Emma Chamberlain Is the Most Important YouTuber Today
The most talked-about teen influencer in the world doesn't airbrush her photos. She doesn’t have a team of editors and photographers following her around and taking aspirational “plandids.” In fact, she doesn’t make her life seem very aspirational at all: In many of her videos, she looks like she just rolled out of bed. Emma Chamberlain shuns makeup, sometimes skips a shower, and doesn’t seem to care if she looks weird or if her camera is poised at an unflattering angle. While other YouTube stars—like Jake and Logan Paul, Bethany Mota, and Lele Pons—rely on hyper-produced, staged videos with bright thumbnails and clickbait titles, Chamberlain posts lo-fi vlogs using default fonts, clashing color schemes, and lowercase titles that never overpromise.
All of this has gained the 18-year-old some 8 million YouTube subscribers and 7.7 million Instagram followers in less than two years; her YouTube channel is one of the fastest growing in the U.S., according to the company. The analytics estimates Chamberlain may be earning nearly $2 million in ad revenue on her YouTube videos alone. In the past year, she launched a podcast that promptly , introduced a line of self-branded , and , where she was at the Louis Vuitton show. “Her growth has been so fucking insane,” says Mai Linh Nguyen, a producer and YouTube strategist who has worked for many top YouTubers.
