Call It What You Want To

Chapter 2: Kyler

In the grand scheme of things, my life is not really unfair. I have a pretty easy class schedule, a job that pays me pretty decently, I drive one of the nicest cars in the school parking lot, and I don't really have any issues with anyone at school. If someone was just taking a general look at my life, they'd probably say I have it pretty good. Hell, someone could look at my family and say that I had it great!

But you know how the Titanic sank because of what was just under the surface, that they just couldn't quite see?

It's kinda like how my life was. On the surface it looked like I was living the dream, but being in a YouTube family had more downfalls than its perks. It was something I thought about a lot, but the thought would completely occupy my mind on Wednesday nights when we'd all sit down and have to be a part of the editing for the newest weekly Youtube video (or sometimes videos) to go up on The Midwest Morgans.

When I was 11, shortly after my little brother Declan was born, the basement to our house flooded after a series of brutal storms that cut power for a ton of people and caused huge storm drain surges. When the basement flooded, my parents found out that they lost so many of the books, pictures, and elementary school projects that my younger sister Milana and I had done up to that point. What was even worse for them was that they lost so much of Declan's baby milestone memories.

My parents, my mom especially, are people that always wanted a moment to be remembered, and they'd do everything to capture it. I remembered having a camera in my face and pictures of my sister and I in matching outfits for about as long as I could remember.

After the flood, we not only had to lose our house because the damage was just too much, but my parents also lost a lot of their most prized possessions: the tangible things they could hold on to from our childhoods. This was at the rise of social media though, so when my parents were feeling especially upset, they could scroll back through Facebook or Instagram to see some of the highlights that made it online.

I was twelve when my mom got the idea to make a family YouTube channel. The idea started simple enough after she saw another Mom post her family's "adventures" online. The whole idea of "the internet is forever" was always made to sound like a scary concept, but to my mom this was perfect. The internet couldn't be destroyed by natural disasters or accidentally lost, because when it got posted it was there forever.

When the original idea was pitched, our channel would be private and the link would only be shared with my parents Facebook pages for their friends and family. They would just be Facebook worthy highlights in a video format. I was fine with it, until the private channel went public.

A day at Disney should be one of a kid's fondest memories, but at thirteen it was the start of one of the worst things to take over my life. My mom had a camera in our faces for almost the whole three days we were there, and a week later there was a video for all of YouTube to see called "The Morgan Family LOVES Disney". The video got 150,000 views in a week, all because of one fifteen second clip where my sister and I were dancing on the hotel room bed. That clip got shortened into a GIF and we were a "reaction meme" in days. While embarrassed, a part of me at the time thought it was cool. I mean, I was famous, but this changed my family's perspective on the videos forever.

People wanted to see more of just our typical, Midwestern family and mom went full force into it. At first it was just recording little bits of our day into mini vlog style videos, but then everything became a video and event. Daily routines turned into "get ready with us" videos, grocery shopping turned into "grocery hauls for our family of five", and the first day of school became a hugely publicized event. After a year, my mom was getting paid by brands to feature products in her videos and upload specific content for her growing channel.