Arts
Onward soldiers:Lankans join PewDiePie’s global battle
For many the name PewDiePie brings a blank look but to 80 Million of his YouTube subscribers and the YouTube community, he is very well known. Recently the Swedish YouTube celebrated his fifth anniversary of becoming the most subscribed YouTube channel but his long-held title is being challenged by the Indian music production company T-Series, which is currently less than a million subscribers away from passing him.
Manitha holds up the fliers he was distributing in front of the rented billboard in Bambalapitiya
PewDiePie, AKA Felix Kjellberg, the controversial 29-year-old originally made ‘let’s plays’ and gaming oriented videos on YouTube and shot to stardom in 2013, quickly rising to the No. 1 spot. He still garners millions of views each day. He has now shifted towards more personality-based content with one of his most popular video segments being LWIAY (Last Week I Asked You). He goes through his subreddit and reacts to what his audience has uploaded – a great way in which fans can bring things to PewDiePie’s notice. Which is how Sri Lankan ManiYa ended up getting noticed by PewDiePie.
As the battle between T-series and PewDiePie has become an all-out war spanning the globe, his 9-year-old army (PewDiePie’s fanbase name), spam subscribe to PewDiePie all throughout the internet, place posters in all sorts of places and work hard to keep PewDiePie at No.1. After another YouTuber from North Carolina Mr Beast made a video, about how he rented out billboards and ads urging people to subscribe to PewDiePie and unsubscribe from T-Series, his efforts started a trend, with many following in his footsteps, like the Sri Lankan YouTuber ManiYa.
Manitha Abeysiriwardana, AKA ManiYa uploaded a video on YouTube on December 15, called ‘Sri Lankans for PewDiePie!’, renting a billboard in Bambalapitiya and giving out fliers all around town. ManiYa does videos related to entertainment, gaming as well as parodies, rant videos and vlogs. He also went to SLCG – the largest cyber gaming tournament in Sri Lanka, as PewDiePie became popular for his gaming commentary.
There were also others who were carrying posters, and attempting to support Pewds. “Most of the crowd at SLCG knew about PewDiePie, but some of them hadn’t actually subscribed. So, when I gave the fliers, some of them actually subscribed to PewDiePie right there. And to the ones who didn’t know about PewDiePie and the whole T-Series vs PewDiePie incident, I explained to them what it was all about,” ManiYa said.
Manitha’s billboard and PewDiePie’s reaction
“I have been watching PewDiePie since about 2013, and since 2016, he has been my role model and inspiration. Having been influenced by PewDiePie to start my own YouTube channel and doing similar content as him, it was my gratitude towards him to represent Sri Lanka as a fan.
Other than that, this was actually a personal investment to my channel as well,” says ManiYa.
ManiYa’s support was not overlooked by PewDiePie or the 9-year-old army as his video submission on the PewDiePie subreddit was upvoted more than two thousand times, finally making it into LWIY, where PewDiePie reacted on December 21 saying, ‘Thanks Maniya, very cool’ as well as “How does this keep happening?” That was a big deal for Maniya. “It meant a lot. I sometimes still cannot believe that it actually happened,” he says.
“When I posted a short clip of my billboard on Instagram, literally more than 100 people tagged PewDiePie on that post. This was before PewDiePie reacted to my video. My fans created accounts on Reddit just to up-vote my video submission on PewDiePie’s sub-Reddit. I would like to thank my audience and the fans, who like to call themselves the ‘Pie Army’, a lot for supporting me! After PewDiePie reacted to my video, my Instagram and Facebook notifications were blowing up.”
In essence, the PewDiePie vs. T-Series war is about a single individual against a well-supported organisation that some observers have likened to a David and Goliath scenario.