Massively popular YouTuber PewDiePie, otherwise known as Felix Kjellberg, has gone on a rant against the platform, saying that he will delete his channel when it hits a milestone of 50 million subscribers.
In his most recent video, posted below, PewDiePie joked that YouTube is “like a toddler with knives”, and said that it is currently trying to “kill” his popular channel.
He accused it of hiding his videos and those of other high-profile YouTubers from subscribers, and echoed a claim made by some others that a glitch on the site randomly unsubscribes users.
As evidence that YouTube is fudging its algorithms, he points to the fact that some of his recent videos have only received two million views – still a high number, but unusually low when your base subscriber count is up around 49.5 million.
He accused the site of promoting “random-ass fucking videos”, trending content and clickbait over older, established personalities, and that the overall level of content on the site is suffering as a result.
On one very obvious level, this rant comes to you from a multi-millionaire video game blogger who is throwing a hissy fit because he’s not as popular as he once was, and it’s hard to be -all that- sympathetic.
On the other, PewDiePie seems genuinely proud of the millions of subscribers he’s accumulated after years of hard work, and it’s understandable that the current situation feels to him “like a kick in the face.”
For what it’s worth, PewDiePie says that, even if he does delete his channel, he won’t quit YouTube, but will “start fresh with a new shitty channel probably.”
He’s about 500,000 subscribers off hitting the 50 million mark, so we’ll wait and see what happens.
You can watch the video below, although be warned that, while he previously said he regrets using derogatory terms like ‘retarded’ in his older videos, he’s already forgotten all about that.
Source: YouTube.
Photo: Vincent Sandoval / Getty.
