Jennelle Eliana, the fledgling YouTuber who recently captured the internet’s fascination by gaining more than 1.3 million subscribers in just three weeks and two videos, has broken her brief social media silence to talk about “What the f-ck is going on, my dudes.”
That’s how Eliana — who now has more than 1.5 million subscribers — opens her new video, a 12-minute Q&A where she shares frank answers to some of the internet’s most burning questions about her.
But let’s rewind for a second. If you’re not yet familiar with her, Eliana is 20 years old and lives in a decked-out 1995 GMC Vandura Explorer with her ball python Alfredo. Her YouTube content exists at a nexus of popular trends (van life, sustainability, adorable reptiles), and her first two videos on the platform, Solo Female Traveler Lives Vanlife With Pet Snake, and How I Shower Living In A Van, have netted 6.8 and 12 million views, respectively.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
In her new video (below), which has netted 3.2 million views in two days, Eliana acknowledges there’s been a lot of speculation about her from people who noticed her meteoric rise, and says she was not at all ready for the attention she’s garnered.
“I have no words to express the gratitude that I feel at this moment, but to be honest, watching the rapid growth of my channel was a little overwhelming,” she says (while extracting Alfredo from his nest in her hair). “I needed to take a step back from social media for my mental and physical health, because I was not prepared for this.”
Eliana specifically addresses the general suspicion that she’s only able to live her lifestyle because she’s funded by her parents or another similar entity.
“That is false,” she says, straight-up. “I actually moved out when I was 18, in the midst of the night. I had a very dysfunctional household.” She adds that in high school, she was preparing to become the first person in her family to go to college and get a degree. But on her high school graduation day, she found out the college fund she’d been depending on had never existed at all. Panicked, she packed her things and moved in with a friend.
She attended college for a while, but ultimately decided to leave, as balancing work with school wasn’t feasible. The job she ended up getting shortly after that is actually the same job she has now — which answers another popular question: What do you do for work?
Eliana clarifies that she isn’t a “digital nomad,” traveling 24/7 and working freelance jobs remotely. She has a full-time job doing data entry for a company in California, and says she “just got really lucky” to work for a business that’s willing to let her work an odd schedule, like half the week on, half the week off, or one full month on, one full month off. She notes that she just took one month off to travel and film YouTube videos. (She also maintains a Depop account, jennellesgasmoney, where she sells clothing. And, between when we last wrote about her and now, she joined the YouTube Partner Program and monetized her videos.)
As for why she lives in a van in the first place, the answer is pretty simple: “Long story short, basically just cuz I don’t wanna pay rent.” It’s a good arrangement for her, she says, but she also tells viewers that her schedule essentially “revolves around” making sure she’s able to be close to a bathroom, shower, and — two or three times a month — a laundromat, because in-home access to these things is something many van livers have to give up.
However, “I definitely think that if you’re toying with the idea [of living in a van], give it a shot,” she says. “For me, I find making those compromises worth if, because I just have so much more freedom.”
As for what her YouTube plans are, Eliana says she intends to make a video about how she converted her $2,500 van into a living space.
