The Evolution of Jenna Marbles - Jenna Marbles' Story (Jenna Mourey)

contrary to popular belief jenna mori was one of the first content creators on youtube starting her first youtube channel in 2006 but finding accidental success through her second channel created in 2010 from here the world renowned jenna marbles was born and gave life to a new age of content creators while her initial videos were mostly skit-based her personality was soon at the forefront of her content always seeming to experiment with different styles of content that usually included makeup pets comedy and most importantly her genuineness it is no surprise that someone with such strong commitment to a schedule and commitment to improvement could rise where so many have fallen once the largest female youtube content creator her content transcends her cultural boundaries as other channels merely translating her videos to different languages have flourished alongside her like most ambitious creators she was a boundary pusher experimenting with sometimes offensive forms of content throughout her time on youtube she was more critical of herself than her actual detractors to the point that she became the icon of ideological improvement on youtube but her hard work to separate herself from her past did very little to satiate the hordes of provoked viewers sweeping the platform to remove anyone with an imperfect past though she received minimal backlash from her videos in comparison to others that were targeted she ultimately listened to the few and decided her time on the platform has come to an end but others speculate that this was an excuse for her to leave the platform as some theorized that she has progressively become disinterested in youtube to reach due diligence and develop a clear perspective of her past and present we will go through the rise of jenna marbles jenna nicole mori was born on september 15 1986 in rochester new york where she was raised alongside her older brother who is two years her senior growing up jenna had many positive influences to shape her life that consisted largely of family her father is a penny holding chemist one of ron's is an emmy award-winning broadcast journalist and another aunt worked at a high level position at the library of congress but the most important influence was her mother who worked various jobs including a job in marketing her mother raised her with much care and gave jenna the freedom to make many of her own minor choices but still help guide her and support her through the various decisions she made she also guided her in other ways like showing jenna an empathetic approach to life one way of accomplishing this was during christmas along with purchasing their own presents jenna's family purchased presents for less fortunate families and on the topic of taking care of others jenna also had many pets but in place of typical pets because jenna's mother is allergic to both cats and dogs jenna took care of smaller animals such as hamsters gerbils guinea pigs and ferrets while pet care must have taken a decent amount of her time she still had enough time to be active in hobbies beyond the ones that were offered in school like gymnastics dance and even musical instruments like the clarinet but in the end was more interested in piano lessons where she received them from a classically trained piano teacher and learned alongside her brother but unlike her brother she was considerably more talented and caught on quick eventually being able to learn songs by ear at a young age to add to her list of talents she was also athletic as she played on a baseball team coached by her father until she turned 13 where she then switched to softball these hobbies were in no doubt influenced by her family but she didn't derive all influence from those at home a large influence came from the 1950s black and white sitcom i love lucy starring lucille ball who played lucy ricardo an upbeat quirky yet lovable character that had jenna wanting to emulate her freedom meaning that she cared little of what some would consider harmless social norms like wearing matching socks to school which is something that she typically did not do because of smaller decisions like these and some larger looking back she identified herself as the weird kid a weird kid with a dream to work with animals or a job in a stem field but putting yourself in the perspective of an outcast isn't always a healthy mindset for the majority of middle school and some of high school jenna like many teenagers had much angst and described herself as the color gray because in her own description it's blah and everyone hates it but it can be elegant and pretty at times and it surprises people it also has a dark side which is depressive and dark but it has a light side which can be bright and amazing though most of these feelings did dissipate a bit when she started to be more active in high school and took part in the diving team the bowling team and of course the softball team as if that wasn't enough jenna graduated high school at the age of 17 instead of the typical age of 18. from here she decided she wanted to take life at a different pace and go to college in a big city first she sent out college applications to see who would accept her but this did not help narrow down her choices because she got accepted into every college that she applied to eventually she went past her home state lines and attended suffolk university in boston to earn a degree in psychology but having to build relationships in a new city decently far away from your home could prove difficult for anyone she did eventually develop relationships but not before her 18th birthday where she spent the majority of it alone in her dorm room crying her loneliness was later remedied in large part due to her joining the softball team where she played for all four years of her bachelor's degree and made many new friends which appreciated her quirkiness and personality overall this in turn made her more comfortable to be who she always naturally was with some confidence and a new macbook janet discovered imovie a relatively easy to use video editing software which she initially used to edit videos for her class projects sometimes even going out of her way to ask her professor if she could turn in projects in video format the problem was jenna's laptop didn't have a dvd burner so she could not transfer her videos physically luckily there was a new and free alternative that appeared and formed jenna of known as youtube so on april 5th 2006 the channel jmori 66 was created and hosted her various school projects along with the rare upload of a playful video that she usually linked on her facebook for family and friends to see though jenna was not a stranger to videos on the internet that's because of stupidvideos.com a once popular website that hosted a random array of stupid videos unlike youtube these videos had to be uploaded then screened by the owner in order to be viewed this was most likely done as a way to save storage space and filter lower quality content all of this was happening at the tail end of her bachelor's degree while she did in a way find purpose and belonging in her time at suffolk university she was still uncertain what direction to take in life with the possibility of applying to jobs with the degree she just earned she also opened the possibility of furthering her education by pursuing a master's degree and sent a single application to one graduate school that only accepts 13 applicants a year for their program at 21 years old now accepted to boston university's graduate school jenna was the youngest person in her class of 13 while being the youngest did pressure her to act in a more mature or professional manner being surrounded by people much older allowed for an even more accepting environment so her goofiness persisted now at 22 years old jenna earned a master's degree in sports psychology and counseling and with much excitement her and her friend decided to move down to texas together which was perfect for jenna as texas had a large potential to find a job in her field but at the last second her friend backed out and things began to fall apart since she already made arrangements to move to texas like informing her landlord that she was moving out because of this frustration she will not talk to her friend for a year but