How Markiplier’s $50M Movie Changed Hollywood Forever

Iron Lung is the number one movie in America! But if you know anything about Markiplier, this is probably not a surprise. His indie horror film Iron Lung just made history. We need to talk about how Markiplier's independent horror film could change Hollywood. In the case of Iron Lung, it is doing something very unusual as a f*cking unicorn out there.

Regal has picked it up, cinema has picked it up, and MC has picked it up. Pretty much every major movie chain that you know of in the United States has picked it up. Oh man, thank you, everybody so much for watching.

At the time of this recording, it has grossed $48 million with a reported budget of around

$3 million. And it's not just because he has $38 million YouTube subscribers. There's so much more to it than that. So if you were going to Hollywood and you read this headline, you might make an assumption

“that you should just find a YouTuber with a big audience and make a movie with them,”

and that'll drive similar results. But that's just not the case at all. So as we looked into this story, we broke down three reasons why this movie was such a success. We also went to see the movie earlier today. In the rain, you're welcome Mark. Yeah. How hard it is in Los Angeles to go across the city in the rain?

It was worth it. It was worth it Mark. Great movie. All right, we're going to tell you what Markiplier's historic movie means for creators. Let's get into it. I actually don't know the story of how this came together. I am not part of Markiplier's community. I don't know how the movie came together.

Yeah, I also am not a part of the community, but I have been fascinated by this story. The last three or four days. I've just been reading every article I can find.

“I've been listening to very long podcasts about this.”

And I've tried to distill the most interesting points here for you. First off, for anyone who does not know Markiplier, I would imagine if you spend any time on YouTube. You do know him. He is one of the legends of the platform. He started out in 2012. Primarily as part of the Let's Play genre. So very long-form videos playing video games. Hello, everybody. I'm welcome to Let's Play Skyrim.

Okay, I'm not going to do that ever again. Initially, those gameplay videos were split up into sections. He posts upwards of 10 videos a day, but now they are much longer. And he's playing a game and he's joking around. It's very raw and authentic. It's like similar, I guess, to a long-form podcast. You're getting the real version of him.

He's always been based in Indie Horror. He's had a lot of breakout hits.

Whether it was Amnesia in the beginning. I'm sure you're more familiar with Five Nights at Freddy's.

“Finalf? Finalf? That was a major hit for him as well.”

2022, he plays Indie Horror Game Iron Long, and I want to play for you the beginning of the video. My name is Markiplier. Welcome to Iron Long. Every known star and habitable plan had vanished, leaving only those who were on space stations or starships. This event became known as the quiet rapture. You are a convict test with exploring this anomaly and a makeshift submarine nicknamed The Iron Long. It was not designed for this depth,

so you will be welded inside and a forward window will be closed. There is no time for training. It's a good story. It's a good story. And he's the right voice for this story. Yeah, totally. He just feels cinematic. Even when you watch him set up the story of the game. Yeah. So this is in 2022. He ends up just really falling in love with the story of the game. And the world that the creator has built out. And he decides that he wants to reach

out to the creator of the game. It's an indie game. And the rights are up for grabs. And he gets the rights to adapt it into a film. About a year later on his channel, a teaser comes out and announcing

it to his community within a year, which is pretty incredible. It's crazy. Later that year in

2023 we get the second teaser. And sometime after that is when he starts the conversation about feeders. He knew that this was something that was meant for theaters. His thought was 50 to 60 theaters. He partners with a distribution company called Centurion. Centurion, the distributor says, why don't we start with three theaters? And he says to them, that would be disrespectful to my audience. I have 38 million people. And if I do this 99% 99.9, we'll not be able to take

part in this. But it's in December of 2025 that the official trailer is released. That's when tickets go on sale. And this is when we see the real push begin from his audience. They end up starting a bit of a grassroots campaign to get this movie into more theaters. And Markiplier leaves a comment on that teaser trailer on YouTube. If it's not in your local theater, there is a way that you can ask for a movie. They have a suggestion line usually. And if you contact the theater

and enough people are interested, they will book that movie. And my audience took that and ran with it really hard. And if you look at the comments on this post, it's pretty incredible. There are people in this community who run theaters and have reached out to the distribution team. There are people who say, Hey, my dad runs a regal cinema theater. Whoa. And it starts to

to the AMCs and regals of the world. And the onslaught of emails was so intense that a lot of those companies and people at the theater thought it was like spam. Because a lot of them were template emails. Wow. By the time the movie is actually released, it's in roughly 1500 theaters and now we're upwards of over 3000. Wow. And all over the world. So his community came in in a major way to spread the word and make sure that there was essentially foam on behalf of the

theaters and also proof through the presales. Yeah. In presales, they already did 7 million. Oh my god,

that's amazing. So iron-long did $18 million in opening weekend. And it's now up to 48 million.

