How I Met Your Buck

I’ve made collab videos with a lot of “popular” YouTubers. I’ve appeared on LisaNova’s channel. I’ve appeared on WhatTheBuckShow’s channel. Hell, I’ve appeared on YouTube’s official company channel. I’ve written videos for Lisa. I’ve edited a video for Buck… After which I always get asked a lot about how I became friends with, or how I even just know them.

Most friendships grow organically and you’d think it would be hard to pin point one day or one way you became friends with someone. But let me tell you the story of how I met Michael Buckley, WhatTheBuckShow (who announced just last night that he signed a deal with HBO).

Buck subscribed to me a long time ago, over a year ago. He had less than 20,000 subscribers at the time. I had less than 2,000. I read the name “WhatTheBuckShow” in the subscription notification email from YouTube, but didn’t bother to check out the channel. Given the name, I thought the show was hosted by a redneck, or worse, two rednecks, discussing deer (buck) hunting or something. I deleted the subscription notification email and moved on.

Two days later I was hanging out in Kelley (nutcheese)’s Stickam room, as was custom before blogTV hit the scene. She said Buck had subscribed to her. She asked if any of us in the room knew who Buck was. None of us did. She suggested we go check him out, she said he was quite funny.

I’ll admit. I was hooked one minute into the first WhatTheBuckShow video I saw. He was talking about Britney, or was it Christina? Doesn’t matter. He was talking about someone I didn’t care about, but I still found myself laughing and mesmerized by his energy level, his sense of humor and his on-screen presence.

I wrote him an email thanking him for subscribing. I subscribed to him. I watched his almost daily videos as they rolled out. I made sure to comment on each one. After a couple weeks, I asked him to be in my How Videos Get Featured on YouTube collab. He delivered. It was brilliant.

He asked me to work on some graphics for him, after seeing some of my work. I asked him to be in my Halloween collab. We’ve been friends since.

If you want to make more friends on YouTube, or friends with a particular person, you need to keep yourself within their line of sight. Had I simply subscribed to Buck, but never emailed to say “thanks” and “hi”, had I never commented, never talked to him about collabs… if I had been “too busy” the weekend he asked me to make him a banner - things probably would have turned out different.

But be careful not to smother. Commenting is great. Skyping someone you don’t know twenty times a day, is not so great. And remember that it takes two to make a friendship. If Michael hadn’t been interested in making a new friend, or hadn’t cared for my videos or my design work, again, things probably would have turned out different.

There is no secret to making friends on YouTube any more than there is in high school, or the business community or any where else. You’ll most likely get along best with those who have similar goals and interests as you on the Tubes. You won’t see Fred hanging out with the current YourTubeAdvocate on any given month because, well, they’re on two completely separate paths on YouTube. Don’t change yourself to fit in with the circle of friends you want. Be yourself and enjoy the comments and messages you do receive and send. Friendships and relationships will grow naturally.

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