Peshawar's youngest YouTuber at the center of digital shift

An unexpected start in Italy

Muzamil opens by highlighting something singular about his guest: at 17, Mahrukh is one of the youngest and most successful YouTubers in Pakistan. She came to the medium almost by accident. While in class 9, she watched international vloggers and Pakistani creators like Anusha Khan and Muminah Munir. The inspiration took hold, but she decided to wait until after her board exams. Then a family trip changed the plan. “I was in Italy,” Mahrukh recalls, “and I thought I would try YouTube. I talked to my parents and then I started out of nowhere in Italy.”

She did not start with equipment or a plan. She had a phone and curiosity. By July 2018, at 15, she posted her first video. Her parents initially did not understand vlogging, but Mahrukh says, “They gave me support. For one year, my parents used to watch the vlog on YouTube and then they went on YouTube.” That backing was crucial. She had bought time and permission to experiment.

The long climb to monetization

The narrative that goes viral overnight is rare. Mahrukh’s story is more honest. She spent her first two months gaining 1,000 subscribers. Progress felt glacial. Then came a collaboration with Yuhano that opened a door. After that, a video about a Pakistani wedding in Norway gained traction. Within seven months, she had 10,000 subscribers. The journey took longer than audiences expect. “People expect that you have worked 2 weeks and 10,000 subscribers,” she says, “but it was a huge journey.”

She edited everything on her phone using iMovie. No fancy software, no assistant. When 2019 arrived, inconsistency crept in. She uploaded only 10 videos all year. Then the lockdown of 2020 arrived, and something shifted. Confined to a 4x4 room, she generated 25 to 30 videos in a few months, creating content about cooking, room redesign, and recreating Pakistani celebrity photographs. One recreation video became viral. Still, her first YouTube payment did not arrive until April 2020, almost two years after she started.

Why representation reaches deeper than numbers

Muzamil presses on a point that matters: when young girls see Mahrukh, they see proof. Muminah Munir and Anusha Khan showed the way. Now Mahrukh is showing it again. Her audience is 18 to 24 years old, mostly female. She receives direct messages from girls who say they started their own channels after watching hers. The impact is not abstract. “I like it very good,” she says of this effect, “because now I have a lot of DMs that we have started our channel and started our blog account.”

On Instagram, where she has 70,000 followers, her engagement rate is roughly 30 percent. Most creators report 5 to 7 percent. The intimacy is real. She is sharing her day, her experience, her life. People respond not to a polished brand but to a peer. This carries weight in a market where YouTube remains male-dominated and where girls often see no path forward in the digital space.

The price of visibility no one discusses

The conversation darkens when Muzamil asks about criticism. Early on, Mahrukh received hate comments. She deleted them, let them hurt her. Then a realization came: “I would get a hate comment, and then I was getting 10 positives, why do I see hate?” She learned to separate critique from hate. Critique teaches. Hate is about the critic, not about her.

But the deeper issue remains unspoken in Pakistan’s creator circles. Muzamil points out that constant feedback, both praise and blame, rewires the nervous system in ways humans are not built for. Young creators exist in public in a way previous generations did not. The comments never stop. The metrics never lie. He notes, “We’re not designed, as a species, to take that level of feedback.” Mahrukh admits the pressure is real. When she goes silent for a week or two, people question her. “Why don’t you post a video? We are sitting there.” The burden of expectation is constant.

Peshawar’s own narrative

A running theme in her work is Peshawar. When Muzamil googled her, every headline said “pride of Peshawar.” She acknowledges the weight. “When I started, my main goal was to change the image of Peshawar,” she says. Yet she has made few videos in her own city, choosing instead to travel. Khaanpur Dam, the Khewra Salt Mine, towns most Pakistanis have never heard of. She discovers them for her audience. “In Pakistan,” she argues, “there are 2 to 2 hours of drive and there are 3 interesting things.”

Muzamil notes that Peshawar has been misrepresented. Pre-2013, it was seen as lawless. Now startup events and tech conferences happen there. But the perception has not caught up. Mahrukh believes change is slow. “Aista aista,” she says, slowly and steadily. “It will open up slowly and steadily.”

A career, not a hobby

At 17, she is already balancing college and her channel. She is studying Computer Science but plans to pursue media studies later. She has earned through AdSense and occasional paid promotions on Instagram, though the latter remains inconsistent. The money question matters because without it, the work cannot survive. Parents need to see returns. Peers wonder if it is sustainable.

Muzamil presses: does she see this as a career? She was hesitant before. Now she says yes. “I feel like it would be a disservice to everything that you have created and all the efforts that you have put in,” she responds, “if you leave it at this point and say my mood will change.” She does not plan to leave, not now. But she is protecting her future by studying as well. It is a balance between betting on the present and hedging against the uncertain.