that was the least of jenna's worries now without a decent chance to find a job in her field her part-time jobs of cleaning tanning beds bartending and go go dancing became full-time jobs but jenna is no stranger to work beyond her existing jobs previously she managed to finish her masters on time take on internships in her career field work as a camp counselor and work at a clothing store where she was promoted before leaving so working full time was definitely not comfortable but it was manageable something that helped reduce stress or may have even added to it was max her boyfriend who is one year her senior they met when jenna was in college and had locked herself out of her apartment the same day that max was moving into her apartment complex naturally they struck up a small conversation about how they haven't seen each other around there before and then a couple more conversations in passing what started off as a fling turned into a serious relationship that was built on a platform of developing issues something that may have helped mask these issues by creating comfort was jenna's first dog mr marbles a chihuahua jenna adopted in 2008. while footage of this no longer exists on her original channel j morris 66 it still lingers and the deeper crevices of youtube this video was recorded through the camera installed in your laptop and posted to facebook through a link to youtube [Music] this is the cutest thing in the whole world online her intentions were to show herself off to her friends but she'd also show herself off to strangers sure through the few random people that would come across her videos but mostly because for one of her jobs she was a promo model as the job name entails she promoted random products at different venues one such promotion was for barcelo sports a sports gambling newspaper turned digital media company that has a focus on sports and pop culture ran and owned by david or dave for short el presidente portnoy who contracted jenna for several promotions for barstool sports and its advertisers what set jenna apart from a good portion of promo girls was that she was usually on time and mentally stable not to mention her excellent communication skills and her notable knowledge of sports it did not take long before she received a call from portnoy asking her to be his assistant while crying tears of joy jenna accepted a finally stable job that paid around twelve hundred dollars a month to do things like get portnoy's coffee or help with organization this meant that she could quit her job at the tanning salon and support herself through one job though she did go go dance every now and then for 100 a night because she genuinely enjoyed it after enough time of working in close proximity to portnoy jenna started pick up on how digital media and writing worked not only in the entertainment industry but also on the internet in general portnoy wanted to test jenna asked her to write a post on his website and after revisiting it portland was surprised at jenna's writing proficiency no doubt helped by her college education enough so to let her continue to write for him under one of the many characters that barcelo sports had with the draw that her blogs were under the perspective of a girl this job also served as a bit of an outlet for her writing creativity but even outside of work she continued to showcase herself online once through jmory's 66 but now through her new youtube channel known as jenna marbles created february 2010 the reason she created this new channel was because her mother was trying to find a job at the time but any google of mori her last name led to jenna's youtube channel and then to her uploads of random skits rants and school projects that's why this new channel was created with the last name of marbles after mr marbles her dog who was then named after a sinister looking ventriloquist doll from the popular sitcom seinfeld so jenna indirectly named her channel after mr marbles from seinfeld similar to jmori 66 jenna uploaded random skits and rants to her channel for the sole purpose to post the links on facebook for her friends to view many early videos included mr marbles and few cameos of her boyfriend max who at this point moved in with jenna but everything changed after july 9th 2010 on this day just like any other after returning from her day job at barcelo sports jenna still needed to get ready to go dance later that night so during this intermission period jenna was remembering her frustration at people not recognizing her at the bar she worked at because of all the makeup she applied to go go dance and while getting ready she turned her laptop camera on and decided to record a video for facebook this video's title is how to trick people into thinking you're good looking running at 2 minutes 36 seconds with rick astley's never gonna give you up added in post editing a 24 year old jenna showed her transition from pre to post makeup all while keeping a friendly visage and dropping satirical commentary like jokingly crying while holding her master's degree which she could not find a job with jenna has said that this video was made at one of the most confusing points in her life as for most of us she continually tries to find out in what direction her life is heading little did she know that she was in for a big surprise this video was posted on friday two days later on sunday morning she returns to her channel to look at her video and finds that has accumulated 750 000 views in panic and in disbelief she called her mother to explain her accidental virality and also to explain to her that she used curse words quite a bit in the video but after viewing the video her mother loved it and so did 250 000 more people that day as it hit a million views by july 12th this video has many aspects that made it popular some viewers might have clicked on her video expecting a short tutorial but received way more because this was not jenna's first video as she had five or so years of video making experience and was extremely comfortable around a camera that end she was not afraid to be direct and use vulgar language or show the more eccentric sides of her also this video was truly intended for only her friends to view but strangers viewing it felt like her friend interestingly enough before it went viral right when it was posted an employee filling in for dave portnoy enjoyed the video so much he posted to dave's personal blog while this may have helped gain initial views it is likely that most of the traffic was from reddit facebook twitter and of course youtube promoting it it is also highly likely that jenna brought more traffic to barcelo sports from this video than the other way around that's because back in 2010 youtube had a feature to give credit to an original video on another website or to allow the owner to promote their own website being that this video racked up around 6 million views in the first nine days meant that web traffic to barstool sports increased because of it people wanting to see more of jenna started watching her older videos and newer uploads but it didn't stop there even on twitter notable figures such as andy milinakis and joe rogan tweeted her video in just one month after uploading this video she had 30 thousand subscribers on jenna marbles partner noticing jenna's potential in the middle of august of 2010 gave jenner her own blog known as stuart law which is also linked to a facebook and twitter with a new found responsibility of stool online instead of switching her focus to make youtube videos jenna spent most of her energy making several tabloid-esque entries to her new blog in one entry she's criticizing a celebrity's appearance where she wrote quote oh god she looks like footbalicious in these pictures what the [ __ ] are those shorts i think my mom had those back in like 88 and she's not what we like to call a stylish one it's really starting to become painful to look at her when new pictures come out i think every time i look at a picture of her a small piece of my retina is permanently burned off i would rather vomit and then eat my own vomit than hanging out with dirty dirty dives misha barton unquote while she did pour an extreme amount of energy to make stool online succeed it gained very little traction which made jenna dislike her job and felt terrible of the possibility that she was