That includes presale. Yeah. In comparison, the Rocker Rocker Boys and other YouTube group that has gone more traditional. They partnered with a studio with a 24, which again, Markiplier did not have a studio behind this. Their movie talked to me did 10 million in opening weekend. So also very good. Bring her back. Their next film did 7 million.

“But I think one of the most interesting things is that if iron-long had been released in 2025,”

it would currently rank as the 8th highest grossing domestic horror movie in 2025. Already. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I will just say from a community perspective, we went to go see this movie in a pretty, you know, relatively random time, noon on a Thursday, weeks after release. Yeah. In a kind of small theater at Universal City in Hollywood and outside of us, there was 15 other people in the room. Like, also, it was downpouring in LA,

which is actually important because people do not go outside when it rains here. And I've been into the movies in the past couple months. Like, that's a lot of people in a movie theater for a midday showing weeks after a movie comes out. So like this, this movie is still pulling in people weeks later around the country. Now, I want to talk about why this was actually successful. There's a number of reasons. Of course, you're listening and watching right now and thinking,

yeah, his 38 million fans contacted movie theaters and did 7 million in pre-sale. There's

no doubt that that is a big part of the equation. But again, not every creator has that ability to do that type of thing and to activate an audience like that. So it's worth looking at what are the ingredients of Markiplier and what he's done over the years that contribute to this

“being even possible. Okay. So let's talk about some of the reasons. I think the first is something”

I've already touched on a little bit. The fact that the rights for this game, even up for grabs, like it is, it was a smaller indie horror film. He didn't set out to like tell the Minecraft movie. Okay. So it was up for grabs. He was truly passionate about the story and the story happens to take place in a single location inside of this submarine with minimal characters. So his passion for the story of the game met perfectly with the actual logistics of being able to pull it off.

The fact that the entire game takes place in a submarine meant that he could film the entire movie essentially in one location. And on his channel, he brings you behind the scenes. I'll put it up. Yeah. It's green right now. But he shows this box lifted up in the sky in this sound stage. And it's being shaken around, which is when you watch the film, you see it's being shaken around. And that's the majority of where the entire movie is shot. So, you know, cost of production

“is capped. It's less than if you have to be in a million different locations shooting all over.”

Can I tell you what a room minded me of? One of the first things I thought when I watched it.

What's that? Bo Burnham's inside. Yes. Another YouTuber, right? Early stage YouTuber, who's like, let me work within the constraints of my room. Yeah. Like when I was watching Aaron Lung, I was like, only a YouTuber would think like this that I can work within the constraints of a room. Yeah. Because that's what Mark does too, right? He's like sitting in his room a lot. And he's making, he's engaging you for an hour while sitting in his room. When you watch Aaron Lung, you'll be like,

oh, oh, look at the variety of shots. Look at the variety of moods within this single room. In the beginning, I felt like, are we really just going to be in this setting the whole time? Like, how is it? How is he going to keep this interesting? And you realize he probably had the confidence because he does that. Yeah. He stays in one setting and keeps it interesting. If you're Markiplier and you have a deep passion to tell this story on a high scale in theaters,

that's actually a pretty good constraint because you're able to make production kind of tight,

I took out my iPhone, which by the way, I'm not that guy in a movie to take out his iPhone,

“but I was doing research watching this movie. Unfortunately, we were both that guy during this”

movie. Yeah, we were real embarrassed. Yeah, it was embarrassing, but there was some reason. Well, we had to film the screen, not for piracy purposes, just to clarify. Oh, man. Did you get nervous that they did? Yeah, I got really nervous. I got skiddish while I was filming the screen. I was saying, yeah, someone going to be like, sir. And then I was thinking about what response would be like, I'm here for research. Yeah. You know, I'm making a YouTube show about this movie. Yeah,

you're definitely kicked out. Yeah. So, um, okay. The first thing I wrote down was self-reliance.

