How To Become The Biggest YouTuber of All Time

PewDiePie is the biggest YouTuber by far. It's not even close. And with his recent milestone of 50 million subscribers, I thought it'd be interesting to look into the factors that contributed to his massive success. And obviously, his enormous catalog of videos and early entry into let's Play contributed. But in this video, we're going to focus on just the psychological factors that make him so unstoppable. And I promise you, even if you hate PewDiePie or you don't yet know who he is, you can learn from his success because he is tapped into the fundamentals of the way people work. First off, PewDiePie is the master of capturing attention.

How's it going, bros?

My name is PewDiePie.

Now, YouTube is one of the most competitive marketplaces for attention. On any given page, each creator is competing with dozens of different options, plus the option to just leave YouTube and go outside. So how does PewDiePie reliably capture the attention of his audience? It starts with his thumbnails and titles. Take a look. You see extreme contrast in colors, mystery, and most importantly, strong emotions. Remember the T. Rex from Jurassic Park? It only saw and chased people when they moved because movement captured its attention. Humans have the same sort of thing going on, except we pay closest attention to faces. We're wired not only to recognize human faces, but to spend extra attention on those faces which depict a strong emotion. That extra attention often translates to people clicking on PewDiePie's videos. And yes, I'm taking this lesson for Charisma on Command's thumbnails going forward. So once watching the video, the emotions just keep coming. Watch how PewDiePie jokingly crams four intense emotions into a 24 second span.

We all know what happened that day when the fire nation attacked. Sorry, just when I got my play.

Button, it's fucking broken.

Congrats for surpassing 1 million. Oh, that's cool.

That happened years ago. Give me 44 of these. It was broken.

Just like my heart.

Like I said, we're wired to be captivated by strong emotions. And when they're strung together so tightly, the effect is mesmerizing. Now, four emotions in 24 seconds is extreme. And it's a product of the fact that PewDiePie is on YouTube. But even great stand up comedy will follow a similar pattern of depicting strong emotions within a short time period.

The Canadians, they skate perfectly, eh? We did it perfect, huh? Then the Russians, they come. Oh, fuck, they fucked up. And the French judgment. How like life they fucked up. I give it to them at that Point I'm going, where is Tonya Harding when you need her? Tonya would have been on that judge like shit. On Velcro.

And in public speaking, you're likely to see at least three intense emotions over a 20 minute arc. This kernel of truth remains the same throughout life. If you want to be heard, first you have to capture attention. And showing a strong emotion is a brilliant way to do it. Of course, it's not the only way. I often talk about people who create strong emotions like Donald Trump, tyrion Lannister and PewDiePie. And that's done very well for charisma on command. Also, in terms of virality, the quality of a message is secondary to its ability to capture attention. My most viewed videos are not the absolute best content that I have, at least in my opinion. They just happen to be the most attention grabbing. I suspect that PewDiePie feels the same way, and the same is true of your life. So if you feel like your message isn't being received, whether you want people to donate to a cause or just pay attention to an awesome story that you're telling, don't blame your audience. Figure out how to position your message so it captures attention. And one way that we've talked about to do that is by leading with a strong emotion. I want to talk Next about how PewDiePie gets laughs from places that most people just don't expect. So let's look at some of the effects in this clip.

Are stuck in the old days. And I get that that's where probably when a lot of people found my videos. And the first time you experience something is always gonna be the best. Am I right? But I thought we'd gonna react.

PewDiePie takes full advantage of video format, creating humor from quick cuts, mood music, framing, and just about every visual effect ever. In addition, he changes one of those things about once every four seconds. And that helps keep attention and makes it difficult to click away from his videos, which drives up watch time. And that happens to be the leading reason that YouTube promotes a particular video, which makes him even bigger. So just watch again. Now for the same. At which he changes his music and framing.

I want four diamond play buttons. I want them delivered by a horse. I want them smothered in glitter. Not too much. Make it classy. I want the man delivering the packages to be a bearded, beautiful man. And I want a written apology. I want you to. I want a begged apology.

