• Curating your Instagram feed can be a game-changer in helping you find the motivation to get fitter.
• Following people who inspire you to live a healthier lifestyle and teach you new skills (rather than make you feel bad about your body or promote questionable fad diets) can have a huge effect.
• Whether you want to improve your mobility, take up ballet, or get into weight-lifting for the first time, there are influencers out there who will help you reach your goals.
• Here are the 50 best to follow this year.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Living an active, healthy lifestyle has never been cooler, and a lot of that is down to the rise of the fitness influencer.

Social media — and Instagram in particular — has made it easier than ever to find workout ideas and training tips, but for every influencer sharing genuinely good advice, there are tons more who don't know what they're talking about and simply grew their following because they have a banging body.

There's a real difference between someone with a peachy booty, abs of steel, and popping biceps who simply posts selfies from the gym, and someone who actually shares science-backed evidence, genuinely good workouts, and motivational advice.

Here are the 50 best fitness influencers to follow in 2020.

SEE ALSO: The 15 most inspiring fitness transformations of 2019

SEE ALSO: Labelling foods with the amount of exercise needed to burn off the calories sends a terrible message about both eating and exercising

Luke Worthington

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Instagram:@lukewtraining

Followers: 56.7K

Former international athlete Worthington is a Nike master trainer, sports scientist, and personal trainer to A-list celebrities, models, and elite athletes. He's one of the most knowledgeable and respected people in the industry, and anything he doesn't know about how the human body moves probably isn't worth knowing.

Tally Rye

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Instagram:@tallyrye

Followers: 88.5K

Personal and group trainer Rye is a staunch advocate for the myriad benefits unrelated to the aesthetic change that exercise brings, and highlighted in a recent Instagram post that she is "an anti-diet weight inclusive PT, who focuses on the mental and physical benefits of exercise." She's a firm believer in moving your body because you love it, rather than as a form of punishment.

Laura Hoggins

Instagram:@laurabiceps

Followers: 24.5K

London-based trainer Hoggins is a champion of strength-training, particularly for women. Her enthusiastic and fun approach to working out will have even the most committed cardio bunnies reaching for a heavy barbell.

Jordan Syatt

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Instagram:@syattfitness

Followers: 573K

Jordan Syatt is not only one of the most knowledgeable trainers in the fitness industry, but he's also one of the kindest and most encouraging. Syatt takes the time to reply to all his followers' questions, regularly reminds people that if you're still trying you can't mess up, and dispels myths to help people achieve their goals without overcomplicating matters. 

Sohee Lee

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Instagram:@soheefit

Followers: 261K

Lee shares a mixture of incredibly helpful fitness content on her Instagram feed, including science-backed diet tips, training technique demonstrations, and advice to help her followers develop a healthier relationship with food, the gym, and their bodies. 

Rich Tidmarsh

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Instagram:@richtidmarsh

Followers: 17.7K

With celebrities and elite athletes amongst his clients, Tidmarsh is an expert in training techniques but places as much emphasis on mobility and recovery as strength. 

Massy Arias

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Instagram: @massy.arias

Followers: 2.6M

Arias is one of the biggest names in fitness and has built her huge following from inspiring people to persevere, work hard, and not give up when they face obstacles. She's also a huge advocate for not focusing on aesthetics.

Amy Lane

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Instagram:@wellness_ed

Followers: 53.8K

As Digital Editor of Women's Health UK, Amy Lane champions all aspects of fitness and all-round health. She encourages her followers to make fitness a part of their lives, not their whole lives.

Bret Contreras

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Instagram:@bretcontreras1

Followers: 870K

Bret Contreras is the glute guy. With a PhD in sports science, he's a hive of knowledge when it comes to fitness, with a focus on one area in particular: the glutes. If you're after a booty to rival Kim K's, this is the guy to follow. 

Samantha Gwazdauskas

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Instagram:@thesamplan

Followers: 78.1K

Personal trainer Sam Gwazdauskas has documented her changing weight and journey to where she is today: healthy, strong, and fit, with a balanced relationship with both food and her body. She helps her followers get to the same place and also shares workouts.

Samantha Briggs

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Instagram:@bicepslikebriggs

Followers: 635K

Professional Crossfit athlete Samantha Briggs is one of the strongest and fittest people on the planet. Her Instagram and approach is all about pushing yourself to achieve more and be the best version of yourself.

Susan Niebergall

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Instagram:@susanniebergallfitness

Followers: 95.2K

Unlike the majority of fitness influencers, Niebergall is actually over the age of 30. But she proves there's no age limit to being fit, healthy, and strong. The online trainer share no-nonsense advice and workout tips to help people of all ages develop healthier lifestyles. 

James Stirling

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Instagram:@london_fitness_guy

Followers: 171K

Whether you're at home without any equipment, have a couple of dumbbells to work with, or access to a full gym, James Stirling has workout inspiration for you. 

Nesrine Dally

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Instagram: @nez__healthhub

Followers: 21.1K

Dally is a Nike master trainer, weight-lifter, and Muay Thai expert. She posts workout ideas and updates on her own fitness journey, fitting workouts into her busy lifestyle. 

Meghan Callaway

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Instagram:@meghancallaway

Followers: 30.7K

Callaway is all about the pull-ups. If you want to learn to do them, she's the person to follow. However, the strength coach also shares videos showcasing the correct technique for various other movements.

Tom Kemp

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Instagram:@tomkempfitness

Followers: 19.8K

Kemp is the founder of Farm Fitness, an outdoor gym in the English countryside which teaches people how to get strong and fit using hay bales, barrels, ropes, and more. He's a huge proponent of exercising in the fresh air, and posts plenty of images and videos to inspire you to take your workout outside.

Kelsey Wells

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Instagram:@kelseywells

Followers: 2.6m

Kelsey Wells believes the main mistake women make with regard to exercising is focusing on aesthetics, rather than health. She uses her platform to encourage women to empower themselves through fitness.

Max Lowery

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Instagram:@max.lowery

Followers: 50.2K

Max Lowery originally made a name for himself as the founder of the 2-Meal Day, which is exactly what it sounds like. Now, however, he also runs retreats in the Pyrenees as well as helping people reach their fitness and fat-loss goals. 

Cat Meffan

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Instagram:@catmeffan

Followers: 147K

Yoga instructor and retreat host Meffan posts beautiful yoga images and videos encouraging her followers to find their flow and move their bodies in whatever way feels good.

Niko Algieri

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Instagram:@nikoalgieri

Followers: 18.1K

Algieri is a trainer who isn't afraid to talk about having aesthetic goals — or to point out when a particularly shredded photo of him has benefited from excellent lighting and professional editing. He posts workout ideas particularly focusing on the underused piece of equipment that is the TRX.

Emily Ricketts

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Instagram:@emrickettz

Followers: 156K

Personal trainer and vlogger Ricketts shares workouts, motivation, and helpful tips on developing a positive mindset around working out.

Kelsey Heenan

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Instagram:@thedailykelsey

Followers: 306K

Having worked with Olympic athletes and celebrities, Heenan has her own workouts and fitness brands. She posts motivational images and captions, as well as videos demonstrating correct training form.

Eric Helms

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Instagram:@helms3dmj

Followers: 112K

Weight-lifter Helms is an author with a PhD in strength and conditioning, and he's considered an authority in natural body-building.

Jenny Francis

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Instagram:@jennyfrancis23

Followers: 19.2K

British fitness journalist Francis is a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. She posts about her workouts, personal journey, and motivational tips.

James Smith

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Instagram:@jamessmithpt

Followers: 460K

His style may not be everyone's cup of tea — disclaimer: if you're averse to swear words you may not be a fan — but Smith's message is spot-on. His no-BS approach simplifies fitness and fat-loss and he regularly calls out influencers posting damaging health content. 

Kayla Itsines

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Instagram:@kayla_itsines

Followers: 11.9M

The original Instagram queen of fitness is still worth a follow as she continues to post workout videos, inspirational quotes, and transformation photos from people who've followed her guides.

Kaisa Keranen

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Instagram:@kaisafit

Followers: 951K

Personal trainer Keranen shares her passion for helping people get fit and was previously involved in Michelle Obama's"Let's Move" digital campaign.

Misty Copeland

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Instagram:@mistyonpointe

Followers: 1.8M

As principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, Copeland shares stunningly graceful images that showcase the strength required to perform ballet, and will inspire anyone to dig out their old ballet shoes. 

Sophie Brace

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Instagram:@sophiebrace_fit

Followers: 12.4K

Brace is a gymnast whose Instagram feed is devoted to her athletic endeavors swinging round bars, flipping across the floor, and generally being impressively strong and flexible.

Courtney Fearon

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Instagram: @courtneyfearon_

Followers: 9K

Fearon is a Nike master trainer and the head coach at stylish London gym Sweat by BXR. As well as useful fitness content, Fearon posts inspirational messages to help you find the motivation to get moving and achieve your goals.

Shona Vertue

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Instagram:@shona_vertue

Followers: 426K

Sydney-based yoga teacher Vertue is an ex-elite gymnast and is all about mobility and strength, as well as mindfulness and looking after yourself too.

Faisal Abdalla

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Instagram:@faisalpmafitness

Followers: 71.9K

Abdalla is best known as "Mr PMA"— that's Positive Mental Attitude. Indeed, he is all about the positivity and the role it can play in helping you achieve your goals, both fitness and otherwise. He keeps it real on Instagram though, and isn't afraid to show the truth behind rippling six-pack snaps. 

Ross Edgley

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Instagram:@rossedgley

Followers: 514K

Edgley is without a doubt one of the fittest humans on the planet. He has a penchant for completing ridiculously extreme physical challenges like swimming 1,780 miles around Great Britain, and although most of us wouldn't dream of doing anything like that, he might just inspire you to sign up for a 10K.

Lucy Mountain

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Instagram:@lucymountain

Followers: 309K

Lucy Mountain is on a mission to end the demonisation of carbs, the proliferation of weight-loss teas, and help people develop a healthier relationship with food and exercise. She posts hilarious videos, tasty recipes, and witty infographics to hammer her points home in an amusing fashion.

Ben Carpenter

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Instagram:@bdccarpenter

Followers: 83.9K

Carpenter simplifies scientific research to a level that can be understood by the average person scrolling through Instagram. He also dispels fitness myths and provides sassy comments directed at people who promote unhealthy practices.

Jessie Diaz-Herrera

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Instagram:@curveswithmoves

Followers: 18K

Diaz-Herrera is a dancer, yogi, and staunch advocate of exercise being for all body shapes and sizes. She posts inspirational, anti-diet messages and encourages her followers to get moving and have fun.

Katie Crewe

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Instagram:@katiecrewe

Followers: 1M

Nutrition and fitness coach Crewe posts her workouts with plenty of videos to demonstrate the correct technique. She's also refreshingly honest about what life is like working in the fitness industry, and isn't afraid to be candid.

Layne Norton

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Instagram:@biolayne

Followers: 352K

Norton is a natural weightlifter and one of the most respected people in the fitness industry. He posts inspirational content of the mammoth weights he's lifting, funny memes about fad diets, and helpful messages to combat health myths.

Sia Cooper

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Instagram:@diaryofafitmommyofficial

Followers: 1.1M

Cooper is a personal trainer who uses Instagram to explain how to train specific body parts, updates her followers on her own journey, and posts reality-checks to show that nothing on Instagram is exactly as it seems. 

