Over the weekend, the World’s biggest YouTuber has changed. Pewdiepie who at the time of writing, has 92,042,437 subscribers, has been on YouTube since 2010 and became popular for his horror gameplays. I used to watch them when I was younger, and he’s only continued to grow. Pewdiepie, who’s real name is Felix Kjellberg, became the most subscribed to YouTuber in 2013 and stayed so until now, where T-Series has taken over. T-Series is a corporate entity in India, who publishes music videos, movies, and all sorts of media content. This often includes Bollywood movies and their songs and soundtracks. They could publish 10 videos in a day, in comparison to Pewdiepie’s one. T-Series at the time of writing has 92,089,733 subscribers.

This battle for number one on YouTube continued for months on end, and it seems it’s finally come to a halt. Pewdiepie posted the video ‘Congratulations’ (Linked above) as a concession to the company. Comedic in his telling, it seems as if in some parts he was serious about congratulating T-Series. This ‘battle’ spurned a number of memes, videos, and people chiming in about the topic. It’s not as much as about somebody else passing Pewdiepie as #1. But rather who it is. T-Series is a big corporation in India, and this shows the shift of YouTube’s algorithms and what type of content they want.

There are at this point thousands of creators who’ve been surpassed by these huge corporations creating YouTube channels. There is a certain solidarity in knowing most content is getting on YouTube, making it easy for everyone.

But maybe there needs to be a distinction in who’s actually #1.

A big company capable of churning endless numbers of videos shouldn’t be able to call themselves #1. It just takes away from the culture that YouTube once was. But now it seems like it’s a race to be the first to 100 Million, and it’s definitely going to be something that decides the landscape of YouTube for the foreseeable future.