Hi, Nala.
You can't be in every video.
[Alfie]: Come on
You can sort of see her.
[Alfie]: You still recording the video for me?
What video?
[Alfie]: Ten Reasons I Love Alfie, for Valentine's.
No.
Hello, everybody!
First of all, I want to start by saying Happy Valentines Day!
Or Happy Galentine's Day, or Palentine's Day.
There's so many different variations of telling someone you love them today.
Whatevs.
Or if you're single, it doesn't matter.
It's just a day.
I'm wearing my special Valentine's shirt for the occasion
And this video has nothing to do with Valentines Day.
So if you've clicked this thinking, "ugh I'm so done with Valentine's," don't worry.
This actually has nothing to do with Valentine's Day at all.
Just before I start this video,
I'm just gonna throw it out there and say
I feel like I look like a sack of poop today.
So...we've gone for a bit more of a cosy, ambient vibe
which I actually quite like
Because this room is, like, one of the cosiest rooms in the whole house
and I absolutely love it.
So, I quite like that we're channeling more of a cosy vibe
but it is also to cover up the fact that I have a chin growing on my chin.
It's the biggest spot I've ever had in my entire life
Uhm, if I wasn't so, like, frustrated about it, I would be proud of it.
[laughs]
Quite a while back, I asked on Twitter what questions you would love me to answer
that I had never answered before, or that you would love to know.
And I saved them all for a special occasion.
This is definitely going to be a Q&A that spans over a couple of videos,
because there was so many questions that I was like,
"I would love to answer that, and I've never answered that."
So, I'm gonna start going through them.
Ahh, that one's cute.
*shouts* Alf!
[Alfie, from afar]: Yeah?
*shouts* Come here a sec!
*normal voice* Do you mind just sitting in this a second?
[Alfie]: Do you have like...unready I am
Because it's Valentine's day, I have just said this isn't about Valentine's day
It's actually a Q&A but the first question I've got in here is,
"When did you realise you actually loved Alfie?"
- Ughhhhh here we go.
- Like, what made it click?
And I was like, do you know what?
It is Valentine's Day, let's answer this together.
I think I realised I loved Alfie when... obviously before I moved here
Because me moving was actually a really big deal.
Like, I'd grown up in this tiny village. I'd never thought I would move.
So obviously I realised I loved you before that, otherwise I would never have moved to Brighton
I don't know. I think just when I was always thinking about you, and always wanted to talk to you.
Because you had never loved anyone before, so how did you know?
- Alright. Bloomin' hell.
You bring me in the video randomly, and bloomin' dump me under it.
I don't know. I don't know. I need some time to think of this answer.
I don't know, it's just, like, so used to the person being there kind of thing.
Like, I can't imagine living in a house without you living there.
But then obviously you don't have to live with somebody to love them, so
I don't know.
- So you basically just got used to me and thought, "Well, I must love her then."
- It's been too long now. I can't back out, I'm stuck.
- I quite liked this question. It was from Charlotte and she said,
"I don't know if anyone has asked it before, but I'd like to know which dream of yours you remember the clearest."
When I was a teenager, I used to have this dream
That I was a witch, my mum was a witch, and my mum's mum -- so my nan -- was a witch as well.
And it was so vivid
and I used to have it so much.
And I really enjoyed it, because in the dream we all had brooms, and we could fly
And I just remember dreaming it and feeling like I could actually fly, and then waking up the next day
being like, if I really concentrate, I think I can fly.
Like , it was the weird - and I'm a teenager at this point , so I know I can't fly, but it just felt so real,
and I had that dream so many times. I've never had, like, repeat dreams apart from that one. And also tsunamis,
which I guess is a nightmare. But I used to dream that a lot , like at least once a week, I would dream that me , my mum and
my nan were witches, and we were good witches, not bad witches, and we could fly on brooms, and no one else knew,
and it was like this family secret that we had and it was just the best thing ever.
"Why don't you have your own gaming channel?"
I actually do like gaming. Maybe not, kinda, more of, like, the console sense, but I really like playing PC or Mac games.
Things like Sims, I could spend hours and hours on Sims, I love watching Sims gaming, and I play that with Alfie.
But I did actually try and film my own gaming video, and it didn't go down very well. I was trying to play Theme Hospital,
because it's one of my favourite games ever and I just - there's not very many people online that play it and I was like, I'm going to try.
And I was going to upload it on my second channel, or Alfie's gaming channel, and I can't remember which,
but when I'm actually playing the game, I'm not very good at commentating over it. So because I concentrate so much on the game,
I don't actually speak.
