PewDiePie

Background

Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, popularly known as PewDiePie, was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. His parents, Lotta Kristine Johanna and Ulf Chrisitan Kjellbeg, both worked in corporate jobs, far different from what he does for a living. When he was young, he had an interest in art and video games. He would often draw characters from the video games he played, such as “Mario,” “Sonic the Hedgehog,” “Donkey Kong,” and so forth. With Gothenburg having a big gaming community, PewDiePie would often skip classes to play video games with his friends. In his last year of high school, he made money by selling his art through his grandmother’s gallery. He used the money he earned to buy a computer that he used to launch his YouTube channel. He studied economics and technology at the Chalmers University of Technology, but later dropped out. He had often stated that the reason he left was not to pursue his career in YouTube but because he had lost interest in his studies.

After his exit from pursuing a university degree, his parents stopped supporting him in terms of money. He worked as a harbor captain, selling his art prints and working at a hot dog stand to finance his YouTube career. During that time, not a lot of people were doing gaming videos on YouTube, and that paved the way for an opportunity he decided to seize. Early in his YouTube career, he started by giving gaming commentaries on horror and action video games. The game that pushed his channel forward was “Amnesia: The Dark Descent.” Realizing he needed to diversify his content, he began making his own style of vlogs, named “Fridays with PewDiePie” in 2011. With hard work and consistency in making quality content, his channel collected over one million subscribers, and then two million in just a few months (2012).

He was then signed with Maker Studios, a network that would drive his growth even further. The following year, he reached 10 million subscribers, surpassing Jenna Marbles. Later on, he was also awarded a certificate from the Guinness World Records for being the most-subscribed to channel on YouTube. In 2013, his channel reached over 15 million subscribers. It reached a point where he gained a new subscriber every second! By 2015, his videos received over 300 million views per month, and he became the first YouTuber to reach 10 billion views (2015). However, his successful career wasn’t without any controversies — they involved Maker Studios, the ever-evolving YouTube algorithm, as well as his offensive content. One report stated that he read erotic fan fiction of the movie “Frozen” in one of his videos, putting his deal with Maker Studios at risk. He was also very vocal about his frustration with the YouTube algorithm, which only added more difficulty for a lot of content creators. Despite the controversies, he kept making content and growing his career even further.

Controversies aside, one of the things that the fans love about PewDiePie is his relationship with his partner, Marzia Bisognin. After dating for a long time, the couple finally married on August 19, 2019. They met through a mutual friend in 2011 and started an online relationship. He flew to Italy to meet her for the first time. The couple moved around between Sweden and Italy before finally settling in Brighton and Hove, England. PewDiePie stated that he’s happy about living in Brighton and Hove as he was able to avoid the commotion that comes with his fame. The couple also owns a house in Japan, and they moved there in 2022 with a five-year business visa. Regarding his political beliefs, PewDiePie has stated that he is apolitical, not leaning toward the left or right wing. In terms of religious belief, he claimed that he was an agnostic atheist.