110 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 one of the site's co-founders 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 had all worked there, and the tie paid off: PayPal's former finance chief, Roelof Botha, was the Sequoia Capital partner who backed their site in 2005.

For how much did Google buy YouTube in November 2006?

$1.65B, paid in Google stock: Google's own Google Video had failed to draw much traffic, so it bought the site instead, then kept YouTube running separately rather than merging the two.

Which squeaky-voiced character, played by teenager Lucas Cruikshank, fronted the first YouTube channel to reach a million subscribers?

Fred Figglehorn, a hyperactive six-year-old, got his chipmunk squeak because Cruikshank sped up the footage; the channel passed a million subscribers in April 2009.

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 began as a song nobody can trace to a writer, most likely an old campfire chant; Pinkfong's 2016 video of it overtook Despacito as YouTube's most-viewed in 2020.

Which music video was YouTube's most-viewed for just 25 days in 2017 before Despacito overtook it?

See You Again, by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, was written for Furious 7 as a farewell to the film's star Paul Walker, who had died in a car crash in 2013.

Which video was YouTube's most-viewed from July 2010 until late 2012?

Baby by Justin Bieber took the top spot from Lady Gaga's Bad Romance in July 2010. Bieber himself owed his career to the site: a talent manager came across his home videos there when he was 13.

Which upload became YouTube's most-disliked video in December 2018, a week after it was posted?

That year's Rewind, YouTube's own recap of 2018, passed 10 million dislikes within a week. The company answered in 2019 with a plain countdown of the year's top videos, then dropped the series.

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

100K. Passing 100,000 subscribers is not quite enough on its own: YouTube reviews each channel before it sends out a Silver Play Button, and hands the awards out at its own discretion.

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

100M. YouTube added the Red Diamond Play Button only after channels began passing 100 million subscribers in 2019.

What is MrBeast's real name?

Jimmy Donaldson began uploading as MrBeast6000 in 2012 and, soon after starting college, dropped out to chase a full-time career on YouTube.

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

Counting to 100,000. The upload ran close to 24 hours, became his first viral hit and set the pattern for the endurance challenges the channel was built on.

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

T-Series, the Bollywood music label, had led since passing PewDiePie in 2019. MrBeast marked the takeover by posting that PewDiePie had finally been avenged.

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

Feastables launched in January 2022 with a Willy Wonka-style sweepstakes: ten winners went on to compete in a MrBeast video for a real chocolate factory.

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

1,000 contestants set out after $5 million, but a coin flip in the finale doubled the pot, and winner Jeffrey Allen went home with $10 million.

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

20M. A fan had dared MrBeast to plant a tree for each of his 20 million subscribers, so he and Mark Rober set out to raise a dollar a tree for the Arbor Day Foundation, and hit the target before the year was out.

What is PewDiePie's real name?

Felix Kjellberg quit his degree at Chalmers University in 2011, and paid for his early videos by working at a hot dog stand.

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

Amnesia: The Dark Descent gave viewers what they came for, his freak-outs at its monsters, and that audience made him YouTube's most-subscribed creator by August 2013.

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 fellow YouTubers' company bought Smosh in 2019 after its parent Defy Media collapsed?

Mythical Entertainment, Rhett and Link's company, bought Smosh in February 2019, three months after Defy Media shut down without warning; in 2023 Smosh's two founders bought back a majority stake.

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?

Deleted everything: Unus Annus is Latin for "one year", and when the year was up the pair wiped the channel at the end of a 12-hour farewell stream that more than a million people watched live.

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

Iron Lung, from David Szymanski's 2022 submarine horror game, was paid for and released by Markiplier himself; it opened in cinemas in January 2026 and earned back its small budget many times over.

What is the real name of the YouTuber known as Jacksepticeye?

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

Jacksepticeye became known for opening his videos with which shouted greeting?

"Top of the morning to ya, laddies" was a stereotype he used on purpose: early viewers kept taking him for an American, so he drove home that he was Irish with the greeting and a flat cap.

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

Her dog Mr. Marbles supplied the name after her mother complained that searching 'Mourey' brought up Jenna's videos, which she feared would put off employers.

