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In the modern day, content creators are unashamed to sprint toward 15 minutes of fame through virality online; Quenlin Blackwell is in it for the long run. The Allen native and mega-creator has achieved success across various platforms, even as trends and algorithms have evolved to become increasingly challenging to navigate. As a teenager, Blackwell found early viral success on YouTube and Vine (remember that?), but in the decade since, she has amassed an audience eager to trace her digital footprint across platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
As she has continued to grow up on social media, Blackwell, now 24, has defined what it means to be an ‘It Girl’ of Gen Z.
We recently caught up with her via Zoom on a buzzy November afternoon. The night before, she hosted GQ’s Men of the Year red carpet, stunning in archival Mugler. Our interview is one of several she has this day, and the next day, she will film an episode of her Feeding Starving Celebrities YouTube series, which has featured fellow Gen Z juggernauts like Addison Rae, Lil Yachty and PinkPantheress.
From the other side of the screen, an It Girl’s omnipresence might often seem daunting to the average scroller, but Blackwell says she always knew her social media presence would get her this far.
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“I’ve always had a dream of entertaining people on a big scale,” Blackwell tells the Observer. “And I have done everything in my power to put myself in the position that I am now. So I’m literally like, ‘Oh, your hard work literally does pay off.’ I’ve been doing this for the past decade. I have YouTube videos from when I was 12. Every time I would come home from elementary school, I would be like, ‘If we keep making these videos, I will be on the Ellen show. That was the pinnacle of celebrity at the time. But now, it’s gotten me on an HBO show.”
In a recent episode of Rachel Sennott’s HBO series I Love LA, which also features Dallas’ Froy Gutierrez, Blackwell plays a fictional version of herself, hosting a party at the home of Elijah Wood. During the party, chaos ensues as fellow influencer Tallulah Stiel (played by Odessa A’zion) tries to get close to Blackwell in an effort to elevate her own TikTok presence. Meanwhile, Maia (Sennott) and Alani (True Whitaker) attempt to seduce Wood, while Charlie (Jordan Firstman) befriends Christian pop star Lukas Landry (Gutierrez) in hopes of becoming his stylist. It’s a rather proportionate caricature of the LA life Blackwell knows well these days.
The episode’s chaos unfolds as Stiel and Blackwell record various re-creations of a scene from Kramer vs. Kramer, before Blackwell later reveals her “click farm,” a collection of old phones that manipulate her online engagement.
“[When I read the script] I was like, ‘Am I awake right now? Or is this literally a dream,”’ Blackwell says. “Because Rachel immortalized me in HBO. The episode is using my name, I’m playing this crazy version of [myself], and it’s insane. Like, me and Elijah Wood are homies and I’m inviting them all to the house, I’m tweaked out, it’s nuts. I read the episode and I was like, ‘Are we sure that this is me?’ And they’re like, ‘yes.’”
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for HBO
While the show is meant to exaggerate the outrageousness of Hollywood culture, Blackwell has a bit more structure in her day-to-day. Though no two days are alike for her, she understands her online presence has become a business. Unlike most breakout creators so far into their careers, she doesn’t have a manager and answers emails herself.
“I am my manager,” she says. “So I do all of the logistics side of it in the morning.” By afternoon, she goes to a workout class or spends time outside. “So I don’t turn into a crazy person,” she says. The rest of her days are often spent filming content. The next day, she does it all over again.
“Quen is a natural talent. That is obvious,” Firstman tells us. “But what I didn’t know is that she is a consummate professional. She came [to the set of I Love LA] prepared and focused and still had the freedom to improvise and add an incredible, funny and terrifying energy. I actually saw Quen on Vine a decade or more ago, and about five years later, I called my agents and said ‘I want to meet with her and help her develop something for TV.’ I’ve always known she was a star, and it’s so exciting to see the world finally notice.”
