PewDiePie maintains top spot for YouTube subscribers despite controversy

YouTuber
PewDiePie
YouTube/PewDiePie

• YouTube’s
  biggest star is still PewDiePie,
  who just reached 70 million subscribers.
• Researchers have predicted that PewDiePie, aka Felix
  Kjellberg, would be dethroned by the Indian music channel
  T-Series, but that has yet to happen.
• Kjellberg has still seen support from fans and popularity in
  the YouTube community despite a long history of disparaging
  racist and anti-Semitic remarks.

The pundits predicted that a new content creator would be crowned
YouTube’s biggest star come November, but the title still belongs
to the Swedish vlogger PewDiePie.

PewDiePie became the first YouTuber to reach the 70-million
subscriber mark, beating out the Indian music channel T-Series
who
has been quickly gaining ground. Research firms
predicted that T-Series would overtake PewDiePie — who real
name is Felix Kjellberg — by the end of October, but the content
creator still led Monday by almost half a million subscribers.

Kjellberg has managed to keep his spot atop YouTube
despite a history of making offensive remarks in his videos.
Most recently,
Kjellberg landed in hot water this summer over a (since
deleted) Twitter post. Following Demi Lovato’s hospitalization
for an apparent drug overdose, Kjellberg tweeted out a comic that
depicted Lovato asking her mom for money to buy a burger, then
instead using it to buy heroin.

Although his subscriber base has remained loyal throughout his
controversial past, YouTube itself
has punished the creator for his actions. News surfaced in
February 2017 that nine videos published on PewDiePie’s channel
featured Kjellberg making anti-Semitic comments, and the video
platform responded by cancelling the second season of Kjellberg’s
original series on YouTube Premium.

Read more:

PewDiePie criticizes YouTube’s ‘inept’ leadership, accuses the
company of giving Logan Paul a lighter punishment for offensive
video

This sordid history hasn’t stopped other YouTube influencers from
calling on their fans to support Kjellberg in securing his spot
atop YouTube.
Tubefilter reports that fellow YouTube creator MrBeast
campaigned heartily for Kjellberg through stints on local radio
and purchases of advertisements on TV, websites, and billboards.

It’s worth nothing that this title of “YouTube’s biggest star” is
based on the number of subscribers. Based on viewership,
PewDiePie sits down at No. 7 on a leaderboard
from research firm Social Blade. T-Series, however, leads all
of YouTube in terms of viewership with more than 53 billion
all-time video views.

As of Monday, research firm Tubular
Labs revised its estimates to predict that T-Series would
overtake PewDiePie for the most subscribers on November 30.

Meanwhile, PewDiePie posted on Twitter that he’s already eyeing
100 million subscribers.