I Turned My Grandma Into A YouTube Celebrity Ma grand-mère est devenue une célébrité sur YouTube Transformei a minha avó numa celebridade do YouTube Я превратил свою бабушку в знаменитость на YouTube

- My grandma and I went viral, and this is that story. - Minha avó e eu viralizamos, e essa é a história.

Now stick with me, because we have a lot to get through. Agora fique comigo, porque temos muito o que superar.

So this all starts in 2011.

I am in 8th grade, and like most middle schoolers, Estou na 8ª série e, como a maioria dos alunos do ensino médio,

I just wanna go viral on YouTube. Eu só quero viralizar no YouTube.

I start uploading videos of me dancing with my cat,

(upbeat music)

and this channel is totally private.

Every time someone found out about it in my life, Toda vez que alguém descobriu sobre isso na minha vida,

I would just delete it instantly.

About a year goes by, and I'm now a freshman in high school. Cerca de um ano se passou e agora sou calouro no ensino médio.

One day, I'm at my grandma's house,

and she's really making me laugh as she usually does.

As an experiment, I decided to put my camera

on my grandma's dashboard when she drove me home

and I filmed the entire thing,

and she had no idea that it was recording.

- 'Cause they could say, oh, the lady did it.

You know what I mean?

- Obviously she was kind of concerned

if the camera was on and I just said, yeah,

it's for a photography project, and she believed it.

Want to do the cinnamon challenge at your house?

- No, no, no, don't be crazy.

You think I wanna get,

what the hell was that?

- I get home, I edit it, put it on YouTube,

and decided to finally make my channel public.

They next day, I wake up to over 20,000 views

and to my 14 year old self, that was going viral,

and I just felt like I finally made it.

The rest of that year,

I continued to upload videos of myself,

but also with my grandma,

and noticed that the grandma videos

were getting way more views.

So in my head, I'm thinking, maybe this channel

is meant to be about me and my grandma. é para ser sobre mim e minha avó.

I enter this online comedy contest

hosted by Simon Cowell and I end up winning.

So I used the reward money of $2,000

to buy myself a new computer

to start editing my videos properly,

and I kept this whole YouTube thing going.

Keep in mind, my grandma still has no idea Tenha em mente, minha avó ainda não tem ideia

that these videos exist and the internet loves her.

Honestly, after the contest,

I started to get a little worried

that she was gonna find these videos

or someone's gonna show them to her.

- One time a kid threw a snowball on my car,

I got out of my car, and I ran after that kid.

- Because I didn't know if she was gonna freak out on me.

So the next year is 2014, and I hit 100 thousand subscribers

and it just hit me that this is becoming an actual thing.

At this point, I'm trying to get my driver's license

and my grandma is my ride to driver's ed.

A.K.A. a lot of time in the car together,

A.K.A. a lot of YouTube content.

I know what you're thinking.

Yep, she still has no idea.

I literally told her that I needed my camera for driver's ed

and that the dashboard was a safe place for it,

and she bought it.

I start this idea,

where I start having conversations with my grandma

about pop culture and celebrities

and things that are going on in the news.

Taylor Swift wants to go to prom with me.

- Who is that?

- I was able to convince her

that Miley Cyrus was my best friend,

I went to prom with Katy Perry

and I egged houses with Justin Beiber.

It was seriously insane,

before I knew it, at school, on there internet,

I became known as the kid that convinces his grandma

that celebrities are his friends.

Some of the videos start getting so many views

that my grandma begins getting recognized in public.

Like at the grocery store, at the mall,

even when she was driving.

Everyone is eating it up and my grandma has no idea, still.

I was in way too deep. Eu estava muito fundo.

I knew I had to keep going, though,

so I told her that all those people that asked for photos

were my close friends at school

and they just happened to see my class projects.

- Okay, we're lost.

- Do we need a map?

So it's almost the end of 2014.

I hit 200 thousand subscribers

and my grandma literally cannot go to the store

without getting recognized at this point.

It was time to come clean.