So this whole episode that I filmed, which must of been around forty minutes long,
I feel like I didn't have much kind of charisma or character, and I was like, no one's going to watch this and I'm not being very entertaining,
and all I'm really doing is filming myself playing a game and not saying anything. So that is why I don't have a gaming channel,
and I think if I was to film Sims without Alfie,
he wouldn't remind me to talk. I would just get so into it, but it's good there's two of us that film it because
he reminds me I need to actually talk.
Heather said "If you could go back and change one thing that has happened to you , what would it be?"
I think this is quite a deep question, because even though there is certainly things in my life I've not enjoyed or things that
I sort of feel like I would do a little differently, ultimately I do believe that everything happens for a reason and that bad things happen so good things can happen
after it, and that the bad things kind of, erm, show the value of the good things and when I think of it like that I think I wouldn't change anything.
But if we're getting, like, down to the nitty gritty, there are certainly things that I'm like "Why didn't I do this ?" or "Why did I put up with that ?"
or "Why didn't I say this?" But then I'm like if I didn't, would I be here today , would I be sat making this video
in my house in Brighton, like,
I don't know.
Holly said, "What is it actually like to be reported about in the news about every little thing you do?"
On the grand scheme of things, I don't get written about as much as, you know, actual, like, celebrities and people that have, like, interesting lives,
I don't know. Like if I'm being completely honest, I hate it.
If we're just going to strip this down and er , talk
you know, one to one, I really don't like it.
I love being online, I love having control over everything I can post, I love you guys and everyone that watches and gets involved,
and I liked that I had built my own community, and we could talk about what we wanted. And I'm so fortunate
in the sense that there are so many of you, and it's kind of like we created our own little, like, I dunno.
I feel like YouTubers and, like, the online space don't see traditional media in that same way.
We don't need traditional media to
tell a story because we can do that ourselves.
And so I think sometimes when I'm trying to tell my story and they go, "Ooh this is kind of interesting, let's write about this,"
and it doesn't always spin what I've said in a positive way,
just to get clicks. It's really weird to get my head around, because
I think also a lot of people forget that when I started this, there was no
Oh but if my channel grows to this size, then the press will be interested, and there'll be people stopping you in the street,
and you'll go to signings, and you'll do signatures, and you could be sat in a restaurant with your family and someone will come up and ask you for a video message
for their best friend, like, I didn't know what could ever be, if that makes sense.
There was no one that was already experiencing all of this, and if there was I wasn't aware of them, so
it was all very new and I had to learn very quickly how to kinda balance that.
Because, ultimately, all I really wanted to do was film videos for an audience of people online, and it hadn't really occurred to me that if that audience grew
on a much, much larger scale, that that would change the way I lived my life offline.
If that makes sense.
I feel like quite a lot of the time people say, you know, "Oh but, you know, it's just part of it, it's part of it" but when a lot of Youtubers started, it wasn't part of it,
and it's something that people have had to learn to deal with and kind of learn to slot into their, like, everyday lives,
and it is scary, daunting, unpredictable. But there are also really amazing aspects of that as well because it means I get to actually meet you guys.
"If ten-year old you could see you now, how would she feel?"
I dunno, this one's a hard one, because I feel like I have pinch me moments all the time.
I don't take any of this for granted, and it still surprises me on a weekly basis that I am doing the things that I'm doing,
and that my life has gone this way. And so I don't even think ten-year old Zoë would ever think twenty six-year old Zoë would be doing all the things she's doing.
I don't know.
"Have any friends ever left you/judged you because of your career?"
um...
I think anyone that's ever had an issue with it, or not understood it, or kinda turned a blind eye or mocked it, which I definitely did have
when I first started doing this, but it was all very indirect. Those people weren't ever really friends and they're not my friends now, um, if that makes sense,
like they were kind of people I knew.
Starting a relationship online is...
daunting,
and, um, because of the size of the audience, you are aware of people kind of judging your every move,
and kind of taking what they want from certain things, and that's just what happens.
But so much of the time it's so focused on relationships, when actually
I think it can be just as difficult having friendships online, especially if those other people aren't too sure about, you know, being online or being on camera,
um,
or if they have channels themselves, and they're not sure if they want to be in your videos,
or kinda, of what can come from that, and it can be- it can make me quite paranoid, because I want people to be my friend for me,
not for anything else, and
I had this, like, time where I was like, no one's going want to be my friend because they're not going want be on my channel.
Like, how daunting is that gonna be? Or they're not going to want to hang out with me because they're gonna think I'm a certain way when I'm not,
or, I dunno. It- I honestly think, I wish more people would, like, talk about this a bit more, because it is so, like, relationship-focused,
like, what's it like having a boyfriend that daily vlogs, and what's it like, you know, having a relationship online, but you don't really talk about
kinda friendships, or building friendships or,
not knowing if someone really wants to be your friend or doesn't. And that is, like, a whole thing in itself.
