During his six years on YouTube, Manny Gutierrez, better known as Manny MUA, has gone from uploading everyday makeup tutorials to collaborating with the likes of Kesha, Shay Mitchell, and even Mariah Carey.
Gutierrez was urged by his Instagram fans to set up a YouTube channel when he was still working at a Mac makeup store. The company never gave him a full-time role, so he decided to put all his time and energy into makeup tutorial videos instead.
"I figured I'd just share it with the world," he told Insider. "I actually had my followers requesting me to show how to do the looks that I was creating on my Instagram on YouTube, just to see how they could do it themselves."
Gutierrez's success in growing a following of 4.8 million lies in makeup being his passion. He never thought he'd be where he is now, he said, getting hundreds of thousands of views on his videos, and developing a makeup collection with Morphe.
"I never in a million years thought it could become a lifestyle or a business in any way shape or form," he said.
"And now it's not only my passion but my business too. So it's not like I am just doing it for s---s and giggles, I'm doing it because it's my passion and it's become my career as well."
Being a YouTuber at the top of your game brings flexibility, a loyal following of subscribers, and financial stability. There are also things Gutierrez struggles with, but he said the "pros definitely outweigh the negatives."
"I would say con-wise there would be things along the lines of not really having a ton of privacy and people always watching and waiting for you to make mistakes," he said. "There's a lot of pressure on you when you have a career like this because you want to be the best as you can for the followers that care for you."
It's not realistic, he said, because we are all human. But we can sometimes forget that when we're viewing and judging our favourite online stars. Gutierrez was on the receiving end of this cruel rule in 2018, during a time that is now referred to as "Dramageddon."
It all started in August 2018 when fellow beauty YouTuber, and friend of Gutierrez, Gabriel Zamora tweeted a photo of them both with Laura Lee and Nikita Dragun that broke and created many alliances at once.
"B---- is bitter because without him we're doing better," he wrote alongside a photo of them all giving the camera the middle finger, which the online community took as an attack against Jeffree Star.
Any real intent behind the photo was immediately lost in a flurry of arguments on social media and drama channels creating their own narratives about what was going on behind the scenes. The resulting mess caused many of the channels involved, including Gutierrez's, to lose hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Over a year and a half later, Gutierrez looks back on this time as a learning experience. He spoke out against cancel culture in September 2019, a year after Dramageddon, calling it "toxic and disgusting."
"Cancel culture basically says 'oh you f---ed up, you're canceled, you'll never be brought back to life because you're literally dead in the water,'" he said, likening his experience to a line of thousands of people insulting him one by one.
Gutierrez told Insider the hardest part of it all was having no control over what was happening. No matter how much he wanted to get his side of the story out there, it felt like fighting a current of more and more hate coming his way. He said he always used to worry about people taking things he said or did the wrong way, and in that sense, his worse fears came true.
"I always feel like intention is stronger than action," he said. "I think when people intentionally do something to hurt someone else, rather than someone accidentally hurting someone else, there's a difference, you know? And I think that I have good intentions, always."
One of the hardest lessons to learn is that you can't control what the people in the comments think of you. Some are going to keep fuelling the drama however they can without any real evidence of what's going on offline.
"It was such a struggle mentally to try to figure out how to deal with my personal relationships in real life, and putting them online is a whole nother ball game," Gutierrez said, adding that it becomes a war where people choose sides.
"You can't really do anything," he said. "You really just kind of have to lie in the s--- that's there."
Gutierrez ended up taking two months off YouTube where he started going to therapy to make sense of what happened. He said he had always considered himself as a mentally strong person, until he experienced "probably the worst thing I have ever gone through in my entire life."
"It's hard not to go crazy online and not to mentally become like a fricking potato and just not wanting to do anything and live your life offline forever," he said.
Gutierrez is now armed with different ways of coping with the hate mob, and knows that if anything like summer 2018 happens again he wouldn't get "so enthralled in the drama" this time around.
"I would just say my piece and I would move forward," he said. "I'm never going to let someone else write my narrative for me."
He takes this into his online life every day when he has to face trolls and bullies, like nearly every influencer does. He said he blocks someone "probably every single day."
"If you're not adding to my life you're taking away," he said. "And I take that with me into social media as well. If you're not adding to my happiness online then you're taking away from it. I don't need to see it."
Gutierrez may have been through some ups and downs in his career, but his following has been loyal throughout. He said it was amazing to realize how many fans were still there to defend him when he came back from his break.
"Haters are always the loudest, so that's what you're going to see," he said. "You're going to see one piercing mean comment through a hundred nice ones."
We all look for the flaws in things so quickly, it's so easy to find the negatives, he said, "especially if you're feeling insecure about something."
Many of Gutierrez's followers are there to learn about makeup and to watch a video to have 20 minutes to themselves. They don't care about whatever drama, or "tea," is going on, so it's a lot easier to block out the hate when he focuses on them.
"Maybe they're a 35-year-old woman with kids who's like, 'Bitch I ain't dealing with none of his bulls---,'" Gutierrez said. "They just wanna watch and have fun and get a relief from their everyday life. It's like watching a movie."
Gutierrez likes to detach too, separating his "on" Manny MUA with "off" Manny.
"Manny MUA — he's glam, he's glamorous, he's bubbly, he's so just ready for anything," he said. "Me being Manny in my everyday life, I'm so chill and down to Earth and laid back and I like to just relax and watch Netflix and just chill with my dog.
"That's the difference — I don't really feel like I'm performing when I'm Manny, I'm just being me."
Gutierrez said he owes a lot to YouTube, because it helped him build a better relationship with his father, learn what it means for his identity being Latino and gay, and how to be more open about depression and anxiety. He's able to be "Manny" offline a lot more easily largely because of his online journey.
"I feel like when you have a big audience online it almost pushes you to be better," he said. "You want to be a better person for your following because if they are looking up to you, then they're looking up to someone who's worthy of that, or someone who deserves it."
He said he hopes the one lesson people take away from his videos is to be true to who they are, even if it's not a conventional thing, like being "a boy with a beard wearing a full face of makeup."
"I'd love for them to take that just be your most authentic self and just live happily and live free," he said. "Because if you don't do it for yourself, no one's going to do it for you."
Manny MUA will be attending this year's VidCon London as a featured creator, along with Jacksepticeye, Hannah Witton, Tana Mongeau, and more.
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