Blind YouTube star Molly Burke traces road to social media stardom in audiobook

TORONTO – Being a YouTube star is not enough for Molly Burke.

The chatty social media sensation, who is blind, is also a motivational speaker, accessibility advocate, beauty guru and online influencer with nearly 1.9 million YouTube subscribers.

And now the Canadian personality can add author to her multi-hyphenated job title, with the release this week of her autobiographical audiobook, “It’s Not What It Looks Like” on Audible.ca.

The three-hour recording traces Burke’s drive to entertain and educate from a young age, despite multiple hurdles that included losing her sight at age 14, enduring agonizing bullying in the aftermath, and depression and post-traumatic stress disorder later in life.

But like her sunny online videos, the 25-year-old is not interested in wallowing in past pain. Burke applies her breezy delivery to push listeners to find their own strength in the face of adversity and tap into their own potential.

For Burke these days, that means pursuing more writing gigs and possibly acting, now that she’s moved to Los Angeles.

“I’ve already talked to the team I worked with on ‘It’s Not What It Looks Like’ and said, ‘Hey guys, here are some ideas I have about both potential other non-fiction books as well as some fiction books that I’ve thought of and had in my mind for years,’” says Burke, who was diagnosed with the genetic eye disease retinitis pigmentosa at age 4 and lost her vision progressively throughout childhood.

Burke says she’s auditioned for several acting roles since moving to Tinseltown in January 2018, all of them blind characters on TV or film.

Each time, she says she lost out to a sighted person.

“That really kills me because that’s what continues to perpetuate stereotypes that I work so hard to break down,” says Burke, whose YouTube stories draw heavily from her own experiences facing insensitive and ignorant comments about blindness.

“It’s also unfortunate because many of the writers who I’ve met through my audition process have told me they based their characters off of me, or they watched all my YouTube videos to write their script. To lose to a role when I feel like they’ve crafted it based off of me and my life is kind of upsetting.”

Burke’s YouTube series is dedicated to busting stereotypes about people with disabilities, with many featuring her own blunt retelling of cringe-worthy encounters she’s faced.

In the book, she recounts the baffling rejection letters she’s gotten from prospective employers — one of them suggesting that hiring Burke would force them to dedicate another staffer to assisting her — lifting the veil on some of the insidious microaggressions that seem to persist despite growing awareness about diversity and inclusion.

Burke says she left the Toronto area when she noticed she was increasingly working in New York or L.A. while “work wasn’t really taking off” at home.

Despite working in an industry often considered borderless, she says there’s still a “glass ceiling” in Canada for social media stars hoping to break big.

“You do need to get to New York or L.A. or one of those cities,” she says, noting that’s made it easier for her to collaborate with bigger YouTube stars who can boost her profile.

She says huge opportunities to appear onscreen with another YouTuber can emerge with little notice in L.A., and she has to be able to respond.

“Man, if I was in Toronto, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. That happened with both (YouTube megastars) Gabbie Hanna and James Charles, and I gained hundreds of thousands (of subscribers) from both of those collabs,” she notes.

“I moved here a year-and-a-half ago with 200,000 (subscribers) and I’m at almost 1.9 million now. But prior to that I was on YouTube for four years.”

Burke has no plans to shift into new arenas, though, saying she expects to remain on the platform for years to come.

Still, she admits to having set her heart on something more. She’s working on another merchandise launch, but would love to do a capsule collection for a fashion brand.

And then there’s her childhood dream to be an actress.

“My dream would be to play a sighted person because I don’t think it’s ever been done before, that a disabled actor has played an able-bodied character,” she says. “And I think I could do that.”

Burke might have to write that role for herself, she allows, and it dawns on her that she now has an inside track to do just that — Audible.ca is owned by Amazon.

“Hey, Amazon Prime Video,” she exclaims. “Let’s go!”