Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg has laughed off concerns over his dwindling YouTube popularity, and the steep drop in views, claiming he “already feels retired” and stopped caring about fame a long time ago.
For years, Swedish content creator PewDiePie reigned supreme as the King of YouTube, sparked by his huge T-Series vs Pewds rivalry, extraordinarily popular Minecraft videos, and more.
In more recent times, however, the 32-year-old has found his average video views dropping away, his interactions dwindling, and his popularity seemingly “fading away” in a way he and his fans have never seen before.
While his “Bro Army” may care, Pewds says it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. He’s already climbed to the immense heights of the top of YouTube, he says — a goal he “didn’t even really want,” ironically enough — and has been purposefully “doing what [he] likes” for months.
“I’ve said it before,” he said after one worried fan raised concerns. “I’ve considered myself retired for like a year now. I’m only doing YouTube videos for fun now.”
The biggest concern the PewDiePie fandom has had in the past few months has been around the Swede’s immense subscriber count, and how having those 110 million followers doesn’t translate to video views anymore.
Felix was quick to brush those concerns in a December 2 video.
“This channel is so hyper-inflated by the T-Series rivalry, so it’s not like they’re all my dedicated fans anyway. And then, I’m doing what I like doing. People have always put me in a box, and I think that’s the big problem here. I’m doing what I like, and that means that people will stop watching me.
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“Honestly,” he continued, “I’m kind of getting tired of it. I’m just trying to have fun, and people say ‘I wish he was like he was five years ago!’ That’s not what I want to do. Years ago I did horror, and when I stopped my views dropped then.
“I’m allowed to change. I stopped worrying about if people were watching, and started making things I wanted,” he said. “It’s normal to change.”
Related segment begins at 2:07 in the video below.
Funnily enough, the “drop” in PewDiePie’s immense YouTube popularity still leaves him raking in more than two million views per video, and he often adds more than a million new subscribers each month that he uploads.
Kjellberg admits he’s “extremely lucky” to have the success he’s enjoyed over the past decade, and says he’s “chilling” now. At the moment the Swede is enjoying reaction videos, but the 32-year-old admits that could change again too. If that comes with less views, he adds, “so be it.”
“People always complain,” he said. “When I did games, people complained. When I watched Reddit videos lots, they complained. They do it for everything.”