Youtuber, former BuzzFeed Executive Producer and Co-Founder of Watcher Entertainment Steven Lim reflected on his career and Asian American representation in the media at the Northwestern Chinese Students Association’s Fall Speaker Event on Thursday.
Speaking to a crowd of nearly 100 in Harris Hall, Lim said he never expected to be an internet star, but it had always been his dream.
Lim graduated from The Ohio State University in 2012 with a chemical engineering degree and worked as a research and development engineer for the company Procter & Gamble.
The following year, he started his own YouTube channel and began creating original content. Once he figured out that engineering wasn’t his calling — he simply didn’t enjoy the work — he said he decided to leave the company and work as a YouTuber full-time.
“When I left Procter & Gamble, I had no idea what I was doing with my channel, but I put my all into it,” he said. “Back then, I was making one video a week; I had only 5,000 subscribers in three years. I felt it was dumb, but I had a desire to keep going.”
Lim’s viral moment came when he recorded himself video calling his parents to tell them he loved them and captured their reactions. BuzzFeed saw the video and reached out to Lim to ask if he would like to work for them. Lim said he originally said no because he didn’t know what BuzzFeed was, but after getting rejected from another company, he decided to give them a shot.
“Content on BuzzFeed could go viral and be enjoyed by the masses, whereas my YouTube channel was very niche and based on only my experiences,” he said. “BuzzFeed taught me my content had to have a broader appeal.”
After getting hired by BuzzFeed, Lim recounted how he pitched and created a show called “Worth It,” where he and his co-hosts tried food at restaurants with three varying prices to determine which one is most worth it for the given price.
Despite being initially rejected by executives, the show wentviral and turned Lim from a small-market YouTuber into a TV star.
“I’ve watched a lot of his videos in the past, so it was super cool seeing him in person,” Weinberg sophomore Selena Li said.
Lim said his inspiration for “Worth It” was to change people’s perception of Asian Americans in the media, which he felt was stereotyped by previous shows depicting Asians as mostly “martial arts people.”
He wanted a show that used food to honor different cultures and win what he called a “battle of representation,” he said.
“I originally made content about Asian American people and talked only about Asian American stuff,” he said. “People didn’t care about that specifically, but they cared about food. So I hoped that through this show, which combined the two, we could celebrate diverse cultures and bring people together through our love of food.”
Since the success of “Worth It,” Lim has launched his own entertainment company called Watcher Entertainment and teased a new show he’s working on with his “Worth It” co-hosts.
Weinberg sophomore Eric Pak said he was a fan of Lim’s videos and appreciated his insight about the portrayal of Asian Americans in the media.
“In elementary and middle school I used to watch his content a lot,” Pak said. “It was interesting seeing his insights, especially into Asian American representation.”
The event also included a fun mock round of his show, where Lim tried four different kinds of rice, including rice from Foster-Walker Complex, known as Plex, and local restaurant Peppercorns Kitchen.
“The Plex rice isn’t worth more than 25 cents,” he said.
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