I'm, like, a super trusting person. I basically just trust everybody and, like, welcome anyone with, like, open arms,
and I think at one point I was a bit like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. I don't know. I was really, like, questioning it,
and I was like, what do people want from me? I don't know.
But all the friends I have now are so supportive and so lovely, whether they're YouTube friends or non-YouTube friends, and think some of them
still find it kind of weird.
Like I was with some of my friends recently, actually I think it was, like, last year, and I was putting petrol in the car and someone was screaming like "Zoella!"
and my friend was like, "I find it so weird, because to me you're not Zoella, to me you're just Zoë."
And it's kind of like that kind of clicking in and out of like, oh yeah, that's... that's what you do and that's, like, your work thing,
but I know you as, like, Zoë.
"When did you decide that you wanted to live on your own out of your family house, and was it a scary or an easy decision?"
Growing up, I always thought I would live in my tiny village for the rest of my life.
I couldn't imagine ever moving away .. ever
In fact, me and my friend, um, who- we lived quite close to one another, we were always like,
"Oh, we need to stay in this village forever," and "You'll have a house there, and I'll have a house there, and our kids will go to the same primary school
and we'll stay here." And pretty much all my family lived kind of, like, ten minutes around me,
and I just thought that's where I would always be.
And I'm definitely a home comforts girl, which you all know, and I didn't really do a lot of travelling.
In fact, before I did YouTube, I think the only places I'd ever visited was the Maldives on a family holiday and Portugal.
I had no desire to travel the world,
I just wasn't really interested in it. And I loved being at home, I loved being round my family, I loved my tiny little village life, and I think
I couldn't imagine
a different life to that, if that makes sense. But when I started doing YouTube, I
massively grew in confidence, even more so off-camera than on-camera.
I think, like, my parents will agree with me here, that I started
going to London to events, and for me that was, like,
terrifying.
I was getting the train to London, I was meeting new people, I was going to events and meetings,
and I was filming collabs with, like, Marcus in Bristol.
And I'd never driven to Bristol on my own, even though it really wasn't that far away. But I drove across Bristol to go and hang out with Marcus and Niomi,
and I filmed with Marcus. And then I started going to conventions in, like, Florida, and LA, and Milan,
and, like, all these different places. And I think that made me see that the world was a lot bigger than just my village,
which I still absolutely love.
But when I met Alfie, and I came to Brighton on the train,
I remember getting off the train and just being like, I love this city. I instantly felt like I could live there.
And I have never felt like that about any other place I've ever visited in my life. And the minute I got off that train I was like, this is a really nice place.
I feel really comfortable here, I really really love it. In fact, the only other place I feel like I have felt like that is Edinburgh.
And I'm not gonna move to Edinburgh. Don't worry.
And obviously as me and Alfie were dating, seeing each other, going out, whatever, I used to drive to see him, like, every week.
And that's, like, a two and a half hour drive, and I was doing that, like, every week, twice a week.
And every time I was in Brighton, it just felt like more and more comfortable, and more and more like home,
and so, eventually I was like,
I kind of want to be here. Like, I love the sea, I love that there's the countryside, and I've done this drive so often now, it doesn't feel far,
if that makes sense. Like the more I'd done it, the more it didn't feel far away.
I knew, obviously, I wasn't gonna be living with my dad and my brother for the rest of my life, and I was starting to think about, where do I want to move out,
and as I was kinda making these decisions, I was visiting Brighton a lot and I was like, I think I just want to move to Brighton.
I didn't want to move straight in with Alfie, because I think packing up your whole life and moving two and a half hours away is already, like, a big deal.
Maybe not to everyone, but it certainly was to, like, this country bumpkin. So I moved into my own place.
Obviously me and Alfie saw each other every single day and he may as well have lived with me, but I still like that I made that step
on my own, and I was renting that place, and it had all my things in. And I think living there made me realise that this is where I want to be,
and then me and Alfie moved in together, and the rest is history.
Did that rhyme? I feel like it might of done.
"Are they any YouTubers that you hate or dislike but don't want to say anything or hurt anyone's feelings?"
I really could dish the dirt here.
But its not my kinda vibe.
So all I'm going to say is, yes, there are some really not very nice people who make YouTube videos, who I would be more than happy to never see ever again,
or cross paths with,
But...
That's the same for everything in life.
If you work in an office, you're not gonna like everyone you work with, and YouTube is a place for anyone to upload videos, and there are hundreds
and thousands of people that make videos.
So I think its only right that some are not the sort of people that I
would like.
And the only people that I don't like are people that have been
rude or unnecessarily bullyish towards me or my friends. But then that's just the same for anything.
There's people like that in school who are just not very nice, it just so happens that some of those people have created YouTube channels.
But yeah, I'm not going to say names 'cause that's not my style, but
you never know.
Never say never.
"How does it really feel to date someone almost four years younger than you?"
Um...
