Describe your book.As a YouTuber, my occupation is to share my life with anyone who wants to listen. It's a dream job that I've had for almost eight years, and my audience has grown to 7,500,000 people — with half a billion total video views. I can barely wrap my mind around it and feel so incredibly lucky. And while I've made a career out of oversharing, there are still some things that have felt too personal to put out there — until now. In my new book, Binge, I share essays about everything I've never told my viewers — touching on the best and worst days of my life, some hilarious, some embarrassing, but all extremely personal.
What scares you the most as a writer?
Being misinterpreted. I've never worked so hard on something in my entire career, and I just want people to understand me and my intentions.
Dogs, cats, budgies, or turtles?
What in the WORLD is a budgie?! I'm going to have to say no budgies. Turtles are good; I did an entire podcast episode dedicated to them once, but they seem like they'd be annoyed with me. Cats absolutely not unless it's a lion. Dogs are everything to me. In general, I'd rather talk to your dog than you.
Describe the best meal of your life.
I'm a fast foodie — like, a foodie, but with food courts. I'd love to go with all my friends to a food court that's also a buffet — with unlimited orange chicken from Panda Express, curly fries from Arby's, Hawaiian pizza from Sbarro, and Coke Zero. I'm a simple man with simple pleasures.
Who do you follow on Twitter and why?
I like to keep my timeline pretty clean, so I don't follow many people. I limit it to my best friends, other YouTubers, digital industry leaders, pop stars, and my current favorite: @DaysUntilBinge. It's a daily countdown by one of my viewers — I even have notifications turned on for it so that every day when it says how many days are left until my book comes out, I get an alert on my phone. My stomach drops every single time. IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING!
What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?
When people put a space between the last word of a sentence and the punctuation ending that sentence. I don't understand why they do it.
Do you have a favorite font? Does it change depending on the project?
I always use Coolvetica when I'm editing stuff. Growing up, I used to always use Papyrus; please don't judge.
What was your favorite book as a child?
In elementary school, I loved the Bailey School Kids series. It was about a group of classmates who would speculate whether adults in their lives were supernatural beings. I read literally every single book in the series. I was obsessed. In middle school, I was really into the Redwall series, about anthropomorphic rodents in medieval times. I had a bowl cut, too, if you need the full imagery.
Five Great Books of Hilarious Stories:
My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler
Naked by David Sedaris
You Deserve a Drink by Mamrie Hart
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs