Confessions of a Catfishing YouTuber

Chapter One: I'm not dead but my love life is

It was all pretty innocent when it started. One of my mates was doing it. It was just for a laugh.

Fine, I guess I was looking for content too. A follow up to my fanfic video. It was never supposed to get so... interesting. I know it's not right. I'm terrified someone will out me. So I've decided – I have to stop. I will stop. Really soon. This confession is my commitment contract to make sure I don't go back on my decision.

I'd better start from the beginning. You see, I've always been pretty shy around girls. Especially girls I liked. I was this nerdy kid, into trading cards and video games. I had no idea how to talk to girls, so I kinda just avoided them for years. I was the type of kid who joined a martial arts class just because the girl I liked went. Never asked her out, never even talked to her, just sort of awkwardly hung around her each week. Smooth, yeah? Real frickin' smooth.

Then I started growing my hair and I found my look. Things got better for a bit. Sometimes I would meet a girl I liked, who liked me too. I had a couple of girlfriends. I thought I'd got this dating thing sorted. I guess, for a while, I had. Then my channel blew up.

Once you get to a certain size of audience, you start getting a lot of attention online. Good and bad. You know about the bad - I've made a few videos, and a whole song, about some of the closed-minded homophobic hate I get. Those comments don't bother me much these days. But you also get a lot of positive attention. And then there's the fangirls. I mean that as a non-gendered term, both guys and girls message me. My DMs are full of unsolicited nudes right alongside the less nutty messages saying how much people appreciate my content. It freaks me out. I gave up reading them all, right after Don't Stay in School went viral.

Trouble is, despite the online attention, real world relationships get harder. Just look at the comments any time I collab with someone female. Endless speculation about whether I'm sleeping with them. Including my sister. My bloody sister. I mean, Christ, how stupid do people have to be, right? But whilst the comments section is kicking off, my love life is doing anything but. Either I'm too depressed to leave the house, or I'm busy with an endless cycle of planning, researching, filming, editing, and uploading. And trying to deal with Patreon and YouTube post-adpocalypse, hoping enough cash comes in before my rent is due. There just isn't time to meet someone, and even if I did, there would be no time for a relationship. Very few people want to date someone committed to that kind of lifestyle. Just look at the number of YouTubers who've split up with their partners recently.

Plus, you've got to worry about who is watching, or worse, taking photos. I'm not one of the biggest names, but I can't risk hooking up with someone without explaining she'd better not post anything on social media, unless she wants to get death threats, because everything you do is stalked by a bloody army of horny fangirls. Half of them are underage, most of them are crazy, and all of them have this massively unrealistic impression of me, which I'm supposed to play along with. They just can't understand the concept that I'm a regular person who works hard to create things, and happened to get lucky.

I guess I just got really lonely. And I made some bad decisions. And I am going to stop, soon. I really am.