0:04

Listen to supported WNYC

0:06

studios. Hey,

0:09

it's Latif from Radiolab. Our

0:11

goal with each episode is to make

0:13

you think, how did I live this

0:16

long and not know that? Radiolab,

0:18

adventures on the edge of what we think

0:21

we know. Listen wherever you get podcasts. Hey,

0:24

it's Micah. This is the On the

0:26

Media Midweek podcast. Something

0:28

happened on the internet this week that was at

0:30

once huge and

0:32

also kind of a foregone conclusion. Jimmy

0:35

Donaldson, better known as MrBeast,

0:37

has been for many years

0:39

basically the king of YouTube.

0:43

But as of a few days ago,

0:45

MrBeast is now officially the most subscribed

0:47

to YouTuber in the world with 271

0:49

million followers at time of recording. His

0:55

clickbaity game show style videos with

0:57

their extravagant sets and giant payouts

0:59

have come to define this era

1:01

of the site. Behind me

1:03

are 100 people and they range from the age

1:06

one all the way to age 100. And

1:08

they're going to be competing for $250,000. Everyone

1:13

go to your queue. Remember

1:15

Squid Game, the Korean Netflix sensation?

1:18

That show got around 265 million views. MrBeast's

1:22

real life Squid Game video got 616

1:25

million views. That's

1:38

why he's number one. And there's

1:40

actually a very interesting history behind the

1:42

jockeying for YouTube's top spot. To

1:45

get there, MrBeast had to surpass

1:47

a giant Indian entertainment company, T-Series,

1:50

266 million

1:52

subscribers, which had been number

1:54

one for years. In

1:57

2019, I worked with Brooke on a piece

1:59

about the last time, a big

2:01

western YouTuber went head-to-head with T-Series.

2:04

Back then, it was a guy who was

2:06

sort of the Mr. Beast of his era,

2:08

a YouTuber known as PewDiePie. How's

2:11

it going everyone? My

2:13

name is PewDiePie! So PewDiePie is a

2:15

character played by Felix Schalberg. He is

2:17

a caustic and funny gamer. Clay

2:19

Shirky is a tech writer and

2:22

vice provost of educational technology at

2:24

New York University. He's tracked

2:26

PewDiePie's nine-year rise to the

2:28

top of YouTube. He's Swedish, he lives

2:31

in England, he's 29, and

2:33

he's one of the first generation of YouTubers

2:35

who did it as a hobby and converted

2:37

it to a career. Friday's

2:39

my panda-paw! On to

2:42

the Friday! PewDiePie's subscriber count

2:44

started to rise on the appeal

2:46

of a now-classic genre of videos

2:48

called Let's Play, as in, you

2:50

watch him goof around while he

2:52

plays a game. He's now

2:54

got 80 million subscribers, but two

2:56

years ago he started dipping

2:59

into controversy. Alright, Disney cutting ties

3:01

with... what is this? PewDiePie!

3:03

PewDiePie, the Wall Street Journal reporting

3:06

that PewDiePie, the world's highest paid

3:08

YouTube star, posted nine videos featuring

3:10

anti-Semitic comments or Nazi imagery. The

3:12

Wall Street Journal reported that a

3:15

January 11th video showed two men

3:17

holding a sign that said death

3:19

to all Jews, allegedly hired by

3:21

the 27-year-old internet personality. Google cut

3:24

PewDiePie from its lucrative preferred

3:26

ad program and cancelled his

3:28

premium YouTube original series. PewDiePie,

3:31

by the way, did not respond to

3:33

any of our requests for comment. I'm

3:36

sorry for the words that I used,

3:39

as I know they offended people. I

3:41

do strongly believe that you can joke

3:43

about anything. Here's the thing though, the

3:46

media takes what I say out of

3:48

context to portray me as a Nazi.

3:51

Old school media does not like

3:53

internet personalities because they're scared of

3:55

us. The context question is often

3:57

used as a get out of...

3:59

jail card to say to people, I

4:02

don't want to be held to standards

4:04

other than those held by my own

4:06

audience. And I buy that. I do. But

4:09

there's this really smart anthropologist, Crystal

4:11

Abedin, and she went through a

4:14

lot of the

4:16

citations of PewDiePie's transgressions

4:18

that were assembled by the Wall Street Journal. The

4:21

Wall Street Journal circulated a still

4:23

of PewDiePie supposedly making the Nazi

4:25

salute when this was actually

4:27

him just extending his arm and pointing off

4:29

screen. There was another one

4:31

that the Wall Street Journal did

4:34

of PewDiePie donning a uniform and

4:36

watching Hitler videos when this was

4:38

actually the second half of a

4:40

longer snippet in which PewDiePie first

4:42

refuted earlier media accusations that he

4:44

was a Nazi and then jokingly

4:47

donning a British uniform while pretending

4:49

to watch clips of Hitler's speech

4:51

to depict how he thinks the

4:53

media views him. I mean, this

4:55

isn't just casual context. No, that's right.