In August of 2014, I decided to come clean

and show her all the videos.

I recorded her live reaction,

and she was actually really happy.

I though she was gonna kill me,

but to my surprise, she wanted to keep making more

and I was just so relieved.

Grandma, come here.

I have to show you something.

You know what YouTube is?

- No, yeah, show me YouTube.

(laughing)

See that. - This was 2012.

Now don't leave, because it's about to get crazy up in here.

I upload the confession of showing my grandma her videos

and this gets over a million views within the first week.

Media outlets all over the globe

begin talking about this random kid

that was able to film his grandma secretly for years.

I remember teachers in school,

even the ones that didn't like me

were telling me that they saw my story on the news.

I'm even driving to school

and listening to my favorite radio station

randomly talk about my YouTube channel.

The radio was on

because I didn't have an AUX cord, by the way.

There's all this media buzz stirring around.

One day, I open up my email

to a message from Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Honestly, I thought the email was fake,

but turned out to be real,

and they asked if I was down to be on the show via Skype.

Jimmy wanted me to convince my grandma

that the movie Frozen happened in real life,

and secretly record her again.

So grandma, do you wanna build a snowman?

- When?

- It was so funny,

because I wasn't allowed to tell my grandma

that we were gonna be on the show

and she found out from a friend at the senior center

and she actually got so pissed at me.

The next year, out of the blue,

we're asked to fly out to California

to film a Target commercial, my favorite store.

This is our first time ever on a plane together.

It was our first real trip.

All the stuff you need for your dorm room,

right, Grandma?

- Totes.

- That summer of 2015,

my grandma and I embarked on a road trip

from Connecticut all the way to Chicago

and filmed the entire thing for a web series.

That week was probably

one of the most memorable weeks of my entire life

and I really got to see a different side of my grandma

because you get trapped in a car with someone,

you really see the different side of them.

We go to VidCon, my grandma is a full blown celeb there.

Everyone's coming up to her asking for photos

and she even tells me that she feels like Marilyn Monroe.

Like most grandmas, she never expected to have like fans,

and so when people were asking for photos nonstop,

she at one point like ran away and was like, Kevin,

like you have to, I was working as her assistant kind of

and like monitoring everything,

and like making sure the pictures were running smoothly.

It was really cute, because she starting calling

all these kids her grandchildren,

and people were asking for her to adopt them

and she was saying yes.

Even though she knew all these videos existed,

she still didn't really understand

the whole concept of YouTube and the internet,

and kind of still thought that these people

that come up to her I know personally.

Cut to spring 2017, Steve Harvey asked us

to be on his show Little Big Shots Forever Young.

We head to LA again, and we talked to him on his show.

(cheering)

- Hi, fellas and girls.

- The premise of this show is having senior citizens

demonstrate their talents,

and we don't really have much talent

besides I guess being funny,

so we just sat on his couch and talked about vlogging

while other grandparents were acrobat-ing and doing magic.

After five years of being YouTubers together,

we decided to spend some of that YouTube paycheck

and get a trip to Cancun where we spent a week

and just relaxed.

Which brings us to today.

We're still making videos together

and she says it actually makes her feel young.

It's like her favorite thing to do,

and I'm just really happy and relieved

because starting out, I was a little nervous

that she'd get mad that I was doing this

and she's the one calling me saying like,

are we gonna make a video together?

Before all this, she was just my grandma,

and we had a normal relationship,

and now I'm happy to call her my best friend.

I'm just really happy that this whole experience

brought us so much closer,

because without it, I don't think I'd be as close with her.

(laughing)

I'm glad you're laughing, I thought you'd be mad.

(laughing)

I also think it's really important

to visit your grandparents because a lot of the time,

she's just sitting at home

and this has really given her something to do.

What started out as a secret

and something I did not want my grandma to ever know about.

Now she's the one that won't shut up about it

and is telling everybody we see to subscribe,

whether it's at the restaurant

or even at stoplights and that's just insane,

because Grandma, we're better than that.

By the way, please like and subscribe.

(exciting music)