Stephen Colbert Celebrates One Million Subscribers By Referencing Popular YouTube Videos

The official YouTube channel for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert just passed one million subscribers, and the CBS host celebrated his accomplishment in amusing fashion. In a recent video, Colbert turned the gold play button he received from YouTube into a portal that allowed him to act out popular online video formats.

Colbert’s Late Show YouTube channel launched last June, four months before the former Colbert Report host made his debut on CBS. Since then, the digital hub has risen rapidly up the YouTube charts, becoming one of the few channels on the site to go from zero subscribers to one million in less than a year’s time.

In order to thank his subscribers, Colbert offered them an eye-winking video that riffs on past and current YouTube trends. In turn, viewers watch as the last night host hosts an Epic Meal Time

-esque cooking show, unboxes an Apple product, skips a car ad, attempts the cinnamon challenge (you’re a few years late on that one, Stephen), and performs a ukelele cover of Metallica.

Actually, I lied — in most of those “videos,” Colbert actually gets attacked by mousetraps. Damn you, Tim Cook!

Colbert’s rise to YouTube prominence comes as no surprise, given the popularity of late-night TV on the Internet and, more specifically, his own positive reputation. Still, it’s been refreshing to see the sort of experimental content The Late Show has released online. As Colbert and CBS march toward two million, let’s hope they keep the creativity level high.