PewDiePie vs. T-Series was a widespread YouTube event in which Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie, who held the title of the most-subscribed YouTube channel from August 15, 2013 to March 27, 2019, jokingly declared a race against quickly-growing YouTube channel of Indian music label T-Series as a way to remain the most-subscribed channel.
Although it was initially started as a joke in late 2018, it eventually turned into a large online campaign that ended up lasting well into 2019. Many believed T-Series would pose a threat to the future of all content creators due to corporations becoming more and more noticed on the platform. This would spark a massive campaign throughout the world that would last over half a year. The campaign was also prominently endorsed by MrBeast (who overtook PewDiePie to become the most-subscribed independent YouTuber in 2022), who bought billboards to advertise PewDiePie as well attending the Super Bowl with his friends wearing shirts that spelled out "SUB 2 PEWDIEPIE", strategically standing in view of cameras broadcasting the game. Other stunts performed across the globe included mass printer hackings, cheerleader dances to PewDiePie's diss track "Bitch Lasagna", a march in Estonia, and controversially, the defacing of a World War II memorial.
The movement gained so much attention that it caused media outrage and somewhat of a social panic on the Internet, as media outlets found themselves targeted by pro-PewDiePie fans in many online instances such as the hacking of the Wall Street Journal, who infamously ran harsh articles on PewDiePie's 2017 Fiverr incident, with the motive of getting them to display a purported apology for running such articles. Outlets like Vox have also been heavily criticized for running similar articles.
T-Series ended up surpassing PewDiePie in the spring of 2019, though the meme would continue to live on sometime after. However, On April 28, 2019, PewDiePie officially announced that he wanted the Subscribe to PewDiePie meme to end, citing its appropriation by alt-right individuals such as the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shooting and other acts done in the name of the meme (such as the defacing of the WW2 memorial), thus ending PewDiePie vs T-Series as a whole.[1] Many YouTubers consider this to be the greatest YouTube feud of all time, with it being massively widespread across YouTube and the wider internet.
Beginning[]
T-Series has been the fastest growing YouTube channel since late 2017. Since December 2017, when they were getting 100,000 subscribers daily consistently, they were growing 4 times faster than PewDiePie.
When T-Series was less than 10 million subscribers behind PewDiePie, PewDiePie himself and multiple YouTubers, such as Pyrocynical, DramaAlert, and MrBeast discussed T-Series.
On August 29, 2018, PewDiePie made his first video on T-Series due to the YouTube community and big YouTubers discussing their growth against PewDiePie. It was featured in a LWIAY episode. PewDiePie mentions T-Series at the start and says he was "looking to fight back IRL" while flaunting a fake sword, to prevent T-Series from surpassing him in subscribers. This was an exaggerated satirical approach. Felix himself probably has nothing against the company and nothing against Indians. The video caused many other creators on YouTube and other media to "fight back" as well, making T-Series more well-known among the English-speaking audience.
PewDiePie later made a video called "T-SERIES EXPOSED?"[2], an episode of the "PewNews" series. He read a comment from his subreddit. The comment says that you will be automatically subscribed to T-Series once you create an account in India. PewDiePie then asked Indian fans to test this. He also mentioned T-Series having over 62 million subscribers, but little to no views on their recent videos. He later created a diss track called "b***h lasagna", now his most viewed video, which was produced by Party In Backyard.
Diss track[]
On October 5, 2018, PewDiePie released a diss track on T-Series named, "b***h lasagna"[3], originally named "T-SERIES DISS TRACK". The song was made with the help of Party In Backyard and shot/edited by Brad (fakemarzia).
When the music video was released on the PewDiePie channel, it received more views than Eminem's song, "Venom" in an hour. It also took down T-Series' growth on that day, gaining only 90,000 subscribers, while averaging getting 120,000 subscribers a day that month.
The music video is PewDiePie's most viewed video, surpassing "A Funny Montage"[4], a video which held most viewed video for 5 years.
Party In Backyard also released an instrumental of the track on November 28, 2018, which soon sparked many covers, remixes, and parodies.
