I, Justine: An Analog Memoir

by Justine Ezarik

  Despite this bustling new economy, most of us were working independently of one another. Brookers—by virtue of the fact that we were briefly represented by the same firm (at a time when very few managers were taking on Internet talent)—was one of the only people I’d met who was out there doing the same thing I’d been doing. But that was about to change, too. YouTube, in an attempt to keep growing its business, was getting ready to take on the traditional television industry. One of the first major attempts to do that was YouTube Live.

  It was billed as “part concert, part variety show, and part party”; the event—streamed live on YouTube from Fort Mason in San Francisco—opened and closed with performances by Katy Perry and Akon, respectively, but it featured lots of online stars in between, including people like Tay Zonday, creator of the wildly popular “Chocolate Rain” video (remember that? The young, bespectacled guy with the unbelievably deep voice?), and Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, the duo behind Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager (a Star Wars parody in which the title character worked as a manager of a grocery store called Empire Market). Presenters ranged from will.i.am to the “Will It Blend?” guy. There were also all these weird and unlikely stage pairings—funtwo, a South Korean amateur guitar player (whose cover of “Canon Rock” went viral after someone else posted the clip to YouTube), got to play a mini-concert with Joe Satriani, one of the greatest guitar players in the world, a virtuoso who’s sold 10 million albums and toured with people like Mick Jagger. I mean, how crazy is that?

  As for me, I didn’t have any onstage bits to perform, but I did get a pretty cool ride to the party. Since Virgin America airlines launched in 2007, Richard Branson’s company has made it a point to reach out to tech and online folks (a pretty solid marketing strategy, since his is the only airline based out of San Francisco). Earlier that summer, just a few months before YouTube Live, in fact, I’d been invited to cover the unveiling of Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo, the first commercial space shuttle, for my YouTube channel. (Branson has been at the forefront of “space tourism,” which would give regular—albeit extremely wealthy—folks the chance to fly into outer space.) By fall, Virgin became the first American airline to offer in-flight Wi-Fi fleet-wide. To publicize this, Virgin sent up a plane to circle the skies of San Francisco packed with reporters and bloggers (including yours truly), all of whom were given a chance to try out the service. Keith Powell and Katrina Bowden from 30 Rock were on hand to star in a small skit, which was beamed down to YouTube Live—the first ever air-to-ground video stream—from thirty-five thousand feet. After landing, we all headed over to Fort Mason to join the show.

  More than just a first foray into webcasting, YouTube Live was by far the biggest thing the site had ever attempted to pull off; for most of us content creators, it was also the first chance we’d had to actually meet each other in person. Truthfully, I think many of us were less excited about seeing the celebrity performers up close than we were about the chance to hang out with each other.

  Of course, none of that means the show was considered a commercial or critical success (no matter how awesome I thought it was)—viewership peaked at around seven hundred thousand, a small audience by television standards, and what was supposed to be an annual event has actually never happened again. (In 2013, the site hosted the YouTube Music Awards, but they’re still trying to get the formula right on that event, too.) What YouTube Live accomplished, however, was to demonstrate the site’s commitment to fostering its native talent. It helped bridge the gap between the online and mainstream entertainment worlds. What had once seemingly been a site for one-hit-wonder-type viral sensations was quickly becoming a legitimate launching point for a career in Hollywood. And there is no more obvious example of that than the case of Justin Bieber—2009 was the year the biggest sensation to come out of the web would cross over.

  Most people know that Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube (in 2007), and that he’s been wildly, ridiculously, improbably successful—with his first EP, he became the first artist in history to have seven different songs from a debut album reach the Billboard Hot 100; to date, he’s sold more than 15 million albums. What’s particularly interesting about his career, though, is the fact that he’s managed to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to tech trends: he’s amazingly adept in the world of social media; as I write this, he’s the second most popular person on Twitter, with nearly 61 million followers. The premiere of his 2011 documentary, Never Say Never (which I got to cover with former MTV VJ Quddus), was one of the first to be live-streamed to the web. And he doesn’t just use the latest social media platforms, he’s also, apparently, a pretty savvy investor within the start-up world; it’s been reported that he owns stakes of Stamped, Spotify, and a slew of other companies. In 2012, he was on the cover of Forbes.

  It’s also worth pointing out his age: the Biebs was only fifteen when his first album came out; it’s possible that having a correspondingly young audience only contributed to his success. After all, teenagers have always been trendsetters and tastemakers; it’s young people who determine what’s cool and in fashion. But it’s thanks to sites like YouTube that teenagers are more connected than ever. For the first time in history, it’s possible for teens to influence each other on a global scale.

  • • •

  YouTube wasn’t the only example of the ways in which online and traditional entertainment were merging—by 2009, Twitter had also gone mainstream. Celebrities were joining in droves what had once been the domain of techies and early adopters; and a lot of that, believe it or not, had to do with Ashton Kutcher.

