Q&A: MacDoesIt Builds Community Through Content Creation

Machaizelli Kahey, otherwise known as MacDoesIt (he/him), does it all. He is a content creator and internet personality, but his comedy grounds his work. As a self-proclaimed “organized hot mess,” he bridges the two sides of YouTube by making the offensive palpable and the normal into nonsense in the best way possible. Since joining the platform in 2012, his videos have reached millions of views with a subscriber count of 2.57 million. In partnership with Hopelab, YR Media’s Zipporah Pruitt (she/her) interviewed Mac regarding his thoughts on LGBTQIA+ content creators and his experiences with parasocial relationships.  

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

YR Media: How would you describe your content? 

Machaizelli Kahey (MacDoesIt): It is kind of a collage of whatever I want it to be. I tell people I do like satirical commentary. That’s kind of like what I’m mainly known for — I tear apart anti-gay propaganda and anti-gay commercials. 

That’s what I did for like basically for a whole decade. But I feel like I’m also a mixture of a comfort channel for a lot of people nowadays, because I have been doing this for so long, and people have grown up with me. So it’s kind of a mixture of satirical commentary mixed with just comfort content of whatever people want to see me do. 

YR: What experiences in your life led you to content creation? 

MacDoesIt: Um, boredom and obsession with the Internet. I mean, I watched YouTube throughout all of middle school. That was like all I did with my friends and then in high school as well. We all started our own individual channels together. And then I was the only one out of the group that decided to make my channel public. 

And then here I am today. I mean, I’ve always been a creative person growing up. I did theater my entire life, since the third grade. So I’ve always been a performer, a person that’s just like been in the creative fields. YouTube was kind of like a good alternative step for me to be in a creative field where I was 100 percent my own boss. I just fell in love with that. And here I am today. 

YR: Yeah, you’ve been doing it for over a decade. Am I right? 

MacDoesIt: Twelve years this month.

YR: So how does your experience as someone working within the intersection of being Black and Queer differ from your peers in the way you are perceived online?

MacDoesIt: Where do I start? Being Black, that’s a very surface-level identity of mine. I mean, that’s a huge deep conversation we’ve been having for a decade online. 

You know, it is a very obvious fact that more people are going to click on a thumbnail of a beautiful white brown-haired boy versus me. Just all for the fact that I’m not, you know, not their cup of tea. There’s a deep-rooted systematic racism, grown-up racism, generational racism that happens in people’s bodies and minds, and that creates biases that, you know, kind of makes me feel I’m naturally against the grain when it comes to a lot of internet culture. 

One of my main goals when I did start digital creating was [that] I didn’t really see that many creators like me, that look like me, in a certain atmosphere of YouTube. And so that’s one of the reasons why I kept on pushing to do what I do. I am one of the reasons why there were so many diversity initiatives and panels put into a lot of conventions and YouTube itself over the past few years.

YR: Hopelab’s research shows that a lot of LGBTQIA+ youth have strong, beneficial relationships with content creators. Do you see this in your interactions with your fans?

MacDoesIt: I feel like my existence and me being very publicly myself online has helped people feel more comfortable in themselves and their own skin, and has also helped people form communities. You know, they find other people that watch my content and suddenly, I have whole discord servers and pages and like chat rooms based on just who I am and the common interests of me. It’s created like a sense of comfort for people; that’s what communities are. And it helps grow their comfort and authenticity.

I tell people that my channel was kind of like that rare slice where you found someone like me, a big Black queer creator, to be like fully the main character at all times. I wasn’t the side character; I wasn’t the comedic relief.

It’s my life, my perspective, my mind being blasted out 24/7 on my channel. And I feel like that you don’t really see that in the media for people like me. And I feel like that helps people gravitate, help people to learn and discover perspectives that are different, you know.

YR: Some LGBTQIA+ youth may use parasocial relationships because they don’t have real-life connections that could help them explore their identity. Do you have any thoughts on that? 

MacDoesIt: Yeah, that’s wonderful. I did that too, basically. I feel like we all do that, especially when we’re like little gays in our own houses, not really fully out to everybody. Not really knowing who to talk to. You’re turning to the screen staring in front of you. You find that one creator that you’re like, oh, there’s more there’s more homosexuals out there like me. For me, it was like Kingsley. 

Kingsley was very much that like, you know, that, that O.G. gay creator out there. I was like, oh, another gay Black man doing this thing, being funny, made me feel comfortable being gay and Black. It’s a beautiful thing. I feel like it’s very much proven that the internet has definitely helped strengthen the identity of queer people across the globe. 

YR: What other people do you follow online that have a positive impact on your well-being? 

MacDoesIt: There was a creator called Hartbeat. She’s a lesbian, a big Black lesbian creator. She doesn’t really do that much YouTube videos that much. She does like [The Sims] stuff now here and there. But she was also one of the OGs that I really fell in love with, I had a parasocial relationship with. Also because I became a YouTuber myself, those parasocial relationships kind of grew into actual connections. 

But, without their existence online, I probably would never have the courage to step up in the game, too. But those, I feel like are the heaviest people. And then also, you know, for my comedic side, it was definitely Grace Helbig. I think still to this day I’ve only met this girl once on an elevator, like seven years ago. And still, to this day, I feel like we could be best friends. 

