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.
“This one goes out to all you Bros out there. I love you.”
That is one of the most heartwarming lines (and one of the few lines suitable to print in this publication) from a 2013 video with the simple title “A Funny Montage.” For years, the ten-minute compilation was the first video visitors saw when they navigated to the YouTube homepage of PewDiePie, the Swedish gamer whose real name is Felix Kjellberg.
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Kjellberg’s YouTube career now spans a decade and a half, but 2013 truly was his big moment. He became the platform’s most-subscribed creator in August of that year, and his channel established the 15-million-subscriber club in November. Oh, and did I mention he reportedly grossed $4 million during the year as well?
I think you get the point: PewDiePie was ubiquitous in 2013. I could go on about the various factors that informed his dominance, but I don’t need to. “A Funny Montage” tells you everything you need to know about who Kjellberg was back then.
Feel free to give it a watch if you haven’t already, and then we’ll discuss:
OK, let’s review. Here are a few things I notice every time I rewatch this (gleefully profane) video:
1. PewDiePie was a boundary-breaking gamer in an era defined by gamers
Five seconds into “A Funny Montage,” we learn two things about PewDiePie: He likes playing video games, and he doesn’t have much of a filter. (Eventually, the video informs us that PewDiePie is a fan of Swedish profanity, too.)
It was the right time to be playing video games on YouTube. YouTube’s decision to realign its recommendation algorithm to favor channels with more watch time and engagement was a godsend for creators who uploaded hours-long gaming sessions. PewDiePie was arguably the biggest beneficiary of that change.
Though the internet is now replete with thousands of foul-mouthed gamers, there was something novel about the combination at the time. Kjellberg wasn’t like SeaNanners, Syndicate, or FazeTemperrr: early 2010s gaming creators who drew attention with their exquisite skills. Most of the time, he was a middling gamer, and that was part of his appeal. Other YouTube gamers made viewers feel as if they were spectators at an esports arena, but PewDiePie was more like the big brother who made millions of virtual siblings laugh as they sat next to him in front of the console.
In PewDiePie’s world, casual titles like Five Nights at Freddy’s and Goat Simulator became blockbusters. There was no Call of Duty required, though I bet Kjellberg could have pulled off a Temperrr shot if he really set his mind to it.
2. For the kids who watched PewDiePie, the edginess was freeing
OK, let’s talk a little more about all that profanity. It’s everywhere in “A Funny Montage,” and it’s a big reason why PewDiePie became such a massive phenomenon. Kjellberg recognized an essential truth about the intentionally annoying creators who had dominated YouTube.
One reason why kids enjoyed those channels was because they served as an affront to the tastes and sensibilities of older generations. Fred and The Annoying Orange were beloved because they offered something completely different than traditional media, and Kjellberg followed their lead.
Despite Disney’s attempt to clean up his image, PewDiePie stuck with his rule-breaking shtick long after it got him in trouble. If he had given it up, he would have let down the fans who subscribed to his videos because they appreciated his willingness to draw outside the lines. Which leads nicely into my next point:
3. PewDiePie’s “Bros” were the ultimate in-group
Subscribing to PewDiePie wasn’t just a means of accessing offbeat, forbidden content. It was an admission to a club that offered its members a sense of belonging. By placing a shoutout to his Bros in his Funny Montage, PewDiePie invited casual viewers to come along for the ride.
It was an early example of now-common creator fanbases. For PewDiePie fans, raising a Brofist in the air was an act of defiance. It was the Bat Symbol mixed with the fist bump, and for Kjellberg, it was a prescient calling card that showed his keen understanding of the direction in which the creator community was headed at the time.
4. Even girls could be Bros
As with the majority of YouTube gamers, the PewDiePie audience was largely male at the time, but Kjellberg still reached a sizable female audience that included millions of subscribers. That may seem surprising for a creator who called his fans Bros, but he was hardly a macho man (and certainly isn’t one now).
Between his dashing looks, his charm, and his relationship with his then-girlfriend CutiePieMarzia, Kjellberg connected with viewers across gender gaps that persisted on other gaming hubs. Marzia, who is now Kjellberg’s wife and the mother of his child, gets some cameos in the Funny Montage, and her chemistry with Kjellberg was always a big part of PewDiePie’s mass appeal.
5. The Swedish accent mattered
Remember, this was the year after Gangnam Style, when YouTube was exploding internationally and views were coming in from all over the world. With his combination of European attitude and English-language humor, Kjellberg was one of the first creators to prove that subscriber acquisition could truly be a global game.
6. There’s just a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole thing
At the end of the day, the creator who served as the face of YouTube’s gaming boom could have been just about anyone. But PewDiePie is the ambassador we got. He may not have endeared himself to everyone — Variety once wrote that he sounded like “a young Bobcat Goldthwait between hits of nitrous oxide,” — but his post-2013 career shows that he’s an innately interesting character who carries himself with an undeniable sense of confidence.
After less favorable algorithmic shifts and a few breaks, Kjellberg’s YouTube output has slowed considerably. (He also has the whole fatherhood thing eating into his free time.) But whenever he does return to his famous YouTube channel, he reminds his 110 million subscribers of the unique form of creativity that drew them to the PewDiePie channel in the first place. His Funny Montage may not jump off the screen like some of the other videos I’ve discussed in this series, but it is the perfect encapsulation of where YouTube was during an era when its biggest star seemed like a nigh-invincible powerhouse.
