Irfan Junejo sits in the corner of a gym spinning on a stationary bike. You’d think a guy cycling nowhere would have a lot of time to reflect on the what-ifs of life. But if you ask Junejo – YouTuber, photographer, accidental marketing guy – he will flash that faint grin of someone who has seen a thing or two and reply, “I don’t regret much, to be honest.”

He grew up in a Karachi you could almost call quiet. North Nazimabad was his first address until circumstances led his family to move to Malir. It’s more subdued there: wider streets, fewer gunshot echoes and grand social clubs. He was the kind of kid who liked to run around until someone could think of a good reason to bring him home. That reason turned out to be football.

From the time he was nine, Junejo was more likely to remember the names of Arsenal’s bench players than the math formulas in his textbooks. “For me, football was everything,” he said. “I was a strong student early on, but eventually, I became just above average.” He lived and breathed the sport, toggling allegiances between FC Barcelona and Arsenal. By the time he hit his teens, he was serious enough about the game to play for local clubs. Provincial teams came calling, and some departmental squads dangled opportunities; the kind that demand full-time training.

But you can’t chase a degree and a ball full-time unless you are Lionel Messi, and Malir doesn’t have a Camp Nou.

This is when practicality barged into his life like an uninvited houseguest. “At 18, I realised I was not going to be a professional footballer. In Pakistan, there was no real future for it.” So he parked those dreams and the ball rolled out of the frame. His new direction pointed toward higher education. Marketing. A BBA. Followed by an attempt – well, three attempts – at an MBA.

He tells you this story in a tone that is both proud and self-deprecating. “I love marketing because it’s about storytelling.” He ended up at the Institute of Business Management (College of Business Management) in Karachi and says the real reason he stuck with marketing was the love of a good story.

Ask him about that, and he lights up like a neon sign. “I used to watch old Nike and Adidas football commercials. They weren’t just ads to me; they were like mini-action films.” He remembers a particularly funny Strepsils commercial featuring an Olympic weightlifter who fails to hoist the bar until he pops a lozenge – after which he still can’t lift anything, but now he can scream. “All under 30 seconds. To me, that was brilliant storytelling.”

For a moment, he let that fascination flicker, until he stumbled upon photography. About a year into his BBA, his mother – newly retired – bought him a camera. That planted the first seeds of guilt.

He decided to make photography pay for itself, hammering away at the craft through online tutorials and practice. He shot weddings – not exactly the FIFA of photography, but it paid for better lenses and tripods. “I did a few free shoots to build a portfolio and the wedding circuit was repetitive,” he pauses, “but hey, I got to learn and make some money.” And he still had football.

In 2013, he established a football academy in Malir. “We weren’t making much. It was for the love of the game.” He was running the Facebook page for FC Rovers, his football club. Between wedding gigs and marketing the team, his photography and videography skills got a serious workout. The academy thrived until 2018 when his foray into YouTube turned full-time.

If you scroll back to January 1, 2017, you will find a humble piece of local internet history: Junejo’s inaugural YouTube post. “My first video was literally me explaining who I was and why I wanted to vlog,” he says.

“It was my New Year’s resolution to start that channel and I didn’t know what I was doing.” But “pooray dil se karna tha.”

No illusions about going viral. He spent every month uploading daily videos – 30 in 30 – and made a glorious sum of six dollars. But he wanted to shape raw slices of daily life into stories that inspire the sense of wonder he’d felt watching Casey Neistat. And if you think that’s an easy trick, try turning a breakfast of fried eggs and a quick trip to Dhoraji into compelling cinema.

It was also a test of how far he could push the daily vlog format without losing his sanity. Two years in, his channel had soared past 800,000 subscribers. He had brand deals, a YouTube Silver Play Button and was recognised by fans – sometimes in the middle of a meal with his wife – enthusiastically waving their phones at him.

Offline, people sometimes don’t engage with you like a real person. “You go to a wedding, and you sense you are invited only for the picture. It’s weird,” he says. Online, he received comments about how he ate, which hand he used to hold a spoon, or that he looked a little tired that morning. “Early on, one negative comment could ruin my night,” he recalled. He found ways to shrug off superficial critiques, but by then, the bigger problem was that he no longer felt like the protagonist of his own story.

“You wake up thinking, ‘What can I do that’s exciting for the vlog?’” he says, exhaling the memory.

“That’s not living; that’s manufacturing life. I was a ‘professional life-sharer’ and it became toxic fast.” By 2019, he was burnt to a crisp and told his fans he was stepping away. “I didn’t want a vlog that was my life. I wanted a life that I could vlog.”

He started journaling, cut down on screen time and tried to rebuild a semblance of personal space. He launched a second YouTube channel, Junejo 2.0, during the Covid-19 lockdowns. This time, it was more ‘Three Tips for Better Titles’ or ‘Watch Me Fail at This Game,’ a contained environment that didn’t require him to rummage for vlog-worthy moments every waking hour. By the time the pandemic’s haze lifted, that second channel had ballooned to over 300,000 subscribers.

His original channel soared to over a million subscribers. “Brands didn’t trust creators with creative freedom,” he says. They would come with bullet-pointed scripts, instructions on tone, etc. “I made free videos for them, basically like, ‘Here’s what I can do – does it work for you?’ and that opened the door.” And results they saw in millions of viewers, young and old. Now, brand deals chased him.

He did toy with the idea of a feature film, but the local industry, with its labyrinth of bureaucracies and compromises, didn’t appeal. On YouTube, he is the boss. He can edit, upload and gauge audience feedback in hours instead of months. “I can release content on YouTube without dealing with restrictions.”

He says his real bread and butter is brand deals and endorsements. If YouTube was banned, that would be a crisis, sure. But short of that, he is not losing sleep. He is, however, mapping out a plan: “I asked friends in London and Dubai how much they need to live comfortably. They said about $10,000 a month. So now, my goal is to build a source of income that isn’t tied to a specific location or platform.”

Irfan Junejo is no longer the starry-eyed idealist who once wanted to roam London’s football pitches.

Nor is he the overworked daily vlogger who filmed every breath of his day for content. These days, he is more measured; someone who has felt the exhaustion of fandom and fame but still loves the camera enough to chase the perfect shot. If you ask him what defines success, he will say, “It’s about feeling free.”

“Let’s just say I’m comfortable talking to a camera on my own terms. Five thousand people in an auditorium? Sure. A dinner party with strangers? I might just stick to the corner of the room.” He is building bigger brand deals, cooking up better content and quietly charting an exit plan if the digital gods ever slam the doors.

You get the impression that if they did, he would shrug, pick up another camera and reinvent himself again. “I used to think 15,000 subscribers would be my peak,” he recalls. “Today, I have 1.4 million and the goalpost keeps moving. You are always chasing the next thing. It never ends.”

Alifya Sohail is a human rights reporter and researcher.