Legendary YouTubers.
I spent a day with some of the most renowned YouTubers of the past two years.
But there was overwhelming demand to spend a day with legendary YouTubers
who've been around since the platform's inception.
Just one year after YouTube's creation, YouTube already found itself as one of the fastest growing websites
in the history of the internet.
Delivering an average of 100 million video views per day by July 2006.
Quickly, the word "YouTuber" was coined to describe the various individuals who garnered regular viewership on the website.
Entertaining hundreds of thousands of people during a time when one million views was regarded as extremely viral.
My name's Anthony Padilla, and today I'm going to be sitting down with some of the earliest
legendary YouTubers to learn about the truth about their day-to-day life
and how they've managed to remain relevant on the platform throughout the years.
Is being a legendary YouTuber with millions of adoring fans a dream come true?
Or is it a life sentence to exhaustion and isolation?
Are the insurmountable pressures of achieving peak levels of success and fame early in life a blessing?
Or a curse?
Anthony: Hey, Jack!
Jack: How're you doing, Anthony?
Jack: He's just- he's just always watching, y'know, he's always-he's always watching, he's the pope!
BOOM, FIXED YOUR FLAG
Anthony: Ryan!
Ryan: Hey!
[Awkward handshake]
Anthony: OK!
Ryan: Not one lesson.
Anthony: Brandon!
Brandon: You know it's me!
Brendon: This is a Saratoga nettle, they're extremely nutritious.
Anthony: Thank you so much for coming out and teach me about the wondrous world of being a legendary YouTuber!
Brandon: Is that what I'm doing?
Anthony: That's- is today!
Brandon: Ok.
Anthony: Apparently.
Brandon: Yes.
Anthony: So what do you consider yourself?
A legendary YouTuber?
A god?
Jack: Keep going.
Anthony: A perfect -uh- face shape, jaw structured
Jack: Yeah, this doesn't happen by accident.
Ryan: When you say legend, that -to me- that just means like, old
Brandon: Yeah, I just try to be a person on the internet
uhh, and the funniest one.
Anthony: Yes.
Brandon: You have a great editor and I'm hoping he'll make me a lot funnier
Anthony: Mission accomplished! Thank you, Mike.
Brandon: Thank you.
Anthony: Do you still have trouble describing what it is that you do to out-of-touch family members?
Ryan: Usually they'd go "Oh, you're still doing that?"
Jack: I think on some like tax forms or official forms I'll say videographer
Anthony: Ooo, I like that!
Jack: Because, YouTuber doesn't sound legit
Anthony: Right. And you want the government to know that you're legit.
Jack: Yeah.
Anthony: How long have you been a YouTuber?
Ryan: 06', I want to say.
Brandon: Uh, about 14 years!
Anthony: 14 years dude? It was in 2005 when you uploaded your first-
Brandon: Yes, when it first- when YouTube first cracked.
Jack: Uh, 13 years.
Anthony: 13 years?
Jack: Yeah, I've built my channel in 20-
[wheeze] "built my" just f*ck off...
Anthony: You fi- Yeah! You-You handcrafted it from scratch!
Anthony: Why did you first upload your first YouTube video?
Brandon: Because I thought that I was funny and I thought that people at school did not think I was funny
and I thought if I could edit myself into a way where it's like just watch me deliver stuff like this.
Brandon: Haha, Barry, your mom's in the hospital!
[screams]
uh, and I put it on YouTube and people, they thought it was funny.
Anthony: It was kinda your way of proving yourself to other kids in your high school.
Brandon: Yeah. And it still is.
Anthony: Considering you started uploading content on YouTube before the idea of
making a single penny off the platform was fathomable,
why did you think you continued to upload content back in the early days?
Brandon: Well, the same reason I'm making content now.
It's my favourite thing to do and it's my escape.
Anthony: After making such a big name for yourself,
do you feel pressured to constantly live up to those expectations?
Brandon: Every day I wake up, and I either think
"Wow, I've just made something great and I have to live up to that," or
"I've just made garbage, and I'm garbage."
It's never a positive.
Anthony: Yeah, yeah. There's always pressure somehow attached to it.
Brandon: It's like a vulture on my shoulder, and the more creators I talk to,
the more I realize that I'm not alone in that.
Anthony: Are you ever nervous that your channel will die?
Jack: Oh god, I'm never not nervous.
Ryan: I think, technically I've just killed it myself.
Like, I didn't call it a break but I said I wanna change things, cuz I'm just
I'm (???) that I'm gonna quit.
Brendon: I think that every YouTuber's nervous that their channel will die,
and if they're not, they're f*cking stupid.
