Jessi Smiles

As a teenager, Jessi Smiles started working as a makeup artist and learned about the Vine platform from a model. Jessi, who considered herself funny despite people telling her otherwise, found the platform fitting for her type of humor. She soon started posting funny videos on Vine and attracted a lot of attention. By the time she reached 5000 followers, one of her videos made it to the "popular" page on Vine, which exposed her to a larger audience, doubling her followers count overnight. It took her only a month to reach 1 million followers. She made friends with another popular Viner, Curtis Lepore, who showed interest in her work, and the two soon started collaborating on Vines together. She eventually reached as many as 3.6 million followers on Vine, but left the platform for personal reasons. She started focusing on her YouTube channel where she currently has over 680k subscribers.

While growing up, Jessi Smiles was interested in a number of things and wanted to be a ballerina or a basketball player among other things. However, she could never stick to one thing for a long period of time. According to her father, she is hot-headed, but generous, and loves to give much more than she receives. Once ridiculed for her crazy blend of humor, she is now best known for her goofy videos on Vine and YouTube. In the "Storytime" videos, she often shares with her fans hilarious stories about herself, sometimes embarrassing things she might have done while drunk. A large section of her videos contains details about her private life, including her romantic relationships and sexual exploits, sometimes making her family members uncomfortable. However, realizing her difficult journey to where she is now, they have supported her in her pursuits and often appear on her videos. A misfit in school, she gained fame quick on Vine, but attracted a lot of hatred after she had an ugly break-up with Curtis Lepore, following a short but public romance. The way people started to judge her made her so desperate that she left Vine and became a YouTuber, sharing her "insane stories" to a new fan base. She is now determined to bring positive change in the lives of her fans and urges her fans to do the same.

According to Jessi Smiles, high school was the most confusing time of her life. She would often make inappropriate jokes and be misunderstood by everyone. She even had bouts of depression, to deal with which, she had to go through therapy where she was told she needs medication. As a teenager, she suffered from anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. She would eventually be involved in a long chain of "dysfunctional" romantic relationships. However, her relationship with Viner Curtis Lepore has been the center of controversy for a long period of time. Within a few days of meeting, they started dating, broke up, and she alleged that he raped her while she was asleep. The rape charges were soon dropped after Lepore pleaded guilty to felony assault, and after one year, charges were reduced to a misdemeanor.