KiMi Robinson|The Republic | azcentral.com
After a six-month hiatus from recording new videos forher YouTube channel and its almost 2½million subscribers, Scottsdale resident Taylor Alesia Comptonreturned to the platform with an announcement this week.
"Hey, I'm back!" she wrote in the title of thenew 12-minute video sheposted Feb. 27. Her previous video, titled "goodbye," was posted Nov. 15 and showed a montage of past videos.
On her channel, Compton, 23, took part in YouTube challenges, talked about mental health issuesand told stories about dramatic moments in her life.
But she appeared to abandon her verified social media accounts in late 2019, including her popular @TaylorAlesia Instagramaccount. She started a new@alesiajournal Instagram accountin November that she called her "Christian diary."
This week, fourmonths after the last post at @TaylorAlesia, she posted a new photo on Feb. 26, teasing her return to her 2.3 million followers.
In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Compton explained why she stopped uploading contentfor several months and how her posts will be different in the future.
Why Taylor Alesia stopped posting
Though having a large following on social media had made her happy since she began at age 14, Compton said she recently came to realize that she "just kind of took the wrong path."
Creating videos was fun and exciting until it became her full-time job, she said.
She startedan account on Patreon, which allows people to earn money through subscription-style memberships that offer exclusive content. Her followers paid $30 per month for access to exclusive "fun and weird selfies" and one-on-one chats.She said her YouTube videos earned her about $100 each.
Her Patreon page shows that she posted messages behind a paywall through the end of December.
"I'm not proud of (creating the account)," she said. "I was making a lot of money on there ... and it wasn't meant to be a scandalous account. I don't know what happened, but I just started posting a little more risqué photos on there.
"I think I kind of broke, like Iwas just going to bedcrying, waking upcrying. I was walking around miserable. I'm taking scandalous photos, still miserable, and I was doing it just to keep income coming in — I couldn't afford my apartment."
That's when she "lost passion for why I did this in the first place," she said. "I'm going to say four months ago, it kind of just dawned on me that ...the image I kind of created over the past, I'm gonna say, seven months, was not a great one."
Taylor Alesia's return to social media
While struggling with compromising her happiness to earn an income, Compton said she felt her Christian faith calling to her.
"I just kept feeling like Jesus was grabbing my shoulder," she said. "I chose God, and I chose my faith over money."
She got rebaptized before she started posting again.
"I personally won't be doing social media for work anymore," she explained in her new video. "Happiness means more to me than my bank account."
Her new "journey" — "maybe God gave me this following to do more and spread the word of Jesus and my faith" — is one that she knows not everyone will want to join.
She'd created her @alesiajournal Instagramaccount to send the message that she would no longer post the content her followers were used to seeing.
"I know not everyone's a follower of Jesus, and that's fine," she said. "I just didn't want that to be pressuring."
But after friends and family expressed confusion about why she hadn't been posting at @TaylorAlesia, she realized she needed to explain.
What's next for Taylor Alesia?
Hervideos from the past year largely showed her modeling shorts, dresses and bikinis. She said she will now pivot toward talking about mental health and sharing her quality time with family and friends.
"I just kind of want to take a few steps back and try to be the old Taylor because I feel like I lost sight of who I was," she said.
Another big change is that she will no longer monetize her YouTube videos and will decline offers to represent brands. She will live on her savings, she said.
She hopes that no longer making money from her online platform will be key to enjoying using social media again.
"I just want to keep good intentions from here on out," she said. "I just want to do the right thing from now on."
Reach the reporter at kimi.robinson@gannett.com or at 602-444-4968. Follow her on Twitter @kimirobin.
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