Connor Franta came into the BuzzFeed UK office while on a book tour for his memoir, A Work In Progress.
Not familiar with Connor? He's a YouTuber, originally from Minnesota, and has amassed more than 4.5 million subscribers to his creative and personal weekly videos. Most of his videos are viewed by 13- to 25-year-olds.
How much effort have you spent building your YouTube channel?
CF: People think that you upload a video, and it goes viral, and then you're a YouTube star, and I’m like, ‘nah, no'. In total, with all of the channels I’ve done, I’ve uploaded anywhere from 400 to 1,000 videos to the internet, and each one of those takes a whole day to make.
And what about the pressure that comes with it?
CF: I feel like there is pressure on yourself, but I don't think that is necessarily is a bad thing. I don't think I am stressed by it. I think it is empowering that I can do whatever I want in my own time. I really enjoy the fact that I have all that freedom and I really like to keep it for as long as possible.
But coming out last year created an absolutely huge positive online reaction for you, didn't it?
CF: Yeah, and I just also didn't actually think that I would actually do that soon. It was just one of those things that eventually happened over that whole year. It's interesting how much your life can change in just one year.
So why release a memoir now, at only 22?
CF: I was definitely nervous putting it out with the title memoir at 22 ... but I really wanted to go beyond the five minutes that I do every week with a YouTube video, and I also wanted to capture this moment in time for me. Because I feel this age and this point of my life that I'm at is really key, and with this digital era I also think it's interesting to anyone who is older or younger, to show exactly what is going on.
During our chat, we handed Connor a whiteboard and shouted 14 different words at him from a safe distance.
1. London
"There's a giant cat statue in my hotel that I'm staying at, so it was the first thing that came into my mind."
2. Sunday roast
"We couldn't find a roast dinner yesterday because it was a bank holiday, so nothing was open that day. I probably have indirectly had one in America but we just don't call it that. We have dinner where everything is roasted, essentially."
3. Jet lag
BuzzFeed (stalking his Twitter feed): So you went to bed at 2am last night?
Connor: I was editing till 2am last night. I got back from filming collabs with Tanya Burr and Jim Chapman and I was like, 'I have to edit a video'. I was back at 10pm, and then I had to edit and 2am, and I had to be up for 7, so no sleep for me!
4. Middle child
"There's a lot of anger that comes with being the middle child [Connor is a middle child FYI]. You're just angry at the world and you're like, WHHHYYY? You've got no identity. None. Nothing."
6. Public speaking
"Public speaking is scary, I think. I've gotten way better at it. If I have to do a speech and be like, I'm a YouTuber then that's easy but if I have to get up there and pretend I know something in front of adults, it's never fine. In front of adults, it's like, Ahhhh they're going to judge me. Doing an event with viewers is easy because I can just wing it and I can do whatever I want."
7. Photoshop
"I could photoshop for hours. I spend way too much time making thumbnails. I spend like two hours on my thumbnails sometimes just because it's like fun."
8. FOMO
"Meeee! FOMO and me are synonymous. I am FOMO. FOMO is me. I always have had a fear of missing out. And I'm like, What are my friends doing in America? It's the whole social media thing that you can always see what other people are doing, and you're like, Oh I want to do that too."
9. Activity
"I do like running a lot more, but swimming is a lot harder because it is harder to find a pool, whilst with running you just get to put your shoes on and go outside."
10. Home
"[In Minnesota] it snows like, potentially October till June. I think it was snowing the other day there. In California the coldest it gets, you barely need to wear a jacket. It's ridiculous, but when I go home it's like, OK, four days is enough...ready for California again."
11. Taylor Swift
"The first thing that comes to mind was amazing but the second was her cats, because she has two adorable cats. Because their ears are flopped. They're flopped ear ones. They're SO cute. They're so adorable. I want to hold them."
12. Writing
"I thought of notebook. I wonder if that's a weird thing to think about, typing or something, as nobody actually writes anymore. I'm trying to imagine someone at school if they actually just write now or if they type everything, if they actually buy notebooks. You know what I mean?"
13. Italian
"It's the simplest one. I haven't had breakfast."
14. Fear
"I hate spiders. In America they're small but in Australia they're huge. They're like, the size of your fist. Terrifying. They're huge. Google Australian spiders. You'll never sleep. One of my friends the other day was talking about how Australia has 'spider storms.' There's a hatching season and and some, like, towns get covered in spiders, so your whole house gets covered in spiderwebs full of baby spiders. The most disgusting thing I've ever seen."
So after his book out, what is next for Connor?
"One of the most asked questions is like, "Where are you going to be in five years?", but I do not know what I'm going to be doing in five days! No, genuinely I have no idea where I am going to be in five days. It is a little bit scary to think about what could happen next year, but also if I look back at this last year it's really exciting because so much has happened in this last year. I've doubled my subscribers, I've written this book, I've come out the closet...I've done a million things I never thought I would do."