wasting portnoy's money outside of work she did have a few pleasant moments by the end of 2010 like adopting her newest dog an italian greyhound known as kermit while picking him up with max for the first time a notable characteristic was noticed immediately and that is how kermit will constantly cry possibly due to an anxiety disorder what's out there you hear the sound he's making me so sad we're going on a long a long long life journey together as kermit and jenna's relationship was building by february of 2011 portnoy's and jenna's was collapsing as it was clear to the both of them that jenna's passion for blogging had died and that stolen law did not achieve the virality that they were both hoping for leading to pornoid telling jenna that because he was expanding to other avenues stolen law was coming to an end though jenna understood why funding was being cut she still felt bad that stolen law did not seem like an asset that was worth keeping but portnoy kept her on stool allah and her blogging salary of 2 800 a month for two months then be transferred to work promos for barstool sports until she quote unquote figured it out what jenna really wanted was to go back to making videos even though she took a four month break which usually kills a typical channel her uploads in february and march brought her falling back like they never left after all she did create the second most shared video of 2010 her new videos allowed her to pass well over 100 000 subscribers by the end of march this massive growth allowed her to in the same month joined the youtube partner program which allows ads to be placed on her videos in turn making her more money than she was making from her blogging salary after discussing her earnings with portnoy he decided since she was making more money through youtube she didn't need the last payment of 2 800 but she very much did unlike a typical job where pay is bi-weekly youtube's pay is monthly and since she started in april she wouldn't see a check from youtube until may so she would be unable to pay rent until it arrived this situation created a very heated argument between the two where jenna broke down in tears though they finally came to the deal that portnoy would pay jenna they agreed upon two thousand eight hundred dollars as long as she worked events at half her usual pay until she paid off that money this caused a massive divide between the two frustrated jenna posted her last blog to stu lala this blog addressed another thing that was causing a divide between her and portnoy and that was how her video went viral at the time portnoy claimed it was because he posted the video on his blog which helped launch it but jenna using youtube's analytics showed that the majority of people who viewed the video were women while the majority of people who visited barstool are men and actually barstool only made up around one percent of her views her ending his entry by writing quote but with this post i just wanted to clarify that the fact i strongly believe that you every hot girl or gay guy or embarrassed straight guy that follows me on facebook and youtube and twitter are the ones that made my video go viral you are the ones that watched and laughed and shared and shared and shared again you guys did that to the tune of 1 million times on facebook in the first week not bar stool not unless black dude odds again and amber lamps embedded it on their facebook walls and then watched it 400 times a piece i mean i know everybody likes to take credit for stuff but come on this has been hanging over my head since day one like i owed everything including my soul to prezi for making my video go viral and maybe i'm still wrong but those numbers are pretty hard to argue with and if stool unlock gets shut down i think you guys already know where to find me unquote in the same blog jenna does not deny that poornoy helped her with growth beyond her viral video but the point she is making is he cannot take credit for video going viral are inventing jenna marbles a day later portnoy wrote the last post on stole outlaw responding with quote for jenna's blog trashing me yesterday stool allah is dead i actually wrote a long rant in response but i didn't want to make people cry so i just spit my tongue on this issue which i never do i'll just wish the best of luck in her new endeavors peace out homie nobody better than you p.s jenna has had another job since march she already makes more than she made with us she hates blogging and considers running stool online a nuisance it took time away from her making videos which is all she wants to do she didn't want to continue the site no point me paying money to keep a site going that she didn't want to run so she could make me look like an asshat don't cry for me argentina while jenna harbors little to no resentment towards portnoy the same cannot be said about portnoy's feelings towards jenna as he feels the opportunities and knowledge he gave jenna were not appreciated through the years following he will let these feelings be known with jenna mostly ignoring portnoy's comments her focus was set on her youtube channel and a vlogging channel she made in the early months of 2011. on her main channel she uploaded every week on wednesday or thursday with very little deviation while on her vlogging channel she uploaded sometimes multiple times a week or sometimes not for several months something that helped keep the schedule was her discipline that she got from working at barstool and getting her master's degree which is also a reason she does not regret going to college while she did not work in the field she was hoping for it helped guide her to the one she's in now and to examine her content a bit further in mid-2011 jenna's weekly videos consisted of her recording skits or answering questions sometimes with a pet involved and as the year progressed she started to develop a format of embodying characters and an exaggerated form of their stereotypes depending on what activity they were doing sometimes she'd be a celebrity a politician or simply a male character and pitted against a female character doing the same task she might also focus on a specific type of person like white girls at a club while she was experimenting she'd sometimes return back to her traditional format of to videos after all that is the core of her going viral something interesting about these videos is that many of them share the same background and same exact frame recorded through a fairly low resolution even for its time but this may have helped jenna's growth rather than hindered it as it set more attention on her rather than her exterior influences there was sort of a genuineness and relatability that not only came with the characters she was playing but also the way she was recording her unwillingness to censor herself helped with that aspect what's your natural hair color is that a serious question like you [ __ ] kidding me it's [ __ ] brown the success of her videos was tremendous in just five months starting in march she went from getting a few hundred thousand viewers per video to multiple millions per upload in august in large part due to returning viewers that got her to 1 million subscribers by september of 2011. she even appeared on national television via an interview by good morning america on a story about grinding in clubs millions are watching her video blog that creatively instructs how to fend off annoying grinders so what i started doing is this guy comes up to you starts dancing on you you turn around and you give him one of these now the trick is you don't say anything the whole time you stand there frozen don't change your face don't look around don't talk to your friends just stand there i'm sick and tired of guys thinking that just because i showed up at a club or a dance or a bar that i want to have their genitalia touching my backside so i made that video as a foolproof defense mechanism against that because it's disgusting i don't really want to have fake sex with you and jenna marbles says you can really use her technique on anyone you want to go away including annoying roommates she also has a video on how to make people think you're good looking robin all kinds of information you needed this morning all right thank you as always andrea appreciate that there were much more life-changing things happening in