Joel Varg Johannson (born 29 August 1993), better known online as Vargskelethor Joel or Vinesauce Joel, is a Swedish gaming streamer who has been a member of the Vinesauce group since 2011.
History
Joel first visited the Vinesauce website in May 2011, where he noticed a post advertising an old stream by Vinny. Joel was interested, so clicked on it. At this time, Vinny only had around 25-50 viewers on his streams. Joel was intrigued and decided to sign up. He dropped a message in the chat, which was his first confirmed message: "God I hope you're not one of those asshole streamers that doesn't talk to the chat."
Vinny actually responded, which made Joel stay with the community and familiarise himself with viewers and streamers. He then began contributing a lot with art and helping with the community itself. This made him a known figure in the community, which was also due to the fact that Vinny sometimes invited Joel to campfire streams and occasionally Super Mario Retardy streams. Because Joel was constantly getting drunk on stream, the Super Mario Retardy streams became famous. The community started to take a liking to Joel, which was an honour to him.
Eventually, he became so popular that Vinny offered the chance to be a streamer to Joel. He declined at first, but, a few months later in Autumn 2011, he took a shot at streaming.
His first stream was the 1993 game Doom, which was popular enough for Vinny to promote him to a full-time Vinesauce streamer. During his first years, he played games such as Metal Gear Solid 2, Half-Life, Grand Theft Auto IV, and more.
Hacking
On 4 November 2015, Joel's YouTube and Twitch account was reportedly hacked, an event known as "The Invasion". He was hacked by a hacker known as Towel, who claims to have hacked Markiplier's Tumblr account and YourMovieSucksDOTorg's Twitter account. Towel changed the name and profile picture of Joel's channel, and uploaded three videos taunting subscribers about how he owned the channel. Towel also raided Joel's Twitch, banning almost everyone who left a comment there's. Towel also managed to gain access to LiveByFoma's Twitch account, de-activating it on access.
Several threads were made on the official Vinesauce forums, the Vinesauce subreddit and on 4chan, some trying to identify the hacker and some even trying plan a raid on the hacker. However, the subreddit threads were locked and replaced with stickies threads, the Vinesauce forums had to be shut down temporarily due to the amount of threads being created about the attack, and the 4chan thread was deleted due to 4chan's rules against planning raids.
On 8 November, four days after the hack, Towel uploaded a video titled "Goodbye" to Joel's channel. Many people believed this meant the hacker would be withdrawing from the channel, but instead, all of Joel's previous videos had been deleted. By 10 November, Joel had his channel's videos restored and uploaded a video on his return.
Rivalry with Rev
In his five years of streaming, Joel has obtained a sort of rivalry with the third most popular Vinesauce streamer Rev. Whenever they have streamed together, Rev often tries to make Joel do lewd things. In retaliation, when they stream a game that is new to Rev together, Joel does the same thing back. Joel has even made an entire album on how much he hates Rev, called "The Revnarok Album".
Trivia
Childhood
Joel had a very strange childhood and adolescence, which he occasionally talks about on stream:
- When Joel was around 5 years old, he asked his father what technology was. His father said, "IT'S MAGIC JOEL! IT'S MAGIC!". After that, Joel was never the same.
- At 6 years old, Joel searched "fat boobies" on his father's PC. However, his work associates came round and saw his search history.
- At 7, Joel and his friends went to the website youareanidiot.org on a school computer. The website, which is today now inactive, continually played "You are an idiot, ha ha ha!". One of his friends, Kevin, attempted to close the window, but that caused multiple windows to appear and make it louder. Their teacher came in and "made a raptor noise", according to Joel. Kevin was the one punished, and since this incident, Kevin has disliked Joel.
- When Joel thinks about Sonic the Hedgehog, he always remembers the day where he was once accused of stealing Pokémon cards at age 7. When he went to his friend's house, he played a Sonic game. His friend offered to trade Pokémon cards, and Joel was given 200 cards for free. The next day, his friend, in tears, accused Joel of stealing the cards, was forced to give them back by his mom, and was never friends with him again.
- Joel once changed his background to a Playboy image of Pamela Anderson. His father was unimpressed, but Joel convinced him it was because of a virus.
- At 11 years old, Joel installed a desktop stripper onto his PC. However, it was a sped-up 2 frame GIF of a woman, which made it look like she was having a seizure. Joel couldn't remove the application, being forced to ask his dad. His dad was very disappointed that it wasn't a proper desktop stripper.
- Joel was a fan of "The Phantom" in his childhood, a Swedish comic book hero.
- A local store was supposedly having a sort of deal with the comic creators, but when Joel arrived hoping to see the real Phantom, he found that the store had just dressed a bald intern up in a Phantom t-shirt.
- Joel had a school friend who "had no talent" (according to Joel), who would go round on every computer in school, open Paint and draw a penis with the spray Can tool. When the teacher saw this, they would shout "Who's been drawing dicks!". This phrase has become a popular internet meme.
- Joel used to believe trees had feelings, and when one of his friends (the same one who would draw penises on Paint) kicked a tree, Joel scolded him, telling him he shouldn't kick trees because it would hurt their feelings.
- Joel's brother once gave him a CD with a ROM collection, which had a SNES hentai game. Joel's brother couldn't remember the name of the game, so he told Joel not to play any games under the "A" title. Joel accidentally found the ROM, but did not know what "hentai" meant at the time, so he showed it to his brother who freaked out.
- Joel once saw one of his friends jump from a tree 6 metres up, but he did not bend his legs to cushion the fall, ending with his knees "splattering".
- When he was a teenager, Joel made some of his own games, the most famous called "Grill Såsen" or "BBQ Quest", which he played in one of his streams.
Other
- Joel's father used to sound like Kermit the Frog, with people including Joel depicting him as Kermit.
- Joel's game, BBQ Quest, is due for an update, thanks to the money raised in the 2015 Vinesauce charity stream.
- The information on the Vinesauce contact site says "The resident merry metalhead, hailing from the freezing realms of northern Sweden. Enjoys retro gaming, alcohol, necromancy and breadsticks. Happiness is a Cigar Called Joel."
- Joel is a fan of the games Fist of the North Star and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. His name contains an unintentional reference to the latter, as his full name is Joel Johansson, in which is similar the way that the protagonists of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure characters are named.
- In a prank call to the help centre of the scam software PC Optimizer Pro, which Joel did in his Windows 8 Destruction stream, he sexually identified himself as an attack helicopter. This became a joke in the Vinesauce community.
- In August 2015, Joel shaved off all his hair, and allegedly bears an uncanny resemblance to Phil Anselmo.
- Joel's first computer has Windows 2000.
- Joel has type 1 diabetes, but doesn't seem to mind it.
- When Joel was playing Undertale, he was the first to get "dunked on" by Sans The Skeleton, after the chat suggested him to spare Sans. After the "dunking", he no longer relies on the chat for similar decisions like that.
- Joel also seems to have a crush on the character Undyne.
- Despite only being 25 years old, he sounds older. This is because he used to smoke.
- On 22 May 2016, Joel's Twitch account was temporarily banned while he was streaming bootleg games. This might have been because the game he was playing hasn't swimsuit girls, or he changed the playing notice to "Vargskelethor Playing: Fuck You."
- Joel mentioned he doesn't have a driver's license, but he still sometimes drives a car.
- Joel has stated he is around 180 centimetres tall.
- Joel has made videos and streams with the channels Pyrocynical and IDubbbzTV.