Women often diet during their entire lives. There is a constant pressure to maintain a beautiful appearance and the unrealistic bodies of models. However, dieting is not easy. Most women suppress the desire to eat and use strong willpower to endure tough exercise routines. Two women, however, diet happily and are maintaining a diet YouTube channel. The SMT reporter had a chance to meet these two exceptional ladies and talk about their YouTube diet channel.
Your YouTube channel now has almost 10 million subscribers. What motivated you to start a YouTube channel?
Before starting our YouTube channel, we attended a special lecture entitled ‘New Media Theory’. At the time, we had just entered our second semester of second year, so we were starting to feel the stress and anxiety of future career prospects. During the lecture, we were introduced to ‘Memedia’ and ‘MCN (Multi Channel Network)’. The lecture was very informative, and the professor strongly emphasized the field’s bright outlook. It caught our eyes, and we decided to create Memedia content. Having watched several YouTube videos, we determined that the best way to start would be through the YouTube platform.
Today there are all kinds of YouTubers. What made you decide to go with the idea of ‘diet’?
We brainstormed our YouTube channel interests and found common areas: the strongest of which was diet-based. At the time, there were plenty of beauty and food channels, but few diet YouTubers. Those YouTube channels mostly focused on fragmentary images and did not spotlight the entire diet process. We decided to fill the need for a good diet channel, so we chose ‘diet’ to achieve not only a vivid picture of losing weight, but also issue making by challenging rare domain.
Why did you name the channel ‘Thin Stiller’?
Our theme was diet and we wanted to give our channel a name that captured the idea of dieting but also reflected our own identity. We’d completed a course on copyright, so we knew we had to seek a name which is meaningful. It was a very demanding process that required much discussion on a number of possible names. In the end, we chose ‘Thin Stiller’ because the term was known among a lot of people. ‘Thin Stiller’ has two main meanings. One is, ‘I want a skinny body’, and the other reflects our ambition to made viewers’ aware of our diet “in-process” on the YouTube channel.
Have you had any difficulties creating YouTube videos and how were you able to overcome them?
We’ve faced plenty of difficulties, but the biggest was editing. Though we had hoped to create excellent content and tried to ensure perfect planning, use of quality filming equipment, and the fi nest shooting location, video quality did not meet our expectations due to our poor editing skills. We started at ground zero, and it would take up to a week just to edit one video clip. We are much better at it now, but it still takes a day or so because we want to extract images. So we’re doing our best in our own ways. We learnt our editing skills from other YouTubers and took a 1-month editing training course at MCN, with whom we are working together with.
What attracted you to becoming a YouTuber?
Since we are still at university, our main job is being a student. Working on our YouTube channel is secondary. Still, the most powerful attraction of becoming a YouTuber is the freedom that career provides you. Working at a company, you will always need to get permission from a supervisor, but as a YouTuber, you are free to upload your content based on your own satisfaction level. You do not need permission to do something. In other words, I’m a boss. Another attractive point is that you get to communicate with huge numbers of people. It doesn’t matter that those are only online communications; they are still real relationships and real discussions. Moreover, during the YouTube festival, YouTubers have the chance to meet various Facebook stars and celebrities. That’s really a great privilege. Lastly, it is an honest job. Your profits reflect your work. When the work is sincere and done well, subscribers feel the pain of the YouTuber and are inclined to reward the work, which then makes the YouTuber even work harder.
Your channel looks at both well-known diet methods and more modern methods by offering produce reviews and detox juice recipes. What are your plans for the channel in the future?
Today, we are thinking about the day by day struggles of dieting. We are considering something like a diet application, where we suggest daily exercises to our subscribers. Subscribers would never get bored because they’d be doing different exercises each day and losing weight easily! Actually, one of the advantages is that we are not professionals. Unlike the people on famous diet video channels that never look exhausted doing the routines, we show our exhaustion. Because we are showing reality, subscribers can feel as though they are exercising together with us. Also, our videos bring smiles to our subscribers like our movements becoming slower and slower. Also, as videos on eating are popular these days, we want to do content related to eating and dieting. We are thinking about making something like ‘Cheating Day’, a program that allows users to binge once a week.
What is Thin Stiller’s last goal?
We hope to reach 100 million subscribers. While this may not be for many years, we believe it could happen if we steadily increase our number of subscribers. To be honest, we are in somewhat of a transition period right now with our YouTube channel. We soon need to make a decision on whether to steadily pursue work as a YouTuber or haul effort on that and work towards preparing for a job at a company. Even if we opt for the second choice, being a YouTuber is a hobby that we will continue and we will reach our goal of 100 million. Most young YouTubers have a job along with maintaining a YouTube channel, so we know this is a real possibility. By the time, SMU students read this article we hope that we will have reached the 10 million mark.
Lastly, would you like to leave a few final words for Sookmyungians who plan to start up their own business?
A lot of people come to university without clear direction and find themselves just wandering about. Well, this goes for us too. Some students soon realize they don’t have any forte in their chosen field, but if they do their best at school, we are confident, something will present itself. You may find your turning point in one of your elective courses or by participating in a school career discovery program, so don’t worry and over stress on the subject, but instead do your best and seek possibilities at your own pace. Also, we’d like to suggest getting involved in various activities as they may also provide you with career ideas. Join off-campus activities and school clubs and build up a qualification that reflects who you are. Just like others at SMU, we worry about our future and our decision to start a YouTube channel, but that became our own qualification. No one else will have had this same experience. Maybe take into consideration your blog or diary ideas and use them to increase your competitiveness. Don’t be afraid to challenge something new. Last, if you ever spot us on campus, do not hesitate to say “Hello”. We are always happy when we are greeted by fellow Sookmyungians.
Cho Hyeri / Kang Soomi
- Department of Public Relations and Advertising' 13
- Diet Youtuber, Operation of Youtube Channel 'Thin Stiller'
