But when metrics substitute for self-worth, it’s easy to fall into the trap of giving precious pieces of yourself away to feed an audience that’s always hungry for more and more.
Documenting my darkest moments began to feel like the only way people would truly understand me. In 2018, I impulsively released a video about my struggle with burnout, which featured intimate footage of my emotional breakdowns. Those breakdowns were, in part, a product of severe anxiety and depression brought about by chasing the exact success for which many other teenagers yearn.
My burnout video didn’t end my career; it brought me even more attention, from both the wider YouTube community and the news media. Sharing it meant that I was seen authentically, but it also meant that I had made a product out of some of the most devastating moments of my life. In its aftermath, I felt pressured to continuously comment on problems in my private life that I didn’t know how to fix.
And yet, I kept making videos. In hindsight, the videos I made during that time lacked the passionate spark that had once been key to my success. It had begun to feel as if I was playing a version of myself I’d outgrown. I was entering adulthood and trying to live my childhood dream, but now, to be “authentic,” I had to be the product I had long been posting online, as opposed to the person I was growing up to be.
Online culture encourages young people to turn themselves into a product at an age when they’re only starting to discover who they are. When an audience becomes emotionally invested in a version of you that you outgrow, keeping the product you’ve made aligned with yourself becomes an impossible dilemma. Changing an online persona is something at which few have been successful, so most are too scared to risk their livelihoods and try. Staying unchanged brings its own challenges — stagnancy, inauthenticity, burnout. The instability brought by growing up is what commonly makes this career path short-lived.
As it did for many, the pandemic marked a turning point for me. There was never a definitive moment when I decided to quit YouTube, but for a year, I didn’t post. Eventually, I knew I wouldn’t return.
Sometimes, I barely recognize the person I used to be. Although a part of me resents that I’ll never be able to forget her, I’m also grateful to her. My YouTube channel, for all the trouble it brought me, connected me to the people who wanted to hear my stories and prepared me for a real shot at a directing career. In the last year, I’ve directed a short film and am writing a feature, which showed me new ways of creating that aren’t at the expense of my privacy.