Felix Kjellberg, YouTube's top star who is more popularly known as PewDiePie, swore that he was going to delete his channel once it reaches 50 million subscribers, a feat that he recently achieved.
PewDiePie fans, who simply could not accept the possibility that their favorite content creator could soon be quitting, can now rest easy, as Kjellberg revealed that the threat of deleting his channel was just a joke.
PewDiePie Deletes Alternate Channel
After reaching 50 million subscribers on his PewDiePie channel, the YouTube star's fans started to panic, with some even downloading his videos to save them from being deleted from the face of the internet forever.
However, as some have speculated, in the video that Kjellberg uploaded that would supposedly see him delete his PewDiePie channel, he instead deleted his alternate channel Jack septiceye2.
The alternate channel just had more than 1 million subscribers, which is a significant number but nowhere near as many as the 50 million subscribers that the PewDiePie channel now has. The now-deleted channel also posted only two videos.
"You know when you make a joke, and it just blows up way bigger than you ever imagined?" said Kjellberg in the video before he deleted his channel. He then shows various media outlets reporting that he would be deleting his channel after reaching 50 million subscribers, and then keeps the joke going by adding that he "will delete PewDiePie at 100 million" at the end of the video.
Was This A Simple Joke Or A Marketing Stunt?
While Kjellberg said that this was a simple joke that just blew up, there could have been a deeper agenda underlying what just transpired.
In his announcement that he would be deleting his channel after reaching 50 million subscribers, Kjellberg raised two issues. The first problem is that he believes YouTube is sabotaging his PewDiePie channel through means such as diminishing the rate of his videos appearing on the suggested videos feed of users and the second problem is that he thinks that the move is being done due to his race.
While the threat to delete his channel may have turned out to be a joke, his announcement garnered widespread media coverage that boosted his profile and brought certain issues that content creators are having with YouTube due to the changes that have been applied to the platform's monetization and discoverability tools.
PewDiePie now has over 50 million subscribers, by far the biggest number for any YouTube channel. In October of last year, the channel reached 40 million subscribers after reaching 10 billion views a month earlier.
While Kjellberg only joked about deleting his channel, perhaps his stunt will lead to bigger changes to YouTube and its content creators.
