When You Share Your Life

Jessica Contrera (thanks, Michael): When 13-year-old Caleb LeBlanc's death made the news this week, millions of people already knew him. He wasn't a pop star, an up-and-coming actor or a child prodigy. He was a boy who liked to wear his hair floppy, play baseball, and belt out nonsensical songs about being a baked potato — all for an audience usually bigger than the population of his home state.

Caleb, whose parents said he died of an "undetected medical condition," was the oldest son of the "Bratayley" clan, the YouTube-famous Arnold, Md., family. Their lives and their income revolved around creating 10- to 20-minute clips of their unremarkable moments: bouncing on a backyard trampoline (15…