he founded with his two best friends, Baylor Barnes and John Stephen Grice.
The Alabama teens made their first video together in 2013, entering a Vine dance competition
out of sheer boredom at a sleepover.
"It's all girls entering the Vine contest, and we're like, 'Aw, this is so dumb huh huh
huh how funny would it be if we entered it, guys?'"
They did just that, and the response changed Cole's life forever.
He went on to reveal that after one week, they had gained 100 thousand followers.
"We weren't trying to get social media famous.
We honestly didn't even know that it was a possibility or that it was a thing."
Before long, the boys were on a flight to Hollywood to meet their legions of teenage
fans, but the appeal of internet stardom soon began to wear off for Barnes and Grice.
In 2015, Cole's two BFFs allowed him to rebrand their various socials under his name, and
the rest is history.
With his two friends out of the picture, Cole continued to develop his own personal brand
online, putting the days of Dem White Boyz behind him.
Everything was going smoothly until the Vine star was targeted by hackers, who almost ruined
his career before it really got going.
"They deleted all my pictures.
I lost 100,000 followers in less than a week.
It was just so humbling to see that, everything that I'd worked for about two years, just
to see it all crumble."
Cole was locked out of all his social media accounts for a full week.
When he managed to regain control of them, he decided that it was time to start being
more truthful with his content while he still had the platform.
The future YouTube star decided to distance himself from his "twerking Vine boy" past
and started talking about God.
"We didn't start out proclaiming the gospel and things like that.
So making the transition from being a secular social media person to a Christian social
Savannah seemed like a woman on top of the world when she spoke to Taudrey in 2016, but
she would later admit that she was actually deeply unhappy at the time, despite being
one of the biggest stars on Musical.ly.
She was actually the top performer on the entire platform in May 2016, but according
to Influencer Marketing Hub, Sav wasn't the real draw, her daughter Everleigh was.
However, being upstaged by her daughter wasn't what was making her unhappy.
According to Sav, it was the behavior of Everleigh's father that was getting her so down.
She revealed in her and Cole's joint book, Our Surprising Love Story,
Before long, Cole filled that space.
Given everything that Savannah has said her ex put her through, you wouldn't blame her
for wanting to sever ties with Everleigh's dad, Tommy Smith, for good.
But he still sees his daughter and is, by all accounts, a caring father to her.
"He's still a good guy, and I don't want to bash him.
He sees Everleigh once a week for like a couple hours."
Cole added that they want to always keep Smith in her life.
"He loves her to death, he's, you know, a great dad to her, he loves her."
The YouTuber revealed that Everleigh calls them both dad and painted a picture of peaceful
co-parenting, but is that really the case?
Discussions about Cole and Sav's treatment of Everleigh's dad often pop up in comments
sections on social media.
According to one critic of the couple on Twitter, Smith's Insta bio used to read:
Cole was called out by one Twitter user in 2018 when he appeared to copy a photograph
that Everleigh had taken with her dad.
The user called the move "really s----y."
Savannah dished the dirt on her own love life in her and Cole's book, but she also discussed
her mother and father's failed marriage.
The YouTube star revealed that her parents' marriage crumbled after her dad was unfaithful,
and their subsequent divorce was really hard for her to accept growing up.
While promoting the book, she told People magazine,
It took a little while, but with Cole's help she was able to get back on the right path,
and at the end of it she found that a shared experience had made her relationship with
her mother even stronger.
She explained,
Before he met Savannah, Cole had a real thing for Selena Gomez.
In 2014, he tweeted the Disney kid-turned pop star to ask if she'd be his date to his
upcoming high school prom.
Unfortunately, she never replied, but that didn't stop the Viner from pursuing her.
He tagged Gomez in another tweet, explaining that he was "Absolutely in love with [her]
and her heart for the Lord."
After being ignored for a second time, he decided to up the ante.
A photo of Cole down on one knee inside a heart drawn in the sand appeared online, a
teaser of what was to come.
The Vine star's Hail Mary was a video in which he mimed to a number of Selena Gomez songs
while begging her to be his date to prom.
"It was the first YouTube video I had ever posted, I had no idea if she would ever see
it, if anybody would ever see it, if it would even get any traction whatsoever."
The reaction the video got meant that there was simply no way Gomez could avoid it.
People peppered the singer's Instagram with comments about it and outlets like Teen Vogue
and Billboard even shared it.
Cole's hopes reached their peak when Gomez finally reached out to him, sort of, by having
someone from her team tell him that she was too busy.
The fact that Everleigh seems to be one of their channel's biggest draws has led many
people to question whether or not Cole and Sav are exploiting their super-cute child
for views.
The couple's wedding video has more than 32 million views, but many asked why they decided
to use the words "vows to 4 year old daughter" in the title.
Yahoo! loved the fact that Cole had prepared special vows for Everleigh…
"I promise to always love you, little girl, and I promise that I'll always love your mommy."
But critics of the couple say this was just one of the many ways they've exploited Everleigh
to get more famous.
During an in-depth critique of Cole, Odyssey contributor Olivia Brown suggested his wedding
video was, quote, "never about the sentimentality of the vows."
She added,
Ouch.
YouTubers aren't usually that familiar with the concept of oversharing, and it turns out
Cole is completely oblivious to it.
After he and Savannah tied the knot in July 2017, they did what most newlyweds do and
went on a relaxing honeymoon, but what most couples don't do is immediately make a video
to announce that they had sex.
"I was a virgin until we got married.
She's the first person I've made love to."
The staunch Christian also decided to share in a since-deleted tweet,
And he was roundly roasted for it.
One Twitter user said,
It wasn't long before another Cole and Sav-themed think piece popped up on Odyssey, with contributor
Maddie Blanz examining the obsession over the couple.
She wrote,
In a 2016 student profile posted on Troy University's YouTube channel, the social media star said
that multiple networks were looking into making a reality show featuring Cole and his family,
but nothing ever came of it.
In a world where controversial tweets can get you fired from your job in Hollywood,
that might have been for the best.
Cole preaches open mindedness, but some of his past comments have been construed as being
homophobic.
One tweet in particular led to a number of people calling the Christian YouTuber out.
He wrote,
When he appeared on The Amazing Race the following year, these comments were discussed at length
online.
Some called him a bigot while others defended him, but Cole claims to "love all gays."
Cole and Sav caught some serious heat in 2018 when they appeared to fake a wildfire evacuation.
In the offending video, they claimed that they were being forced to abandon their California
home because of the Holy Fire raging nearby, which destroyed over 10,000 acres.
"Ev, you know that we're leaving the fire, right?
We're going far, far away."
"We're going away from the fires so you don't have to be scared anymore."
"Yeah."
Cole and a pregnant Sav got into a car with Everleigh and left for San Francisco, but
they were soon outed by neighbors, who confirmed that no evacuation notices were issued for
their Orange County neighborhood.
One neighbor criticized the couple's decision to exploit such a serious situation, in her
words,
"... just so that they could get more likes or more hits on their channel."
The YouTubers tried to contain the damage by changing the video's original title of
"A giant fire makes us evacuate our house" to "We left our house because of fires in
California."
"See the thumbnail, where it's them looking scared?"
"Wow, yeah…
We were never even near that."
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