And I wrote it because I was like, this guy, the promise of YouTube and the Creator economy was self-reliance in entertainment, meaning they're only things standing between you and your idea is yourself. That if you have the energy to just make it, film it, edit it, there's nothing else in your way. There's no studio in your way. There's nothing. While I was watching this, I was like, this is the embodiment of self-reliance. This is a

dude alone on screen performing in a movie so that he is making. That's my reason number one is that he made this movie like a YouTube video. Yeah. His passion to make it met perfectly with the feasibility of pulling it off. Right. Not to say that it was cheap, but for him, yeah, a $3

million budget, 35 days of production. Yeah. It was possible when paired with his passion and

there were no stakeholders. Yeah. So this was him making a film in the way that he would make a YouTube video and that there was nothing keeping him from doing it the exact way that he wanted to.

“Exactly. So that I think is actually really important. Okay. My second reason,”

this is not his first rodeo. Like it may be his first time on a screen as big as these and these types of theaters, but if you look at his history in 2017, he did a live tour called The Your Welcome Tour and he sold out thousand seat theaters across North America in Europe. And it was like a sketch comedy style tour. Like an interactive type of experience. Thousands seat theaters eight years ago, basically. It's like, that's a serious proof point that not a lot of creators would have.

Some creators have it and I think it would be important if you're thinking about

working with them on making a film. Right. But he had it eight years ago to a pretty big degree. Let alone in 2019 and 2022, he made YouTube originals. He did a heist with Markiplier and he did Markiplier in space, which were at a much higher production value because they were in coordination with YouTube. And they were playable movies. So he essentially made three movies for one because he would show you a scene and that he would give you an ultimatum and you could either go

left or right. And so we essentially had to make three movies for one. So he has experience acting, working on these types of sets. And then he also has experience getting his audience to rally around one of his projects. Right. Also in 2022, he told his audience that that if they could get his two podcast number one on the charts, he would start an only fan, which is an absurd premise. Sure. But within a couple of months, they did. His podcast became number one. He started an only fans for

what he called the most peaceful of news. Which I did not look into for the purposes of this project. But I was okay. All right, Jesse has them up for their screen. There are. Yeah.

“Okay. We can show those. Yeah. I think we can show that. Yeah. I didn't anticipate”

showing that in the episode. Yeah. If you're listening, maybe come onto YouTube or take a look at the video. And all of the money that he made from the the only fans went to charity. Right. So I say that only to say that like he didn't pocket the money for me. Yeah. But that was an instance where he rallied his audience around actually like getting something that he's going to make to number one. And that moment with the podcast and the only fans I actually think is

really significant because it speaks to the type of creator that he is. And we've talked about this on the show a couple of years ago now probably. But there are relationship-based creators. Which we would say is like an amateur and a genre of vloggers. You are there for the relationship. We bring this up often. But she made a video called you totally caught me making soup. Yeah. And you only click on that video if you're there for the relationship with her. That is no. That is no,

by no means a sensational idea. Then there are idea-based creators who like a Mr. Beast where last person to take their hand off a Lamborghini. Right. You're there for the idea and he is the host bringing you through it. But essentially it is the idea that is getting you in the door. Not your expectation that Jimmy is going to share with you something about him personally. Right.

we would call a community-based creator. Yeah. Where he has deeply creative ideas. But they are

“only to satiate his direct community. They are not made for an audience who does not know who he is.”

The other thing I wrote down during the movie is participatory media. Meaning even me being there, even us making this, we are participating in the story of Markiplier making the movie. Because he kind of encourages it. He makes it a part of the experience of being one of his fans or being a fan of his work to participate in it. And something I've noticed is just this week as I've been looking into Markiplier. I'm getting so much fan-made content about Markiplier in all of my

feeds now. Instagram Twitter. I opened up Twitter and the first thing I saw was drawings of Markiplier. And I'm like, oh, this is so interesting because he is a community leader. He's deeply understands that he's not in a relationship where he makes something and you watch it. He's actually making something more like a video game. All of his media is like a video game that you also get to play. Yes. And that is reason number three. He's not making his videos and his projects for his