YR: Do you have any suggestions on how to foster community online? 

MacDoesIt: Discord servers definitely. There’s so many different ways to like talk to people and form groups. There’s group chats on Instagram, Twitter spaces or X talk groups, but you know, there’s so many different places to constantly communicate. There used to be Google Hangouts, but that’s not a real thing anymore. 

I think it’s called just Google Meet, which is a totally different system now. But that’s what I used to do with a lot of my friends. Like a lot of my internet creator friends, we were just on Google Hangout for hours as we were editing. 

There’s so many tools, I think nowadays more than ever before, to just talk and constantly chat with people that you have shared interests with. So many different forums, Reddit, Discord servers, Telegram groups, and so on. Unfortunately, because, you know, parasocial relationships can get to the point where it gets toxic and can get dangerous sometimes too for the person. And so I know I can’t be on the Discord server as much as I want to be, but, you know, I hover. I invisibly hover most of the time. 

YR: And that’s fine. You got to set boundaries as well, you know? Protect yourself.

MacDoesIt: Boundaries are very important. 

YR: In Hopelab’s research, the folks that our participants listed as the most impactful content creators were often considered more small-scale. What role do you think smaller-scale content creators play versus celebrities? 

YR: I feel like smaller-scale content creators in general are one of the reasons why celebrities are even on the internet in the first place now. You know, one of the reasons why celebrities even have social media or even take it seriously now is because of the strides even smaller creators have made for the past couple of decades. 

I feel like because online and digital creators have more of like a personal approach and that we seem more personally approachable than celebrities, we form, a stronger sense of community. Stronger responses, stronger interactions that I feel like a lot of celebrities nowadays look at and now have to try to emulate. That wasn’t how it was back in the day, but now, because the digital era and all these creators have showcased how stronger a brand can be when you form that community online. Now a lot of these industry execs have this bar they set for a lot of these celebrities. 

I feel like queer artists that are coming out, you can definitely tell they were online on Tumblr, on YouTube. Like the rest of us looking at the same content, following the same people. And it’s nice to see. I feel like not just Billie Eilish, but it’s also like Chappell Roan, Lil Nas X. They’re all, these queer artists are showing like, yeah, they’re online 24/7. And I feel like it’s enriched them and it’s helped them create big communities around them. 

YR: And speaking upon Chappell Roan, she put out an Instagram post and she made several videos talking about parasocial relationships and toxic fans approaching her. And she’s got a mixed reception on that. What do you feel about that situation? 

MacDoesIt: I mean, boundaries are healthy. It’s like I said, there are, there can be toxic parasocial relationships. There can be parasocial relationships that lead to people having this feeling of entitlement towards the people that they watch. And it results in specifically what’s happening with Chappell Roan. I feel like she’s dealing with that situation where people just feel entitled to touch her whenever they see her, like interrupt her, whatever she’s doing. And like she probably can’t walk outside as much as she used to literally five, seven months ago. 

I do feel like female creators, and like females in the public eye in general, have to deal with like an entirely different level of parasocial relationships than males. And so, there is that fear. I feel like you deal with a lot more stalkers, a lot more creepier people when you’re a female in the public eye. Even at like a smaller scale that like men only have to deal with when they reach like the tens of millions of followers online. 

YR: What boundaries do you set for yourself? And what advice would you give new creators with parasocial relationships?

MacDoesIt: I mean, it’s typical boundaries. There’s a level of how much I, I guess, release information and like to converse with certain people about certain topics. I try to keep it, especially in real life, I keep it light. I keep it cute, a few pictures, a few smiles. Maybe a video or two.

It’s all just based on your comfort level, champion consent as much as you can. You have to champion consent like crazy when you reach the public eye — consent, consent, consent. Because a lot of people are going to try to take consent away from you. The higher you get in the public eye, you gotta fight it back. 

Before you walk into a situation, you always want to test how comfortable you are with X, Y and Z. If you don’t want to get touched, maybe you don’t want to do a public meeting. Or maybe do a virtual meeting. You know, there’s so many different avenues you can really set yourself boundaries on how, how far you want parasocial relationships to be.

YR: I want to ask you for anybody who wants to start creating content, what advice would you give them. Or what would you tell yourself if you started now as opposed to 12 years ago? 

MacDoesIt: Ooh, I keep on telling myself, if I tried to start now, I don’t even know where I would even land. I feel like it’s so oversaturated now compared to ever before. You’re now seeing people rise to levels of viewerships and followings in a matter of seconds that you’ve never seen before, ever. And the only advice I can give because of that right now is to just start. Just make content. See who gravitates. Make what you want to do, see where it goes, and just take it one step at a time.

I know a lot of people that have made content nowadays have that expectation and want to reach that skyrocket level off of one upload, because that’s what’s happening nowadays. That’s still like a one-in-a-million situation. Even though there’s a lot more content happening — now there’s a lot more millions popping out more than every second. But I feel like for any creative field in general, you just gotta throw yourself out there and learn hands-on. Ask questions, go to events, talk to people, make a video, comment on other video comments. Just go out there and grow.

Zipporah Pruitt (she/her) is an L.A. homegrown journalist who covers entertainment and culture. Follow her on X and Instagram: @zippzine.

Edited by shaylyn martos