“Ford can have their stupid car back!” Kristina Horner told herself after stalling her new Ford Fiesta on a hill through three green lights.

The UW junior tried to learn how to drive the manual-transmission car from her father and then her brother in just two lessons. But when she was stuck on that hill on her way home from a two-day immersion event in Seattle, she ended up on the phone with her father in tears.

After auditioning in April with more than 4,100 other people via YouTube, Horner, 21, was selected to be one of 100 Ford Fiesta Agents across the United States to receive a free Ford Fiesta for six months.

Ford requires Horner to take her Fiesta, go on a mission and film it each month, posting it on YouTube as part of the Fiesta Movement.

“Kristina was an easy choice because she has such a fun personality,” Ford Motor Company representative Jenny Yim-Nordquist said. “She has so many diverse interests … and she’s a very active vlogger (video blogger).”

Horner views Ford’s advertising campaign as converting “our success to their success.” And with more than 21,000 subscribers, Horner’s YouTube channel, “italktosnakes,” is definitely successful: It boasts more than half a million views and was the 81st most viewed musician channel on YoutTube last week.

Her first mission uploaded on YouTube was a trip to Snoqualmie Falls to play in the water. Currently, Horner is working on a mission to purchase products from SkyMall, a catalog distributed to airline passengers. Her camera will accompany her every step of the way.

But out of the 74 videos currently on Horner’s channel, only five deal with her Ford Fiesta missions. Video blogging, or vlogging, has allowed Horner to document her life on YouTube for years. She often films herself talking about everyday things in her room, available for thousands to view with just the click of a button.

“It started as a fun little hobby, but it’s really great to be part of this community of people who all feel the same way,” Horner said. “Some people tell me they watch videos instead of regular television. There’s a lot of dumb stuff on TV, and it’s cool to have people watch to find out your opinions.”

She pinpointed her entrance into the realm of vlogging as coinciding with the 2004 creation of her wizard rock (Wrock) band, The Parselmouths. The name refers to characters in the Harry Potter series who claim the unique ability to converse with snakes.

Following the band’s inception, “it was all kind of a chain reaction,” Horner said.

As she and co-founder Brittany Vahlberg began playing shows in 2006, they formed friendships with other Wrock bands. Communication over the Internet then became commonplace for Horner.

“I feel like the Internet makes the world smaller,” Horner said, because to her, whether she’s Skyping with a friend across the state or across the world, they seem to be the same distance away.

Most of Horner’s friends are not even from around the UW, but rather from around the country. She gets to see them when she travels with The Parselmouths and for YouTube events, but the Internet acts as a tool for maintaining all her relationships.

Horner even met her current boyfriend, Alex Day, over YouTube. But with the Internet still so new, the boundaries of Internet dating are only slowly coming into view.

She spoke about how it’s socially acceptable to meet someone in a bar for a night and begin to date them without knowing anything about them, but when people find out she’s dating Day from YouTube, they’re often quick to judge.

“People don’t want to like what they don’t understand,” Horner said of the relationship.

But to Horner, meeting someone through a vlog isn’t any different than meeting them in “real life.”

“If you talk to someone on YouTube, they make video after video talking about their ideas and hopes and fears, and you really get to know them,” she explained. “It’d be pretty hard for a serial killer to build an entire channel of a really nice person. I think it’s better because you get to know people first — before you meet them.”

One of Horner’s “real life friends,” Eia Waltzer, a UW junior and current member of The Parselmouths, has been featured in a few of Horner’s videos. An entire video wound up dedicated to Waltzer when her alarm clock went off for close to four hours in their shared house. Upon returning home, Waltzer had 179 comments on her YouTube channel — all from viewers telling her to turn off her alarm.

“I think it’s incredibly funny when [Horner’s] YouTube life ends up affecting me,” Waltzer said in an e-mail. “Knowing [Horner] in her ‘real life’ world is actually pretty funny. Sometimes, I’ll watch her videos and already have heard what she’s saying, and other times, I’ll storm into her room demanding to know if the news from her video is true and have her tell me about it.”

When Horner meets people that know her purely through YouTube, though, she’s often surprised by how much they know about her life. They ask her things like, “How was your math test?” or “How’s your job going?”

“But I’ve been really lucky [because] I haven’t really had any weird stuff happen,” Horner said. “One thing that I’ve found is people kind of view you as a celebrity, even though you don’t see yourself as one. If people write fan mail, they apologize for being creepy. I don’t feel like it’s creepy.”

Horner considers her life no different from those of others — there are just more people watching it.

“I don’t really know if I’m kind of missing out on the college experience, but I’m oftentimes too busy to go to regular college things,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like a double life. I wouldn’t have time to have a double life.”

Horner has instead integrated her Internet life with her “real” one, whether she’s driving to Snoqualmie Falls as a Fiesta agent or merely driving to work at a local theater. Both lives are real to her.

“I started just as a girl sitting in a room making videos,” Horner said. “Now, two years and 20,000 subscribers later, I’m still just a girl in a room making videos. I’m not any different.”

Reach reporter Ella Williams at features@dailyuw.com.