The internet's most famous people converged in 1 place and it all was captured on video: Inside my trip to VidCon

Yahoo

11-07-2025

I spent a frenetic weekend at a convention center in Anaheim, California, in June, immersed among content creators and their rabid fans. VidCon, 15 years after its inception, is still a hotbed for influencers — and discussions about how they impact pop culture and turn social media into prosperous careers.
I kept a diary of my time mingling with online celebrities and the people who keep the creator economy afloat. It was sometimes glamorous, oftentimes scrappy and always fascinating, just like the internet itself. Let's talk about it.
Much of the vibe of VidCon is set by the palm tree-lined street outside the Anaheim Convention Center, where vendors line up to sell you food from a truck or guide you through the line for a photo opp.
This year, there were Minecraft topiaries in honor of the game's mainstream success through its movie adaptation, a box sponsored by horror production company Blumhouse which participants could enter to scream at the top of their lungs and a huge rainbow banner celebrating YouTube's 20th anniversary that was positioned over a small house at the intersection of 'Subscribe Street' and 'Like Lane.' It rivaled Disneyland, which was also visible from the window of my nearby hotel.
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Everyone was filming all the time — including me and Yahoo video producer Sam Matthews.
As we walked through the convention center, we saw a girl dressed as Wednesday Adams do an elaborately choreographed dance in the middle of the floor, declaring, 'I was just kidding' to the crowd that had formed by the time she finished. We saw another huge gathering of people formed around dozens of influencers holding their phones to their faces, lip-syncing to a song we couldn't hear with perfect synchronicity.
There was also a huge line of kids forming to take photos with a man dressed as The Lorax, who was giving instructions on how to pose and interact with him.
None of this was sanctioned, but it wasn't forbidden, either.
The sprawling expo hall in the convention center's grandest ballroom was extremely popular for attendees. There, amid lines of people waiting for meet and greets with their favorite creators or big events hosted on a mainstage, was a smorgasbord of all the finest collectibles. The little stuffed monsters known as Labubus were clipped to the purses and belt loops of every tenth person I saw. I formed a bond with a person in a Furby costume.
Another ultra-popular toy was the Easy Sqweezy Stretchy Banana which is literally just a big squishy banana toy that a dad told me kids like hitting each other with. There was a huge stand for mystery merch boxes, where fans could spend a few dozen dollars to get a random assortment of items related to titles like Stranger Things, Spider-Man and Star Trek. The cashier told me the most popular box is for The Goonies, but he didn't really understand why.
I was part of the first generation to grow up with access to YouTube, so many of the creators honored in VidCon's Hall of Fame felt like the cool seniors who graduated when I was a freshman, though they're technically titans of media. Still, I was starstruck — more so interviewing Hank Green and Grace Helbig at the event than I was interviewing Josh Hartnett or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the past.
I was also charmed by how kind and down-to-earth the Hall-of-Famers were. Ian Hecox of Smosh talked to me for more than half an hour, and I didn't even let it slip that I used to have a crush on him.
Rosanna Pansino somehow got me cake at a hotel bar when she heard it was my birthday. I've heard all these stories about how internet fame warps your sense of self and reality, but everyone I met was incredibly humble and sweet.
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I expected a crowd of more people my own age at the Hall of Fame ceremony, given that the honored creators had been around since the 2000s, but I was wrong. I consider myself pretty well-versed in the online world, but I felt like an explorer in the depths of an uncharted jungle.
Sam and I were surrounded by children as young as 7, screaming at the top of their lungs to meme-inspired songs performed by YouTuber CG5. We were then subjected to a magic battle between two viral illusionists, Justin Flom and SeanDoesMagic. The kids behind me were screaming jokes laced with internet slang, accusing people of 'hacking' and directing questions like, 'Yo, who are these people?' to an imaginary 'chat.' They were rude to the Hall of Fame inductees, talking over their acceptance speeches, but loudly admitted that Rhett & Link are funny.
