Not sure if anyone else has stumbled upon this banner on their YouTube front pages, but these playlists really remind me of how reality TV genres are sometimes programmed in genre chunks on TV. I've always found a parallel between reality TV genres and lifestyle vlogs, and this is sometimes confirmed by YouTubers saying they wish they had their own HGTV series or cooking show. Conceptualizing lifestyle vlogs in this way really emphasize how much YouTube is remediating reality TV, finding many of their industry models from Hollywood rather than from the Silicon Valley. Because, alternatively, you can view lifestyle vlogs through the YouTubers themselves, which would foreground celebrity rather than genre. Within a YouTuber's oeuvre, you'll see a mix of these lifestyle videos: many make-up gurus also do a "what I eat in a day" video, many fitness gurus also do "outfits of the week" video, etc. When their name becomes the structuring principle, YouTubers look more well-rounded and entrepreneurial in a variety of ways. When structured as a part of a genre, like what YouTube does here, the image of YouTube becomes a lot more, well, generic. It de-emphasizes individual appeal in order to highlight the common strands within the content, mimicking TV by emphasizing its ability to organize and program itself. This might also be a tactic to advertise to newcomers, people who might not be well-versed in YouTube celebrity to navigate the variety in lifestyle vlogs. In embracing this convergence, YouTube is making itself more legible to a TV audience, almost as if convergence was front-and-center in their marketing strategy.
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