YouTube 2011 - 2016 - arseny

YouTube 2011 - 2016

Embracing Spider-Man in 2011

In the fall of 2011, I was in my second year at university. YouTube was still relatively new, and I loved spending my time watching videos about topics that piqued my interest. Despite being already 21, my passion for superheroes, especially Spider-Man, remained strong. Occasionally, I would read a comic book, find related discussion forums, or watch an episode or two of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon. Where I grew up, the people surrounding me, whether friends or family, weren’t too keen or interested in my passion for superheroes. Since the entire superhero culture wasn’t popular, even among the kids I grew up with in school, feeling an active part of the fandom through the Internet was quite fulfilling. I was still a novice to video editing at that time, having only limited experience in the Windows Movie Maker, which, despite being rather simple, allowed me to edit and cut various clips, whether from a game I was playing online or my own short recordings from school.

SevenWebHeads

In December 2011, I decided to create my own Spider-Man-based YouTube channel, a site where anyone could come by and say hi, watch a bunch of Spider-Man cartoons or scenes, or discuss a movie or comic book in the comment section. But most importantly, I made this channel for myself, a sort of hub of all the superhero entertainment I would typically have to dig up through various websites and forums. In the comic books, Spider-man was often called a ‘Webhead’ by his friends and foes; that, and my favorite number being seven, made me come up with the channel name ‘SevenWebHeads.’ The channel's original content was a copyright holder’s dream: not a single recording of myself, my voice, or anything related to my personality. Instead, it was lots and lots of official Spider-Man media, with occasional gameplay and walkthroughs of various Spider-Man games.

Sharing Life with SevenWebHeads Fans

It was only in 2012, a couple of months after I moved to the UK, that I started to actually visit comic book stores, create some very first vlogs, visit comic book exhibitions, review comics, and so on. While my channel got some traction and a couple of thousand subscribers purely through cartoons and scenes, it was after a bunch of real-life vlogs that I finally injected my personality into it and, for the first time, my own style. As a non-native English speaker, doing the first voice recording was rather stressful, and my obnoxious accent at the time caused some tension with each upload. But as the weeks went by, I realized I was getting my own fans and subscribers, not just people who shared my passion for the character, but people who actually liked me. It was only a matter of time before my first face reveal and I shared about my personal life, ideas, and thoughts with my brand-new community.

Expanding Content Horizon

By 2012, the brand-new Spider-Man movie was in the works, a reboot of the franchise, a new cast, and a new story; it became the perfect opportunity for me to start covering movie news and updates, sharing my very own script ideas, discussing filming locations, etc. Ten thousand subscribers became twenty thousand -- the hype around the movie was giving my content the wings it needed to really take off. Creating my first channel-based social media, a Facebook page and Twitter account, the best part of my day became logging into said media to check out new DMs, comments, and requests from my fans. From a person who just wanted to upload a bunch of his favorite cartoons to catapulting into a loyal fanbase and community, I knew I was on the right track.

SevenWebHeads Hits 100,000 Subscribers in 2014

By 2014, my channel had reached 100,000 subscribers. A sequel to ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ was coming, and what started as a hobby became a full-time job for me. I encountered lots of sleepless nights for the sake of covering every single filming update, more advanced video editing, better optimization with each video, turning down offers to hang out with friends, and staying in my room with my brand-new microphone, just so I could talk about the new movie poster or filming location; long story short, I was living a dream. My dream. Some videos required more intense editing, where I could spend 5 hours on a 5-minute video. Despite being exhausted, I was happy. These were still the very early years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU for short. There weren’t many vlogs or channels about it, and there certainly wasn’t a single channel that was as dedicated to a single character as mine. My channel eventually started getting more recognition as I was getting mentioned in various websites and articles, especially when I did some covering of the hot movie filming updates. You could find the channel’s name dropped on websites like MTV, Comicbook, ComicBookMovie, ScreenCrush, etc. By then, the channel had already had a bunch of collabs and videos made with my fans’ help (notable mentions would be when I asked fans to send me shorts clips of them talking about Spider-Man, reacting to the Spider-Man movie trailer, and wishing Stan Lee, the creator of Spidey, a happy birthday).

The Excitement of Shared Spider-Man Passion

I would get thousands of clips from fans worldwide and mash them into one exciting video. Somehow, I managed to unite Spider-Man fans from all over the globe, kids, teens, and adults, who would share the excitement for my beloved character. As I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t a single website or a channel these people would hang out on beforehand, so you can say that ‘SevenWebHeads’ became the central hub for Spider-Man fans all over the world. One of the most exciting yet nerve-wracking experiences was when some of my followers sent me a bunch of Facebook messages revealing that they were working on ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ movie set. Yes, you heard it right! I was getting so-called “leaks” of the Spider-Man costume that Andrew Garfield was wearing during the filming, some photos of trucks rushing through NYC, filming the opening chase scene, and so on. Talking about such things on my official channel was exciting but also straight-up bold.

