YouTubers, Canadian beauty maven Eman (@emanmakeup) and Brazilian vlogger Alex (@alexmadecosta), now both based in L.A., talk us through what it’s like to share their relationship with a combined 500,000 subscribers who tune in to watch them get coffee, go on vacation and just generally hang together.

Eman: “We ‘met’ on YouTube. Around January of this year, Alex found my channel and, to get my attention, he got his viewers to leave comments on my videos.”

Alex: “Eman’s video randomly popped up on my YouTube feed. I was instantly intrigued. I spontaneously decided to ask my viewers to comment on her latest video. She got over a thousand cheesy pickup lines in a few minutes.”

Eman: “I was so confused. But I checked out his channel and he was really cute, so after hundreds of comments, I had to go on a date with him!”

Alex: “We weren’t sure if we wanted to have our relationship out in the open for a while; we kept it behind the scenes for around seven months before posting our first video together in July.”

Eman: “You’re opening the doors for people to have an opinion on your personal life. But Alex is such a big part of my life, I couldn’t make videos and not include him.”

Alex: “We are still setting boundaries. We have to be really mindful of how we act in our videos. If I make fun of Eman, for example, even if it’s in a really loving way, her subscribers might actually get mad at me.”

Eman: “I just discovered the term ‘shipping.’ It’s when someone is totally invested in your relationship and they ‘ship’ you. [This is people writing fan fiction about celebs or fictional characters they want to see together as a couple.] People started leaving that in my comments, and I had no idea what it meant. It’s sweet because it comes from a good place.”

Alex:
“We are workaholics. Our dates consist of us brainstorming ideas for future videos while having dinner. It’s great to have someone get it when you say ‘My thumbnail looks awesome.’”

Eman:
“The downside is that if something goes wrong with the relationship, I’ll be stuck having to share that too because my viewers are going to ask so many questions and they won’t stop until I answer them.”

Alex:
“Random people in public who see us vlogging always think we’re trying to take a selfie and ask if we need help.”

Eman: “You get to share something with someone that no one else really gets. Plus, in the end, we have all these great home videos that we can look back at.”

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