I, Justine: An Analog Memoir Read online

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  The Golden Rule

  Blond (Lack of) Ambition

  Sort of Making It in the Real World

  The Oatmeal Face, and Other Heartbreaking Works of Staggering Genius

  And Now, for the Talent Portion . . .

  Orbiting Macworld

  One Night Only

  iJustine.tv

  Pivot

  iJustine Goes West

  Going Mainstream

  Fair Game

  Almost Famous

  Meant to Be

  Acknowledgments

  About Justine Ezarik

  To the Internet <3

  INTRODUCTION

  SO, YOU COULD SAY IT all started with a visit from the mailman.

  It was a Saturday in August, uneventful except that I had received a package in the post: a white box with perforated sides, roughly the size of a legal pad and an inch or so thick. The package was clearly postmarked from AT&T; based on the bright blue Priority Mail sticker, it had cost the company more than seven dollars to ship.

  I was new to AT&T, but the box threw me. As I unglued the flap, I contemplated briefly that this might be a warranty for my brand-new iPhone? Or maybe some kind of complimentary Apple accessory? Inside, however, was a thick set of pages. I thumbed through them quickly, not really understanding why I was suddenly holding in my hand a detailed record of every text message, data transfer, and file download I’d made since switching service providers. Why in the world would they send me this? I wondered. And then it hit me: This wasn’t some welcome-to-the-family paperwork or a summary of AT&T member benefits. This was a phone bill.

  It was three hundred double-sided pages.

  It actually weighed a couple of pounds.

  After the initial shock wore off—I mean, really, since when does a phone bill come in a box?!—I did what I had done nearly every day for the previous six months: I drove to my local coffee shop, Crazy Mocha, which had become my unofficial office (and virtually my only contact with people in the outside world). Then I set up my camera and filmed myself flipping through the bill—incredulously—page by page. I downloaded “Perfect Timing (This Morning)” by Orba Squara, the cheery acoustic-guitar-and-toy-piano melody made famous by its use in the first-ever iPhone ad campaign, and gave my minute-long video the (rather obvious) title “IPHONE BILL.” Finally, I uploaded the finished product to several sites: my personal blog, the now-defunct video-sharing site Revver, YouTube, Myspace, and Yahoo. It wasn’t the first video I’d ever posted online, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. I just didn’t know then that this video would be the one to change the entire course of my life.

  These days, going from obscurity to celebrity via the Internet isn’t exactly unheard of, nor is it a particularly slow process. Justin Halpern of Sh*t My Dad Says fame snagged himself a book deal just two months after signing up for Twitter. #AlexfromTarget became a guest on Ellen inside of forty-eight hours. But the summer of 2007 was a different world, technologically (and culturally) speaking. Myspace was still the dominant social media site. (Facebook wouldn’t surpass it for another twenty-one months; Instagram wouldn’t launch for another three years.) “Viral” videos were still a relatively new, little-understood phenomenon. And the iPhone, now the most iconic smartphone in the world, had been on the market for only forty-three days. I’d had mine, purchased for me by a company called Technology Evangelist (because I had only two hundred dollars in my checking account and couldn’t actually afford one—more on that later), for a little over a month.

  Of course, the iPhone was immediately hailed as revolutionary. What became clear rather quickly, however, was that AT&T—the exclusive carrier of the newest, most advanced mobile device on the planet—was not: these guys had some seriously outdated billing policies. By early August, I’d heard about one or two unusually large statements; AT&T’s decision to make (painstaking) itemization their default billing option was already getting play on some minor blogs and in the tech press. But I hadn’t seen anything even approaching the colossal size of my bill, which—spread out on the little Formica table at the coffee shop—looked less like a phone bill and more like a Russian novel.

  In the tech world, I’ve always been what you would call an early adopter, someone who signs up for new services and social media platforms as soon as they become available, long before they’re actually popular. Such was the case with Twitter, which in those days was still very much a fledgling company. (Depending on which source you cite, there were only something like fifty thousand active users back then, compared to nearly 300 million today.) Since my account was linked to my phone, every tweet I sent (and received) was recorded by AT&T as a text message—in one month, with Twitter factored in, I’d racked up a log of texts in excess of thirty-five thousand.

  So the length of the bill really wasn’t surprising—what was surprising was that they printed the whole thing out and mailed it to me. I was upset about the obvious environmental implications. Which is why, at the end of the iPhone bill video, over a black screen, I had typed the words: Use e-billing. Save a forest.

  To say it struck a nerve is perhaps a bit of an understatement.

  Within twenty-four hours, the video had more than a hundred thousand views and I’d been interviewed for an article in USA Today: “How Many Trees Did Your iPhone Bill Kill?” Within two days, I was at two hundred thousand views and granting interviews to a handful of local Pittsburgh news stations. (I was such a n00b that I insisted on meeting this batch of reporters at Starbucks; I didn’t want anyone to know where I actually lived. Also, during one on-camera interview, a bug flew directly into my eye. Take two.)

