Pascack Valley junior Lindsey Mattesich always enjoyed watching YouTube videos when she was younger. In fifth grade, she wanted to create a channel, but was “too nervous” to start. Now, she has over 1,000 subscribers.

“I started filming on my phone and I barely knew how to edit,” Mattesich said. “Currently, I don’t know everything, but I get more how it works and I have a camera. I think that it’s a cool thing for people to think about or even watch because everything is on [YouTube]. It ranges so much.”

Mattesich created her YouTube channel on Feb. 4, 2018, and posted her first video in May. As of now, her favorite YouTubers are James Charles, Tana Mongeau, and Cody Ko.

“My parents kind of told me to do it and I also was nervous to do it,” Mattesich said. “Finally, I was just like, ‘Who cares, I’m going to do it.’”

Mattesich uploads vlogs and sitting and talking videos in her bedroom to her channel once a week. She said that if she is not able to post during a week, she publishes two videos the following week.

“I like entertaining people and making people laugh,” Mattesich said. “[My channel] is mainly for comedic purposes — being funny is the goal [YouTube] is not like Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat where they all copy each other. I think that everyone has the opportunity to do it no matter how much money or how many followers you have.”

Mattesich started to gain publicity after publishing a video on Jan. 15 titled “ETHMA CONFIRMED!!!!! i have proof,” which has reached over 40,000 views and almost 2,000 likes. She said she figured that the video would receive more views than usual, but “did not expect it to do that well.”

“I’m proud of how many subscribers she has gotten and how many views she has on the Ethma video,” PV junior and Mattesich’s friend Lily Glastein said. “I’m proud of everything she does.”

The video was posted after Youtuber Ethan Dolan tweeted about Emma Chamberlain, a fellow Youtuber, after she received a hate comment about her videos. The two YouTubers are believed to be in a relationship, although it has not been officially confirmed. Ethma is Dolan and Chamberlain’s relationship name or “ship name” — a common trend on social media for alleged and verified couples. Mattesich said that the tweet made the “whole Internet blow up.”

“There was so much drama with this, and my first instinct is to always make a joke about it, which is what I did,” Mattesich said. “Some people didn’t know it was a joke and I got a lot of push-back on it. I think about it in a business-type standpoint. I strategically posted it, not hoping to get as many views as it did, but to get my name out there.”

Mattesich said that there was a period where the video was increasing 1,000 to 2,000 views a day. She believes that it was because the video was in the recommendations category on YouTube.

“I hope that she becomes famous one day because that’s really cool. I think that once a video gets more views, it’s recommended to more people,”Glastein said. “It’s like a snowball effect.”

Mattesich said that balancing YouTube and school can get “tricky at times” since uploading a video requires filming and editing. If she has school, it takes two to three days to edit a video.

“If I’m in a rush, I will film and edit a video in a night, but if I have time, it usually takes 5 days to go up on my channel,” Mattesich said. “There are some times when I put YouTube before school, which isn’t a good thing, but that’s very rare. It takes around a week with my schedule of school and being out all day.”

In college, Mattesich is planning to study interior design, but she is keeping her options open.

“If the opportunity were to come to me, I would love to do [YouTube],” Mattesich said. “If it didn’t happen, I’m obviously not going to cry about it. That’s my dream, but it’s not something you can go to college for.”

Pascack Valley junior Lauren Bell was called “bling” for wearing jewelry by her second grade teacher. When Bell started her YouTube channel on Aug. 13, 2013, she wanted to find a word that complemented “bling.” With over 300 subscribers, Bell is known as “dazzlebling.”

“It’s pretty ironic how everyone calls me dazzle when it all started with bling,” Bell said.

Bell began posting videos a year after the creation of her channel. She started because she was inspired by Bethany Mota, a Youtuber who makes lookbooks and vlogs. 

“I like making little films, editing them, and sharing them with people to make them happy,” Bell said. “YouTube to me is fun.”

Originally, Bell wanted to have a makeup and travel channel, but began posting vlogs to “keep memories alive.”

“I really hope that people watch them and are happy and can look back on them 20 years from now and say, ‘That’s what my high school years were like,’” Bell said.

PV junior and Bell’s best friend, Emily Kennedy, is seen in many of Bell’s videos on her channel, especially vlogs.

“It’s kind of weird getting filmed all the time, but you get used to it,” Kennedy said. “It’s fun to look back on the videos and be like ‘I forgot we did this.’”

Bell said she does not follow a normal posting schedule, but vlogs when she goes somewhere with other people. Last August, she took her friends to Disney World and posted videos from their trip on her channel.

“I made sure I posted every single one of those vlogs so that I have them,” Bell said. “It’s about memories.”

Behind the publishing of videos, Bell tries to edit during her free time in school and edits and posts the video at home. She said that it takes around a week to post a fully-edited video.

“It’s difficult when teachers give you a lot of work to do and you’re starting to slip on a lot of your classes,” Bell said. “Sometimes, I like to get ahead of schedule and edit it all day during school and keep it private until later in the day. Your main focus should be school and YouTube should be next.”

At PV, Bell believes that people are very accepting of her channel and that asking other students to be featured in her videos has made her a “different person” since she has always been shy.

Bell participated in “Vlogmas” during the month of December where a video was posted every day until Christmas. Her videos consisted of footage in PV with other students and on vacation in Aruba.

“I’ve never got any hate comments from anyone from school or hate comments in general because I haven’t really put myself out there for them to find me,” Bell said.

Bell said that becoming a professional YouTuber has been her dream since she discovered the platform, but most video production majors in college involve movies or becoming a director. In college, she is deciding between going for a business degree with filming as a second option at Coastal Carolina University or attending a filming school in Los Angeles.

“Thinking about the next chapter in my life is very scary, so I’ve been contemplating if I want to be that far away from home,” Bell said. “Los Angeles has always been a dream of mine to visit ever since I started watching YouTube. There are just so many opportunities if you work hard enough.”

“It’s fun to see her come up with ideas for different videos,” Kennedy said. “She’s just grown as a YouTuber and it’s kind of cool.”