audience. He's making them with his audience. Yeah. And when you have a true two-way street, that creates a different level of engagement and opportunity to actually activate a large group of people to go somewhere. It's very different than a creator like, I don't know, the Stokes Twins or something, where we talked about it on the last episode, the secret room videos. Those are very much entertainment. You are made to sit down and they're mainly for kids, sit and watch something and

then move on to the next video. You're not really interacting with that story. Right. Like you could

get the wrong signal from seeing that video like that has over a hundred million views. Again,

if you're someone in Hollywood, you might be like, oh, of course great. Like these views will turn into physical attendance or ticket sales. And that's just not the case. It's not true that

“all views will drive visits. And I think the way to tell is how”

engaged the community is not just not from comments. I'm not talking about comments and likes and shares like not your traditional social. I think I wrote three things that people can use to tell how engaged a community is just just quickly. If you're looking at somebody as a lot of views, how can you actually tell if there's like a deeply engaged community that's operating in this two-way street. Number one, Reddit community engagement. Is there a Reddit community around this creator and

how engaged are they? I think that's like a real tell tale sign. It's not a requirement, but it would be a really clear cut sign that there's like activity and action happening within this community. Number two is kind of what you just mentioned, but I wrote down the simple thumbnail test, meaning can they make a simple thumbnail and millions of people click on it? So Markiplier is one of his most recent thumbnails is called it just as my hair is gone and it's just an image of him that's kind

of dark. Yeah. Two point six million views. I think that should immediately signal to you

there's something going on here that's like a deep relationship. Yeah, the less accessible the title and thumbnail. Yeah. The more that video is a filter for how many people actually care.

“You have to be such a specific person to click on this video. That's a real tell tale sign of”

the engagement. Can I give an example of something that he did? Like that? Yeah. So he did an entire project if you're unfamiliar or called Eunus Honus in 2019 from 2019 to 2020, which was a brand new channel where he uploaded every single day for 365 days and the story of the channel is that it will be deleted at the end. And in that year the channel gained 4.5 million subscribers.

It had over 800 million views and the final live stream had 1.5 million live concurrent viewers.

And even I was like, wait, what was this? Like this was an ephemeral YouTube. I would remember hearing about this. Yeah. And speaking of Reddit, I went to his Reddit and there was an amazing comment. Someone was like, hey, what was this? I wasn't around. I wasn't following him when this happened, but I've heard about it. What was it? And a member of his community came in and said, it's basically like if you found out that your friend had won your to live. How would you spend

your time and allocate your time and think about those memories with that friend? Let's go. And this was a difficult project to make 365 videos a year knowing that you're going to delete all of that work. That is not something you do because you're hoping it pays you off in five years or that people can still watch it and become members of your audience. That is

all that effort into something they were just going to get rid of? They were just going to throw away.

And I said, it'll make sense when it ends. Because I firmly believe that the entirety of what something is cannot be truly appreciated until it ends. And that to me is the epitome of a community-based creator doing community-based content. Yeah. Like that project.

“That's why Markiplier can fill theaters and gross $48 million on this movie. So I also wrote”

down for the love of the game. Because when we sat down with Anthropo, who's a creator who does these big kind of viral stunts stuff like the Timothy Jailman. I look a like contest. He did this experiment called Cheeseball Man where he put up posters and created a superhero that Ada Jarve. Cheeseballs in New York City, a lot of the stuff he does is just for the love of the game. Like there's no commercial intent. Like Timothy Jailman, I look at that contest, did not have a sponsor.

It was just like he thought it was cool. And of course that I'm imagining all the people who haven't heard of Cheeseball Man knowing like, wait, what? Hold on. Can you, yeah, say that,

explain why that matters at all what? Basically what I'm saying is like, of course he has a business.

He does advertising. He does brand deals. He's recently launched an agency. But like a lot of the stuff he does, you can tell and even just out of his mouth, he said it's for us. It's like for the

“love of the game. Because he just loves it. He thinks it's cool. And I think you know, Markiplier,”

what you can feel in a lot of his projects is their status element for the love of the game. That like he said, he's made an unfathomable bound of money now. So at this point, like why work hard? At this point, why put this much effort into doing this? Like making a movie is hard. Because he loves it. And you can feel that. And I think that is a very, very new or unique feeling in the world of creators right now when it feels like most creators are here as a profession now.

