I had no idea it would be like this,” admits mega-influencer Marissa “Small” Eduardo Laude who still can’t believe her phenomenal rise to fame in the vlogging sphere. With 1.47 million subscribers on Youtube (as a comparison, Kim Kardashian has 1.95 million), almost half a million followers on Instagram, and more than 2 million likes on TikTok as of writing, the former stay-at-home mum is a big (pun intended) deal in a world that, until recently, was completely alien to her.
Like many others of her generation, vlogging—or creating video blogs—was uncharted territory for Laude, and navigating its labyrinthine depths was daunting in the beginning. Sure, she had seen her daughter Alison write a blog that she started at age eight, and she had Facebook and Instagram accounts, but that was the extent of her social media exposure. That all changed in 2019.
“My friend Karen Davila introduced me to vlogging; she encouraged me