References[]
The diss contains many references, which can be found described in depth on Genius' b***h lasagna[5] lyric page, many being satirical and joking, with no harmful intentions. For instance, the line "I'm a blue eyes white dragon while you're just dark magician" refers to Yu-Gi-Oh cards, often seen as "nerdy" and far from the tough superior "diss" persona many rappers use. Many seem to mistake the diss as towards Indians as a whole, but this is not the case. The line, "You India, You Lose” for instance, is a reference to his "You Laugh, You Lose" series, which he names "You [Country], You Lose" if the video is about memes from a specific country.
CRY (Child's Rights and You) Charity Organization[]
Much has been brought to the YouTube community since "PewDiePie vs. T-Series" began. While most of it has been the influx of harmless interaction and jokes, there have been a reserved few who have sparked genuine racism towards Indians. Felix addressed this in his video, "This is getting out of control..." where he asks users to stop making hateful remarks about Indians as a whole, and he has nothing against Indians, just the music label; calling the insults "really distasteful [and] unnecessary."
On the same video, he announced a charity fundraiser to support "the Indian 9-year-olds", linking it in the description. The fundraiser raised 179,192 Euros (over the 150,000 goal) in just a day of it being up. Felix states the reason for him doing this is that while it had been fun battling T-Series, he wanted to take the opportunity to create something positive.
MrBeast advertising PewDiePie[]
PewDiePie's growth after MrBeast advertised PewDiePie publicly.
At the start of the PewDiePie vs. T-Series battle, fellow YouTuber MrBeast wanted to help PewDiePie. On October 26, 2018, he released a video called "I Bought Every Billboard In My City For This[6]", in which he used the Billboards to advertise PewDiePie, urging people to subscribe to him and make sure he stayed the most-subscribed YouTube channel. Additionally, MrBeast used posters, National Television, and the radio. T-Series was 100,000 subscribers away from surpassing PewDiePie at this time.
After the release of the video and billboards, PewDiePie received over 180,000 subscribers, and over 360,000 subscribers the next day. The 360,000 subscribers were the most subscribers he had ever received in a day.
Throughout the 'battle', T-Series has made no response. They still release music videos, lyric videos, audio of the music, and BTS. The only thing T-Series have mentioned is that they are "just one small step away from being the world's largest channel" (in a tweet). The fans criticize T-Series for alleged subscriber-botting. They also retweeted a few tweets from artists that work at T-Series asking fans to subscribe to T-Series.
Indian YouTuber Saiman Says also contributed, putting up T-Series billboards jokingly around India, though he is actually a fan of PewDiePie and set up PewDiePie billboards across India, gaining him a shout-out from Felix.
MrBeast says PewDiePie 100,000 Times[]
The billboards did not stop T-Series. They were approximately 90,000 subscribers away from surpassing PewDiePie, before MrBeast made another video to keep PewDiePie #1 most-subscribed. On November 25, 2018, MrBeast said PewDiePie 100,000 times. At the start of the video, he told his fans and new-comers to subscribe to PewDiePie" and to help him win the war". The subscriber growth was given to PewDiePie once again, gaining 244,000 subscribers on the day of the upload, and 247,000 subscribers the next day.
Hacked Printers[]
Original message from the hacked printers. Screenshot by Georgia Barton.
On November 29, 2018, Twitter users posted screenshots of printouts from internet-connected printers saying that PewDiePie needs their help. It turned out over 50,000 printers were hacked, printing a message asking people to subscribe to PewDiePie, unsubscribe from T-Series, and spread awareness using the hashtag #SavePewDiePie. The middle of the printout contains an ASCII figure of a “brofist,” a gesture from PewDiePie and his logo/channel branding. The screenshots have no specific origin; users from Canada to the UK have received it.
The individual responsible, a hacker who goes by TheHackerGiraffe , claims they found a repository of 800,000 open printers[7] on Shodan.io – a search engine to find out devices connected to the internet – and took over 50,000 of them and sent out a command to print his message, claiming that it just took him 30 minutes to learn, code, and take control of the printers, and taking it as a point of awareness for printer security.
“People underestimate how easy a malicious hacker could have used a vulnerability like this to cause major havoc,” TheHackerGiraffe told The Verge. “Hackers could have stolen files, installed malware, caused physical damage to the printers and even use the printer as a foothold into the inner network."
The hack did not help PewDiePie much, unlike MrBeast's two attempts.
