YouTube has influenced Nikita Dragun's life in more ways than one.
One of the platforms' biggest beauty influences—with over 3.55 million subscribers—Nikita's rise to fame coincided.
She came out to fans as transgender in an emotional 2015 YouTube video.
But long before her social media success, the self-proclaimed "mother of draguns" was a makeup-loving kid growing up in Springfield, Virginia.
She exclusively told host Austin J. Mills, "I always knew I was a little bit different."
"I was a little bit smaller than everyone, a little bit more feminine," she continued.
"And being in a small town, I really didn't have that many friends, so I turned to online to try to make something of myself."
Nikita said that YouTube gave her the space to be her true, authentic self. "I just wanted to live an online life," she told Austin.
"And being online, no one knew I was either a boy or a girl. They just saw me for me."