Why did Jenna Marbles leave YouTube in June 2020?

Her old videos: after making many of them private and tearfully apologising for sketches that had caused offence, she said she didn't want to put out anything that hurt anyone and was done with the channel "for now or forever".

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

Texas A&M. The channel grew out of the roommates betting each other sandwiches on trick shots at their backyard basketball hoop, which they started filming in 2009.

What animal is Dude Perfect's costumed mascot?

A panda. The Panda joined the group's videos in 2010, and the five have kept the identity of whoever wears the suit a secret.

Which network aired Ryan Kaji's series Ryan's Mystery Playdate from 2019?

Nickelodeon ordered a second season just five days after the show's April 2019 debut, on the strength of its ratings. Ryan, then seven, had begun reviewing toys on YouTube at the age of three.

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

Walmart put the Ryan's World line on its shelves in August 2018; his unboxing videos drew so many views that the toy industry had already seen them move sales.

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.

The channel now called Cocomelon went by which name until a 2018 rebrand?

ABCkidTV. Jay Jeon and his wife started the channel in 2006 as a hobby, after their own sons loved the cartoons they had made.

Vlogger Emma Chamberlain launched what kind of business under her own surname in December 2019?

A coffee company: Chamberlain Coffee began as a mail-order brand selling steeped coffee bags. It followed from her channel, where making and drinking coffee had long been a fixture of her videos.

Which fashion house made vlogger Emma Chamberlain a brand ambassador in 2019?

Louis Vuitton took her to its Paris Fashion Week shows, and she was wearing the label again in 2021 when Vogue sent her to interview guests at the Met Gala.

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 texting and email and traded vlogs every weekday, and the audience that gathered to watch kept them posting long after the year was up.

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 sold out its first edition, held in a Los Angeles hotel in 2010 with about 1,400 people; within two years it had outgrown the hotel and moved to the Anaheim Convention Center.

Which 2012 novel by Vlogbrother John Green became a hit film two years later?

The Fault in Our Stars reached No. 1 on Amazon six months before it came out, while Green was still writing it. He had promised to sign every copy of the first printing, and ended up signing 150,000 books.

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

iPod's Dirty Secret showed him stencilling a warning about the battery across Apple's posters. Within two months Apple announced a battery replacement programme, though it denied the film was the reason.

Which media company bought Casey Neistat's video app Beme in 2016?

CNN bought Beme in November 2016 for a reported $25 million, then shut the app itself and kept Neistat's team to build a news brand; that venture closed in January 2018, when Neistat left CNN.

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

KSI boxed Paul twice, winning their 2019 rematch on a split decision. When the former rivals launched Prime in 2022, demand ran so high that Aldi limited UK shoppers to one bottle each.

Which WWE title did Logan Paul win in November 2023?

United States Championship: Paul took it from Rey Mysterio at Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia, landing the winning punch with brass knuckles that had been left on the ring apron.

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

Mike Tyson was 58, some 31 years older than Paul. The fight had been due in July but was put back after Tyson suffered an ulcer flare-up on a flight.

Jake Paul left which kids' TV sitcom in 2017 after neighbours' complaints about his stunts made the news?

Bizaardvark had cast him as Dirk Mann, a character who takes dares for his online videos. The network called the exit mutual; Paul later said he had been fired over the TV report on his neighbours.

Beauty YouTuber Michelle Phan co-founded which subscription box company, known for its monthly Glam Bag, in 2011?

Ipsy began life in 2011 as MyGlam. A year earlier Lancôme had made Phan its official video makeup artist after she used its products in her tutorials.

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

Charlie Bit My Finger was meant to vanish from YouTube once the NFT sold for $760,999 in May 2021, but the winning bidder decided the original should stay up.

Which YouTube CEO once rented a garage to Google's founders?

Susan Wojcicki rented out the garage of her Menlo Park home to Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, later joined Google herself and oversaw its purchase of YouTube; Neal Mohan succeeded her as CEO in 2023.

