Fans of Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, have taken desperate measures to keep the Swedish YouTube star in the top spot on the video site.

One die-hard follower is believed to have hacked 50,000 printers, producing paper messages asking people to subscribe to PewDiePie on YouTube.

PewDiePie currently runs the world’s most popular YouTube channel, having found fame for producing funny gaming videos.

Right now, he’s got exactly 73,000,000 subscribers, many of whom follow the online celebrity’s every move.

But there’s been concern among PewDiePie’s fan-base over T-Series, a channel that posts Bollywood movie trailers, which is catching up.

To give PewDiePie the subscriber boost he needed, one tech-savvy fan hacked printers around the world, encouraging people to follow the YouTuber.

Over the last week, people have been posting surprised messages on Twitter claiming their work printer had been hacked.

Users posted images showing the exact same message print-out – a piece of paper promoting PewDiePie.

One wrote: “On Wednesday our work printer was hacked! This message printed out on our cheques.”

The message itself read: “PewDiePie is in trouble and he needs your help to defeat T-Series!”

“PewDiePie, the currently most-subscribed-to channel on YouTube, is at stake of losing his position as the number one position by an Indian company called T-Series, that simply uploads videos of Bollywood trailers and songs.”

The message asked recipients to unsubscribe from T-Series and subscribe to PewDiePie.

PewDiePie doesn’t appear to have asked anyone to hack any printers – but it happened nonetheless.

A Twitter user named TheHackerGiraffe claimed responsibility for the hack, and posted a thread detailing exactly how it worked.

The Sun decided not to reveal the exact details so it can’t be replicated.

But explaining his reasoning, he said: “I was bored after playing Destiny 2 for a continuous 4 hours, and decided I wanted to hack something.”

He said he was “horrified to see over 800,000” unprotected printers, and added: “I was baffled, but determined to try and fix this. So I picked the first 50,000 printers I found…and downloaded the list.”

“It didn’t take me long to realize that the most perfect thing to print would be a message supporting our dear overlord PewDiePie himself!”

On Sunday PewDiePie talked about the hack on his YouTube channel. So far the video has over 7,000,000 views.

Sadly for PewDiePie, it’s looking extremely likely that T-Series will overtake the YouTube star.

In January 2017, T-Series had around 15 million subscribers – versus PewDiePie’s 50 million.

But by July 2018, T-Series was sitting on 50 million subscribers, not far off PewDiePie’s 64 million.

Now the two channels are neck-and-neck, with analytics firm Social Blade’s forecast showing that T-Series will overtake PewDiePie early next year.