Interview: YouTube Influencer – Emily Boo “I love to give back, I’m always very aware that my followers are the ones who have got me where I am. I’m so appreciative.”

106588342_3119429244789667_7532912137217185300_oSuffolk based alternative YouTuber and Influencer Emily Boo is here and refuses to give up her 15 minutes of fame. After being one half of the most pierced couple on the BBC3 show “Snog, Marry, Avoid’ and then appearing on BBC3’s “What Not To Say To Someone With Body Modifications” she’s carried on spreading love, positivity and a hell of a lot of weirdness!

YouTuber extraordinaire Emily Boo sat down with Devolution to have a chat about life as a Mum, TV appearances, YouTube, trolls, work, alternative lifestyles and Boobies.

What influenced you to start your on YouTube Channel?

“I originally started it when I was on ‘Snog Marry Avoid’ a few years ago. It kind of came from that but, I wasn’t really invested in it and I regret that. I really wish I had got more into it then, so many people said, tell us about your life!, and tell us about your piercings! And I wish I had. And then after my confidence grew a little bit, I started to make some. And then it kind of progressed from there. I got pregnant, and then I really started to do it, because I wanted to document my journey.”

What would you say are your favourite current brands at the moment that you would happily endorse on your channel?

“Ok, I take this question very seriously because i see a lot of YouTubers and influencers that just tell their followers things are good when I personally know they’re not, and they do it because if they send you something and you say outright that it’s not good, then they’re not going to keep sending you stuff. But I can’t do that. I started my anti haul videos because I wanted to show people that, not everything people promote is good. One of my biggest ones was Dollskill, but I also did one for Killstar and that’s quite a big brand and everybody loves them, but it’s not actually worth it. They charge a lot of money. I had a look today actually as someone on Facebook said they’ve got a new line dropped that’s nice. It’s not nice, they had a maxi dress on their site for £70! That’s a LOT of money for a thin velvet dress. So brands I do personally love and I will happily endorse are Disturbia, That’s one of my favourite brands, and Mary Wyatt of London, I only got into her stuff really recently actually and so far I’m SO impressed.”

Tell us about the Mary Wyatt brand.

“Mary Wyatt is streetwear Nu-Goth. Lots of black and white, casual Goth clothing and their customer service is excellent. That’s something I really appreciate with brands, they aren’t just there to take your money, and they want you to actually enjoy your shopping experience with them. It’s streetwear, Goth style sweatpants, little tops and there are so many different genres of Goth style.”

There seems to be so many different niches of Goth culture now, why can’t it just be Goth?

“Because Gatekeepers don’t allow it!” (Laughs)

Exactly! Maybe we need to get Dungeon master on it, he could sort it!

“Yeah, there is just too much politics, it drives me insane”. (Laughs)

Do you plan to make YouTube your sole career?

“That would be the dream, I have a rough goal to hopefully do it by next year. I like to think I am quite realistic. I would love to quit my job and do YouTube full time, but I have a daughter to support, YouTube pays pennies, it does not pay a lot. I don’t get sponsored very often. I may have had two or three in my YouTube life, I think the most I got paid was one hundred and fifty pounds, but most of my main income comes from AdSense. But even then I probably get about three to four hundred a month, which is like, a lot of money but I couldn’t live off that!”

Your “Boobies” (Followers) seem to be growing steadily, do you interact much with them directly?

“Oh as much as I can. Mainly on Instagram, so if you want to get a response from me, Instagram is the way to do it. I try to message back even if it’s just an emoji, because I understand big YouTubers and big Celebrities. I’ve tried to reach out and say “I love you so much!”, and then I’ve had nothing back. And I know they have lives, but I would have appreciated so much as a little heart emoji, something like that.

How do you deal with negative feedback and trolls

“Sometimes I get sassy, I do get a lot of negative comments, it’s like proper negative, and it’s the same comments over and over again. But I just literally block and delete them. You don’t get a second chance, I haven’t got time for that. I screenshot every single comment, (rude ones) and I save them for hate comments videos, and that’s where I get all my sass out. I love them, I sit down and become the Queen of sassiness”.

Will you be expanding into interviews on your channel?

“Yeah I would love to one day that would be amazing. I don’t know if I would be a good person to interview people though. I’m not professional and I don’t think I could be very professional. My biggest love in the whole world is Chris Motionless, from Motionless in White. He did an interview with Black Friday, she is a massive Goth YouTuber and she was so professional, and if it was me, I would be like, (gasps) “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!” I’d love to see that happen. I don’t know, I get really star struck, really easily. (Laughs) I would love to do interviews, but I think I would be a massive embarrassment.”