Carter Good

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Instagram:@cartergood

Followers: 442K

Good is a fat-loss coach who posts about what he learned on his own weight-loss journey to help his followers make healthy changes, develop more balanced lifestyles, and lose weight sustainably.

Kim French

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Instagram:@kimfrench87

Followers: 632K

French posts about her fitness journey from losing weight to building muscle, as well as workout ideas and technique pointers.

Shannon Billows

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Instagram:@shannonbillowsfitness

Followers: 15.2K

Weight-loss specialist Billows is on a mission to simplify losing fat. He posts helpful infographics to educate his followers, as well as inspirational transformation photos from his clients.

Kim Schlag

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Instagram:@kimschlagfitness

Followers: 80.7K

Like many people, Schlag used to try fad diet after fad diet to lose weight but ultimately saw the light and realized losing fat really only comes down to one thing: a calorie deficit. She now helps others see through the fog and reach their health and fitness goals.

Diren Kartal

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Instagram:@diren.kartal

Followers: 106K

Kartal is on a mission to get people moving more over the course of their day — "Neat Up 24/7"is his mantra, "Neat" standing for "Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis" which means all the movement you do outside of dedicated exercise time. Walking, cleaning, and taking the stairs all count.

Stephanie Joshi

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Instagram:@nuttyfoodiefitness

Followers: 180K

Joshi has some of the best abs on Instagram. Anyone would think she's a slave to the gym, but she's actually refreshingly down to earth and normal, loves a donut, and encourages her followers to take time off and rest when they need it.

Bradley Simmonds

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Instagram:@bradleysimmonds

Followers: 331K

Simmonds is a celebrity personal trainer and fitness magazine columnist. He posts workout ideas, inspirational messages to help you get yourself off the sofa, and the odd healthy recipe.

Chontel Duncan

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Instagram:@chontelduncan

Followers: 868K

Sweat trainer Duncan is all about the HIIT (high intensity interval training) and inspiring her followers to dream big, work hard, and achieve their goals. 

Britteny Floyd-Mayo

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Instagram:@trapyogabae

Followers: 53.5K

Not only will Floyd-Mayo's Instagram account encourage you to roll out a yoga mat, but it'll also leave you feeling empowered, confident, and ready to stop putting up with other people's poor behavior.

Melissa Alcantara

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Instagram:@fitgurlmel

Followers: 966K

Trainer to the stars Alcantara didn't get into fitness herself until the age of 28 but worked hard to transform her body, career, and life. She encourages balance though, and is open about the fact that she drinks alcohol a couple of times a week and sometimes can't be bothered to cook for herself.

Mari Llewellyn

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Instagram: @marillewellyn

Followers: 953K

Llewellyn's life changed when she discovered weight-lifting — she transformed both her body and her mental health, and now she helps others to do the same.

• Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul have broken up.
• The YouTubers got together last April and held a whirlwind wedding in July.
• The pair both posted statements on their Instagram pages announcing that they were taking a break to focus on their own "crazy lives."
• Both also joked that Mongeau would come out of the breakup with a Lamborghini from Paul.
• Paul said the break was "bitter sweet" but was "what's best for us right now."
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The YouTube stars Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul have ended their relationship after a turbulent nine months. The pair went public with their romance in April, then had a very public wedding in July, but have now announced they are taking a break.

The couple shared the same photo on their Instagram pages with statements about how they were feeling.

Mongeau said she didn't really know how to do a "we're taking a break" post but was glad to be doing it with Paul next to her.

"For right now we both are taking a break to focus on our own very crazy lives,"she wrote. "I'll never know what the future holds and I will always love Jake and everything we did. I'm grateful to know throughout this I've made a best friend for life & found someone to do life with when no one understood me."

She joked about taking Paul's Lamborghini since she gets "half of everything."

"No need for crazy speculations — this is coming from a place of nothing but love," she concluded. "I love u Jakey. Thank u for this past year."

Paul commented underneath "wuv u" and posted his own statement.

"As Tana and I sit next to each other writing captions about taking a break we're literally laughing at how crazy and stupid the past couple months have been and cracking jokes at how silly this all seems," he wrote. "I'm keeping custody of Thor but Tana unfortunately gets my Lamborghini."

He said he wouldn't change anything and mirrored Mongeau's sentiment of their remaining close friends who needed to focus on themselves. He said the break was "bitter sweet" but "what's best for us right now."

"The last thing we wanna see is fan pages speculating 'what happened,'" he said.

"We truly just need a second to focus on our own lives and ourselves."

Mongeau commented below, as tongue-in-cheek as ever, "ur still my bestie so that's cool wanna get married?"

The public breakup comes just a few days after Mongeau posted a raw, emotional video she called "the truth about everything," where she hinted that her and Paul's relationship had gone downhill since their wedding night — which she called "just hell."

Mongeau, who once described the wedding as being "for fun and for content," spoke about the various rumors and speculations that had been flying around over the past few months and described their open relationship as tough on her mental health. She said she was pretending to be the "cool girl" for Paul but realized she was just looking through rose-tinted glasses.

"I was the one green-lighting everything because I just wanted to make him happy," she said.

She also said finding out Paul had met up with his ex-girlfriend Erika Costell a month after their vows had left her feeling "broken" and said it was difficult when he then released a new song about another ex, Alissa Violet, and posted an old photo of them kissing on his Instagram page.

"I felt like I was opening my phone every day to something that just broke me further," she said.

She also said she probably should have stayed single after breaking up with her previous boyfriend, Brad Sousa, but "lost herself" in Paul.

"It was the best feeling in the world to be so on the same page with someone," she said. "It was like a drug."

• Read more:
• Tana Mongeau said finding out about her husband Jake Paul meeting up with his ex Erika Costell 'killed' her
• The whirlwind romances and breakups of YouTube stars fuel our appetite for increasingly extreme and dramatic online entertainment
• Jake Paul says his parents didn't approve of his marriage to Tana Mongeau but he's 'proving them wrong'
• YouTuber Tana Mongeau defends marriage to Jake Paul as legit after she said their wedding was 'for fun and for content'
• YouTuber Tana Mongeau said she turned down a $2 million deal with an energy drink company, even though she's 'cripplingly demonetized'

SEE ALSO: A timeline of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau's whirlwind open marriage, which Tana says has gone downhill since the wedding night that she called 'just hell'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 34 details you might have missed in HBO's 'Watchmen' episode one

• Tana Mongeau said she would send her Twitter followers "a random amount of money" if they followed and retweeted her.
• "rt this and follow me and i'll cash app u a random amount of money rn,"she tweeted at about 11 p.m. (PST) Sunday night.
• She sent about $7,500 overall, according to a screenshot, to fans who needed food, help with bills, and doctor's appointments.
• Mongeau recently announced a break with her husband Jake Paul.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

YouTuber Tana Mongeau was clearly in a generous mood when she told her followers she would send them "a random amount of money" if they followed and retweeted her.

"rt this and follow me and i'll cash app u a random amount of money rn,"she tweeted at about 11 p.m. LA time on Sunday night.

Requests from Mongeau's fans flooded in over the next two and a half hours, with several lucky ones receiving cash gifts. One fan said she needed to buy food for her cats, to which Mongeau said: "got u."

Another said she was living on her own at 18 years old, which Mongeau retweeted and said she had "been there."

"i don't have health insurance and need to pay for a doctors appointment," one fan responded, to which Mongeau replied, "paid 4 it!"

At about 1:30 a.m., Mongeau tweeted a photo from her cash app that said she had hit her $7,500 limit for the week.

"ok i popped off c u soon!"she wrote.

Mongeau, like many YouTubers, has a very close relationship with her fans. She thanks them for following and supporting her in every video she posts on YouTube.

She may have felt like giving back to her loyal fanbase because her 5 million-strong following has helped her through a difficult few months, which included her break with husband Jake Paul.

The pair recently posted statements on their Instagram pages announcing that they were calling it quits to focus on their own "crazy lives."

The announcement came just a few days after Mongeau posted a raw, emotional video she called "the truth about everything," where she hinted that her and Paul's relationship had gone downhill since their wedding night — which she called "just hell."

Read more:

A timeline of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau's whirlwind open marriage from beginning to end, which Tana said went downhill after the wedding night

Tana Mongeau opens up about her marriage to Jake Paul: 'The wedding night was just hell'

The whirlwind romances and breakups of YouTube stars fuel our appetite for increasingly extreme and dramatic online entertainment

YouTuber Tana Mongeau said she turned down a $2 million deal with an energy drink company, even though she's 'cripplingly demonetized'

20 YouTube channels you should really subscribe to in 2020

SEE ALSO: YouTubers Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul have called it quits after almost a year of petty drama and a wedding that was 'for fun and for content'

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Warning: The photo included in this post is not entirely safe for work.
• Instagram fitness star Tammy Hembrow deleted a photo and deactivated her account after receiving criticism, according to The Daily Telegraph.
• She said she would donate 100% of the profits from her clothing line to emergency relief for the Australian bushfires underneath a photo of her wearing a see-through wet T-shirt.
• Some people said the photo was tone-deaf.
• Hembrow then reactivated her account and posted a heartbreaking video of a koala, reiterating that she would donate her profits.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Instagram fitness star Tammy Hembrow uploaded but quickly deleted a photo of her in a swimsuit and wet T-shirt after she was accused of striking the wrong tone.

In the caption, she said she was donating 100% of the profits of her Saski Collection clothing line to emergency relief for the Australian bushfires. But some people thought it was a bit tone-deaf to promote fundraising efforts with a see-through top.

Hembrow deleted the photo and temporarily deactivated her Instagram account as a result of the negative comments, according to Australian news site The Daily Telegraph. But not before some fan pages screenshotted the image and reposted it.

Hembrow reactivated her account to reiterate that she would donate her profits by posting a heartbreaking video of a koala.

Hembrow isn't the only influencer who has used an unconventional method to try and raise funds for helping those affected by the devastating wildfires engulfing Australia.

Kaylen Ward, also known as "The Naked Philanthropist,"tweeted that she would send a nude photo to anyone who donated at least $10 to the cause. She's raised over $70,000 so far.

Hembrow did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read more:

A social-media influencer giving out nudes in exchange for donations to fight the Australian bushfires says she has raised $700,000

Red skies are blanketing southeast Australia as hundreds of fires ravage the country

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban donated $500,000 to Australia's fire services amid devastating bushfires

I spent New Year's trapped by Australian bushfires that looked like a scene from a war zone

Here are eight ways you can donate to help fight the fires

SEE ALSO: An Australian Instagram star had her name held up on a sign in front of photographers at the VMAs so they would know who she was

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 31 details you may have missed in the 'Breaking Bad' movie, 'El Camino'

• 16-year-old YouTuber JoJo Siwa is a megastar with 10.5 million subscribers.
• She gave her fans a tour of her new mansion in California at the end of December. 
• She said they had been living in the house for just three days and a lot of stuff was still being delivered, but they could show a sneak peek inside. 
• The tour starts through the front door, which revealed a massive open plan hall with marble floors and white walls.
• In a second video, Siwa shows off her bedroom, which has a massive rainbow headboard, a wall of bows, and sheets with her face on.
• Scroll down to see what Siwa's house had inside.
• Watch the full videos here and here.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: Jeffree Star shared a tour of his $14.6 million mansion that includes everything from a movie theater to a 'beauty barn'

The tour starts in the front hall, with a grand piano and several of Siwa's eccentric, bedazzled outfits from her tours and music videos.

