The bitch who keeps her receipts.
Influences: Green Day, Busted, blink-182, Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Paramore, The White Stripes, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Placebo, Twenty One Pilots
Emma Louise Blackery (born 11 November 1991) is a YouTuber and singer-songwriter from Essex, England.
Emma got her first following through a series of videos of herself reading the well-known erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey that she has since removed due to copyright, after which she opted to try out vlogging. Although she was known for uploading a mix of vlogs, skits and advice when she was first getting popular, her brand of content interest has touched on a myriad of subjects ranging from makeup hauls to educational videos on North Korea. Her content has also undergone significant change throughout her career, what with her three now-defunct side channels for beauty (boxes of foxes), gaming (BirdyBoots) and vlogging (Vloggery).
Emma's current content generally consists of videos related to her music career, advice videos, and recurring gameplay (mainly of The Sims 4) that revives BirdyBoots as a series instead of a channel. Her sense of humor often entails heavy Self-Deprecation and employs a quite colorful vocabulary.
The reputation that she built discussing issues concerning identity and mental health led to her to write a book that was published in fall 2017 titled Feel Good 101, named after the video series in which she talked about said issues.
Although it wasn't how many people knew her when she first got famous, Emma actually started out as a musician, as her earliest YouTube channel (emmaforthewin
) was based around covers. She's been building a solid discography since the early 2010s that has gotten her recognition up to being a support act for Busted and having her EP featured front and center in an iPhone X keynote.
Her main channel can be found here.
Discography:
- Human Behaviour (EP; 2012)
- Distance (EP; 2013)
- Perfect (EP; 2014)
- Sucks to Be You (EP; 2016)
- Magnetised (EP; 2017)
- Villains (album; 2018)
- My Arms Are Open (EP; 2020)
Tropes that apply to Emma Blackery:
- A-Cup Angst: Admitted to having it in this video, where she stated she was considering getting breast implants.
- The Alcoholic: Used as a running gag during her cooking videos, when she would invariably start chugging neat vodka halfway through. The joke was retired after the "Butternut Gnocchi" video because she legitimately gave herself alcohol poisoning due to depression-drinking after that one.
- all lowercase letters: How she portrays her name in her YouTube username. Also applied to "boxes of foxes".
- Ambiguously Bi: As discussed in a video, even she isn't sure.
- Berserk Button: She does NOT look like Cher Lloyd, okay?
- To a lesser extent, she has made clear her intense disdain for working in retail and waitressing.
- To a lesser extent, she has made clear her intense disdain for working in retail
- Bilingual Bonus: Emma has a knowledge of French that she got from studying the language in school. The T-shirt Emma is wearing on the cover of the Sucks to Be You EP has the message "je m'en fous" on it, which translates to "I don't care".
- Blatant Lies: In "The Rise and Fall of Emma Blackery", she shows a clip from a deleted video where she's way too firm about being the happiest she's ever been... while crying.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Done in quite tongue-in-cheek style in Your ASMR Friend. When Emma finally confronts the titular "friend", she retaliates by questioning Emma's judgment of people because of particular quirks or strange interests that they have. Emma replies by saying that she has her own ways of being happy, such as playing video games...to the point where she even has a channel called BirdyBoots that you can subscribe to. Yes, she does look directly into the camera when she says this, and yes, she does continue right on with the skit after saying this.
- British Accents: (Obviously). Used to have such a strong accent that Brits can specifically identify her as being from Basildon. Since about 2014 it's morphed into a generic South England accent, probably from collaborating and living with several British vloggers.
- British Teeth: Used to have a downplayed instance of this (her incisors were crowded), but due to (cyber)bullying she began hating her teeth and got them refined via Invisalign.
- Can't Hold Her Liquor: Emma gets drunk on wine very easily, as revealed in Awkward Sexy Teenage Moments.
- Catchphrase: Her BirdyBoots intro was always "HALL-O, everybody! Welcome back to BirdyBoots!"
- Cluster F-Bomb: She does this a lot. Often unintentionally.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: The running joke of the "Cooking For Singles" videos, which usually involve Emma taking a perfectly good basic food recipe and replacing the water with vodka, and adding cat biscuits. The video where she tries to make butternut gnocchi like a Sim reveals that Emma herself isn't exactly a terrible chef in real life, just not a great one.
- Crossover:
- With Nerd³. They have a series together on his channel: Demma Plays.
- Has made several videos with KickThePj, who she has described as the most creative YouTuber out there.
- Has made a skit with PewDiePie parodying the media attention around the amount of money he makes; Emma is interviewing Felix, Felix establishes a "no questions about money" rule, and Emma can't find a single question that isn't about money. Emma has also been on one of Felix's podcasts with CinnamonToastKen.
- She's also participated in a few videos with Stuart Ashen and Barry Lewis, including a Doritos Roulette challenge.