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

Marques Brownlee, MKBHD to his viewers, treats ultimate as a second career: he has played professionally for the New York Empire and won the 2022 world club title with PoNY.

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

North Carolina. The two met at Buies Creek Elementary, went on to study engineering together, and both quit their engineering jobs soon after graduating to make comedy videos.

Mark Rober spent seven of his nine years as a NASA engineer working on which Mars rover?

Curiosity took up most of Rober's time at NASA. He was still there in 2011 when a Halloween costume he built from two iPads, faking a hole through his torso, became his first viral video.

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

How to Be a Bawse became a New York Times bestseller in 2017, and two years later NBC handed Singh the late-night slot that Carson Daly's show had filled for 17 years.

Ryan Higa of nigahiga went to UNLV to study what before leaving to make videos?

Nuclear medicine. Higa left UNLV once nigahiga, the comedy channel he had started as a schoolboy in Hilo, had become the most-subscribed on YouTube.

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

Generating random .com domain names on a fake-name website until one sounded right gave Stevens the name; Vsauce began as a video-game channel before its science explainers took over.

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

Mixer. Ninja's exclusive deal with Microsoft's streaming service began in August 2019, but Microsoft closed Mixer less than a year later and he soon 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, the biggest recorded first-week sale for a debut; soon afterwards Penguin admitted that Sugg had not written the novel on her own.

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

Nerdy Nummies grew out of camera practice: Pansino, then an actress in commercials and small TV roles, started making videos to get comfortable on screen, and when viewers asked for more she turned her baking into a series.

MrBeast recreated which Netflix survival drama in 2021, with 456 players chasing a $456,000 prize?

Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk reacted positively to recreations of his series, even as one review said the video missed the show's anti-capitalist message.

PewDiePie and his wife Marzia left England in May 2022 to settle permanently in which country?

Japan had been the plan since a 2018 trip. The couple bought a home there in 2019, but a burglary and pandemic entry rules delayed the move.

Logan and Jake Paul both built their first followings in 2013 on which short-video app?

Vine made Logan Paul one of its most influential figures by 2015, and Jake had 5.3 million followers there when Twitter shut the app down.

Markiplier's 2014 Let's Plays earned him the nickname "King of" which indie horror game series?

Five Nights at Freddy's had been out just five days when Markiplier posted his first playthrough, which became his most-viewed Let's Play.

Which martial arts series premiered on YouTube Red in 2018 before moving to Netflix two years later?

Cobra Kai continues the Karate Kid rivalry decades later. Its first two seasons launched as YouTube originals before the series left for Netflix in 2020.

On which YouTube show does Sean Evans interview celebrities over a platter of chicken wings?

Hot Ones opens with Evans's tagline, "The show with hot questions, and even hotter wings," and ends on a sauce rated above 2,000,000 Scoville units.

Which YouTuber created Game Theory in 2011, then spun off Film Theory, Food Theory and Style Theory?

MatPat, real name Matthew Patrick, narrated most of the videos himself until he stepped down as regular host in March 2024.

Which singer played YouTube's Filthy Frank and Pink Guy before quitting comedy for music in 2017?

Joji, born George Miller, also popularised the Harlem Shake meme. The craze helped turn Baauer's song of the same name into a commercial hit.

Which comedian behind Netflix's Inside began his career posting bedroom songs to YouTube in 2006?

Bo Burnham made Inside alone at home during the pandemic, with no crew or audience, and it won a Peabody Award.

Which streamer, born Darren Watkins Jr., made his support for Cristiano Ronaldo a running theme?

IShowSpeed finally met Ronaldo in Lisbon in June 2023, a year after releasing a tribute song titled "Ronaldo (Sewey)".

Which British Minecraft YouTuber topped the 2017 Forbes list of highest-paid YouTube stars?

DanTDM, real name Daniel Middleton, earned about $16.5 million that year. His channel began in 2012 as TheDiamondMinecart.

Mark Rober's 2018 bait parcels filmed package thieves while dousing them in fart spray and what?

Glitter gave the contraption its name, the glitter bomb. Later versions were used with authorities to track money mules working for scam call centres.