Apart from YouTube, what other interests and aspirations do you have?

“I used to want to be a body piercer (very cliché I know for a very heavily modded person). I think a lot of alternative people do, piercer or a tattooist. I think back to my early teenage life, I had so many piercings about 35! I had nine all around my lips. They were a release for me, if I was sad I’d get a piercing, as it cheered me up. I used to get them done cheap, and now they’re really not cheap, they’re really expensive.” (Laughs)

How did you manage to get all those piercings when you were under 18 and what did your parents think at the time when you walked in with a face full of metal?

“There was a very, very dodgy tattooist! I wasn’t living at home at the time, I was with my ex-partner. I had too many face piercings back then. So i now have lots of little holes on the top lip and I don’t know if you can see but I have little scars here (at the bottom of her mouth) I have hypertrophic scarring, and they had to be stitched up. I can cover the upper ones with make-up, but I can’t cover the ones I had stitched. When I had all those piercings I didn’t have a job. As I got older you couldn’t have them in for work, so I had to take them out every day. It got really tedious, and so I took them out, and when I was pregnant I took out the lower ones that I had left in. And I’ll tell you something funny. My bottom lip wasn’t as big as it is now, it got bigger from the weight of all the piercings I had in!”

114899944_4127481493993105_3280816061424410748_n

You have an utterly gorgeous little girl, how would you feel if she wanted to follow in your footsteps and make a career from YouTube?

“I would like it and I wouldn’t like it, I would be very protective as I know what goes on the other side of the screen. When I make my videos I try not to think about how I don’t know who’s watching so I would be crazily protective of her, but… if she really wanted to do it (and i think she might)  I would totally support her as much as i could. My little sister started at thirteen and I edited her videos for her.”

Who are your favourite current bands and artists at the moment?

“Ooh, I change my favourite bands all the time, whatever mood I’m in. I refuse to make videos about music, because people take music SO seriously. I LOVE the Backstreet Boys, I’m not even ashamed of this! (Laughs) and whenever I mention this on YouTube, I will get so many comments, “you can’t be a Goth and love Backstreet Boys!” and I do. My favourite band has to be Motionless in White. Chris Motionless is the lead singer, I love his voice and his deep song lyrics. He’s also been very open with his mental health struggles in the past, which I always appreciate when celebrities speak out. I’ve also seen many interviews with him, and met him at a show once and he comes across so down to earth and not up his own bum like a lot of famous people. My favourite genre is 2000’s new metal. I LOVE IT! I frickin love 90’s music, 90’s 2000’s is dope. Murder Dolls, that cheesy kind of sound. The world is so boring if you stick to one genre”.

There’s nothing better than discovering new music, it could have been out a billion years or just released, but that moment when you find it and it hits you is the best.

“This is very me, as I stick to my own bands, I don’t venture out and discover new bands. And I work with a guy who absolutely hates that, he will play me new songs by new bands at the end of a shift before I go home. But I love that, because then I get this whole experience of listening to a whole new band all in one go.”

If you could interview anyone on your channel, who would be your top three choices and why?

“Well my top one would be Chris Motionless, I would literally spend the whole interview gawping at him.”

Well I could do the questions for you while you sit there gawping?

“That would be literally hilarious, he would get a restraining order! (Laughs) Music wise I think Maria Brink would be a good person to interview, I really like In This Moment, and she’s so Badass. Controversially I don’t really like female singers, but if they have some filth and dirt vocally then I like them. Marina is so phat I’d really like a night out with her and that would be messy. The other people I look up to are dead (Laughs).”

Who are the top three dead people you would like to meet then?

“Ooh. So, the top celebrity deaths, Rik Mayall I don’t generally cry when celebrities die as I don’t really know them, but I cried my eyes out when he died, I knew I would never get to meet him, and that was a life goal, I was brought up watching Bottom, and that would have been a dream come true, and it won’t happen now. I’m gonna’ chuck a Chester Bennington in there, who doesn’t like Linkin Park? I grew up listening to Linkin Park and he had such a unique voice. Robin Williams man! He’s another one that got me, loved him, still love him.”

What do you have planned coming up?