Tons of people have asked me who the most popular creator at VidCon was. It wasn't the one with the longest legacy or the biggest following. It was Jmancurly, a YouTuber who almost exclusively shares videos of himself playing the virtual reality game Gorilla Tag, in which people play as legless primates.
I missed his onstage appearance at the Hall of Fame ceremony, but I felt his presence everywhere. He had a giant — and I mean bigger than a house — statue of a buff torso set up in the expo hall. Kids everywhere wore his merch and lined up to play Gorilla Tag. To VidCon attendees, Jmancurly was like all four of the Beatles combined.
Another popular creator duo was AJ and Big Justice, the father-son pair who went viral for the loud New Jersey accents with which they assign things ratings on a 'boom or doom' scale. They had to enter the press room for our interview through a secret door because, as their manager explained, they kept getting 'swarmed.'
People begged them for photos and lined up to make videos with them, in which they would both scream and assess how many 'booms' a selfie-taker deserved. I was overjoyed when Yahoo received five big booms.
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AJ and Big Justice often create content with The Rizzler, an 8-year-old child influencer best known for striking comically macho poses in viral interactions with celebrities. He sadly wasn't able to attend VidCon because he opted to go to Fanatics Fest in New York City instead, to the disappointment of at least a dozen people who asked about his whereabouts. I did see someone carrying around a seemingly life-size cardboard cutout of him, though.
VidCon also felt more exclusive than ever, because, much to the chagrin of fans online, it didn't livestream its panels. You just had to be there.
When I went to VidCon in 2022, everyone wanted to meet an influencer. People lined up around blocks and sat in full costume for hours for the chance to see a YouTuber they adored.
In 2025, everyone wanted to be an influencer. Even when lining up at panels for a chance to ask a creator a question, most wanted to know the secret to success or ask for advice on their careers. I'll never forget how many children I saw wearing T-shirts with their budding YouTube channel names printed on them.
At first, I thought the designated area that linking website Pop Store had set up that offered a hospital-themed 'monetization clinic' for fresh creators hoping to make money off their content was dystopian. 'Your vibe is billable' a neon sign beckoned.
After wandering through, I realized that for so many people, turning sharing what you love into a financially beneficial endeavour is an absolute dream. Who am I to judge, even if someone in a lab coat is prodding me to try my hand at a giant game of 'Operation' so they could lower my guard far down enough that I'd willingly open a website on my phone?
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Luckily, content creators and other members of the creator economy were extremely eager to give advice. I gathered words of wisdom from a dozen of them.
I was particularly moved by the advice from video game streamer and true crime podcast host Ericka Bozeman, who could have tossed vague platitudes at the young YouTuber who approacher her, but instead gave him an on-the-spot overhaul by helping him identify what's distinct enough to embrace about his style and come up with a new channel introduction.
It feels like we only hear horror stories about children who grew up famous online, but the ones I talked to at VidCon love their lives. Big Justice, for instance, is living his dream. Avia Colette, the now-adult child of some of the first family vloggers, wouldn't have it any other way.
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After the success of A Minecraft Movie forced the mainstream entertainment industry to pay attention to the power of a sandbox video game, I became obsessed with untangling how it has managed to stick around for so many years. I spoke to Minecraft YouTubers with millions of subscribers about how they sustain a whole massive ecosystem of fans and content, though you've probably never heard of them.
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The comedy duo I was obsessed with in 2005 is still thriving, but not without their challenges. I profiled the people behind Smosh, a YouTube channel that has survived virality and brushes with career death over and over again for two decades.
They told me the secret to thriving as online creators from the early internet to modern times, which hasn't been easy or normal, but it has been an incredibly fun ride.
Anthony Po is the king of going viral. He thinks it's easy. You probably don't know him by name, but chances are you've seen the Timothée Chalamet lookalike competition, or videos of him eating a jar of cheese balls in front of 3,000 people in a mask.
