On Saturday December 1, 50,000 corporate printers across the world suddenly abandoned their queues of scheduled content, and began printing a bizarre call to action. “Attention!” read the headline, “PewDiePie is in trouble and he needs your help to defeat T-Series!”

An explanation of sorts followed: “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 trailers of Bollywood and songs.” The letter than asked readers to subscribe to PewDiePie’s channel, which publishes daily video game commentary and has kept its status as YouTube’s most popular channel since 2013, and unsubscribe from T-Series’s channel.

The hacker, known only by the social username “HackerGiraffe”, is what the might call a “stan”: a devoted fan that exists within a large and cult-like fanbase dedicated to a famous celebrity. Stans - named after the famous Eminem song, Stan, about a deranged fan - often give their community a name and a trademark emoji, so Beyoncé’s “stans” are the BeyHives (bee emoji), and Nicki Minaj is served by the Barbz (unicorn emoji).

Meanwhile, PewDiePie, the 29-year-old Swedish YouTuber (real name Felix Kjellberg), who makes almost £12 million a year, commands 73,602,262 PewDiePie stans, whom the YouTuber had asked to help him retain his channel’s top spot. HackerGiraffe - rumoured to be only nine years old (unlikely, but, since the highest-earning YouTuber is seven years old, anything's possible) and who took to Twitter to warn that he could have hacked 800,000 printers if he’d wanted to - is one of many "Pewds", as some PewDiePie followers have named themselves, to have gone to extreme lengths over the last week to support their idol.