Valerie Lepelch knows what it feels like to be the one who’s quaking in her boots. She has been a fangirl her entire life, the kind of person who goes nervous and quiet when a creator she admires walks into view. So when fans started shaking in front of her, she recognized exactly what was happening.

“I have always been, like, a fangirl of a lot of YouTubers and a lot of influencers,” she says. “And when I meet them, I get nervous and I, like, shake. And so it’s crazy when I see people meeting me, and they’re shaking, and I’m like, ‘Why are you shaking for me?’ But then it’s like, the same way that I shake for the other influencers.”

That recognition, of herself on the other side of the line, is central to how Valerie operates. The lifestyle and storytelling creator has spent a decade building a devoted Gen-Z following across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, amassing over 16 million followers through conversational POVs, relatable humor, and a commitment to making viewers feel like they are already in the room with her. 

On June 26 at VidCon Anaheim, she brings that ethos into an actual room. She is headlining a two-hour meet-and-greet and competing in “Crown the Creators: Wheel of Chaos!” alongside a lineup that includes ZHC, Merrick Hanna, and Juju Wonder.

From Follower Count to Faces in a Room

Valerie makes a distinction that most creators take years to articulate clearly. When a number climbs on a screen, it is still just a number. A crowd of people is something else entirely.

“A lot of people, when you see a number on your phone, like on your screen, let’s say a thousand, you just see a thousand, and you don’t really think about how many people a thousand people are,” she says. “So it’s definitely good to have events like this where you can see in real life that there are actually people that are watching you and they’re not just a random number, they’re actually people.”

That reframe, from metric to human, defines what VidCon means to her beyond the programming schedule. For Valerie, in-person events function as calibration tools as much as they do career moments. They remind creators what the audience is made of, not just how large it has grown. 

Her audience has shifted over the years, trending younger as the cycle of new followers continues. What has not shifted is how it feels to be in front of them.

An Introvert in the Chaos Arena

What Valerie does not look like, from the outside, is someone who finds being in front of a crowd natural. She is competitive, she says, and also very introverted. The confidence visible on stage is earned, not innate.

She competed in a similar format at a prior VidCon, a Disney trivia game requiring contestants to complete lines from shows and movies. Before stepping up, she was nervous. Once she was on stage, something shifted.

“Before then, I was really nervous,” she says. “But when I was up on that stage, like, I felt confident, and it was fun. So I’m hoping that it’s going to be the same way. And this one’s a little bit more chaotic, so I’m sure it’ll be even more fun.”

“Crown the Creators: Wheel of Chaos!” runs Friday, June 26, at 10:00 AM on the Spark Stage. Valerie knows this version is less structured than trivia: a bad spin might mean ping pong balls or a pair of handcuffs for the rest of the game. The competitive instinct is already engaged. The nerves, she is honest enough to admit, are already there too.

A Thousand Takes, and Then One Shot

The gap between filming alone and performing live comes into focus when Valerie describes her normal creative process. In her room, she has complete control. She can start over. She sometimes forgets she is even filming and picks up her phone mid-take.

“It’s different filming alone when you’re in your room,” she says. “And I can do a thousand takes over and over, and sometimes I’ll be filming videos, and then I’ll get sidetracked, and I’ll forget, and I’ll just start scrolling on my phone.”

That kind of candor is the brand. Valerie does not position herself as someone who operates from a polished, perfectly managed creative workflow. She positions herself as someone her audience can recognize, which is also her entire content thesis.

For the meet-and-greet, two hours with no retakes, she holds herself to a different standard. She has met creators who disappointed in person, good on-screen, and unavailable face-to-face. She does not want to be that for her own fans.

“I definitely want my followers to walk away and be like, ‘Oh, wow, she’s even better in person,’” she says. “Even if I’m in a, like, horrible mood, they make me happy. So if I’m in a bad mood, meeting them will switch me immediately.”

Nobody Has an Original Experience

The premise behind Valerie’s posts is counterintuitive. She draws entirely from her own life, and the content resonates not because that life is unusual, but because it is not.

“I like to make videos that I relate to myself, knowing that other people relate to them,” she says. “I try to think of experiences that I’ve actually lived through. And I always read comments that are, like, ‘I’ve never had an original experience ever,’ because everyone really experiences the same thing.”

That comment thread, the place where thousands of people recognize themselves in something one person described, is where Valerie says the content actually lives. The video is the delivery mechanism. The comments, full of people who assumed they were alone in whatever the video documented, are what she is chasing.

Her content is largely identical across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, with the same material distributed to wherever the platform rewards it at a given moment. She does not build separate strategies per channel. The ideas come from lived experience; the platforms are where they land.

Friendships First, Content Second

Valerie’s collab playlist runs over 80 entries, and the volume has a simple explanation. Every person in it is a real friend. They met online, tested the chemistry in person, and kept spending time together long after the filming was done.

“Thankfully, all the people that I’ve collaborated with are my actual friends,” she says. “We can hang out for weeks. And we don’t have to film content, but we just know that everyone loves to see us together. So we just decided, why not?”

That structure keeps the collaborations from registering as transactional. When the dynamic is genuine, audiences absorb it differently than they do a paired brand deal. Valerie notes that her followers and her collaborators’ followers already overlap, which means seeing them together reads as organic rather than arranged.

The Panel That Doesn’t Exist Yet

Valerie has been posting for a decade, and she is clear-eyed about the cost of staying in a format past its moment. Her early creative work leaned into acting skits, scripted collaborative videos that required preparation and real performance. 

She loved them. The audience moved on.

“People started growing out of that, and no one was really watching it anymore, which I got sad about,” she says. “But you have to kind of change and evolve with your fan base and what they want.”

The next chapter, as she describes it, involves returning to something more intentionally creative without replicating what has already run its course. What that looks like is still being worked out. What she does know is the conversation she would want to have if the opportunity ever came.

If VidCon handed her a full panel, she says she already knows how she would fill the hour. She would talk about how to start and how to survive the part that stops most people before they see any traction at all.

“I definitely would like to help people and give them advice on how to start,” she says, “and to ignore, you know, all the negative comments, because no matter what you do, you will get a negative comment.”

VidCon Anaheim will officially take place from June 25-27, 2026, at the Anaheim Convention Center. Follow this link for more information.

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