Then Siwa shows the 'fun room' with a candy bar complete with Nerds, Airheads, Haribo, Skittles, Peanut M&Ms, and much more.

The room has some thimble chairs, which were a birthday gift to Siwa from Nickelodeon and feature in her music video for 'Hold The Drama.'

There's also an area called the '7-Eleven,' which has a popcorn maker, pizza rotator, nacho chips and cheese, and a Slushie maker.

And, of course, two full shelves of JoJo's Juice.

Siwa says her mom's office is not complete yet so she couldn't film in there, but did show off the special light in the guest bathroom and her 'magic' hide-and-seek cupboard.

One guest bedroom currently just has costumes in it because Siwa doesn't know what to do with them yet.

Then she shows the 'merch room,' packed full of pink JoJo Siwa lunch boxes, unicorns, and colorful bows. Siwa found her pink guitar inside which she'd been searching for, for the past three days.

Next, there's the pantry, which is surprisingly bare at the moment with just a few tins of soup, cereal bars, and snacks.

Siwa's kitchen is open plan with a breakfast bar, massive fridge, and cappuccino maker.

The kitchen also has Siwa's favorite drawer full of plates that she painted. And on the counter, there are cakes and cookies ready to be eaten.

Viewers then got a brief look at Siwa's home security system, but she had it turned off for the video.

As is every teenager's dream, Siwa has a custom made pool table.

Nearby is a crane game stocked full of JoJo Siwa merch and full-sized candy dispensers and a gumball machine.

This leads to a massive dining room, with a chandelier and more mannequins wearing Siwa's outfits in each corner.

Next is the living room with a huge white couch with sequinned and fluffy cushions.

Outside there's a basketball court which can also be turned into a volleyball court. Next to it are some lime, orange, and lemon trees.

And there's a swimming pool which almost perfectly matches Siwa's outfit. Siwa says she wants to jump in because she doesn't know how deep it is yet.

In the other outdoor area, there are pink and turquoise seats, a Foosball table, and ping pong.

Siwa says she loves that her house has a yard because so many Californian properties don't have any outdoor space.

She finishes the first tour in the hall giving viewers a preview of what the upstairs will look like with her mom's room and bathroom, the laundry room, her brother's room, her bedroom, and fun room.

In a second video uploaded on Jan 6, Siwa showed her fans what her bedroom looks like.

Firstly, she showed a wall of tour photos with pictures from behind the scenes from shows and days off.

Then she revealed her closet full of bright onesies and T-shirts and sparkly shoes. She says this is where she keeps her regular clothes, but she has another 'rock star' room where she keeps her outfits for performing.

There's also her vanity mirror dressing table, which is home to her 10 million subscriber button from YouTube.

Siwa then shows off her wall of her signature bows and various awards she's won.

And her bed has a massive rainbow headboard while her duvet cover has a massive picture of her face on it.

Her bedside table is where she keeps another YouTube plaque, a bible, a 16th birthday book, a canvas, and a drawer full of more bows.

She finishes the video with a sneak peek of the upstairs fun room, with guitars on the walls, a table with human legs, and a jukebox, and runs around the room with a pink baseball bat.

Read more:

David Dobrik flew to Las Vegas to put $20,000 of his friend's money on black and won for 'like the fifth or sixth' time in a row

YouTuber Tana Mongeau randomly sent $7,500 to followers who retweeted her

A JoJo Siwa makeup kit from Claire's has been recalled after testing positive for asbestos

JoJo Siwa responds after her Claire's makeup set was recalled for testing positive for asbestos

A timeline of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau's whirlwind open marriage from beginning to end, which Tana said went downhill after the wedding night

• Emma Chamberlain is one of the most popular influencers among teens, who turn to her YouTube channel for candid vlogs and funny, relatable content.
• Chamberlain is featured on the cover of the upcoming issue of Cosmopolitan, her first appearance on the front of a major US magazine.
• In an interview, Chamberlain told Cosmopolitan she thinks the term "influencer" is "disgusting," and said she preferred to be known as a friend and entertainer.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Emma Chamberlain, one of the internet's most influential stars among Gen Z, doesn't want to be known as an "influencer." Instead, the 18-year-old YouTuber says she wants her fans to see her as a friend and entertainer.

Chamberlain called the term "disgusting" in a recent interview with Dana Schwartz for Cosmopolitan. Chamberlain is featured on the cover of the magazine's February issue, her first time appearing on the front of a major US magazine.

"If someone is calling me an influencer, they're saying that my job is to influence, and I don't think that's true," Chamberlain told Cosmopolitan. "I prefer to entertain and be a friend. I don't want to influence."

Even if Chamberlain doesn't want to be called an "influencer," she is undoubtedly one. Chamberlain is known for her goofy vlogs and candid videos, which are shared with her more than 8.5 million YouTube subscribers and amassed nearly 1 billion views. And she makes money in part by using her popularity to market products and brands. 

The 18-year-old's quirky and lively personality has turned her into someone teens follow in droves because they see her as someone relatable and just like them. 

"I make fun of YouTubers and I am one. I think of it as, 'Why not play into it? If you can't beat them, join them,'" Chamberlain told Cosmopolitan. "Watch my videos—if you hate it, go watch the news or something, I don't know. Like, have fun, but I don't care."

Chamberlain's influence has also been recognized by, and integrated into, mainstream culture and fame. She attended Paris Fashion Week twice in 2019, and hung out with supermodel Karli Kloss at a Parisian bakery during one of the trips. She's been credited with boosting the popularity of the VSCO girl aesthetic that took over Generation Z and TikTok during the summer of 2019. She now hosts a podcast called "Stupid Genius," and she was named to Time Magazine's 100 Next list, showcasing rising stars shaping the future.

Most recently, Chamberlain launched her own coffee company called Chamberlain Coffee, which sells bags filled with coffee grounds, similar to those used for making tea. At $10 a bag, Chamberlain's coffee isn't cheap.

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• Linda Malys Yore was 65 when she first started travel blogging.
• Just over two years later, she has over 53,000 followers on her "Linda on the Run"Instagram account.
• Malys Yore told Insider she traveled as a kid growing up, and spent most of her life crisscrossing the US and Canada in an RV with her family.
• Now, she travels the world and documents it all on her website and Instagram, advocating for people not to let life pass them by, and to make travel a part of their life at any age.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Linda Malys Yore says she has a library book sitting at home about how to use Instagram. And yet, she runs a successful account with 53,400 followers.

At 67, Malys Yore is not your average travel influencer. But with bright-red lipstick and a vibrant pink streak in her platinum blonde bob, she's also not your average 67-year old.

Malys Yore says she has been traveling her whole life. She describes her parents as "Depression babies" that worked multiple jobs to ensure that their four kids would have a better life. Part of this was that they insisted on going on a family vacation every year in order to broaden their horizons. Malys Yore credits this with fueling her wanderlust.

"My dad always taught me that you don't get a second chance in life. I just made a kind of a promise to myself that on my deathbed, I really didn't want to have any big regrets," she said.

Malys Yore said she got married in 1988, and quit her job as a nurse to become a full-time mom to her two daughters. Since her husband at the time worked in the medical-equipment business but was self-employed, Malys Yore said he could work from anywhere — so he did.

They bought an RV and never looked back

Malys Yore said she home-schooled her daughters "from birth until they graduated high-school" while they spent six months traveling around Canada and the US, and the rest of the time outside of Tampa, Florida, their home base. Malys Yore believes that's how her kids learned tolerance, American history, and to have wanderlust. 

She herself says that she learned how precious resources are, and to live with fewer things. "You learn that you don't need all the things you think you need. You learn to live with less and appreciate it more," she said. "What a blessing. That was a wonderful, remarkable lifestyle."

This lifestyle came to a halt in 2014, when Malys Yore and her husband divorced after 26 years of marriage

But one of her daughters always knew that Malys Yore's way of life, married or not, was unique enough to turn her into a bona fide influencer.

Initially, though, Malys Yore wasn't interested.

"My daughter Victoria, who runs the website Follow Me Away, would say 'Mom, you are so interesting. You lead a very interesting lifestyle. There aren't many travel bloggers in your retired age group, and I think you would really like this,' and I pooh-poohed it, and I was just not very interested because I didn't know a bunch about it," Malys Yore said.

However, for Christmas 2017, Malys Yore said Victoria gifted her a website and all connected social media platforms, giving her the kick she needed to get blogging for "Linda on the Run."

Malys Yore was 65 when she started writing about travel and says her biggest struggle was really just the tech

"I pretty much knew about email and Facebook. That's about all for technology. I had to learn everything from scratch," she said, adding that taking good photos was also a struggle initially.

As for gaining followers, according to her, that took "dedication and perseverance."

Her hard work has paid off though, as Malys Yore now has over 53,000 followers, and has worked with brands ranging from Ray-Ban to Waldorf Astoria

"Representing a brand that I want to focus on for my followers is an extreme responsibility that I take very seriously," she said. "I don't think that people understand all that goes into being a successful influencer."

In 2019 alone, Malys Yore says she went to 10 countries across three cruises. Her favorite was Russia, in which she spent 13 days traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

"Their history was amazing, their food was amazing, their people were warm and friendly, it was not at all like I had expected it to be," she said, speaking of Russia.

Malys Yore is an advocate for packing light — but she does like to pack Instagrammable outfits, and says she would never travel without her signature red lipstick

While she says that she's "a huge fan of washing clothes out by hand at night in the sink or when you're in the shower," you'd never guess that from her Instagram account, in which she's often seen wearing bright and extravagant outfits that seem to fit in perfectly with her surroundings.

"I pick my outfits based on the destination. When I was on a Mediterranean cruise, I took lighter, colorful clothes that would fit that genre," she said, adding that often, if you could look outside the frame of her photos, you'd find scarves, hats, and layers quickly shed to get the perfect shot.

The travel blogger says she finds ways to travel cheaply, and believes others can as well

This may involve eating out less or getting fewer manicures to save money, or taking a connecting flight and being flexible, but Malys Yore says it's worth it.

She also says she likes booking Airbnbs with kitchens to save money on breakfast and the occasional lunch. Not only does this save cash, but it's also often healthier, which Malys Yore says is a concern for her as she follows a vegan diet.

All in all, Malys Yore just wants to inspire her followers

"I consider it an honor and a blessing to be able to be an influencer and to have people value my opinion," she said. "I'm trying to teach people the things that my dad taught me: Life is short, and you gotta seize the moment. Don't wait until you retire. Don't wait for a better day. Don't wait: Seize the moment. Life is not a dress rehearsal, you're not going to get a second chance."

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• Village Studio opened its first photo studio in 2018 in New York City for influencers and brands in need of Instagram-ready backdrops for shooting ads and promos.
• The team is now opening two new locations: a house in Los Angeles' West Hollywood and a $15,000-a-month loft in Brooklyn, of which Business Insider was given an exclusive tour inside.
• These studios run essentially like a WeWork: brands book the space to produce content, while Village Studio does the upkeep and ensures the space looks modern and photo-ready.
• Village Studio is a product of an influencer marketing agency founded by Vickie Segar, who told Business Insider the company's goal is to create an Instagrammable "alternate reality."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For influencers and social media users everywhere, finding the ultimate photo-ready backdrop for an Instagram post can be a strenuous and fruitless task.