4:57

But I don't think there's any claim of

4:59

being out of context that saves the death

5:01

to all Jews stunt. Actually, I

5:04

watched that entire thing. And

5:07

he was asking a whole bunch

5:09

of people to do things that

5:11

he knew they wouldn't do. And

5:14

this was one that he had put

5:16

in that group on Fiverr who, for

5:18

a certain amount of money, will

5:20

do something on video that you

5:22

request. He'd ask that for outrageous things.

5:24

No one did it. And for five

5:26

bucks, two guys from India did this death to

5:29

all Jews thing. And you

5:31

see his reaction. I

5:33

am sorry. I didn't think they would actually

5:35

do it. I feel partially responsible, but just

5:37

I didn't think they would. And

5:39

he looks genuinely shocked. He just never

5:41

expected it. Now, should he have done

5:43

that? Was it really

5:45

obnoxious and creepy? Yeah, but I

5:47

think he kind of conceded that

5:50

himself. Yeah, but that to me says

5:52

he can sort of have it both ways.

6:00

daily stormers favorite group of

6:02

guys exposing plans to take

6:04

over the world and make

6:06

him white. His lure

6:09

is PewDiePie. The problem with PewDiePie is

6:11

not that he's a Nazi, the problem is that

6:13

he's an asshole. And he wants

6:15

to be both edgy and not

6:18

upset people because his audience expects

6:20

edginess but his advertisers expect not

6:22

upsetting people. And one of

6:24

his constant complaints about people pushing back

6:27

on his edgy content, which often involves

6:29

racial slurs or using the

6:31

word retarded, casual homophobia, these kinds of

6:33

things, is that he's being held

6:35

to a standard that his own audience doesn't

6:37

have. He's now finally being treated

6:39

as a cultural figure who says something

6:41

about the larger society. He's not just

6:44

a gamer mouthing off to amuse other

6:46

gamers. PewDiePie's mounting controversies

6:48

had little effect in his

6:50

ranking as the most subscribed

6:52

to YouTuber until the rise of

6:55

the Indian super channel T-Series. It's

6:58

on course to become the

7:00

most subscribed channel on YouTube

7:02

and is about to pass

7:04

the controversial personality pewdiepie. Out

7:07

of nowhere comes this channel

7:10

T-Series. There are like 60

7:12

million subscribers and their

7:14

channel is going insane. And

7:16

I'm thinking, who are these

7:18

guys? What is T-Series? T-Series

7:20

is like India's Disney, almost

7:22

synonymous with the films and

7:24

music it produces. Like

7:27

the viral song Lahore by Guru

7:29

Ram Swat. T-Series is, I guess,

7:31

everywhere. Every part of the country

7:33

there is T-Series. This

7:36

is Indian YouTuber, Kari Manati. He had

7:38

5.5 million subscribers. YouTube

7:42

came in India very late. Before YouTube

7:44

there, we had CDs, DVDs, we had

7:46

VHS, we had cassettes. Every

7:50

Bollywood movie has a song in it. Of course. So

7:52

most of them were released by T-Series. I think it's

7:54

been there forever. Forever,

7:56

coming from a YouTuber who knows his

7:58

way around the internet. Okay,

8:02

so I've been doing this for a

8:04

long time, it's been like 10 years

8:07

I guess now. And how old are

8:09

you? I'm 19. Wait

8:11

a minute, you've been doing it since you were 9? Yeah,

8:14

kind of. I've been making

8:16

like a lot of content from

8:18

like football tricks to PSP tutorials

8:20

to game plays, lot of things.

8:23

I've done a lot of things. Gulshan Kumar,

8:25

son of a juice seller, started what became

8:27

T-Series in 1983, growing it into what's

8:32

now the ubiquitous emblem of

8:34

Indian pop culture. And

8:36

so it remains, though Kumar was murdered

8:39

by the Mumbai underworld in 1997. Today

8:43

the company distributes Bollywood, Bangra, and

8:45

hip-hop in a variety of Indian

8:47

languages, all of which is available

8:50

on a YouTube channel, the subscribership

8:52

of which has sometimes briefly

8:55

even overtaken PewDiePie's.

8:57

We're failing! Another

8:59

YouTube channel is taking over us!