Having grown up in North Texas, many of Blackwell’s Friday nights were spent at high school football games. She was a cheerleader at Allen High School — and tells me “we’re friends now” when I mention I attended Plano Senior High School, Allen’s archrival. The chronically online might recognize Blackwell from an old Vine video in which she falls during a cheerleading stunt. Much of her videos on Vine — on which she amassed over 500 thousand followers — consisted largely of quick, physical comedy, including clips of her falling off a hoverboard and strumming a guitar with her hair.
When she comes back to Texas, she enjoys Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-B-Q; the hot sauce is her favorite. She also looks forward to spending time with her parents, but will often stay with her grandmother, who lives down the street from them.
Though she refers to her old videos as “freak content,” Blackwell has no regrets about these clips. Our conversation comes at a time when many former child influencers have opened up about identity crises that have stemmed from growing up in the spotlight. Blackwell, fortunately, is an exception to that — fame came at her own accord, allowing her to more easily adjust to adult life in the spotlight.
“I put myself in that situation,” she explains. “Now, I think if my mother was the one filming me, and my mom was the one creating the environments for me to be pranked when I’m going to my first day of school or something, I would feel more of a warped sense of identity. I think the only skew of my identity I feel, which is what everyone feels, is like this third point of view that comes from filming things all the time.”
Singer Destin Conrad has fostered a genuine friendship with Blackwell through content collaboration. He says her closeness with her parents is a testament to the relationship she has with fame.
“Something people would be surprised to know about Quenlin is that she is very, very close with her parents, and values what they think more than what people might know,” Conrad says. “I admire her love for her family.”
Still, the creator, who has been praised as one of the most influential creators on the internet by Rollingstone and Time Magazine, seems acutely aware of the risks of online creation at a young age.
“I feel like everyone has kind of become their own PR agents,” Blackwell says. “They’re their own observers because of the internet. I feel like we’re self-surveilling, but I think that’s just what comes with the internet. I do feel bad for child influencers and what their families do to them. I think it should be illegal, honestly, and I think that we should have some type of law to protect them, because it’s ridiculous.”
Blackwell moved to Los Angeles at just 17 years old. After Vine shut down in 2016, her status as a viral sensation pivoted in the form of a popular “Me Explaining to My Mom” meme, in which a screen grab from a video of her screaming was paired side-by-side with an image of television personality Ms. Juicy. Another oft-circulated moment from her catalog of meme-wothy content features her trying a spicy gas station pickle, which has amassed nearly 6 million views on YouTube alone.
Eventually, her algorithmic prowess led her to TikTok before the platform’s meteoric pandemic-era rise, where she has pulled in over 13 million followers.
Blackwell’s tenacity has since earned her partnerships with brands like Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty and appearances in music videos for Lucky Daye, SG Lewis and City Girls rapper JT. In 2024, her It Girlhood was cemented as she became a slime-green flag carrier for Charli XCX’s ubiquitous Brat movement, appearing in the pop star’s all-star lineup video for “360” and joining her onstage for a Grammys performance earlier this year. In October, she walked among supermodels like Gigi and Bella Hadid on the runway for the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
“Her ability to multitask is honestly scary,” says YouTuber Larri “Larray” Merritt. “Creative brain, business brain, strategy brain — all firing at once. She understands the algorithm and the audience. She sees the long game while winning the short one. And the wild part? She’s only getting started.”
Blackwell’s tenacity for being a scroll ahead of the rest of the timeline has come full circle. At the time of our conversation, Vine was announced to be revived as an app called DiVine, and Blackwell is looking forward to being part of it . “They’re not allowing AI content, which I love,” she says. “I wish more social media platforms would [follow suit].”
By and large, Blackwell has become a main character in the online-verse, but it’s no role — she’s not simply emulating or following internet culture; she’s an architect of it.
“I feel like the same way everyone does [about social media], but it’s just my job,” Blackwell says. “You know how to use TikTok, and you know how to use Facebook and Instagram, because that’s what the cultural zeitgeist has demanded of you. And I feel like I’m the same way, I just look at it in a bit of a different lens. How do I communicate with my audience in a different way? It seems like it’s kind of intrinsic to me. I feel like I’m bilingual in internet.”
