Catching Up with Nicole Rafiee

It’s a tough time to be anything right now, and being a college student is no exception. My entire second year of college consisted of constantly panicking about becoming infected with COVID-19 or being sent home because of it, missing my friends because they either deferred or weren’t permitted to live on campus, and struggling to concentrate in class or get any work done. I acknowledge how extremely fortunate I am to have been at school at all, but the whole experience left me feeling stressed, lonely, and honestly, deeply depressed. One thing that helped me get through it, though, was Youtube. Creators documenting their college experiences during COVID, the vloggers that showed they were feeling the same way I was. Creators like Amanda Gordon (amandamaryanna), Tiffany Ferguson (tiffanyferg), and my favorite, Nicole Rafiee. I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to Nicole in the fall of 2020. We talked about music and concerts, life as a college student during the pandemic, and being a content creator during such a tumultuous and uncertain time. 

Though she’s best known for her videos, Rafiee just recently graduated from Temple University as a media studies and production major last fall. A full-time Youtuber, she’s been making videos on and off since she was in elementary school — notably gushing over FouseyTube and other favorite channels. In 2018, she started taking her videos more seriously, and now, at just 21-years-old, she has a little under half a million subscribers — building a following in only about two and a half years. 

Rafiee describes herself as a personality-based Youtuber, making different videos each week with no set expectations or genre in mind. One thing she has become known for are her “playlist videos,” in which she records herself talking about her latest playlist creation and going through each song while driving across town. “The playlist videos ultimately began because I saw a lot of other people who were doing that, and found it really interesting.” Rafiee organizes her playlists by time of year, by what songs she’s obsessed with within each time period (fall, spring, for example), as well as by “themes.” “Like the main character playlist video,” Rafiee notes, which garnered over 100,000 views. Some of her favorite artists include Mac Demarco, Billie Eilish, Arctic Monkeys, Prince, and The Strokes. 

Though she’s not a fan of parties, Rafiee loves going to concerts. “I hate big groups of people and I’m very claustrophobic, but when it comes to concerts I have no problem,” Rafiee says. “I used to get so hurt when people would say I’m ‘vanilla’ and like, lame for not wanting to go out and party or get crazy in college and stuff. Concerts are the one place where I can let go and have fun. I feel very euphoric, because it’s such an intimate moment, to listen to these artists you take along for your life, like every single day.” She comments on how she listens to The Strokes every day in her car, when cleaning her room, or driving across country — nearly every moment of her life she is listening to music. “To have that one moment where they’re just in front of you, it’s like you’re nowhere else, that’s a very cool, special thing to me. And I think also the fact that everyone in that room also values the same band and is not judging me like how it would be at a party. It’s like one big community.

“I would say music has always been a very emotional thing for me. One of my closest friends Danielle, she’s from New York and the music scene there is obviously so different from Pennsylvania, so she put me onto so many different kinds of artists, like the Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash, Regina Spektor. And I have all these songs now that I associate with memories of spending time with my best friend and stuff.” Rafiee says playlists got her through all the hard times in her life, explaining how songs powerfully trigger emotions and feelings of times and people: “I look back at those songs so fondly because they got me through so many different things.” 

When it comes to making Youtube videos, concerts and playlists aren’t the only thing Rafiee talks about. In fact, her videos about manifestation, regrets about going to college, and ordinary vlogs of her day have garnered Rafiee hundreds of thousands of views. It took a while for Rafiee to find her unique voice as a creator, however. “It’s a lot harder to form your own personality and your own videos and content when you’re basing it off of whatever other people are putting out there. Subconsciously, I would try and emulate things that I’ve already seen, especially in the beginning of starting Youtube. Youtube didn’t work for me until I just started being completely myself.” 

Indeed, if Rafiee could give any piece of advice to those thinking of starting a Youtube channel, it would be to just make videos as your authentic self. She explains: “If you want to make content based on being in college, cut back on watching people who are unnecessary for you to watch, because you might be holding yourself back and pretending to be someone you’re not even if you don’t mean it. Find inspiration from other places and make sure you’re tuned into your personality.” Rafiee notes this process has been quite the journey herself. The first video that put her on the map thanks to Youtube’s algorithm was “a guy answering questions girls are too afraid to ask,” which has 2.3 million views as of today. Though one of her most famous videos, she slightly regrets ever making it. “I didn’t intend for a lot of people to see it, I made it into a trend and made it something that was never supposed to really be.” Another more genuine video that put Rafiee on the map was her “the *WORST* coffee expert reviews Emma Chamberlain’s NEW coffee,” which catapulted her 10,000 subscribers at the time to a whopping 200,000 within a month or so. It was this video succeeding at Youtube’s algorithm that showed Rafiee she can be her most authentic self and viewers will subscribe; she doesn’t have to pretend to be someone else in order to maintain popularity on the site.

Aside from Youtube, Rafiee has two weekly podcasts, “Talk Nasty to Me” and “i saw ur tweet, r u ok?,” the latter of which is co-hosted by her college housemate Jake Ropka. In both shows, she discusses various life experiences, topics relevant to young adults like money guilt and trauma dumping, as well as funny, lighthearted, personal stories with Ropka. Despite being so early in her career, Rafiee has solidified her unique voice and role as a content creator with a massive following across all platforms. Whether it’s talking about The Strokes and her latest playlist, or how much she misses concerts, or why college turned out not to be for her, Rafiee is on her way to becoming a genuine, yet influential content creator. 

You can find Nicole Rafiee by her channel of the same name on Youtube, and you can find her podcasts on Spotify (or Apple Podcasts) by clicking this link here.

-Mikayla Connolly