Justine Ezarik was a YouTube star before it was cool. She beat Jenna Marbles and Meg DeAngelis by years, starting out her career as a video-gaming, tech-happy Bieber-interviewing YouTuber 10 years ago. She's garnered the attention of over 3 million followers across multiple platforms and has been proving to all of them that anyone can be tech-savvy, no matter their gender.
For her latest initiative, she partnered with Made With Code — a Google initiative for middle and high school girls to inspire them to get interested in and learn coding — to show her fans that coding can be fun. We sat down with her to talk about the initiative and much more.
Teen Vogue: Tell us a little bit about your partnership with Google’s Made With Code.
Justine Ezarik: We did a little event here in Los Angeles. We coded some emojis, and it’s kind of showing how you’d use code in real life. So, we coded the emojis and then we printed them, kind of showing how it can be fun to code. So, seeing it can be used for real life.
TV: What does being a “coder" mean to you? I think a lot of people see that term, and are intimidated by it or don’t know what it means.
JE: I think it’s being able to create something from nothing essentially. And I think a lot of people do think it’s intimidating, but for me growing up I was always wondering how things worked. So being able to construct things and figure out how they were created was really fun.
TV: How did you first get into coding?
JE: I was probably 11 or 12 and it was when my family first got the internet. I went to my first website, Nintendo.com, and I’ll never forget thinking, “How did this website show up on my screen?” At the time you were able to see the code so I took the code that created that website and sort of deconstructed it to teach myself… So making websites was my first introduction to code.
TV: What was one of the first websites you made?
JE: I built a lot of them. Silly little things. The Daily Random Photo website. I would code page and the archives by hand… It was just a way to share my passion of taking photos and finding funny things online.
TV: Very cool. Like a pre-iPhone version of Instagram. How did that experience inform how you apply coding to your life now?
JE: For me, growing up coding and computers and video games wasn’t something that was cool, but it was something that I was always passionate about. I never let the fact that that wasn’t something that was cool take me away from it. Now that’s pretty much my entire career: video games and doing things that weren’t cool back in the day. So if there’s something that you’re passionate about, don’t let other people take that passion away from you. If they tell you it’s something you can’t do, most likely you can do it, so don’t give up.
TV: What are some big misconceptions that may be keeping girls from coding?
JE Changing the perception that it isn’t just a numbers, it’s something that can be applied in daily life is important. It’s basically everywhere, but people don’t realize it.
TV: In the last few years there have been several initiatives working to get women involved with coding, but this push to get girls involved is fairly new. As someone who’s been building their own websites since they were 12, why do you think we’re just starting to encourage girls to get involved in the coding world now?
JE: I think just seeing the lack of women in the industry. I mean, I know there are a bunch of super powerful, amazingly talented women in the field, but I think growing up for me [it was] just thinking it was going to be too difficult. I think this push and getting us started early and showing girls that it’s something they can do as well, I think it’s very important.
TV: You’ve been a YouTube star for over 10 years now. What advice do you have for our readers about sharing major parts of your life online?
JE: You do have to be careful because it is a public forum. Anybody can see it… I think that one thing a lot of people do now is overshare. Even though do I share a lot of stuff, it’s a very small portion of my life. And I think you just have to be careful because anything that you post, it essentially is there forever. If it’s not something you don’t want everyone to see, don’t post it.
TV: One in 3 people have been cyberbullied online, and you’ve spoken out about dealing with mean comments online before. What is your advice for young girls who’ve been cyberbullied?
JE: It’s so difficult because it’s something people deal with whether they’re young or old… Unfortunately, you just have to ignore it and not let it get to you because, most of the time, these people are saying things out of a place of hurt or hate or anger and they’re not really meaning it directed at you. They’re just sort of acting out how they’re feeling and trying to take it out on someone else. The best advice is to ignore it.
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TV: What advice and encouragement can you offer to readers who are interested in coding or pursuing a career in STEM?
JE: It’s just something that you have to try. Don’t be discouraged because it is such a good thing to know. Even if you’re going into a field that has nothing to do with computer science, just having that way of analytical thinking and being able to process information and break it down is important no matter what you’re doing. Having that knowledge of code is something that you can apply to your daily life.
This interview has been condensed for length.
Related: See What It's Really Like to Be a Girl Who Codes
