Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where—in partnership with global creator company Jellysmack—we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth.
MacDannyGun loves Nerf guns.
No, like, he really loves Nerf guns.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
And, in case you didn’t know, so do lots of other people. Nerf for some folks might be a spur-of-the-moment toy aisle grab, a plastic pistol and handful of foam darts that keeps the kids entertained for a few summer evenings–but for enthusiasts, it’s the center of a thriving community. And for Danny, it’s the key creative component that lets him take his love of class films like Predator and Rambo and create his own high-octane action movies, right in his living room.
Danny, who’s from Vancouver, Canada, says he’s always felt “drawn to” guns and knives. When he was a kid, that draw pulled him toward Nerf guns–or, he says, probably toward cheaper knock-offs, since his family was on a tight budget. As he got older, his Nerf fascination only grew more fervent. He (like many members of the Nerf Nation) began not just acquiring Nerf guns, but also learning how to modify them.
At the same time, Danny also felt drawn to YouTube.
He started his YouTube channel in 2012 and almost immediately began posting videos about his Nerf adventures. They didn’t get much traction early on, but Danny wasn’t deterred. Back then, he didn’t think of YouTube a potential career or even a regular thing.
Then two things happened to change his perspective. One in 2013, and one in 2020. In 2013, he posted a comedic brother-versus-brother video called GunVsGun, which he says generated so much attention it became the true genesis of his channel. (Even now, nearly a decade later, he still calls himself “Danny from GunVsGun” in the titles of his videos.) That clip, and the myriad other GunVsGun installments that followed, helped grow his channel to a tidy 130,000 subscribers by the middle of 2021.
That’s when the second thing happened.
YouTube Shorts.
Danny’s channel popped off in June 2021, and now is trending toward bringing in 100 million views per month. Monthly view and subscriber data from Gospel Stats.
In 2020, the first COVID lockdowns had kicked in, and Danny was bored. But he still had his two longtime interests: Nerf and YouTube.
Plus, he’d been hearing about YouTube’s plan to take on TikTok, and had a feeling that Shorts was going to be the platform’s next big thing. So, he reloaded his content-making efforts (and his Nerf arsenal, of course) and, for the first time since starting his channel, began regularly posting videos.
In July 2021, he had his first hit: Nerf Heavy Weapons Guy, a 14-second clip where a naive young whippersnapper–aka Danny’s son–unwisely challenges a master marksman to a Nerf war. That video has spun up 70 million views to date, and Danny thinks it was instrumental in pushing his channel’s overall traffic.
Since Nerf Heavy Weapons Guy, Danny’s channel has gone from around 4 million views per month (July 2021) to nearly 90 million (January 2022), and his subscriber count has jumped from 130,000 to 450,000. Thanks to all this, YouTube is now Danny’s full-time job–and, he hopes, a way for him to build his creator’s skillset so that one day, he can take his action-movie ambitions out of the house and onto the big screen.
Check out our chat with him below.
Tubefilter: First, tell us a little about you! Where did you grow up? What did you get up to before you started your YouTube channel?
MacDannyGun: Grew up in Vancouver, Canada. I was also big into basketball playing it in high school, and recreationally with friends. I was also interested in computers after high school.
Tubefilter: What kindled your enthusiasm for Nerf guns? Was it something you got into when you were a kid, or did you find them when you were older? What made Nerf so interesting for you?
MDG: I always had that enthusiasm towards Nerf guns, but we could never afford many of them when I was younger. I might have had one or two back in the day–when I think back, they were probably not even Nerf, but other, less expensive brands.
Action movies are something that I love. I watch Predator and Rambo monthly, if not weekly. Guns and knives are something I am drawn to, and it’s kind of what made Nerf guns so interesting. Nerf wars with friends was the best and closest thing to an action movie.
Tubefilter: You started your channel nine years ago! What made you decide to get on YouTube?
MDG: YouTube was always around. At the time, I was posting other videos on YouTube with minimal to no views. Everything changed when we uploaded the very first GunVsGun Nerf video on YouTube. GunVsGun spawned my channel.
