In Conversation with Beckii Flint: “I don't want influencers to be an afterthought anymore”

From a very young age, Beckii Flint was obsessed with the internet and encouraged to use it by her parents. Growing up in a small, secluded town, the computer opened a portal to a whole world of opportunity she wasn’t finding in her local area. “It meant that I could really broaden my horizons,” Beckii says, “It's not enough for me to just sit back and watch, I want to get involved. The internet really allowed me to tap into that side of my personality.”

Initially, Beckii was posting videos on bolt.com – a now inactive social networking site. However, upon Google’s acquisition of YouTube, and the stratospheric launch of that video sharing site into mainstream popularity, she decided to jump ship, and began posting content there. “Things kind of took off from there,” Beckii muses, “I was never really trying to grow my channel or anything. I was just sharing my hobby, dancing to Japanese pop music.”

She didn’t realise it at the time, but that decision was about to change her life forever.

Even though her intention was never to go viral, Beckii woke up one morning to find her inbox flooded with new subscribers. She was used to her channel receiving a new subscriber every couple of weeks. Shocked and confused, Beckii soon found out that the subs and views were secondary traffic from a Japanese site called Nico Nico Douga, where the videos had originally gone viral.