- What's up, Mafia?
I'm Airrack, and I'm doing the WIRED Autcomplete Interview.
[upbeat music]
It's not your business, just for the record.
[upbeat music]
All right, what Airrack?
What does Airrack mean?
That's an interesting question.
Basically, when I was like 13, Instagram was invented,
and I was trying to get at Eric, E-R-I-C,
which is my first name,
but obviously, that wasn't available.
So I just kind of kept respelling Eric
in the most interesting and idiotic ways possible.
A 13-year-old Eric came up with Airrack,
and now I'm stuck with it for life.
What did Airrack do before YouTube?
I would go around to different businesses
and shoot whatever somebody would pay me
to pick up a camera to do: I would basically do it.
What happened to Airrack?
I feel like it's gonna be something
about me dying or something.
What happened to Airrack's channel?
I think this might be talking about the time
that I accidentally deleted my YouTube channel.
I was trying to change the settings on my channel one time,
and I accidentally pressed the delete channel button,
which sent YouTube into what they called code black,
which means that everybody
at the entire YouTube organization, all the executives
had to try to restore my channel immediately.
That was like a year ago or something like that.
While the channel was down, I actually ended up pretending
like I purposely deleted the channel.
I made a video just promoting
this YouTuber ping pong competition that I had up.
But yeah, 24 hours later, Susan and the gang
ended up getting my YouTube channel back up.
So, thank you, Susan. I owe you one.
What Airrack video got taken down.
This is a whopper of a story right here.
When I had like 20,000 subscribers,
I had this video idea to sneak into a Dan Bilzerian party.
If you don't know who Dan Bilzerian is,
he's like the ultimate manly man.
He has like 30 million followers on Instagram,
and he just posts pictures of him with hot babes every day.
He threw a party that he only invited 1000
of the most influential people
and then just a bunch of the hottest women on earth.
So I thought it would be funny if I snuck into the party
to show everybody what's going on.
So I did, and I like hid in the bushes for like four hours
and then snuck into the party and filmed the entire thing,
uploaded it to YouTube.
It was like my first viral video.
I remember it got like 85,000 views in an hour, which,
at the time, was like an unbelievable amount of views.
Literally, within the hour,
Dan Bilzerian's team got back to me
and said take the video down or else.
I didn't take the video down.
And then three days later,
a guy in a suit showed up to my front door
and served me papers
and said I had three days to take the video down
or I was going to get charged
a quarter of a million dollars plus all of his legal fees.
And at the time, I had 20,000 subscribers.
So I was terrified, and I just took the video down.
Dan, let me know if you ever wanna make amends.
I'm not mad at you.
What is Airrack outro song?
My outro song is called "Bad Karma" by Axel Thesleff.
Shout out, Axel.
I started using the song, and then his management
actually copyright-striked all my videos.
So I DM'd him on Instagram,
and he ended up whitelisting my channel
so that I can use his song forever.
So shout out, Axel. You're the man.
It's like a Frisbee.
When, Airrack? When did Airrack start YouTube?
I actually started YouTube in the fifth grade.
I think that was like in 2006.
I found out from a friend at school that YouTube existed,
and then that night took my parents like tape camera
and found like 20 dongles
that allowed me to tape something on a camera,
plug it into my computer, get the footage off of it,
and then upload it to YouTube.
And it sounds like totally normal now
'cause we have like TikTok and smartphones and everything,
but at the time, filming on tape
and then getting it onto the internet
where anybody with a connection to the internet
could watch a video was like an insane thought.
But I actually started trying to like become a YouTuber
about three years ago.
But I always wanted to be a YouTuber
since I was a little kid.
When does Airrack post?
So I try to post every week.
Logistically, a lot of these videos
are kind of a nightmare to produce.
So like, for example, a year ago,
I tried to rent out an entire commercial airliner.
But it turns out the guy that I rented the plane from;
he was actually a scammer.
Like, he didn't have any planes at all.
So I had like me and 100 of my friends
out on a tarmac in Florida in like the heat of summer,
and the plane just never came.
I had to go back; get a lawsuit against them
to try to get the money back.
Finally got the money back like a month later.
Then I had to take that money,
find a real guy to give me a real plane,
got all my 100 friends back to the same airport,
got onto the airplane, shot the video,
edited the video, and posted the video.
But that took like two months.
So these are the things that sometimes
keep me from uploading videos on a weekly basis.
When did Airrack hit 10 million subscribers?
So my goal when I started YouTube, like three years ago,
was to go from zero to a million subscribers in a year,
which we did.
The next year, last year,
we went from 1 million to like 4 million subscribers.
And then, in 2022, we went from 4 million subscribers
to 10 million subscribers.
And I promised my fans that at the end of the year,
I would throw the world's largest pizza party.
And we actually set the world record
for the world's largest pizza
and threw a giant pizza party for myself and the Mafia
to celebrate hitting 10 million subscribers.
It was beautiful.
Oh, man. How, Airrack?
How blank Airrack have?
