I can't believe my eyes. Am I just too old? Some random persons shows herself in 5 different shirts or shows herself sitting all day on the balcony? Why is that interesting and so many people want to watch this?
Way back when this effect played out in the way people connected with the people on their favorite TV shows. If anything, it's compounded now, since you can watch these people do normal hangout stuff like "sitting all day on the balcony". That stuff used to be reserved for friends and family, or at least acquaintances. So we still attach a special feeling to taking part in it. Again, this is most true when we see the person as cool.
Might even be further compounded by the rise of actual friendships (i.e., two-way streets) that mostly play out online -- if many of your interactions with actual friends occur over Instagram, it's easier to see "I see person x's Instagram posts" as a kind of friendship.
These are just guesses. I follow some people on YouTube, but they're all very skilled practitioners of at least one of my hobbies, and I'm not into their sporadic "my life outside my hobby/vlog" videos.
Also, on reflection, I probably stole most of these ideas from an old essay David Foster Wallace wrote about television, "E Unibus Pluram" [1].
But otherwise, the entire culture of watching other people online is weird to me.
If you have children, or younger siblings, you will know they consume those like candies. Is it generational? I don't think so, unless "Internet, Youtube, Social Media... etc." is counted as a generation--which might as well be.
Why so many people still want to watch hollywood movies is what I would ask instead.