Vine's Gay Superheroine
Spend any amount of time on Vine and you'll see rather quickly that it's no land of milk and honey. With popular pages rife with worn out EDM-laden sports clips, flying potatoes and self-serving bratty teens, it's all too easy to write Vine off as a time-wasting, nonsensical dumping ground.
But every so often, a Vine will burst onto the art or style page with an eye-catching flourish that's difficult to overlook. That Vine, more likely than not, is the work of rising star Jeffrey Marsh.
His message is simple: Be yourself. Be happy with yourself. Be more comfortable with your differences — and embrace and enjoy them. And while this missive has resonated most strongly with the LGBTQ community, Marsh insists that it's for anyone and everyone.
"I hope it's universal for everyone: LGBT, Q, I, all those letters, and straight people, men, women… I want to reach everybody."
His ethos of "everyone is welcome" permeates not only his Vines, but his personality. Case in point: When I asked Marsh what his preferred pronouns were, he confidently told me that I was free to choose them myself. "I don't care, you can call me whatever you want. I don't mind if you think of me as a boy or a girl — I don't think of myself as either. I'm me, and I'm human."
Marsh grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where his differences were recognized early on, but by no means accepted by peers or family. Daily life was accompanied by alienation and emotional and physical bullying. To mask these issues, Marsh chose to heavily immerse himself in Christianity hoping against hope that he "could be so Christian, no one would suspect [he] was gay."
Marsh recollects coming out to his mother on three separate occasions before it really stuck. After Marsh "officially" came out as a senior in high school, he spent a few years attempting to reconcile being gay and Christian, but treatment by the church made that choice intolerable. It was soon after that Marsh discovered the book "There Is Nothing Wrong With You" by Cheri Huber, a Western student and teacher of Zen Buddhism. Reading it, he began the process of shedding self-hate and his practice of Buddhism.
Buddhist principles of selfless meditation, discovery of compassion and simply connecting with others played an important role in the creation of Marsh's lifestyle and the formation of his social voice.
And after spending years working to spread his gospel of positivity and self-confidence to others through live performance, YouTube videos and various other mediums, Marsh finally found success through Vine. The brevity and intimacy of these videos, according to Marsh, has allowed his message to travel so well.
"I didn't know what Vine would be when I first started out. I wanted to share what I had learned through simple language and direct communication."
Marsh's first big hit on Vine was the hashtag-titled #NoTimeToHateMyself in which he challenges fans to accept themselves and others no matter how they choose to look. The tag was a crystallization of what Marsh was trying to do when he first started using Vine.
Before long, fans from across the spectrums of the race, gender and age were taking part in the campaign and using Vine to profess their own self-worth.
"I had no clue that a place like Vine would be receptive to something like that, let alone embrace it wholeheartedly," Marsh said.
More recently, Marsh's #DontSayThatsSoGay tag has been encouraging Viners to change their language and assert the idea that the word "gay" is not an insult. It started with a Vine from puppet-star Corduroy Cat that promised to block any users who used the word "gay" as an insult. After Corduroy Cat began receiving vicious hate comments, Marsh started the hashtag to show his support and the tag took off.
Marsh did not attack the haters, but rather defended the victims, calling his fans to action and asking them to express why gay is not an insult. In an overwhelming and heartfelt show of solidarity, fans took to the app in support of Marsh's message, giving reasons why people love and respect gay people and don't want to use that word as an insult.
If you're unfamiliar with Vine, you may not realize that it possesses a messaging feature which allows people on the app to send short Vine messages in private to one another. While average Viners rarely use the feature between themselves, it has been a fantastic tool to connect Viners with their favorite Vine celebrities. As Marsh's popularity has grown, this feature has taken on an important role for his fan base.
Marsh responds to every message he receives (excepting those which are simply malicious). He alleges that 98% of the messages he receives are people saying things like, "Thank you for what you do," "When I watch your Vines I feel like I can be myself" and "You gave me the courage to come out to my parents."
"My hope is that people see some humanity in my Vines, that they see someone who, despite all the hate I receive, is happy to be who they are. And I hope they can connect with that."
It was shocking to Marsh when almost every single day he began to receive messages from people who told him they were planning to commit suicide and had chosen not to because of his work on Vine.
Emails from fans are touching, appreciative, and reveal just how much of an influence Jeffrey has had on people's lives:
In any event, your videos just make me feel so fucking beautiful. I feel so fucking alive. Pardon the curse words. You bring life to the corpse of my soul that has been shattered by society's view about people like me, and like us.
Most recently, Marsh has returned to YouTube which allows for him to respond at length to fan questions, and address both serious and lighthearted topics more in-depth.
But even as Marsh expands his vision to other social sites, it's never about popularity or followers, it's about reaching individuals — something taken directly from his practice of Buddhism. For Marsh, it's about care. Care about the creation of each Vine, about himself, and about each viewer. "If a Vine gets two likes, and that affected somebody's life, then I feel like I've done my job. Each like is coming from a very important person."
Marsh's passion for individual engagement manifested itself further as we talked about plans for his first Vine meetup. "It doesn't matter if one person shows up, or 50. Each person is important to me."
His real goal for the meetup is to start a movement to bring people together under the banner of making the world a safe place for people who are different.
The weekend after Marsh and I originally spoke, I went to his meetup in Washington Square Park. Amid the throngs of people, pigeons and dancers, he stood smiling in a smart black romper and sharp heels, waiting for fans to arrive.
After waiting for a half hour, only two fans had arrived. But in Jeffrey's eyes, I could see that he still counted this as a success. He greeted those two people with generous hugs, took selfies and chatted about their experiences, and in the end, both fans walked away with huge smiles on their faces.
One of the fans told me, "There's such a wide variety of human expression that's often quelled and subdued, but Jeffrey preaches quite the opposite. His reminders to love yourself and be true to yourself is something we all should take to heart."
After the meetup, Marsh and I spoke a little further about his future plans, and he admitted quite candidly that the less he's planned, the more successful he's been — a strategy that's landed him on the red carpet for Laverne Cox's "The T Word." He remains open, enthusiastic and says yes to every opportunity he can, "Of course I'd like to grow my Vine and YouTube channels, but even if they don't grow, I'm pretty fulfilled right now."
We even filmed a couple Vines that answered some of our burning questions about Jeffrey Marsh:
As we parted ways, Marsh let me in on a secret: "I make Vines as a time machine, I'm making them for my 10-year-old self back in Pennsylvania on the farm. Which, as I've come to find out, there are a lot of 10-year-old 'me's' around. They are a way to bring healing to everybody, including me."
Keep up the good work Jeffrey.