Which British YouTube group has staged its own charity football matches since 2016?

Sidemen started out in October 2013 as a Grand Theft Auto Online crew called The Ultimate Sidemen, three years before the first match.

Colleen Ballinger plays which comically talentless character, the star of Netflix's Haters Back Off?

Miranda Sings satirises bad but self-assured performers who film themselves singing for attention. Ballinger has posted as her since January 2008.

Which children's YouTuber began her Songs for Littles videos in 2019 after her son's speech delay?

Ms Rachel, a former preschool music teacher, modelled the videos on techniques used by her son's speech therapist. He did not say his first word until he was two.

Which children's character in an orange bow tie was created by US Air Force veteran Stevin John?

Blippi came to John after he saw his two-year-old nephew watching low-quality videos on YouTube and decided he could do better.

Which education nonprofit grew from online maths lessons a hedge fund analyst gave his cousin Nadia?

Khan Academy traces back to 2004, when Sal Khan tutored her over Yahoo's doodle notepad. He kept his finance job until late 2009.

Which fitness coach's lockdown PE lessons for children set a YouTube livestream record in 2020?

Joe Wicks drew over 950,000 live viewers on 24 March 2020, earning a Guinness World Record for the most-watched fitness workout stream on YouTube.

Which quartet featuring Keith Habersberger and Eugene Lee Yang left BuzzFeed in 2018?

The Try Guys took all rights to their brand with them when they went independent that June, having made their name testing things like raising toddlers.

Which teenager's viral 2011 song "Friday" led a Yahoo critic to ask if it was the worst ever?

Rebecca Black refused an offer to take the video down, saying she would not give the haters the satisfaction. She released a hyperpop remix ten years later.

Which YouTube co-founder created the site's first account and starred in its first video?

Jawed Karim opened the account, named simply "jawed", the same day he uploaded the clip. Years later he rewrote its description to protest against Google+ comment rules.

Two YouTube founders said the site was first conceived as a video version of what kind of website?

A dating service modelled on Hot or Not was the plan, and the founders offered women $100 on Craigslist to upload clips before opening the site to every kind of video.

What is the real name of Ninja, the Fortnite streamer who drew a record audience playing with Drake?

Tyler Blevins, born in a Detroit suburb, set a record of 635,000 concurrent viewers in March 2018 alongside Drake, Travis Scott and JuJu Smith-Schuster.

Lilly Singh posted comedy on YouTube from 2010 to 2019 under which superhero-style pseudonym?

Superwoman, styled IISuperwomanII, was dropped in August 2019, a month before Singh began hosting the NBC late-night show A Little Late.

PewDiePie's 2015 mobile game took its title from which gesture he made to close his videos?

Brofist fitted the way he called viewers "bros" and his fan base the Bro Army. The mobile game was PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist.

Which YouTuber interviewed Barack Obama in 2016 and later hosted Nickelodeon's Double Dare revival?

Liza Koshy spoke to the president just before that year's election to encourage voter registration. Her Double Dare run earned a Daytime Emmy nomination.

Which video creator describes his seamlessly edited illusion clips as "digital sleight of hand"?

Zach King began in 2008 with a website teaching Final Cut Pro, set up because he could not find tutorials for the editing software online.

Which Brave Wilderness host has let a bullet ant and an executioner wasp sting him on camera?

Coyote Peterson started the animal education channel in 2014 and became known for the videos in which he takes a bite or sting on purpose.

Which animated science channel founded by Philipp Dettmer has a name meaning "in a nutshell"?

Kurzgesagt is German for "in a nutshell", or literally "shortly said". The Munich studio is known for its flat, minimalist animation.

Which singer's 2004 live television incident, hard to find online afterwards, helped inspire a YouTube co-founder?

Janet Jackson's halftime wardrobe malfunction and footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami were both hard to find online, which suggested a video-sharing site.

Which science channel's host won a $10,000 bet with a UCLA professor over a wind-powered car?

Veritasium host Derek Muller showed the propeller-driven car really could sail downwind faster than the wind, and the winnings became prizes for a science communication contest.