9:02

That's right, we know less than in

9:04

November this year. PewDiePie

9:06

will not be the biggest channel on

9:09

YouTube! No! We

9:11

must fight back! YouTube, Instagram,

9:13

Twitter, and Snapchat were flooded

9:15

with PewDiePie's calls to action.

9:18

I'm gonna put subscribe to

9:21

PewDiePie on the largest

9:23

billboard in Times Square. In this

9:25

video, I will save PewDiePie 100,000

9:27

times to stop T-Series. People

9:31

around the world doing

9:34

campaign for PewDiePie, and in

9:36

Bangladesh, it's not different. People,

9:38

they are sticking posters on

9:41

the trees and the walls. I am going

9:43

to destroy my body with a subscribe to

9:45

PewDiePie chat. Everyone's

9:52

doing their part! Have you been

9:55

doing your part? They've taken control

9:57

of printers around the world to

9:59

create. posters supporting the blogger,

10:02

PewDiePie. The other day I was

10:04

sitting at work and the printer

10:06

started printing something. While 23 year

10:09

old Sarah Moore was working her job

10:11

at a hair salon in Wilson, North

10:13

Carolina, the office printer, one of 50,000

10:15

hacked worldwide, spat

10:18

out posters promoting PewDiePie.

10:21

It was honestly one of the best things

10:23

that's ever happened. I never thought it would

10:25

actually come to my salon that I work

10:27

at and everything. Basically, I've always been a

10:30

fan of PewDiePie forever. So what does the

10:32

war represent to you? The Wall Street Journal

10:34

and these other publications, basically, they're just taking

10:36

things completely out of contact and

10:39

to rise up and defend him, I guess,

10:41

and have this battle for him, it kind

10:43

of to me represents that YouTube still has

10:45

this really nice deep-seated community of people who

10:47

know what's right and what's wrong. We live

10:49

in a world where canceled culture is so

10:52

strong. Somebody does one thing wrong and

10:54

then you want to cancel them forever. Sarah

10:56

disavows the anti-Semitic joke

10:58

video, but believes his

11:01

apologies are genuine and her

11:03

fear of cancel culture is

11:05

shared widely on the platform.

11:07

To many of his fans,

11:09

PewDiePie is the David up

11:11

against YouTube, the Goliath, against

11:14

the media Goliath, against the

11:16

T-Series Goliath. While everyone else

11:18

is just moaning and complaining

11:20

and turning our beloved T-Series

11:23

into a tyrant, into

11:25

this big music industry type food that's

11:27

coming in and taking away the little

11:29

guy, which don't get me wrong, definitely,

11:32

definitely is all those things.

11:34

But it's our evil corporation,

11:36

okay? For once, our

11:39

evil corporation gets to win and gets

11:41

to take the number one spot. Canadian

11:43

Indian YouTuber, Jess Raine. Because maybe it

11:45

is our time now. Maybe

11:48

your karma of colonizing us

11:50

is finally catching up through

11:53

us beating you and a

11:55

completely unnecessarily racially motivated subscriber

11:58

race on YouTube. Meanwhile,

12:00

the diss track Bitch Lasagna with

12:02

over 100 million views

12:04

is PewDiePie's most popular video.

12:06

The song takes its title

12:09

from a meme ridiculing the

12:11

broken English of Indians online.

12:14

Other YouTubers like Ethan Klein

12:16

of H3H3 Productions

12:18

have fanned the fling. Bitch

12:21

Lasagna, Bitch Lasagna, we can

12:23

see everything is crying from

12:25

the wrong... These men have like

12:27

1.4 billion people in India. They are

12:29

churning out YouTube views in unprecedented numbers.

