Tyler Oakley

Tyler Oakley
Mathew Tyler Oakley, known as Tyler Oakley, is an American YouTube and podcast personality, humorist, author and activist. Much of Oakley's activism has been dedicated to LGBT youth, LGBT rights, as well as social issues including healthcare, education, and the prevention of suicide among LGBT youth. Oakley regularly posts material on various topics, including queer politics, pop culture and humor...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionYouTube Star
Date of Birth22 March 1989
CityJackson, MI
CountryUnited States of America
Over the last eight years of being on YouTube, I've seen so much progress. I think the reason for that is that a lot of young people are having open dialogue and honest conversations about social justice and human rights.
I think traditional is trying to go more digital and digital is trying to go more traditional. We're meeting in the middle.
I think everyone just goes to London and says like, oh I went international!
Everybody on YouTube starts with zero subscribers. You think of everyone you look up to or have watched for years or whatever, they may seem like this is their life now, but it wasn't always that.
Julie Chen. She's my ultimate celebrity idol. I think she's one of the most amazing interviewers and hosts ever - and would kill to pick her brain. I am a fangirl of talent, so to see someone slaying the competition doing what I'd love to do, that's inspiring to me.
I come up with new ambitions all the time - and the coolest thing is, I think of something I want to do, and I don't really imagine it as "Oh, I've never done that." I think of it as, "Oh, I haven't done that yet." I literally believe I'm going to do everything I set out to do, which is a pretty amazing feeling.
I'm a firm believer in making it happen - no matter what 'it' is. Sometimes I feel a bit too driven - where it's all I think about. But I guess that's gotten me to where I am, so I can't complain.
There are tons of gay issues that are important, from gay marriage to adoption rights to work-place discrimination and more... but I think the biggest gay issue is the level of involvement of the gay community to demand change. So many gays think that other gays will take care of it. To fix this, people need to realize that they CAN make a change, but no one person can do it alone.
I don't think kids should think their lives have to be perfect or have a filter or the best angle or anything like that. I think it's important to see that everybody is human and everyone has their ups and downs.
Care less about what other people think because at the end of the day, everyone is so worried about themselves & how they are coming across that nobody is actually judging as much as y'all think they are.
I spend all day replying to tweets and reblogging posts and sharing fan art. I think it's the most important thing I can possibly do, to stay involved in the community as a part of the community, not ahead of the community. I'm very much the same level of them in it.
There's something about YouTube, where you're not being anybody but yourself. You have the opportunity to start as yourself from the very beginning. From the very first video, you choose what you say, and you choose what's right and wrong for your presentation of yourself.
Prior to 2015, I had kind of approached every year like, 'Let's hope for the best.' I always made these year-end videos with 100 things I did, and it would kind of build itself up throughout the year. When this year started, it was like I knew the 100 things before I even got to do them.
There's no Hollywood tradition of maybe not telling people that you're gay to protect your future ambitions. The YouTube world is a little unprecedented. I think what people are seeing is that the more true to yourself you are, the more an audience will connect with you.