- That's so intense. Oh my God,
it climbs so fast.
- And number two. - Oh.
- Oh, one, baby!
♪ (dramatic intro) ♪
♪ (guitar) ♪
- Okay, here we go. - What is this?
- I just watched this a few days ago.
- I'm already confused. What's going on?
- Most subscribed YouTube channels.
Oh, wait. - Over the years?
- Look, 2011.
- Oh, what? It's showing them change.
- With the time.
- RayWilliamJohnson. - He was my middle school.
- That was my idol, man.
- I watched RayWilliamJohnson, I watched Ryan, I watched Smosh.
I watched Shane, duh. I watched Fred.
I was obsessed with Fred.
- Okay, RayWilliam-- whenever somebody's the top,
number one YouTuber, I never know who they are.
- Oh, oh. - Dude, we're there.
- We're trading blows. - Look at you, dude.
Look at you go. - Go, Smosh.
Go, Smosh.
- You know what's funny about Smosh?
I interned for Smosh 100 billion years ago in college.
- I'm proud of Jenna. She's doing her thing.
- I love Jenna Marbles. She was the first
YouTube video I ever watched in my entire life.
- The race for the top, it's interesting just looking back.
Man, RayWilliam was on top and so was Nigahiga.
- Lonely Island is a little surprising,
but I guess they did have that song.
The I just had sex song.
- PewDiePie, there he goes. Wait, what?
- He dominated.
- Oh, there's PewDiePie.
- Ray William's still holding strong right now.
- And number two. - Oh.
- Ha, one, baby! There was a good while
when it was Smosh, RayWilliamJohnson, Nigahiga.
There was quite a battle.
- Oh, there's One Direction. Hell yeah.
One D, come on, baby. One Direction.
- One Direction! Yes.
- College Humor, Epic Meal Time, the Ellen Show
coming in hot.
- This is really cool.
- Oh, Epic Rap Battles.
- It's going so fast.
- Oh, look at PewDiePie. Suddenly, his thing's just like,
brrrr. - His meter is moving so quick.
- PewDiePie. Look at him.
He's just going up. - Oh my gosh.
- I wonder what videos PewDiePie had made
that really got him. - Yeah, how did he
make that jump?
- Oh, oh. There you are.
He came into the scene and then rose up
in a matter of a year. We made a really fun video
when he overtook us. We filmed a little video
of us taking a crown and putting it on his head.
- If you wanna look fabulous, you can't go without that.
- Yeah.
- I wanna see him find that crown
and put it on T-Series' head now.
- So it's PewDiePie, Smosh, Hola Soy German,
Jenna Marbles, wow. What an era, 2013.
- Oh, there's PewDiePie taking the lead.
The commanding lead.
- PewDiePie just left everyone in the dust.
What?
- I feel like it gives hope to people,
'cause anything can happen to any person.
PewDiePie wasn't on the top list in the beginning
and then he just came out of nowhere.
- Nigahiga. Oh, Ryan's gone down.
Hey, the Fine Bros! - Hey.
- Fine Bros, hey. It's my channel.
- They were the best channel. - Best channel, man.
- PewDiePie is not looking back.
- Who is this? OMG.
- Smosh still number three.
- Oh wow, look at all the VEVO's.
I looked away for one second and now it's all VEVO.
- These VEVO accounts, I think that's not fair.
- Can you believe that though? I work so hard
to make my videos and it's like Justin Bieber
is on here. He could post a two second
clip and get 60 million views. It's like, bitch.
- It always bothers me on these lists when
VEVO accounts and music channels are included.
- Oh, Yuya. I remember her.
I met her during this era and little did I know,
she was on them charts
- Oh, Fine Bros. - No, come back.
- No.
- All right, there's three guys I don't know.
- Dude, the rate at which PewDiePie grows,
it's like a trained sprinter and then children.
- Yeah.
- Uh oh. What did Fernanfloo
do that year-- that month?
He's climbing.
- Where'd Nigahiga go? - Yeah.
- Oh, Ryan.
- Dang, Dude Perfect, that's a good channel right there.
- There's T-Series. God dang it.
Here they come.
- T-Series, oh no. 2017, oh no.
- Oh no, T-Series. - Where?
- Whoa, whoa, whoa. - I mean, really, I think
it's targeting an audience that wasn't necessarily
targeted before. - Access to YouTube in India
became a lot more widespread. It makes sense.
There's an insanely huge market there that no
American YouTubers is really tapping into.
- German, he's going down. Who's coming up number two?
Oh, T-Series!