The desire for that perfect aesthetic, which can be difficult to find in the real world, has led to an influx of photogenic pop-up experiences for consumers, such as the Color Factory and the Museum of Ice Cream. Meanwhile, brands and influencers are often left to reserving pricey studios and staging massive productions in rented hotel rooms.  

Village Studio was launched to fill the gap existing in the influencer economy, which could become a $15 billion industry by 2022. Born as an offshoot of influencer marketing agency Village Marketing, the company provides a clean, über-modern apartment space that's designed to be used for influencer photo shoots.

The team opened up its first studio in New York City's trendy SoHo neighborhood in October 2018, a $15,000-a-month apartment filled with millennial pink furniture. The studio was a massive success: Village Studio was profitable after just three months in business, and was booked solid three months in advance, Village Marketing founder Vickie Segar told Business Insider.

Now, Village Studio is opening spaces in two more locations: Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Segar says the new spaces will give brands more design and aesthetic variety for their future influencer-led campaigns. All three locations do share similar characteristics that make them ideal for photo shoots, Segar said: big windows that let in natural light; bare, clean walls; and open-floor plans, which allow for photos captured at any photo angle imaginable.

Business Insider was given exclusive photos of the new photo studios, and a walk-through of Village Studio's Brooklyn location. Take a look at the three Village Studio spaces, which have been designed with influencers in mind.

Village Studio opened its first photo studio in October 2018 in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, an epicenter of trendy restaurants, fashion, and influencer culture. "Everything has to be perfect all the time," Segar told Business Insider.

Segar described the studio's aesthetic as "feminine." Much of the furniture is a blush color known as "millennial pink," and the space is filled with clean, white detailing and bare walls.

Village Studio pays $15,000 a month to rent the penthouse, which comes with a rooftop garden overlooking the city skyline. In 2019, the studio welcomed celebrities shooting magazine covers, like Emma Roberts and Lea Michele, and business stars such as Alexis Ohanian.

In contrast, Village Studio's new space in Brooklyn's south Williamsburg neighborhood is what Segar describes as "California-neutral with a little bit of a twist."

Instead of millennial pink, the Brooklyn space is filled with darker and more neutral tones, like black and gray and brown, which some brands may prefer. "I felt like we were alienating an entire group of fans [with pink]," Segar said.

Each Village Studio location keeps its walls pretty bare. However, the accessories are carefully chosen to be interactive and easily changeable. Segar showed Business Insider the "prop closet," filled with home decor essentials like books, plants, and vases that brands can choose to incorporate into their shoots.

It was important to Segar that the Brooklyn kitchen be a large and wide-open space, a feat which is hard to achieve in New York. The kitchen's look makes it ideal for content that involves cooking and food prep.

The Brooklyn apartment is a massive 3,500 square feet: It has 3.5 bathrooms and two big "soaking" bathtubs, a kitchen and dining room, a bedroom, a library, and two living room setups — all that are customizable and available to use for photos. Village Studio even constructed an additional wall to create more rooms for different settings.

"It's not about the studio. It's about the content produced in the studio," Segar said. "This is an underground business that we are professionalizing."

The library in the Brooklyn Studio is the only room with a dark hue on its walls. It's designed to have a more masculine feel, from its leather couch to its dark-stained bookshelf (with books sorted by color, of course).

Each Village Studio features a dressing room, where influencers are able to get dressed for shoots and change between each set-up. Segar says many brands will bring in hair stylists and makeup artists, as well as droves of their own props and accessories for photo shoots.

Segar estimates that it cost between $100,000 and $150,000 for Village Studio to acquire and set up its Brooklyn space. The rent costs Village Studio $15,000 a month, but the company didn't pay out of pocket for the furniture — it was provided by a partner luxury brand, Maiden Home.

Segar says that around 80% of its customers who rent out Village Studio are brands, who will produce an enormous amount of content and often bring in influencers for photos. Village Studio charges brands anywhere between $3,000 and $15,000, depending on how much furniture they want moved around or removed.

Meanwhile, individual influencers — the other 20% of clients — are able to access Village Studio for free. Because of the access Village Studio provides to these influencers, there are "at least 1,000" on the waitlist to use the space, Segar said.

While the New York locations are only apartments, the Village Studio space on the West Coast is an entire standalone house. It's located in Los Angeles' West Hollywood neighborhood, which is known for its art galleries and nightlife.

To reflect a more West Coast feel, the Village Studio in Los Angeles is filled with darker shades and modern looks. It took Village Studio nine months to design and modify the house.

The highlight of the space, however, is its outdoor area. The house has an infinity zero-edge pool and spa, and is surrounded with tall thick greenery to shroud the house — and its influencer guests — in privacy.

Segar said that she thinks Village Studio will only lead to similar spaces that cater specifically to influencers. "I feel like we have this gold little gem here," she said.

• YouTuber Jake Paul has spoken about his recent breakup with Tana Mongeau, saying he fell out of love with her and in love with boxing.
• He told Page Six that Mongeau has been very supportive and they ended things on "great terms."
• At a press conference for his upcoming boxing match with British YouTuber AnEsonGib, Paul told Entertainment tonight he would always love Mongeau.
• "When we made that decision it was a weight lifted off both of our shoulders," he said. "It kind of reminded us of how the relationship started, which was as friends."
• Paul and Mongeau broke up after getting married six months ago. The pair both posted statements on their Instagram pages announcing that they were taking a break to focus on their own "crazy lives."
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Jake Paul has spoken about his recent breakup with Tana Mongeau, saying he replaced her with his newfound love of boxing.

He told Page Six that Mongeau has been "super supportive" throughout everything.

"We ended things on great terms, we're friends," he said. "I guess I fell in love with the sport of boxing and fell out of love with Tana."

The 22-year-old YouTuber is currently training for a fight against British YouTuber AnEsonGib in Miami on January 30. At a press conference, Paul told Entertainment tonight he would always love Mongeau, but the pair are better off as friends.

"When we made that decision it was a weight lifted off both of our shoulders," he said.

"It kind of reminded us of how the relationship started, which was as friends."

He went on to say Mongeau is an "amazing girl" but it just "wasn't the right time" for them to be together.

When asked whether they could get back together, Paul said: "I don't know what the future holds. We'll see."

Meanwhile, Mongeau, who married Paul in July after just four months of dating, has been addressing rumors that she's started dating another YouTube superstar, David Dobrik.

"we'd like to be addressing these rumors in private smh,"Mongeau tweeted with a photo of her FaceTime-ing with Dobrik.

Dobrik also responded to a story from Life and Style which asked, "So, are y'all dating or what ..."

He retweeted it replying: "R y'all on crack."

Paul and Mongeau announced their breakup at the start of January, after just six months of being married — although there's been a lot of speculation that the ceremony wasn't legitimate because they didn't have a marriage licence.

The pair both posted statements on their Instagram pages announcing that they were taking a break to focus on their own "crazy lives." It came just a few days after Mongeau posted an emotional video called, "the truth about everything," where she hinted that her and Paul's relationship had gone downhill since their wedding night — which she called "just hell."

"For right now we both are taking a break to focus on our own very crazy lives,"Mongeau wrote in her statement. "I'll never know what the future holds and I will always love Jake and everything we did. I'm grateful to know throughout this I've made a best friend for life & found someone to do life with when no one understood me."

Paul said he wouldn't change anything and mirrored Mongeau's sentiment of their remaining close friends who needed to focus on themselves. He said the break was "bitter sweet" but "what's best for us right now."

"The last thing we wanna see is fan pages speculating 'what happened,'" he said.

"We truly just need a second to focus on our own lives and ourselves."

Read more:

A timeline of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau's whirlwind open marriage from beginning to end, which Tana said went downhill after the wedding night

A timeline of Tana Mongeau's relationship with Noah Cyrus, who Mongeau claimed to be dating while still 'married' to Jake Paul

26 photos show the wild antics inside Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau's $500,000 Vegas wedding, including a 'Game of Thrones' sword and a massive mid-ceremony brawl

KSI says there are a few celebrities who 'want some' in the boxing ring, but he'd only fight Jake Paul if he could 'prove he's better than Logan'

YouTuber Tana Mongeau randomly sent $7,500 to followers who retweeted her

SEE ALSO: YouTubers Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul have called it quits after almost a year of petty drama and a wedding that was 'for fun and for content'

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• YouTube star Jake Paul has made headlines throughout his career, from engaging in risky stunts for content, to getting fired from a Disney television show, to having a whirlwind six-month marriage with YouTuber Tana Mongeau.
• In an interview with Business Insider, Paul said that he and his older brother, Logan Paul, are collectively seen as YouTube's "big bad wolves" who people are constantly rooting to see fail.
• Jake Paul will soon join the slew of YouTubers, including his brother, who have stepped into the boxing ring. If he wins, Paul says he wants to fight the YouTuber who defeated his brother last year: KSI.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

To the YouTube generation, the Paul surname evokes a certain amount of expectation that it's accompanied by news of viral controversy or outlandish drama. 

This kind of reputation has helped establish Jake and Logan Paul as "the big bad wolves" of YouTube, the younger Paul brother, Jake, told Business Insider in a recent interview. To him, this status means the brothers are constantly facing an upward battle in their career pursuits, which have expanded into music production and amateur boxing.

"The Paul family is sort of notorious," Jake Paul told Business Insider. "Everyone wants to see the big bad wolves fall."

At 22 and 24, respectively, Jake and Logan Paul are already viewed as veterans of the creator space. While they rose to fame on Vine, an app that no longer even exists, younger and younger kids are emerging in the industry from the likes of TikTok and Instagram. Their nearly 10 years in the limelight has been marred with a string of controversies that have successfully captured the attention of media and fans, and won't soon be forgotten.

2019 was a particularly wild year for Jake Paul — a large feat, considering past hiccups have seem him accused of turning his neighborhood into a "living hell" and fired from a leading role in a Disney channel show. Paul started dating a fellow YouTuber, Tana Mongeau, not long after both of them had gone through high-profile star-studded breakups. From the beginning, their relationship made headlines and was rumored to be a publicity stunt. Paul and Mongeau publicly dated for a month, then got engaged, and held a wild $500,000 Las Vegas wedding that featured a public brawl — before announcing just a few days into 2020 that they were "taking a break" from their relationship.

"It's best for both of us to be friends. I think it's a weight lifted off our shoulders," Paul told Business Insider. "I'm doing great. I'm doing as happy as ever, and I'm ready to kill 2020."

Moving into 2020, Paul is following in the highly publicized steps of his older brother by trying his hand in the boxing ring — something that YouTubers are turning to in droves. Although Logan Paul's recent bout against YouTuber KSI ended in a contested defeat, it brought him an estimated seven-figure payday.

Jake Paul is scheduled to fight at the end of January against YouTube gamer AnEsonGib exclusively shown on DAZN, the sports-streaming platform behind the production of several recent YouTube boxing matches. In the wake of his brother's loss, Paul vowed to "avenge" his brother, and is already setting his sights on a future battle with KSI.

