[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
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If you want to reach the #1 spot in our Global Top 50, you have to be a pro — a KIMPRO, that is. The Korean short-form hub returned to its usual perch atop our viewership ranking after collecting 1.75 billion weekly YouTube views at the start of September.
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Last week’s #1 finisher, Sierra and Rhia FAM, dropped down to second place in this week’s chart. The other two channels with at least one billion weekly views both upload videos that depict mechanical gadgets. Cool Items is representing China in third place, while India’s CurioVerse is in fourth.
Religious YouTube videos are getting polytheistic
If you’re a regular reader of this column, you may be familiar with the wave of religious channels that have cracked the Global Top 50, often by using generative AI to depict God and Jesus. That phenomenon, strange as it may be, is not going away any time soon. In fact, it is now expanding to faiths outside the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Uljhan Suljhan, the #48 channel in this week’s Global Top 50, is one of the hubs expanding the scope of religious content on YouTube Shorts. Though its short-form library spans a multitude of genres, there is a common thread linking several of the channel’s top-performing Shorts: The Hindu deity Sri Krishna.
Krishna is a major deity who has been depicted many times in film and television, and Uljhan Suljhan uses some of those portrayals to bring theological YouTube content to life. The channel’s most-watched video, which has more than 86 million views, posits that an eight-year-old boy has a spiritual link with Sri Krishna.
These videos do good work for Uljhan Suljhan, which collected 459.6 million weekly views to bring its lifetime YouTube tally above six billion. It’s nice to see religious YouTube videos get popular without AI assistance.
But even without AI enhancements, videos like these still tie into other short-form trends. Remember those gadget channels I discussed in the intro? They get billions of weekly views by depicting mechanical processes and crafty projects undertaken by creative individuals.
To find the link between that category and YouTube’s theological genre, all we need to do is look one channel below Uljhan Suljhan in the chart. In 49th place, we find MZKtricks-1, a channel that got 440 million weekly views at the start of September. The craftspeople depicted in MZK’s most-watched Shorts use their building skills to create miniature worlds that feel divinely inspired. It’s only a short logical leap from those videos to the fanciful depictions of Sri Krishna that make Uljhan Suljhan’s Shorts shine.
Data via Gospel Stats
Sure, this might be a bit of a stretch, but I’m looking for any logic that can explain YouTube Shorts’ sudden turn toward religious topics, and this is the best idea I can come up with. Both crafty videos and theological videos appeal to viewers’ senses of wonder and imagination. If they have that in common, and they’re both capable of generating billions of YouTube views, why not combine multiple genres on a single channel?
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
- India: 17
- United States: 14
- Hong Kong: 6
- Australia, Canada, and Indonesia: 2
- China, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Spain, and Tanzania: 1
This week, 44 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
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