There is obviously commercial intent when you're watching a creator. I mean, even with Mark, it's not like there's not there is of course. But when you get to a point where you can feel someone's desire to do something, when you watch Markiplier cry because of the success of this film on his channel, you feel something different as an audience member. And I think that is the, there's a purity here that is pretty hard to replicate. Oh, sorry. I'm just really, really happy. And

I'm really, really grateful. He himself said on the town that it would be hard to replicate. Yeah. But then he also went and called it a win for independent creators. Yeah. It just got me thinking like, okay, if he's such a unique case, who is winning out of this historic sort of case study of Markiplier bringing this film into theaters? I think Markiplier in his community win number one, right? I actually think it sounds like centurion wins. His theaters are win.

Yeah. His distribution partner that he cut a 50/50 deal with, they were probably like,

we thought this was something that he felt like we're gonna win. Yeah. This made $50 million.

Yeah. They must be already. Yeah. They must be floored. Uh, theater is definitely one. I think the reason why it's a win for creators is because, you know, we're still at this point where headlines hit. That's like, did you hear about that? A YouTuber made a good movie that people watched. You know, and I think that that is that is an important thing to happen still. Let me read the headline from the Atlantic. Yeah. Because it speaks to that sentiment perfectly.

It just says a no-named director to everyone, but his 38 million fans. And that headline is important. Like people who read the Atlantic or see that shared, who are like, wait, who's this? A YouTuber? What happened? There's a credibility factor that

“happens to creators. Now, when it comes to replicating this, I think you have to think about like,”

what, what even needs to be replicated. Like, it's not actually the financial outcome. That's very hard to replicate. And you need to have dedicated 24 years of your life to a community in the way that Markiplier did. And have the impact on a community that Markiplier did to get that outcome. Yeah. Okay. So that's number one. Like, sure. But put your head down and dedicate 24 years of your life into like a passionate craft. And you can maybe also have an

outcome, not promised, but you could. You also need to make a good film, which is a whole other thing. Let alone having the opportunity. Yes, making something good. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I wouldn't traditionally like a movie like this. But I was, I was hooked. Yeah. Mark, if you're watching this, listening, you are an exceptional actor. Like, I was blown away. I thought creatively everything from like the performance of this film to the look of it, to the sound design, to the, the way

the story was dripped out. Like, did you say dripped out because of all the blood? I did.

This is very good. And I just want to acknowledge it is hard to make something good. Yeah. It is really hard to make something good. It's very easy to make something mediocre. Very hard to make something good. So I just, you know, there's a lot of like analysis we can do and like, how he engaged the community all this, but like, just want to acknowledge the performance, the craft, the storytelling, it's very good. You made a great film. Agreed. Cannot state that enough. But I think the win is

for creators like us to understand that as the, the Hollywood system comes towards us, as the

“opportunities get bigger, as our industry gets bigger, to continue to remember that the thing”

that made us is self reliance that we can do it ourselves. And I think he is showing us like this inspires me to go like, oh, yeah, dude, you're right. The ideas that we feel passionate about. We should just make, you know, that may be sound so obvious, but that's where YouTube started. Like, is that experience that much better if we bring our audience through it? We bring all of you through it and make something that you feel like you're, you're more part of the story. Yeah, we're

working on a lot of stuff that's behind the scenes and trying to make deals and trying to put stuff together and it's like, it's awesome and it's cool and it's fun, but it's it's an old school model where I think the win for creators is the recognition that as we all get bigger, as we all have bigger budgets have more dollars to play with. The reminder is it is there for us to make cool projects.

