YouTube's most popular creator, Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg, promised to delete his channel if he reached a milestone 50 million subscribers -- and he did, only it wasn't the channel that many people were expecting.
The 27-year-old veteran of YouTube and its most-subscribed channel host raised issues with the video service over perceived difficulties in both discovering and distributing worthwhile content.
Changes in how viewers are presented with new videos were behind a drop in engagement, Kjellberg proposed in December 2 video, promising to delete his channel as a form of protest. "All I want is that the people that subscribe to me get to watch my videos... and don't unsub me from channels that I'm watching" he said. By contrast, suspected back-end changes amplify "the problem of YouTube having too much clickbait" -- videos whose content doesn't satisfactorily match their packaging.
"YouTube by far is the hardest job I ever had and ever will have. Every successful YouTuber put their heart and soul into it... We know if something is wrong and if something has changed." Part impassioned plea, part entertaining rant, and part exaggerated conspiracy theory played for laughs, the video ended in a promise to delete "my channel" should PewDiePie reach 50 million subscribers.
Public and media response to sections of that video led to I'm Racist?, a December 8 meditation on the importance of contextual understanding, after some outlets misunderstood or willfully misconstrued the announcement's more jovial, sarcastic segments.
Perhaps crucially, the piece was prefaced by a notice about December 9 and 10 charity event Cringemas. It was to be a livestreamed event organized by members of Revelmode, a Disney-owned collective started by Kjellberg himself, with proceeds raised by Cringemas viewers plunged into prominent AIDS foundation (RED).
So it was that later on December 8, 2016, youtube.com/PewDiePie became the site's first channel to pass 50 million subs. Crucially, the Cringemas event was to be livestreamed through the PewDiePie channel, meaning that any erasure would have to wait. Or would it? December 9 provided Deleting My Channel, in which Kjellberg followed through on his promise.
"I just wanted to say, you know when you make a joke and it blows up bigger than you ever imagined?" he reflected, before deleting a two-video secondary channel that'd only been announced in October.
"That was the joke. That was it... that was the joke," he explained. Revelmode raised in excess of $1.3m for (RED) over the weekend; Deleting My Channel ended with a montage of news reporting on Kjellberg's promise, accompanied by the sound of 1974 single "Why Can't We Be Friends?" Bold pink text proclaimed "Will delete PewDiePie at 100 Million!"
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