“I am currently working on merch, when you reach 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, they can pair you up with Teespring, who do all the merch for you, and that seems really impersonal to me and I don’t like that side of it. So I have been buying in merch myself, I’ve spent so much god damn money (Laughs) buying it all myself, and I’m releasing it all at once and I’ll be sending it myself, so if people message me asking where their order is, I can’t say “Oh I don’t know I didn’t ship it!”. But I can add little notes myself, which I love that little touch. I love to give back, I’m always very aware that my followers (my Boobies) are the ones who have got me where I am. I’m so appreciative.”

How did you reach your viewers during the covid lockdown, did you see a spike in your viewers and did you engage with them more, if so how?

“I definitely saw a massive spike in viewers, but the majority of that came from one video, my Dolls Kill video. I uploaded that, and then a week later was all the Dollskill drama, thank you Dolls Kill!  You could not have timed that more perfectly (laughs) and everybody was at home sat on YouTube and bored, and it definitely shot me up.”

Out of interest do you know the ratio age/gender of the majority of your followers?

 “Yes. The majority of my followers are 18 – 24 and in the UK, I have a small percentage of 65+ and I’m like, that’s probably my mum (laughs) but that’s so interesting, the different age ranges that follow me. The majority gender wise is only slightly more women than men, I really like that. (YouTube statistics only allow for typified genders of men and women)

100931772_1385063711691211_548764999292551168_o

If you could play God for a day, who would you make an angel and who would you send to hell, and why?

“Well right now I would send Jeffree Star to hell, I used to love Jeffree Star and I know I shouldn’t but I feel so personally let down by him. That bitch is going to hell. He’s come out time and time again as a racist person. I don’t know if i can use the term Pedophile enabler. Years ago Jeffree wrote on Twitter that Dahvi Vanity of the band Blood on the dancefloor is a sexual predator, that he witnessed all this. There were loads of tweets. The following year he went on tour with the band and deleted all those tweets, now he’s saying “Oh no i didn’t mean it, I didn’t see anything!” Whereas you clearly did! All the worms are clearly coming out of the woodwork, and he could have stopped that, but he chose to put his music career before his morals, and it’s disgusting. Honestly I can’t stand the man, and I supported him for so long.”

“Who is going to heaven? That’s a hard one! Louis Theroux. Louis Theroux is going to heaven. (My partner is laughing at me) Louis Theroux is a beautiful soul, I love that man. He would document heaven for us! I love him, he lives in London. We could track him down (laughs) He is just so… He doesn’t get angry. When I watch his documentaries, sometimes I get angry for him, and he’s just so calm. I don’t know how he does it.  Love that man. We love you Louis. Have you seen the one where he goes to the brothel, that’s my favourite one, and that one girl who tries to get with him? That would be me!”

What do you think your defined role is as an influencer on YouTube and Instagram?

“I think I have more of a responsibility than I like to think I do. I didn’t realise, until actually recently, how much influence I had. Sometime this year, I did a haul video and I had so many people message me after that on Instagram, and say “I got this because of you and I really like it”,  And I thought, people actually listen to me?! (Laughs).  I’ve started doing alternatives to brands recently, and I did alternatives to Dollskill, and I had a few of those brands reach out to me and say, thank you so much, we’ve had so many people reach out to us and say Emily Boo recommended you to me, and then they have bought the brands as I recommended them. That’s amazing. With my merch, I have one t-shirt at the moment, just one. And I have washed it and washed it over and over, just to make sure the print holds. I want to know that the T-shirt lasts, because I want to ensure the quality holds up. I don’t want to put my name to something, or my face on something that doesn’t last.”

How often do you upload new content?

“It’s supposed to be every week. I try to upload every Tuesday as i work nights.”

Editing takes a long time to do, far longer than people imagine doesn’t it?

“Oh my God! It’s so long and I hate it. Although I love my jump cuts, people get really angry, but I love them. I have to be in the mood to edit, to sit there for hours and hours staring at my own face, I can get so fed up and bored. My alternative’s video takes me a week to edit, and they’re only 20 minutes long!”

What have been the biggest fashion trends of 2020 that you have started following, or have created?

“I don’t wanna take credit, but I kinda’ am going to. (Laughs) the amount of people I have seen with split hair colour is unreal. I have seen so many people come into my work or around, who not only have split hair colour, but black and green. I have seen a MASSIVE rise in it.”

Interview By Lucy Slessor

 

You can find Emily on;

YouTube  www.youtube.com/stitches1313

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emilyboo_official/?hl=en

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/emilybooofficial/

img_20200702_092935