YouTube's biggest star just trolled everyone - here's what's going on
To call Felix Kjellberg "internet famous" is to sell him short. The name may not be familiar to you, but perhaps his pseudonym is: "PewDiePie."
He's a handsome Swedish man who plays video games, records video blogs, and makes millions doing so (about $15 million this year, according to Forbes).
That's also selling him short - Kjellberg makes his job look easy, which is almost certainly a testament to how hard he actually works. He publishes at least one, often several, videos per day. That's before you start talking about the show he made for YouTube, or the video game about him, or his talent agency, or his book.
His YouTube channel just passed 50 million subscribers. That's a really big deal! His videos casually reach tens of millions of people.
He's far and away the most popular YouTuber, by tens of millions of subscribers, which is why it was such a big deal when he announced last Friday that he was going to shut down his channel upon reaching 50 million (he was just over 49 million at the time).
Gaming sites and major news sites alike covered his announcement. Assuredly someone from YouTube called him in a terrified panic.
Turns out he was just joshin'.
Kjellberg isn't shutting down his PewDiePie account. Relax.
Instead, he posted an update on Friday thanking fans for pushing his channel over 50 million subscribers.
In that video, he did indeed delete his YouTube channel - his alternate YouTube channel, named "jack septiceye2." That channel is no longer available.
Kjellberg's latest video runs through a montage of media coverage (like this piece you're reading!) that he laughs at, his troll having been a success.
He even doubles down and says he's going to delete his PewDiePie channel at 100 million subscribers, but we'll forgive you if we're not holding your breath this time.