Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi, Nala. You can't be in every video. [Alfie]: Come on You can sort of see her. [Alfie]: You still recording the video for me? What video? [Alfie]: Ten Reasons I Love Alfie, for Valentine's. No. Hello, everybody! First of all, I want to start by saying Happy Valentines Day! Or Happy Galentine's Day, or Palentine's Day. There's so many different variations of telling someone you love them today. Whatevs. Or if you're single, it doesn't matter. It's just a day. I'm wearing my special Valentine's shirt for the occasion And this video has nothing to do with Valentines Day. So if you've clicked this thinking, "ugh I'm so done with Valentine's," don't worry. This actually has nothing to do with Valentine's Day at all. Just before I start this video, I'm just gonna throw it out there and say I feel like I look like a sack of poop today. So...we've gone for a bit more of a cosy, ambient vibe which I actually quite like Because this room is, like, one of the cosiest rooms in the whole house and I absolutely love it. So, I quite like that we're channeling more of a cosy vibe but it is also to cover up the fact that I have a chin growing on my chin. It's the biggest spot I've ever had in my entire life Uhm, if I wasn't so, like, frustrated about it, I would be proud of it. [laughs] Quite a while back, I asked on Twitter what questions you would love me to answer that I had never answered before, or that you would love to know. And I saved them all for a special occasion. This is definitely going to be a Q&A that spans over a couple of videos, because there was so many questions that I was like, "I would love to answer that, and I've never answered that." So, I'm gonna start going through them. Ahh, that one's cute. *shouts* Alf! [Alfie, from afar]: Yeah? *shouts* Come here a sec! *normal voice* Do you mind just sitting in this a second? [Alfie]: Do you have like...unready I am Because it's Valentine's day, I have just said this isn't about Valentine's day It's actually a Q&A but the first question I've got in here is, "When did you realise you actually loved Alfie?" - Ughhhhh here we go. - Like, what made it click? And I was like, do you know what? It is Valentine's Day, let's answer this together. I think I realised I loved Alfie when... obviously before I moved here Because me moving was actually a really big deal. Like, I'd grown up in this tiny village. I'd never thought I would move. So obviously I realised I loved you before that, otherwise I would never have moved to Brighton I don't know. I think just when I was always thinking about you, and always wanted to talk to you. Because you had never loved anyone before, so how did you know? - Alright. Bloomin' hell. You bring me in the video randomly, and bloomin' dump me under it. I don't know. I don't know. I need some time to think of this answer. I don't know, it's just, like, so used to the person being there kind of thing. Like, I can't imagine living in a house without you living there. But then obviously you don't have to live with somebody to love them, so I don't know. - So you basically just got used to me and thought, "Well, I must love her then." - It's been too long now. I can't back out, I'm stuck. - I quite liked this question. It was from Charlotte and she said, "I don't know if anyone has asked it before, but I'd like to know which dream of yours you remember the clearest." When I was a teenager, I used to have this dream That I was a witch, my mum was a witch, and my mum's mum -- so my nan -- was a witch as well. And it was so vivid and I used to have it so much. And I really enjoyed it, because in the dream we all had brooms, and we could fly And I just remember dreaming it and feeling like I could actually fly, and then waking up the next day being like, if I really concentrate, I think I can fly. Like , it was the weird - and I'm a teenager at this point , so I know I can't fly, but it just felt so real, and I had that dream so many times. I've never had, like, repeat dreams apart from that one. And also tsunamis, which I guess is a nightmare. But I used to dream that a lot , like at least once a week, I would dream that me , my mum and my nan were witches, and we were good witches, not bad witches, and we could fly on brooms, and no one else knew, and it was like this family secret that we had and it was just the best thing ever. "Why don't you have your own gaming channel?" I actually do like gaming. Maybe not, kinda, more of, like, the console sense, but I really like playing PC or Mac games. Things like Sims, I could spend hours and hours on Sims, I love watching Sims gaming, and I play that with Alfie. But I did actually try and film my own gaming video, and it didn't go down very well. I was trying to play Theme Hospital, because it's one of my favourite games ever and I just - there's not very many people online that play it and I was like, I'm going to try. And I was going to upload it on my second channel, or Alfie's gaming channel, and I can't remember which, but when I'm actually playing the game, I'm not very good at commentating over it. So because I concentrate so much on the game, I don't actually speak. So this whole episode that I filmed, which must of been around forty minutes long, I feel like I didn't have much kind of charisma or character, and I was like, no one's going to watch this and I'm not being very entertaining, and all I'm really doing is filming myself playing a game and not saying anything. So that is why I don't have a gaming channel, and I think if I was to film Sims without Alfie, he wouldn't remind me to talk. I would just get so into it, but it's good there's two of us that film it because he reminds me I need to actually talk. Heather said "If you could go back and change one thing that has happened to you , what would it be?" I think this is quite a deep question, because even though