september of that year as on the 11th she finally arrived from her 18-day road trip from boston to la where she was planning to live permanently with her boyfriend max that quit his job to come with her the reason she moved was because as for many content creators youtube is a lonely job full of recording editing and writing by herself with little necessary interaction as a way to address this she wanted to move closer to other content creators especially those who she met during vidcon of the same year but not staying too long in one place jenna was also planning to visit hawaii in a month to attend a marine ball while she was still dating max she wanted to attend to give the marine that asked her back in july a platonic but memorable experience the marine that asked her was probably one of jenna's fans from barstool where her demographic consisted mainly of drinking age males but now because of youtube she mainly had an audience of young girls which shocked her partly because of how vulgar she was in her videos but this was a welcome change jenna admittedly felt more comfortable with an audience of girls rather than bar going guys though the parents of these girls were not as pleased and would sometimes leave comments on jenna's videos asking her to be more child friendly but censoring herself would strip away at her personality a personality that brought jenna marbles to 2 million subscribers just 5 days into 2012 with this new year came a bit of change in her content sure there were technical upgrades like a new camera that showed aspects about her and her dogs harder to see in a lower resolution like the t-shaped scar on her nose that she got when as a child did a backflip off a dock and hit a ladder on the way down but really the big changes in content came when viewers began seeing a rare upload of a music video like bounce that dick which was uploaded at the tail end of 2011 and was also age restricted it also later received some backlash because of this one line hey ching chong wong shake your king kong ding dong sorry that was racist i'm bad at rap songs but the more immediate backlash came with her comparatively innocent music video landshark that added fins to random objects and deemed them landsharks turning everything into a land shark what's a land shark it's a shark that's on land [ __ ] if you want to turn yourself into a land shark you're gonna need a hand and if you don't have one then you're [ __ ] but you're gonna take your hands and put it on your back like a fin and now you're a landshark yeah you're a landshark in the middle of an awkward conversation nope not anymore landshark you'll never [ __ ] catch me [ __ ] if you had any friends then you could turn them into land sharks but you don't so cry for a minute then turn your dog into a land shark while the majority of people loved this video few detractors made their hatred for this video and jenna very well known but her supporters easily outweighed her detractors as by december of 2012 she had accumulated 5.4 million subscribers and over time on average received 10 million views per video on the surface it seemed that jenna was doing great and that 2012 was almost nothing but good for her that was until by the beginning of december she uploaded things i don't understand about girls part 2 [ __ ] edition where in her perspective she was trying to say that it's okay to not be promiscuous and monogamy is perfectly fine as a counterpointed girl is being pressured to be promiscuous but to her viewer base she was saying that women that are promiscuous can sometimes be insecure lonely or make extremely dumb decisions that are based on their multiple relationships so everyone just do your best just hang on with me here because i know the word [ __ ] has a negative connotation but what i want you to understand is that i think that being a [ __ ] is a choice so maybe i'm not making fun of you personally i'm just making fun of your [ __ ] choices because i still love you no matter what dear girls when you're out and you see another girl that's like blackout drunk and some dude's trying to take her home and she's alone and doesn't know where she's going you know what all you have to do is just be a fellow vagina partner in life go up to her and be like are you all right that's all you have to say and then all of a sudden you start to see the drunk gears turning and they're just like oh yeah i don't know i just met them i'm not going home with them i'm gonna get a cab help them help the [ __ ] of the world make less bad [ __ ] decisions i can almost promise you for the girls that i've done that for i saved you you could have had herpes for life and i saved you need to look out for the [ __ ] of the universe together because i think they're just a little lonely and sad and i guess i also just wanted to make this video from one girl to maybe another girl because i know there are many girls that watch my videos hooking up with a lot of dudes doesn't make you cool hooking up with one dude that you care about and know and have strong feelings for makes you cool this was one of the few videos that got many video responses denouncing jenna's message with the responders saying that it was okay to explore your sexuality without condemnation to make this month worse unbeknownst to jenna's viewers max and jenna broke up about six days before the release of this video so in her personal life jenna was going on a drunken binge to cope with a breakup and because she had little motivation to make a positive video half of her december videos were extra videos that recycled unused footage and compiled it in place of a regular weekly video she did however announce her breakup on the 20th while drunkenly decorating her christmas tree for the record max no sleeves and i did break up but we're still friends forever we were together for like four years you don't just like break up but not scissor your hands we've been broken for like two weeks it has been really not fun i was really sad were you sad like real sad there's a christmas tree that needs to be decorated this depressed many fans as they had grown to see him as a large part of her channel but no one was hurt more than jenna because this was very much not a typical breakup for one she couldn't vent because anything she'd say publicly would probably be echoed for the foreseeable future by her audience though she did later possibly reference him and the breakup in 2013. that end even though jenna was avoiding speaking of it prior to 2013 fans continuously begged for jenna to get back together with max and constantly reminded her of him ending 2012 emotionally destroyed while 2013 also had many upcoming difficulties something or rather someone that helped jenna through it was julian salamida a college student working a bartending job at a bar that was at the end of the street of max and jenna's residence through max and jenna's frequent visits they were recognized somewhat as regulars but because max and jenna broke up it was just jenna and sometimes her friends going to the bar now with jenna's main motivation being to chat with julian what started as a friendship in 2012 flourished as a relationship in 2013 but jenna learning from her previous experience with having a public relationship and the difficulty of a public breakup sought to keep her relationship with julian a secret not just for her but also to avoid getting her audience attached to someone that might not be around for a long time while julian was not on camera often except for a few skits or vlog his influence in jenna's videos was notable mostly because of his previous experience working at a radio station his pursuit of a degree in journalism and now having more time around her because the bar that he worked at closed down which means he could apply a different medium of media to jenna's videos though this would not be fully realized until a couple of years later meanwhile still in 2013 at the start of the year she was the 5th most subscribed youtube channel and the top most subscribed female youtuber with rising profiles on other websites like twitter facebook and instagram and had already done a round of interviews and public questions and answers always seeming to give the most she could to her fans like this video recorded in march of 2013 doing a q a in trinity college located in dublin milk