Rule 5 Saturday - New Media Star - Anna Akana

This week's Rule 5 special is for Anna Akana:

Anna Kay Akana is an American actress, filmmaker, author, and comedian. She is known for her YouTube channel, which has over 2 million subscribers and over 226 million video views

Anna Akana was born August 18, 1989. Her ancestry is Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Irish, German, Spanish, French, and English. Akana's father was an officer in the United States Marine Corps as she grew up. Her family moved every few years to a new state or country. As a result, Akana picked up several languages including Japanese and Spanish.

On Valentine's Day 2007, Akana's 13-year-old sister, Kristina, died by suicide. Several months after her sister's death, Akana watched Margaret Cho perform on a Comedy Central special and laughed for the first time since the suicide. She began to see laughter as a means of trying to move on with her life, and decided to seriously pursue comedy. Akana is very vocal about her sister's suicide and is a strong advocate for suicide prevention. In 2013, Akana uploaded a YouTube video called "please don't kill yourself" where she explains what it feels like to have a family member die by suicide. In that same year, she released a book called Surviving Suicide which contains her journal entries from the two years after her sister's death.

Akana first started performing comedy at the age of 19, but ended up switching her platform to YouTube in 2011 after experiencing massive panic attacks and anxiety before going on stage. Akana has since resumed performing stand-up.
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avAkana creates both comedy and documentary YouTube videos. In 2014, Akana was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #72. In that same year, Akana decided to focus more on her skills as a director and attempted to make one short film a month. While she did not reach her goal of 12, she did make six short films which were received well by her YouTube audience. Akana starred in all of her short films and has starred in various other short films produced by other YouTube stars. Akana has since continued to create short films.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho is going Asian too with "Rule 5 Sunday: Mariya Takeuchi" and "FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short". Linked at The Right Way in "Rule 5 Saturday LinkOrama."