Do we like Emma Chamberlain?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record with no sign of a harm pattern, but one real stain from 2020 and thin evidence of her doing good for others.
Emma Chamberlain started a YouTube channel in 2017 with no big plan. She wanted a more honest, less polished look at teen life than the influencers she grew up watching. It worked: nearly 10 million subscribers, a Streamy for Breakout Creator in 2018, and a spot on Time's 100 Next list.
The ugly bit first. In June 2020 she posted an Instagram photo, since deleted, in which she appeared to pull back her eyes in a gesture critics said mocks Asian people. She apologised on Twitter, saying it was not her intention and she was sorry to those hurt. Plenty of people called the apology slow and thin, and she was also accused over an older video in which she wore a much darker foundation, which she put down to grabbing the wrong shade.
In March 2023 a screenshot went viral that appeared to show her merch store selling a personal Instagram DM for $10,000. The store closed within days. Her merch company said the claim was false and the listing was an internal test she didn't know about, and she said she first assumed it was an online scam. It reads more like a dodgy corporate cock-up than a grift by her.
On the harm check, nothing turned up from her of the kind we look for: no campaigning against trans or LGBTQ+ people, no conspiracy theories, no anti-vax or climate-denial material. In 2020, when fans speculated about her politics after the US election, she wrote that she didn't want to spend the day “defending made up facts about me”. She named no candidate, so her politics stays unknown. Her recent work, a horror-comedy and fashion and coffee partnerships, looks harmless, though I found only light searchable record.
Coffee is the big business. Chamberlain Coffee launched in 2019, and in February 2025 a TikTok creator accused it of “whitewashing” the rounded boba-style cup it uses. Other users called that criticism overblown, and the Daily Dot printed no response from the company, so treat it as a online squabble and not a finding.
Nothing contentious has landed lately. Her feature film debut, the horror-comedy Forbidden Fruits, opened in March 2026 alongside Lili Reinhart and Victoria Pedretti. At the Vanity Fair Oscars party she said she'd shave her head for a role only if it was the coolest project of all time.