Interesting. How many subscribers does Airrack have?
We just hit 12 million subscribers, which is crazy.
How did Airrack get his scar?
I have never answered this question before.
That's a great question.
So I have a scar right here on my neck.
I've actually named it Bubbalicious.
Just a random name I came up with.
I actually had a tumor in my neck.
Like, if you look at old photos of me on Instagram,
you'll see like this huge bump
coming out of my neck right here.
And it was like right when I
was about to start doing YouTube.
So before I got put to sleep on anesthesia,
I told the doctor, "Hey, my man,
I'm gonna start doing YouTube,
and I'm like gonna be a big YouTuber,
so like try to make the scar as small as possible."
And he laughed at me, and then I woke up,
and the scar was like three inches wide.
I was so mad. He told me it was gonna be like an inch.
It was so big. Don't go to that guy.
I wish I knew his name.
I would tell you guys not to go to him right now.
How much does Airrack make? Off of what, you know?
You gotta be specific here. Is my mom here?
I don't really tell her these kinds of questions.
The answer is millions.
I wish this was followed up by another question,
how much does Airrack spend?
Because the answer to that would be also millions.
If you watch my videos, you know I've been wearing
this hoodie for like two years.
I have the same car that I've been driving
for like five years, and I somehow make
but also spend millions of dollars on these stupid videos.
Shout out to the Mafia.
You're welcome. I do it for you guys.
How many bodyguards does Airrack have?
Zero. Zero bodyguards.
I had this idea of what would happen
if I hired 50 bodyguards.
So I hired 50 bodyguards. I went around LA.
I got into the backroom of Nobu with my bodyguards.
I got an immediate reservation at Saddle Ranch.
I took my bodyguards to the Venice Beach Gym
and kicked all the giant bodybuilders off the equipment
so that I could work out.
I also did a video like six months ago
where I hired 100 bodyguards,
and then I used those to sneak into VidCon.
I'm now permanently banned from ever going back to VidCon.
I don't know why I did that. I thought it'd be funny.
I'm sorry, VidCon. I shouldn't have done that, probably.
Here we go. Next one. Does Airrack cuss?
I don't cuss that much, honestly.
If I cuss right now, will you guys bleep it?
No. [bleep]
Does Airrack fake videos?
This question triggers me
because of the lengths that we go to
to make sure that videos are not faked,
unscripted, completely real.
We'll like reshoot entire videos.
We have people living in separate houses,
so that information isn't shared
between myself and my friends.
Like, we go so far to make sure that videos are not fake.
So, no, you can count on me to not fake videos,
unlike almost every other creator on the platform.
I feel like I just started 100 beefs. Not sorry about it.
Does Airrack have a world record?
I've attempted like three or four different world records.
I've attempted most eggs smashed with head in one minute.
I've attempted most snails on the face.
I've only actually accomplished one world record,
which was creating the world's largest pizza.
Does Airrack have a tattoo? I have a tattoo.
I don't think I've ever shown this before.
Under my watch, you would think I'm a clean-cut guy.
No tattoos here.
When I was 17, my biggest inspiration on earth
was Casey Neistat.
I was on Venice Beach with my cousin Jack,
and Jack and I got matching tattoos
on our wrists that say, do more.
Always empty the tank. Do the most that you possibly can.
Does Airrack live with his parents? Who's searching this?
You know, like, who of you is searching
whether or not I live with my parents?
The answer is no. I don't live with my parents.
I'm from a small town
called Cumming Georgia, spelled C-U-M-M-I-N-G.
It's not a joke.
It's a real place, and my parents live there.
I probably shouldn't tell people that, but it is what it is.
So, sorry, Mom and Dad.
Okay, next question. Did Airrack almost become Spider-Man?
I've always wanted to be in like a Spider-Man movie.
I thought for sure the direction of my life
was going to be the next Spider-Man when I was a kid.
So I climbed the side of a building in LA
and put my phone number at the top of it
to try to get the attention of all of you Marvel execs
so that they would call me.
And I actually ended up getting a call
with somebody from Marvel.
I think it was like a pity call, to be honest with you.
I think they were just trying
to make me feel like I had a shot.
They asked me about why I like Spider-Man so much.
What makes me a good fit to be Spider-Man?
And then they said they would get back to me,
and that was like nine months ago, so.
Did Airrack actually go to space?
I think I was the first person ever
to eat pizza in zero gravity.
So I took a zero gravity plane,
where they just go up and down really fast,
and I brought pizza with me,
and it was just me and my friend Mack
eating pizza in zero gravity.
Turns out, when you eat in zero gravity,
your body does not know what to do with the food,
so you just start violently vomiting everywhere.
I would know because I puked pizza
for an hour and a half straight, and it cost $20,000.
Did Airrack break his collarbone? The answer to that is no.
But something interesting about me
that most people probably wouldn't expect
because of my reckless lifestyle
is that I've actually never broken a bone in my entire life,
not a single bone.
