I hid my identity from my YouTube followers. Revealing my face sparked some backlash, but I'm glad I did it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with pop culture news influencer Kristi Cook. Cook's YouTube channel, Spill Sesh, has 808,000 subscribers. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I built a following on YouTube covering the lives of influencers, but I hid my own identity for years.

In 2018, I stumbled upon this community on YouTube that talked about influencer news and digital culture. I felt like mainstream news outlets weren't covering this. But I was invested in these influencers' lives.

I consumed YouTube content like crazy. I made videos and had a few different YouTube channels over the years. I also worked for TMZ and freelanced on the side.

I made a video about YouTuber Manny Mua, a makeup artist, who sent a copyright strike to the YouTube channel Tea Spill for using footage from his channel to critique him. I uploaded the video under a new channel I made, which I called Spill Sesh.

Launching the YouTube channel as an anonymous creator wasn't intentional.

I saw videos from other influencer news channels, like Tea Spill, that were just text on a screen. I thought to myself, I could do that. That's really where it began.

I didn't talk or show my face in my videos. Eventually, I added voice-overs.

I figured that if I stayed anonymous, people I knew couldn't find out what I was doing and make fun of it. I felt like I could be more myself that way. I felt like I could be funnier.

Why I decided to show my face

I honestly never thought I would be front-facing.

But being anonymous had limitations. All my videos looked the same, and there wasn't much I could do creatively with only text and audio. I also wanted to do more on-scene reporting.

I needed to be on camera to expand what I was doing and make Spill Sesh into a news outlet.

Manny Mua and I had messaged here and there on social media, and my first Spill Sesh video was about him. I thought it would be a full circle moment if I revealed my face while he did my glam.

I connected with a publicist who helped me connect with my management firm. I filmed that video with Manny in 2023 and then posted it.

I was absolutely freaking out the day I posted my face reveal.

The response at first was amazing. Everyone loved it, and there was so much positivity.

Then, the next day, people were upset that I had done the video with Manny.

It was right after the Colleen Ballinger controversy, and Manny had published a podcast episode where he and his cohost were accused of protecting her. He was also friends at the time with YouTuber James Charles, who admitted to sending sexually explicit messages to underage boys. People were upset with Manny, so viewers were upset with me.

In the moment, I thought the backlash to my face reveal was ridiculous. I had made so many videos calling people out, especially Ballinger.

Mostly, I felt sad that people thought I was acting fake or was a fraud.

Luckily, the backlash passed as time went on.

The internet was so messy back then. YouTubers and influencers were ruthless. Everyone was trying to expose one another, and it just felt like a hot fire pit. Now, everyone is a little more reserved.

But revealing my face threw me into that drama.

Before, nobody knew who I was, so if I was in the same room with someone I had just made a video about, it wouldn't be weird. We were going to parties at the Team 10 house, to Tana Mongeau's birthday parties — everyone in the industry was going everywhere. The downside to revealing my identity was that it sometimes made it awkward with other creators.

Yet, overall, revealing my identity has opened a lot of doors. It's made everything much more exciting and refreshed.

How my life has changed since revealing my identity online

Now, it's great to tell people at events what I actually do. I used to just tell people I worked in social media. I no longer have anxiety about describing my job. I can actually network and meet people at events.

After revealing my identity, I started to get invited to more exclusive influencer events. For instance, last week, TikTok invited me to Universal Studios Hollywood. We spent a day there listening to people talk about film and TV on TikTok. I got to meet with other creators, go on a studio tour, and to the park. I'd never been to Universal, so this was a sick experience.

I've tried to keep my content relatively the same. The videos look the same, I'm just in them for the first couple of seconds.

Now that I show my face, I take a more neutral stance on the topics I cover. I started to feel like it's not my place to share an opinion on what's going on. Instead, I share both sides, what happened, and what people are saying.

I can also be more creative. It's easier for me to create content instead of trying to find different assets to make a video exciting. Overall, showing my face has definitely boosted my content because I've been able to make way more of it.