"[AnEsonGib] is a kid that no one really knows about," Paul said. "This opponent is merely a doormat I'm wiping my shoes on on the path of taking on KSI and knocking him out."

Paul told Business Insider that beyond boxing, he's also working on "a couple films and TV shows." This would be his first foray into television since leaving the Disney Channel series "Bizaardvark" in 2017. While both Paul and Disney have said that his mid-season exit was a mutual decision, there's been much speculation as to whether it had to do with the widely covered complaints at the time that he and his housemates — members of a content creator incubator Paul founded called Team 10 — were turning his neighborhood into a "living hell" with couch-burning parties and troves of screaming fans.

For now, Paul says he's focusing on interests that bring him "happiness and freedom," instead of a lucrative income. This mindset may help to explain why Paul fell in 2019 from Forbes' list of the 10 highest-paid YouTube stars— although his net worth is estimated to stand at around $11.5 million.

"When I was first coming up, it was so cool to have the nice things and cars. But at the end of the day, that stuff doesn't make you happy," Paul said. "When you really get to know the business, you know that these people aren't living the lives they portray. There's only a few people actually succeeding."

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• Casper, the startup mattress retailer, has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.
• The S-1 filing includes a customary list of "risk factors" that could affect the company's value, and one of Casper's disclosed risks is the network of social media influencers it uses to advertise.
• Casper warns that its reputation could take a hit if any of its influencers engage in behavior that "adversely" reflects on the company or fails to comply with the Federal Trade Commission's rules on influencers' ad disclosures.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Online mattress seller Casper filed its paperwork Friday to become a public company, and it's warning potential investors that its value could be impacted by the network of influencers it partners with to advertise on social media.

As is customary for a S-1 filing, Casper disclosed a number of risk factors to potential investors that could cause the company's stock to decline. Two of these risk factors concern internet-bred influencers, who companies will often pay or provide free products to in exchange for advertisements and mentions on social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

Casper warned that missteps or a pattern of bad behavior by one of its "thousands" of social media influencers could damage the company's reputation and impact its IPO price. A bad review from an influencer could also hurt Casper, the company writes.

"Influencers with whom we maintain relationships could also engage in behavior or use their platforms to communicate directly with our customers in a manner that reflects poorly on our brand and may be attributed to us or otherwise adversely affect us," Casper said in its S-1 paperwork. "It is not possible to prevent such behavior, and the precautions we take to detect this activity may not be effective in all cases."

As the influencer marketing space stays on track to reach $15 billion by 2022, brands engaging in influencer-fueled campaigns are increasingly held accountable for the behavior of the popular internet personalities they sponsor. In the face of majorly publicized scandals such as those involving PewDiePie or Logan Paul, YouTube and massive brands like Disney have reacted by distancing themselves from these creators and halting plans for partnership deals and ad campaigns.

Ad campaigns on social media have become so common that the federal government has gotten involved in its regulation. In November 2019, the Federal Trade Commission issued guidelines for how influencers should disclose sponsored and paid posts in order to maintain a sense of transparency and stay within the confines of the law.

These new FTC guidelines could also pose a potential problem for Casper, the company said in its S-1 filing. Casper is tasked with the "burden" of monitoring its influencers' posts to ensure they abide by federal guidelines. However, Casper admitted that it doesn't check or approve every post an influencer makes.

"While we ask influencers to comply with the FTC regulations and our guidelines, we do not regularly monitor what our influencers post," Casper wrote. "If we were held responsible for the content of their posts, we could be forced to alter our practices, which could have material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations."

Since it launched in 2014, Casper has invested heavily in its online presence and relationship with influencers. The company sponsored a post on Instagram in 2015 from Kylie Jenner, who reportedly raked in around $400,000 per post in 2017. (That number has since spiked to over $1.2 million.)

Casper's influencer network is vast and far-ranging: Its ads have appeared in social media posts from famous pets, social media strategists, teen Nickelodeon stars, radio show hosts, and fitness gurus.

But Casper may be particularly cautious about influencers in its S-1 filing because it already knows what it's like for an influencer debacle have negative effects on the company's reputation. In 2016, Casper sued three popular mattress-review sites, claiming that they wrote reviews about Casper's competitors without disclosing they received the products for free as well as affiliate revenue for driving sales to these companies.

Casper alleged that the behavior had cost the mattress company "millions of dollars of lost sales," but all three sites settled with Casper in the end, Fast Company reported in 2017.

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• YouTuber and therapist Kati Morton said "bridge statements" are a great way to start building up your self-esteem.
• She told Insider it's almost impossible to go from the negative messages we send ourselves straight to positive affirmations, but a bridge statement lets you get there slowly.
• "Let's say we have really bad body image and we think we're fat and ugly," she said. "Then the bridge statement could be like: 'It's possible that I'm not as ugly as I think I am. I might be, but it's possible that I'm not. I could be over-reacting.'"
• Social media makes it harder because there's a nearly endless supply of enviable lifestyles that you can stare at on your phone at any time.
• A helpful step to take is to pay attention to what you digest online, unfollow anyone or anything that makes you feel bad about yourself, and take breaks from being online entirely, if possible.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Being kinder to yourself is something more or less everyone struggles with at some point. Most of us would never dream of talking to other people the way we scold ourselves in our own heads.

Kati Morton, a YouTuber and therapist who helps her 847,000 subscribers improve and understand their mental health, told Insider it's almost impossible to go from the negative messages we send ourselves straight to positive affirmations.

But one way to kickstart the process is with what she calls "bridge statements."

"The bridge statement is a possibility," she said. "Let's say we have really bad body image and we think we're fat and ugly. Then the bridge statement could be like: 'It's possible that I'm not as ugly as I think I am. I might be, but it's possible that I'm not. I could be over-reacting.'"

Slowly, step by step, we start building a bridge to the positive statements. The ultimate goal eventually being: "I love everything about myself."

And slowly you're building a bridge to those positive statements. We're bridging to: 'I love everything about myself.'"

As humans, we are prone to comparing ourselves to other people. If we look at someone else's appearance, life, career, or anything else as better than our own, our brains have evolved to compete.

"We can view a person who's super fit and looking a certain way as a threat to us," Morton said. "We don't feel good about ourselves because we should look that way. It's that comparison of like, 'Oh they're better. That's threatening to me emotionally, so I'm not gonna forget about that.'"

This is even harder to combat with the power of social media because there's a nearly endless supply of enviable lifestyles that you can stare at on your phone at any time.

"It's hard for us after we've been scrolling through Instagram for an hour seeing people's perfect lives to go back to our lives and not be like, 'Wow this is total garbage,'" Morton said.

"We're so used to being not kind. So the bridge statements help because it's like, 'maybe it's not as bad as I think it is.'"

'Notice what you're saying and remind yourself that thoughts are not facts.'

She said a good way to start is to pay attention to what you digest online, and unfollow anyone or anything that makes you feel bad about yourself. You can even take breaks from being online at all, if possible.

"If you're able to take whole nights off, one night a week or something, just to give yourself a break and pay attention to the conversation you have with yourself," said Morton. "Notice what you're saying and remind yourself that thoughts are not facts."

The more we tell ourselves something, the more our brains are inclined to think of it as real. It's like when you reminisce about the past, the brain can't tell the difference between feelings you're having now and the feelings you're reliving, and you can easily revisit that trauma. So it's important to remind yourself that the negative image you have of yourself isn't necessarily a real-life reflection.

Also, you should also remember that people always put the best of themselves on social media, so you're comparing yourself to an impossible ideal. Nobody's life is 100% great or 100% awful.

"People can be very comfortable living in the black and white versus what life really which is all grey," said Morton. "It's all in the middle. Do your best, try to be a nice person, and be kind to yourself, little by little."

Morton explained bridge statements further in a video called "How To Stop Hating Yourself!" which you can watch below.

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• Brian Barczyk is a 50-year-old YouTube star who is known for his vlog-style content about his life and the snakes, geckos, and other reptiles he owns and breeds.
• He has built a lucrative career online as a reptile influencer who posts daily content and frequently collaborates with mega-popular creators like David Dobrik and his Vlog Squad.
• Barczyk told Business Insider that he supports himself and his family financially from the money he earns as a YouTube creator, through ads, sponsorships, and by selling merchandise.
• He charges as much as $30,000 for a brand sponsorship deal, he said.
• Sign up for Business Insider's influencer newsletter, Influencer Dashboard, to get more stories like this in your inbox.
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Brian Barczyk is a 50-year-old YouTube star who lives with his family in Michigan and posts daily videos about his life and the snakes, geckos, and other reptiles he owns and breeds.

Barczyk isn't new to YouTube. He began posting content in 2008, and since then, has gained 2.4 million subscribers.

Along with a massive audience, he has built a lucrative career as a reptile influencer. He currently supports himself and his family financially from the money he earns on YouTube.

Barczyk monetizes his content online through ads placed in his videos by Google, promoting brands, and by selling merchandise. 

Alongside his YouTube channel, he also owns and operates a reptile zoo, "The Reptarium," which he is able to fund from the income he earns though his influencer career.

The business of reptile videos and $30,000 brand deals

Maybe you've seen Barczyk and the reptiles he owns appear in your favorite creator's videos, like David Dobrik (15 million subscribers) and his Vlog Squad. 

Collaborating with YouTube's top stars is one of the ways Barczyk has established his audience and reach online. 

He's also had a few viral videos, like the one where he shows his viewers how to help a snake that's unable to lay its eggs, which has over 28 million views. He told Business Insider that just that viral video alone helped him gain around 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. It's also his highest-earning video.

Barczyk works with United Talent Agency, a top Hollywood talent agency that also works with digital creators. He has worked for brands like the the food subscription service Hello Fresh and other subscription-based services like Dollar Shave Club.

Barczyk said when he was first starting out, he would look to other creators on YouTube for advice on what to charge brands. 

"It's hard to land brand deals and it's hard to know what the value is because there are no real road maps," Barczyk told Business Insider. 

Today, he charges as much as $30,000 for a sponsorship deal and also earns revenue by selling merchandise to his followers.

Read the full breakdown of how much money Barczyk charges for YouTube sponsorships on Business Insider Prime.

And check out this post about how much money YouTube paid Barczyk for his video with 28 million views about snakes on Business Insider Prime.

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• YouTuber David Dobrik took superstar Justin Bieber to meet some students at UCLA in California.
• In typical Dobrik fashion — he followed the same format to surprise fans with Kylie Jenner back in March— Bieber was hiding in the back of the Tesla behind the passenger seat, waiting to jump out and surprise the students sitting in front.
• "Today we're gonna see what people think about Justin Bieber," Dobrik said, followed by clips of him asking students just that.
• "He'll always have a special spot in my heart," one student said. Another said she got into a bullying fight with a girl in fifth grade about who was a bigger fan.
• "Well you're gonna have to bully her again because you're gonna have to show her you just met Justin," Dobrik said, just as Bieber poked his head from behind the seat. The student screamed and asked him, "Can I touch you?"
• One girl, who said Bieber wasn't all that talkative when she met him before, started to cry when his voice appeared behind her: "Maybe he'll be more talkative next time."
• A very honest student said he loved Bieber but his new song "Yummy" was "just not it" and "not that good."
• Bieber shot out from behind him yelling "It's not it?!" and the student screamed in shock.
• "OK 'Yummy' is good," he conceded, and started to sing along.
• Watch the full video below.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

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• It has become fairly common for YouTubers to document their cosmetic procedures for their subscribers. 
• Tana Mongeau, Jeffree Star, and Trisha Paytas are just some of the creators who have filmed their experiences to give a backstage look at what goes on in the nurse's chair. 
• While getting cosmetic procedures isn't necessarily the result of low self-esteem, YouTubers are in a position to be more at risk of struggling with body dysmorphia.
• For starters, they are always turning the camera on themselves, and are subject to criticism and trolling from millions of people. Thousands of the comments posted are about their appearance. 
• "If there's something you can do to protect your mental state that will make you happier, I'm all for it," YouTuber Gabbie Hanna told Insider. "Because, unfortunately, the world's not gonna change as quickly as we would like. We can't stop everybody from commenting."
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the middle of Shane's Dawson's video "The Ugly Side of the Beauty World," his partner's sister Morgan Adams pulled out her Invisalign retainer.