Surrender[]
Despite MrBeast's attempts to help PewDiePie, Felix made a tweet
saying, "It looks like this is it bois.[8]" attaching a picture of text saying "Dawn of The Final Day -24 Hours Remain-"( "From Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask"), in which PewDiePie surrenders his #1 most-subscribed title, as T-Series' growth had not stopped, and PewDiePie failed to catch up.
MrBeast also made a tweet responding to PewDiePie saying "It was an honor fighting by your side"[9], in which MrBeast gives up and can no longer help PewDiePie further, possibly to prevent lack of PewDiePie videos from MrBeast, as it can get weaker along the way.
Many other well-known internet personas such as Grandayy, Sr Pelo and Pyrocynical encouraged PewDiePie to never give up, but others, like TheSyndicateProject, Mini Ladd and CouRage, accepted his fate.
This wasn't the end, as creators of all kind joined forces, despite background or history, to not only keep PewDiePie #1, but to save YouTube from corporate invasion.
YouTubers Do Their Part[]
Right after PewDiePie surrendered, creators on YouTube refused to give up. Markiplier, a long-time friend of PewDiePie, made a 1-hour live stream encouraging his subscribers to subscribe to PewDiePie where he "Literally Won't Shut Up Until You Subscribe To PewDiePie"[10], continuously telling his live viewers to subscribe to PewDiePie, which was successful. Jacksepticeye wrote a poem, Durv challenged himself to watch PewDiePie's "b***h lasagna" for 24 hours, Joe Jenkins live-streamed him playing "b***h lasagna" at a mall[11] until someone told him to stop, even Logan Paul offered his help (with a catch), after Felix joked about calling for help, saying, "we are that desperate".
T-Series was 14,550 subscribers away before being number 1 most-subscribed, and after the help from other successful YouTubers, PewDiePie was 320,000 subscribers above and gained 544,000 subscribers in 1 day, a first in PewDiePie's YouTube history. By mid-December, the subscriber gap between PewDiePie and T-Series was over 1.3 million.
In YouTube Rewind 2018, Jaiden Animations placed easter eggs of "b***h lasagna" and the Sub to Pewdiepie in her section.
Many parodies, covers, remixes, and variations of "b***h lasagna" have also come into sight since PartyInBackyard released an instrumental, such as a Minecraft parody by grande1899 titled "Witch Savana"[12], a rock version[13] by Tsuko G, a metal cover[14] by pellekofficial, "B***h Wasagna OwO", an owo cover[15] by Dottovu, an Otamatone cover[16] by TheRealSullyG, a Google Translate remix[17] by heiakim Music, amongst many others. A DJ, known as Ghastly also played PewDiePie's "b***h lasagna" at one of his concert's to get his fans to subscribe to PewDiePie.
On February 21, 2019, YouTuber BK4 live-streamed himself saying "T-Gay" 15,000 times. Then on March 11, 2019, he live-streamed himself saying "T-Gay" 25,000 times.
Fans Do Their Part[]
Since the battle, many fans have been "doing their part" from around the globe, which started as an inside joke on the PewDiePie Reddit page. Many putting up flyers around town or contributing in other ways, such as a Bunnings Warehouse employee announcing "subscribe to PewDiePie" at an intercom at work, two kids holding up signs walking around the street in the pouring rain, and developer Gurpreet Singh Matharoo making a T-Series battle based video game (demo), which Felix played in this video[18]. Felix addressed many of these in his video "I am SO proud of this community." amongst many other LWIAY episodes.
Aftermath[]
Though the PewDiePie vs T-Series trend started to decrease in popularity, anytime T-Series is close to surpassing PewDiePie, YouTubers still do their part and make sure PewDiePie stays the most-subscribed. It had been done multiple times which still makes PewDiePie the most-subscribed YouTube channel.
Especially after YouTubers did their part multiple times previously, PewDiePie played and live-streamed popular franchise Fortnite for the first time on February 3, 2019, to stay ahead of T-Series. The stream had over 300,000 live viewers and successfully made him stay the most-subscribed YouTube channel. The Livestream also made it to #1 on Trending for Gaming immediately.
MrBeast advertising PewDiePie at the Super Bowl[]
MrBeast advertising PewDiePie at the Super Bowl LIII when Stephen Gostkowski misses the 46-yard FG.