There's a Walt Disney quote that I used to look at all the time in my 20s when we first started

making videos. And it said, we do not make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies. And that I think is like the reminder of this Markiplier project is you just like, we are in this for our own freedom of creativity. And it's a reminder that that creativity can potentially go farther and be seen by more people than we previously had thought because the power of the people who are considered gatekeepers is shifting. Yeah, the fact that the theaters were as

up for grabs as they were, I did not even realize that like my assumption when I would walk into an AMC or a regal is like, oh yeah, the the independent person has almost no ability to decide that they would like to be on these screens. And they are much more up for grabs when you look at how

“grassroots this movement was. Totally. And I'm not saying if you make things that you should be”

thinking about how you can get into 1500 or 3000 theaters, but even a small theater is up for grabs right now and is available. Convening a group of people to watch your work in person is a validating unique experience and it's up for grabs. It made me think about the fact that a local theater here in Santa Monica reached out to us a couple of years ago. Yeah, you're right. And it's a cool old vintage theater and they just said, hey, I'm a fan. I watch you guys and like, you know, we have open nights.

Yeah, you want to fill it. And we never did anything with it. And I'm thinking to myself like,

yeah, that theater is up for grabs. Right. And what a cool experience we could put on. And physical experiences are much more interesting right now. I'm going to read a comment from our last video about the world of abundance online and how much digital content there isn't how AI is creating an exponential world of abundance. This is from Mark Miller. He said, this episode really makes you think about the future of content creators. The idea that scarcity

and human connections will become the true added value in an era of AI generated abundance is an extremely interesting perspective. Great video, Colin, it's mirror. Another one from Melanie Ball, the offline world has already begun. More people are getting into it. I think with AI content,

“that's what's pushing people to disconnect. This is a pendulum moment towards IRL and then”

Mitch and his van. When authenticity can be duplicated and uploaded, then it seems to me that the only alternative is to go live and offer regular meetups with your audience. So I'll pause there.

But like, basically, people reacting to our last video about this increase in AI generated

content, increase in just abundance of digital content and saying opportunities to get out and be with other like-minded people. We should not overlook the fact that if you went to IRL and long, even today when we were in the theater, I was looking around. I was like, should we just talk to some people? It's kind of how I felt like I was like, oh, the movie's playing so I can't have already on my phone so I didn't interrupt you. But I kind of wanted to be like, but you, you're

in on it. You're part of a community, right? And that feels good that you're like, ah, we're all here because we're into the same thing. You know, you know, really, maybe you feel

it's made for you and your generation. Yeah. But yeah, if I go to Mission Impossible, I don't look

at the guy next to me and I'm like, yeah, man, you're like, dude, you like this. Yeah, there's, there's a, there's a deeply human feeling to being in the IRL and long movie right now. And like, I'd recommend you guys go check it out. Like, if you're fans of YouTube and fans of this world at all, like, go watch Iron Lung, go support it. It's like, it's really cool to be in that theater and look around and be like, this is dope. Like, that's just Mark on the screen. Like, that's

that guy from YouTube. That's just that guy from YouTube. And acting and looking really cool. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's insane. I would say the other place where we are seeing this happen a little bit and maybe a bit of like a Jason or, or a tangential. But like, I thought about retail stores and I thought about that time. We went to Walmart with Jimmy, with Mr. Beast and looked at his uh, uh, layouts like in, in the IRL shelf space, his shelf space. And how into shelf space, he got.

And how much he learned the amazing distribution of physical shelf space, right? And how, how different

that was from digital space. Yeah, his eyes. You could see his eyes lit up. Yeah, with the opportunity to be a part of people's lives exact in real life, in real life. And how different that was that he became a part of again, something that was scarce. He wanted, you know, different spaces in the Walmart. He wanted the end caps. He wanted spaces that were reserved for other people because they're scarce.

“And I think, um, that's the thing. He wanted all the views the same way. He wants all the views.”

Yeah, but yeah, but he wanted the right ones. And I just think, um, movie theaters are also like that. They're kind of like the retail stores for content, right? And they're the old model of like the, the, the physical thing. But they're not so, they're not so far gone. Like we are craving that physical connection and that opportunity to be in a room, look around and go like, we're part of something. And I think, um, Markiplier understanding, that's at the center of his content

is that you look around and you go, I'm a part of something if you know you know. So that's the difference. That is a dramatic difference. Like as we've said before, views are becoming available online. You can get, you can figure out how to get views. Now, doing that over 25 years, that's not easy. But like you can figure out how to get views right now. Um, communicating a passion and and building a community that is regularly engaged with each other, that's different. Those are

few and far, but there's only a few creators who can do that to that scale to that scale. Yeah, there are a lot of creators with communities. Yeah. But of that scale that could make this impact. I don't know how many there are. Yeah. There's not many unique, very unique and cool case study. Yeah. Okay. Now, this also made me think about this jacksepticeye clip where he's talking about the

“Mount Rushmore of YouTube. Made me ask the question, is Markiplier on the Mount Rushmore of YouTube?”

