Teen turns life into art

Riley produces content for his YouTube channel. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

In Riley‘s case, life can be art and often is. The YouTuber posts about what’s happening on any given day with a creative flair.  

“Right now, it's very much like a lifestyle vlog, some kind of art creation,” he said. “A lot of it is very much just me filming myself talking to the camera while I do things. There's a rough theme, but most of my videos are very unplanned and I just figure them out as I go.”

Riley, 19, of Alberta, Canada, whose channel is riley here, was inspired by other content creators.

“Emma Chamberlain is a big inspiration for me,” he said. “She's very popular. She started out doing the same thing I did where it was just filming yourself doing things for fun. I definitely would spice up my content more if I had more time. But for now, it's just like me talking to the camera while I do things, so that's how I describe it.”

Riley wants his channel to evolve and expand.

“I wouldn't mind if it went somewhere bigger,” he said. “As a long-term goal, if I could make it sustainable, the animation or more high-end filming that's scripted and more like a movie would be somewhere I would go if I had the resources to do so. I would make it more structured if I had the time, and I'd probably stay with the more vloggy style videos alongside some other more ambitious content. But for now, I'm sticking to the stuff that's easier to make.”

Riley has an imaginative concept that could be filmed someday.

“I've had this idea for a video for the last few years where it is a somewhat interactive horror/mystery story,” he said. “Using YouTube features, creators can sometimes make a choose-your-own-adventure story. One of the most popular ones is A Date with Markiplier. I would want to create a complex horror-mystery story where the viewers can choose how their own stories play out. It would also incorporate elements of finding hidden codes and solving mysteries between the story's installments.”

Riley is waiting for the time and money to realize his concept.

“I have not made this video yet because of how long it would take and the resources needed to make it,” he said. “Also, I've been waiting to build up an audience that can be invested and will try and solve the mystery alongside the story as it happens.” 

Riley has been posting videos for nearly a decade.

“I've had a YouTube channel since I was 10 years old,” he said. “When I first started, I was copying my older brother, who had a YouTube channel where it's all about gaming and video games. I did exactly what he did without really adding my own spin to it or anything. Then I started learning how to do animation, just completely teaching it to myself on my own with a bit of help from some school classes. But I was usually doing it entirely by myself.”

Riley eventually shifted his content.

“I just kept taking inspiration a lot from a lot of the other YouTubers I was watching,” he said. “I was 13 years old and I was watching these YouTubers that did animations of them telling stories about their life, but then they'd animate it. I'm like, okay, I want to learn how to animate. I always liked cartoons when I was younger anyway. I always wished cartoons were real. Me being a kid, I'm like, okay, if I can make the cartoons, then maybe they're kind of real. Being 13, I had so much time to myself, I'm going to just learn how to animate entirely by myself. I shifted to animation for a bit.”

Riley’s animation was prep work for his future content.

“It is very unsustainable to do by yourself, especially if I wanted it to look almost TV show quality, which is very unattainable for one child to be doing all the time,” he said. “But I'm very proud of some of the stuff that I made back then. A lot of it holds up. That definitely was a stepping stone because then I was like, okay, I like telling stories. I like my personality. I grew into being more confident as I got older anyway, so I'm gonna show my face on camera and I'm gonna mix everything together. Maybe I'll make a video about video games, but it's framed in a vlog way.”

Riley's videos include working on class assignments.

Riley now takes his cues from what inspires him.

“The content I make now is just constant inspiration by other people that I get really interested in,” he said. “There's Emma Chamberlain and then there's the YouTuber Brittany Broski that I'm really invested in. I switch between people, and I take inspiration from all sorts of different creators. Each little phase that I had that went from gaming to animation to now vlogging and more skit kind of stuff was me developing my skills, learning what works and what's easier to make or more attainable to make at this point.”

Riley is attending the University of Lethbridge.

“I'm going for a Bachelor of Science in Psychology right now with goals to go into a Master's of Counseling,” he said. “If I want to be a counselor across Canada, I need to get a doctorate. But if I just want to stay here in Alberta, I only need a master's. But I probably will leave Alberta at some point. Either way, probably seven more years of school for me.”

Riley, who posted a video about being bisexual, wants to bring an inclusive ideology to psychology.

“With counseling, I would love to be able to be a counselor with the queer perspective,” he said. “The counselors I've gone to in the past, they don't have a queer perspective. Of course, they're understanding and they're good at their jobs. But there's even been this one time where I told them a story about this one experience that I had and the way that they talk about it, I'm like, you don't get it. You don't get it because you're not queer. And that's okay. Not everyone has to understand everything perfectly.”

Riley wants to aid others.