"I have to get my teeth straight," she said, half-jokingly. "I feel like people will like me more if I have straighter teeth. It's a theory."

Dawson looked at her in shock, epitomizing what a lot of viewers were probably thinking, but Adams wasn't phased. She knew it was just part of living in Los Angeles and hanging around with beauty influencers.

"You don't even need to talk to them, just being around them, they're all like 'oh, what have you gotten done?'" she said. "Then you think about it. And I'm like, 'Oh, I should probably get fake teeth, probably lip injections, maybe a nose job, and also maybe botox.'

"But I've never thought like that before in my life. It's like a cult — they suck you in."

YouTubers are some of the most visible people in the world

Taking their cameras to the surgeon's office has become a norm for many YouTubers. Tana Mongeau, Jeffree Star, and Trisha Paytas are just some who have given their subscribers a backstage look at what happens when they get their botox and lip filler.

Many get the procedures for free in return for the publicity in their video. Adams had been seriously considering an offer by a well-known nurse because she'd been comparing herself to the unrealistic perfection of several beauty influencers she went on a brand trip with. 

But while transparency about cosmetic procedures can be seen as a good thing for the mental health of the youngsters comparing themselves to their favorite online stars, it also begs the question of why YouTubers seem so likely to want to alter their looks in the first place.

Being in front of the camera all the time builds confidence in many ways. But focusing that level of attention so intensely on one's appearance can be one of the main causes behind body image struggles.

Many of the platform's biggest creators, including Dawson, Emma Chamberlain, and Gabbie Hanna, have spoken about their body dysmorphia and eating disorders, and been praised for it. But the collective insecurity doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.

Hanna, a YouTuber with 6.3 million subscribers, went back and forth about whether she should get the fat from under her chin sucked out in a video posted on December 5 called "My Liposuction Experience."

The nurse at her regular office told her she was a "perfect candidate" when she visited at the end of 2019, which she said made it sound like she'd "won a prize."

"It was something that I had never really thought about or considered trying to fix," Hanna told Insider. "And then after she said it, I couldn't stop thinking about it."

She has filmed several procedures for her channel, such as lip filler, a non-surgical nose job, and botox, but ended up backing out of this one at the last minute. She realized she didn't want to take the risk of the anaesthesia when she was falling victim to the critical internal voices that have been attacking her self-esteem since she was a child.

Hate comments amplify our worst thoughts

Hanna has wrestled with deep, underlying issues about her weight since she was about nine years old, which trolling over the years has only amplified.

"It's pretty rare as an adult, that somebody would say to your face, 'You're fat,'" she told Insider. "But then when I started on the internet, every single comment was, 'this fatass, fatass, fatass.' And then commenting on my double-chin or my fat cheeks or something.

Trolls pick apart your physical appearance so much, she said, that "it's impossible to not take notice."

After a journey towards eating healthily and working out, Hanna lost weight, and the hate comments subsided. The only way she's been able to ignore the comments, she said, is that she just doesn't get them anymore.

This is probably why the confidence she had slowly been building up for a long time started slipping away when she injured her knee.

"I couldn't work out and I just felt really out of control," she said. "I noticed myself gaining weight and losing muscle mass, and I was trying to just impulsively gain control of my body again, especially my weight and my image."

We remember five bad comments and forget thousands of supportive ones

Kati Morton, a YouTuber and licensed therapist, told Insider being a visible online person "makes you way, way, more aware" of things about yourself that you probably don't need to be.

"People can just critique at their leisure," she said. "I think people do it because they don't feel good about themselves either. But that doesn't make it easier for the human on the other end."

Our brains also love to dwell on negatives — remembering the exact wording of five bad comments and forgetting the 20,000 good ones, for example — because they have evolved to seek out threats. This gives one person's hateful criticism much more power than someone showing support.

"The negative comments actually really get to you when you feel that there's a little bit of truth to it," Morton said. "And so, if someone is saying it to you again, you're like, 'Oh crap, that must really be true.'"

Photo editing can quickly become real-life adjustments

Morton has met YouTubers who have been persuaded into having various procedures, which she thinks has been exemplified by the use of editing apps. Constantly looking at perfected photos of yourself makes people feel bad when they don't see that curated image in the mirror. 

"Essentially what you're doing is spending all your time focusing on the things that you would like to edit," she said. "Which is a horrible way to look at your body versus what we should be doing which is being grateful for all that it does for us."

YouTubers, with the resources and desire to look a certain way, might feel a greater temptation to make some of those edits real.

"Some creators that I know, they're 21, and they've already had five different procedures," Morton said. "It's really sad because it's like instead of learning to love ourselves, we're just trying to turn ourselves into what we think would be lovable."

20-year-old Alyssa Kulani, for example, has 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, and she got a breast augmentation after wanting bigger boobs from a very young age. She also regularly gets lip injections, which she said is "100% because of social media."

"A year and a half ago, I was listing all these surgeries that I wanted to save up for," Kulani told Insider. "I was like, I'm going to get veneers, I want to get my butt done, I want to do this to myself, and I had a list of things so I could glow up basically."

She obsessed over images of other women on Instagram, screenshotting their photos and thinking to herself, "I want my face to look like this" and "I want my hair to look like hers," without considering the fact their perfection was almost definitely a result of editing.

"It's hard for us to believe that things aren't perfect," Morton said. "We'd be more likely to think like, 'Oh I need to up my game, I need to do this, I need to exercise more, I need to buy better clothing, I need to make more money.'"

It's a warped version of body positivity

Author Virginia Sole-Smith told Insider she thinks the boom in influencers getting cosmetic procedures is a distortion of the body positivity movement that has shaped the last decade. She explored how the message can be muddied on YouTube in a piece for Elemental.

"It's like the messages have gotten so distilled, that we can now say loving your body means doing whatever you want to it, including altering it, to make it totally meet up to this really strict beauty ideal that we have," she told Insider.

"It's like I'm defending my right to get a nose job or a boob job or all of these different procedures because this is how I'm being body positive. I'm making myself as beautiful as possible because I love myself that much."

She said the trade-off for the freedom and control that comes with being a YouTuber is living up to this ideal of perfection, which can be warped by the constant comparisons, as well as something called "self-objectification."

The concept essentially means imagining a camera crew following you around all the time, and obsessing over what you look like to other people. YouTubers don't have to pretend because they're actually sitting in front of a real camera every day for hours at a time.

"It's not just this mental camera lens that we're all kind of walking around with, they're literally turning the camera lens on themselves," Sole-Smith said. "Women with high levels of self-objectification are at a higher risk for eating disorders, they're at higher risk for body dysmorphia, there's all these very real consequences."

The entire vlogging and influencer industry has become normalized to this constant self-objectification, with YouTubers and subscribers alike all commenting and comparing each other, she said. Creators are reinforced to keep aspiring to some ideal they may never reach, with some even profiting off the pain it causes them and their fans.

"It's this whole crazy cycle, passing it around," she said. "I think we're really just starting to understand what the impact of that's going to be."

'We can't stop everybody from commenting'

Morton said chasing the beauty ideal with cosmetic procedures is missing the point that everyone is different and individuality is supposed to be loved and appreciated.

"At the end of the day, that's what stays with us, that's what's important," she said. "I feel like a lot of the younger generation is skipping that step and they're going right into trying to alter how they look, and I just don't think that's healthy."

Kulani often wonders to herself whether she's setting a good example to her fans when she's had procedures herself. But she thinks there's a difference between wanting something because your favorite star has had it done, and wanting to make an adjustment because it would really help your self esteem. 

"I definitely think comparison is definitely the biggest thing right now," she said. "I'm sure a ton of girls don't ever see what's wrong with looking at other girls and wanting to compare yourself and wanting to change things to look like somebody else. "

Hanna agreed that she doesn't see anything wrong with cosmetic surgery as long as you're sure it's going to be good for your mental health, and not harm you further. 

"If there's something you can do to protect your mental state that will make you happier, I'm all for it," she said.

"Because, unfortunately, the world's not gonna change as quickly as we would like. We can't stop everybody from commenting."

With the camera turned on them nearly all the time, and the flood of criticism never-ending, some influencers feel the pressure to find something to fix to make them feel good. Some are encouraged to have more procedures, while others are invited to make changes they never thought they wanted.

But Botox and filler don't change the conversation about self-love and confidence, because tweaking your outside appearance to feel good inside isn't a long term solution. They just stick a band-aid over the pain before you're willing to face it.

So if influencers were encouraged to think more about how they're mentally coping with the pressure and being kinder to themselves, maybe they'd find there are fewer things they want to change on the outside, and focus their efforts inwards instead.

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• Though charcuterie first rose to prominence in 15th century France, meat-and-cheese boards have spiraled into a massive trend on social media, propelling some enthusiasts to the status of "charcuterie influencer." 
• A search for "charcuterie" on Instagram yields nearly one million results, and on Facebook there are hundreds of public and private groups dedicated to the art form. 
• "It blows my mind every time I open the app and have a hundred notifications or 2,000 new followers," Maggie Johnson, known as @magsmeals on TikTok, told Business Insider of her newfound social media stardom. 
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On a whim, Maggie Johnson filmed herself in October washing cartons of blackberries and grapes over a marble-lined sink, carefully slicing wedges of cheese and opening packages of cured meats before arranging them ornamentally around a circular wooden board. 

Though she had been privately watching videos on TikTok for months, she decided to share her own video for the very first time, posting it to her page before heading into an early shift at the bakery where she works in Nashville, Tennessee. When she opened the app during her break, she was astounded to find that her post had thousands upon thousands of likes and comments. 

Three months later, she's amassed more than 175,000 followers to her TikTok page @magsmeals, where she regularly shares charcuterie-related videos.

"It blows my mind every time I open the app and have a hundred notifications or 2,000 new followers," she said. 

Johnson — an epicurean at heart, who first started making charcuterie boards for her sorority sisters in college — discovered that she had unwittingly tapped into an obsession among young Americans suddenly seeking out charcuterie content unlike ever before. 

Though charcuterie itself has existed as a culinary delicacy for centuries, it only really flourished into a bona fide social media phenomenon in the past year, marking those like Johnson as "charcuterie influencers" along the way. 

Aspirational meat and cheese

The word charcuterie is derived from the French words "chair" and "cuit," which translate to "flesh" and "cooked," respectively. According to the food blog Serious Eats, charcuterie first rose to prominence in the 1400s in France "to represent storefronts specializing in the preparation of pig and offal at a time when shop owners weren't allowed to sell uncooked pork."

