A Man Like Aaron Ashgrove

Chapter Three

It is in New York city I get recognized the most. My plane touched down a day before yesterday, and from that point to now I've had more than a dozen of my subscribers approach me. Some of them want to chat on their opinions on some movies I've reviewed in the past, the majority of them just want autographs, which is always the most shocking part.

That people actually want my autograph, like I'm some celebrity.

I didn't really imagine this would be my life when I first started YouTube. I was just a very angry, very bittered, and an extremely depressed teenager
who had too much knowledge on what made a movie either good or bad. Courtesy of my late grandma.

At first I had started off by writing Critical pieces, online, then I had slowly shifted into YouTube after several of my readers suggested I do. My channel remained relatively unknown.

Until a very popular movie critic on the platform reacted to a video of mine, after praising me for having such an observant eye, that video pushed me into the limelight.

My channel grew rapidly after then, I think a lot of people were just happy to see a woman dominate in a male invested niche on youtube, and the fact that I was kind of an enigma intrigued a lot of people.

I hadn't done a face reveal up until I hit 500 thousand subscribers, I used the voice over approach on my channel. I hadn't really done it to be mysterious. I just didn't want people to focus on my features that my mother had deemed "plain" all my life. I didn't want random strangers on the internet calling me ugly.

Eventually when I did do a face reveal, people would call me ugly. Internet trolls on the internet went as far as to say that I had gaslight them into believing I was way more attractive than I actually was.

I had no idea how to handle the immense hate and cyber attacks. All over social media I was getting dragged, people that hadn't even heard of me joined in on the bullying.

It was Aurora that suggested I join ITENS. She insisted that the organization was what I needed at the time. They had a lot of years handling content creators on social media. I was a little hesitant at first. All the years I had spent making YouTube videos I had done it independently. I didn't really know how signing with an agency-especially one as big as ITENS- would influence my creative freedom.

In the end it was one of the best decisions I ever got to make. Not only did the PR team manage to handle my dilemma online and make things turn around in my favour, my subscriber count online grew massively and my best friends got to sign in as well. The rest as they say is history.

"Say hi Yasmine." Tk prods, as his twin sister Nadia points her camera my way.

I'm currently in their Soho apartment, with one other influencer, and their stylist. After the twins coerced me to go with them to some exclusive new club, we are all getting ready. According to them the club is apparently a hotspot for the rich and famous, the Crem dela Crem of new York city always go there. It must be exclusive if you need an invite to get in. Everyone's trying to look their best because Tk and Nadia will be adding our outfits choices on their vlogg.

Tk and Nadia are what Libby, Hannah and I would refer to as Social-media-friends. There are the perfect, good looking people you hang around with whenever you're in each other's cities, you can create content with them, take cute pictures, have fun- but you never share personal information that you don't want the public finding out about with them, because they will gossip about you.

"Girl your hair is to die for!" Tk compliments.

"Thanks hun!" I reply touching my butterfly locs that I got done yesterday before the interview, I'm slightly flustered. I'm really anti going out. I prefer my own space and quiet. I'm extremely nervous just thinking about how I'll be out if my comfort zone tonight.