“I'm motivated by helping people,” he said. “I've been living by this philosophy for a while. The key to helping people is understanding them, because the reason there's so much hatred and anger towards other people is because you really don't understand them at all. That's misunderstanding, miscommunication. That's what breeds hatred and anger. I like psychology because it helps me understand other people, and I think that's very refreshing. It helps me be nicer. You don't have to always be sympathetic, but empathetic. Helping people and understanding other people is the big thing that I want out of my videos and becoming a counselor.”

Riley did a video about painting his shoes.

Riley is a native of Alberta, which is a Canadian province.

“I've honestly never really gone anywhere very far, very exciting,” he said. “I grew up in rural Alberta in a town with 200 people for most of my life, and then moved around a little bit, just other small towns, other small places. Lethbridge, which is not even that big of a city especially compared to U.S. cities, still is the biggest place I've ever lived in. So just a lot of small places throughout Alberta.”

Riley said social media’s role increased as people spent more time indoors.

“People online, especially because of things like Covid, they want connections so desperately,” he said. “Young people forget that they can go outside and connect with young people that way. But also there's this whole other thing where it's the loss of third places, public places where people can get to know each other and relax like libraries, cafes. Things like that are going away, and young people especially are not going to those places anymore. The big thing on social media is relatability. They want connection. They want anything.”

Riley stressed it’s vital for content creators to show some personality.

“Another thing that motivated me to show my personality more is I didn't feel like I was seeing people like me online, so I'm like I want to put my foot in the door,” he said. “It's crazy the way that the Internet's so obsessed with relatability. Those people become so successful, they're not relatable anymore. What I find so interesting, too, is I only like a creator's older content when they were in a similar stage of life as me because I can connect to them more. But once a creator becomes more successful, I don't feel personally connected to them as much because I'm like, oh, well, I'm not a successful, probably wealthy person with millions of fans. How am I supposed to connect to that when I can make content about what I'm doing right now to connect to, hopefully, people who feel the same way.”

Riley wasn’t always extroverted.

“When I was a kid, I was not very outgoing,” he said. “My recent video about me opening up about being bisexual really gained some serious traction. I was not expecting that. It was really cool. I grew up in a small town, middle of nowhere, being bisexual and queer in some way, in a way that I didn't understand. A lot of that was internalized. A lot of that made me very shy. If you go back to my older videos, you can see it. I was so quiet. I posted on YouTube not really wanting the attention, just doing it for fun. I didn't want people in my real life seeing that kind of stuff. I'd get made fun for it. People would bully me for it.”

Riley eventually became more open.

“I'd say definitely once I came out I was bisexual and I realized that about myself, which is towards the end of the pandemic,” he said. “That's when I came out. Everyone was locked inside for some serious thinking and reflection. Now I'm as outgoing as I wished I always was because it was never I’m a naturally shy, introverted person. I was just too awkward. I always wanted to be outgoing. I think coming out and then I also think even just going to university and being an adult helped me a lot, be a lot more outgoing. Being able to build a community of friends myself is something I’d never thought I’d be able to do. I was always like, oh, I’m too nervous. I’m not going to make friends in university. But I was able to overcome it. I can finally be who I want to be and find people who support me regardless, so there's no reason to be shy anymore.”

Riley stressed the importance of content creators to talk about sexual orientation.

“I definitely think so,” he said. “I don't mean to get political with it, but people who don't agree with homosexuality or especially trans people, it's bad. I feel like it sucks though, because when you're surrounded by that, you don't even consider the idea that being queer in any way is valid or real or what it even means. I remember when I was a kid, I didn't know what that meant. I wasn't getting any positive representation or media or anything. I only started seeing that kind of thing because I, one, actively seeked it out after I came out and, two, just because more modern times, things are developing better.”

Riley said although tolerance of others’ differences is higher in society, the need to promote it remains.

“I'm very glad that I have younger siblings who are living in a world that's a lot more accepting of them and they have a school environment that's way more accepting than any school environment I lived in,” he said. “It's only a five-year age difference. I'm already out. I wasn't hiding it in my videos before, but I wanted a video that definitively stated it so that people could watch me and see me and be like, oh, this is actually how he is. He does represent the community. I don't think necessarily all of my content's going to be about being queer in some way. A lot of it's just me being myself. Just doing what I want to do is good enough representation.”

Riley also does animation.

Riley said a person doesn’t need a relationship to validate his or her orientation.

“I've never been in any relationship at all,” he said. “Never been in a queer relationship, never been in a straight relationship, never anything like that. A lot of popular media these days is telling you that the solution to accepting that you're queer is getting into a queer relationship. It's not true. That's not true about anything. A relationship doesn't solve the problems of straight people who want to be in straight relationships. Relationships don't solve anyone's problems. They never will. You have to find happiness within yourself. I'm finding that when I make videos about me having fun, usually by myself, and just enjoying things and trying out new stuff, that's also really motivating to other people. I'm not happy because I have a boyfriend waiting for me after I make the video. I'm happy because I'm queer and I've accepted that.”

