- Y'all giving me big hard words here?
What is this, how do you say this?
- [Producer] Pseudonym.
- Pseudonym.
You mean a nickname?
"In 2010, Singh started her YouTube channel under the",
what is it?
- [Producer] Pseudonym.
- Pseudonym.
But there's a P in it, you know that?
Hey, Lilly here, and I'm about to fact check some fans
who have some stuff on the Internet,
so I'm ready for my self-esteem to plummet.
Let's get into it.
[upbeat music]
Let's start off with fandom.com.
"In 2010, Singh started her YouTube channel
"under the pseudonym 'IISuperwomanII'.
"She thought this nickname would give her the strength
"to stand up for herself and rise to challenges as a child."
Correct.
[bell dings]
I did do this.
In 2010, I sat there,
I was thinking of my YouTube channel name.
I didn't think it would go anywhere, and I thought,
"You know what would be so smart?
"I should use a copyrighted name!"
So that's exactly what I did.
I used to call myself Superwoman
based off a hip hop song I really liked
by Lil' Mo featuring Fabolous, showing my age,
and I honestly didn't have a second thought
about if that was a smart business decision or not.
And alas, here I am calling myself Lilly for a reason
'cause we're not trying to get sued.
As a kid, everyone wants to be a superhero.
If I would have a hard day at school
or if my parents, I would get in a fight with my parents
and I'd run away to the washroom,
I did in fact run away to the washroom once.
I moved all of my clothes into the washroom,
I was very dramatic.
But I would call myself Superwoman to be like,
"I can get through anything, I'm a superhero."
And this is gonna sound real cheese, but it's the truth,
I think one of the things I've learned over time
is that I feel like more of a superhero by being Lilly.
"In 2015, Lilly launched an app
"entitled 'Lilly Singh's Unicorn Island',
"a social media app created for fans
"to share their feelings, thoughts and fan art
"with other members of Team Super and Singh herself.
"There is also a game called Flappy Unicorn on the app,
"a parody version of the international hit mobile game,
"Flappy Bird."
This is true, this is completely true.
[bell dings]
I did have an app.
It was a place for just Team Super,
which is what I call my fans,
to get together, get to know each other,
a safe space where there wasn't all the other noise
of social media, and I was obsessed with Flappy Bird
and very frustrated by it, so I thought,
"Let me slap a unicorn on there
"because why be creative and original when you can parody?
"It's easier."
It was short lived, I will say.
The app, I think I used it for three months.
Then I was like, "This boring" and I stopped doing it.
But I still, to this day, I like the idea
of having a safe place for my fans,
because I do think the Internet can be really noisy.
"In early 2018, Singh adopted a dog, Scarbro,
"who has his own Instagram account
"and features heavily in many of Lilly's videos."
Ding ding ding.
[bell dings]
He's named after my hometown in Toronto,
which is Scarborough spelled longer
and the abbreviated spelling is Scarbro my dog.
He's my best friend.
I would not be surviving my life without him,
especially not pandemic.
Absolutely not.
Yesterday, this is a true story, I came home from shooting
and he has this toy that's a rose,
and he literally brought it to me
and just dropped it beside him.
He just greeted me with a rose as I entered the house.
Your bae could never, could never, okay?
Could never.
"She struggled with depression,
"and began making YouTube videos
"as a way of dealing with her feelings."
Hmm, correct.
[bell dings]
To be honest, I was doing a bunch of stuff
I didn't wanna do.
I was getting a degree in something I wasn't passionate in,
I was kind of being forced to go to grad school
to further do something I wasn't interested in.
I wasn't being very creative
and I was ignoring all of my inner instincts
of things I wanted to do, and I was a sad person.
And then when I discovered YouTube,
I think this creative side of me that I'd suppressed so much
came flying out and was like,
"This is what you actually wanna do.
"You like being funny and you like being creative
"and you like storytelling."
And so YouTube really helped me just discover
who I am and what I actually wanna do.
I think everything is a double-edged sword.
I'm a big believer that every single thing
is good and also bad, depending on how you interact with it
and look at it.
The Internet is great.
You can connect with people.
Think of all the movements we've had
because of the Internet, how much you can get educated
because of the Internet.
But it's also, yes it's a very mean place.
It's where people can be unfiltered
and there's no consequences for what you say and do.
And so, I think it's what you take from it.
When I first started YouTube, I was lonely,
I didn't feel a sense of community.
I did get that from YouTube.
