PewDiePie Has Become YouTube’s Voice of Reason

Yes, PewDiePie plans on taking a break in 2020. But that’s not the important stuff he said in his latest video

Chris Stokel-Walker
FFWD

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Image: Wikimedia Commons/camknows and Chris Stokel-Walker

Read any number of news outlets today and you’ll learn some shocking, breaking news. PewDiePie is stepping back from YouTube. “I’m taking a break from YouTube in 2020,” said PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg. “I’m feeling very tired.”

Of course, it’s something YouTube’s largest individual creator has done multiple times in the past, but the media have fixated on the notion that this is new.

Kjellberg has previously stepped away from YouTube at times when he feels that the platform is making changes in a way that harm its long-term viability, and when the need to try and get his head around changes to the platform are an added stress to the simple churn of uploading videos regularly. This 2016 video outlined some of his previous thinking:

Months later, as he closed in on 50 million subscribers — half the number he has today — he also threatened…

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Chris Stokel-Walker
FFWD
Editor for

UK-based freelancer for The Guardian, The Economist, BuzzFeed News, the BBC and more. Tell me your story, or get me to write for you: stokel@gmail.com