60 Fun Facts About YouTubers

What is the title of the first video ever uploaded to YouTube, on April 23, 2005?

Me at the zoo shows co-founder Jawed Karim in front of the elephants at San Diego Zoo, noting that they have really long trunks.

YouTube's three founders had all previously worked at which company?

PayPal. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were all early PayPal employees before they registered the YouTube domain on 14 February 2005.

For how much did Google buy YouTube in November 2006?

$1.65B, paid entirely in Google stock; the deal was announced on 9 October 2006 and completed on 13 November 2006.

What record did the San Diego Zoo's 2020 reply under "Me at the zoo" set?

Most-liked comment. The zoo wrote that it was honoured the first-ever YouTube video was filmed there, and the reply collected more than four million likes.

Which video was the first on YouTube to reach a billion views, in December 2012?

Gangnam Style by Psy later blew past the 32-bit view counter's limit of 2,147,483,647, forcing YouTube to upgrade its maths.

Which children's video became the first on YouTube to pass 10 billion views, in January 2022?

Baby Shark Dance, Pinkfong's children's song, passed 10 billion views on 13 January 2022, the first video on the site to reach that mark.

Which music video ended Psy's reign at the top of the most-viewed list in July 2017?

See You Again, Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's Furious 7 tribute, passed Gangnam Style on 10 July 2017 and was itself overtaken by Despacito that August.

Before Psy took over in 2012, which video had been the site's most-viewed since 2010?

Baby by Justin Bieber passed Lady Gaga's Bad Romance in July 2010 and stayed the most-viewed video until Gangnam Style overtook it in November 2012.

Which upload overtook Justin Bieber's "Baby" as the site's most-disliked video in December 2018?

The year-in-review series ran from 2010 and was quietly cancelled in 2021 after the backlash.

How many subscribers does a channel need to earn a Silver Play Button?

100K. The Silver Play Button marks 100,000 subscribers; the next tier, the Gold Play Button, arrives at one million.

The Red Diamond Play Button is awarded at what subscriber count?

100M. The Red Diamond Play Button marks 100 million subscribers and was first awarded in May 2019.

What is MrBeast's real name?

Jimmy Donaldson, raised in Greenville, North Carolina, first uploaded as MrBeast6000 in 2012.

MrBeast's breakthrough viral video in January 2017 showed him doing what?

Counting to 100,000. The stunt took him roughly 40 hours and marked his shift from Let's Plays to the challenge format the channel was built on.

MrBeast's channel became the most-subscribed on YouTube in June 2024 by overtaking which Indian channel?

The music label founded by Gulshan Kumar had held the crown since beating PewDiePie in 2019.

What is the name of MrBeast's chocolate bar brand, launched in 2022?

Feastables launched in January 2022 with a line of chocolate bars; MrBeast Burger preceded it as a virtual restaurant in 2020, and the Lunchly lunch kit followed in 2024.

MrBeast's Amazon Prime competition Beast Games put how many contestants in the running for $5 million?

1,000 contestants competed for the $5 million prize, billed as the largest in television history when Beast Games debuted on Prime Video in December 2024.

MrBeast's 2019 fundraiser Team Trees set out to plant how many trees?

20M. Team Trees, launched with Mark Rober in October 2019, raised $20 million for the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 20 million trees, reaching the goal that December.

What is PewDiePie's real name?

Felix Kjellberg was born in Gothenburg in 1989 and moved to Japan in 2022 with his wife Marzia.

PewDiePie built his early audience with Let's Play videos of which horror game?

Amnesia: The Dark Descent playthroughs did it; by August 2013 he was YouTube's most-subscribed individual creator, passing Smosh.

What was PewDiePie's October 2018 diss track during his subscriber race with an Indian music label called?

Bitch Lasagna, released 5 October 2018, became PewDiePie's most-viewed video; Congratulations followed in March 2019 to concede the race.

Which company dropped PewDiePie as a partner in 2017, two years before he lost YouTube's most-subscribed title?

Disney's Maker Studios cut ties in 2017 after a Wall Street Journal report on antisemitic jokes in his videos.

Which duo founded Smosh, the channel that was YouTube's most-subscribed as early as 2006?

Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla. Their lip-synced Pokémon theme video was briefly the most-viewed on the whole site in 2006 before a copyright takedown.

Which company bought Smosh in 2019 after its parent Defy Media collapsed?

Mythical Entertainment, Rhett and Link's company, bought Smosh in February 2019 and owned it until Hecox and Padilla bought back majority control in June 2023.

In which U.S. city was Markiplier raised?

Cincinnati. Mark Fischbach was born in Honolulu but grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied biomedical engineering at the University of Cincinnati before leaving to make videos.

Markiplier and Ethan Nestor's channel Unus Annus uploaded daily and then did what after exactly one year?

The name is Latin for "one year", and the November 2020 deletion was the point of the project.

Which horror video game did Markiplier adapt into a film he wrote, directed and starred in?

Iron Lung, adapted from David Szymanski's 2022 submarine horror game, was Markiplier's feature debut as writer, director and lead actor.

What is the real name of Irish YouTuber Jacksepticeye?

Seán McLoughlin. 'Jack' was a childhood nickname and 'Septic Eye' came from an eye injury he picked up in a football match.

With which greeting does Jacksepticeye open his videos?

"Top of the morning to ya, laddies" is the shouted intro that opens his videos; the Irish creator also had a cameo as himself in 2021's Free Guy.

Jenna Mourey, one of YouTube's early stars, took her stage name from what?

Her dog Mr. Marbles inspired the name; her 2010 video 'How to Trick People into Thinking You're Good Looking' pulled 5.3 million views in its first week.

In what year did YouTuber Jenna Mourey (Jenna Marbles) announce her indefinite hiatus?

2020. She announced the indefinite hiatus in June 2020 after apologising for older videos; in 2015 she had been among the first YouTubers given a Madame Tussauds wax figure.

The five members of Dude Perfect met as roommates at which university?

Texas A&M. The five were roommates at Texas A&M in College Station; their first backyard trick-shot video in 2009 drew 200,000 views in its first week.

What animal is Dude Perfect's costumed mascot?

The character became a fixture at college basketball games; the group is based in Frisco, Texas.

How old was Ryan Kaji when Ryan ToysReview began in 2015?

Three. Born in October 2011, Ryan was three when the channel launched in March 2015; Forbes ranked him the highest-paid YouTuber for 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Which retailer launched the Ryan's World toy line in 2018?

Walmart launched the Ryan's World line exclusively in August 2018; the franchise later added Nickelodeon's Ryan's Mystery Playdate and a 2024 feature film.

What is the name of the main character in Cocomelon's nursery-rhyme videos?

JJ, the baby with the tuft of hair, stars alongside his siblings TomTom and YoYo; the channel was bought by Moonbug Entertainment in 2020.

In what year was the channel now called Cocomelon first created?

2006. The channel was created on 1 September 2006 and run by Jay Jeon and his wife under names including ABC Kid TV before the 2018 rebrand to Cocomelon.

Which vlogger's coffee company, launched in 2019, shares her surname?

Emma Chamberlain launched Chamberlain Coffee in December 2019; that year Time listed her among the 25 most influential people on the internet for reinventing the vlog with jump cuts and on-screen text.

Which fashion house made the Chamberlain Coffee founder a brand ambassador in 2019?

Louis Vuitton signed her as an ambassador in 2019 and took her to Paris Fashion Week; she added Cartier in 2022 and hosts the Anything Goes podcast.

In Brotherhood 2.0, the 2007 project that began Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green agreed to what?

Communicate only by public video. For all of 2007 the brothers gave up text-based contact and spoke to each other only through vlogs posted on alternating weekdays.

What is the name of the fan community that grew up around the Vlogbrothers?

Nerdfighters. The name came from a 2007 video in which John misread an Aero Fighters arcade cabinet as 'Nerd Fighters'; the Greens went on to build Crash Course and SciShow.

The Green brothers founded which annual online-video convention in 2010?

VidCon began in 2010 at a Los Angeles hotel with about 1,400 attendees and moved to the Anaheim Convention Center in 2012.

Which media company bought the Greens' Anaheim video convention in 2018?