That's when I was an underdog.
When I was an underdog and starting on YouTube
and people wanted me to win,
I did have a lot a lot of supporters.
I still have a lot of supporters.
But with success comes the stripping of your underdog title.
People want you to make it until you make it,
to a certain extent.
So I still have a lot of supporters,
but I also, yes there are a lot of people
who are very mean to me online as well.
And so I think it's that double-edged sword.
This is the best free therapy I've ever received,
by the way, can I just say?
This is great.
Next up, IMDB.
Oh no, is this about me?
Because it was probably two sentences long.
I don't know how y'all dug up something here.
"She started as a Bhangra dancer in Bollywood movies
"such as 'Thank You' and 'Speedy Singhs',
"climbing her way into becoming an Internet sensation."
This is true.
[bell dings]
I am a trained Bhangra dancer, this is correct.
I have been in the Bollywood movies, "Thank You".
I think the title was changed to "Speedy Singhs".
When I shot it, it was called "Breakaway".
If you look very closely in the background
of a monologue in "Thank You", the Bollywood movie,
there's an actress by the name of Sonam Kapoor,
who has a beautiful beautiful scene
and she's striking and amazing,
and I'm in the background wearing pink.
I have no eyebrows.
I have no eyebrows because this was 2011,
when that was the trend,
and I get roasted about it every day.
My fans, when they watch it, they go,
"What is going on with your".
Literally they're this thin and they're arcs on my face.
Full circle though, I just had a Zoom meeting
with that actress.
I was like, "You don't remember this,
"but I was your extra on this movie",
and we just had a development meeting, so full circle baby!
Wikipedia!
Facts, facts, facts.
Okay, oh no.
"Singh was cast in HBO's film adaptation of 'Fahrenheit 451'
"after recording an audition outside an Internet cafe
"in Melbourne, Australia.
"She was in the region to promote her book
"and rushed the audition at her agent's urging
"around 2 am in May 2017."
Absolutely, correct.
[bell dings]
So I was on my book tour for "How To Be A Bawse".
I'd finished a show and my agent was like,
"This is the deadline for this audition"
and my hotel had no Wifi, it was very very spotty,
so I had to find an Internet cafe
at two in the morning after my show.
It was full of gamers, it was very sticky
and I had my vlog camera
and I literally recorded it like this on the street.
There's people walking by, I did the whole bit
and then I got the role.
"Singh announced that she and other celebrities
"were bringing a National Women's Soccer League team
"to Los Angeles that is expected to play in 2022."
Major flex, so true!
[bell dings]
Yes, I am part owner of a new soccer team,
it is called Angel City and I'm very proud of it,
mostly because my athletic ability is very bad.
I also don't know the rules of soccer.
But that didn't matter, that was irrelevant
because I know a lot about women's rights
and the needle I want to move with respect to that,
and so that was really important to me.
It's a group of founders that is very impressive and cool,
and to be honest, I'm like,
"How is my name in a sentence next to theirs?"
Like Natalie Portman, Serena Williams,
and I'm like, "Lilly Singh.
"Hi, I'm also a part of this."
Next up, YouTube Fandom.
"Lilly is a fan of Dwayne The Rock Johnson and WWE."
If you don't know that this is true, then you don't know me.
[bell dings]
I am a fan of the WWE,
but I was a fan of the WWF growing up,
and the OGs know what I'm talking about
because growing up, it was WWF.
He's nodding, he knows what I'm talking about.
I accept the name change,
but I just wanted to put that out there.
Growing up, I loved wrestling because I don't know,
I felt that it was just full of so much personality
and in a lot of ways, WWF or WWE is like Bollywood
and I grew up with Bollywood.
They're both theatrical dramas
that have a lot of personality and charisma,
and I think that's why I was attracted to wrestling.
I know it's fake and I'm there ringside, like,
"No!"
It's just, there's a science that's very beautiful.
I idolized Dwayne for many reasons.
One, because I got into wrestling when I was younger,
so I loved him as The Rock
and I thought he had so much charisma,
and I used to do the Smackdown, the People's Elbow,
all that stuff, the Rock Bottom.
But then as I grew older and I got into this industry,
I think it turned less like, "Oh my God, The Rock" crush,
into more, "I idolize this person's work ethic
"and I idolize their career and their evolution."
They always say don't meet your idols
because they'll disappoint you, he's the exception.
He is just as incredible as you would want him to be.