At Super Bowl LIII (53), MrBeast bought seats by the end zone so he and his affiliates could wear shirts word by word saying "SUB 2 PEW DIE PIE" and was seen on television by around 110 million viewers. ESPN tweeted[19] a picture with MrBeast and his friend asking viewers to subscribe to PewDiePie. The subscriber difference between PewDiePie and T-Series grew from 50,000 subscribers to 277,000 subscribers in one day.
T-Series surpasses PewDiePie[]
In February 2019, the gap started getting closer again, and the record for the lowest gap was broken multiple times in the second half of February. On February 22, T-Series overtook PewDiePie for the first time, because of YouTube's daily subscriber audit, which is used to delete inactive subscribers / fake subscribers. PewDiePie, but T-Series went up, making an easy surpass against PewDiePie. But PewDiePie quickly reclaimed the spot as most-subscribed 8 minutes later after Elon Musk finally hosted an episode of 'Meme Review'[20].
Occasionally, T-Series would surpass PewDiePie thanks to the YouTube audit which happens every day at 11:30 AM PST. T-Series gains subscribers during the audit, but PewDiePie goes down in subscribers most of the time, giving T-Series a closer gap to passing PewDiePie, or passing PewDiePie for a short period of time before PewDiePie holds the title again for another 23 hours on average.
During the night time for US and UK, T-Series started to grow faster than PewDiePie and occasionally surpasses PewDiePie. On March 21, 2019, T-Series was ahead by 34,000 subscribers and held the most-subscribed title for 11 hours.
Gunman Urges People to Subscribe to PewDiePie[]
On March 15, 2019, a gunman (identified as Brenton Tarrant) killed 51 Muslims and injured 40 others at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques. Right before entering the mosque, the shooter said on a livestream: "Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie".
PewDiePie responded on Twitter about the shooting and felt sickened about his name being brought up. His tweet got over 500,000 likes in 24 hours. However, the controversy came in and multiple journalists blamed PewDiePie for playing a role in the terrorist attack, however this has been met with scorn.
After this incident, Cult of Dusty along with many others posted all the list of PewDiePie's followers to send deaththreat against him as retaliation[21], this forced PewDiePie to unfollow everyone on Twitter other than BTS.
The Race to 100 Million Subscribers[]
Since T-Series surpassed PewDiePie multiple times, Felix changed up the race and decided the finish line would be to reach 100 million subscribers first, instead of keeping the most-subscribed title. Felix claimed after he hopes to reach 100 million subscribers before T-Series, he will accept T-Series taking the spot as most-subscribed, however on May 29, 2019, T-Series beat the race to 100 million subscribers against Felix.
Defeat and Comeback[]
In the early mornings of March 27, 2019, T-Series surpassed PewDiePie, but this time, they stayed the most-subscribed for an amount of time. Within 2 days, T-Series was 80,000 subscribers ahead. 3 days later, 100,000 subscribers ahead.
3 days after being officially surpassed by T-Series, Felix uploaded a video "We lost (not happy)"[22], another episode of LWIAY. Felix says that it was all just a troll and sub counts do not matter. On March 31, PewDiePie made a music video "Congratulations"[23], congratulating T-Series on surpassing PewDiePie in subscribers. However, after the "Congratulations" video was released, PewDiePie started gaining a massive following. In just 12 hours, T-Series was 100,000 subscribers ahead and PewDiePie is now 200,000 subscribers ahead as of April 2, 2019.
T-Series blocks PewDiePie's Disstracks in India[]
On April 10, 2019, the Delhi High Court ordered the removal of PewDiePie videos due to "racist" and "derogatory" comments towards India. Following this, on April 11, 2019, b***h lasagna and Congratulations got blocked in India.
Defeat[]
The effect and hype of "Congratulations" gradually dissipated as PewDiePie rapidly slowed down; the censorship of his music videos in India also did not help him. Pepsi's sponsorship of T-Series on its song "Har Ghoont Mein Swag" was placed on the homepage of Indian YouTube, which allowed T-Series to quickly make a move and surpass PewDiePie to be the most-subscribed YouTube channel on April 13, 2019. "Slowly Slowly", a collaboration single between Guru Randhawa and Pitbull released on April 19, only worsened the situation for PewDiePie. By April 28, T-Series was over a million subscribers ahead of PewDiePie.
