Ingrid Nilsen Returns to YouTube for First Time in 5 Years to Reflect on Anniversary of Her Coming Out Video

Ingrid Nilsen has come a great distance.

Since making the choice to stroll away from her YouTube channel and conventional influencing platform 5 years in the past, Nilsen not too long ago returned to YouTube to mirror on the tenth anniversary of her popping out video from June 2015.

Posted 10 years to the day since her popping out video “(*5*)” was posted, Nilsen clarified that her newest submit was not a sign she’s returning to her YouTube channel, however “extra of a coming again to myself.”

“The day that this video goes up is the 10-year anniversary of my popping out video, and I simply really feel so joyful so grateful to be right here,” she mentioned initially of the video.

“I needed to make this video not simply as like a full circle second for myself however for all of you who’ve come up to me over these final 10 years and have stopped me on the road, or in the grocery retailer, or in a bookstore, or simply wherever, getting ice cream, and have advised me what my popping out video has meant to you, and the way it has impacted your life,” she mentioned.

Since posting the unique video, Nilsen revealed that “to this present day each week” she nonetheless has viewers who come up to her in public and share what her popping out meant to them.

The unique video, which has now been seen greater than 18 million occasions, was a teary confession from Nilsen, who was finest identified on the time for her magnificence content material.

“There’s one thing that I need you to know, and that one thing is I am homosexual,” Nilsen mentioned in the decade-old video earlier than breaking down in tears. “It feels so good I am shaking proper now as a result of this second is actual and it is right here.”

Within the 19-minute video from 2015, she gave an sincere and detailed confession about her sexuality, admitting that being attracted to ladies was one thing that’d “all the time been an element of me,” although she did not really feel her sexuality was “universally accepted” in the atmosphere she grew up in.

In her newest submit, Nilsen admitted that earlier than posting the video, she’d had many encourage her behind the scenes to proceed to hold that half of her life a secret.

“After I posted that video it was concurrently this sense of freedom and feeling simply this immense quantity of gratitude for doing one thing that I used to be so nervous about that I used to be so scared to do, particularly in such a public approach,” she mentioned in the brand new YouTube video. “And behind the scenes what quite a bit of folks do not know, is that there have been folks telling me not to come out. That it will jeopardize my profession, and I mentioned, ‘I am doing it anyway.’ And that was actually painful for me.”

That menace of dropping her platform lingered in the lead-up to the video and likewise after, as she revealed she’d obtained threats compromising her privateness and security following its launch.

“It was actually actually scary I do know what it seems like to have your private security jeopardized whenever you’re actually getting threats for simply being who you might be,” she mentioned.

Nilsen recalled the way it was “actually scary” to hear folks insist it will have an effect on her profession. “I’m a mixed-race girl. I didn’t develop up with cash, and I used to be 26 years previous. I had constructed this profession being a creator, and that cash was the one [significant amount of] cash that I had ever seen in my life,” she defined.

“On the identical time, I believed to myself, you recognize, I’ve been by a lot in my life… I didn’t develop up with cash,” she continued. “I used to be like, I can determine this out. I’ve been in onerous locations earlier than, and if my profession disappears and I lose every thing, I can determine it out.”

Nilsen famous that a lot of the preliminary negativity was centered round others’ notion of what somebody together with her sexual id appeared like.

“There was simply a lot emphasis on how I appeared and the way I offered, loving magnificence and being blended race and you recognize additionally being queer. Like, how do all of this stuff come collectively? This does not match the molds that we have been fed for so lengthy in phrases of what homosexual seems to be like,” Nilsen mentioned. “We have all the time existed. I’m not the primary mixed-race fem lesbian to ever exist, however it was so stunning to those that that is what queerness seems to be like.”

Although the video didn’t mark Nilsen’s return to her YouTube channel, and she or he reiterated she won’t be making extra content material repeatedly, she needed to share the reflection 10 years later together with her unique followers, as they’ve “grown up collectively.”

“I hope by giving myself my finest probability, another person is ready to give themselves their finest probability too,” she mentioned. “I’m so immensely grateful to be sitting right here 10 years later, simply so pleased and so fulfilled.”