ireland do it you're getting milked while this clip might seem pointless to show it has a significant importance as it highlights jenna's ability to turn a situation positive done by turning an audience members uncomfortable but sincere question that was verbally unsupported by the rest of the audience into a pleasant and comedic experience though there were other platforms that sought to make a mockery of jenna because of her traction by april of 2013 she was about to reach a billion total views on youtube but with this milestone came more attention and with its attention came interview requests like one from the new york times that wrote a positive well-researched and well-written article on her but probably the biggest interview was done by good morning america who she'd been interviewed by before while being interviewed jenna felt that while some of the questions seemed insulting they may have been poorly communicated but the story that was put out was edited in a way that she had not anticipated the story started with the interviewer saying quote she might just be the most famous person you've never heard of unquote or the massive incompetence that it takes of confusing views with subscribers by claiming she has 1 billion followers or devoting a sizable amount of time by adding a segment where they count the amount of times she says ridiculous even going as far as to say her videos are ridiculous to add even more they noted how some parents are displeased with her vulgarity online then asked if she deserves to have her following oh hi she might just be the most famous person you've never heard of i'm gonna tell you what i've been doing lately meet jenna marbles at 26 jenna has more than one billion that's billion with the b youtube followers and all for making videos about well nothing and now you're a landshark i wish i was counting the amount of times you use the word ridiculous in this interview this video gets ridiculous make a ridiculous ridiculous and ridiculous video ridiculous things ridiculous ridiculous most ridiculous ridiculous is that your takeaway from what you put out there well i mean the whole thing's ridiculous it's ridiculous that a lot of people watch it and what i put out on the internet is ridiculous so yeah but her fans love it they are after all mostly teens some even younger she's the best video person in the world some parents don't think so they complain about all that talk of sex the drinking and the language i bleach the absolute out of my hair really just a weirdo do you know what's on the internet this is like baby stuff do you think you deserve to have as many fans as you do the amount of people that have found it entertaining is ridiculous for good morning america cecilia vega abc news los angeles this two-minute video had very little if anything positive to say about jenna this also highlights the conflict of traditional media and new media where traditional media like good morning america may be a little up and coming social media like youtube in response to the story with social media backing her jenna tweeted out a link to a blog she wrote and said this about her interviewer cecilia vega quote cecilia was incredibly patronizing me in person and applied it to everyone that watches and enjoys my videos i think that shows pretty clearly as they chose to make a piece apparently about the word ridiculous instead of anything with actual substance yet another example of how traditional media doesn't get how the internet machine works nor do they care because they can edit things together with their dings and speech bubbles and make fun of people on their awesome tv machines great work cecilia and all of the good morning america team hats off to you i'm sure all these annoying internet people will go away soon enough so real people like you can go back to work without being bothered by these troglodytes anymore unquote jenna did well to overcome this obstacle in 2013 but there was still a bit more to come two months after the interview now in july the same month that she had the honor of tossing the first pitch at the dodger stadium she was forced to leave her apartment while also getting informed that her brother was getting married with little time to prepare i'm in a hotel because right now my house is getting fumigated for termites not just my house i live in an apartment so the entire building i guess they all scheduled when they wanted their fumigation to happen but i just got a letter that said you gotta get the [ __ ] out i'm in a hotel and no my landlord is not paying for it she lives in japan doesn't speak any english he doesn't give a [ __ ] about me things that you missed because i didn't tell anyone a my apartment caught on fire which was super awesome i was getting on a flight to austin and i had to leave the airport like six in the morning so naturally i just waited until all night to not go to sleep and stay up and pack and i left the house so we had some food in the middle of the night came back my apartment was on fire i opened the door and smoke just pours out of the door and i'm like oh my god and carmen and marbles are like same so i called 9-1-1 the bent fan above my washer and dryer caught on fire and then caught all the clothes on fire and bunch of sheets on fire and melted my washer and dryer and then because they didn't want to go in through the basement door they cut open my garage door with a chainsaw and all the water poured out but the sprinklers contained it to just the garage and this weekend is my brother's wedding so reminder to those of you who will be looking for me at vidcon i'm not going to be there because my brother's getting married so yeah i'm in this [ __ ] sketchy ass hotel for like four days house has got a giant tent on it got all my [ __ ] in it and i just realized like eight million things i forgot that i need for the weekend the wedding whatever [ __ ] to leverage these unexpected events two months later she was moved into a spacious house no doubt affordable because of her increase in views that was so substantial that by the start of 2014 she passed 12 million subscribers meaning that she doubled her amount of subscribers in a year's time while starting months of 2014 looked promising for growth as the year progressed it was obvious that there was a steady decline in monthly subscribers something a bit surprising is that on june 19th 2014 she released her 200th video meaning she managed to get such a large audience with such a relatively small collection of videos excluding the videos on her other channels in her 200th video she stated that she does not have any plans for the future but to post videos and that confusion or rather not being sure where you're heading in life is a good thing because it allows personal growth discomfort and uncertainty was something that remained a theme throughout her time on youtube this same month it was announced that she was hosting the youtube 15 on siriusxm which is a satellite radio service where every week her segment was broadcasted fridays at 6pm eastern counting down the top 15 songs on youtube the week prior so every week of her contract she'd record the show on thursday and then send it to siriusxm where it would be played for whoever was tuned in for that allotted time on friday the internet loves k-pop and so do i and i couldn't think of a better way to close out than with some four minutes they've been trending for months on end this song is one of my favorites ever still to this day slay me queen's a four minute sleigh here is crazy on the youtube 15. i'm gonna learn the whole dance and perform it at my wedding because why not i'm not even getting married but goals right to add more to her workload jenna also started a podcast with her boyfriend the following month on their newest combined channel jenna and julian giving viewers a more natural peek at jenna because of the lengthy uncut segments that you'd expect in a traditional podcast the same applied for julian then now started posting consistently on the channel he created when he met jenna in 2012. giving fans yet another way to peek into their lives there meaning jenna julian and their dogs marble kermit and the newest edition peach an italian greyhound julian got as a new responsibility and as a reward for getting his diploma like any infantile creature peach had to