Rewind Time

Rather than study for her exams, Charlotte McDonnell (formerly Charlie) started the YouTube channel charlieissocoollike in 2007. Posting a combination of vlogs, comedy videos and challenges, Charlotte’s channel broke out when her video How To Get Featured On YouTube was featured on the YouTube UK homepage. What began as procrastination lead to Charlotte becoming arguably the UK’s first YouTube sta...

Dan and Phil. Phil and Dan. Dil. Phan? We reach the conclusion (for now) of our Dan and Phil series, focusing on the pair’s collaborative channel formerly known as Dan and Phil Games. What started as as a Let’s Play channel would develop with the boys, hosting collaborations, side projects, and tour videos. Not even Dan’s multiple year hiatus could kill the channel, with Dan and Phil resurrecting...

Our second episode on Dan and Phil focuses on Daniel Howell’s personal YouTube channel, formerly known as danisnotonfire. Before launching his channel, Dan was a fan of Phil’s channel AmazingPhil, and the two became online friends. With encouragement from Phil, Dan uploaded his first video, ‘Hello Internet,’ in 2009. Dan’s storytime/sketch videos were reminiscent of creators like CommunityChannel,...

We begin our 3 episode Dan and Phil series with AmazingPhil, the main channel of Phil Lester. When Phil published his first YouTube video in 2006, shot using a camera from a cereal box, he couldn’t have know it would lead to online stardom, the creation of beloved comedy duo Dan and Phil, and meeting Kylie Minogue. Nearly 20 years on from his YouTube debut, Phil is the undeniably more active half...

YouTube Rewind 2011 was the second installment of YouTube’s end-of-year retrospective series. It repeated the format from the previous year, counting down the top 10 most viewed videos on the platform in 2011. However, it introduced an element that would become central to Rewind, a YouTuber cameo, with Friday songstress Rebecca Black playing the role as host. We discuss how the popular videos shif...

Everyone know’s Rebecca Black’s Friday , but comparitively few are aware of her second YouTube life as a 2010 lifestyle creator. Friday became one of the defining YouTube memes when it released in 2011, drawing millions of viewers and launching Black to global prominence. Unfortunately, much of the attention was negative, with the then 13-year-old Black receiving targeted harassment online and at...

The Jackass of food. That’s how everyone described Epic Meal Time, including the boys themselves. Led by ringleader Sauce Boss Harley Morenstein, these Canadian 20-somethings rose quickly to YouTube stardom in 2010 on the back of their monstrous, highly caloric food creations like the TurBacon Epic, the TurBaconEpicCentipede, and the original Fast Food Pizza. The channel format would be spun out f...

Throughout the 2010s, Jenna Marbles was one of the YouTube community’s most beloved and popular creators. Since releasing the canonical ‘How to Trick People Into Thinking You Are Good Looking’ in 2010, Jenna would use this format and other 2010 YouTube comedy staples like ‘Girls v Guys’ to grow her audience. She moved to LA, began dating fellow creator Julien Solomita, and would collaborate with m...

This week, we return to that treasured 2000s YouTube genre, the Harry Potter parody. A Very Potter Musical (AVPM) was staged at the University of Michigan for a modest three night run in 2009. Two months later, the cast uploaded an amateur recording of the performance to YouTube. Harry Potter fans, starved of content following the conclusion of the series, would latch on to the musical and propel...

Felicia Day is an actress, writer, and presenter who starred in the web series The Guild and co-founded the YouTube channel Geek & Sundry. We discuss Felicia’s roles in Joss Whedon’s work and how The Guild differed from other depictions of nerd culture. Her channel Geek & Sundry was launched during YouTube’s push towards producing original content in the early 2010s and was quickly acquire...

We explore YouTube Rewind’s humble beginning as a top 10 of 2010’s most popular videos. Rather than a cameo-filled remix of the year gone by, 2010 YouTube Rewind: Year in Review was a very matter-of-fact countdown more akin to Funniest Home Videos than later YouTube Rewind installments. It’s a timely episode given the list features recently-covered creators like Schmoyoho, The Key of Awesome, and...

Musical quartet The Gregory Brothers rose to fame off the back of their YouTube channel Schmoyoho. The musical comedy channel would hosted long-running series series Auto-Tune the News, Songify the News, and Songify this, with the Gregory’s remixes of politics, viral videos, and memes often leading to themselves going viral. The Gregorys would go on to feature on the Oscars, on Late Night, and hos...

