Amazingly, it was only within the past two years that Noah realised he’s had a pretty extraordinary life so far. Before then, he hadn’t thought about it all that much. But a U.S. headline tour meeting fans and putting faces to his many dedicated YouTube subscribers in 2022 hit him hard.
“It’s not that I was spiralling, but it was the biggest moment where I was like, ‘Oh, shit, this isn’t just my life online. This is real life!’” he smiles. “I think the first day of the U.S. tour, I met a kid that was like, ‘I feel like I’ve grown up with you. I watched every single video that you’ve posted every single week for five years.’ And I just can’t compute that. It got me thinking about how strange it is that I’ve had that many eyes on me since I was 15. When you grow up with an audience and you’re constantly getting feedback about who you should be, and who people want you to be, and what they don’t like about you, you can’t separate that from who you are as a person.”
Given the title of the album, it’s no secret to say that Noah’s relationship with the online world is complex. On one hand, this “constant feedback” he speaks of is practically impossible to process. But on the other, YouTube gave him a place where he could show people who he really was when he needed it most.
“As much as it’s fucked-up, the amount of stuff that I’ve had to deal with as a literal child on the internet, I can never not be so intensely appreciative of that,” he nods. “I was in the closet at school, and literally the only place where I could be myself was the internet. And I think if I didn’t have that community or that space to access, I don’t know… I was a shell of a person while I was in school, because I was just so aware of who I was, and so aware of what I needed to do in my life to make myself happier, but so aware that in the (puts on posh voice) conservative naval boarding school I was in (laughs), that was not a possibility.
“A lot of the last year or two it’s just been trying to unpack that,” Noah continues. “Meeting people has made me realise that my life online and my life in real life aren’t separate anymore. And I’m glad that it’s the direction that the album went, because I was like, ‘Okay, this this feels right.’”