In 2016, Colleen Ballinger, better known to millions of people around the world as Miranda Sings, became the first YouTube personality to make the jump from internet fame to scripted television. Her sitcom for Netflix, Haters Back Off, garnered mixed reviews, but big ratings ensured the commisioning of a second season, which will stream later this year.
YouTube itself is the fulcrum on which the joke at the heart of Haters Back Off balances. Miranda, who has a voice that might curdle milk and an ego to match, is voraciously ambitious for YouTube fame, covering her favourite songs. It’s a wry commentary on the plethora of motivated millennials who have latched on to the video channel as a means to a celebrity end.
Ballinger’s rise epitomises the ultimate goal of many of YouTube’s biggest names. This month’s GCN cover stars, married couple Rose Ellen Dix and Rosie Spaughton, known to their million YouTube susbcribers as Rose and Rosie, don’t hide their aspirations under a bushel.
Watch Out Netflix!
“Netflix is our ultimate goal,” says Rosie, the quieter of the two. “We’d love to write a series and possibly star in it – that would be the dream.”
Dark-haired Rose cites Ballinger as the stimulus for the pair’s venture into live performance, Exposed, which comes to Dublin’s Vicar Street this month. “We were so inspired when we saw her show back in 2012,” she says. “I thought she was so talented and fearless, and such a creative force. Look at her now, she’s absolutely huge!”
The exclamation mark at the end of that statement epitomises Rose. She’s a fast-talking, super-enthusiastic ball of energy with a lot to say. Rosie, by comparison, is more considered. She’ll answer a question that’s specifically directed her way, but otherwise leaves Rose to do the chatting. The pair went on their first date in 2011, having gotten together in a typically lesbian fashion. “We dated the same person,” Rose laughs. “But not at the same time!”
Click below to keep reading about how Rose and Rosie’s relationship was played out on YouTube.
Rose and Rosie’s ‘Exposed’ is at Vicar Street on Monday, April 24, tickets from €32.50 on Ticketmaster.ie.
While it was love at first sight for Rose, Rosie admits it took her a little more time. “I’m quite a guarded person in terms of relationships,” she says. “Rose helped me break down my barriers.”
Part of the breaking down of those barriers has been the playing out on YouTube of their relationship, something the pair began about six months after meeting. Rose already had a burgeoning YouTube presence and the two decided to join forces to capitalise on it.
“We both grew up loving drama,” says Rose. “I wanted to be an actress when I was young, I studied film at university and Rosie did media studies, so we were both really interested in on-screen performance.”
Don’t Leave Our Audience Waiting
In the early days of their relationship the pair could only meet at weekends. “If we made a video I’d try to get it up the next day,” Rose explains. “We had seven people watching our videos back then and I was like, we don’t want to leave our audience waiting!”
For anyone starting out on YouTube, this kind of consistent enthusiasm is key to success. “I think timing was good for us too,” says Rosie. “We got on the YouTube train before there was this huge thing about becoming famous online and making big amounts of money from it.”
Subscribers to Rose and Rosie’s channels have journeyed with the pair through the early days of their relationship, through their engagement in 2014 and their wedding the following year, which has attracted almost 1.2 million views to date. But they’re nervous of the term ‘role models’.
“It gives you this huge responsibility,” says Rose. “I mean, who am I to talk about what it’s like to be a lesbian, when it’s a different experience for a lot of different people? At the beginning I felt like I wasn’t really qualified, but as we’ve developed on-line we’ve realised we are impacting on people’s lives in a positive way. I think that talking about our lives normalises being gay more than going on and on about how normal being gay is.”
Bisexual
Rosie identifies as bisexual and on her own YouTube channel, The Roxetera, she has a series of videos in which she seeks to break down myths and stereotypes surrounding bisexuality. She was driven to do this by the biphobia she encountered at the start of the Rose and Rosie online journey.
“Everyone would comment, saying things like ‘Rosie is going to leave Rose for a man,’ or ‘Rosie’s confused,’ or ‘Rosie’s really straight’,” she says. “Nowadays I get messages like, ‘I used to think a certain way about bisexuals and I realise that was wrong, and you’ve changed my mind’.”
Part of the Rose and Rosie online identity is openness about their sexual relationship.
Keep reading to find out about Rose and Rosie’s sex positive videos, unplugging from the internet and the couple’s comedy tour in Ireland.
Rose and Rosie’s ‘Exposed’ is at Vicar Street on Monday, April 24, tickets from €32.50 on Ticketmaster.ie.
Sex Positive
“We’re just very open with our audience,” Rose says. “We don’t hold back or have a filter. We’re not over-sexual, but if that topic comes up we’ll talk about it. There’s no reason not to discuss our sexual experiences. If it gets people to discuss these things in a safe environment, that’s great.”
Rosie has a more political overview. “Growing up I didn’t have a lot of the positive messages you see for women online these days. We love to help spread those messages now, that we’re equal and we can do anything, to respect ourselves and be sex positive at the same time.”
Creating vlogs in your living room is one thing, appearing live before an audience is quite another, and while Rose and Rosie admit to some trepidation before going on stage, they’ve caught the bug.
“It’s the most thrilling and rewarding experience,” Rose says. “And there’s lots of audience participation too, so technically no one is safe, which I love!”
“We’re both very ambitious people, and we’re both perfectionists, so we put all our heart and soul into our shows,” Rosie adds. “We want people to have the best experience.”
The live shows are one giant step on the road towards the clear goal of their own TV show, but Rose and Rosie won’t be forsaking YouTube along the way “We want to start a family in the future and we’d love to take people on that journey,” Rose says. “They saw us dating and then get engaged, and then get married, and if we have children, that would be incredible to share too.”
Switching Off
With the line between their lived lives and their online presence so blurred, how do Rose and Rosie differentiate between work and play?
“I think a lot of people think being on YouTube is the easiest job in the world,” says Rosie. “It has some benefits, you can decide when you work and what you do, but like any other career, if you want to be the best at it, you have to put all of yourself into it and you have to work really, really hard.”
“We find it harder to switch off at the end of every working day,” Rose chimes in. “We’re in the same environment, social media is our lives, so it’s difficult to draw the line between work and play. But when we do, binge-watching Netflix is our thing. We make some popcorn, chill out and try to switch our laptops off!”
Rose and Rosie’s ‘Exposed’ is at Vicar Street on Monday, April 24, tickets from €32.50 on Ticketmaster.ie.
This interview of Rose and Rosie was originally published in GCN’s April 2017 Issue, Issue 328, which is available to read online here.
© 2017 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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