The Untold Truth Of YouTube Star Gabbie Hanna
Before YouTuber Gabbie Hanna amassed over 6 million subscribers and 1 billion views, she found success on another video platform (via Social Blade). Gabbie got her start on Vine, and was one of its top performers. Under the name The Gabbie Show, she showed off her goofy side and made fans fall in love with her in six-second video snippets. Then she gravitated to YouTube, and the rest is history!
Gabbie's content has shown a lot of growth from her Vine days until now. Where she originally spent most of her time creating comedic skits, many of her current vlogs focus on more personal, serious topics such as her struggle with anxiety, self-care and bullying. Over the years, Gabbie has used the challenges she's faced in her personal life and the entertainment industry to further her art. Whether you've been following her career since the beginning or have only recently dipped your toes in her work, here's what you need to know about the vlogger.
Gabbie Hanna has added poet, dancer, and singer to her repertoire
Gabbie channeled her creativity into different avenues. She's penned and illustrated two poetry collections, Adultolescence and Dandelion, that give her readers an inside look at deeper topics such as mental health, self-discovery, and toxic relationships (via Goodreads). Both books graced the New York Times best sellers list at one point, showing that fans relate to her writing on a personal level (via Simon and Schuster).
Amazingly enough, Gabbie was also featured in the dance videos of other popular YouTubers such as Dominic "D-Trix" Sandoval and Matt Steffanina. Gabbie and Steffanina won season four of online dance competition series Dance Showdown.
With the titles of best selling author and dancer under her belt, Gabbie expressed herself in another way: Singing! She shared her personal struggles in songs such as "Out Loud" and "Monster". She broke down her lyrics on Genius' series Verified. "'Monster' came at a time when I was feeling like I was losing a lot of people, and it felt like a lot of different people and a lot of different directions. And it felt like I was doing something inherently bad, or I did something wrong," she commented. She also added that "there comes a point, if you're having problems with people, where you have to ask yourself, is it me, am I the reason. Because sometimes it's hard to see things from another person's perspective, so that's just that self-analysis."
Self-reflection is a recurring theme in a majority of her work.
She's struggled with mental health and body image issues
Gabbie makes a conscious effort to use her platform to highlight issues that are important to her. In an interview with Access Hollywood, Gabbie revealed her ongoing struggle with her body image and mental health. "[Body image] is one thing that is really important to me because I definitely have body dysmorphia and it's insane how much you see on yourself that nobody else sees and people can tell you that until you're blue in the face," she explained.
Gabbie also told Access Hollywood that going to therapy helped her confront her issues, and stressed that it needs to be normalized. She uses her social media and comedic nature to prove that there's nothing wrong with therapy. "Just by kind of like tweeting jokes about it and talking about my therapist and talking about something awkward that happened in therapy made kids realize that it's okay in a less direct way. I think humor is a really good way to... bring light to anything", she added. By being so open about her experience, Gabbie proves that the social stigma on therapy and mental health awareness needs to be broken!
Gabbie was involved in drama with other YouTubers and briefly quit social media because of it
Gabbie has been in the spotlight for awhile, and is therefore no stranger to controversy. In 2019, YouTuber and former friend Trisha Paytas posted a vlog where she claimed that Gabbie told her then-boyfriend that she had herpes via text (via Cosmopolitan). After their feud blew up all over social media, Gabbie found herself at the center of controversy again. YouTuber Jessi Vasquez, who goes by Jessi Smiles, accused Gabbie of siding with her ex-boyfriend despite her sexual assault allegations against him (via Distractify).
All of this drama came to a head in 2020 when Gabbie briefly quit social media after calling out YouTube for supposedly creating a toxic environment by promoting commentary channels that criticized her work, and repeatedly revived the drama (via Insider). Since then, Gabbie has re-activated her social media and has been promoting her upcoming projects.