by Tyler Oakley
After applying for literally every position posted on Craigslist: San Francisco, I scored an internship running social media and community management for a start-up. I had been doing it for years as a personal hobby on YouTube, so it felt like a good career fit as a young professional. Eventually, my position became full-time, and I began to carve my path in the digital workspace. It wasn’t the perfect job, but I was able to pay my bills and explore a new city with new possibilities. Leaving Michigan for San Francisco introduced me to myself. I met new people, tried new things, and I was inspired to live and create like never before. My passion for YouTube became all-consuming.
As my online presence grew, so did my impatience at work. During the day, I’d struggle to influence my teams over the basics of social media management, how connections online happened in real time and relied on instinct. Every day was a new battle to get them to trust me. With so many hoops to jump through with campaigns and social posts, by the time they were approved, it was already too late. Then I’d come home to a life on YouTube where I was my own boss and able to create my own content without anyone restricting me.
I was so inspired to create, and so frustrated in the workplace, that I started to consider the possibility of pursuing YouTube as a full-time career. I was getting more views than ever before, and I was finally bringing in a tiny income through my YouTube channel that could, if maintained, pay my rent. So, trusting the same instincts that brought me to San Francisco in the first place, I quit my office job to pursue a full-time job as a YouTuber. And it worked.
Getting rejected by the dream job at Google gave me the freedom to pursue something I never thought was even possible. I’d wanted to work at Google in the first place not because I had a passion for sales or because I furiously hated Bing or AskJeeves; rather, I was told that that’s what my aspiration should be. Only when I failed to get the dream job was I able to figure out my dream job.
For years, I never knew why I didn’t get that position at Google back in 2010, and the question was always in the back of my head. Fast-forward to 2015, at the YouTube Creator Summit. A man came up to me to remind me of that time when he destroyed all of my hopes and dreams. This guy wasn’t responsible for taking Oprah off the air, he was my final interviewer during my three-month-long pursuit of “the dream job.”
“When everyone at Google wanted to hire you, I was the one guy who said absolutely not. You were too creative, and as much as you were the perfect fit for Google, Google wasn’t the perfect fit for you.”
My jaw dropped, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at his story and the serendipity of the situation. There I was, having just met with Google executives, on the day that I was officially offered a national marketing campaign in which my face would be plastered all over subways and billboards across the country as an ambassador of YouTube. And I was talking to the man responsible for sending me down the path that got me to there in the first place.
Finding my dream job was like finding a needle in a haystack. It was a crazy party in which every failed path I followed was like an attendee required to take away a single straw of hay as they departed, one by one. It took a while, and I eventually found that needle, but I couldn’t have done it without failing over and over.
The Google employee who saved me from an entirely different life pointed across the party to a gigantic portrait of my face that a squad of teens were taking selfies with.
“I think it all worked out,” he said.
one direction
I FIRST DISCOVERED ONE DIRECTION WHILE LIVING in San Francisco. My time in SF was even more party-focused than my time in college, and my friends and I typically went to the bars Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, and Sunday afternoons (even God rested on the seventh day).
At the time, I was living with my best friend, Korey, in the Castro, which is the gay neighborhood of the city, with most of SF’s gay bars right in its heart. By that age, we knew what we wanted, and we wanted to be in the middle of it all. Our best friends were dispersed throughout the city, so our home became the meeting place for all things social. Every night at around 9:00 p.m., our buzzer rang with someone assuming we’d be going to the bars (correctly).
The buzzer was our cue to push play on “Korey’s Jams,” a playlist made with that week’s yet-to-be-discovered hits. Korey was always on top of all the new music—he was blasting Chumbawamba long before other people’s radios were pissing the night away. One fateful night in August of 2011, with a freshly updated playlist, Korey pressed play.
Up in my room, deciding which black-on-black-on-black outfit looked most slimming for that evening’s festivities, I heard the opening chords of “Summer Nights,” from the musical Grease. I didn’t think anything of it and had no idea that my life was about to change forever. Having decided on my black, denim, short-sleeved button-down (different from last night’s black, denim, long-sleeved button-down), I made my way downstairs to ask whoever just arrived if I looked lumpy.
Rounding the corner into our kitchen, I found one of our best San Francisco friends, LuLu. His real name was Laurence. He was thirty-one but told everyone he was in his early twenties. A Filipino with a thick accent that he played up for comedic effect, he loved to play dumb. He was petite, energetic, and flirtatious, and every phrase he spoke somehow came out as a flamboyant moan. He was somewhat of the Regina George of San Francisco—he knew everyone’s business, and he could get us on the list for any event or in the door at any bar. He was one of the first friends I made in the city, and we immediately became attached at the hip.
“Oh my Gahhhhhhhhhhh, Tyler, you look so gooooooooood!” he reassured me, in between gasped screams of lyrics, while he danced in the kitchen. I had no clue what the song was, but LuLu was living—completely off-key. “‘That’s what makes you beau-tuh-ful!’”
“What song was that?” I asked, completely oblivious, and more interested in considering what I’d be drinking that night.
