How should an influencer sound?
For 10 straight years, the most popular way to introduce oneself on YouTube has been a single phrase: Hey guys! Thats pretty obvious to anyone whos ever watched a YouTube video about, well, anything, but the company still put in the energy to actually track the data over the past decade. Whats up and good morning come in at second and third, but hey guys has consistently remained in the top spot. (Here is a fun supercut of a bunch of YouTubers saying it until the phrase ceases to mean anything at all.) Sign up for The Goods newsletter Each week well send you the very best from The Goods, plus a special internet culture edition by Rebecca Jennings on Tuesdays. Sign up here. This is not where the sonic similarities of YouTubers, regardless of their content, end. For nearly as long as YouTube has existed, people have been lamenting the phenomenon of YouTube voice, or the slightly exaggerated, over-pronounced manner of speaking beloved by video essayists, drama commentators, and DIY experts on the platform. The ur-example cited is usually Hank Green, whos been making videos on everything from the American health care system to the Top 10 Freaking Amazing Explosions since literally 2007. Actual scholars have attempted to describe what YouTube voice sounds like. Speech pathologist and PhD candidate Erin Hall told Vice that there are two things happening here: One is the actual segments theyre using  the vowels and consonants. Theyre over-enunciating compared to casual speech, which is something newscasters or radio personalities do. Second: Theyre trying to keep it more casual, even if what theyre saying is standard, adding a different kind of intonation makes it more engaging to listen to.  In an investigation into YouTube voice, the Atlantic drew from several linguists to determine what specific qualities this manner of speaking shares. Essentially, its all about pronunciation and pacing. On camera, it takes more effort to keep someone interested (see also: exaggerated hand and facial motions). Changing of pacing  that gets your attention, said linguistics professor Naomi Baron. Baron noted that YouTubers tended to overstress both vowels and consonants, such as someone saying exactly like eh-ckzACKTly. She guesses that the style stems in part from informal news broadcast programs or infotainment like The Daily Show. Another, Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania, put it bluntly: Its intellectual used-car-salesman voice, he wrote. He also compared it to a carnival barker. @onlyjayus GO JOIN MY @irl GROUP CHAT I cant wait to talk to you guys :))  original sound - Isabella Avila  I started noticing YouTube voice proliferate on TikTok as soon as the app started to go mainstream (as opposed to its delightfully cringe origins). Most instances were essentially 60-second versions of YouTube videos, dudes pointing to an image or a graph while explaining whatever factoids went alongside it, or giving scripted hot takes on some depressing political event. Popular users like @onlyjayus iterated on the voice by adding visual eye-grabbers like walking into the frame, holding their camera up to a bathroom mirror, then giving a clearly rehearsed spiel. A sizable percentage of TikTok are accounts that use the person-pointing-and-explaining format alongside its requisite inflection, to the point where its almost become distinct: Id argue that TikTok voice is more of a sped-up monotone as opposed to the drawn-out dramatics of YouTube, likely due to the 60-second time limit (though that could change once every user has access to three-minute videos). Last week a TikTok came on my For You page that explored digital accents. TikToker @Averybrynn was referringspecifically to what she called the beauty YouTuber dialect, which she described as like they weirdly pronounce everything just a little bit too much in these small little snippets? What makes it distinct from regular YouTube voice is that each word tends to be longer than it should, while also being bookended by a staccato pause. Theres also a common inclination to turn short vowels into long vowels, like saying thee instead of the. Others in the comments pointed out the repeated use of the first person plural when referring to themselves (and now were gonna go in with a swipe of mascara), while one linguistics major noted that this was in fact a sociolect, not a dialect, because it refers to a social group. Its the sort of speech typically associated with female influencers who, by virtue of the job, we assume are there to endear themselves to the audience or present a trustworthy sales pitch. But whats most interesting to watch about YouTube voice and the influencer accent is how normal people have adapted to it in their own, regular-person TikTok videos and Instagram stories. If you listen closely to enough peoples front-facing camera videos, youll hear a voice that sounds somewhere between a TED Talk and sponsored content, perhaps even within your own social circles. Maybe! Also maybe! To find out, I asked the one person I knew who has lots of experience talking in YouTube videos and also does not sound like a big dork. Joss Fong, senior producer and one of the most recognizable faces of the Vox video team, told me, I generally tell people to speak slightly faster and with more energy than they normally do and to imagine that theyre talking to a friend. She added, What to do with your face, eyes, or body is a whole other thing that Im still a bit clueless about.  What this really asks of us, however, is a lot more difficult than imitating an influencers voice  its acting. Its a skill thats notoriously tricky to nail convincingly, but also even more so when the person were acting as is ourselves at our most comfortable and relaxed. So its not exactly the YouTube creators fault that theyre unable to stop themselves from sounding either cringey or smug or annoying or whatever, and its certainly not a regular persons fault that they cant turn themselves off and on at will. As more of us pivot to this kind of life, a life of talking into our cameras, performing authenticity, and building precious clout, itll be interesting to see how YouTube voice evolves. Perhaps the frequent up-and-downspeak will turn toward the monotone of TikTok voice or the staccato influencer voice or whatever voice is suited to the platform that comes next. Perhaps its a faceless audio-only app like Clubhouse or some kind of virtual reality massive multiplayer online game where we need to figure out how to listen to each other in real time or else well be eaten by a robot dragon. I, for one, look forward to a universe where door-to-door salesman isnt the voice I hear radiating from the internet every day. 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