Emma Chamberlain has become quite the youtube fixture in the past couple of years, and recently has stepped into the world of fashion, even hosted the Met Gala and walked the red carpet with all of the VIPs. It seems that Emma has made the transition from just “online influencer” to “mainstream” but in a podcast episode entitled “the truth about youtube” she opened up about the truth behind her channel.
In it, she thanks the subscribers that have been there since the beginning of her youtube journey, but much like her vlog detailing of why she dropped out of school at 16, she let people know that youtube just wasn’t fulfilling for her anymore.
Emma Chamberlain quits youtube
Everyone had noticed that her videos had taken a turn for the more aesthetically pleasing around the time that she got hired for the Met Gala gig, and that Emma posted a lot of vlogs of her doing art and sitting in bed just eating things.
In the podcast she says that she felt like a lot of the time she had to “play a part” for her youtube channel and that’s not surprising simply because a lot of youtubers pick a “character” to portray on their channel, or rather, a version of themselves that they like and that’s the face that they choose to present to the world during their videos. For the most part, it works.
But not for Emma.
She said that she wanted to wait to address the issue so that she could properly articulate her thoughts on the matter, but does not forget where she came from, she literally credits youtube with all of her business opportunities. She said that she has posted a video on her channel every week for four years and that “burnout is inevitable”.
She said that she tried to tell herself there are other people who burn out at their jobs and they can’t quit and basically she would guilt herself into uploading a video but that caused anxiety and depression to take over – never a good thing.
She said that in the youtube community if you go more than a month without posting content that your channel is basically dead and she was caught in a never ending cycle of creating content, and at first she refused to hire a team because she thought that her videos wouldn’t be the same if she did but she saw other youtube creators hiring teams of people to help them so that they wouldn’t experience burnout.
She hired an editor which did help for a year but that made her sad because she realized that editing was one of her favorite parts of the youtube process, so she stopped that and started editing her own videos again but then she burnt out for “what was probably the 40th time” and that time caused her to question everything.
Basically, Emma Chamberlain had an existential crisis… over youtube. However, let’s not judge her too harshly because anyone can have a crisis over a job, and youtube was for her, her entire career. She said she got to such a dark place that she needed to step away from the platform completely so that she can heal from her years of burnout.
She says that her podcast is a great comfort to her because it’s just her in her bed and no one cares about what she looks like. She also had some interesting predictions about youtube and felt that vlogs may soon be passe… hm, we’ll see. Stay tuned!!!