How PewDiePie fans are dealing with the YouTuber’s break from the platform. J.M Follow Feb 2 · 5 min read

When young Swedish man, Felix Kjellberg started making videos sometime in 2010, He was very likely not expecting to amass over one hundred million followers, some of whom still watch him to this day despite the format changes, the years passing on and the fact that he has abandoned the horror games that “made him famous”‌ for a channel full of mixed content.

screenshot credit: pewdiepie’s youtube channel

Felix Kjellberg has been a staple of YouTube for a very long time, starting his channel with Call of Duty videos but really jumping to fame when he started playing Amnesia in 2010, an indie horror title released by Frictional Games (A Swedish company based in Malmo, though I’m not sure Felix knew this at the time of playing)

He started off slowly but gained massive popularity by playing horror games, when he was finished with Amnesia he played custom stories that his fan base would create for him, he searched high and low for horror games to play, and eventually due to lack of good horror games and genuinely being bored by the same types of jumpscares every single day, Felix started playing different games — a move that shook his fanbase to it’s very core.

He went on to play Happy Wheels, a silly flash game that was popular among YouTube gamers thanks in part to Toby Turner, who had recorded at least over four hundred videos playing this game — When Happy Wheels ran out of steam for Felix, he switched to different things, in 2016 he mostly stopped playing games as often as he had before, citing that he was just not as interested in it as he once was. In 2016 to late 2017 he created various videos discussing random videos he would see online, and even made a video about The Room (a fantastically awful movie staring Tommy Wiseau)

Him not playing games as often had sort of turned into a meme in itself, and though he did play games here and there (Resident Evil 7, 2017 playthrough was ‘lit”) it wasn’t his channels purpose anymore.

In 2019, he started finally playing Minecraft on the channel, and it became an instant hit for his views, for his fans, and he and his minecraft animals became possibly the happiest little family on YouTube for several months, even his other video series started to be all about Minecraft, with LWIAY filled with user-posted memes about Minecraft and Meme Review just memes about Minecraft.

After Minecraft, he continued to do reddit review videos, meme reviews and LIWAY videos, sprinkled with the occasional gaming video somewhere in there.

On December 15th 2019 Felix announced during a Pew News segment that he would be taking a break from YouTube in the new year, potentially the first real break the man has even had from the platform.

Now without the king of YouTube, what is an army to do?‌ ‌fans of PewDiePie, referred to as many different things throughout the years, including “Bros”, “Squadfam”‌ and “Gamers” but most have settled on the group name “9 year olds” (Sometimes 19 year olds, depending on the situation) The 9 year olds have taken to changing format of the PewDiePie submissions subreddit, normally a place to share memes and other things that Felix would review in his LWIAY series of videos, but the 9 year olds have temporarily turned it into a place to post recipes, cooking memes and much more for a few days, as well as discussing plans to change themes every week.

Felix Kjellberg

Without an ounce of sarcasm, I‌ can say that I love PewDiePie’s content and I‌ respect him as a creator who has put so much passion and love into everything he does that even the idea of taking a break caused him to stall on actually doing it for an entire month.

PewDiePie has been on the YouTube platform for a very long time, and though he has changed formats and gone through different periods of his channel and his life, his content has inspired many people for many different reasons — in 2017 Felix started a video bookclub series in which he would discuss a book with his viewers and what he thought about it, he has also made a few videos that are voiced over montages of his thoughts on certain subjects, getting his message across in a sort of Pyrocynical style way, only with a Swedish accent instead of a British one.

He mentioned in his final posted video that he didn’t want to stop and that he truly does love making videos for his fans, but that he felt he needed to take a break and recharge for a little while, though he did not mention when he would be back, the fans have been coping with the absence the only way they know how — memes.

Felix and Marzia Kjellberg

Many commenters and fans are theorizing that he will never come back and has left the platform entirely like former YouTuber “Filthy Frank” who was known for making edgy comedy videos, and who left the platform in 2017 after years on the platform, or Felix’s own wife Marzia Kjellberg who left the platform in 2018 after deciding that though she loved the times she had on YouTube, she was ready to move on to different passions in her life.

And various discussions of creator burnout have been brought up recently with Felix’s temporary departure from the platform and popular tech YouTuber Linus Tech Tips sharing that he has thought about retiring sometime during an impromptu and emotional livestream, and it is an important discussion to have, especially for YouTubers, most of whom have daily upload schedules and very little time to themselves outside of making, writing, filming, editing or otherwise prepping for their channel.

He shared in his last posted video that even though sometimes he was not actively producing new content for the channel, (like certain times when he would pre-record content, or when he was living in L.A for filming of “Scare Pewdiepie”‌ but even then, he was trying so hard to do a daily vlog that it ended up causing more stress than it was worth) he was always there and had never took a proper break and unplugged from the creator side of things entirely.

Will PewDiePie come back to the platform or will he find life is too good outside the video website and find new ventures to follow?‌‌ And how many times will the 9 year olds change the format of the Pewdiepie subreddit?

His absence has certainly been felt within the community, but none have been hit harder than clickbait media sites, and two weeks into his break, we are all looking for things to fill that void until he comes back.