Student Natalie Tran is the very embodiment of YouTube celebrityhood. Young, attractive and widely watched, this Australian brings a little life to — and extracts considerable success from — the standard vlog format by often acting out her musings via multi-character sketches in which she plays every role. Posting under the screen name “Communitychannel,” Tran has more than 100,000 regular subscribers, and her 91 (and counting) vlogs on YouTube average hundreds of thousands of views apiece. A few — such as this sketch in which she plays an ultrasound technician with a propensity toward practical jokes — have drawn a whopping 7.3 million look-sees.
While it may be tempting to chalk Tran’s popularity up to mere online ogling of an admittedly smokin’ babe, it’s impossible to dismiss her as just another viral vixen whose window dressing masks a lack of actual wares. Her response to a racist email from one viewer is both astute and scathingly funny, and her parodies of pop culture reference points and phenomenon — from attractive-but-inept local news anchorwomen to the Easter Bunny having a Midol moment — at least rival SNL on an average-to-good day. In other words, here we have the complete package — equal parts hubba hubba and hilarity. And a beautiful girl doling out punchlines and sight gags has all sorts of cross-appeal: the feminist-minded can get behind the fact that a sistah is making in-roads into the still male-dominated territory of comedy, while less high-minded types can get behind the fact that she sometimes does so in a bikini.
Her heightened profile has infused her with some authority as a pundit for the Net celeb set. Whether making the rounds as a panelist at the launch of YouTube Australia, or recently guest starring on Australia’s The Hack Half Hour (where she fittingly weighed in on how much online visibility is too much), Tran has become a poster child for — if not yet a victim of — her own success, and she appears to take it all in (self-effacing) stride.
Whether she is mocking her inclusion in the Maxim-designated “Women of the Web,” or shooting down suggestions that she ought to branch out beyond the computer screen to the silver screen, it’s possible she’s simply being coy about her aspirations. But perhaps the optimal medium for the girl behind Communitychannel is the one in which she already shines. When one can engineer a successful creative career — and exercise complete control over it — from the comfort of one’s own bedroom, the lure of Hollywood might shine a little less brightly than before the advent of YouTube… and would we really want to see Tran reduced to a one-time MadTV cast member, anyway?
