Conversations with Irene Wu

Today we’d like to introduce you to Irene Wu

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My brother (who is 12 years older than me) gave me a digital camera when I was 11 years old and blocked my social media (live journal and AOL Instant Messenger) to “protect me” from the internet. I was very determined to have a social life so I would find other ways to get back on social media platforms which made me very interested in figuring out technology. I used to take pictures and videos of all my friends and post them on the internet. It was honestly so I could look back at all the memories. I’d also edit videos on windows movie maker on my PC and really enjoyed creating.

I also always wanted to be a food blogger / food critic because I thought that was just be a fun job. Another way for socialization besides the internet, pictures, and videos was going out to eat at restaurants with friends. Pretty food was fun to take pictures of and meals were fun to get to know friends on a deeper level.

Fast forward to college when we had facebook and from my high school days, I remembered that the easiest way to meet people was to take pictures of them and tag them also so I could remember their names. I’d meet people who would talk about Yelp Elite: you can only get it if you are nominated or if you nominate yourself and the Yelp council decides your fate to badge you with Yelp Elite. I thought that was such an unattainable goal but it was a dream. I’d check-in on facebook and yelp every where I went. On facebook, it was for social and on yelp, it was to keep track of all the places I’d been and when.

Eventually, all of these little hobbies I had turned into my food Instagram: stirtheyummy. People were getting into finstas so I thought, what do I have to lose by starting a food instagram? I didn’t follow anyone I knew, I created it for me as a separate identity because I did not want to be judged by people I knew. At first, I posted about food I’d go to while writing honest yelp reviews and eventually I got an email from the Yelp Elite Squad doctoring me as a Yelp Elite. I’ve been Yelp Elite since 2018.

During the pandemic, I was furloughed from my job and was losing my mind doing nothing so I got into Tiktok and loved making short videos and following trends. I continued to get better at creating a quick cut style and voiceovers. A lot of my friends would compliment me about my voice which was really nice because I was always very insecure about my voice since my first language was Mandarin and my parents were immigrants. I’d write scripts and edit my videos on InShot, find a song that represented the mood of the experience, and just post without shame on Tiktok and Instagram, and now YouTube shorts.

I really enjoy creating whether it be for a restaurant, experience, brand, or product. It’s a nice creative outlet that’s purely just for me and the best part after editing is seeing the finished product and thinking, “wow, that wasn’t that bad!”

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I wouldn’t say it’s been smooth, I don’t consider myself very successful. I would love to have millions of followers and millions of views to show people the data and be like “look I made it.” But it’s not really about that for me, I just don’t want people to question the legitimacy of my work. I create for fun and I try to to be entertaining and hope that someone had a good experience watching my video or is influenced to help out a small businesses I was able to make a video for.

The pandemic was initially a struggle because it was hard changing my entire POV from what I thought I knew into focusing on myself and being productive without a job, without yelp elite events, without being able to travel to see my friends who lived far away.

When I started to focus a lot of my energy into myself, to be honest, I think that it wasn’t easy because I was always the type of person who was happier if other people were happy so it was weird having to redirect that energy into just myself. It was easier to hype up my best friends or people around me, but it was super hard to hype up myself and build real self confidence and feel like everything I do doing is “good enough” when there are a lot of other people on the internet who have the numbers and the skills that may be better than mine.

I’ve learned though, that it’s not that people are better, they’re just different and it’s okay to be different and have your own style. I do think I’m still trying to find my style and my voice, but that also requires me to be braver on the internet which the internet can be a very TERRIFYING and mean place. But I’m learning to not take people’s words to heart anymore. I think my fiancé has really helped me listen to my voice over the noise of others.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
In short: I create short form videos on the internet. You can call me a content creator.

I’m known for my food instagram: @stirtheyummy – where I vlog mainly about food, using sensitive skin beauty products that don’t have propelyne glycol or limonene (because I’m allergic), any cool product I’m into, and sometimes fashion.

I also post on tiktok @irenehwu. I work for a large streaming company and have had a few of my tiktok ideas land on the brand’s tiktok’s which is really cool.

And my personal instagram @irenewu which is a place I post about my personal milestones.

I’m most proud of when I started my job, I posted a tiktok vlogging my first project and it went viral and the video got picked up by bustle (https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/real-life-squid-game-promo-stunts?utm_campaign=linkinbio&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=later-linkinbio) and people at work saw that as a good thing. It made me feel really happy, supported, and valued for my creativity.

My latest biggest accomplishment was when I was upset with my fiancé for freezing bananas with the skin on and I was so annoyed. So I made a video as a way of therapy for being annoyed with him and it got 3.7M views and counting and triggered both men and women on the internet: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C68GDtluVch/. The best part is that majority of the internet (90% of 50K voters) sided with my way of freezing bananas.

What sets me apart is that I love what I do and I’m impressively fast at creating content. It makes me happy every time I create something. It just validates me when one of my videos go viral.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I feel like things are always changing. I really don’t know where everything will go in 5-10 years, maybe we’ll be more like a Blade Runner world. Everything is going to be more tech, more AI, more robots, more efficient. We already have robots delivering food to our doors, automatic self-driving cars like Tesla or Waymo. I’m sure we’re just going to go more in that direction. It’s important to keep up with it all. We gotta go along for the ride, ride the wave, and lean in, I think that’s the only way to not get left behind.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.instagram.com/stirtheyummy/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/irenewu/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@stirtheyummy
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=k4cJzyEa7HypFsQUzNbMHg
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@irenehwu