Nicole Rafiee may have over 1 million subscribers on YouTube now, but once upon a time, she was simply a middle schooler who loved making stop-motion music videos and videos about Webkinz.

“And sometimes, the two of them combined — like a stop-motion Webkinz video,” Rafiee told Mashable during VidCon back in June. These days, her content is a little different, exploring pop culture topics like the exodus of YouTube’s it girls, Frenemies lore, and Chappell Roan. Despite the subject shift, she still loves a prop and a striking visual — her Chronically Online series features many costumes and collages that adorn her walls.

The journey from her middle school YouTube channel to her current one involved a few deleted channels and changing directions, so I caught up with Rafiee to discuss how a person manages to evolve their YouTube content as they grow, especially once that content finds an audience.

Mashable: What inspired your middle school self, and then college self, to make YouTube videos?

Nicole Rafiee: I was heavily inspired by the people that I watched at the time — the JennXPenns, the SuperMac18s, the Ricky Dillons. So I started doing it. I was an only child, and [YouTube] was my creative outlet. I was in band at the time, but I didn’t feel creatively fulfilled from playing the flute. For me, it was just the coolest thing to go home, and that was like my secret life, like a separate persona of who I couldn’t be in person.

And then in college, I lacked so much creativity in my life because I did not know what I wanted to do in college. I went because I thought that was the right thing to do. At the time when I started making YouTube videos, I was in school with the intention of becoming a physician’s assistant. I would sit in my anatomy lecture like, “I would rather do anything else right now than this. But most importantly, I would rather be making a video.”

I would rather do anything else right now than this. But most importantly, I would rather be making a video.

That kept calling to me, and I had some friends at the time, who also had this middle school YouTube channel and wanted to revisit that, so that inspired me to start again. And at the time, YouTube was kind of having its resurgence because of people like Emma Chamberlain. That was a huge inspiration to see, like, wow, there are younger people than me who are starting now, and it’s never too late.   So that became my creative outlet, and then that just kind of changed everything. I ended up changing my major, and that became my goal for when I graduated — for YouTube to be my full-time thing.

How would you describe the evolution your channel has gone through since those RA college days to now?

 In the beginning, I did what I thought people wanted to see from a college student, which was college vlogs, when in reality, I hated vlogging. I don’t feel comfortable doing it out in public, and I’m not watching vlogs, to be honest. But then, as COVID hit, I was like, okay, everybody is stuck on their own. And so I was trying to do challenges — basically whatever I was seeing other people doing.

It wasn’t until I questioned the content that I was making for myself and asked, “What actually interests me and really inspires me?” And a lot of that came down to literally what I study in school, which is media studies.

I’ve also always been an opinionated person. Since I was younger, I was always told, “You should be a lawyer,” as every little girl is if people are just too scared of calling a nine-year-old a bitch. So I was like, Why don’t I take that onto the internet? Once I started doing that, I think I saw the success that I did because people saw for the first time, “Oh, this is so authentically you.”

That opened up the door to making videos about so many new topics. I wanted to keep my personal life private; I didn’t want to vlog. So it was like a natural evolution and progression of who I am as a person, I think, and like growing up with me.

Did making that switch to creating content that felt more authentic to you feel intimidating?

 If anything, in the beginning, it felt a little bit easier than it does now. I’m trying to understand why it does feel that way now. In the beginning, I felt so confident in being the person I was hiding behind closed doors.

I’m not necessarily introverted, but I really only feel comfortable being myself around people once I’m fully comfortable with them, as a lot of people do. But I always envied people who were authentically themselves, regardless of who they were around or what they were doing. I could not find that. So I felt like I closed the door and I could be myself, I could make the jokes I want to make, I could dress however I want, I could do exactly what I wanted to do.

I do find, though, that now, as I’m continuing to do YouTube, I feel almost a little bit scared of doing that just because as the audience increases, so does the backlash. I have not fully experienced that — I’ve been very lucky not to experience a lot of negativity or hate comments, but now that it’s just gotten so much bigger than I had ever anticipated, part of me wants to turtle away. So I’m trying not to allow that to be the case.

I think because I’ve done YouTube, it’s allowed that scared girl who would hide in her room and only be that confident person behind that closed door — that helped me be that in the outside world. I have gotten way more confident in my day-to-day life since doing YouTube. But now I’m struggling where I’m comfortable in person, and I’m less comfortable online, and I want to nip that in the bud while I can.

Speaking of that success, you’ve found a big audience for your Chronically Online Girl series.  Does it feel risky to think about trying different types of content with that increased audience?

 Yeah, absolutely. So many people only see me as just the chronically online girl. And that was never my intention. Everyone talks about wanting to appeal to their audience, and I totally understand that, but I would rather find an audience that likes me for whatever content I make. I know that’s gonna be hard and maybe means less subscribers along the way, but I’m OK with that.

 Before, I used to be more comfortable showing or talking about personal things in my life, and now I’m like, does anybody even care? But I’m trying to shush that noise out and also recognize that chronically online girl. She is a part of me. At the end of the day, to my core, I am a chronically online girl.