The owners of these shops, known as charcutiers, grew popular for their thoughtful meat preparation that helped establish stylized plates of "cooked flesh" as a part of French gastronomic culture. Over time, breads, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables joined the boards as accoutrements to the succulent meats, forming the charcuterie board as we know it today. 

While the word "charcuterie" gives off an air of European luxury and sophistication, plates of meat and cheese have also long been a mainstay of American social life, fueling partygoers and vanquishing hunger as restaurant appetizers. Today they've become a fixation on social media platforms. A search for "charcuterie" on Instagram yields nearly one million results, while on Facebook there are hundreds of public and private groups dedicated to the art form. 

According to Ken Albala, a history professor with a focus on food at the University of the Pacific, the mass appeal of charcuterie on social media coincides with the rise of crafting and foodie cultures, paired with an inherently aesthetically pleasing nature. 

"For hundreds of years people have been doing cheese boards and charcuterie, but I think it has been part of the rise of the interest in do-it-yourself artisanal craft food," he said. "It's also very photographical, and a lot of food that is great is not. A plate of stew is just disgusting-looking on camera, but if you can arrange things in fun patterns it looks nice and that's why it's very Instagrammable."

Marissa Mullen, founder of the food-styling blog That Cheese Plate and widely known as the first "charcuterie influencer," understands just how Instagrammable — and, thus, profitable — meat-and-cheese boards can be. 

Mullen, who has a background in photography and visual arts, first started posting photos of stylized charcuterie on Instagram back in 2013. Her hobby helped her cultivate a small but devoted following over the years, prompting the occasional gig from brands like Whole Foods, which once gave her a $100 gift card to create a board and share it on Instagram. 

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I made it,'" she said, recalling the experience to Business Insider.  

While her social media star grew, she was cutting her teeth in the music industry, working as the house band coordinator for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." Despite the flashy job, she still spent most of her spare time styling meat-and-cheese boards, coining a method she called "Cheese By Numbers" for arranging charcuterie boards.

Encouraged by support from her social media fans, she pitched the concept as a book, a venture that proved unsuccessful. She shelved the idea until November 2018, when a producer on "The Rachael Ray Show" found her Instagram and brought her on to talk about her love of charcuterie and cheese by numbers. It didn't take long for Random House to come running back to Mullen. Her book, "That Cheese Plate Will Change Your Life," will be published in May. 

She has since dedicated herself full-time to That Cheese Plate, which she monetizes by hosting cheese plate classes, tutorials, and special events. Today she has more than 300,000 Instagram followers, including notables like Gigi Hadid, across her @thatcheeseplate and @cheesebynumbers accounts. 

"I can't take credit for, like, being the person to make cheese plates popular because that's, like, a very big statement to say, but I do think I made it accessible for people to put their own spin on their own plates and get creative with them," she said. 

The rise of the 'Adult Lunchable'

A few days into the start of the new year, the private Facebook group Bon Appétit Test Kitchen— a fan page for devout followers of the popular food publication and its chefs — was awash with photos of elaborate charcuterie boards, including one so large is spanned an entire room with mounds of fanciful meats and cheeses.

The posts had become so ubiquitous that Amanda Hasaka, one of the group's administrators, stepped in to ask the group's more than 16,000 members to refrain from posting charcuterie imagery. 

"I'm sure we all enjoyed the meat & cheese boards (because who doesn't) while they lasted, and now that the holiday season is behind us, let's try and limit the posting of them for now," she wrote. "In fact, we can start a charcuterie main thread, and everyone can post in there, so it's limited to once [sic] place!"

Hasaka told Business Insider she became administrator of the group on request from her friend Megan McGowan, who created the page in 2018 for fellow Bon Appétit fans to talk about their favorite chefs and swap recipes. Neither of them expected it to become as popular as it is today, but Hasaka said it's helped democratize several food trends, including charcuterie. 

"Personally, I am kind of intimidated by cooking and preparing a full-on meal, but there's something that's kind of low stakes about a charcuterie board," she said. "Anyone truly could do it very easily." 

Samantha Birkholtz is a fellow member of the Bon Appetit group, as well as several other Facebook pages including "Show Me Your Charcuterie" and "Is This Charcuterie?" which each hosts thousands of meat-and-cheese enthusiasts. Some of these groups have strict barriers to entry, while others list group rules including "no charcuterie shaming" and a request to avoid the use of "explicit" terms like "charcooterie," a play on words that has previously made some group members uncomfortable. 

Birkholtz said she primarily uses the groups as inspiration for meal preparation for both herself and her 12-year-old son, whom she is currently homeschooling. Like several others on social media, she likened the boards to an upgraded version of the Lunchable, the popular childhood packaged meals made by Oscar Meyer.

"When my son was a bit younger, he wanted those Lunchables but I find those things repulsive," she said. "When I started introducing the boards to him, I called them Adult Lunchables. I was like, 'Let's have an Adult Lunchable' and all of a sudden it became highfalutin."

Spotting an opening to capitilize on the trend among young Americans, Fisher-Price went so far as to roll out a "Snacks For Two" charcuterie playset in December, which quickly drew ire on social media as some called it "bougie" and "snooty."

"This is the most bougie toy I've ever seen. A f****** toddler rocking a Fedora and serving salami to nother one in a beret?"one Twitter user wrote. "The persnickety rep at @FisherPrice who thought this was a great idea should be demoted." 

Charcuterie as art form

For Birkholtz, charcuterie influencers and certain members of the Facebook groups have become "artists" to their followers. She added that the craze around stylized food in many ways mirrors the aspirational nature of fashion and lifestyle influencers on Instagram. 

"We've gone from showing off our designer handbags and expensive makeup to now we're showing off [charcuterie]," she said. "I keep looking at these boards and they're so beautiful and I'm thinking, 'My goodness, that person's an artist.'"

Beyond its ability to cultivate influencers, Hasaka of the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen group said that part of what social media has done for charcuterie is help demonstrate its relative ease and cost-effective nature. Ultimately, you don't have to be wealthy or particularly adept in the kitchen to make a stunning board, she said, which is what makes charcuterie particularly attractive to millennials. 

"I live in LA and I don't have a beautiful, sprawling kitchen with all this space where I can cook some intricate meal," Hasaka said. "But I have enough room to make a little board with meat and cheese. You don't need a gourmet kitchen to put something like that together."

Looking toward the future, Albala, the history professor, said he anticipates the passion for charcuterie will start to die out on social media, as the obsession over artisanal goods starts to wane. 

"The whole idea of handmade artisanal stuff is just not going to be that interesting to people anymore because everyone's doing it now. It's not a market distinction of coolness," he said. 

However, influencers like Instagram fan favorite Mullen and TikTok star Johnson are banking that the boards will remain beloved on social media, both for their fans and their bank accounts. Mullen said she anticipates that the next wave of charcuterie will be focused on plant-based "meats" and cheeses, as well as new takes on deconstructed meals displayed on boards. 

"I feel like it's released my inner child again," Mullen said of the obsession with charcuterie. 

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• The New York Jet's TikTok account uploaded then swiftly deleted a video where they made it look like a football flew out of a teenager's butt.
• A TikTok video taken by 19-year-old TikToker Addison Rae was placed next to a quarterback about to catch a ball.
• Rae bending down to twerk her hips to the side perfectly aligned with the ball appearing in the next shot, to make it look like it had flown from her butt.
• "Whoever runs the Jet's official Tik Tok account is about to be promoted or fired,"wrote Twitter user @isabella_nowak, who shared the video that quickly went viral.
• The team's account removed the video within an hour, according to The Daily Dot, but the internet had already gotten ahold of it.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The TikTok account for the New York Jets uploaded then swiftly deleted a video where they made it look like a football flew out of a teenager's butt.

Side by side "duet" TikToks are popular on the platform, where a video is uploaded next to a trending one to create something new or comedic. In this case, 19-year-old TikToker Addison Rae was placed next to a quarterback about to catch a ball. Her bending down to twerk her hips to the side perfectly aligned with the ball appearing in the next shot, to make it look like it had flown from her butt.

"Whoever runs the Jet's official Tik Tok account is about to be promoted or fired,"wrote Twitter user @isabella_nowak, who shared the video that quickly went viral.

The team's TikTok account removed the video within an hour, according to The Daily Dot, but far too many people had already noticed for it to just disappear. Some people thought it the joke was inappropriate, while others thought it was pretty on-brand for the platform.

Rae, meanwhile, clearly saw the funny side and retweeted the TikTok it to her followers.

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SEE ALSO: Brits are going crazy for this TikTok of an American tourist who can't get enough of a beloved pub chain

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• Josh Pieters has quickly earned a reputation in YouTube comments as being one of the "most underrated" creators on the platform.
• With the help of his friend, magician Archie Manners, he "answers questions you didn't know you had."
• Some of his latest videos include hatching a quail from a supermarket egg, tricking influencers into promoting gravel, selling microwave meals on Deliveroo, and, finally, fooling the world with a fake Ed Sheeran.
• "It's that concept of asking a question of something quite silly, is it possible, and then exploring it in a video, and hopefully achieving the right outcome," Pieters told Insider.
• The biggest challenge is coming up with new ideas, he said. But one thing is for certain — 2020 will see Pieters and Manners push the boundaries of what they can get away with, keeping the channel one of the most interesting on YouTube right now.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Josh Pieters dreamed of being a professional cricket player when he was growing up in the tiny town of Meissner in South Africa. But it was at the start of the season in the UK that he fell ill with glandular fever, and was out of action for six months. With his sport suddenly no longer an option, Pieters started making YouTube videos.

A good friend from his hometown, Caspar Lee, had already found some success on YouTube. He is now considered one of the platform's originals who has built a following of more than 7 million subscribers over eight years. Pieters had appeared in many of his early videos, so already had an advantageous jumping off point

"I was super fortunate that I was part of this group of YouTubers already," Pieters told Insider. "They were all my friends, so starting on YouTube was probably a lot easier than it would have been for most people."

He decided to stay in the UK after six months and scraped together enough money for a deposit on a flat.

"I wasn't sure how I was gonna pay the first month's rent," he said. "But I kept making YouTube videos and it eventually got to a point where YouTube could be my main source of income."

Becoming one of the 'most underrated' YouTubers

Pieters moved on from the "boyband era" of videos he made with his friends towards the type of content he's posted in the last year that has earned him the reputation of being one of the "most underrated" creators on the platform.

While he's not ashamed of his old videos, he definitely feels like he's now making content that his audience, who are growing up with him, will enjoy. The absolute seal of approval comes from his older brother.

"We can't be all cutesy when we're 26 anymore," he said. "So I decided to make a change."

That change came with some social experiments like faking a trip to Coachella and signing up as an Uber driver in London with a military tank. The last year has also seen Archie Manners, a professional magician, become a prominent feature in Pieters' videos

They struck gold with their new theme that now exists in Pieters' "About" section on his channel: Answering questions you didn't know you had.

"It's that concept of asking a question of something quite silly, is it possible, and then exploring it in a video, and hopefully achieving the right outcome," Pieters said.

That trend has weaved through several of his latest uploads: hatching a quail from a supermarket egg, tricking influencers into promoting gravel, selling microwave meals on Deliveroo, and finally, fooling the world with a fake Ed Sheeran.

