Most people don’t realize that over the past few weeks there has been a fierce and bloody battle raging on YouTube.
Two of the biggest channels in the world – video game vlogger PewDiePie and Bollywood music video site T-Series – have been duking it out to see who is king of the platform’s subscriber base.
First, T-Series overtook PewDiePie – also known as Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg – but PewDiePie is fighting back, and he’s just passed a major milestone. The 29-year old now commands an army of subscribers bigger than the entire population of Germany.
PewDiePie currently has 83-million subscribers (and counting). That’s roughly nine-times the population of the UAE.
In videos addressing the ongoing subscriber battle, PewDiePie has urged viewers to “smash subscribe” so that he would not lose his place as YouTube’s top dog. But he didn’t do it alone: two more YouTube powerhouses put their substantial subscriber bases behind PewDiePie’s channel.
Both Logan Paul and Mr Beast both backed the Swedish YouTuber, while other grass-roots campaigns have done much to generate subscribers. One vlogger recorded a 12-hour live stream in which he said the word ‘PewDiePie’ more than 100,000 times. The video has been watched more than nine million times (at time of publication).
World-changing event or a ginormous waste of time? You decide.