“Thanks to her, I became aware of the dangers of the world around me, congratulates Léa, 17 years old. Through his videos, I learned a lot about society. "The idol of this young schoolgirl? You probably don't know her yet. However, Victoria Charlton is increasingly establishing itself on the Internet as a kind of version 2.0 of Pierre Bellemare. At the head of a YouTube channel, this 24-year-old Quebecer has more than 379,000 subscribers and has almost 55 million views!
Today she publishes a book, “Keep your eye open”, which looks back at fifteen unresolved disappearance stories, in continuity with the content of her YouTube channel which is mainly devoted to stories of crimes (murder, kidnapping, disappearance ). Sign of success: in dedication last week in Paris, his queue in front of the Fnac des Champs-Élysées stretched ... to the sidewalk.
At the start: the murder of Elisa Lam
It was in 2016 that Victoria launched her channel, in parallel with her studies. She initially concentrates on beauty advice. But his channel will quickly take an unexpected turn: “I always liked stories that were a bit creepy. One day, one of these stories, that of the murder of Elisa Lam ( Editor's note: a 21-year-old Canadian tourist found in a water tank of a hotel in Los Angeles ), ended up obsessing me: it was necessary that I'm talking about it, so I decide to make a video of it. "
Success is there: his subscribers ask him for other videos of the same format! For two years, she decides to devote her channel to these stories of criminal cases. And the bet is successful: the income currently generated by his channel allows him to live without having another job nearby. “I think my success is mainly due to the originality of the theme of my channel, I think that at the start nobody except me spoke about it in France and Quebec. "
Videos on criminal stories are still very rare in the French-speaking world of YouTube. This has enabled Victoria to establish itself as one of the only representatives of this type of content for teenagers who, for the most part, no longer watch conventional news broadcasts on television. “Thanks to my regularity - I release two videos per week - I have been able to build loyalty among an audience that has grown and diversified today. "
Restoring visibility to forgotten business
To shoot her shows, she provides a lot of research work. "I take advantage of my master's degree in literature to have access to university libraries which contain a lot of period articles and I no longer hesitate to go and interview relatives of victims to retrace the investigations with precision," she deciphers.
Victoria's success is also due to the message she wishes to convey: “At first, I wanted to create thrills with my videos, but today my approach has changed. Its goal: to invite its public to be vigilant in the face of certain dangers in the world around them, but also to restore visibility to certain forgotten or little publicized cases. "Some relatives of victims I interview are sometimes happy that I can relaunch the case in some way," slips the young Canadian.
Its success allows him to turn to other projects: "I want to deepen my current format with longer YouTube documentaries, I will also probably write a second book and Quebec broadcasters contacted me for a project on television . »Case to follow.
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“Keep your eyes open, 15 stories of mysterious disappearances” , Éditions de l'Homme, 224 pages, 16.50 euros.