  But it didn’t stop there. I watched in disbelief as my inbox filled with hundreds of emails from literary agents, talent managers, publicists, and reporters and news producers from every major media company in the world. The video—and therefore my face—was splashed across the Yahoo, Myspace, and AOL home pages. The story, which had already evolved from a piece about the size of my phone bill to a piece about the popularity of the video I’d made in response to the size of my phone bill, was being covered in every important paper in the country, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, as well as a slew of international outfits, from India to Australia.

  Within three days, I started a round of satellite interviews. I showed up at a small studio somewhere in Pittsburgh—and by “studio” I mean an empty room the size of a closet—where I was handed an earpiece and instructed to look into the camera while a chatty production assistant explained that this whole setup was a “live feed to New York.”

  “Oh, is that what’s going on here?” I asked, completely without sarcasm. Amid the avalanche of media attention, I wasn’t even sure what I was agreeing to; it wasn’t until I was placing the earpiece in my ear that I started to realize just how crazy this whole thing was. A kind of mild panic began to set in.

  Eight months earlier, I’d been at Macworld, the annual Apple trade show in San Francisco, to watch Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone to the public. Afterward, I was wandering around the floor of the Moscone Center, starry-eyed, when a reporter approached and asked to interview my friend Karen Nguyen and me. I guess I didn’t hear her when she said she was with ABC. Also, I may have been a tad overexcited. Because when the reporter asked how long I’d
been an Apple user, I responded, rather inelegantly: “Since I came out of my mom.”

  Pieces of that interview later aired on Nightline.

  And Good Morning America.

  As I recalled this from my chair in the little studio in Pittsburgh, I shuddered. Maybe I wasn’t quite ready for a prime-time live feed.

  Within ten days, I hit 3 million views, and the “300-page iPhone bill” had become a bona fide Internet meme. It would later spawn spoof videos and copycats; eventually, it earned its own Wikipedia entry. But if you go back and watch some of that early press coverage now, what jumps out, I think, is the comical disbelief on the part of some of those reporters. Because once we got past the size of the bill, none of them seemed quite able to understand how—or perhaps more to the point, why—anyone in their right mind would amass thirty-five thousand text messages. “Oh my goodness. That’s a lot. . . . Do you have unlimited text messages?” asked one journalist from a local ABC affiliate, WTAE-TV. Glenn Beck, after wondering aloud if I “had legs” and asking the camera to pan backward to prove I wasn’t “confined to a bed,” asked me—on CNN prime time—if I had a life. When the interview ended, he politely told me I could “go back to tweetering.”

  I probably shouldn’t have been surprised; it’s easy to be dismissive—suspicious, even—in the face of new technology. Remember when no one—and by “no one” I mean your parents—could figure out the appeal of AOL Instant Messenger? Likewise, Twitter’s 2006 launch was largely met with ambivalence. That’s probably why so many of the interviews I gave had a flippant those-kids-and-their-rock-’n’-roll kind of tone. It’s probably why, amid all that press attention, what virtually every one of those reporters missed was this: “IPHONE BILL” wasn’t a random one-off. In fact, I’d long since quit my “real” job to focus on the Internet thing full-time. I’d been “iJustine” for five years already. And aside from blogging and vlogging and doing freelance graphic-design work to make ends meet, I was two and a half months into live-streaming my life—that is, broadcasting my every waking (and sleeping!) moment, 24/7, to the web, like a real-life Truman Show or an episode of EDtv.

  Becoming “Internet famous” was never my goal, but it also wasn’t something that happened to me. I’d been cultivating an online following—without really understanding what I would eventually do with that following—for the better part of my adult life.

  So, you could say it all started with a visit from the mailman, but you’d be wrong. That’s only part of the story.

  • • •

  In the years since the “300-page iPhone bill” went viral, I’ve somehow managed to carve out an entire career blogging and making videos about technology, gadgets, and gaming. For my efforts, I’ve been called “the most influential person online.” A few years ago, I ranked number six on The Daily Beast’s Digital Power Index. I’ve built a following of nearly 4 million subscribers across multiple YouTube channels, with total views approaching half a billion.

  Trying to explain what exactly I do for a living, though, hasn’t gotten a whole lot easier.

  Granted, the third most popular video I’ve ever uploaded to the web—which has been viewed more than 7 million times—was a rant about a restaurant server who kept insisting on telling me about the daily specials when all I wanted was a cheeseburger. (It’s called—wait for it—“I WANT A CHEESEBURGER!!!!!!!”) The most popular video I’ve ever created—viewed more than 15 million times—was a spoof on the Black Eyed Peas hit “I Gotta Feeling.” (Just so you know, I felt the need to apologize to will.i.am for this when I met him several years later.) A cursory glance at my main YouTube channel would reveal a slew of videos of me dancing (like a crazy person) in Apple Stores—and on an airplane!—across the country, a peek at the apps on my iPhone 6, and a series of ill-advised cooking demonstrations. Navigate on over and I’ll show you how to make eggs, a homemade pizza, even a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich . . . in a blender. I guess what I’m saying is, if you’ve never heard of me (or you’re over the age of twenty-five), you’d be forgiven for wondering, Why does anyone watch this?!—let alone an audience of 15 million.

