20 years of YouTube: 2024 brought us the “influencer election” — and a vision of the future

In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the uploads, trends, and influencers that have defined the world’s favorite video site — one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.

YouTube’s first wave of stars rose up because they had something original to say. Lonelygirl15 spoke to a young, anxious generation in a novel way. iJustine ushered in a new era of tech reviews. Antoine Dodson had a very important safety announcement he wanted to share with all of us.

Nearly two decades later, the man who hosted the most consequential YouTube video of last year relied on his listening skills as much as his own thoughts. Theo Von interviewed Donald Trump on his This Past Weekend podcast during the 2024 election cycle. The results of that collab have been crystal clear: 17 million views and one Trump reelection later, Von’s presidential chat has come to epitomize the shifting winds of YouTube — and the rising influence of the creator economy within mainstream culture.

Here’s another way Theo Von is different from YouTube’s pioneers: He plied his trade elsewhere before launching his channel. In the era of early YouTubers who harbored Hollywood dreams, Von’s backward journey may have seemed counterproductive. He cut his teeth on MTV, landed a few acting gigs, and settled in as a stand-up comedian and podcast host. Only then did he establish his YouTube presence.

Von’s ingratiation into the creator world came through podcast appearances. As he grew This Past Weekend, he popped up on shows hosted by Logan Paul and the Nelk boys. Those ambitious young men had pulled themselves up by stretching their personal brands as far as possible, making moves across fields like podcasting, consumer products, and live events.

With This Past Weekend, Von possessed a piece of content that could fuel his own multiplatform rise. His push on hubs like YouTube coincided with a so-called “influencer election,” which sent politicians scrambling to book spots on creator-led podcasts. Von’s timing (and his rise up the podcast charts) could not have been better.

By 2024, podcasting had become so mainstream that top audio production companies like Alex Cooper’s Trending were able to land nine-figure distribution deals. Von’s career path offers a partial explanation for that boom. In an era when creators fashion themselves as platform-agnostic brands, a multimedia show can come to represent its host’s personality and preferences.

When it comes to the growth of video podcasts specifically, YouTube’s own priorities can’t be ignored. In recent years, the platform has pushed its creators toward a multiformat approach that encompasses live streaming, long-form video, and Shorts. Within that ecosystem, a video podcast is the ideal piece of content. Creators can premiere their latest conversations as live streams before making them available as long-form VODs. From there, cutting memorable clips for distribution on Shorts is a logical next step.

If technological innovations set the stage for Theo Von’s cross-platform ascension, his political leanings ensured that he would take advantage of the opportunity. He is part of a pronounced rightward shift that has reshaped creator culture.

For years, top YouTube stars were more connected to Democrats than Republicans. That’s how we ended up with multiple creator-hosted interviews with President Obama and numerous collabs with Hillary Clinton leading up to the 2016 election.

Trump’s activity on the platform then known as Twitter portended the changes he would bring to internet discourse, and in 2024, that wave crashed down with full force. It became clear that members of YouTube’s ruling class — including the Nelk boys and the Paul brothers — shared many of Trump’s conservative viewpoints.

That political drift even made its way to YouTube’s San Bruno, California headquarters. The platform that had come down hard on Trump and his lies during the 2020 election cycle soon changed course. The 2023 reversal of YouTube’s election misinformation policy suggested that its stance toward the right wing was softening.

Two years later, as YouTube capitulates to Trump’s demands, its left-wing history feels like a distant memory. The platform’s hardline anti-Trump approach may be a relic of the Susan Wojcicki era, when YouTube was led by an avowed liberal. With Wojcicki’s sudden 2023 retirement and her equally sudden passing a year later, her former employer’s corporate politics became murkier.

The fifth presidential election in YouTube history didn’t just update the platform’s political discourse. When you compare it to the first YouTube election, from 2008, the contrast is striking. Gone are the days when creators could hit the homepage with cheeky parodies and goofy viral clips that commented on current events. By 2024, viewers were looking for substantive takes from YouTube politicos. If you want to know why the silly side of the internet’s electoral culture fell away, you can probably pin the blame on Hillary Clinton and her decision to tell people to “Pokemon Go to the polls.”

Von’s casual-yet-informative interview style was a natural fit for the contemporary political landscape. When you add in his mastery of the podcast and his generally conservative ideology, This Past Weekend‘s rise up the YouTube charts almost feels like a fait accompli — and 17 million views is only the beginning.

One day in the not-too-distant future, a creator will be elected to a federal office in the U.S. (We’ve already seen that happen in Cyprus.) When the influencers add roles like “Senator” and “President” to their multihyphenate descriptions, the rest of us will have to come to terms with the reality we live in — as if it wasn’t strange enough already.