PewDiePie reveals why he almost deleted his YouTube channel
PewDiePie, YouTubeYouTube king Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg celebrated 10 years on the platform on May 5, acknowledging his decade of content with a thorough review of his older videos — where he revealed a surprising fact about an old prank.
While PewDiePie has long been one of YouTube’s most successful creators, internet stardom isn’t all sunshine and roses, as he revealed during his May 5 review of videos uploaded throughout his career.
Looking over his vlogs from 2015-2016, where he traveled to Los Angeles to film his infamous “Scare PewDiePie” special, he revealed that he’d been “overworked” by the network during this time.
PewDiePie, InstagramKjellberg also brought up a meme from back then, where he’d jokingly threatened to delete his channel — but, as it so happens, it wasn’t actually much of a joke.
“I don’t know if I said this before… I meme’d it like, ‘Haha, got you,’ but the original idea was intentional, because I just was so done,” he admitted.
“I was so overworked. It was way too much.”
That’s not all: the YouTube star also revealed he’d grown tired of the fame from his position as a top entertainer and claimed that he’d missed his smaller audience from his earlier days in comparison to his explosive success.
“I was fed up with being so famous,” he continued. “I just realized I wasn’t enjoying it. It was a time when I wished I had a smaller channel and no one knew who I was, kinda.
I missed those times, back in 2012, when it was just me and my audience, and the acceleration and the hype. I felt like I had lost that.”
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Despite scoring a book deal and filming a YouTube Original series, PewDiePie has historically been adamant that fame and money are not equitable to happiness, as argued during his video reacting to critics upset by his wealth.
Having reached a milestone 10 years on YouTube and a record 104 million subscribers, Kjellberg has seen both the good and the bad sides of being internet famous — but it’s no secret that he’s grateful for his fanbase, thanking them for spending an entire decade watching his content, all the way from horror let’s plays to LWIAY years later.