Germán Alejandro Garmendia Aranis (born: April 25, 1990), better known online as HolaSoyGerman., or JuegaGerman, is a Chilean YouTube celebrity, comedian, entertainer, vlogger and well-known Spanish YouTuber. On the channel, he uploads comedic videos about various life and fictional topics, occasionally talking about events that occurred in his own life. As of November 2019, he has the 18th most subscribed YouTube channel with over 40 million subscribers. On top of that, all of his videos on his main channel has a combined total of over 4 billion views.
Claim To Fame
German began his YouTube career in early September of 2011 after being encouraged by friends. He started to gain a following on the platform from standing and talking about everyday and unusual topics but in a fast-paced, quirky, and relatable manner along with doing comedy sketches to imitate what he was talking about which targeted mostly children to young adults as fans of him and his channel. German does these videos in his house, but he moves frequently meaning that every couple of videos, he is in a new location. A majority of Garmendia's fans are Spanish but there are many whom are of other nationalities as well due to many of his videos being subtitled in various languages, some of them already knowing the Spanish language, and some of them who doesn't even know the Spanish language but like his content and personality.
By late 2012, his channel was already the most subscribed Spanish speaking channel and became the first to be in top ten most subscribed in early 2013. His subscriber growth skyrocketed in the same year as at that time he was gaining over a million subscribers a month on average, resulting in him gaining the third most amount of subscribers in 2013 behind YouTube Spotlight and current most subscribed YouTuber, PewDiePie.
By the beginning of 2014, all the videos on the HolaSoyGerman channel had amassed one billion total views and over 14 million subscribers, making him have the fourth most subscribed channel behind Smosh, YouTube Spotlight, and PewDiePie although just a year and a half before then not even being in the top 100.
However, the popularity of German caused conflict. In April of that year, Garmendia was scheduled to attend a fan greeting in Telmex Digital Village in Zócalo, Mexico City. However, the attendance for the occasion was overcrowded and many people in the crowd fainted due to heat exposure and had to be evacuated. Many disobeyed to leave because they wanted to see German, some moving past the barricades and moving to the tented area to see him and to get away from the hot weather. The occurrence caused many injuries, eventually a light element plunging and injuring ten more people. Security then aided the injured and dispersed the other people who attended the event. Although German didn't attend the gathering due to the incident, he expressed his condolences to the people affected afterward.
Despite this, German's HolaSoyGerman channel finally surpassed YouTube Veterans, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla's Smosh channel (who just less than a year prior was the most subscribed YouTube channel) to become the second most subscribed user-generated channel of all time on June 21, 2014 which it still is. In early July 2015, slightly over a year later, he surpassed YouTube Spotlight to have the second most subscribed channel on YouTube overall.
Due to German's fast channel growth, he received MTV's "Icon of the year" award in August 2014 and won it again a year later.
Although since May 27, 2018, the HolaSoyGerman channel has been the fifth most subscribed channel on YouTube, the channel currently gets over 140,000 subscribers a month despite him not uploading often, inconsistent compared to most content creators. However, German gets more than 24 million views monthly on the over 34 million subscribed channel, averaging around 24 million viewers per video he makes and uploads.
Controversy
It has been stated multiple times by the English community and more so (primarily) in the Spanish community that German uses bots, making it the reason why he has many subscribers.
One day, a YouTuber by the name of "LordDestroyer" noticed and screen captured a computer browser having a link to a bot website belonging to in one of his earliest videos titled "Internet Y Redes Sociales" (The Internet and Social Networks), at the timeframe 0:40. LordDestructor immediately created a video showing the evidence, and at this point, German who had only been on for only six months and already had over hundreds of thousands of fans, saw the hate comments on his videos, deleted his video where it showed the browser, and hid the statistics of every video from then on for a while. Unfortunately, by then, many Spanish YouTubers were already making videos discussing the matter and saying that he was cheating and stealing's money plus the viewers' money as well.
Shortly after, Garmendia made a video saying that he was just "trying" the website out to see if it really worked and that he didn't care about the people that hated him, stating that there was a community of Spanish people all around the world that were doing something truly amazing with his channel. Later, LordDestructor made a video explaining that German claimed and deleted his video about the bots to protect his reputation. He eventually left due to an overwhelmingly negative response from German's fans to him.
Subscriber Milestones
Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade. Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.
- 1 million subscribers: October 12, 2012
- 2 million subscribers: December 14, 2012
- 3 million subscribers: January 25, 2013
- 4 million subscribers: February 24, 2013
- 5 million subscribers: March 23, 2013
- 6 million subscribers: April 19, 2013
- 7 million subscribers: May 18, 2013
- 8 million subscribers: June 18, 2013
- 9 million subscribers: July 19, 2013
- 10 million subscribers: August 19, 2013
- 11 million subscribers: September 21, 2013
- 12 million subscribers: October 24, 2013
- 13 million subscribers: November 22, 2013
- 14 million subscribers: December 21, 2013
- 15 million subscribers: January 22, 2014
- 16 million subscribers: February 20, 2014
- 17 million subscribers: April 3, 2014
- 18 million subscribers: June 19, 2014
- 19 million subscribers: August 23, 2014
- 20 million subscribers: November 10, 2014
- 21 million subscribers: January 23, 2015
- 22 million subscribers: April 28, 2015
- 23 million subscribers: July 3, 2015
- 24 million subscribers: September 9, 2015
- 25 million subscribers: November 15, 2015
- 26 million subscribers: January 16, 2016
- 27 million subscribers: March 31, 2016
- 28 million subscribers: June 8, 2016
- 29 million subscribers: August 23, 2016
- 30 million subscribers: November 16, 2016
- 31 million subscribers: February 14, 2017
- 32 million subscribers: July 11, 2017
- 33 million subscribers: January 9, 2018
- 34 million subscribers: June 27, 2018
- 35 million subscribers: December 9, 2018
- 36 million subscribers: January 24, 2019
- 37 million subscribers: January 30, 2019
- 38 million subscribers: February 15, 2019
- 39 million subscribers: April 27, 2019
- 40 million subscribers: November 10, 2019
Other Channels
JuegaGerman
- Main article: JuegaGerman
HolaSoyGerman2
This initially was HolaSoyGerman's second channel where he on a random schedule posted bloopers and behind the scenes from his main channel videos as well as posting extra vlogs and comedy sketches which consisted of more personal and serious things about his life with less video editing and transitions than his main channel. There have been twelve videos uploaded on this channel, the first being uploaded on October 7, 2011, a week after its creation, and the last being uploaded on June 2, 2013, nearly three weeks before his current second and most active channel released its first video. This account has not had any activity since then and there is no explanation from German as to why. The channel has had over 3 million subscribers since January 9, 2018 and over 35 million total video views, his most viewed video on here being his second to last.
