Ex-Vine star Christine Sydelko said her feud with former best friend Elijah Daniel felt like 'a breakup'

• Ex-Vine star Christine Sydelko spoke about her feud with Elijah Daniel in a recent NBC News interview.
• She said falling out with her former best friend felt like "a breakup."

Former Vine and YouTube star Christine Sydelko spoke about her feud with fellow social-media star Elijah Daniel in a recent interview with NBC News' Morgan Sung, saying drifting apart from her former best friend felt like "a breakup."

Sydelko and Daniel both rose to fame on Vine around 2015, and soon after started collaborating on YouTube. They parted ways in 2018 and later fell out publicly over disagreements about undelivered merch. At the time, Sydelko said Daniel had "ignored all his responsibilities" and failed to fulfill fans' orders, while Daniel said he was trying to fix the problem.

Daniel did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on Wednesday.

The public argument was a sign to Sydelko and Daniel's fans that they were no longer business partners or friends, and the pair did not collaborate again. Sydelko told NBC News that she and Daniel started drifting apart before their public spat, and said Daniel became "a little more demanding" and got more involved with the LA party scene.

She said she now regrets how everything played out online and being "publicly bitter" about the merch.

"I don't like how I handled that for sure," she said.

Sydelko said she Daniel reconciled last year when Daniel's mother died from COVID-19. The pair are "friendly" again, she told NBC News, adding they were probably not going to be as close as they were in the days of Vine.

Sydelko, who had 1.3 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, quit the internet in 2019. She announced on Twitter in September 2019 that being an influencer was a "trivial" job and said she couldn't stand the "fake drama" anymore.

Sydelko said she always struggled with the influencer lifestyle, and said several times it had been the main cause of her anxiety and depression. She also disagreed with how internet creators "just film themselves living."

"It was sorta fun while it lasted but I value my privacy more than followers now," she wrote. "See ya."

Sydelko has sporadically returned to social media since then but has remained mostly offline. Her legacy lives on in her Vines that are still referenced today — especially one where she hovers near people in New York mispronouncing "Merry Christmas" as "Merry Chrysler."

"I just don't like being famous," Sydelko told NBC News. "Even positive interactions. I didn't think this before I started. I just don't like being recognized, for good or bad. I just like being anonymous."