  You may remember Ashton’s very public campaign to become the first Twitter user to attract a million followers—which he did, in April 2009. But the backstory of how and why that happened—which goes way beyond a desire to be “popular” on the web—is, I think, way more interesting.

  Ashton joined Twitter in 2009, at a time when he was most famous for playing a dopey kid on That ’70s Show, as well as for hosting MTV’s Punk’d—unless, of course, you’re me, in which case you know him best from that time you inadvertently created a fake Myspace profile and people thought you were him for a while. (So awkward. . . .) Anyway, let me give you some context here: January 2009 was nearly a year after my first trip to SXSW—despite the site’s average of 3 million tweets a day, most of the people I spoke with on the streets of Austin hadn’t even heard of it yet. It had been more than two years since Twitter’s so-called tipping point (also at SXSW), when the site first started to gain traction within the tech community. In all that time, even while growing steadily, it still hadn’t really taken off yet. By late 2008/early 2009, very few celebrities had joined (Lady Gaga and Britney Spears were early to the site, in March and October 2008, respectively), and no one had amassed a million followers.

  Even before sending out his very first tweet, Ashton had quietly been learning about the web and the ways in which traditional entertainment, advertising, and social media were converging. Along with the partners in his production company, Katalyst, he’d started experimenting within the space: taking meetings with tech entrepreneurs, hiring some digital experts, and producing some web-only content (namely, an animated series called Blah Girls). After joining Twitter and quickly amassing a following of 750,000 in just a few months—easily making his one of the most popular accounts on the entire site—he decided to test his sphere of influence. He partnered with Malaria No More, a nonprofit organization with the goal of ending malaria-related deaths in Africa, and started tweeting social-awareness messages. And that’s when the idea for the one-million-follower contest came about.

  Ashton and his team challenged CNN, whose Breaking News Twitter feed was the second most popular account at the time, to a race to a million followers (via a video posted on Qik, naturally), set a deadline, and launched a very high-profile campaign, promising to donate ten thousand malarial nets upon winning. As the race heated up, CNN promised to match that donation if they won, and the network’s most popu
lar anchors, including Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, started hyping the contest on TV. At some point, the thing was so pervasive that as I was driving around Pittsburgh, home for a few days to visit family, I saw a “Follow Ashton Kutcher on Twitter” billboard on the side of the road. (As it turns out, one of the largest billboard companies in the country offered to put them up—in states all over the U.S.—pro bono.)

  When the contest ended, Ashton had won—and he remained the most-followed Twitter user for a while (with roughly 16 million followers, he now hovers somewhere within the top fifty). Within the week, he went on Oprah and helped the host send her first tweet. Not surprisingly, Twitter exploded—what actor, musician, political figure, or Internet personality doesn’t have a Twitter account these days?—and Ashton was now firmly implanted in the digital space.

  • • •

  In the summer of 2009, my sisters, Breanne and Jenna, were visiting me in L.A. when we decided to embark on a totally spontaneous road trip to Vegas. So spontaneous, in fact, that my father, who knew I didn’t so much as know how to change a flat, pleaded with me to at least get the air in my tires checked before hitting the road. We didn’t. We did, however, find a very nice man from AAA working on someone else’s car in a Starbucks parking lot—obviously, our first stop—so I flashed him my membership card and shot a quick video while he took care of business. Mission accomplished.

  At some point during that drive, I tweeted that I was en route to Vegas. (By the way, it’s worth mentioning that my sister was doing the actual driving. Please do not drive and tweet!!) Less than an hour later, I got an unexpected response: a press rep associated with Ashton’s new film, Spread—which just so happened to be premiering that week at the Palms—asked if I was interested in interviewing him for my YouTube channel. Obviously I said yes.

  By then I’d had an opportunity to rub shoulders with some celebs in various work-related circumstances—I’d met Akon at YouTube Live, I’d interviewed a few people at SXSW, I’d been a pseudo–red carpet reporter at the premiere of Get Smart (as part of a promotional thing with Cadillac)—but I hadn’t done a ton of correspondent work. So, when I met Ashton, I asked him a few obligatory questions about his movie, but I was far more interested in talking about the Internet. I wanted to know which Twitter apps he preferred, if he was following me (hello); we talked a little about the one-million-follower campaign. Even after the camera was off (obviously I filmed the interview), we chatted a bit longer about apps and start-ups and some friends we wound up having in common.

  Since that interview, Ashton has gone on to become a wildly successful venture capitalist; he’s invested in a slew of start-ups, including Skype, Foursquare, and Airbnb. And because the Internet is a very, very small world, we’ve had the opportunity to work together several times, on another Malaria No More campaign, on a web-only advertisement for Popchips (another company in which he’s an investor; we Punk’d the staffers at TMZ), and a video to promote the web launch of his show The Beautiful Life: TBL. Mostly, though, I’ve enjoyed seeing what he’s managed to do in the tech world: he’s been a creative director for Ooma (an Internet-based phone company) and was named a product engineer at Lenovo, where he was instrumental in designing the Yoga 2 tablet.