Riley is penning a novel to reinforce that acceptance for others.

“I'm currently working on a novel right now,” he said. “My novel is very similar to my life, small town. The main character is trying to accept himself for being queer and try to find a community, finding self-worth while being bisexual. The end of the story does not have this huge resolution where he finds a boyfriend and that solves everything for him. It's from within. Definitely friends and family that support you helps, but also having to really accept that on your own and spend a lot of time by yourself is key, too. That's one thing that I'm thinking more about as I make my content moving forward is it's okay if my content is made with me just doing stuff by myself because I think that that goes against a lot of other queer media where queer media is very much relationship focused. I think just me being me is all that's really needed to show my orientation.”

“I’ve come to this point where I like reflecting on my life in a way that’s entertaining or educational, inspirational in some way where I could turn almost any experience that I’ve gone through into something.”

Riley has some minimal limits on what he’d reveal about his life on social media.

“There's the general things like my address and legal information that I've never disclosed,” he said. “I'm trying to keep my last name off the Internet. In all aspects of my life, not just my YouTube channel, I'm such an open person. I've come to this point where I like reflecting on my life in a way that's entertaining or educational, inspirational in some way where I could turn almost any experience that I've gone through into something. When it comes to my life and my experiences, I don't really have anything that's off the table for sharing as of yet. Maybe that'll change in the future, but that's my policy right now.”

Riley produces content both from recording what would be doing anyway and what he does for the purpose of posting.

“It's mixed, but I do think the second one is the better mindset to have,” he said. “I have a video about me just moving to a new place, which isn't like the craziest, most unique format ever. But I thought it was fun. I thought it'll explain some of the things in the background changing, just an update on my life type thing. I seem to have a lot more people invested in that now, so that's very exciting. But I think anytime I do that for a video, it ruins the fun that activity I do in the video would bring me.”

Riley said recording something he already would be doing sometimes is beneficial.

“A couple years ago, I did a video where I painted my shoes,” he said. “That was only one of the only good examples where it helped motivate me to actually finish that and do it because I had kept those shoes around. I'm like, oh, I'll paint them eventually, but if I can do it for a YouTube video, then it feels like I can get more out of it. In the long run, that's a negative mindset to have because then you can't enjoy anything anymore because you're always thinking, oh, what if I film this? It's finding a balance between that where it's also I have this video idea, let's do it. That's been a lot more of the things that I've been doing lately.”

Riley stays active.

Riley said planned videos tend to be more rewarding.

“There's been a couple videos I've made where I pair up with my siblings and their friends and I film a skit with them,” he said. “That is way more deliberate. We'll always be like, okay, we need to come up with ideas. Those videos are more fun to make because you're making the video for the sake of the video. You're not doing some other task or some other chore while you're doing it. So I would say a bit of a mix of both.”

Riley weighs the pros and cons of content ideas.

“For my next few video ideas that I have coming up, it's something that I probably would do, but I'm more motivated to do them because they're a video.” he said. “I have this idea where I might bike around the city that I live in and I'm like, okay, that's a fun thing that I might do. But the thing is, I bike every day to work. I don't really want to go out of my way to bike more than I already do. But at the same time, it's good for you and it'd be an entertaining video. So I'm like, okay, I'll do it. There's a lot of benefits to that. It's also not like I'm pushing myself to be like everything has to be filmed.”

Riley explained there are boundaries for planned content as well.

“There's a lot of controversies on YouTube and on social media where people think anything is content,” he said. “A couple years ago, this one YouTuber did a prank where he pretended to kill his best friend in front of his other friend. It was a prank, but it looked so realistic. People thought it was a terrorist attack. It was horrible. That's when people go to way too far where they think anything is content and they have to film everything, every funny idea, every whatever. They just have to film it and make money off of it. That's just a really negative mindset to have on any kind of art. Art should be made for the sake of it existing and enjoying making it instead of the end result.”

“That’s a big thing where I want people to not feel alone in whatever they’re doing. Lifting moods and connection, showing that you’re not alone with whatever you’re going through.”

Riley wants his followers to be entertained and comforted by his content.

“Just something to look forward to,” he said. “That's a big thing where I want people to not feel alone in whatever they're doing. Lifting moods and connection, showing that you're not alone with whatever you're going through. YouTube and social media love to romanticize everything. I want to bring a more authentic side where it's like, okay, this is a real connection. This is real joy out of the little things, not some grandiose, over-the-top, stupid, romanticized version of life. It's this grounded, more realistic form of joy out of my videos.”

Riley stays fit.