have around-the-clock hair to make sure she developed well this means taking her into the set of the fireball music video where jenna can be seen dancing in the background along with other internet celebrities the idea behind their inclusion was to increase the virality by adding these internet personalities one could say that jenna was excelling at extending herself outside of youtube but her main channel was still on a decline which added more stress to jenna's plate this decline in subscribers that started in 2014 and was extending far into 2015 made her wonder about her channel's future and if her once a week uploads would be able to compete for the next generation of youtubers that uploaded daily but looking at it through a wider perspective even with a decline in new subscribers during this time jenna was still able to retain amazing retention of her existing viewers as they did more often than other channels returned to her weekly not to mention that she was still the most subscribed woman on youtube this was also the year where there was a noticeable transition from her traditional content of skits and heavily themed videos to more natural vlog style videos that focus more on her thoughts and lifestyle with a larger inclusion of julian so while she still uploads the rare video where she played a character or a how-to video focusing on a specific gender her new main format of content was more relaxed as she delved into whatever interested her that week whether it was video games writing a song about glue or eating dog treats jenna always had a way to keep these videos engaging enough so that for those that were not stated with weekly content could seek her out on other branches of social media a popular avenue for her younger demographic which is still the majority of her europeans was snapchat and during september of 2015 she announced that she was from then on attempting to go 100 vegan been like over a month without any meat and just over a week probably 100 vegan and hopefully not going back a journey that started around 2010 when she tried keeping a vegetarian diet for six days a week with the addition of a single cheat day where she could eat meat not for ethical reasons but rather it made her feel better and turn more productive on this diet over the years she flopped from going to an average diet of meat and back to vegetarian that was until one afternoon when julian was out of the house she dedicated that afternoon to watching grotesque videos and meat processing plants and with a few hours she spent watching what these animals underwent with their last glimpse of life it changed her life as she decided from then on to go on a vegan diet which she now also had an ethical reason for though unlike other channels that would flaunt what they believed to be their ethical superiority jenna decided that she wouldn't aggressively advertise her transition in diets to not put those down that had an average meat eating diet this was something that over the years people will learn passively mainly through food tasting or cooking videos it was passive information like this that kept jenna a interesting and tangible internet personality as she wouldn't shy away from sharing her hobbies and now especially sharing more about her likes and dislikes which made her seem more like an idol than a standard youtuber one day you might find out she loves to play elder scrolls online another day you might learn about her belief that occasionally having deja vu means that you're going down the right path in life these interesting while also unimportant tidbits of information she gave out allowed her to maintain a deeper connection with her fans and still kept her channel thriving even if it was not performing as well as it was several years ago overall this was showing that jenna's audience was growing with her in more ways than one and was immortalized not just through her audience memories but also wax when it was revealed that a wax figure of her was now on display in manchesters a wax figure museum in new york with jenna doing the honors of unveiling it a couple months later in 2016 some people were less than excited to see this wax statue erected that of course was dave portnoy jenna's ex-boss that because he was still feeling betrayed from jenna's departure as he did every couple of years went on a recorded rant about jenna when he was reminded of her then posted the video on one of barstow's youtube channels just to receive a sizable amount of backlash from jenna's fans on the topic of traditional media figures interacting jenna in the course of about 3 months janna did a short video collaboration with the massive traditional and new media personality kylie jenner who's been a viewer of jenna for quite some time and later another appearance on khloe kardashian's show cocktails with chloe along with drinking and asking each other whatever questions came to chloe and guest's minds they also played a card game where the player would select a random card that contained a question the question jenna pulled asked what is privilege to you is it a victimless crime and how have you contributed the other players petitioned jenna to pull another card in order to avoid a seemingly uncomfortable question but jenna denied the request and answered that she believes that it is not a victimless crime and that inherent privileges should not be ignored in society jenna's adamant response to her question on a controversial topic appeal to many interviewer base but as a standard on the internet not everyone supports any content creator to their entirety as few fans were displaced with jenna's older content and were not won over or did not understand her transitions into new ideologies as explained in her 300th video posted on may 26 2016 jenna understood her previous controversial content and with the help of her comments section she changed her attitude towards the controversial things she said in the past by adhering to the morals of many in an effort to offend as little people as possible and to show that ideological change is doable was like i didn't like when she made fun of him by calling him gay but it shows how she's grown in the past few years as a person it's very true i've said words in the past that just aren't okay a lot of my older videos like i said some words that are just offensive i think having a comment section and always reading the comments has helped me a lot as a person you know kind of grew up and realized that i don't want to talk like that i don't want to be like that i don't want to use the words that i use and i just stopped but uh for those of you that have been here with me and have grown with me it just it means everything to me and i just really appreciate it more than i could ever possibly tell you thank you so so so so much for just being kind to me and caring and giving me a chance to learn from my mistakes and i will try to continue to grow and learn and do things the best that i can in the future i want to live on the internet i'm not in this to try to do anything else be on the internet for as long as i can and i genuinely mean that and i always have this video helps solidify a sort of transitioning content that jenna started in 2015 by having her personality at the forefront instead of a comedic theme that she'd aggressively follow through a video she was now creating a form of relaxed vlog style videos these videos were amplified by julianne because having him as a cameraman allowed her videos not to be so static meaning that instead of jenna filming herself with a camera on a tripod trapped within an unchanging background julian added movement and a lot more energy to the production making it feel more lively it also may have helped that when julian was filming her gaze would sometimes drift towards julian rather than the camera allowing her to talk more comfortably to her audience and let conversations and reactions flow more naturally though she was doing well to maintain a balanced lifestyle there were still unexpected things that could never be in her control on october 24 2016 jenna announced through twitter that she would not be live streaming that night the reason more shocking than the actual cancellation live stream was because her and julian were in a car accident luckily both julian and jenna sustained only bruising as there were