there is certainly things in my life I've not enjoyed or things that I sort of feel like I would do a little differently, ultimately I do believe that everything happens for a reason and that bad things happen so good things can happen after it, and that the bad things kind of, erm, show the value of the good things and when I think of it like that I think I wouldn't change anything. But if we're getting, like, down to the nitty gritty, there are certainly things that I'm like "Why didn't I do this ?" or "Why did I put up with that ?" or "Why didn't I say this?" But then I'm like if I didn't, would I be here today , would I be sat making this video in my house in Brighton, like, I don't know. Holly said, "What is it actually like to be reported about in the news about every little thing you do?" On the grand scheme of things, I don't get written about as much as, you know, actual, like, celebrities and people that have, like, interesting lives, I don't know. Like if I'm being completely honest, I hate it. If we're just going to strip this down and er , talk you know, one to one, I really don't like it. I love being online, I love having control over everything I can post, I love you guys and everyone that watches and gets involved, and I liked that I had built my own community, and we could talk about what we wanted. And I'm so fortunate in the sense that there are so many of you, and it's kind of like we created our own little, like, I dunno. I feel like YouTubers and, like, the online space don't see traditional media in that same way. We don't need traditional media to tell a story because we can do that ourselves. And so I think sometimes when I'm trying to tell my story and they go, "Ooh this is kind of interesting, let's write about this," and it doesn't always spin what I've said in a positive way, just to get clicks. It's really weird to get my head around, because I think also a lot of people forget that when I started this, there was no Oh but if my channel grows to this size, then the press will be interested, and there'll be people stopping you in the street, and you'll go to signings, and you'll do signatures, and you could be sat in a restaurant with your family and someone will come up and ask you for a video message for their best friend, like, I didn't know what could ever be, if that makes sense. There was no one that was already experiencing all of this, and if there was I wasn't aware of them, so it was all very new and I had to learn very quickly how to kinda balance that. Because, ultimately, all I really wanted to do was film videos for an audience of people online, and it hadn't really occurred to me that if that audience grew on a much, much larger scale, that that would change the way I lived my life offline. If that makes sense. I feel like quite a lot of the time people say, you know, "Oh but, you know, it's just part of it, it's part of it" but when a lot of Youtubers started, it wasn't part of it, and it's something that people have had to learn to deal with and kind of learn to slot into their, like, everyday lives, and it is scary, daunting, unpredictable. But there are also really amazing aspects of that as well because it means I get to actually meet you guys. "If ten-year old you could see you now, how would she feel?" I dunno, this one's a hard one, because I feel like I have pinch me moments all the time. I don't take any of this for granted, and it still surprises me on a weekly basis that I am doing the things that I'm doing, and that my life has gone this way. And so I don't even think ten-year old Zoë would ever think twenty six-year old Zoë would be doing all the things she's doing. I don't know. "Have any friends ever left you/judged you because of your career?" um... I think anyone that's ever had an issue with it, or not understood it, or kinda turned a blind eye or mocked it, which I definitely did have when I first started doing this, but it was all very indirect. Those people weren't ever really friends and they're not my friends now, um, if that makes sense, like they were kind of people I knew. Starting a relationship online is... daunting, and, um, because of the size of the audience, you are aware of people kind of judging your every move, and kind of taking what they want from certain things, and that's just what happens. But so much of the time it's so focused on relationships, when actually I think it can be just as difficult having friendships online, especially if those other people aren't too sure about, you know, being online or being on camera, um, or if they have channels themselves, and they're not sure if they want to be in your videos, or kinda, of what can come from that, and it can be- it can make me quite paranoid, because I want people to be my friend for me, not for anything else, and I had this, like, time where I was like, no one's going want to be my friend because they're not going want be on my channel. Like, how daunting is that gonna be? Or they're not going to want to hang out with me because they're gonna think I'm a certain way when I'm not, or, I dunno. It- I honestly think, I wish more people would, like, talk about this a bit more, because it is so, like, relationship-focused, like, what's it like having a boyfriend that daily vlogs, and what's it like, you know, having a relationship online, but you don't really talk about kinda friendships, or building friendships or, not knowing if someone really wants to be your friend or doesn't. And that is, like, a whole thing in itself. I'm, like, a super trusting person. I basically just trust everybody and, like, welcome anyone with, like, open arms, and I think at one point I was a bit like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. I don't know. I was really, like, questioning it, and I was like, what do people want from me? I don't know. But all the friends I have now are so supportive and so lovely,