SevenWebHeads on the Biggest Spidey Fan Excitement

One of my most bizarre stories is about the leaked storyboards from the movie, sent to me by the same person from the set. After making a video about it and speculating with my fans about potential plot details, the video, which by that time reached thousands of views and got coverings on many websites, unsurprisingly got removed by Sony Pictures. After some investigations, it turned out that the leaker’s intentions weren’t so genuine. As an ordinary fan from Facebook who turned out to be an almost full-blown TMZ reporter, he would ask for money for additional exclusive content, be it short videos or photos from movie sets. Together with one of the Sony Pictures managers and about a week of e-mail chats and investigations, we managed to find the source of the leaks. Eventually, my channel got a clean slate from the previously received YouTube strike, and Sony, well, let’s just say there were no more crucial movie leaks until the movie's release in May 2014. One month before the movie's release, SevenWebHeads was on the biggest hype train among Spider-Man fans. And when I thought things couldn’t get better… they did.

In April, almost a month before the movie release, I got contacted by Sony Pictures yet again; this time, though, things were much more pleasant. I got invited to talk to the movie's cast, alongside its director, through a Google Hangout event. Along with four other people, one of whom was ‘Kid President’ himself, I was allowed to come up with questions for Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone, Dane Dehaan, and the director of the movie, Marc Webb, and do it live. Due to not being comfortable revealing my real name and the whole leaker fiasco, one of the Sony managers, Vanessa, and I decided that it might be fun to create an alias for myself. I went with the name Josh as a small nod to Josh Keaton, an American actor who voiced Spider-Man in one of the cartoons. The event happened on April 22; we went live, and SevenWebheads was introduced to the movie's cast through our video call. Still, one of the best moments of my life was yet to come.

Meeting Marc Webb and Jamie Foxx at an Event

When it was my turn to ask the question, the host joked about me being a super Spider-Man fan and asked if my head was exploding. Before I could answer, he was interrupted by Marc Webb, who said it was his head that was exploding: “My head is exploding, this guy is all over the internet, he’s amazing,” to which the host replied, “Really, you know who he is Marc?” It turns out that Marc Webb, the director of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’, was actually my fan. He watched my videos and, to make sure, asked if I was the one who created the video about people reacting to the movie’s trailer. After taking the biggest breath in my life, I shouted, “You know me?” I think I even asked for somebody to call an ambulance. The entire event was super fun, and I got to ask my questions, which I prepared for Marc Webb and Jamie Foxx.

So there it was: Arsenijs, who became SevenWebHeads, who became ‘Josh’ for the evening, realized that since the first Spider-Man cartoon he watched with his grandad in the small, unknown town of Jekabpils, getting 50 cents to watch the first Spider-Man movie in 2002 from his grandma, drawing Spider-Man in-between classes in school, making his Spider-Man YouTube channel while sitting alone in his room during a cold December culminated to this day and this moment. Was it one of the best moments in my life? Without a doubt

Sony's Franchise Shift and Personal Struggles

2014 was the peak of my Spider-Man channel’s career. It was everything I ever dreamed of, but also a year that I had to deal with family issues. ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2,’ while getting decent box office numbers, didn’t exactly meet the goal in terms of revenue that Sony expected. That, and reviews being very divided among the fans, resulted in Sony deciding to scrap the franchise's plans for the future. 2015 also marked the first talks of the potential appearance of Spider-Man in Marvel Cinematic Universe, a long-awaited debut of Spider-Man in Avengers, and much more. As the previous franchise began slowly dying out, so was my interest in the potential of yet another reboot. I realized I was slowly fading from the channel due to my personal life and how exhausting the last couple of years were.

New Content for Future Generations

In 2016, I uploaded my last video, a review of Spider-Man appearing in Captain America: Civil War. The Sony and Marvel deal went through, and new and exciting times were ahead. Fans started to move on, and so did I. After many years of absence, realizing I would never return to this part of my life, I decided to sell my channel to a company, ‘FandomWire,’ which was appropriate for many reasons. First, they were specializing in the superhero genre, and second, I knew I would never discuss and cover news about the new MCU Spider-Man anymore. However, I still wanted my legacy channel to produce new, exciting content for younger generations.

Journey Through Channel's History

This was a truly exciting part of my life, and I felt like I’d accomplished everything possible regarding this particular genre on YouTube and the Internet. Several years later, you can still find articles on Reddit or various forums about people discussing if I will ever return or some YouTube comments of praise. Even to this day, my very last video still gets comments, people stopping by, and fans mentioning how they grew up watching my videos, how they miss my voice, my speculations, etc. Many videos also discuss the absence of SevenWebHeads, the deal with FandomWire, and much more.

I remember reading a bunch of tweets about how my channel inspired people to create their own superhero content, be it a vlog, forum, or channel. I’ve met and worked with amazing people and made many great friends along my social media journey. Despite not being ‘SevenWebHeads’ anymore, I will always be a Spider-Man fan and always be able to relate to him. You can find many of the channel’s history materials below, from the first videos to the interviews, reviews, and other media. All the older videos are always available on FandomWire’s YouTube page. Excelsior!