Tubefilter: When and why did you go from occasionally uploading videos to having your channel be an everyday creative outlet for you? Was there a specific video that caught a lot of attention and boosted your channel, did you just decide you were going to make your mark on YouTube…?
MDG: Uploading to my channel was never a scheduled thing until the COVID lockdown. I had too much time on my hands at home, and so I wanted to try daily uploading to see if it would make a difference on my channel. Subscribers these days need daily, if not hourly content. I noticed that YouTube had just come out with the YouTube Shorts format around that time, too.
Tubefilter: So about YouTube Shorts…A lot of your views come from Shorts. What made you want to upload to that vertical? What advantages does uploading to Shorts have over uploading to YouTube main?
MDG: I had a feeling that Shorts would be the next big thing YouTube would promote, so I decided to dedicate all my energy to creating daily Nerf shorts. I set a goal to be the biggest Nerf Shorts channel on YouTube. COVID lockdowns also helped, since I had nothing else to do at the time.
Tubefilter: Your YouTube channel has recently seen a big boost in number of views and subscribers. Do you know if there was one specific video that took off, or did numbers go up across a bunch of videos simultaneously?
MDG: I knew I had a viral hit with my Shorts video called Nerf Heavy Weapons Guy, and that’s the video that kick-started everything.
Tubefilter: Is YouTube your full-time job? What else do you get up to? What does the average day look like?
MDG: YouTube is my full-time job. On top of doing YouTube Shorts, I also run a livestream on the same channel three to four times a week.
My average day consists of early morning brainstorming ideas and getting ready for my livestream, if I have it scheduled on that day. After coming up with ideas, I set out to run the livestream midday for three to four hours. After the livestream, I set out to film one to two Shorts. Later in the evening, I edit the Shorts and have them scheduled for the next day. If my Shorts involve effects, that takes longer to edit, so editing runs well into the night, in that case. I watch some Netflix before bed, and the next day repeat the whole process again.
Tubefilter: Has your recent engagement spike changed anything for you? Do you have any new plans or goals for your channel?
MDG: Recent spike just gave me more creative energy to keep going. When you don’t get views, you get discouraged, so this recent spike is just a breath of fresh air. I still have the same goal–to be the biggest Nerf Shorts channel on YouTube–and if that takes doing two Shorts a day, every day, I will do it.
Tubefilter: What’s your favorite thing about making videos?
MDG: Watching the finished product.
Tubefilter: What do you hope people take away from your content?
MDG: I hope they get a laugh every time, and that they get entertained by my Nerf madness.
Tubefilter: What’s next in the immediate future for you? Where do you see yourself in five years?
MDG: Immediate future is continuing doing Shorts, taking the video quality up a level, and expanding my livestreams into live Nerf reviews–just providing the fans what they want to see.
In five years, I’d like to use all my experience on YouTube to write a movie script and sell it to Netflix. Why not.
Jellysmack is the global creator company that powers multi-platform social media growth for individual video creators, media companies, brands, celebrities, and its own online communities. The company’s proprietary video optimization technology optimizes, distributes, and promotes video content across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, resulting in meaningful audience growth and increased revenue in record time.
Jellysmack is currently partnered with over 500 of the world’s most talented creators including MrBeast, PewDiePie, Like Nastya, Nas Daily, Karina Garcia, Patrick Starrr, and Bailey Sarian, plus renowned media brands like Paramount Pictures, MGM, Fuse Media, and Combate Global. In addition to multi-platform syndication, Jellysmack offers catalog licensing deals that provide creators with upfront capital in exchange for licensing part of their YouTube back catalog. The company’s comprehensive social media solutions build upon its success in scaling its own original content channels in beauty (“Beauty Studio”), soccer (“Oh My Goal”), gaming (“Gamology”), and more. In total, Jellysmack-managed content boasts a cross-platform reach of 125 million unique U.S. users, making it the largest U.S. digital-first company in monthly social media viewers.
Looking to grow your social presence? Let’s talk.