- Cue the Flying Pigs: It almost seems like Busted's Pigs Can Fly tour was named with Emma in mind, and in her announcement video she explicitly said the "when pigs fly" phrase when reflecting on how she knew she'd never play with Busted after they broke up in 2005.
- Curse Cut Short: Used occasionally, like in this Q&A.
- Deadpan Snarker: Has a very dry sense of humor that is a big part of her comedy.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: This video.
- Emo Teen: Her teenage years were highlighted in One of the Boys.
- Everyone Can See It: Both she and Luke invoked this after they announced they were a couple, saying it was pretty obvious from all the crossover videos (including a "boyfriend does my make-up" episode) that they'd been together for a while. There's also stuff like the creepy stalker shrine at the end of Just Girly Things which was released while the relationship was still a secret.
- Flipping the Bird: A penchant of hers.
- The Gadfly: A theme in 2017, of wearing intentionally the worst outfits she can findnote in public to get people's reactions.
- Gamer Chick: On one of her side channels. She says that she plays games because they just make her happy.
- Granola Girl: Was a vegan when she dated Luke, but had to give it up because she wasn't eating well enough on a vegan diet and it was screwing with her health.
- I Am Not Pretty: She believes that she isn't attractive, despite what her fans tell her.
- I Hate Past Me: Her screwups in the past are an essential part of her Self-Deprecation humor.
- Kaleidoscope Hair: For a long time she kept on changing her hair color; pink, purple, red, blue, the list goes on. Then she shaved it all off for charity, wore a couple of wigs to boost her self confidence (as her hair is a big part of her life), kept it to a natural brown, then bleached it blonde, only to dye it orange around Halloween 2015, turn it a lighter shade of brown, change to purple, turn it brown again (this time fuller and darker), opt for a rich blonde, and as of late turn it back to a dark brown.
- Blatant Lies: She did say during her natural phase that she wasn't going to be colouring her hair anymore. This lasted about 6 months.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: Has quite the foul mouth. Apparently, one of her influences and reasons for it was watching South Park as a kid.
- Memetic Mutation: Invoked and acknowledged in her I AM A MEME video, where she showed a series of pictures (almost all of them Photoshopped) that were made from a photo taken from a shoot made in promotion for an event she was co-hosting at that time.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Her near-verbatim reaction to her decision to sacrifice Chloe in Life Is Strange after seeing its effects. She subsequently spends most of the ending and credits in tears.
- Mythology Gag: For her 1-million-subs
Milestone Celebration, Emma remade her dating rap video from 2013. - Naked First Impression: She made a video describing the time she was dancing around her apartment in a towel, which fell off while she was in front of a window and a neighbor (whom she didn't know) got a full view of her naked body."Welcome to the neighborhood, motherfucker! Here's my vagina."
- Noodle Incident: Fell out with Cherry Wallis in 2014 for reasons still unclear. Didn't officially address it until she posted a photo of herself at Summer in the City with her 2 years later, referring to it as "The Elephant in the Room", and they recorded a video about the falling out in April 2017... except Emma accidentally deleted it...
- Official Couple: Formerly, Her & Luke - the internet exploded with a huge amount of squee when they confirmed they were together in October 2014 having have been dating (an open secret) for some time before that. However they (amicably) broke up around April/May 2016.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Her dating rap, most significantly in her redux of the original, have her try as best as she can to look cool and fail horribly.
- Let's not forget this line:
"Wish I could be Eminem but I'm not that black." - Promoted Fanboy: After 13 years, Emma finally achieved her childhood dream of playing with Busted when she got the chance to join them on their Pigs Can Fly reunion tour.
- Rage Quit: The Sims in Real Life ends with Emma angrily quitting after her Sim starts panicking and drowning in a pool when she is instructed to get out.
- Self-Deprecation: One of the main cornerstones of her comedy, usually through railing on her past self.
- She really rips into herself in her roast rap, including "The Promise".
youtuber!Emma: Bitch, come on, at least I have something to give. "I promise you this", how innovative! - She really rips into herself in her roast rap
- Self-Empowerment Anthem: A lot of her songs fit squarely under this, the most famous being "The Promise".And I may not even know your name,
But I promise you I've felt the same. - Shameless Self-Promotion: See Breaking the Fourth Wall above.
- Silly Love Songs: "Go the Distance".
- Spelling Song: "Agenda" engages in this in its post-chorus ("A-G-E-N-D-A-A-A"), although the "A-A-A" is pronounced as "ah-ah-ah" instead of "ay-ay-ay".
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A fairly savage one to herself in "Villains Pt 2".
- Yandere: Parodied in How to Become a Fangirl."...and put that knife down, young lady; their girlfriends are simply lucky."
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Fear the Future."And I want you to remember this, when you put yourself down, I cannot fear my future now that I have you around."