The End[]
Ending the Subscribe to Pewdiepie Meme
On April 28, 2019, Felix asked his fans to stop the war and the 'Subscribe to PewDiePie' slogan, citing events like the Christchurch shooting, where a shooter yelled the slogan before opening fire on Muslims worshipping in New Zealand.
“I think it’s time to end the ‘subscribe to Pewdiepie’ movement, or meme,” Felix says in the video. He goes on to say that, following the Christchurch shooting, he came to believe, “It’s clear to me the ‘subscribe to Pewdiepie’ movement should have ended then.”
Originally, Felix believed the movement and the meme would only last “just a couple of days or maybe a week” and was surprised by the amount of support it received and continued to receive over the last few months. However, as the meme has continued, it led to some horrendous acts. Felix mentions an example from earlier this year when a World War 2 monument was defaced with graffiti that mentioned the slogan.
Felix states in the video he believes when you have an audience of “over 90 million people, you’re bound to get a few degenerates.” He hoped this graffiti incident would be the end of these more hateful acts inspired by his meme.
“Some of the media,” he says in today’s video, have made the meme about “race or politics or nationality, and I don’t agree with that at all and I want that to stop... This negative rhetoric is something I don’t agree with at all. To make it perfectly clear, no I’m not racist, no I don’t support any form of racist comments or hate toward anyone.”
“This movement started out of love and support,” he concludes, “so let’s end it with that.”
#1 Reigns of T-Series[]
| Date Achieved | Times Passed |
Total Duration | Audit |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 22, 2019 | 1 | 8 minutes, 2 seconds | Yes |
| March 9, 2019 | 1 | 2 minutes, 34 seconds | No |
| March 11, 2019 | 1 | 4 minutes, 48 seconds | Yes |
| March 11, 2019 | 1 | 18 minutes, 14 seconds | Yes |
| March 12, 2019 | 1 | 12 seconds | Yes |
| March 13, 2019 | 1 | 18 minutes, 35 seconds | Yes |
| March 15, 2019 | 1 | 18 minutes, 4 seconds | Yes |
| March 17, 2019 | 1 | 6 minutes, 52 seconds | No |
| March 17, 2019 | 1 | 12 minutes, 38 seconds | Yes |
| March 18, 2019 | 1 | 13 minutes, 48 seconds | No |
| March 18, 2019 | 1 | 5 minutes, 52 seconds | Yes |
| March 19, 2019 | 3 | 50 seconds | No |
| March 19, 2019 | 1 | 30 minutes, 30 seconds | Yes |
| March 20, 2019 | 33 | 48 minutes | No |
| March 20, 2019 | 1 | 32 minutes, 14 seconds | Yes |
| March 21, 2019 | 1 | 11 hours, 36 minutes | No |
| March 21, 2019 | 1 | 52 minutes | Yes |
| March 22, 2019 | 6 | 11 minutes | No |
| March 22, 2019 | 1 | 29 minutes | Yes |
| March 24, 2019 | 1 | Unknown (<24 hours) | Yes |
| March 25, 2019 | 1 | 17 hours, 18 minutes | No |
| March 25-26, 2019 | 59 | 14 hours, 40 minutes | No |
| March 27, 2019 | 1 | 5 days, 7 hours, 33 minutes | No |
| April 14, 2019 | 1 | 5 years, 3 months, 17 days | No |
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ Ending the Subscribe to Pewdiepie Meme by PewDiePie. YouTube. April 28, 2019.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Zz2OTAl7o
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dh-RL__uN4
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRyPjRrjS34
- ↑ https://genius.com/15520807
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZNxvnQv0h4
- ↑ https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18119576/pewdiepie-printer-hack-t-series-youtube
- ↑ https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/1069278200251977728
- ↑ https://twitter.com/MrBeastYT/status/1069282172195008512
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpEQtpnGp_I&t=1118s
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DibSoXZGaEg
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9dDn-N5ccA
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIlr-lWdO5M
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuNmXYmTRQE
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vVpybPnBpg
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mpfGrLaClI
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlZvOytosLc&ab_channel=heiakimMusic
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Ri6MiETrE
- ↑ https://twitter.com/espn/status/1092211022218317824
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWYQ1YtgnI
- ↑ https://twitter.com/cultofdusty1/status/1110668943914602496
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXMDIVioNE
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHgc8Q6qTjc