I can’t remember exactly how or when I first stumbled upon Emma Chamberlain’s YouTube channel. I do remember that despite her receiving a steadily growing amount of views per video, she had yet to earn that coveted blue checkmark on Instagram and was largely uninvolved in anything outside of the world of YouTube.
At that time Emma was a high school student in California, living with her parents and making silly videos by herself. These videos detailed mostly simple tasks like trying out recipes in her kitchen, going to the dollar store, or just driving around in her car and taking to the camera. But the common theme in these videos was Emma’s candor, her originality, her self-deprecating humor—and, perhaps most importantly, her unique style of editing that has since been mimicked by countless other YouTubers.
In the few years since she first started uploading, Emma has exploded in popularity, going from a 16-year-old making thrift store haul videos to an affluential social media star sitting front-row at Paris Fashion Week. In addition to receiving her verification across platforms, Emma has grown to nearly 8.5 million subscribers on YouTube, with nearly as many followers on Instagram; her biggest video has reached 28 million views—numbers that most television shows could only dream of— and even her less-successful videos amass 3-4 million views each. She is a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton, has a clothing collection at Hollister named after her, does advertisements for skincare brand, Curology, and just recently released her own sunglass line with Crap Eyewear.
Despite undergoing major life changes since she first began making videos, like dropping out of high school and moving to Los Angeles, Emma’s content remains mainly the same; her recent uploads show her completing self-assigned tasks such as living in her closet for 24 hours, creating and completing a summer bucket list, pulling an all-nighter, and attempting to take Instagram photos on self-timer.
Now, I’m not trying to claim that Emma Chamberlain invented the wheel. But her videos have always been a refreshing dose of realness and unpretentiousness in an online culture that often lacks those things. Her content has resonated with viewers, and even mainstream media have begun to take notice. A July article in The Atlantic called Emma “the most important Youtuber today,” the New York Times gives her credit for “chang[ing] the world of online video,” and she was even named one of Time Magazine’s 2019 25 Most Influential People On The Internet.
To me, Emma Chamberlain represents the great potential of YouTube to give a platform to talented people who may have been excluded from traditional forms of media. Before the YouTube-era, a teenager who wanted a career in entertainment would have to acquire an agent, go to auditions and hope to be casted in the next new Disney or Nickelodeon show. But with YouTube, the trajectories of people like Emma Chamberlain have shown that all someone needs is a camera and an idea, and they too can make it big.