So I just have to push past that and feel comfortable trying different content because I’m sure my content’s going to evolve — I hope. I hope I continue to evolve as the years go on and that I’m still doing YouTube, the same as it did in the last three to five years.

To return to finding your audience, do you have a moment that sticks out as your first big viral video?

 I think it was definitely the “chronically online girl explains Frenemies” video that I made. I did not expect that video to do well. That video almost didn’t happen because the audio was messed up. I spent so long trying to fix it and I was like, “I think I should just throw this away. This is a stupid idea. I don’t think anybody cares about this.”

When people actually started showing interest in that despite the messed-up audio, I was like, “Oh wait.” I had so much fun filming that, and I was like, “This is way better than me trying to force myself to vlog.”

Another one of those moments was my first video essay, I guess you could say.  I was encouraged by my manager. It was the video, “Why do the ‘it girls’ quit?”

It was about why some of my favorite YouTubers that I looked up to — like Emma Chamberlain and BestDressed — stopped making videos altogether and faded from the limelight, and decided to live a more private, mysterious life. It’s heavily based off of like my own experience as a content creator, even though I was much smaller. At that moment when I saw people enjoy me talking about something for a long time and they were not like, “Boring. Snooze fest.” That was definitely an “Oh wait, I feel like I could do this,” moment.

YouTube is your main platform, but do you find that’s been the most crucial space for growing your audience? Or have you found that posting on other platforms is helpful?

 I wanted to be a TikTokker so bad. I told myself if there was ever gonna be a Vine 2.0, I would put my heart and soul into that because it just seemed like the place to grow. And then the opportunity came, and everything was right in front of me, and I just didn’t care about it. It didn’t spark that much creativity. Like, if I’m going to post on TikTok, I’m going to shit post. I’m not strategically trying to use it.

YouTube, however, always felt like that. It felt like a platform where I could be myself, but also grow an audience. And it felt like I was reaching towards something. I mean, being at VidCon itself is cool and a weird thing that I never thought would happen in my life. So I’m like exactly where I want to be from YouTube.

So I feel like YouTube.com is my home base. I clock in at YouTube.com, and when I’m not there, I get to go and play and have fun.

You touched on this some, but what does being at VidCon mean to you?

 It’s really surreal.

Is this your first VidCon?

 Yeah, it’s really weird. I was invited to VidCon Anaheim a few years ago, but I was only able to attend the industry track for one day. So I ended up going to a bunch of panels, and I was like, “Is this VidCon?” And then I realized I was going to the industry days only. And then I went to VidCon Baltimore, but it doesn’t exist anymore.

But this — I’m having trouble processing it. I don’t feel like my name should be there on the list with Tyler Oakley, Grace Helbig, and Joey Graceffa. Like, what am I doing sitting on the bus back from Disneyland next to Rhett and Link? Like, what is actually happening and going on? But I’m also so grateful for it because I am trying to remind myself that I did work for years on this.

So I’m trying to validate that I deserve to be here while simultaneously being like, “What the heck am I doing here?”

As your channel grew, how did you approach brand deals?

In 2019, when my first video that blew up, I started getting offers, like, “We’ll pay you $1,000 for this review,” and I was like, “Yes, I’ll give you a four-minute-long integration!” and then you find out they took advantage of you.  That was so difficult, but I was so lucky that I got managers very quickly after that.

 I’ve also been very lucky that pretty much every single brand deal, to this day, I still stand by.  I’ve also formed such good relationships with so many companies that like Curology, that we’re going on five years now.

I’m even more lucky that I find brands like NOCD, with having OCD myself, that was just like serendipitous that I found them. While also talking about OCD on my channel, I felt like this is just the perfect partnership. So I’ve been very lucky in that department.

 Do you have any advice for someone starting out in content creation who might be struggling to find what exactly they want to be making?

 In the beginning, it’s totally okay to be inspired by other people and emulate what you see because that’s exactly what I did. But also, make the videos that you yourself would want to watch. Don’t get stuck in a cycle of creating content that you don’t care about — you’re going to burn out so quickly.

And I know that there are so many people out there who are stuck in what they’re doing just because it is what brings them money and the career that they have. I’m all about get your bag, but simultaneously, that is just not a life to live — where you are putting so much of yourself out there and receiving all the negative from it as well, only to be making content that you would never watch yourself.

Don’t get stuck in a cycle of creating content that you don’t care about — you’re going burn out so quickly.

I always think of Billie Eilish, for example, when she said, “Of course I listen to my own music in the car.” When I upload a video, I will sit back and watch it. It’s like watching it for the first time with fresh eyes, and I’m watching it along in real time with the viewer, and I’m like, “Oh my god, this girl’s funny.”

Now I’m not sitting and doing my makeup and like watching my own videos or listening to my own podcast in the car — power to the people who are — but I enjoy what I’m making, and I think that’s the most important thing is like finding that. And if that means experimenting for a while and being in a weird lull, do it. Even upload the videos that you think are bad, too.

Be proud of what you’re making, but also know that you’re your own worst critic. The videos that I hated the most after editing them for like 12 hours straight — sometimes people love them, sometimes not, but you’re learning from every single experience that you have.