I'm kind of shocked by that fact.
I feel like I should have broken something by now.
Did Airrack die? Did Airrack die? Really?
I've actually thought about making a video
where I faked my own death a lot of times.
Did Airrack win a Streamy? Yes, I did.
I actually hosted the Streamy's this year,
which was a really interesting experience,
and I came home with two Streamy Awards.
One is the Creator Honor Award,
and the other one was Best First Person Creator of the Year.
Is Airrack a Mafia leader?
If the police are asking, no. But yes.
I started calling my fan base the Mafia early,
early, early on.
I had a really ambitious goal
of going from zero to a million subscribers in one year,
which was like completely never done before.
And the way that I would get people's attention
was by like sending the Mafia after these people.
And it started what we still have,
which is like this deadly cultish group of people who,
at any point in time, at my whim,
I can just send them after somebody for better or for worse.
Is Airrack a good YouTuber?
I mean, in my opinion,
I'm the best YouTuber that's ever lived.
But I feel like that's kind of up to the audience.
Is Airrack's Dad PewDiePie?
So I do this bit in the videos
where I always refer to my dad being PewDiePie
because PewDiePie, you know,
has always been like the biggest YouTuber
until MrBeast overtook him.
But before that, he's been the biggest
YouTuber on the platform for so long,
and that's my aspiration as well.
So I refer to PewDiePie as my Dad
because he's a huge inspiration,
but he's not actually my biological dad.
Is Airrack family-friendly?
If I were to rank my videos on like a normal movie scale,
it's probably PG-13.
It's not R. It's definitely not G.
I would say it's like PG-13.
Is Airrack related to MrBeast? That's a funny question.
Jimmy and I are not related to each other.
I don't think we look anything alike.
Something interesting about Jimmy
is that where Jimmy lives and where I grew up
is like a three-hour drive,
but we didn't know that we lived near each other
until we both became YouTubers
and started talking to each other.
I think when I hit like a million subscribers,
Jimmy hit me up on Twitter and was like,
"Yo, let's get on a call,"
and just sends me his phone number.
So we just started talking,
and then we became pretty good friends after that.
What's interesting to me was that I moved to LA
because I thought that you had to live in LA
to become a successful YouTuber.
Meanwhile, Jimmy lives literally
in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains,
and this dude has become the world's biggest YouTuber.
So I think that just goes to show
that you can start from anywhere and make it.
Is Airrack the fastest-growing YouTuber?
I probably was the fastest-growing YouTuber
to go from zero to a million.
We're gaining like 500,000
to like a million subscribers a month.
So I don't know, you guys should check Social Blade,
and tell me if I'm the fastest-growing YouTuber.
I might accidentally be doing that.
Airrack biggest secret.
I did a video where my boys and I
all revealed our biggest secrets on camera,
but mine was blurred,
so the audience never actually got to see
what my biggest secret was.
I might reveal it in a video, but not in this video.
Not in this video and not today.
Airrack sneaking in.
Oh man, I have a long history with sneaking into events.
It's like my favorite thing to do.
I did it before YouTube,
and now it's just completely gotten out of hand.
I'll be honest.
On YouTube, it started
I was sneaking into local music festivals, like in my town,
with different disguises and stuff like that.
I ended up sneaking into Rolling Loud five times in one day
as like a construction worker, an artist,
all kinds of disguises that I would come up
to sneak into these music festivals.
Airrack Bermuda Triangle. I went there one time.
I have a problem where I get extremely, extremely seasick,
and to just be completely honest with you guys,
I went out there in a life raft,
spent 24 hours in it, puked the entire time,
and I was just laying in my own vomit for like 24 hours.
If you guys include that in the interview,
I will be shocked.
That is a vile story.
Airrack extreme Capture the Flag.
So my idea was to play Capture the Flag out in the open
in real life and let real people be a part of it.
We went out into the streets of Santa Monica with golf carts
and played four-person Capture the Flag for an entire day.
For me personally,
it was like one of the most fun experiences of my life.
Airrack, don't laugh.
Try not to laugh is a trend
that's been happening on YouTube
for like since the inception of the platform.
So my idea was to get my friends together
and schedule an entire day out
where we play try not to laugh in real life.
It was super, super funny. Yeah.
Airrack, breaking 100 laws.
So I remember when I was a kid,
I had this book of all of these weird laws
that were apparently real.
For example, it's illegal
to eat fried chicken past 2 o'clock in Alabama.
So I had this idea to take these laws
and then break all of them in one day.
So we started by jumping off the Santa Monica Pier,
which wasn't actually that weird of a law.
It just actually makes sense to not do that.
But then we broke like a hundred weird laws that day.
We ended up sneaking into an abandoned hospital,
getting caught by the cops, almost going to jail.
Anything for the video, you know.
That's the end of my interview.
I'm flattered that you guys Googled
all these things about me.
You guys are pretty nosy, asking me how much money I make.
I'm not asking you how much money you make.
Maybe, you know, mind your own business a little bit.