Should we see jacksepticeye? Yeah, let's watch. I don't rush more of YouTubers. I mean, we got to put Felix up there just because he put let's playing on the map for a lot of us and the reason why many of us are even doing it as a career now is because of him. Smosh are on that as well for the exact same reasons. They got him and started doing YouTube and now,

again, lucky enough to call all those people, my friends. I think they're an incredible channel.

And they went from like amazing to like, yeah, maybe not so good to now, like, better than they've ever been. I weirdly enough, I think I would put Ryan Higa on the Mount Rushmore. I don't think I ever really talk about him that much, but I think for what he did for the platform back then. Again, it's those earlier people who really just put YouTube on the map and we're doing it when maybe sometimes don't even get paid to do it, they just did it for the love of the game.

And up there as well is Jenna Marbles. Just right up until she quit, she was still incredible. I think I would like to see her upload again because I think it was very joyous to watch. And I watched basically every single video that was coming out, but I missed that sort of like fun goofy do whatever you want. Like turn on the camera and go energy and that's sort of like the light and the darkness to be cliche about it. But it was definitely, it's just like turn off

your brain, have a good time, forget about what's going on in the world kind of channel. Wow, so he went way back. He went way back, but I mean, Mount Rushmore goes way back, right?

“True, that's how that works. Yeah, that's how that works. He goes for not going to play.”

I'm going to probably put some people from my internet on it, but yeah, you're right. It does. It's funny. He mentions PewDiePie in the context of bringing Let's Play to YouTube, where it's like you actually look at it. Like the most successful YouTubers are the gaming YouTubers on a lot of them are the Let's Play YouTubers, the ones who built a relationship within that participatory media world. So with very long form content. Yeah. I mean, we would all have such a different

Mount Rushmore and of course for like our own influences. But if we're looking at the platform,

it makes perfect sense that he would be. Yeah. Yeah, I'd have to put Rhett and Link, but I would prefer

to put them together. Yeah, they're one. Yeah, I mean, he said smash. Okay. You could put Rhett and Link, I think, can be one. Yeah. I agree with that. It'd be very hard for me to suggest that Casey and I, that's not on there. I think he influenced an entire generation on the platform.

Genomarbles was one that I didn't expect, but I actually think is important. Super important. Personally,

“when I saw the Genomarbles face video, that's what made me realize I could upload to YouTube.”

The epitome of having a constraint, yes, like being in a room or being in a single frame, yes, and making the most out of that frame. Again, that was like self reliance. It was like,

that's it. If you're good, make something and do it with whatever you have. If you have to

Macbook computer and that's the camera you have, no problem. It's tougher me because there's there's people that I love who have stopped or have changed or have evolved, like El Mills, like Emma Chamberlain, that like have made a massive impact, but I feel like to be on the

“Mount Rushmore. Do you need to be consistently uploading still to this day? No, you don't.”

The people who are on Mount Rushmore aren't even alive. Look, but I don't like looking to Mount Rushmore that often, but that's a good point. Yeah. I think Emma could be on there. I think it'd be tough to also say that MKBHD isn't on there. Yeah. MKBHD is a pretty prolific creator. It's not easy. To only have five slots, like that's not easy. All right. Well, we probably did more than five, but yeah, I'm curious what you guys think in terms of your Mount Rushmore YouTube. I mean,

I'm going to put yes theory on there. Yeah, because I think they are the best least talked about channel. I agree with that. On YouTube, I'm very biased. They're good friends. But yeah, if you have your Mount Rushmore, we didn't do this exercise correctly. We did just named creators. We like. Yeah,

“that's unfair. Yeah. The tough that you have to pick for. We did not do that. We didn't do that, but”

we didn't follow on advice. And definitely go see Aaron Long. It is, it is a very good film. And, honestly, a huge win for independent creativity and a reminder that if you have an idea, just make it. All right. See you next week. Catching. Save. How do you feel? Hold your money. Now, just try it out.