Buckle up folks, this is going to be a long one. Today was the first official day of VidCon. I was a little worried because I ended up leaving a little later then I would have wanted to in order to get there. The line of cars to get in was pretty long and I was afraid I wouldn't make it to the main stage by 9:30AM. But alas, I did with about 20 minutes to spare. I then witnessed the #GirlLove On YouTube panel.

Lilly Singh, Lindsey Stirling, Sarah Weichel, Rosanna Pansino and Cassey Ho.

What is #GirlLove you may ask? It is a movement started by Lilly "Superwoman" Singh that promotes females working together and supporting one another rather then tearing each other down in order to get ahead. I've known of Lilly for a couple of years. She is a pretty big presence on YouTube with 9,000,000+ subscribers. She was one of the creators chosen for the billboard campaign by YouTube, and recently released a documentary about a 27 city tour which is one of the flagship pieces of content for YouTubeRed. To talk about her #GirlLove campaign, she brought on 3 of her bestest girlfriends (and her manager to moderate it). First up is Cassey Ho, who has a Pillates channel. I saw her last year on the "Diversity on YouTube" panel, and really that's all I know about her. Next up is Rosanna Pansino. She has a cooking channel and has been on Grace Helbig's Podcast, "Not Too Deep" (which we'll get to later). And lastly we had the main reason I was at the panel to begin with.

3 years ago, Rocket Jump (I'll be discussing them more on Day Two) made a video called "Legend of Zelda: Pot Smasher". It was featured on Kotaku (the gaming blog owned by Gawker) and it was basically a live action video of the first room encountered in the castle town in "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". In this room is a bunch of pots that Link can smash and a lone guard. They got this adorable little pixie of a girl to play Link. When they posted the behind the scenes video I learned that her name was Lindsey Stirling, and she had a channel where she plays the violin. Part of the reason they had her do it is because she already had the Link costume from a Zelda medley video she had made. That night I watched all of her videos on both of her channels, LindseyStomp were she posts her music videos, and LindseyTime where she posts her vlogs. Not only was she this amazingly talented pixie that could play the violin and dance around so effortlessly, but she also is an endearing dorky girl, as seen in her vlogs. I have seen her live twice now and am going to again this year at the OC Fair. That will be a special time to, but we'll discuss that in August when that time comes. Anyway, back to the #GirlLove panel. This was the only thing Lindsey was going to be on at VidCon this year, so I had to see it. And it was great. These 4 women (and iJustine, who couldn't be there since she's out of the country right now) are the definition of squad goals. Once this panel ended I had to rush to the next one. I had 30 minutes to get to a very long line to see a live taping of "Not Too Deep".

Louise Pentland (SprinkleOfGlitter) and Grace Helbig.

Let's go back in time again. The year is 2011, and G4, the cable network for gamers still exists. "Attack of the Show" was their daily news show on all things pop culture. It was around the time that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" came out that they sent a new reporter I'd never seen before to the press junket. She was this really awkward blonde girl that had a very dry sense of humor. About a week later she was back again, this time touring Lego headquarters. I Googled her after that and found out that she had a YouTube channel, DailyGrace. Not only did she have a channel, but she released a vidieo every weekday. I subscribed and started watching her new videos every morning, and would watch the videos in her back catalog whenever I found time. There were a lot. Those videos were for MyDamnChannel. Cut to today and Grace Helbig has left MyDamnChannel after her contract experied and is one of the most popular YouTubers there is, being one third of the Holy Trinity (more on that on Day Three). 2 years ago she started a podcast, and today was the second live recording of it. I have listened to every episode. It is one of my top 5 favorite podcasts. Her guest to day was Louise Pentland, who is an English blogger that goes by the name of SprinkleOfGlitter. She's basically YouTube's Rebel Wilson. I saw an interview with her last year, and this was her second time on "Not Too Deep". It was a very entertaining recording, even though I had to stand the whole time since all the seats were taken. Once this ended it was time to use my Creator badge for the first time. And when I saw that a certain person was on one of the Creator panels I had to go, because she is beyond infamous in my world. This panel was the "Fighting for a Cause" panel.

Sarah Ullman, Anita Sarkeesian, Kat Lazo and Kat Blaque.

My life pretty much revolves around the gaming industry. It's how I pay my bills, it's what I read the most news about, and it's what I spend most of my free time doing. Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist activist who has a channel called "FemanistFrequency" which looks at the negative depictions of women in pop culture, mostly video games. She is highly controversial and is so often presented with death threats that she rarely makes public appearances anymore. I'll be honest, I've never watched one of her videos. But I doubt there is anything she could say in them that would make me hate her to the point of threatening her with death. But then again I've become a lot more rational in my older age. I've realized that the things people get so upset about really aren't that important. I've also never thought that feminism is an evil thing that is trying to destroy everything I love (yes, there are people who believe that). The other 2 activists on the panel, Kat Lazo (who is apparently the only outspoken Latina feminist on YouTube) and Kat Blaque (an African American transgender woman) I had never heard of. I applaud these women because the crap they have to deal with on a daily basis from the mouth breathers of the Internet is scary stuff. I'm actually a little afraid to even say anything positive about Sarkeesian as I know the rage she brings out. All in all, the panel was interesting, and was a perspective I can't really experience being a straight, white male. And if you're not willing to listen to others who are different, there's really not much hope for this world. Once this was over it was time to go for "Fighting for a Cause" to "Gaming for Good".