All right, Buff, in normal conversations, you obviously don't need to be so frantic, but. But it's still going to help people pay attention. If you interject humor every so often, being funny in its entirety is a much bigger topic. But one easy way to do this is with callback humor. And that's where you reference a previous joke someone made. PewDiePie does this across his videos, both for the laugh that it makes and to build a sense of community. There's of course, his typical greeting, which he riffs on many times.

How's it going, bros?

My name's PewDiePie.

How's it going, bros?

My name is PewDiePie.

Hey, how's it going, bros? My name is PewDiePie.

And then there are plenty of others, but they won't really make sense to the uninitiated. And that's kind of the point. Callback humor is funny because it references the kind of thing that you just had to be there for. And while callback humor is powerful in real life, the type of humor that often does the best on YouTube is parodying YouTube, which PewDiePie loves to do. His channel art is a ridiculous corporate mishmash. His channel logo is currently Mark Zuckerberg. His descriptions often contain nothing. And he even made a second channel simply to make fun and parody a friend and fellow YouTuber, Jacksepticeye.

Top of the morning to ya, laddies. My name is Jacksepticeye and welcome to High School 101.

Top of the morning to you, laddies. My name is jacksepticeye, and welcome to my second channel where I'll be uploading vlogs.

The point is this, PewDiePie is constantly talking with tongue in cheek, and that inadvertently serves another major purpose other than just creating laughs. It lets him get away with completely shameless Clickbait. Like his most recent promise to delete his channel at 50 million subs.

I swear to you, at 50 million subs, when we hit 50 million, a huge landmark coming up. Huge deal. Never been done before. No one's even close. I am deleting my channel, which of.

Course he then did not do, instead deleting the parody second channel he'd made of jacksepticeye instead.

Now let's go ahead then and fulfill my end of the promise. That was the joke. That was it. That was the. That was the joke.

Some of the most culturally influential people are the ones who can make headline grabbing claims, but then have the ability to deflect any negative consequences that might come from not following through. These people are Teflon. All press is good press for them because they're impossible to publicly embarrass others. Can make one public screw up that haunts them forever. Remember Howard Dean?

Not only are we going to New Hampshire Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico. We're going to California and Texas and New York, and we go to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House. Yeah.

Those 20 seconds marked the end of Dean's presidential run, and it almost goes without saying, but had Donald Trump done the same thing, he'd still have won. That ability to survive and even benefit from a negative story comes down to two things. First, building a Persona in advance that lets you get away with things PewDiePie's constant irony and joking set him up well for the 50 million subscriber stunt videos like this tutorial on how to make gameplay videos. Set his fan base up to expect him not to be serious even when he sounds like he is. Just watch.

Basically what you want to do if you have any problem is that you turn it backside upside down, you read the serial number and you turn it back on around again.

And then.

You ruined my life.

And the second thing is not apologizing. In fact, it's doubling down and deflecting with humor. Check out how PewDiePie ended his announcement that he was deleting instead his troll second channel instead of his main one. And it's true that in our own lives, pushing a joke further often serves us better than apologizing immediately. That's why that one guy at the office always seems to get away with slacking off and leaving early. That's his Persona, and he probably deflects with humor. That's why you also probably have one friend who you always forgive for being unreliable, because that's their Persona and they can deflect with humor. Now I'm not saying you should copy these traits or plan PR stunts for your own benefit, but a touch of irony and some well timed humor could get you out of a bind scot free. Or maybe get you 100 million subscribers on YouTube. Now, if you like this video and you want more like it, make sure to go ahead and subscribe to the channel. I can't promise I'll ever be quite as engaging as PewDiePie, but it is my hope that if you watch our videos, you'll find yourself more charismatic, confident and magnetic in the moments where you really need that the most. So go ahead and click the button. Subscribe. And I think you now have to hit the bell too. If you want to make sure that you see us pop up on your homepage, so do that as well. Also comment Let me know who you'd like to see me cover next. We have another animated style video that will be coming up on Thursday, which is when we're going to do those in the future. New ones will still be Mondays and your comments help decide what topics I cover. Until then, I hope that you have enjoyed this video and I'll see you in the next one. Have you ever wanted something more than anything, but for the life of you, you couldn't stay motivated to actually make it happen?