When Justine Ezarik published her first book, “I, Justine,” she had to specify it was an “analog memoir.”
After all, Ms. Ezarik, 31, has been documenting her life in online videos and social media for just about 10 years, racking up about 3.5 million YouTube subscribers over three channels under the name iJustine and a few million followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. At one point, Ms. Ezarik was one of the most visible “lifecasters,” broadcasting every detail of her day, 24/7, to the Internet; now, she makes a living video blogging full time.
Print is just a new medium for her.
Ms. Ezarik, who grew up in Scenery Hill in Washington County, is returning to the Pittsburgh area today for a book signing at 6:30 p.m. at Books-a-Million in the Beaver Valley Mall in Center as part of a small press tour across the country to support the book. It was released in stores and online on Tuesday.
“It’s really nice to stop home mid-tour so I can do some laundry,” Ms. Ezarik joked.
But the event also serves as somewhat of a homecoming for the video blogger, who moved to Los Angeles in 2007. Her memoir features Pittsburgh prominently as the place where she found her passion in video games, technology and video-making. After graduating from Bentworth High School in Bentleyville, Ms. Ezarik enrolled in the nearby Pittsburgh Technical Institute, obtaining a two-year degree in video production and multimedia technologies, but spent most of her free time online.
“I put so much of my life online from a very early age,” Ms. Ezarik said. “Piecing the book altogether was just making a timeline of what happened, and filling in the blanks of what I tweeted but never fully told the story about.”
Posting videos to YouTube and Myspace, she said, was not so much her attempt to get famous as it was a way to hone her editing skills and, more importantly, stave off boredom. With her friend Dez Cramer, a fellow PTI student, Ms. Ezarik started recording videos of them goofing off: eating oatmeal, losing a phone stylus, sunbathing in the snow. An avid tech user and gamer, Ms. Ezarik was one of the first in line at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., for the release of the iPhone — livestreaming the occasion from a Logitech webcam fastened to her hat and connected to a laptop in her purse. (Now, when she livestreams, she just uses the app Periscope.) When she received her first iPhone bill a month later from AT&T, which came to a stunning 300 pages, she uploaded the moment to YouTube. Within a few days, the video hit 3 million views, made headlines on USA Today and The New York Times, and lead to an appearance on “Good Morning America.”
As an Apple enthusiast and lifelong Steve Jobs admirer (the cover of “I, Justine” riffs on that famous picture of cross-legged young Mr. Jobs with the first Macintosh computer), Ms. Ezarik has always been what she calls an early adopter. Her memoir reflects a deep connection to the online world.
“I was extremely early on Twitter and Instagram, so [the book is] not only following my life but following social media through how I’ve used it,” she said. “Back in 2006, we had to send a text message to send a tweet.”
Her book, fittingly enough, is dedicated to “the Internet.” But more than that, Ms. Ezarik has used her presence online to make relationships with her fans and total strangers, leading to encounters of both the fun (taking a picture and talking to a young fan who found her walking around Sydney) and not-so-fun varieties. As she detailed in “I, Justine,” her very public persona has ended up in a lack of privacy and security, compounded by considerable sexism in her chosen worlds of tech and gaming. And, as a YouTube star making money from her work, Ms. Ezarik wrote, she often finds herself in the middle of a conversation about “authenticity” and “selling out” that she’d rather not be a part of.
“For all the overwhelming positivity and support of my viewers, my friends, and my family give, those few hateful comments can overwhelm that positivity,” she said. “So I’ve learned to sometimes step back and read that positive support you’re receiving.”
Ms. Ezarik is hoping to adapt her memoir into a movie or a Web series, and is currently working on a movie that will come out around Halloween. More immediately, after visiting Pittsburgh for the weekend, Ms. Ezarik is headed to Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle, and then home to Los Angeles in time to attend the annual E3 convention (Electronic Entertainment Expo).
Chances are, she’ll have her video camera handy.
Gabe Rosenberg: grosenberg@post-gazette.com, or on Twitter @gabrieljr.
First Published: June 5, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
