If you ever search up tech or Apple related videos on YouTube, you will most likely see videos from iJustine. An Apple fanatic and an original YouTuber, Justine Ezarik, better known as iJustine on the internet, has proven herself as a name brand, through intrinsic motivation, in tech review videos, epic slo-mo, drone and slo-mo drone shots.
Raised outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Justine’s obsession with Apple began when her mom brought home a work provided Apple computer. She went on to take high school senior photos with her Power Mac G4, showing her ever growing love for Apple. Ezarik says that she’s “‘always loved tech. Loved Apple. That’s what [she] started vlogging about’” (Forbes).
In Beyond Talent by Teresa Amabile, Amabile says that “people will be most creative when they are motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself” and iJustine is no exception to this with her best work coming from doing what she loves (Amabile). Ezarik said that she “started to make content that [she] thought people were going to like and it wasn’t even something that [she] was into” which made her really suffer (Forbes). iJustine has experienced both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as a YouTuber and clearly when doing what she loves she thrives, as does her channel with now over five and a half million subscribers. With a variety of content on her channel-from tech, Apple and travel to cooking and making music videos- iJustine pulls in a large audience through pursuing what she loves to make.
Ezarik’s success in making what she wants comes from her domain-relevant skills, “everything that the individual knows and can do in the particular domain in question” (Amabile). YouTube as iJustine’s main domain, she has a great knowledge of how to navigate and thrive because of her longevity on the site. Beginning her YouTube career in 2006, when the site had first gone up, as a lifecaster, Justine has spent the past 12 years honing her skills in making beautiful, creative and enjoyable content. There is a reason why she struggled to find others to help her in editing her videos, no one else can do it like she does no one has that kind of experience with YouTube.
Even though Amabile says the challenge of work serves as an intrinsic motivator, iJustine learned her limits in creating content when she had a burnout from trying to create too much content. She would be making “50 videos a week and was going crazy” running 4 channels with completely different content and no crew helping her (Forbes). Although the content was intrinsically motivated and so was the process of creating and editing, Ezarik knew she needed to pull it back and revise how much she wanted to share with the world.
After revision, iJustine’s intrinsic motivation has never shined as bright as it has now where you can see her physical excitement in every video, creating the content she loves without worrying about satisfying extrinsic motivators.
Sources:
Amabile, Teresa. Beyond Talent, Beyond Talent and the Passionate Craft of Creativity.
I have seen a few of Justine's videos and have always appreciated the way in which she presents information about the products she is reviewing. I think what makes her so successful is that she approaches each product with indifference, which allows here to present her review in a fair and unbiased way.
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