Another year, another mind-boggling mountain of money for the most famous, most popular YouTuber in the world, Sweden’s Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg. According to Swedish newspaper Expressen, the 24 year-old brought in $7.4 million in revenue in 2014 from his YouTube production company. Last year, he made headlines with a $4M haul. The reason for the increase? Another absolutely colossal subscriber jump from 27 million that year to 37.7 million today.
PewDiePie remains a controversial figure in both the gaming and the general internet communities with the usual, dismissive reaction to his work being “he yells while playing video games” and somehow manages to draw millions of subscribers which yields millions of dollars.
It’s an easy way to wave away his success, but it’s almost always based on either ignorance, jealousy, or both. It is not in fact an easy task to assemble a fanbase as massive as PewDiePie’s. While at some point a snowball effect kicks in and helps things along, PewDiePie wouldn’t be where he is without being very good at what he does. The disconnect comes when what he does doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, myself included admittedly, the first time I saw his videos.
PewDiePie combines charisma, energy and all-around randomness to create a goofball character with videos that make little sense to outsiders, but are catnip to his younger fanbase. I’m reminded of what it was like in the ‘90s trying to watch Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey movies with my parents. It was hysterical to me, but their stone faces made it clear they just didn’t get it.
Even if you don’t “get” PewDiePie, it’s hard not to respect someone who has managed to build up a personal brand this massive, and used his power responsibly.
PewDiePie did not make an “I made $7.4 million this year!” video after all his cash was counted. Rather, he made a “$1 million for charity!” video celebrating that he and his fans had raised over a million dollars over the past year for a host of charities including the
PewDiePie eventually did make a video (above) talking about the generalities of his income after stories began breaking about the new $7.4M haul. In it, he describes how uncomfortable he is talking about money, which is why it’s rarely discussed. He relays how he started with nothing, and (obviously) had no idea of the potential of his YouTube videos. When he got into it there was effectively no dedicated YouTuber scene, and none of this has been part of some master plan to make millions. It’s just happened.
The best part of the video (the entire thing is worth a watch) is that he lays out how obvious this really all is, just…mathematically. “I have nine billion views,” he says. “That translates to something.”
It’s logically impossible to be mad at PewDiePie for making a significant amount of money. You can be mad that people enjoy things that in turn make him money (still not great), or you can wish that other jobs you deem more important would pay better, or you can wish that you, yourself were making that much money, which is ultimately what this comes down to most of the time.
We see this all the time with celebrity culture, and there’s always this revolving definition about who “deserves” to make what level of money. You may have a camp that is furious that Kim Kardashian makes millions a year, yet is perfectly okay with a basketball player bringing in the same amount. But it’s all a matter of perception. Someone who watches Keeping Up with the Kardashians all day and hasn’t seen an NBA game in years would probably think the opposite. And now both of those types of camps probably think someone like PewDiePie doesn’t “deserve” his millions, but he has 37 million fans who would disagree, and they’re the ones making him rich.
Compared to celebrities with sex tapes or athletes with doping scandals or actors with drug habits, PewDiePie’s goofball humor and charitable ambitions make him hardly seem like the worst role model for the types of kids and teens who idolize him. Better than most, at least.
I don’t like PewDiePie’s videos, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like him, and respect what he’s done over the past five years which is absolutely unprecedented and inspirational to me personally as someone trying to make a living on the internet (words don’t pay as well as videos, unfortunately).
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