Lauren Giraldo seems like your average high school senior. She is trying to figure out what she wants to do after graduation and she loves hanging out with her friends.
But the 16-year-old is not your typical teen. She makes thousands of dollars sharing six-second videos on Vine, the Twitter-owned video platform that launched two years ago.
“I don’t consider myself famous,” she told Fox News Latino recently. “I really am normal. I really don’t care. I just do whatever.”
Millions of people post and share 6-second video clips on Vine, but Giraldo is one of the site’s most popular users, with 3.1 million followers and growing.
The Aventura, Florida native said she got onto the social media platform late into the game – about six months after it launched in early 2013 – and only did it because her friends were pressuring her to do it.
Initially, it was just a couple of her friends watching her 6-second clips, but then it blew up.
“I had it public and then (Twitter) started the re-Vine option,” Giraldo said. “I went on a cruise with my family and I had 300 followers. When I came back I had 30,000 followers – in a week. I was like ‘What is going on?’”
That initial 30,000 followers has grown to more than 3 million – more than celebrities like Harry Styles, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande. Teen Vogue named Giraldo one of 2014’s Vine Stars.
“It doesn’t change anything (about what I was postings) – it made me not say anything inappropriate,” Giraldo said. “I don’t watch my own vines. I don’t watch myself.”
Giraldo’s videos are spontaneous and are often posted after just one take. Many feature the teen doing or saying something ridiculous. She's notorious for going up to unsuspecting people and asking them to marry her and she also invites people to take group selfies with her.
Her most Vined video, she said, was probably one where she was putting on a sock and accidentally kicked her nose.
“It’s just fun – living in the moment,” she said. “I don’t really think about them.”
When Vine began to grow worldwide, advertisers noticed that they could use girls like Giraldo to share their products to millions of people.
Giraldo, who was hesitant to say how much money she makes from various companies for sharing their videos on her feed, easily gets thousands for each six-second video she shares.
“The money doesn’t drive me in the videos,” she said.
And the opportunities keep rolling in. She’s traveled to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. She was even invited to attend the MTV Video Music Awards, where she walked the red carpet and got to take a selfie with singer Demi Lovato.
“It’s a different life. It’s really cool,” Giraldo said. “(But) I don’t consider myself a celebrity.”
The teenager said she wants to see where all these opportunities will take her. She is even considering moving to Los Angeles after graduation. But, in the meantime, she will just keep posting videos.
“I never do it with the intention to get followers,” she said. “I just started with my friends to make them laugh.”
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