When asked ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’, parents hope to hear their children say doctor, prime minister, lawyer or engineer. Sometimes they might dread hearing the same child say ‘actor’ or ‘rock star.’ But what if your child announces that actually, they want to be an influencer when they grow up? For you, social media might be a place to connect with family and friends, vent or unwind after a long day at your ‘real job.’ But for me, social media is the job.
Not that you’d know it from some of the reactions I’ve had. There’s usually a roll of the eyes or someone laughs and then asks ’Seriously though…what do you do?’. But in a year that’s seen unprecedented changes in terms of how we communicate with each other, where we get our entertainment from and how we live our lives, my job as a YouTuber doesn’t seem so crazy after all.
I first started posting on YouTube in 2011, when I was 18 years old and desperately trying to get acting agents to look my way. In the meantime, I discovered the world of YouTube. It was fun, silly and not to be taken too seriously – a hobby and certainly not something that could earn me any money. I began posting videos of myself covering of songs from musicals that I loved mixed in with the occasional pop song. It wasn’t long before I began to make a few friends – other people who made videos on the platform and called themselves ‘YouTubers.’ No one really paid attention to us back then, we were just funny, nerdy teenagers who made silly faces at our cameras in our bedrooms. It took a year before my new friends convinced me to make videos in which I didn’t just sing but talked, too. Videos that documented my day to day life. I started to take my camera outside of my bedroom and film myself on the go, much to the confusion of the people who passed me in the street as I held my camera out in front of me at arm’s length and chatted seemingly to myself. I was officially “vlogging”.
10 years, almost 1000 videos and 141 million views later, I’m still here at 27 years old uploading to the platform. Posting online for the last decade has allowed me to build an audience of like-minded people with whom I can share the things I am most passionate about. Whilst it’s a lovely thing that keeps me creative and busy, it also generates an income when there’s a lull in acting work (or a global pandemic hits…!). Using social media alongside my acting career has worked wonders on both ends. My YouTube Chanel has thrived with new musical theatre fans watching every day and those who only knew me from YouTube are now buying tickets to come and watch my performances.
And now, as I try to keep momentum going on my acting career in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, people’s reluctance consider social media as a proper career makes less sense than ever. Social media has blown up since the early days when I first began. Youtubers are everywhere and the internet and its many personalities has begun to leak into traditional media such as TV, books and, in my case, theatre.
The theatre industry is starting to use more modern means to promote shows. There are very few productions, if any that don’t have an online presence and in such a competitive industry, more and more actors are turning to social media and using it to their advantage to build a name and a profile for themselves. Once upon a time I was told this was “cheating”. Obviously, I whole-heartedly disagree. Casting someone capable of the job who also happens to put bums on seats has always been invaluable to a producer. Back in the day it used to soap stars and TV personalities but nowadays it’s also influencers.
On one hand it feels frustrating that it’s not enough anymore to just be good at your job and your bow needs to be filled with a multitude of strings to get anyone to take notice but on the other hand, A. Fighting against inevitable progress is futile and B. The rise of social media can only do wonders for our industry. Take lockdown for example. Theatres were the first to close and at the time of writing this they have also yet to reopen. The entire industry has had to turn all its attention online as currently theatre cannot exist outside of it. Without producers deciding to stream their musicals, without companies broadcasting live concerts, without actors taking matters into their own hands and creating online content, hosting workshops and lessons on zoom and essentially making sure our industry doesn’t die a slow and painful death, I honestly don’t know where we’d be.
Of course, I can only speak from my own experience but creating my social media side hustle is one of my happiest accidents. Whilst it can be a bit of a minefield with its lack of rules, its giant grey areas and its many, many trolls, I couldn’t be more grateful for the positives it has sent my way. A dedicated audience who are genuinely loyal and interested in me and my career, opportunities to meet people such as Will Smith, Alan Menken and even Kermit and Miss Piggy but also, a source of income that has kept me afloat during a global pandemic.
I was acting long before I began making videos on YouTube. But without the platform, would people have paid attention to what I had to offer in quite the same way? I don’t think they would have and I think what we pay attention to now has been shaped by social media. It’s how we connect, it’s where we get our news, it’s where we learn and, if used well, it’s where we can grow.
INTO THE SPOTLIGHTby Carrie Hope Fletcher (Puffin) is out now.