At that time, Gigi was identifying as a gay male, something she talked about openly on her channel, along with sharing makeup tips, product reviews, and a revolving carousel of silly stuff. YouTube is sort of like a yearbook for her. “I look back and see: Those were my crazy partying days,” she says, “or this is when I learned about liquid eyeliner.” There’s a hair era that she’s glad is in the past, like most of us. “I was obsessed with the heavy side bang — no more!” But the topics were not only superficial: Gigi’s webcam was also like therapy, a place where she could talk out feelings and fears, and connect with people who understood her in a way that her real-life friends just did not. “I would finish a day at high school, make a video really fast, and get all these words of support and advice that I needed to hear, from all these people I could confide in," she says. "I didn’t even realize I was catapulting myself into a community.”