Indie Content Creators: The Life Of Elliot Choy

In the realm of content creation, the process of cultivating one’s personal brand and growing one’s audience often takes several years, involving numerous transformations in the nature of the content itself. This pattern has been examined in this column before, with content creators like DavidParody, and Ava Jules. However, in the case of Elliot Choy, this pattern is broken.

Choy’s YouTube channel has 1.1 million subscribers. When scrolling through his history of videos, the channel appears to be only 3 years old. This is indicative of a quick period of growth that can be attributed to several specific qualities, the first of which is the subject matter of Elliot Choy’s early content.

The three videos on Elliot Choy’s channel with the most views are titled “A Day in My Life at Vanderbilt University”, “Why I Wake Up at 5:00 AM in College”, and “How I Stopped Procrastinating in College”. Each of these videos has over 1 million views, with the first one having nearly 3 million. The common thread connecting these three videos, as well as the entire first year of content created, is the college experience.

Attending college represents a specific life milestone that is shared by at least 20 million undergraduate students every year in the United States alone. Choy’s cleanly edited, relaxed videos detailing his college experience offer the pool of 20 million students-to-be a glimpse into what their own college experience might look like. Interestingly, this allows Choy’s work to occupy two often unrelated genres: The Vlog, and the How-To video. In showing the audience his life as a college student, Choy not only invites them into his life but also demonstrates what the viewer’s life might possibly become if they happen to be a soon-to-be undergraduate student.

Choy’s later content is less about the generic college experience and the content itself becomes more personalized. He vlogs during his experience studying abroad, he goes on small adventures with his roommates, and he leaves college and begins life anew in New York City. Now, Elliot Choy includes his extraordinary experiences alongside his relatable ones, and there are many possibilities for what turn his content can take.