- I see One Direction's about to fall off the list.
Oh my God.
- How did they do that, T-Series?
- It's so intense. Oh my God,
it climbed so fast.
- Oh, oh. - There we go.
- The battle continues. - The battle continues.
- PewDiePie and T-Series. Five Minute Crafts?
Look, they're-- - Five Minute Crafts?
- Five Minute Crafts? Hey, I love crafts.
- November 2018. - Why is it so intense?
- And we're coming up to the final line.
PewDiePie has the inside corner but T-Series is coming up
and we're getting to the finish line.
- Will he pass? Will he pass?
- Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes? We're doing the wrong thing
on YouTube. - That was kind of actually
really cool to watch. - That's kind of intense.
I liked that. - Because when we started
watching YouTube, Ryan Higa was our
favorite YouTuber. - Now you got T-Series,
you got Five Minute Crafts, you got the nursery rhymes.
Those aren't personalities anymore.
Those are-- that's content that you can watch
like Netflix, like a TV show.
- I've been watching YouTube for a very, very long time
and I've been subscribed to a lot of these channels
before I was actually creating, so I grew up
watching Jenna Marbles and Shane Dawson
and Ryan and a bunch of other people, too,
so it's been really cool to see the progression of all
these accounts and channels growing really, really, really fast
and I think it also represents too the climb
of YouTube and how important it is in regards
to digital media because all of these huge musicians,
channels and now full productions
are uploading their content to YouTube as well.
- (FBE) So, that was a video posted on YouTube in February
by a channel called The Rankings
that was accurate back when it was released.
- And it's already out of date. - Yeah.
- (FBE) So overall, what were some of your
major takeaways from watching this?
- My takeaways is maybe I don't spend as much
time on YouTube as I think I do
because I did not know a lot of people on there
and it was also nostalgic.
- You never know what you can do
and what you're capable of. It doesn't matter what
the chart looks like now. You can--
if you wanna be at the top, it's possible.
- And you can be here one day and gone the next.
- Yeah, that too.
- It's cool. It's cool to see things,
especially from way back when, it was like the most subscribed
channel was 10 million. Oh, sis, no, wait.
- Just really seeing the crazy, drastic change of top YouTubers
with tens of millions of subscribers and then
somebody just comes and within a year
and a short amount of time, just pass them up.
- It was cool seeing it because obviously, you know
some of the names and you know that they're popular
but to actually see the growth from when they initially
started and then just go on and see how many they gained
and how fast, too. If you look at the date
and then you look at their thing, it's just, oh my God.
- Nothing was surprising to me just because I've been
watching it for so long, so I've kinda actually
watched this happen. There was also a lot of channels
that I assumed would still be in the top that kind of
went down as well over time replaced by WWE and VEVO channels
and Five Minute Crafts.
- I guess we're all just in the hands of YouTube.
It's up to them to basically decide who is at the top.
- It felt like I was in a history class.
It felt like I was looking at a timescale and remembering
all those years and what was trending.
- (FBE) Some would say that as an online creator,
success is measured in different ways,
so if you've been around for a while, though,
then there's probably a good chance that
a lot has changed since you first started.
What were the platform and the creators like
when you first got into it versus what it's like now?
- I think it was more real back then.
It was real, including my channel.
I was more raw. Now it's follow the trends.
- The content and the humor then, people weren't
as sensitive and there was a lot more gore
and you could be more sexual.
Nowadays, everything's family friendly.
There's some creators that don't wanna adapt to that
and just be them and unfortunately they kinda
drop off.
- People started doing YouTube and a lot of them were misfits
and a lot of people that didn't really fit in
and wanted to express themselves on the platform
and that's why I fell in love with watching some
of my favorite creators and I think now,
it's much more tailored towards being an actual business
as opposed to before, it was a hobby for most people.
- YouTube back then was definitely personality based
and whereas now, it's more content based.
You have T-Series, you have the nursery rhyme channel
and the Five Minute Craft thing. Those aren't--
that's just not personalities whereas back in the day,
you saw all these names with these YouTubers.
- (FBE) So as you saw, who is popular or on top
when it comes to YouTube channels is constantly changing.
A lot of the creators that you saw in the rankings
grew and are sometimes not perceived as popular
as they once were, while others were able
to maintain their popularity despite how the site has changed.
What has been your own experience with the process
of growing and falling when it comes to YouTube
and your popularity on the platform?
- I find that it can be very saddening sometimes
when you are doing well and then you just start
doing bad, it gets to you.
