Hello Kitty is YouTube’s newest vlogger, and to be completely honest, her first video is surprisingly inspirational.
Her first vlog, which went live today, gets a little heavier than she wanted. It focuses on how she got to where she is andwhat she wants to do with her new YouTube channel. Hello Kitty admits in the vlog that it took a year of convincing Sanrio, the brand that owns her franchise, and her personal manager to let her start a YouTube channel in the first place.
“Kitty, the internet is dangerous,” her manager told her.
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Nothing’s going to stop her from vlogging, she said. That’s a good thing: Hello Kitty’s first video is chock full of inspirational advice, like taking a leap into unknown territory in order to purse your dreams and never giving up. Kitty also confesses she doesn’t know what her future looks like, or where the YouTube channel will go, but she’s excited to figure it all out.
She’s even planning some future collaborations with friends, which makes me think she’s got a pretty good handle on vlogging already. Hello Kitty ended her first video with a proper sign off, too, telling people to subscribe to her channel. She has just over 11,000 at the time of this writing.
Hello Kitty isn’t the first iconic figure to start her own YouTube channel. Barbie’s vlogged for more than three years. It’s obvious why Barbie wanted to start a YouTube channel in June 2015 — that’s where the doll’s audience is. As Polygon previously wrote:
For the young girls and boys growing up in the age of YouTube videos and smartphones, any information they want is at their fingertips and one URL away. Barbie’s fans today are going to be spending the majority of their time on YouTube, probably going back and forth between the California doll’s blogs and Let’s Play Minecraft videos. Vlogging, and bringing the Barbie empire to YouTube in general, isn’t just one of the smarter decisions the company could have made to keep her relevant — it was the only one.
Hello Kitty’s audience is also moving online, so creating a YouTube channel is just the obvious next step in staying up-to-date with kids.
For more on Hello Kitty, be sure to listen to Polygon’s History of Fun episode below.