no signs of internal bleeding and no broken bones the worst injury that jenna sustained was a bruise on her leg that limited her mobility and it meant that she could not work out for eight months something viewers greatly appreciated with this video was that in the title she included were okay where others may have taken an opportunity to clickbait or exaggerate their situation jenna chose that title with a very typical thumbnail immediately conveying that she was okay on the topic of thumbnails which is the static image you see that's supposed to represent a video jenna rarely ever created them and allowed youtube to out of film most of her thumbnails a strange tactic for someone her sides considering most content creators may spend up to an hour or sometimes more refining the perfect thumbnail for the maximum amount of clicks this practice of not needing to over exaggerate your videos and release them with passive titles and thumbnails show that fans of hers were there to stay so while the amount of new subscribers were still dropping 2017 started the strongest view-wise since 2013. something else that increased this year was the amount of pets she had starting with the introduction of ad a hamster she adopted in april named after ad which is shortened for advertisement though this pet was not very problematic and was actually very loving for a hamster her second pet or rather pets of the year was the small school a pentabarbs adopted in november of 2017. normally before adopting an animal jenna as she claims does an extreme amount of research to make sure she can provide for her adopted animals by giving them the best care possible but with these fish while she did a sizeable amount of research on her own she was largely reliant on learning from pet store employees in a highly rated pet store i go back it's gotten dark okay we had a lot of learning to do but that guy was so helpful okay he was really really really helpful please if you're on the internet and you're a fish care elitist know that i have not had a fish since i was a child i'm trying my best just like with ad like if i make some mistakes in the comments you can try and help me understand but know that i want the best for my fish i really do i'm not trying to do anything wrong the end result of revisit was a small school of fish and an eight gallon circular tank which as jenna will learn through the comments section of this video was a big problem not only was the tank too small for the fish to grow into it was also a circular tank which are believed to increase stress in fish as it can distort the view of their environment to add to these list of issues was the plastic plants she purchased that didn't add anything to their environment her middle bubbler was too low and in the case of a power outage could cause a fish to swim into and die and most importantly her fish tank was not previously cycled which can lead to an increased amount of ammonia in a tank and kill any fish present while they're adapting to their environment because of all these factors and then some jenna took her video down and uploaded what happened to my fishies video a 47 minute long apology video where she recounts her steps and takes the blame for not doing all the research starting off with the initiative stress of having the fish in that environment i first of all i didn't sleep wednesday through thursday because this was like it was completely just like destroying i was like sobbing all day on thursday i fell asleep last night at like 8 p.m or something and just woke up so um i'm laying in bed this morning and i'm just like how can i make this a teachable moment a fixable moment where i can show people my mistakes so that people don't do it again instead of just taking it down like i'd like to at least be like making this into something where people can have a better idea of of what to do in the future and what not to do in the future i posted the video and i started getting feedback obviously of like first first and foremost no circle tank don't do that and i'm like [ __ ] okay that's something i can fix i can fix that i can get them a bigger tank no problem second like those plastic plants in there like that's not good for them like they need natural plants obviously like their natural environment okay [ __ ] all right let me fix that i can do that i can work on that um the filter obviously the person telling me the power going out and then going in there [ __ ] okay let's get rid of this tank and then people you know telling me he shouldn't have sold you those barbs you know they they need a big 30 gallon tank they're gonna grow to be a couple inches they need more space than that and i'm like [ __ ] okay i'll do anything i'll do anything that it takes and then as i started to look more and more into it i realized like basically my fish are suffering right now i put my fish in a bad place so i'm gonna make it right and i'm gonna put them in the right place so we brought the fish back to the place that i got them and i was like you know i want to talk to the guy that sold me these fish and told me that this was a good environment for them and told me what to do i want to tell him you know hey man i double checked and it turns out everything you told me was kind of [ __ ] so i went in there being like i'm gonna tell this guy like hey man [ __ ] you and i went in there i'd been crying all day and i went in there and i was like i have to give these fish back to you like i don't want my money back i'm i'm not mad i just i have to get back to you and i just start crying like a baby and he was like what's wrong can i give you credit like you know and i was like these fish don't you guys sold me a circle tank and you said that was okay with plastic plants and a filter that they could in theory get into and you guys you said that that was right and these fish you know they like crying they grow to be like a couple inches and they need to be in a school and they need to swim back and forth and they need to like you know have other fish there eventually and he was like yeah there's a lot of bad information online isn't there this video is revered as one of the most excessive apology videos on youtube because of its innocent nature and its length which is actually only 32 minutes long because she included her original fish adoption video to showcase her mistakes it stands as a testament to many viewers that jenna was the kind of person to take responsibility in the face of any error or offense while highlighting her lack of controversies especially when compared to some of the more problematic content creators that had a channel of similar size unfortunately jenna had another pet related emergency only a couple months later in march of 2018 as announced on twitter when adam was adopted jenna and julian assumed that ad was a juvenile hamster but in reality ad was already a full grown adult hamster that was around one year old and being that hamster's lifespan is one to three years ad passed away from old age creating a painful time period for jenna julian and their fans add's passing was something they discussed on their podcast where jenna also discussed her frustration with comments that regularly assume she was pregnant as it was insulting for various reasons like being over observant on a possible awaken intruding on something she finds to be rather personal and because in recent years jenna had taken a very open stance with her youtube channel as a transition to a vlog channel where a large portion of videos included julian her pets or her pets and makeup so if it's something that she wanted to share then she would have but something she could not wait to share was that she finally bought a house something she'd been saving for ever since her massive success on youtube a success that she was seeing a lot more of venturing into march of 2019 where there was a resurgence of interest in her channel which at this point included her dogs a lot more most likely because their dogs started to consume a fair portion of their time when they adopted a rescue dog that they'd named bunny this was around the same time that they'd take their first vacation outside of christmas while summer videos were getting a lot of interest at the start of 2019 the second half made it seem for some viewers like she was losing interest in her videos