I don't really think about it too much, because Alfie is actually quite a mature twenty three-year old.
Is he twenty-three?
I think Alfie is quite a mature twenty three-year old and I'm quite an immature twenty six-year old, so I think somewhere we balance out,
and...
it's absolutely fine.
I never even think about the fact that he is younger than me, in that sense. And I think as we get older the gap kinda closes anyway.
The only time it's really obvious is when I'm going, "Oh my God, do you remember that programme?" and he's like, "No, I watched this," and I'm like, oh my God...
Like, I can't believe you were watching that when I was watching that, because I feel like when you're much younger, the age gap is much bigger.
But apart from that, I don't really think about it.
"With your high metabolism, were you ever bullied or had hate about it? If so, how do you deal with it? I have a high metabolism too."
Yes, in answer to that. I have had pretty much my whole life. I've never been bullied,
I wouldn't say I've ever been bullied about it, but people make remarks, even now.
I dunno.
I think up until the point I realised it wasn't okay and it was making me feel bad, which must have been around 18-19,
I didn't think too much about it. I just used to laugh it off. So it would be, like, family members, or like, friends, or like, people in school,
would say things like,
You're so skinny, like, why are you so skinny? Or, you should put some meat on those bones, or, come on, finish up, you need to eat, you need more pies, like,
you name it, I've heard it. Naturally both myself and Joe, and my Mum and Dad, are very, like, petite people.
I wouldn't say it completely changed the way I viewed myself, because I was always quite happy with my body, and it was only when people would make the remark
that I would go, oh, like, am I too skinny? Do my collar bones stick out, like, am I too bony?
I want to fe - I want to look how people think I should look. It wasn't even about me. It wasn't that I would look at myself and be like,
I think I'm too skinny. It was that other people saying these things made me feel like I should put weight on for them.
I dunno. I never had that same, like,
view of myself that everybody else had, so I felt like I needed to please them rather than pleasing myself.
I would say the only time I was very self conscious about my body was when I got boobs and a bum, but was, like, soooo skinny.
Basically my boobs and my bum came at the same time. I've got the stretch marks to prove it, because they didn't gradually go there, they just were there.
And I had reached, like, my peak height but I was still really skinny.
And um...
It just- I think at that point I looked at myself and was like, my proportions don't feel right, I don't feel comfortable like this.
And then as I got older I sort of like evened out a bit more, but I do still get it. In fact, there was one time, um, I was at a party and someone
who was, like, an adult at the time- I must have been about 21, 22,
um, and an adult, I didn't really know them particularly well, came up to me in front of everyone and was like,
why are you so skinny ?
And I was like, I don't have an ans - I don't- I can't give you an answer to this, because I just feel so uncomfortable
And I was like, what do you mean ?
And this person was like,
You're so- you're too skinny, you need to eat.
And
it was really weird, because I'd only ever really had comments like that as I was growing up, and I felt like those people were kind of
looking out for me, or...
They were, like, teachers or, like, I dunno, like, people that I thought just wanted the best for me. But when I'm a 22-year old woman,
grown woman, and someone's still talking to me like that, I was a bit like,
this is not okay.
Like, I don't like this.
This isn't-
This isn't helpful and this is- you're embarrassing me in front of everybody. I don't know what to say to you.
And I also felt like I wasn't entitled to feel like that, because I knew people who really wanted to lose weight,
and I felt like I couldn't moan for been smaller or skinnier.
I felt like I wasn't allowed to. I felt almost like...
You should- you're not allowed to dislike what you look like, because there are people who would love to lose weight, so therefore you can't.
But actually, if you have
some form of, kind of, body image issue, or you don't feel very self-confident, or there are certain things people say to you about your appearance that really get to you,
you are allowed to feel
down about it. You're allowed to feel self-conscious about it, you're allowed to feel those things.
Um, because everybody
has something
that they wish they could change, or they don't like, or, you know, one day you might like it the other day you might not.
And even now, as I'm 26, there is- there are times I look in the mirror and go "where have my tits gone?" or "why is my bum drooping?" or "why is my skin so bad today?"
There's always something
that someone
feels more self-conscious about. So you are allowed to have those days, and I think I learnt that as an adult.
Um, I just kind of learnt not to care. As long as you're happy, and you're healthy, no one else's opinions matter.
Um, and I think that's really important to remember.
And I think I'm going to leave the Q&A there because I've already rambled on for far too long, and I need to edit this, and it's going to take me a while.
But I really hope you guys enjoyed this kind of more chilled Q&A video. I've got lots more questions to answer.
So I'm gonna do another one of these quite soon because there are still some great questions that you guys had.
I really hope you've had a lovely day,
however you spent it. I love you anyway, so I hope that counts for something.
And give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, and I'll see you again very soon, guys.
Bye!