Young Asian Americans dominate a great swath of the messy territory called YouTube, holding their own against the well-funded and famous.<\/p>\n
Taken together, these numbers make two major points: there is a great pool of Asian Americans who, against the grain of \u201cmodel minority\u201d professionalism, need an outlet for humor and creative expression. Perhaps more importantly, these numbers prove the existence of a huge audience, largely Asian American, who want to see the experiences and talents of Asian people in popular media.<\/p>\n
YouTube is, indeed, the only time most of us have seen Asians speak into a camera about the issues that matter to them, and perhaps the only realm where Asian Americans have the opportunity to talk about race to a large audience. Here, they use humor to take on stereotypes and misunderstandings, as in Higa’s \u201cDear Ryan, Can you open your eyes?\u201d \u2014 an absurdist response to a commenter’s absurd question \u2014 or Wu’s \u201cAsians Just Aren’t Cool Enough?\u201d taking on the casting of a white actor as Goku in the Dragonball movie (\u201cthat’s like making a Fat Albert movie starring Keanu Reeves as Fat Albert\u201d).<\/p>\n