12:32

Bollywood is the corniest on the history

12:34

of the earth. And are all Indians

12:36

the goofiest people you've ever met in

12:38

your life? No, I'm kidding. That was

12:40

chill. In response to PewDiePie, Ethan

12:42

Klein, and the waves of anti-Indian

12:44

hate on social media, Karim Inadi

12:47

made his own diss track in

12:49

Hindi to capture how Indians are

12:51

processing the feud. I've

12:54

seen a lot of comments that say

12:56

that PewDiePie did it as a

12:58

joke. And I've seen

13:00

a lot of comments that

13:03

say PewDiePie did not do

13:05

this as a joke. And

13:07

they are offended. And they

13:10

are angry at... That means

13:12

the world unites against our

13:15

nation. Because

13:19

a lot of people are saying that it's

13:21

not just PewDiePie vs. T-Series. India

13:24

is like alone in this. In

13:26

an effort to diffuse the vitriol

13:28

unleashed by the subscriber war, PewDiePie

13:31

asked his fans to support a charity

13:34

for Indian children. Clay

13:36

Shirky says the aggression exhibited by

13:38

his most vocal fans suggests

13:41

that for these guys, racism

13:43

is the principal fuel. She

13:46

does offer lowercase W, lowercase S

13:48

white supremacy. What is that? She

13:52

is in that mode

13:54

of white guy gamer for

13:56

whom he exemplifies a kind

13:58

of freedom to... be

14:01

caustic and insulting without consequence. And

14:03

that is something that has been given to white

14:06

men more than to other members of society. And

14:09

to hear that people who like

14:11

Bangra and Bollywood music are going

14:13

to displace him does in fact

14:15

raise those cultural anxieties. Do we

14:17

want an American in

14:19

the top YouTube spot or do we

14:21

want an Indian man succeeding better

14:23

on a platform that us Americans

14:25

created? The former Gateway-punded

14:27

White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich

14:29

at the Right-Wing American Priorities

14:32

Conference in D.C. The

14:34

neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, with

14:37

tongue firmly in cheek, called

14:39

PewDiePie the true leader of

14:42

all racists, anti-Semites, and

14:44

fascists, hoping no doubt to entice

14:46

a few of his currently ironic

14:49

viewers while inciting hysterics

14:51

in the mainstream press.

14:54

And PewDiePie's also gotten a

14:56

nod from Canadian psychologist Jordan

14:59

Peterson, who depicts PC culture

15:01

and left-wing politics as mortal

15:04

threats to Western civilization. Hey

15:06

Jordan, what are you doing right now? I'm

15:08

subscribing to PewDiePie. What

15:11

everyone has learned on all sides of

15:13

the political spectrum now is how to

15:15

take an isolated event in the world

15:17

and add it to the giant referendum

15:19

on everything that we're currently living

15:22

through. Even if PewDiePie doesn't mean

15:24

it, especially if he

15:26

doesn't mean it, because he's saying that

15:28

if you don't mean it, it's kind

15:30

of okay. That's just

15:32

a prank bro, that's

15:34

just a prank. Don't

15:37

you like cold throw-off, you

15:40

don't like things?

15:43

Meanwhile, in the war for subscribers,

15:45

the internet's Swedish emperor still

15:47

claims the prize, but his

15:50

grasp is increasingly shaky. Smartphone

15:52

penetration in India is less than

15:54

25%, which is

15:56

to say the West has topped out. There

15:58

will be incremental growth only. I think

16:01

when India has crippled the

16:03

number of people online that it has now,

16:05

something that's not possible in the US or

16:07

Europe, T-Series will leave PewDiePie

16:10

well behind. This is kind of John

16:12

Henry and the machines, right? There's

16:15

this last ditch attempt by PewDiePie's fans

16:17

to kind of create fake demand to

16:19

push him over the 80 million mark,

16:21

which they've done, 80 million subscribers. But

16:24

a lot of that's people's second email addresses

16:26

or people doing it as a joke. Because

16:28

viewcants aren't going up as fast as subscribed

16:30

cants. This is not an audience anymore. But

16:33

it's not even a competition because the T-Series

16:35

people don't care. We asked Louie,

16:38

media analyst and the 11-year-old son

16:40

of our executive producer, Catcher Rogers,

16:42

to offer some perspective for middle

16:44

school. Louie says that subscribing to

16:46

PewDiePie is more meme than anything

16:49

else. In fact, he sees the

16:51

current competition as merely a temporary

16:53

reprieve for a brand that was

16:55

already losing its luster. Some

16:58

people, I could see them listening to

17:00

one sentence of PewDiePie and just hating him

17:02

thinking he's so racist. And he is

17:05

a lot. Also sometimes I

17:07

could see him just doing it to get more views,

17:09

just to get money. I

17:12

don't feel like he's actually really trying for

17:14

good content. So no one

17:16

really watches his videos. If they subscribe to

17:18

PewDiePie, they just press subscribe, leave his channel.

17:21

Right after this whole PewDiePie T-Series thing,

17:23

he's going to be gone. No

17:28

one can tell him. Very

17:41

prescient, Louie. PewDiePie is still

17:43

around and still making videos. But

17:46

with just 111 million

17:48

subscribers, he's no longer a

17:50

contender for number one. Thanks

17:54

for listening to the Midweek Podcast. On

17:56

this week's big show, I'm speaking with

17:58

the onions. CEO

18:01

Brooks back and she'll be

18:03

discussing PSYOP real and fake

18:06

and in the meantime you can keep up with

18:08

the show by following us on Instagram and X.

18:10

See you Friday I'm

18:13

Michael Lohninger