"Her YouTube channel was hacked in late 2016
"but luckily no videos were deleted."
Is this true?
This might be true, but I blocked it from my memory.
I think this is true.
Oh yes, yes yes yes, this was true.
[bell dings]
I did get hacked and someone changed all my video titles
to something random, to promote a website or something,
but they didn't delete any videos.
See, little do you know that me and YouTube are like this,
so then I just hit up YouTube and I said,
"Can you just go into your back log
"and reinstate everything?"
And they were like, "Sure, no problem."
And I was like, "You're smart but you're stupid,
"aren't you, hacker?
"You didn't delete anything?
"What's wrong with you?
"Hack better.
"Hack better, my friend."
And last, let's go to YouTube.
I'm in love.
Aww how sweet.
With a robot.
Say what now?
Wow.
"So it' confirmed when Lilly will have kids,
"she'll role play for them too?"
I don't even know what this means.
This is a questionable comment.
I don't have kids, I don't know if I'm ever gonna have kids.
But if I do ever have kids, yes I do think characters
and storytelling is really important.
[bell dings]
I think storytelling
is what makes the world go around, truly.
I am very passionate about stories, how we view ourselves,
how they connect with us, how we see the world.
I think these help shape people
and I would definitely want my children,
if I do have children, to understand the powers of story.
I think that sounded really smart.
That sounded smart, right?
"Lilly Singh speaks surprisingly good Punjabi.
"Good for her, now she can survive traffic in Delhi."
What is the correlation here?
[Lilly laughs]
Hmm, no.
[buzzer sounds]
True that I can get by in Punjabi.
False that I'd be able to drive in Delhi.
I would 100% crash.
My parents are from Punjab,
which is a northern state in India.
Hindi and Punjabi are very similar, although not identical,
so I get them confused very very often.
But I do speak better Punjabi than Hindi,
but I don't think that would correlate
with my driving abilities.
I think driving in India takes superpowers,
because those drivers are very very talented.
They're just navigating through animals
and other cars going the opposite direction and pedestrians.
It's just, it's magic, so I don't think I could do that,
but I'm glad that you think my Punjabi is good.
Hi, I'm originally from Toronto, Canada.
I moved to LA about five-ish years ago,
and there's some things that I will never understand
about America.
LunarWolf writes, "I love that Lilly prefers
"stuff about Canada and hates America,
"but she doesn't like winter
"so that's the one thing keeping her in America."
Incorrect.
[buzzer sounds]
I don't hate America, I live in LA.
To be fair, I've seen only certain parts of America,
so I can't make that generalized statement.
I live in LA and I love LA.
I love LA so so so much.
I also really love Canada, and Canada's home,
and so of course there's some things about Canada
that I prefer, like my family and friends are there,
health care's free, Justin Trudeau, he's hot.
But I really do enjoy LA and I don't wanna lie
and say that I hate America, that's not true.
But 100%, the reason I moved is because of the weather,
that is true.
"Lilly Singh is Punjabi and a lot of Punjabi girls
"keep their first names as 'Lilly, Molly, et cetera',
"but they always keep their last name Indian."
Hmm, let me add some context.
[bell dings]
Punjab is one part of India,
so I think you mean Punjabi last name, perhaps?
Or a Sikh last name, which is the religion I grew up in?
I think the reason a lot of Punjabi people
have names like Lilly or Molly
is because it's an abbreviation for something else.
That is not the case for me, I am Lilly.
I've had to show my ID many times,
'cause people didn't believe me,
but there's a reason for this.
Let's do a ♪ quick religious lesson
Got hair in my mouth.
♪ Quick cultural lesson ♪
It is because a lot of Sikh people name their children
based on the Guru Granth Sahib, which is the holy book
in the Sikh culture, for lack of a better term.
It is also considered a guru for us, an everlasting guru,
and when their kid is born, they will go to the temple,
known as the Gurdwara, and they will open the book up
and they will name their child based on, I believe it is
the first sentence or first prayer on that page,
which is why they are kind of narrowed into a corner
to name their kid a certain letter.
But then they, in their hearts, they might want the name
to be something else, so they will just add a prefix
onto the name to satisfy religion
and to satisfy the name they actually wanted.
So for example, I have a cousin named Sharon
and her full name is Gursharron.
That is why that happens.
However, my parents were just like,
"We're just gonna name you Lilly."
That's how that happened.
Thanks so much for watching.
I hope this was educational and entertaining for you.
[upbeat music]