Viacom bought VidCon in February 2018; its successor Paramount Global sold the event on to the exhibitions firm Informa in 2024.

Casey Neistat's 2003 short film criticising Apple's battery replacement policy was called what?

iPod's Dirty Secret. The stencil-and-spray-paint protest is credited with pushing Apple to add a battery-replacement programme; his HBO series The Neistat Brothers came in 2010.

Casey Neistat's video app Beme was bought in 2016 for about $25 million by which company?

CNN bought Beme in November 2016 for about $25 million and shut the unit down in early 2018; Neistat's Nike spot Make It Count had spent its whole budget on a trip around the world.

Logan Paul co-founded the drink brand Prime with which fellow YouTuber, whom he had twice fought in the ring?

KSI drew with Paul in 2018 and won the 2019 rematch before the two went into business together.

Which WWE title did Logan Paul win in November 2023?

United States Championship gold came in November 2023; he had signed with WWE in 2022, a year after his exhibition bout with Floyd Mayweather.

Jake Paul beat which former heavyweight champion by unanimous decision at AT&T Stadium on November 15, 2024?

Mike Tyson, 58 at the time, lost on all three scorecards in a bout streamed live on Netflix to a reported 108 million viewers.

Jake Paul was fired in 2017 from which children's-channel sitcom after neighbourhood complaints?

Bizaardvark. He played Dirk Mann on the Disney Channel sitcom until July 2017; that year's single It's Everyday Bro became one of the site's most-disliked videos.

Beauty YouTuber Michelle Phan co-founded which subscription box company in 2011?

Ipsy launched as MyGlam in 2011 and was valued at more than $500 million by 2015; Phan had also been Lancôme's first video makeup artist.

Which viral 2007 YouTube clip sold as an NFT for about $760,000 in 2021?

Charlie Bit My Finger, the 2007 clip of brothers Harry and Charlie Davies-Carr, sold as an NFT for $760,999 in May 2021 after more than 880 million views.

Who replaced Susan Wojcicki as YouTube's CEO in 2023?

Neal Mohan inherited a platform that by 2024 had 2.7 billion monthly users watching more than a billion hours a day.

Which tech reviewer has played elite ultimate frisbee for New York PoNY?

Marques Brownlee, better known as MKBHD, plays ultimate for New York PoNY and was on the roster that won the 2022 WFDF World Ultimate Club Championships.

Rhett & Link met on the first day of first grade in 1984 in which US state?

North Carolina. The two met in a Buies Creek, North Carolina first-grade classroom in 1984, later studied engineering at NC State, and quit engineering jobs to build Good Mythical Morning.

Before YouTube, Mark Rober spent seven years at NASA's JPL working on which Mars rover?

His first viral video was a 2011 Halloween costume that used two iPads to fake a see-through hole in his torso.

What was the title of Lilly Singh's first book, a 2017 New York Times bestseller?

How to Be a Bawse, published in March 2017, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list; Singh went on to host NBC's A Little Late with Lilly Singh from 2019 to 2021.

Ryan Higa of nigahiga dropped out of which course at UNLV to make videos full-time?

Nuclear medicine. Higa, a judo black belt from Hilo, Hawaii, left UNLV's nuclear medicine programme to focus on the channel he had started in 2006 lip-syncing with Sean Fujiyoshi.

How did Michael Stevens come up with the name Vsauce in 2010?

He used FakeNameGenerator.com to churn out pronounceable domain names until one appealed to him.

In August 2019, Ninja left Twitch to stream exclusively on which platform?

Mixer. Ninja signed an exclusive deal with Microsoft's streaming service on 1 August 2019; Mixer shut down in July 2020 and he later returned to Twitch.

Which 2014 Zoella novel set a first-week sales record for a debut novelist?

Girl Online sold 78,109 copies in its first week in November 2014, a UK record for a debut novelist; two sequels followed and she later co-wrote The Magpie Society with Amy McCulloch.

Rosanna Pansino hosts which long-running YouTube baking series, started in 2011?

Nerdy Nummies, launched in 2011, bakes pop-culture-themed treats and made Pansino one of the best-known cooking creators on the site; The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook followed in 2015.