“I was never good at team sports or anything, but I've always liked things like running and swimming,” he said. “I did a little bit of sports throughout high school, but I never was good at anything or got anywhere with anything. But I like staying fit. I like going outside a lot. When university came around, I started going to the gym a lot more. I would thank my roommate for helping me get into that a lot. I work out almost every day now. I'm not exactly athletically inclined, but I like it for the health reasons. One of the reasons that I do like working out is I'm a little bit afraid of getting older. I want to reduce that process a little bit if I can keep my body in better shape for a longer time.”

Riley said it’s important that fitness isn’t tied to appearance.

“Health should be about health, not necessarily the way that you look,” he said. “You can tell when a person is obese and unhealthy and has unhealthy lifestyles, but there's a lot of people who are healthy, but maybe they're still overweight and they're going to be okay. The Internet needs to stop having such extremes about it and just even out a little bit more where you're allowed to have body fat. It's okay to just be in the middle, to be healthy, but look like a normal person, not be some insane one end of the spectrum or another. That's another thing that I think online needs to be promoted is just moderation and less extreme things.”

Riley stays motivated by thinking about the impact content can have on followers.

“When I first started making videos, I wanted the attention,” he said. “As a kid, I want to get famous. I want to have all this attention, all this fame. But lately, it's been very much personal. If I can instill joy and connection with people who need it online, that would be great. That keeps me motivated to make videos. Sometimes, I notice when I will sit there and I'm editing a video and I'm overediting this. I don't need everything to be zooming in and flashing and effects. There's definitely a time and place where those add comedic value, but it can also contribute to this fakeness, this inauthenticity that is really prevalent online.”

Riley said focusing on fitness also lines up with his mindset.

“When it comes to exercise, it's the brain chemicals,” he said. “It keeps me stable. I'm the type of person who likes a routine. When I can get up in the morning, get out of the house and go to the gym, that keeps me motivated.”

Riley dispensed advice for budding YouTubers.

“It depends on what you want out of it,” he said. “If you want to make money, if you want to have that success, there's definitely very strict things you can do like uploading frequently, uploading long videos that people watch most of the way through. That means usually very stimulating content. But I also think from an artistic point of view, you have to have some internal reason for wanting to make YouTube videos and you have to have overarching purpose and overarching consistency.”

Riley said the content should have a thematic approach.

“There's some common theme across them,” he said. “Sometimes that theme can be I'm just going to do cooking videos. That works perfectly fine. But also it could be an overall theme about life.”

“You don’t hold yourself back.”

Riley said a content creator has ample opportunity to produce just about anything.

“When it comes to very logistical things, you could teach yourself anything,” he said. “If you want to animate or edit anything, you can teach yourself. There's this one free program called DaVinci Resolve. I was using another program for years, but then I went onto this program because it's more modern and free. I taught myself it in a couple of weeks. I already have video editing experience, so that makes it easier, but you can teach yourself anything. When I was 13 years old, I was teaching myself how to animate on computer animation programs that they use for movies and video games. They're not beginner things. I was using high-end things and I managed to teach myself.”

Riley said the video quality can only improve over time.

“You have to stay consistent with it,” he said. “You're not going to be good at it at first and it's going to be embarrassing how bad you are at something. But if you have an internal purpose, stick with it. Just keep working on it. Because my YouTube channel changed a lot and I changed my ideas about it. I changed the aesthetic all the time, but it was constant. I didn't drop out of making YouTube videos.”

Riley said YouTubers don’t need the most expensive gear to make content.

“It matters, but it also doesn't matter that much if you know how to use your equipment,” he said. “I have a three-year-old phone that I film everything on that's cracked and glitches out all the time and doesn't work. I'm running out of storage. It's not a perfect setup at all. I have one tripod. The tripod itself is nice, but the attachment that I have for my phone is all taped up and falling apart, completely broken, but it still somewhat works. The computer I have is nicer now, but the computer I was using before was some laptop from 2015 that could barely run anything. If you just stick with it, it doesn't really matter the equipment that you have.”

Riley also covers cooking.

Riley said having only less sophisticated equipment can be turned into an advantage.

“I notice online a lot of people are addicted to vintage,” he said. “If you film things on older stuff, you can make that a selling point. If your videos have a poorer quality then don't try to pretend that it doesn't exist. If you have limited equipment and limited resources, embrace it.”

Riley suggested content creators seize opportunities to become more educated about video production.

“Another thing that really helps is if you go into schooling for some kind of video or production,” he said. “That's very helpful, but it's not entirely necessary. At the University of Lethbridge, they have a new media program which is basically all this kind of stuff, social media, YouTube channels, gaming, everything that a lot of young people are really interested in all in this one program. I went through a first-year class with it, and I knew most of the stuff going on. I already managed to teach myself entry-level university things. You don't hold yourself back. If there's schooling, it’s cool and it makes things easier, but you can kind of still teach yourself anything with the Internet.”

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Riley’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@rileyhere228