A college dropout has shared how he overcame his “chronic shyness” to transform into a social media sensation – earning more than $350,000 in the process.

Howie Melia, 30, from North Carolina, US, started his online career with silent videos on the now-defunct platform Vine in 2012.

But the TikTok star – who now earns upwards of $15,000-a-month through social media exploits – gradually built up the confidence to speak and act, with outlandish videos of him playing various loud and forthright characters quickly gaining a huge following.

His popular posts have bagged him 6.3 million followers on TikTok (@howieazy) and a growing audience on Instagram of more than 124,000.

But his larger-than-life online persona is a far cry from the quiet teenager who rarely spoke to people outside of his close-knit friend group at school.

“I just really kept to myself. I was really shy to the point when people would talk to me, I would just smile and walk away,” Howie told JamPrime.

“At the school reunion a lot of people were really surprised at my videos because I never talked at school.

“I even won best smile for the high school yearbook.

“I did have good friends and around them I would be really goofy but I was really shy for the most part when it came to talking to other people.

“Typically I do not put myself out there. I have a lot more fun recording and doing stuff on the internet.

“I get messages from people from high school saying ‘you never really said anything and look at you all over the internet’.”

After Vine closed in 2016, Howie increasingly switched to sites including YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram which paid him far more for views.

As this was happening, Howie – whose parents both emigrated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the US in the 1980s and had pushed him to go to college – had spent years at college without progressing with a degree.

His father studied at North Carolina A&T University where he later worked as a lecturer in French and enrolled his son at the college in 2011.

But after spending five years studying and changing his major as many times, he decided to drop out with $50,000 debt and nothing to show for it.

He got a job working as a delivery driver earning $25,000-a-year while he continued producing online content unbeknown to his parents who constantly told him to go back to college.

But while his conventional career prospects were going nowhere, his videos were garnering millions of views.

In January 2021, Howie received a $150,000 payout from Snapchat after three of his clips went “super viral” on its Spotlight platform.

He said he was in "disbelief" when the money went into his account and "thought it was some kind of mistake".

This success continued with him gaining millions of views on his YouTube channel – which now has 2.6million subscribers – allowing him to quit his job, clear his debts, help his family and even save money.

He hasn’t looked back since and now posts hilarious scenarios which often mock his family life – particularly his mum – on an almost daily basis.

Howie said: “My parents weren’t happy at all that I dropped out of college.

"I never told them about social media because I didn’t think they could comprehend how it works and how you can really live off it.

"When I got paid and gave money to my family to help pay for bills and things they needed, my mum fell on the floor crying.

"She was really happy and proud that I stuck to my path and went through with social media.

"I was happy that I dropped out of college because it was really unfulfilling for me. I just wanted to make videos.

“I thought doing theatre would help with my acting but I remember when I started I was the shyest person in the class.

“I did a monologue in front of other people and was constantly stuttering. My classmates were asking ‘how do you do what you do on Vine if you are so nervous?’

“In front of people I am chronically shy but filming on my phone by myself allows me to express my alter ego.

“When it comes to shooting on my phone, I feel like I can be myself and have no one looking at me.

“I am naturally really shy. When Vine happened it was just me and a phone. I thought it was just me and I could be as chaotic as I wanted to be.

“After the video was recorded I could release it and I felt like people weren’t looking at me - they were looking at my high-energy persona.”

ENDS

Video Usage Licence:(EXCLUSIVE) We have obtained an exclusive licence from the copyright holder. A copy of the licence is available on request.

Video Restrictions: None.