The ex-BuzzFeed video producer talks to Tatler about starting her own YouTube channel, what inspires her viral cooking videos, and the mental health lessons she’s learnt along the way
Everyone’s version of success is different, so it makes sense that everyone’s recipe for success is different, too. And for Inga Lam, a former BuzzFeed video producer who is now a lifestyle and food YouTuber with 434,000 subscribers on the platform at the time of writing, her recipe involves the flexibility and intuition of cooking more so than the method and exacting science of baking. In fact, had she not been flexible or trusted her intuition, her growing channel—which has garnered more than 24 million views—might not have happened at all.
She posted her first video, My behind the scenes with BuzzFeed Worth It in Taiwan, at the start of 2020, which shares the hard work behind the BuzzFeed Video series that compares dishes or services at three different price points. The episodes shot on the island were later compiled into Worth It: Taiwan marathon on About To Eat, a new channel under BuzzFeed that was created by a group of the media outlet's video producers to explore food and the cultures, stories and people behind it.
“The reason I put it on my channel was because there really wasn’t a space for it on the company channels,” Lam tells Tatler in a virtual interview from her home in New York City.
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After that, there was a short period of radio silence on her personal channel because Lam had neither the ideas nor the time for it. Then the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the world to a standstill, and she found herself with nothing but time on her hands.
This was a challenging time for Lam and her family. While she and her brother were stuck in the US, their mother was in Hong Kong and worried sick about her children. Luckily, “nothing crazy happened” with her family. Still, like many during the pandemic, Lam needed an escape from the imposed isolation.
“[My] YouTube channel came about both from wanting to share things but also a necessity for myself. I had too much time to myself,” she says.