Filup Molina, Markiplier, Danny O'Dwyer and Vernon Shaw.

We're going to skip the major participant of this panel because the last thing of the day is all about him. This panel was Gaming online video creators who use their popularity to raise money for charities. I had only heard of two of the panelist, one of which being Danny O'Dwyer from GameSpot. I know of him because I actually did a live demo standing off stage at E3 last year while he interviewd the Associate Producer of the game I was there to show off. We were a little bummed we didn't get him again this year because it would have been the third year in a row. We still had fun though. This panel was entertaining, even though the questions started to get a little off topic. It is amazing how much good people can do if they just run a live stream, keep it entertaining enough, and choose a reputable charity to donate to. After this it was time to go see a panel about "Pop Culture Popularity" and to hopefully snag a seat for the panel following that in the same room.

Hilly & Hannah Hindi, Leigh Lahav, Andre Meadows, Jon Cozart, Anna Brisbane and Maude Garrett.

This was the last scheduled panel for BrizzyVoices (remember her from the previous 2 days?), so I had to go. Not only that, Andre "Black Nerd" Meadows was on it. I had actually just talked to Andre last week at E3 because he was checking out the game we were showing off. I was telling him how much I like the "Crash Course: Games" series he is currently hosting for Hank and John Green (oh there will be plenty on them eventually). Jon Cozart I only know of because he has released 2 A Capella music videos about the Disney princesses that Brizzy has covered. The Hillywood sisters I knew about only from seeing them at Long Beach Comic Con this year. They make epic parody videos from all things nerdy like Doctor Who and Supernatural. They are tiny and adorable. Leigh Lahav I hadn't heard of, but she makes animated parody videos as OnlyLeigh which I need to check out. And the moderator, Maude Garrett, I hadn't heard of but she is basically and Australian Jane Lynch. This was easily the nerdiest panel of the day. Probably the whole 3 days. It was a lot of fun and I want to be friends with all these people!!!! Getting into this panel was a bit of a pain though. You see, it was at 3:30PM. However a majority of the people lining up were actually lining up for the panel that was going to be in this same room at 5:00PM. I had a very hard time finding where the 3:30s ended and the 5:00s began. Luckily I got in, and was able to stay in after the panel ended, because that is when the insanity happened.

What you are about to see is the only video I have taken so far. It was taken with my iPad because my phone had died by this point, so it's not the best quality. My friends, please let me introduce you to the world...of Markiplier.

(Ironically I had to upload that video to YouTube in order to post it here). Mark Fischbach started posting let's plays (videos where people play video games and make comments about them as they play) 4 years ago. In that time he has become one of the top 10 most popular and lucrative YouTubers in the world. How popular? The hunk of metal he is carrying with him in the video above is a Diamond Play Button. YouTube gives these out to channels that have 10,000,000 subscribers. He actually has over 14,000,000 at this point (it takes them a while to ship those out apparently). What he has accomplished in just 4 years is nothing short of amazing. It probably doesn't hurt that he is very consistent and gives his fans a ton of content. He actually posts 2 videos every week day. That is an insane amount of work. This was a Q&A for him, and the first guy that went up kind of hijacked the mic and the show, it was a little awkward. However he said something that really is the essence of what Markiplier is, "emotional honesty". He is one of the most genuine content creators there is. If you see his videos for when he hit major milestones like 5,000,000 or 8,000,000 or 10,000,000, he get's very choked up about it. And he donates a LOT to charity. He was the 4 member of the "Gaming for Good" panel I discussed earlier. But the thing that really impressed me most about him happened at last years VidCon. When I was in the meet and greet line for Brizzy, Markiplier was in the next booth. The way they have things set up is there is a group of people lined up in rows that are meeting the person currently there. Then behind that group is a section that is free for people to start lining up for the next person. I saw him go through about 300 fans, and they were all super excited to meet him and he was just as full of energy for the first one as he was the last. He then took about a 60 second breather, then walked to the next group that was waiting and said, "alright, come on up". They were there for him. When I got to the front of the line I was in I started talking to the security lady that was there and she said that he had been at it for 2 days, just meeting thousands of his fans without stopping. It was that day that I went home and subscribed to him, because the dude is an inspiration. He is 10 years younger then me, but I could only hope to be as good of a person as he is. And my God, as you can hear in the video, the squeeeeeeeeeeeeeing he elicits is deafining.

One last thing. Here is a little video I shot when I got back to my car I like to call effect and cause.

Apparently there was smoke in that part of the parking garage, so someone decided it'd be a good idea to unload a full fire extinguisher on all the cars in the area. 2 hours of finding and waiting for a car wash and $7 later, my car is clean again. Now if you'll excuse me, this took much longer then I wanted and I have to get to sleep for Day Two.

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