I can understand why people would have--
they say social media causes mental illnesses,
I can see it. I don't allow it to.
- I wish I could say, "Oh, I don't worry about it,"
but it's definitely something that I think about.
Sometimes I think about it all the time
even when it's on a video by video basis.
It's hard not to think about. I have to then tell myself
not to let it affect my actual-- what I'm actually doing,
'cause that could be my biggest enemy.
- The key is making content is cool that's interesting,
but getting people to fall in love with you as a person,
because then no matter what's going on, people are
gonna be interested.
- It's tough because not only do you have to adapt
to what's in, the type of content that people wanna see,
it's also just the platform itself. Before, it was okay
to post three minute to five minute videos.
Those would get shared or be recommended
and now it's like, if the video's not ten minutes,
you're not gonna get shared.
- I had a six month hiatus, 'cause I didn't know what
I wanted to do and I said, yeah.
I didn't-- I'm gonna say I almost
gave up. It's just that I was just here
and I decided to get back. I decided just go for it
and then the motivations I had with the comments
just took me above it, so I said, "yes."
and four years later I'm still doing it.
- (FBE) So, the video we showed you today
measured the most popular YouTubers based solely
on Subscriber count. However, some would likely
argue that there is more to a YouTuber's measure of success
than just their number of Subscribers.
- Me, I think Subscribers used to mean a lot more
back in the day, back when we thought
that your number of subscribers was actually equal
to the number of people that watched your content,
but YouTube started favoring subscriptions less and less
and less and less and now it's just
a nice little reminder that people are still interested
in your content, but it's not a guarantee
that if you have 50 million subscribers, 50 million people
are watching your content.
- (FBE) How do you define your own success on YouTube?
- Wow, deep question. - Yeah.
- I think it boils down to how--
what type of impact you have on people
in the real world and just in the DMs
you'll get messages and comments.
I think that should be what you worry on,
not the numerical aspect of it.
- Yeah, just the good value that you bring to others
with your content.
- An accurate measure is, I think, views.
I think views are-- I just think it's a more
accurate representation of how many people
are watching rather than how many people have
clicked subscribe.
- I try not to look at just the numbers,
'cause that can be a really, really toxic mindset.
I tend to look at creators as a whole across
all their platforms and see what they're
really working on everywhere and that's how I measure in my head.
- Success is in the eye of the beholder.
I define success on YouTube by how much fun
I'm having doing it.
- I like when I see I'm actually changing someone's
actual life. Yeah, I just made
a silly video of how to put marble floors in your house,
but when people send me photos like, "Oh my God,
this made me so happy. Look at my floor,
look at my dorm that you inspired."
I'm like, "Really?" Wow.
- Success to us is the legacy we leave.
Just the legacy we leave behind, I think
that is way more successful than any amount of money,
any amount of subscribers, any amount of views
could ever measure up to.
- (FBE) So finally, this video showed 15 years
of YouTube's most subscribed list, so what is your prediction
in another 15 years of the types of channels
that will be on top as YouTube continues to evolve?
- We'll be number one. - Obviously.
- They love us. - Loveliveserve will be on top.
- There's gonna be different types of content
I can't even think of right now that's gonna be
the next big thing.
- I think it's gonna be more real channels.
People love vlogs and getting to know people.
Wouldn't you love to watch someone grow up, literally?
Yeah, hell yeah. It's like an extended form,
long form reality show.
- As YouTube continues to evolve, we're gonna see
more channels like T-Series come up because the world
is expanding, technology is expanding,
people are now getting internet that never had
internet before. - I think, sadly, the age
of starting off with zero subscribers and making it
on your own as a YouTuber are almost over
because the days of doing it by yourself and talking
to your camera are still there,
but they're slowly going to die off,
which is so sad because
that's what YouTube was made. - That's what YouTube was.
- As YouTube penetrates other large markets,
you're gonna see a very-- You're gonna see a more
multinational kind of list, so India I'm sure,
it'll all be Indian channels in five years
unless China opens up to YouTube.
It's all gonna be Indian channels.
- Everyone watches videos and shares stuff.
It's just whether or not you're using YouTube to do it.
- Thanks for watching this episode of YouTubers React.
- Check out all the creators featured in this video.
Links in the description.
- Which channels do you think will make this list in the future?
- Comment down below.
- (both) Bye.
- Hey it's Sierra, producer here at FBE.
Thank you so much to all the creators who came in
to shoot this episode with us. Make sure you go support them
by subscribing to their channels. Links will be in the description
down below. Bye, guys.