with everyone having their own speculations as to why she seemed less lively in her videos some at the end of 2019 predicting an end to your content as it could be strenuous coming up and performing new video ideas for 10 years on a platform with increasing censorship not just censorship enforced by youtube but also the growing minority of viewers wanting to remove creators from the internet for their older offensive content creators that jenna has associated with with jenna in 2020 getting minimal but similar treatment by these people it was either for this reason jenna losing interest in making videos may be a combination of the two or something deeper as a surprise to nearly everyone on june 25th 2020 jenna marbles uploaded a 11 minute long video titled a message this video starts off with an extremely serious tone a tone that's unfamiliar with most of her content long time viewers watching this unfold noticed immediately that something was amiss not just because of the serious tone but also because over the last 4 days jenna privated the majority of her older videos privating enough videos that the total accumulated from this purge surpassed over 1.9 billion views lost on her channel besides the video announcing that she was leaving on her podcast channel this was the last video she ever posted and has now been privated leaving many things to unpack first is that she's addressing her previous controversies directly like the one where she was accused of doing blackface though she previously apologized and explained that it was a heavy tan at the creation of this video she hardly tried to excuse at this time along with two other videos where she is accused of being racist and misogynist which is typical to address in any apology video but she also talks about the amount of effort and the endless shifts of her personality taken to better herself in order to make her content more inclusive for everyone something that very little content creators would even fathom of doing alright so i get it um i feel like we're at a time where we are purging ourselves of anything and everything toxic and i'm being requested that i address things that i've done in my past i also get a lot of tweets from people that are saying like we love you you unproblematic queen which always makes me uncomfortable because i'm a person those of you that are familiar with how long i've been on the internet know that that's not true and first and foremost i want everyone to know that i've always been a two-way street and that any time that you criticize me and tell me that you would like me to do better or to do something differently that i always try to do that but i'm literally not trying to put out negative things into the world i think there was a time when having all of my old content exists on the internet showed how much i have grown up as a person which i'm very proud of and uh i think now it's hard for that content to exist at all because i think people watch it and don't bother to look at when it was posted or you know care about what path i took to get to where i am first two things that i would like to address is the fact that there are people that were offended that i did blackface as nicki minaj in 2011 and i'll show you the clip it's incredibly cringy and embarrassing this is private it has been private for quite some time but it looks like this and i do just want to tell you that it was not my intention to do blackface this is the end of the video where i took my wig off i i don't know how else to say this but it doesn't matter because all that matters is that people were offended and it hurt them and for that i am so unbelievably sorry okay this is also from 2011 a bad year for me in judgment apparently um this video is called bounce that dick this has also been made private uh i don't want to offend anyone i'm not interested in it i'm not interested in making anyone feel bad in case you haven't noticed um here's the clip i will play it for you here hold on let me remind you sorry that was racist so as you can see i said hey ching chong wong shake your king kong gang dong sorry that was racist i'm bad at rap songs it's awful it doesn't need to exist it's inexcusable it's not okay next thing i'd like to apologize for is a video that i posted in 2012 and made private shortly thereafter this was one of the hardest years of my life and i made a video they came across unbelievably slut-shaming and i'm sorry i i just [ __ ] up uh here's another thing i'm sorry for i'm also sorry for um i used to make a lot of content about like what girls do and what guys do and i know at the time there are a lot of people that enjoyed those videos but i have privated all of them because i don't think that making jokes about your gender is funny another thing i would like to address is when people tweet at me i can't believe you be friends with this person or follow this person that's racist or you know done these terrible things and the only thing i would like to say is that i'm i'm just a person trying to navigate the world um the same way that you are so i don't always know what's right what's wrong what the truth is and i'm just trying my best and someone clearly with their own past that they're not proud of um i do just try to see people for who they are right now today and that they're not defined by their past i want to say thank you um for your support for those of you that um care about me and have been watching me for a long time i appreciate it i want to hold myself accountable and and it's painful to do it and it's not fun and it hurts and i'm ashamed of things i've done and said in my past but um it's important and yeah i hope this uh felt like something that you needed to hear from me and um i just i'm not sure that i want to continue doing stuff on this channel and i don't want to put anything out in the world it's going to hurt anybody so i need to be done with this channel for now or forever i don't know so alright good talk see you guys when considering this and julian's tweet longer the following day talking about jenna being mentally exhausted which is where her possible lack of passion for some previous videos might have come into play and in that instant jenna severed herself from the internet it was not because of any particular reason but several problems coming together at once while her dissenters create an issue of annoyance a large portion of her extreme supporters create another issue by lifting her image to unachievable bounds to the point where jenna was uncomfortable with it while i may be coming from a good place posting a person on an unreachable growing throne can create guilt by not being able to achieve that standard her departure came from a lack of understanding from both sides one side willfully or more accurately lazily and ignorantly ignored her strides to improve herself throughout the years ignorant to the idea that change is possible and maliciously trying to take her down though she has worked so hard to please them the other extreme pains her in an unrealistic light not accepting her minor mistakes and painting her as the last normal person while also making it harder to normalize making mistakes and trying to change jenna's attempt to showcase how a person can improve by keeping the worst sides of themselves online when it was too late instead showed something else it shows how difficult it truly is to bend backwards to please people's beliefs when the descenders won't even hold themselves to the same standards jenna marbles has proved to the internet that it is better to avoid complete genuineness and hide unfavorable aspects of your personality or suffer the mental exhaustion that she did a mental exhaustion brought on by being boxed in but in the end she left on her terms her slate clean with millions of fans saddened by her departure while she may come back to the platform in due time from here we can only hope that she's living a somewhat regular life living life without the need to regulate herself based on the internet's impossible standards so while jenna marbles is not growing jenna mori still is you

Channel: Joon The King

Views: 48,837

Rating: 4.9188032 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: qfUStxTxrkg

Length: 72min 16sec (4336 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BravaCentauri3535]

She didn’t fall tho