  Ashton and me goofing around on the set of his 2011 film No Strings Attached. I filmed a small cameo, and then they went ahead and cut that scene right out of the movie. I will assume that had more to do with Ashton’s outfit (what is he wearing?) than my acting abilities.

  I think a lot of people probably doubted him—the announcement of his role as a product engineer, in particular, was met with a bit of suspicion and some outright snickering—but he is someone who really gets it, a passionate person who’s managed to cross over from Hollywood to the tech space, paving the way for others—through his (relatively) early adoption of Twitter and his embrace of digital marketing—to do the same, as well as for those in the tech space to cross over into Hollywood. He had an interest, educated himself, and went for it, regardless of the naysayers. In my book (and not just figuratively speaking), that makes him a pretty cool dude.

  • • •

  As the lines between online and mainstream content and culture continued to blur, more and more opportunities came my way, including a chance to report from the red carpet at the MTV Movie Awards and a gig as the first official “Twitter correspondent” for the MTV VMAs several months later. The year 2009 was also when I got my first real “acting” job—despite the fact that I still didn’t have representation, I landed a small role on Law & Order: SVU.

  If you’re wondering how to go about getting a job on TV when you don’t have an agent, by the way, you could always do what I did, which is just tweet the casting director. Law & Order had long been one of my favorite shows (I binge-watch on Netflix, naturally)—and SVU is easily the best spin-off of the entire franchise, no question—so when I saw the name Jonathan Strauss pop up in the credits, I figured I might as well reach out. Just to let him know that if he ever needed someone to play a victim, I was willing. Totally normal. (Right?)

  Anyway, after I don’t know how many unsolicited tweets, I reached out to Jonathan a final time; I had to be in New York (for the VMAs, incidentally) and I asked if he might be willing to meet. Amazingly, he said yes. The visit was short and sweet, and he told me he’d let me know when and if they had a script for me to read—I figured I wouldn’t hear from him for months, if ever. But a week later, he called: Did I want to play the role of a young woman who gets strangled to death in her hotel room in the first few minutes of an episode? Um, yes.

  As amazing as it was to work with actors like Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni on one of the most iconic shows in the history of television (although, to say I “worked” with them might be a bit of a stretch—I was pretending to be dead by the time either of them made it on-screen), and as much as I got a kick out of sitting in the makeup chair and being made to look like a corpse (complete with a Y-shaped row of stitches across my chest, post-autopsy), the best part of the entire experience was easily the backstage access granted to me by the producers. Despite the fact that they’d never really allowed someone to film a behind-the-scenes video from the set—and the producers had to jump through all kinds of hoops to secure approval—I was allowed to document just about anything I wanted, and to share that footage with my friends and followers online. And I took my camera everywhere: to the wardrobe department, inside a courtroom holding cell (while wearing a bathrobe, which was my costume for a large part of the episode), on board the catering truck, everywhere. Rather than being standoffish or avoiding the intrusion altogether, everyone in the cast was eager to make an appearance; in fact, Ice-T and Richard Belzer didn’t just say “hi” to the camera, they gave out their Twitter handles. For the better part of the shoot, I was known primarily as “the Twitter girl.”

  In the meantime, I continued doing what I’d always done: making videos, uploading them to the web, coming up with new ways to (hopefully) engage with my audience. I started Ask iJ, an ongoing video series in which I respond to questions I receive on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and my personal blog (shout out to Geoff Smith, an amazingly talented musician, jingle writer, and podcaster, who composed the ridiculously catchy Ask iJ theme song!).

  Nothing lasts forever, though, especially not on the Internet, and 2009 brought about some sad changes, too—Yahoo, three years after acquiring Jumpcut, finally decided to fold the site. It was tough on Karen and her coworkers, and it was bittersweet even for me. The Jumpcut team had taken me in and become some of my first real friends in the business; I’d used the site’s technology for years. I was such a devotee of the company, in fact, that I once went on a date with it.

  Seriously. Sort of.

  Someone in our group—I no longer remember who—thought it would be funny to film a romantic outing between me and, well, the website, so Karen and I and the rest of the crew spent a couple hours blowing up and printing out a life-sized Jumpcut
logo and turning it into a sandwich-board-style costume. In the video, I nervously prepare for the big date in my hotel room, take an elevator downstairs to meet my date in the lobby, and then the two of us go out for a candlelit dinner. Is it weird that that’s one of the better dates I’ve been on?

  • • •

  After the boom of 2009, I had more stability than I’d ever had in my adult life, but it’s not as if all the pressure went away; it’s not like I could rest easy. I certainly didn’t feel like I had “made it.” The job of a content creator is a nonstop, 24/7 kind of gig—no matter how many videos you’ve made, no matter how successful those videos may have been, you still have to keep churning out new material, which may or may not be well received. What was popular last month may not be popular this month. The more new people crop up online, the more you may find yourself competing for views. I was, however, more confident than ever, more convinced that I could achieve pretty much whatever I wanted. And by 2010 I had a new goal in mind.