At 23, he's been a creator for about 10 years, and he said on a panel called 'From Viral Moments to Sustainable Business Models' that 'going viral is kind of easy … it's a science, almost.'
He worked for YouTube's most popular creator MrBeast in 2023, where he said their goal was to have every video reach at least 300 people.
'There's a way to engineer that … you look at what exists and study culture,' he said.
Po isn't into that anymore — he wants to find the authentic human element in everything he does. But it still makes him go viral.
It was fascinating because I think a lot of brands might have been foaming at the mouth just to get a dash of his ability to get their products seen by so many people. Maybe he's onto something, or maybe he's just got the magic touch.
I asked a lot of creators the same question: What do people get wrong about your job that you wish you could correct them on? I got a lot of the same answer: Basically, it's harder than anyone thinks.
I loved VidCon cocreator Hank Green's answer, because he took things in a different direction. He never said content creation was easy, but called attention to the fact that lots of people are creators in the same way that lots of people are musicians. Not everyone's Beyoncé, but that's OK, there can only be one.
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Given the success of creator MrBeast's Prime Video reality series Beast Games, I thought the possibility of breaking out into the mainstream might be the talk of the town at VidCon. I was wrong.
It's notoriously difficult for even the most famous online celebrities to become traditional ones, and after many years, people seem to understand that. At a panel called 'Blurred Lines: Rethinking the Relationship Between Traditional & Digitally Native Entertainment,' I was struck by something that Paul Telner, Viral Nation's head of programming, said. A former YouTuber himself, he now works with creators to develop their own original IP.
'We have an incredible roaster of talent that I really think — they are their own networks. They are their own Nickelodeon. They are their own CNN, they are their own MTV,' he said. 'I love to pair them with traditional [entertainment], because traditional, for the first time in my career, is starting to wake up to creators.'
In other words, old school media like TV and movies need internet celebrities. As Telner explained, there was a time when creators would prefer to produce their own shows, maintain creative control and do so without network feedback. Now, they have more power than ever in the business. Hollywood needs access to the massive audiences of creators, and creators benefit from the budgets and production of traditional entertainment.
I'm always struck by how many fans are willing to pay and line up for long periods of time for a chance to briefly meet and take a photo with their favorite creators. It solidifies, to me, that YouTubers and TikTokers are truly the next class of A-list celebrities for younger generations.
Dream, the most popular Minecraft YouTuber in an already extremely popular online subculture, told me he doesn't like doing meet and greets because it's not enough time to truly make a connection with someone. On the other hand, SoupTimmy, a YouTuber who also has millions of subscribers but a more niche specialty, doesn't mind them. He posts videos of himself solving Rubik's cubes.
'I just treat them like people,' SoupTimmy told me, his fingers clutching a tiny Rubik's cube he wore on a chain around his neck. He didn't expand on that, and honestly, he didn't have to.
I admit I spent most of VidCon avoiding the panels and sessions about AI like the plague, hoping to prioritize talking to creators about what actually aids their careers on a daily basis instead. I underestimated how much AI was a practical answer and not just something that big creators like MrBeast are trying to harness and share as another way to diversify their revenue.
Stephanie Segev, head of creative and content at the link sharing website Hopp by Wix, tells me after VidCon that she highly recommends that creators 'embrace AI beyond ChatGPT prompts.'
'The creators who want to get a head start in 2025 are the ones truly embracing AI at a more technical level,' she says. 'A side-hustler who leans into AI can operate like a full-timer; a full-timer can run like a small agency.'
If this career is really all about consistency, which I keep hearing, maybe leaning into the efficiency of AI isn't such a bad idea. Just don't get into producing AI slop — YouTube just announced it's cracking down on monetizing that.
After I got back from VidCon, I joined Slate's internet culture podcast ICYMI to talk about my experience. Cohosts Candice Lim, Kate Lindsay and I declared YouTube king of the social media sites and daydreamed about how we'd change the convention. Listen here.