  There’s been a lot of ink spilled in an attempt to explain the sudden rise of YouTube “stars,” so I’m used to hearing people say things like “she just came out of nowhere.” But the truth is that’s a bit like calling a band that’s been touring for ten years an “overnight success” because one of their songs finally managed to hit the charts—I’ve been blogging, often with nary a follower, since the late nineties; I was twelve when I built my first website. Likewise, some people have suggested that I stumbled across a kind of magic formula for creating “viral” content, but the heavy traffic many of my videos receive isn’t viral, it’s the result of building a loyal audience over the course of many, many years. (“IPHONE BILL” is one of the only truly viral videos I’ve ever created.) There’s a small but vocal contingent of bloggers who are convinced that, based on my love of Apple products and what was once a stalker-like obsession with Steve Jobs, I’m some kind of covertly paid Palo Alto employee. (For the record: I have never received any kind of endorsement or compensation from Apple. Ever.) And in any conversation about social media, there are those inevitable references to “Generation Overshare,” which is a polite euphemism for the idea that YouTubers are all sociopathic narcissists, that we’re all deluded enough to believe the public genuinely cares about every little thing we do or say.

  I can’t speak for everyone on the Internet (and I have absolutely met one or two sociopathic narcissists in my time), but here’s the thing about what I do for a living: it’s really not about me.

  You see, putting the bulk of your life online is a sometimes exciting, sometimes terrifying, borderline insane thing to do, and deep into my live-streaming experiment I started to bounce between two extremes: either I was so blasé about the whole thing that I’d ignore the webcam (and therefore the viewers) for hours on end, or so anxiety-ridden that I eschewed wearing tank tops for fear of having an on-camera nip slip. Slowly, however, I began to realize that it didn’t matter what I was doing, people went right along having their own independent conversations in the chat room, on topics ranging from popular music to global politics to the minutiae of their daily lives. And really, isn’t that kind of the point of the Internet? To bring people together? I just created a bunch of content about things I love, and posted it all in a place where like-minded individuals could meet up and connect with each other.

  Running a YouTube channel is a bit like having a conversation—one that gets added to in installments, bit by bit, day after day. I’ve been having a conversation with my followers for at least seven years—some of my online friends have been with me since the early 2000s. Even before “IPHONE BILL” went viral, there was a group of people watching idly as I lived my life on the web. They were there on those morning drives to the coffee shop, watching as I tried to earn enough money to survive and learned the ins and outs of running a business. They were there when I received a three-hundred-page phone bill in a box, watching as I filmed and edited the experience in real time. They were there when I uploaded the video, watching as it exploded into a worldwide phenomenon. They’ve been there since the beginning, and they are a huge part of the reason I wanted to write this book.

  If you’ve followed or friended me on any one of a dozen social media platforms, you already know that I wanted this to be a collaborative experience. I asked for your input about what anecdotes and inside information you wanted to read; you’ll find those stories sprinkled throughout, every time you see one of these:

  Some of you might even see your questions in the following pages!

  • • •

  After uploading nearly five thousand videos to the web, crisscrossing the country to speak at trade shows and tech conferences, and even dipping my toe into “acting” (I scored a cameo on Law & Order: SVU by tweeting the casting director—thanks, Jonathan!), I continue to be amazed and inspired by the limitless opp
ortunities available to us all, online. For an antisocial kid from western Pennsylvania, the Internet became a magical place where I could connect with people who liked the same things I liked. After wandering into my first online chat room, I thought, Finally, I have found my people. On the Internet, I could actually enjoy just being me: a goofy, nerdy, Nintendo-playing, Pog-card-swapping girl who liked tech and games.

  That’s the great thing about the Internet: no matter what strange or atypical thing you’re into, eventually you will find your people.

  What’s that you say? That sounds naive and silly? Well, have you ever heard of wikiFeet? For those of you who don’t know, wikiFeet is the Internet’s “collaborative celebrity feet website,” otherwise known as the place for a bunch of lovable weirdos to celebrate and share their foot fetishes with the world. (Inexplicably, there are 612 photos of me—er, my feet—on this site.)

  By the way, there are also people out there with sneeze fetishes. Did you know about this? Let me tell you, stumbling upon a compilation video featuring every on-camera sneeze you’ve ever, well, sneezed . . . it’s a pretty weird feeling.

  Beyond just finding a group of like-minded friends, though, the Internet has been, for me, a place of companionship (in virtual and in real life) and inspiration. Over the years, I’ve watched some of my online friends start their own blogs and YouTube channels; some have even catapulted to more “traditional” entertainment careers, launching successful comedy tours or writing and starring in their own TV shows. The Internet has allowed me to connect with people I would’ve had no hope of meeting from the confines of my rural hometown—people like Leo Laporte of TechTV, Justin Kan of Justin.tv, and Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps—who were gracious (or crazy) enough to share some of their success with me.