Anthony: How has your perception of 1 million views changed since your earliest days on the platform?
Brandon: Like, less than a million views had such a global impact on our media
now it's like, something can get 16 million views and it'll be a footnote
on that week's timeline of your recommended section
Ryan: Shoot, I mean, 1 million subscribers I made a video that was like "Holy crap, we hit a million subscri-", remember?
Anthony: Yes, yes.
Ryan: That was like, so impressive and now it's like everyone has a million-
Anthony: Everyone has a million subscribers!
I bet there's like 35 people watching this have a million subscribers!
Ryan: People don't realize that like, that was crazy back then!
Jack: Back when I was in college, I was at dinner with my friends and I was celebrating,
I just hit 50,000 subs on YouTube!
And then one of my as*hole friends was like,
"Yo, doesn't Smosh have like a million-"
Jack: I'm like, "Shut up, Trevor!"
Anthony: F*cking Trevor!
F*ck you, Trevor! If you're watching this-
Jack: He's dead now, it's fine.
Anthony: How have you prevented yourself from feeling YouTube burnout?
Ryan: I didn't.
Ryan: I was burnt out for a long time, man!
Even when I was still making the other videos, I think I was, I'll admit that I was burnt out for like, years.
Jack: Get outside. Get outside, you live in LA for god's sake.
Take advantage of it.
Brandon: It's almost like a marriage, I think you have to keep continually falling in love y'know
you don't just fall in love with a person one time and then just that's it we're together forever.
I think you have to constantly find ways, not just trick yourself, but really remind yourself
why you love who you're with, and what you're doing.
Anthony: Do you have an end goal or do you think that you'll continue doing YouTube till the day you die?
Brandon: For me, I wanna be on television, I want to do film, I want to be creative
on much bigger, y'know, other platforms
But I think YouTube will always be that place in my heart that-that'll be where I'll keep returning to
to get my hobby fixed.
Jack: Honestly, yeah I'd be happy with making videos in some capacity uh, till my death bed because-
Anthony: Really? Even with a child that you feel like you're gonna miss those years of their life if you don't-
Jack: Yeah, f*ck em'
Anthony: Where do you think you'd be today if YouTube didn't exist?
Ryan: In a hospital.
Ryan: Working. Working.
Anthony: Working! Working-working in a hospital?
Ryan: Yeah.
Anthony: Ok.
Ryan: Nuclear medicine. Nuclear medicine technologist probably.
Brandon: Well, I'd probably still be doing my day job and you know what was that, Anthony?
Anthony: Tell the world.
Brandon: I worked at a law firm.
Oh my god, I worked in a cubicle and I was doing legal bullsh*t, uh, garbage.
I was doing bullsh*t.
Anthony: Alaya wants to know what you think about the new generation of young YouTubers.
Brandon: I think young people are so smart.
I think they are. I used to be afraid because of all the grammatical errors in the comment section
and then I went on tour and I met them, and I don't know if it's just my fans but
almost all of the young people I met are so much smarter than the people I went to high school with.
Anthony: Gracey wants to know how you feel when you look back and watch old videos of yours.
Jack: Sometimes, I'll be impressed, and surprised-
Anthony: Because you're so far removed
Jack: I'm so far removed like I never would have thought of that joke today.
Anthony: But you did then!
Jack: But I did then!
Other times I would be like, oh, I would've done that differently, so that f*cking sucks,
Ryan: Oh, there is a video called "How to be ninja"
Anthony: Yeah!
Ryan: I said f*ggot and I really regret it,
Ryan: And then I'll be like, I can't take it down
Anthony: It was not bleeped, it was just in there?
Ryan: Yeah, cuz at the time, especially in Hawaii, it wasn't like, that bad of a cuss word.
Ryan: I know better now, but I didn't mean like, uh, it wasn't derogatory just towards gay people
Anthony: Yeah.
Ryan: I meant something completely- it was just an insult in a different way
Anthony: Yeah.
Ryan: But, uh, I get it now, but like things like that I look back and be like, I should take this down but I can't
Anthony: Cuz it's part of your brand.
Ryan: It is. And people know it and I had it addressed many times.
Anthony: What's been your most bizarre friend interaction?
Brandon: My first fan.
Anthony: Oh.
Brandon: And his name, I'll put on blast, his name was Sam Sheppard, he's my first fan in 2007,
The first one to leave me a video response, remember when those were a thing
Anthony: Oh, yeah!
Brandon: And he left me a video response, and I flew all the way out to Chicago, we went on a road trip all the-
Anthony: Wait.
Brandon: -way to Memphis, Tennessee.