“Goirl! You dun know One Duhrection!? Oh no no no no no no no no no no . . . this will not do . . . come look.” He sat down on our counter, simultaneously pouring shots and pulling out his phone. “That one’s Louis”—he did a shot—“he’s the hot one.”
“Zayn is the hot one,” screamed Korey from downstairs.
“Show me Zayn,” I insisted, trusting Korey’s taste implicitly.
My fascination with these five delectable British boys was immediate. Their songs instantly joined our rotation of prebar songs—and they were a hit with me and all of my San Francisco gays. I was obsessed, and I felt like a pretween girl thirsty for the unobtainable. The 1D boys felt so distant, unreachable, monumentally famous—my online expressions of my love for them would grow to be playful and obnoxious, knowing they’d never see anything I was saying, nor would I ever have the chance of being in the same room as them.
In April of 2012, just a few months later, I got a call from LuLu, screaming about some contest that we had to enter and win. I had no idea what he was going on about, but after a little explanation, I got all the details: the boys had just announced on Twitter that their new DVD special of the Up All Night concert tour was coming soon, and as part of the promotion, they were sending advance copies of the DVD to their biggest fan accounts on Twitter, so that they could host their own viewing parties. This was one party LuLu could not get us into—it was up to me.
I applied, and by the grace of God, I was chosen! Soon after, I received my box of party favors (tickets to give to my friends, posters, stickers, temporary tattoos, etc.), but LuLu and I decided this simply wasn’t enough, we wanted to go all out. We made our way to the grocery store and came across the magazine aisle. We picked up every magazine we could—Tiger Beat, BOP, J-14, Twist—any and all tween glossies that featured the boys of One Direction on the cover. I felt that if there was a way to stalk One Direction from an ocean away, this was it. Right then and there, it clicked. I bought the magazines, ran home after work, filmed myself f
lipping through the pages—half legitimately fangirling over the boys, half making fun of people like myself who fangirl over the boys. I uploaded “How to Stalk One Direction” to YouTube and went downstairs to set up for the party.
After a night of debauchery with a dozen of my closest gays, in which we made up drinking games based on the exclusive One Direction concert DVD (e.g., drink every time the boys can’t dance), I drunkenly made my way up to my room. Snuggled up in my bed, I checked my YouTube channel to see how my new video was doing. The response was immediate and intense—unlike any other video I had ever uploaded.
To this point, I had never had a video go viral—contrary to how the public believes a YouTube star is born. Don’t get me wrong, some find immediate success with a big viral hit, but that was never my situation. But this video . . . it was spreading in ways I had never even imagined. When the One Direction fandoms on Twitter and Tumblr discovered my creation, it spread like wildfire. The video was candid, spontaneous, and just me goofing around, but hundreds of thousands of teenage girls saw themselves in it.
Immediately, my Twitter and YouTube presence exploded, growing by tens of thousands a day, something I never thought possible. Five years into my YouTube career, I had found my calling—and it was speaking in the language of teenage fangirls.
With this huge boost, my videos picked up steam, and I quickly realized that the demographic watching my content was shifting—younger and more fan-culture-oriented. Over time, I continued to deliver the videos I wanted to make, but I was unafraid to play with the direction (no pun intended) of the content itself.
Throughout 2013, so much of my brand warped and shifted to play along with the fandom culture surrounding One Direction, and I loved it. I loved being a part of such a passionate community every day. I tweeted as just another member of the fandom, excited for whatever that day’s announcement or release was. I would live-tweet music-video releases. I had the boys’ birthdays in my calendar with jokes drafted to tweet to them. My love for them and their music was authentic, and I had no shame about embodying the concept of a professional fangirl.
On Tuesday, July 23, 2013, I joined in on the discussion, a routine chat with the fandom. It was 9:00 a.m., and there I was, just having a coffee, browsing Twitter, the usual. That day, we were trying to break a Vevo record for number of views in twenty-four hours for a music video—a normal event for us—and to add my part, I tweeted, “You know what I’ve got on repeat? The #BestSongEver video. Let’s break a record.”
And then bam. It happened. Harry-fucking-Styles retweeted me. Not just a simple retweet though—no, this guy . . . he added his own flare. He manually retweeted my promo and added “Thanks mate!” to the end of it.
I screamed. I literally yelped. As it was happening, I started involuntarily giggling and decided, No, I’m a vlogger, I have to record this moment and save it for eternity. I calmly set up my tripod, turned on my camera, and then reacted. What came out of that four minutes of filming now lives in infamy on my YouTube channel.
Six days later, I got an e-mail from a rapper I had never heard of, offering me “the opportunity of a lifetime.” The offer was simple: I was to attend the One Direction concert with him, where I would meet the boys, in exchange for promoting him and his music and publicly attending his show, where I had to say I was his fan. It felt dirty. Though I was obsessed with the boys and would have killed for the chance to meet them, I just couldn’t do it like that. Bummed, I politely declined, knowing someday I’d meet them on my own terms, without compromising my integrity.
One week later, I got an e-mail that changed everything.
The e-mail asked if I would be interested in interviewing the boys during their first movie’s press-junket day. This was my chance! I could finally sit across from Zayn and stare blankly for a few minutes before they asked me to leave!