Play Buttons
- 100 Thousand Subscriber Plaque
- HolaSoyGerman: 2012
- HolaSoyGerman2: 2012
- JuegaGerman: 2013
- 1 Million Subscriber Plaque
- HolaSoyGerman: 2012
- HolaSoyGerman2: 2013
- JuegaGerman: 2013
- 10 Million Subscriber Plaque
- HolaSoyGerman: 2013
- JuegaGerman: 2016
Trivia
- German's YouTube partner is Machinima.
- From February to December 2017, his main channel was the most subscribed channel with a YouTube partner.
- He is the first person to have 2 channels with over 10 million subscribers.
- He is also the first person to receive two Diamond Play Buttons due to both his main channel and his gaming channel exceeding ten million subscribers.
- He is the first and only person to have two YouTube channels that has over 11-25 million subscribers.
- German currently dates former MTV VJ Lenay Chantelle Olsen (formerly known as Lenay Dunn) who also has her own YouTube channel, Lele.
- Both German and Lele (Lenay) made their relationship official to their fans in a YouTube video uploaded on the JuegaGerman channel titled Mi Novia (Spanish for My Girlfriend).
- The couple moved to Los Angeles in July 2017.
- German and Lele own two cats named Lucy and Copito, an unnamed ferret and formerly had a Chihuahua dog named Mimi.
- Unfortunately in a YouTube video uploaded on the JuegaGerman channel, German announced that Mimi got lost and asked his fans to help him to look for her under the hashtag #DondeEstaMimi (Where is Mimi).
- He dubbed the character of Julian for the Latin American dub of Ice Age: Collision Course.
- American Actor, Jack Black appeared in an HolaSoyGerman video in late 2015.
- German, often along with his girlfriend Lele, has also collaborated with American YouTubers on multiple occasions, two examples being Bart Baker and Anthony Padilla.
- In June 2017, German appeared in Anthony Padilla's first sketch since leaving the popular sketch comedy YouTube channel, Smosh. Due to this, the video received a lot of views and likes, but an overwhelming majority of the video's comments were about German's brief moments in the video for the first several hours of it's upload. The comments were in the Spanish language although Padilla's channel is English based.
- He collaborated with Anthony on his personal channel in August 2017 and March 2018 as the only guest star, where the same thing happened where this time, most of the video's comments were in Spanish permanently.
- He collaborated with Anthony on JuegaGerman in August 2017 and January 2018, with the latter collaboration featuring Shay Mitchell, as well.
- German knows how to speak English moderately well, and also understands it (but is slightly broken).
- German is the lead singer of his and his brother Diego's own fairly popular band, Ancud.
- Diego and German lived separately during most of his childhood until reuniting in Los Vilos.
- Germán also has his own successful book titled #ChupaElPerro (Spanish for Lick the Dog).
- German has his own website.
- He is one of the first Spanish speaking YouTubers to appear in the Fine Brothers Entertainment series, YouTubers React, along with CaELiKe and LuzuVlogs as well as the first to appear in YouTube Rewind.
- He has appeared in every single YouTube Rewind since 2013.
- HolaSoyGerman means "HiI'mGerman" in English.
- JuegaGerman means "GamingGerman" in English.
- The only video German uploaded on his main channel that was not a blog was the "ALS Ice Bucket Challenge".
- In 2016, he became the first YouTuber to have of his/her 2 channels in the top ten most subscribed YouTubers since Shane Dawson in 2011.
- German has over 67 million subscribers if adding all of his three channels, surpassing PewDiePie and his second channel, PewDie, in October 2017 as having the most combined amount of subscribers on YouTube with over 57 million subscribers. Before PewDiePie and PewDie was Smosh's series' of channels, who lost the title to PewDiePie and PewDie in 2015. However, in October 2018, PewDiePie re-surpassed the combined total of all of German's channels again.
- If adding up all of German's channels by views, it would be the 34th most viewed YouTube channel.
- He has the most subscribed channel associated with sketch comedy on YouTube.
- German is the most subscribed YouTuber to have his or her name in their channel username.
- German is the second most subscribed YouTuber/has the second most subscribed user-generated YouTube channel behind PewDiePie.
- He is the fourth most subscribed male on YouTube, behind PewDiePie, Vevo account based upon Justin Bieber and Canal KondZilla.
- German's father died in a car accident on Christmas Eve when he was 3 years old.
- Christmas Season for German is usually neutral.
- German used to get bullied in school.
- German is predicted to be worth over 2 - 7.5 million dollars.