When I saw Ethan and Mark on my Tumblr feed, I would feel a sense of aspiration and desire. One result of this community of curated authenticity, specifically in gay spaces, is a sense of loneliness or missing out. But just that one of the components of being online is that you don’t see an individual throughout their life, you’re seeing bits of them, and bits that they specifically chose. Again, this isn’t to say that these personalities are completely artificial or fabricated. I don’t post about my what I make for dinner, unless something goes hilariously wrong, because that’s not what my online presence is. I write about identity, digital culture and video games - so my Twitter presence kind of fits that. However, I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that we only showcase certain aspects of ourselves online, even if it might not feel like it.īeing a freelance culture writer who often writes about his own experience, I’m probably on the extreme end of this. In some form, we all do this, and no I’m not about to go on a “social media made us fake and everyone’s on their phones too much” kind of rant. They’ve created a whole career from the foundations of content around their relationship.Ĭurating yourself on social media isn’t unique to Mark and Ethan.
Mark’s professional website lists some clients of his as Samsung, Paramount Pictures and Alaska Airlines and his YouTube channel has over 680,000 subscribers.
It’s unclear how much of Everyday Pro is work for other clients or just their YouTube production, but they definitely have a portfolio of both. Mark and Ethan created their own video production business called Everyday Pro. Beyond those beginnings, Mark and Ethan grew to their current level of fame at the same time. Which… OK, it was 4 years ago, we don’t need to deconstruct that. One of his most popular videos was “Asking Guys If I’m Gay,” which was about him walking around and asking men if he fit the stereotypes of being gay. Mark was a YouTuber for a brief period before Ethan appeared in his videos and even then wasn’t always tied to Ethan. In a way, the progression of Mark and Ethan’s relationship - from popular online to business owners to their publicized break up - is representative of the same shift in how we operate our lives online.
Mark and Ethan existed way before the current wave of Instagram gays and gay online personalities, but they resemble a similar phenomenon.
Everyone was ready to leave their hometown and find their masculine white prince who was going to protect them from the outside world. They were kind of seen as the aspirational gay couple for gay teens.