Humans of McMaster: Allie C.

By: Esther Liu, Contributor

_{C/O @alliee.c}

This interview was conducted in fall 2020 by Sufyan Rather.

The Silhouette: Give me a brief introduction of yourself!
Allie C.: My name's Allie, my pronouns are she/her, I'm currently in my second-year of health sciences (I'm in the core stream, I'm not specializing) and right now I'm calling in from Ottawa.

So tell me about your channel, why did you start it?
I started my YouTube channel around the end of Grade 12. I've always liked creating videos and producing content, but I was too scared to make a public channel until Grade 12 when you're kind of at the top of the hierarchy — you don't really care what the younger years say about you.

So I just went ahead and started a channel. It was more to document fun memories with friends and it's something nice to look back upon. I guess that just kept ongoing. In first year, I gained a little bit of traction and it's just something I really enjoy doing.

What do you want to get across to your audience? Why is it important that you are the one to say it?
Especially having a smaller following for a YouTube content creator, you have a much more personal connection with your followers. They can ask you questions, you can engage with them and their comments. I think it's also giving me a platform to share my voice and opinions or to bring up matters that are important or need more awareness in society, and just educate some more people about these topics that they might not be aware of.

Stuff is still new for me, so I'm still navigating my way around that, like what's the best way to do it. I don't want to do anything that would offend anyone, but I also want to make sure that I'm staying true to myself and being able to voice my opinions to support the causes that I care for.

It started off just for fun, just me being creative and capturing memories. It's sort of always been like that, especially with making videos, you can definitely get burnt out really easily if you're always trying to follow what other people want if you're doing things just to get views or just to get subscribers. So a large part of it for me is to stay true to the content that I want to make.

I really enjoy the creative aspect of it, so getting cinematic shots, or working on different types of editing and just stepping up my skills that way. Along the way, I like to create some informational videos for my audience as well, like advice to people applying to universities, or how university life is like because I know I definitely would've really appreciated that content when I was a younger viewer. So I try to have a good mix of both with the content I create.

How has your channel changed from last year to this year?
Last year, there was a lot more content with other people, whether that was with vlogs or just sit-down talking videos with other people. I think that this year, I can't really incorporate that "fun" aspect to it so I have to think of other ways or other ideas where I can engage with my audience because I know a lot of viewers really want to see how college is like, how college campus life is like and how you make friends on campus.

That's something that's really different this year because nobody's actually on campus so you have to find ways to adjust. Even if I can't capture memories with friends right now, I'm still living at home with my family. I know that that's something that's not always going to an option for me.