Indie Series: Kassandra Lee
YouTube allows creators the freedom to create sketches and series in their own unique ways. For creator Kassandra Lee, this means creating a variety of different skits about navigating relationships and friendships. She shares videos weekly with her 87.9 thousand subscribers spliced with in-depth Q&A’s to grow closer to her followers.
Lee’s content follows a variety of different paths with no main plot point or characters recurring throughout, except for Lee herself. However, Lee’s character also changes with each video, whether stated or not. In rare cases, Lee plays all of the characters in one sketch. She utilized this technique in her video “My Nosey Neighbor” where she portrayed herself being bothered by her overbearing older neighbor, Jill, whom she also played. The short video displayed the struggle of having overly friendly neighbors. This introduces the theme of Lee’s videos. Every scenario Lee paints attempts to be relatable to a large audience. She plays with relevant recurring issues for young adults living on their own or with roommates or significant others. She finds success in her relatability shown in her overwhelmingly positive comment section filled with admirers praising her characters and the situations they find themselves in.
Lee largely posts stand-alone sketches that tackle a real-world issue in five to ten minutes then ends. One example of this shows Kassandra and her friend Jasmine Balais sitting across from each other engaging in an argument about whether the world is flat or round. Each side gives convincing arguments as the camera pans between the two girls getting more and more aggravated with the other. They eventually drag another friend, Fantasia, into the conversation which comes to no final conclusion. Videos like this show Lee’s ability to create fun and engaging content out of the colloquial conversation. The brevity of her videos allows her to explore mundane topics and spin them into a way that appeals to thousands of viewers.
In a different type of video tackling a slightly more serious topic, Lee beings her video as a video diary talking directly to the camera about being on day 10 of her health and fitness journey. She speaks openly about suppressing cravings and listening to her fitness coach. The video cuts to clips of Lee in the supermarket picking out colorful fruits and vegetables and bypassing sugary cereal. Lee waves to her future self as she reflects on her progress so far. Suddenly, the video shits and the words “what really happened” flash on the screen as Lee assumes her similar comedic flair seen in her videos. Lee buys box after box of her weakness food- cereal- and devours it. Although the video follows her similar comedic tropes, it demonstrates a real problem for those on diets and exposes that weakness are real and mistakes occur when trying to follow a diet or routine. She takes this feeling of weakness and turns it into relatable content leading to comments about diet tips and positive encouragement.
Occasionally, Lee takes the time to expand upon certain instances, resulting in two or three-part mini-series on her channel. For example “ When Your Man’s Best Friend is a Girl” tracks the jealousy and anger that arises when your boyfriend becomes super close to another girl, even if they are just friends, in a two-part series posted over the span of a month.
Even rarer are Lee’s three parts series. Her most recent one follows Lee when she thinks she slept with her roommate, as the title of the mini-series suggests. In the first video, Lee wakes up beside her roommate with no recollection of the night before. When confronted, her roommate (ElhadjTv) tells her about his condition called full lunar unconsciousness that causes him to sleepwalk during full moons. Lee believes him and apologizes. Things become fishy in episode two when Lee has a boy over and her roommate sleepwalks into their date and slaps him across the face. Again, Lee writes it off as his condition, yet starts to become a little suspicious. It is not until her friend, Monnie Drea, debunks his supposed disease in part three that she starts to believe something else may be going on.
Lee’s longer series allow more time for her characters and story lines to develop, leading to more engagement from her audience who wait to see what will happen next. However, her ability to create multiple different kinds of content widens her audience further by appealing to a large number of people, despite the type of content they consume. She proves herself talented in more than one regard through her use of multiple video styles. As her channel continues to develop and grow, so does her content, suggesting that she has the potential to create even more different types of videos and longer series in the future.
Lee ends all of her videos by saying “oo say what? Subscribe baby” and follows the exclamation with bloopers, offering her subscribers a deeper look into her creative process. Sometimes Lee utilizes her voice-overs of “oo” and “say what?” throughout her videos at moments of high tension, reacting as an audience would. This personal voice adds to her approachability as a creator as she continually gives her followers more ways to get to know her. Thus, Lee shines as a creator in her sketches and longer series and in her engagement with her subscribers, constantly liking comments and filming extensive Q&A’s. Lee’s channel offers content for all viewers especially young adults who can relate to being ghosted, going through firsts with their partner and arguing with friends.