Turning Ty from Manchester into Ed Sheeran

The latter took place on the night of the boxing rematch between Logan Paul and KSI in November. Pieters took a Sheeran lookalike from Manchester, called Ty, who was immediately flooded by Sheeran fans and influencers who attended the event.

"I was so scared because I organized it all on a whim, last minute, and I was just thinking, what if we turn up and some people go, 'Oh there's Josh, and who's that guy who looks a bit like Ed Sheeran?'" Pieters said. "You don't know what people are gonna think."

The result was even better than they ever expected, with Ty posing for selfies with some of the biggest online stars, and getting invited to super-VIP after-parties hosted by KSI.

"We just had these megastars gravitating towards us, which was such an interesting social experiment because normally there's no way they would have come to say hello to me," Pieters said.

"But now that they thought Ed Sheeran was there, they were actually starting to make conversations with me because they didn't wanna look uncool and bother Ed Sheeran, so they thought they could get an in through me and Caspar."

Prank videos that always give people 'a bit of a chance'

On the surface level, these videos are pranks. But they're also social experiments for Pieters to test what he can get away with.

In LA, for example, Pieters never told anyone Sheeran was with him. They didn't make a fake ID or spread the news on social media. Everything that happened was just a result of social contagion of people hearing Ed Sheeran was in the room. To Pieters, obviously lying and deceiving would be a lot less interesting than what they pulled off.

"I think we always we always try to, not only from a creative point of view, but also from a slightly moral point of view, not completely dupe someone by breaking the law or doing something really wrong," Pieters said. "We always try to give people a bit of a chance."

When tricking reality stars into making ridiculous claims on television, the fake production company he and Manners created, called Invisible Objects, had photos of their "team" on its website. Employees included Colonel Gaddafi, Katie Hopkins, and Julian Assange.

On the site for their Deliveroo "restaurant," there was an AirPod clearly visible where there should have been feta cheese.

"That makes the video far more interesting because you're watching thinking, 'How have these people not clocked this?'" Pieters said. "But it's amazing what people don't notice."

He said it's a bit like the famous selective attention test by researchers Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, where you have to count how many times players pass a basketball. Spoiler alert: the real perception test has nothing to do with the number, but noticing the man dressed as a gorilla.

"Have you ever had that thing where you're looking for your keys, and they're right in front of you, but you don't see them?" said Pieters. "What I mean by all that is often people don't notice very blatant things in front of them if they don't want to or if they're not looking for it."

The magic of misdirection also plays a part

Manners' experience with magic also comes in handy here thanks to his skill of misdirecting people. This allows them to get away with things you might not expect them to.

"He's good at making people not realize when they're being tricked, which is what a magician does," said Pieters. "They make you look one way and then they're doing something in the other direction, which I guess there's a lot of what we do in our videos."

The biggest challenge for Pieters is coming up with new ideas. After the fake Ed Sheeran stunt, he said he was feeling a bit stuck.

"I think that comes with all aspects of life, that yin and yang concept, where anything that's good or bad in your life has this adverse affect," he said. "Having success and doing well definitely comes with the pressure of continuing to do well. But I try best to not feel that pressure too much."

While Pieters' recent videos have all racked up millions of views, he knows that not everything is going to be a hit. He tries to stay "as close to center as possible," not getting too carried away when things do well, so to not feel too disappointed if one video doesn't take off in the same way.

But one thing's for sure — 2020 will bring more social experiments where Pieters and Manners push the boundaries of what they can get away with, keeping the channel as one of the most intriguing and entertaining on YouTube right now.

When asked what he thinks of his "most underrated YouTuber" label, Pieters said he's felt spoilt with views, especially since hitting his long-term goal of 1 million subscribers.

"These comments on the internet, I can only take it as a compliment," he said. "But I feel having as many followers as I have, and the amount of views I'm getting at the moment, I feel very lucky. So I wouldn't describe myself as underrated."

Read more:

A YouTuber tricked influencers into thinking they'd been sent pieces of the moon, but it was actually just gravel

A YouTuber tricked reality TV stars into endorsing a fake charity that he said taught underprivileged African children how to ski

A YouTuber with almost 1 million subscribers sold microwave meals from his apartment on food-delivery app Deliveroo pretending to be a restaurant called 'The Italian Stallion'

A YouTuber used an Ed Sheeran lookalike to trick influencers and tabloids into believing that the real singer was at the KSI vs Logan Paul fight

A former 'SNL' assistant turned YouTuber with millions of followers tells all about vlog-life — from eating toenails to burnout

SEE ALSO: 20 YouTube channels you should really subscribe to in 2020

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• In an influencer marketing world dominated by Instagram, having a large Pinterest following doesn't guarantee big sponsorship deals. 
• Some top Pinterest influencers make more money on Instagram where they have much smaller followings, they told Business Insider.
• We spoke to three influencers with a combined 15 million followers — Keiko Lynn, Erica Chan Coffman, and Jan Halvarson — on how they make money from the social platform.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Keiko Lynn, a personal style and lifestyle blogger, is one of Pinterest's biggest stars and gets more than a million monthly viewers on the platform.

But advertisers care more about reaching her fans on Instagram and her blog, KeikoLynn.com, than the board-based social platform.

"It's usually a secondary ask from brands," Lynn told Business Insider. "I think it's underutilized because I have such a huge amount of eyes on my Pinterest."

When marketers do request sponsored pins, it's often part of a larger package deal, Lynn said. A typical sponsorship package includes one Instagram post, two to three frames on Instagram Stories, a blog post, and a dedicated pin on Pinterest.

Lynn, who's represented by the social influencer marketing agency Digital Brands Architects (DBA), is not alone in struggling to sell Pinterest as a standalone channel.

Pinterest influencers Erica Chan Coffman and Jan Halvarson, who each have millions of followers, said the platform has best served their businesses indirectly through traffic referrals.

"Soon after Pinterest launched, it quickly became obvious that it was the top driver of traffic to my blog," said Coffman, executive editor at HonestlyWTF. Coffman, who has 6.2 million followers on Pinterest, includes sponsored pins in contracts with large brands.

But she says most of her direct income comes from Instagram and her blog. Even though she has nearly 50 times more followers on Pinterest than Instagram, Coffman is able to charge more for Instagram posts and Stories.

"I make most of my income from blog posts and brand partnerships on my blog," she said. "Social media is definitely secondary. The fact that I can keep my traffic numbers high thanks to a lot of traffic drivers like Pinterest is hugely beneficial for my overall business strategy."

Read the full breakdown of how much money these influencers charge for sponsored pins on Business Insider Prime.

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• YouTube star Jake Paul is a veteran social media star, and has used his success to launch the careers of other creators through an incubator called Team 10.
• Since its launch in 2016, Team 10 has been enmeshed in controversy: the group's shared house was accused of turning a quiet neighborhood into a "living hell," and several members have quit over the years complaining of bullying, drama, and a toxic atmosphere.
• Paul recently told Business Insider that although the social media business has dramatically changed since Team 10 first started, he is the "special secret sauce" that's kept it alive and successful.
• Team 10 has maintained a low profile and produced little content in recent months, which Paul said is because the group is "waiting for the right moment" to reveal some big changes.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

With a career spanning seven years in the spotlight, YouTuber Jake Paul can be viewed as a veteran in the creator space.

Since exploding onto the scene in 2013 on the now-defunct Vine, the 23-year-old Paul has attracted nearly 20 million YouTube subscribers and ample headline-worthy controversies. Much of that drama has surrounded his influencer incubator, Team 10, a collective he formed nearly four years ago to help turn young creators into big social media stars like him.

Paul launched Team 10 back in 2016, years before collab houses like Hype House were born and TikTok was even in existence. Paul was one of the earliest to realize the benefit of creators being in close physical proximity, and rented an $18,000-a-month house in Los Angeles for Team 10 in August 2016. Some of the earliest members of Team 10 include successful YouTubers like Alissa Violet and twins Lucas and Marcus Dobre.

"Our business model has always been helping young influencers reach their potential," Paul told Business Insider in a recent interview. "It's just changed so much with the evolution of social media."

However, Team 10 quickly made a name for itself as the bad boys in the creator space. Team 10's house in Los Angeles' Beverly Grove neighborhood was the scene of noisy house parties, including one where furniture was set on fire in the backyard. Neighbors accused the squad of turning the peaceful community into a "living hell" and "war zone," with young fans swarming the street with the hopes of interacting with their favorite influencers.

For his part, Paul seemed not to care. Paul and Team 10 moved out of the neighborhood and into a new home in Calabasas by October 2017. However, the landlord of the former Team 10 house sued Paul for $2.5 million in 2018, alleging they trashed the rented house.

Since then, Team 10 has comprised a rapidly changing roster of influencers, with creators moving in with big dreams and leaving with massive followings — but also with dramatic tales to tell. Multiple former Team 10 members have accused the collective of harboring a toxic culture peppered with bullying and harassment. Members have said they were afforded no privacy and were victims to Paul's endless tirade of attention-grabbing stunts. Alissa Violet, an original Team 10 member formerly in a relationship with Paul, was publicly accused of cheating on him and accused Team 10 of not paying her what she was promised.

Despire the controversy, Paul has stuck with leading Team 10, even as his career has led him to follow forays into boxing, acting, music, and a whirlwind six-month marriage with YouTuber Tana Mongeau.

"It's more difficult as my career becomes bigger," Paul told Business Insider. "I'm not able to focus on it as much."

The problems with Team 10 have continued in regularity. Three queer YouTubers left Team in 2019: Cole Carrigan left first, alleging he was emotionally abused and called homophobic slurs. Two transgender YouTubers then said they were kicked out of the Team 10 house after they were told they weren't "real girls."

It's not like the Team 10 drama hasn't had negative implications for Paul himself. Paul once starred as a main character in the Disney Channel series "Bizaardvark," which he left mid-season in 2017. While both Paul and Disney have said that his exit was a mutual decision, the timing of his departure led to questions of whether it had to do with the drama stirred up from Team 10 house's neighborhood shenanigans.

However, Paul told Business Insider that he's never considered stepping back from Team 10, where he considers himself a vital part.

"The hard part is, I'm the special secret sauce to the business being successful," Paul said. "There's only a couple influencers, counting on one hand, who can actually create huge business and revenue models."

Meanwhile, Team 10 has been relatively quiet online. Nothing has been posted to its YouTube channel in more than six months. Paul said Team 10 has maintained "a low profile" as it goes through some massive changes, and is waiting "for the right moment" to unveil itself in a new light.

Beyond Team 10, Paul told Business Insider he's focusing on interests that bring him "happiness and freedom," instead of a lucrative income. This mindset may help to explain why Paul fell in 2019 from Forbes' list of the 10 highest-paid YouTube stars— although his net worth is estimated to stand at around $11.5 million.

2019 was a particularly wild year for Jake Paul. Paul started dating a fellow YouTuber, Tana Mongeau, not long after both of them had gone through high-profile star-studded breakups. From the beginning, their relationship made headlines and was rumored to be a publicity stunt. Paul and Mongeau publicly dated for a month, then got engaged, and held a wild $500,000 Las Vegas wedding that featured a public brawl — before announcing just a few days into 2020 that they were "taking a break" from their relationship.

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