After five minutes of discussing it on the phone, my answer was obvious: yes, yes, YAAAAAAS. I hung up, sat on my couch—the same exact spot where I sat when Harry Styles retweeted me, grinning. I couldn’t believe it. The band I’d spent so much of my time and energy promoting and genuinely adoring? I might have the chance to meet them. The obvious next question was . . . oh, God, do I delete all the evidence of my thirst leading up to this point? No. Let it live. Thirst unashamedly, Tyler.
That month, I had just launched a project called Auguest, a monthlong collaboration series during August, with surprise special guests every single weekday. This is now an annual tradition, but the format during its first year in 2013 was simple: twenty YouTubers, twenty uploads. Upon launch, I had a list of YouTubers I hoped would participate, but not every spot was accounted for. After getting off the call, I realized . . . what if the interview was the finale for the month? During our next call, I proposed the idea of keeping the interview a secret and launching it on August 30. I was ready to make the Internet explode, but I had no idea how I was going to keep this secret.
Before getting the offer to interview the boys, I had actually planned on going to their LA show five days later with a crew of YouTubers. We sat in a box overlooking the entire stadium. Never missing an opportunity to self-promote, I was wearing my very own PROFESSIONAL FANGIRL T-shirt, which, prior to the show, felt appropriate. Upon arriving, I instantly regretted it—nothing said Tyler Oakley more than Tyler Oakley merch . . . except for Tyler Oakley wearing Tyler Oakley merch. I stuck out like a deer with lilac hair wearing his own merch. I peeked over the edge down to the seats below and was met with dozens of eyes glued to the box. #spotted
I leaned back in my chair, not wanting to make any sudden movements. What once was a constant buzz of excited chatter soon transformed into a slow and growing chant. I grasped the ledge in front of me, found my balance, and slowly stood, looking over the stadium. I rose to see the breathtaking view in front of me, coupled with the even more shocking sound accompanying it—thousands of teenage girls yelling in unison, “TYLER, TYLER, TYLER.” I looked in disbelief at my friends around me, then back to the crowd, and with one sweeping motion waved to the people. An insane roar swept the stadium. Holy fuck.
I slumped to my seat, my face flushed and red, overwhelmed by the outpouring of emotion. These people had come to see the biggest boy band in the world, and while they waited for the main event, they made me feel like the opening act. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine this would be my life.
Soon after, the lights dimmed, the concert began, and the boys delivered what all of us came to eat up—an unapologetically over-the-top teenybopper show worthy of one of the biggest stadiums in America. Even from all the way up and back, this performance was one to remember. I screamed along to every lyric until the very last song. I felt ready.
On August 23, I packed my bag and discreetly flew to New York City. I was undercover and refrained from my usual “New York City, I am in you” tweet to keep everything hush-hush. I told my driver the hotel name I saw in my itinerary, and as we rolled up to the destination, I saw dozens of teenage girls waiting outside the front door. I realized that this was probably the hotel the boys were staying at too, so as quickly as I could, I got out of the car and approached the front door. The crowd screamed as half of them recognized me as Tyler Oakley, and the other half thought I was Niall Horan. Shit. My cover was blown.
When I made it to my hotel room, it was already the middle of the night, and I was both exhausted and wide-awake. I lay under the covers, mind reeling about what was coming. In less than twenty-four hours, I’d be in the same room as the biggest band in the world—how was it going to turn out? Sure I could ask them the safe, mundane questions they always get asked . . . or I could do something different. I thought about the digital age we live in, where the best moments of TV shows or movies are not always the best dialogue, but the best visual moments—what was the most GIFable?
I needed a gimmick. Something cute, playful, something fun and current. Something Tumblr would eat up. I got out my computer and scrolled through the One Direc
tion tag and saw a fan edit that was adorable. It was of the boys onstage, with photoshopped flower crowns atop their heads. This trend was sweeping tween fashion, filtering all the way to fan edits of boy bands. Then it hit me. Why not give people the real version of what they’d been spending so much time using Photoshop to create?
Now, this plan had a few holes in it. Number one, I didn’t have any flower crowns, nor did I know where I could buy them with a day’s notice. How do you search “hippie shit” on Yelp?! Number two, I didn’t know if they’d go along with it. At press junkets, talent sits in a room full of lights and cameras, and different publications cycle in and out with about four minutes of face time each. From the second you enter the room, your timer starts, and you have to get down to business. If I suggested they put on flower crowns and they didn’t like it, it not only wasted time that could have been spent interviewing, but it also sets the mood for an awkward interview. This was a huge risk. I had to make this work.
The next day, I woke up early and called my good friend Alex and asked him if he wanted to tag along for the secret adventure. Like the angel he is, he dropped everything and joined me on my quest for flower crowns. We searched endless boutiques and chain stores, finding nothing like what I envisioned. It was time to get crafty. I bought a handful of flowerless-vine crowns at one boutique and as many flower hair clips from Forever 21 as I could and began to Martha Stewart that shit together with a hot glue gun. They were perfect. I was ready, with less than an hour to spare. It was time.
