Felix Kjellberg, otherwise known as PewDiePie, has dominated the YouTube platform since 2012, but his reign is soon to come to an end.
Kjellberg got his YouTube start by filming himself playing video games, a video type known as “Let’s Play.”
As time passed his channel grew and diversified, but at a certain point he had stopped being himself in the process.
Once he realized he was no longer happy with what he was doing, he cut back on his productions.
Kjellberg stopped playing video games that he did not like, and started to do what any millennial would do if given the chance: review memes. Kjellberg also set up a sub-reddit to go through his audience’s submissions, which includes fan-art, in a show called “Last Week I Asked You (LWIAY).”
In August, Kjellberg uploaded a video entitled “this channel will over take PewDiePie” in which he joking rallied his fans against T-Series, an Indian music record label and film production company which was gaining subscribers at an astronomic rate.
Later Kjellberg made a “diss” track, the name of which is hilarious, but cannot be written in this publication.
It was then that the war between PewDiePie and T-Series for the most subscribed channel on YouTube began.
Each time it seems like T-Series is certain to pass PewDiePie, his numbers start rising just in the nick of time.
As PewDiePie’s movement gained traction, more-and-more prominent YouTubers joined the fight.
Some like MrBeast bought billboards telling people to subscribe to PewDiePie, others like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye made videos specifically to tell their fanbases the same.
Although this sounds completely ridiculous and inconsequential, some real-world good has come out of it. After Kjellberg received this support, he raised over £173,000 during a live-stream for the Child Rights and You (CRY) charity, a non-government Indian organization with the goal of restoring children’s rights.
Two hackers sent print jobs to 80,000 vulnerable printers telling the owners to subscribe to PewDiePie, and fix their printer.
In January they also hacked 65,000 Google Chromecasts with the same message, and told users to adjust their security settings.
Tesla Founder Elon Musk and Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland recently went on Kjellberg’s channel to host a meme review, which resulted in his subscriber number rising rapidly.
However, Kjellberg is not interested in sincerely taking down T-Series.
“I don’t really care about T-Series, I genuinely don’t, but I think if YouTube does shift in a way where it does feel more corporate, [then] something else will take its place,” Kjellberg said. “I think people enjoy this connection so much, I think something else will just show up, if it feels too corporate.”
I urge you all to subscribe to PewDiePie, so that we may support an independent creator as YouTube becomes increasingly corporatized.
I’m doing my part.
The Award-Winning Texas A&M University-Kingsville Student Publication