Web Animation / Story Booth

*click* *ding*

Story Booth is a YouTube channel dedicated to animating and sharing short stories from various people's lives, usually those of young children and teenagers. Themes range from serious issues like bullying and mass shootings to more lighthearted and even humorous videos about embarrassing events, mistakes, or borderline ghost stories.

Unlike many of the similar animated channels inspired by it, Story Booth gets all of its content from its own viewers through submissions, which ensures a higher quality of videos produced and less need to rely on clickbait titles and thumbnails. While Story Booth has a few outlandish stories, most of its videos are firmly grounded in reality and focus on real events. Updates occur roughly once a week.

After coming back from a short hiatus in March 2022 the creators also unveiled a new spinoff channel called Story Booth College that focuses on various stories and misadventures submitted by college kids. This series contains a bit more mature (though still often humorous) subject matter and is aimed at the older teen and young adult demographic. Tropes for it should go in the appropriate section below.

Story Booth provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Plenty of stories involve parental figures who are uncaring at best and outright violent at worst. Mean Mom, 16 and Pregnant, and My 'Perfect' Dad Wasn't Who I Thought He Was are perfect examples of this.
• A-Cup Angst: Jessica from I Was Made Fun Of For Being A Late Bloomer suffers from this when everyone at her school starts developing early and begins teasing her over her flat chest. By the end of the video, she learns to accept her body for what it is and is less self-conscious about being small.
• Adults Are Useless: Played for Drama. Depending on the video, adults are either too clueless, busy, or apathetic to provide moral or emotional support.
• Art-Style Dissonance: Despite the cartoony art style, Story Booth has several very dark stories that deal with controversial real-world issues like bullying, mass shootings, body image problems, underage drug abuse, pedophilia, and much, much more. Justified as each story comes from an actual person.
• Art Evolution: The first few videos on the channel were very rough and somewhat more detailed while later videos gradually became more stylized and simplistic. Compare the first video to a more recent one.
• Bullying the Disabled: A common theme in Story Booth is how people with intellectual or physical disabilities are bullied and ostracized by their peers.
• Celebrity Edition: Occasionally Story Booth will make a video focusing on a celebrity (mostly other famous YouTubers) such as Lilly Singh or Anthony Ramos.
• Creepy Child: My Scary Little Sister features a teenage girl with a little sister who behaves in a very creepy manner, such as claiming to see a strange man in her room or laughing in glee at a particularly dark part of a children's movie that had the other kids crying.
• Driven to Suicide: Discussed in both My Friend Committed Suicide and I Lost My Brother, with the former narrated by YouTuber Katherout (Katherine Berry).
• Fat Bastard: In A Creepy Guy Followed Me, Kayley was harassed by one in the church parking lot.
• He Who Fights Monsters: I Did The Wrong Thing After Getting Bullied revolves around Sarah getting harassed badly in middle school. When she entered high school, she thoughtlessly took her anger out on random people, coming off as no better than her past aggressors, which she admits to herself.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Jasmine from I Hated To Go Through School as the Tall Girl is six feet tall and feels awkward and out of place because of it.
• Humans Are Flawed: Many of the videos make it clear that humans are capable of horrific acts, but many of those videos also end with some measure of hope and state that other people are capable of compassion and sympathy as well.
• Internet Safety Aesop: Several stories have touched upon teenage girls posting their privates online at others' insistence, resulting in them feeling shamed.
• Kids Are Cruel: Quite a lot of stories revolve around childhood bullying. They sometimes reach Bully Brutality levels.
• Mood Whiplash: This can result from watching several videos in a row due to the wide range of subject matter covered on the channel. One minute the viewer could be watching a silly story about a supposedly possessed doll and the next minute be reeling in horror at a tale of extreme child abuse. All of the stories are submitted by real people recounting a past part of their lives after all, so this trope is pretty much unavoidable.
• Never Learned to Talk: Mandy from "My Life with CP (Cerebral Palsy)" only speaks in mumbles due to her cerebral palsy, so her mother has to translate her story for her.
• Older Than They Look: Ashley from "I Don't Look My Age But I'm In High School" is a high school junior, but due to being 4'11" with a "baby face" and hardly any curves, she looks like an eighth-grader at the oldest.
• Pædo Hunt: Several videos show young girls getting sexually abused by strange men, such as a 16-year-old boy and a security guard.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: There have been several of these throughout the series. In My Best Friend Ghosted Me, Anna received one from a girl named Leah.
  Anna: Do you even know what you're saying? Do you hear what is coming out of your mouth?
  Leah: I hear it loud and clear. You are not supportive of me, you're a bad person, and I think you need to go away until you learn how to be a good friend.
• Teen Pregnancy: Covered a few times in stories like this or this.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Several videos have people learn the hard way that even seemingly average people can actually be cruel Jerkasses at best or depraved monsters at worst.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Karim from I Didn't Like Gay People grew up in a setting filled with casual homophobia, causing him to accept without question that homosexuality is wrong. At one point, he beat up his friend for making advances toward him, though he is torn about whether that was right or wrong. Being socially ostracized in high school, then making LGBT friends in college, finally helps him overcome his homophobia.
• Weight Woe: Plenty of stories center on body image issues, often resulting in anorexia. The subjects within the stories do eventually learn to accept themselves for who they are, though.

Story Booth College provides examples of:

• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: It's a series based around stories summited by college students so this is pretty much a given. In just the second story posted on the channel, we have a girl and her friends who end up getting completely wasted while going to various parties which results in them being featured on an Instagram page focused on wild college kid shenanigans, much to their embarrassment.
• Darker and Edgier: Not by a whole lot but it's still there. While the overall tone and animation are similar to the main channel Story Booth College features a bit more adult content and situations and is mostly aimed at the late-teen demographic. If Story Booth is a PG movie with some occasionally questionable subject matter that can be enjoyed by the whole family Story Booth College is a PG-13 movie with more swearing and mature subjects that the parents wait to watch after all the young kids go to bed.

---