Tyler Oakley

“I'm essentially working from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. It's my biggest hobby but also my favorite career that I could ever have. Every single platform is important.”

“When it came to 'Binge,' it wasn't my intention to get on a little soapbox and have a teaching moment. It was more, 'Here are things that have happened to me; here's what I've learned from it. If you'd like to learn from it too, great; if you just like the entertainment aspect, that's fine too.'”

“I hope to introduce my audience to who I think is the next class of YouTuber.”

“I'm a genuine lover of music. I've always watched the Grammys from home.”

“In creating my YouTube videos, I don't want to speak for my audience and the people I represent; I want to amplify their voices.”

“You don't go to your 9 to 5 and share every story with your coworkers, and in the same way, not every YouTuber shares every story with their audience.”

“Look, nobody is born with a sociology degree, and no one can understand all perspectives. Nobody's going to get it all from the very start. But the Internet at least allows everyone to hear these perspectives at a much faster rate than if we had to do it without it.”

“I'm trying to leave more of my calendar open for the spontaneous things. A lot of fun stuff that happened in previous years were things that were like, 'Hey are you available next week?' I wasn't really open unless it was planned months in advance. I'm excited to play it by ear and let a lot of stuff happen as it happens.”

“With everything that I've done with YouTube and podcasts for so many years, it's been: you can record it, edit, and then upload that day. With the book and documentary, it's been such a longer process.”

“2015 was, like, packed from January. 2016 is simultaneously open and packed - but I'm trying to keep 2016 open as possible so I can do weird, crazy, kooky stuff.”

“I always think about the fact that PewDiePie, who has tens of millions of followers, started with zero. All of my favorite creators started with zero. And all it takes is one video to dive deep, and you are officially a YouTuber. So you've got to make that first video. It's not going to be your best, but you will learn as you go.”

“I think social media has amplified a lot of voices that maybe traditional media hasn't perfectly portrayed.”

“There's no Hollywood tradition of maybe not telling people that you're gay to protect your future ambitions. The YouTube world is a little unprecedented. I think what people are seeing is that the more true to yourself you are, the more an audience will connect with you.”

“My one guilty pleasure is, every airport, I will drop everything to get an airport massage at those kiosks.”

“The moment I realised anyone could be watching - and this is going to sound so name-droppy - was when Ricky Martin reached out to me on Coming Out Day 2012. The Internet has this massive potential, and you can never know the effect you might have on others by just being yourself.”

“I knew I could make a living doing my own videos instead of making them for someone else.”

“In middle school, I was really into the 'Redwall' series, about anthropomorphic rodents in medieval times. I had a bowl cut, too, if you need the full imagery.”

“Narcissism has existed for a long time; social media is just a new outlet to express it. Anybody who is going to record themselves and put that on the Internet, hoping people will watch, there is a degree to which that exists, yeah. I don't know if I would call myself a narcissist. I don't necessarily identify with that label.”

“I found a vlogger named William Sledd who talked about his life - it was very minimal edits. It was one of those things where I discovered him, and I was like, 'Oh my God, I'm obsessed with him.' I felt like I was friends with him. And he was a huge inspiration for why I made my first video.”

“In elementary school, I loved the 'Bailey School Kids' series. It was about a group of classmates who would speculate whether adults in their lives were supernatural beings. I read literally every single book in the series.”