Which Canadian tech YouTuber presented videos for retailer NCIX before founding his own company?

Linus Sebastian shot his first NCIX videos on a camera borrowed from the son of the company's president, and launched Linus Tech Tips there in 2008.

Which cooking channel did Andrew Rea build by recreating dishes from film and TV?

Binging with Babish borrows the name of The West Wing's Oliver Babish, which Rea also uses as his alias. A companion series, Basics with Babish, covers traditional recipes.

Which channel's "Everything Wrong With" videos nitpick a movie against a running on-screen counter?

CinemaSins usually charges one sin per flaw, but it once fined Home Alone 2 a billion at a stroke for Donald Trump's cameo.

Which musician and animator made the viral 2017 video "History of the Entire World, I Guess"?

Bill Wurtz has been publishing music and videos since 2002. Accepting a Shorty Award for Best in Weird in 2016, his whole speech was "Thank you."

Which channel, called ChilledCow until 2021, streams study beats 24/7 beside an animated student?

Lofi Girl is a French channel that began streaming lo-fi beats in 2017, and the endlessly studying character in its livestream has an official name: Jade.

Which band's single-take routine on eight treadmills became a YouTube hit in 2006 and won a Grammy?

OK Go left the finished video on the singer's laptop for about a year, worried about being pigeonholed as a goofy dancing band, before uploading it.

Which British YouTube duo began presenting a weekly BBC Radio 1 request show in January 2013?

Dan and Phil, Dan Howell and Phil Lester, met by messaging online. Lester had been posting videos since March 2006, over three years before Howell's first.

Which YouTuber crossed America in 2022 on funds grown from one penny, which he delivered to MrBeast?

Ryan Trahan paid his way with odd jobs such as mowing lawns and walking dogs, and the month-long series raised $1.38 million for Feeding America.

Arin Hanson and JonTron created which Let's Play series in 2012, with Dan Avidan joining in 2013?

Game Grumps centres on its hosts playing video games together. Jon Jafari left in 2013 to concentrate on his own web series.

Which streamer left Twitch for YouTube in January 2020 and won a Game Award later that year?

Valkyrae averaged only about 1,500 concurrent viewers in her first three months on YouTube, before her Among Us streams sent the audience soaring.

Which esports group began in 2010 as a trio of Call of Duty trickshot snipers on YouTube?

FaZe Clan debuted as FaZe Sniping, and its trickshot montage series ILLCAMS became the most popular on the channel.

Markiplier and Jacksepticeye launched which gamer-focused clothing line together in October 2018?

Cloak was aimed squarely at the gaming community, and streamer Pokimane joined as a partner and creative director in 2020.

Which Swedish inventor of deliberately useless robots turned a Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck?

Simone Giertz named the pickup Truckla and paired the build video with a parody advert carrying the slogan "Available nowhere."

Which former plumber from Stamford, England, built a working hoverbike and an underground bunker?

Colin Furze became a plumber after leaving school at 16 and began uploading in 2007. His builds also include a 71 mph mobility scooter.

Which channel is run by Levy Rozman, an international master dubbed the internet's chess teacher?

GothamChess creator Levy Rozman began streaming in 2018 with only 10 followers. His 2023 book How to Win at Chess became a New York Times bestseller.

YouTube's first headquarters sat above a restaurant of what kind in San Mateo, California?

A pizzeria and a second restaurant sat below the start-up's first office. In October 2006 the company moved to San Bruno.

Which musician co-created Epic Rap Battles of History, playing John Lennon in its first battle?

Nice Peter, real name Peter Shukoff, shot each of the first three battles on a $50 budget after the idea proved too hard to stage as an improv show.

Which 2005 Saturday Night Live rap about a Narnia matinee went viral via bootleg YouTube uploads?

Lazy Sunday aired the same week the site left beta, and its overnight internet stardom helped put the fledgling YouTube on the map.

Which YouTube series stars the lab-coated British duo Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy?

The Slow Mo Guys wear lab coats to play up the science angle. Gruchy's has a torn-off right sleeve because the first coats ordered were too small for him.