We chat YouTube icon and multi-hyphenate Trisha Paytas and her channel blndsundoll4mj. Trisha has a huge internet footprint so we focused only on her early YouTube career up until say 2013. This includes her Quentin Tarantino fandom (same), her fast-talking Guinness World Record attempts, various hauls and lifestyle videos, and one of Trisha’s first big break up reactions. We touch on how Trisha’s...

Shane Dawson has loomed over many of our episodes, so we finally sit down and watch his content. Shane’s comedy videos propelled him to YouTube stardom, although at the expense of his and his families jobs at Jenny Craig. We discuss Shane’s comedic style, the since-apologised for use of blackface and race humour, his collaborations and parodies of other YouTubers like FRED, and finally his move in...

The spectre of 2008’s YouTube Live has loomed over most Rewind Time episodes, so we decided to watch the ceremony in full. YouTube abandoned the concept after its inaugural run, and it’s not hard to see why between the awkward celebrity cameos, stilted live performances and the limitations of live streaming technology. Still, we found a lot to enjoy in this messy affair and kinda wish they’d have...

This week we chat beauty YouTuber Bethany Mota, formerly known as Macbarbie07. Bethany started uploading her makeup hauls as a teenager and by 2013 was YouTube’s most subscribed beauty creator. We discuss how Bethany leveraged her success into a clothing line, appearances at global YouTube fan events, and a stint on Dancing with the Stars. Bethany remains a huge influence on beauty creators and ho...

Before Inside and Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham was a humble YouTuber. We chat the comedy superstar YouTuber origins - from recording original music in his childhood bedroom, to performing at YouTube Live, signing a record deal and eventually leaving the platform. We cover how Bo’s comedy changed as he matured, his signature themes and style, and what makes someone a ‘YouTuber’. CHAPTERS Introduction 0...

We chat Australian YouTube pioneer and fellow Sydneysider Natalie Tran of Community Channel fame. Natalie’s observational comedy propelled her to become the most popular Australian YouTuber and led to a career in Australian media. But in 2016, Natalie left YouTube, only having uploaded twice since. We discuss how a lot of her catalogue is privatised, our favourite videos and the legacy of Australi...

We dig into The Key of Awesome (KoA), the musical comedy/parody series on the channel of the same name. We examine how KoA began life as Barely Political, with their viral hit Crush on Obama establishing the channel’s winning formula - topical comedy and hot babes. This ethos was carried over to KoA’s mega-successful parodies of early 2010 pop culture mainstays Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Lady G...

The Annoying Orange is Dane Boedigheimer’s YouTube comedy series starring the titular anthropomorphic fruit and their talking food friends. We discuss the series’ heyday in the early 2010s, the Cartoon Network show and the expanded Annoying Orange channel network. We touch on the channel’s prolific content output, the spooky recent videos and conclude with our lasting impressions of The Annoying O...

We chat Vlogbrothers - the vlog, commentary and general hijinks channel that kickstarted the Hank and John Green YouTube empire. These millennial nerd kings founded VidCon, met the president, and cosigned Charli XCX, all while John became One of the Best Selling Authors of All Time. Max’s subscription: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Lucy’s subscription: Muji Salted Cocoa Cracker with Chocolate Cream...

This week, we're chatting about FilmCow, the animation-focused channel run by Jason Steele and made famous by Charlie the Unicorn. We touch on how Charlie the Unicorn is one of the enduring viral videos, FilmCow’s vast and varied body of work, and how changes to YouTube’s algorithm affected animators. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:30 Our history with FilmCow 00:03:23 FilmCow’s origins 00:07:43 Charl...

We chat OG YouTuber Tay Zonday, best known for his viral song “Chocolate Rain”. Tay would follow up his biggest hit with commercial spins on it, new original music, and covers of everything from Christmas classics to Carly Rae Jepsen. What we’re subscribing to Max - The Pitt, HBO Max. Lucy - Reformer Pilates, Joseph Pilates. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:21 Our history with Tay Zonday 00:06...

We yap about VenetianPrincess, the late 2000s parody music queen.  Neither of us was familiar with VP before this episode, so listen to us track her content journey from the early Disclosure series, to her breakthrough with a Hillary Clinton friendship song, to her highly popular parodies of pop songs.  VP would become ‘The most subscribed female on YouTube’, and her videos featured cameos from so...

This week we chat Fred, the high-pitched, hyperactive, and arguably highly annoying character created by Lucas Cruikshank. We touch on how the channel became incredibly popular on early YouTube, how Lucas used his online popularity to launch a mainstream acting career on Nickelodeon, and the eventual spoiler  peaceful retirement of the Fred character. This week we are subscribing to: Lucy: Mochi M...