ISLAMABAD: In January 2016, Pakistan lifted a three-year ban on the Google-owned video sharing website, YouTube.
Since then, a great number of young Pakistanis have taken to uploading their talents online, joining a huge and enthusiastic global community of YouTube influencers and celebrities.
Below, we list some of the most popular and upcoming Pakistani content creators who have wholly embraced the return of YouTube since 2015 and are bringing comedy, beauty, fashion, travel and more to their subscribers.
Irfan Junejo
With over 600,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and hundreds of thousands of followers across social media platforms, Irfan Junejo is easily the most recognizable YouTube star out of Pakistan. Junejo began vlogging (video blogging) two years ago, detailing his life, his rants and his travels around Pakistan and the world. He is known for his simple, thoughtfully edited videos and rose quickly to become one of the key faces of Pakistan’s growing online entertainment community.
Mooroo
Karachi-based musician Taimoor Salahuddin aka Mooroo has over 400,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, Mooroosicity. With his frank, endearing and often humorous videos, he has become a YouTube sensation as a writer, director, collaborating comedian and musician. Personal videos, where he shares musings and snippets of his daily life are wildly popular and his wedding video has been viewed over a million times since he uploaded it earlier this year.
Umar Khan
With close to 400,000 combined followers on his YouTube and Instagram pages, NCA graduate Umar Khan or Ukhano as he is more popularly known, has given Pakistani content creation a fun twist. His YouTube channel is filled with beautifully shot videos and humorous vlogs detailing his life and travels. His legions of fans follow his videos intently, some of which include collaborations with celebrities, films, and sports teams like Pakistan Super League’s Peshawar Zalmi whose entire current season he has filmed up close and personal for their fans and his.
Fatima Irfan Shaikh
YouTube personality Fatima Irfan Shaikh has been sharing beauty hacks, tutorials and makeup reviews out of Pakistan on her channel ‘Glossips’ for her over 200,000 enthusiastic subscribers, most of them women. Interspersed with some vlogs of her own life, Shaikh stands out for her tutorials on skin and makeup products that cater to the South Asian and Pakistani woman, often ignored in the wider world of beauty.
Mohammad Wasif
Mohammad Wasif is a newer member of the YouTube community- an artist and photographer documenting his travels beautifully around Pakistan and across the border in India, with some content getting over a million views.
Momina Sibtain, Momina’s Mixed Plate
One of the more recent arrivals on YouTube is editor, journalist and a frequent fixture of best dressed lists, Momina Sibtain. Sibtain started her channel ‘Momina’s Mixed Plate,’ a year ago and has quickly started amassing followers in the thousands for her slick, well-edited videos which hold intimate interviews with celebrities (think Mahira Khan, Hareem Farooq and Syra Shahroz), styling tips and fashion and beauty collaborations all injected with her personality, her distinct laugh and relatable humour.
