PewDiePie vs T-Series was an online rivalry between two YouTube channels, PewDiePie (run by Felix Kjellberg) and T-Series (run by the Indian record company of the same name), for the title of the most-subscribed YouTube channel. The rivalry began when T-Series's subscriber count began to near PewDiePie's in late 2018, who had held the title of most-subscribed YouTube channel since August 2013. The rivalry lasted for 8 months until PewDiePie was officially surpassed by T-Series in April 2019, a title T-Series would hold until being surpassed themselves by MrBeast in June 2024.
Many YouTubers voiced their support for PewDiePie, including Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, MrBeast, DanTDM, KSI, H3h3Productions and Logan Paul. Many of his fans, known as "9-year-old army", made efforts to gain subscribers for his YouTube channel in numerous ways, including organised marches and supportive YouTube videos. Supporters of PewDiePie often used the slogan "Subscribe to PewDiePie". The activism of some supporters extended beyond legal grounds; vandalism, hacking of websites, social media accounts, personal devices and the creation of malware had taken place to urge people to subscribe. "Bitch Lasagna", a diss track by PewDiePie against T-Series, and the use of anti-Indian remarks by some of his fans (which PewDiePie would later criticize), led to several prominent Indian YouTubers publicly opposing PewDiePie and backing T-Series with YouTube videos and response diss tracks.
T-Series temporarily overtook PewDiePie in subscribers on numerous occasions starting from February 2019, including taking a good lead from 27 March to 1 April, before PewDiePie made a viral comeback. On 28 April 2019, PewDiePie released a video calling for his supporters to end their efforts to keep him as the most subscribed YouTube channel after the Christchurch mosque shootings, where the terrorist mentioned his name before the massacre. With the significant lead long held by T-Series, the competition is generally presumed to have ended with T-Series winning.
Background and overview
Felix Kjellberg, better known online as PewDiePie, is a Swedish YouTuber who makes comedic videos. He has traditionally been known for his Let's Play videos, and his channel was the most subscribed on YouTube from 15 August 2013 until 22 February 2019, when he was briefly surpassed by T-Series due to a YouTube routine audit, although PewDiePie took back the title shortly after approximately 8 minutes. His fan base at the time of the competition was generally known as the "9-year-old army".
T-Series is an Indian music record label and film production company. On YouTube, it has a multi-channel network consisting of 29 channels (excluding Lahari Music), run by a team of 13 people. The main T-Series channel primarily contains Indian music videos (Bollywood music and Indi-pop) as well as Bollywood film trailers, and releases several videos every day, having uploaded over 20 thousand videos as of October 2023.
The competition between the two channels began after T-Series began to near PewDiePie in subscribers in late 2018. T-Series temporarily overtook PewDiePie in subscribers on numerous occasions in early 2019, and on 27 March 2019, it became the most subscribed YouTube channel for five consecutive days, before PewDiePie regained the lead. PewDiePie then held the lead for 2 weeks, before T-Series passed him on 14 April 2019, reaching 100 million subscribers on 29 May 2019.
Activism
Support of PewDiePie
From YouTubers
The first prominent YouTuber to support PewDiePie was MrBeast, who bought billboards and radio advertisements in North Carolina urging people to subscribe to PewDiePie's channel. He also created a video of himself saying "PewDiePie" 100,000 times in a period of over 12 hours. MrBeast and his friends attended Super Bowl LIII, wearing T-shirts reading "Sub 2 PewDiePie". The group was prominently displayed in an ESPN tweet after Stephen Gostkowski had missed a field goal during the first quarter.
Other prominent YouTubers such as Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and Logan Paul made videos or tweets announcing their support for PewDiePie in the competition, often under the slogan "Subscribe to PewDiePie". YouTuber Justin Roberts, a member of the group Team 10, bought a billboard in New York's Times Square reading the same slogan. Markiplier made a tongue-in-cheek live stream titled "I literally won't shut up until you subscribe to PewDiePie" urging his viewers to subscribe to PewDiePie's channel. Jacksepticeye ran a live stream with the same purpose, jokingly threatening to delete his channel if T-Series surpassed PewDiePie.
Smaller YouTubers also promoted PewDiePie. In reaction to MrBeast's advertising campaign, Saimandar Waghdhare, an independent Indian YouTuber with the channel "Saiman Says", responded to MrBeast's advertising campaign by posting a sarcastic video in which he pretends to support T-Series, later releasing a video in which he instead declares his support to PewDiePie.
YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind, the 2018 video edition of the annual YouTube Rewind series, became the most-disliked video on the platform after heavy backlash. One of the cited reasons for the criticism was the lack of coverage of the competition between PewDiePie and T-Series. YouTuber Jaiden Animations, however, had contributed to the video, and her animation included several hidden icons and objects referencing PewDiePie, such as his chair.
Hackings
A hacker under the pseudonym "HackerGiraffe" sent print jobs to around 50,000 vulnerable printers in November, and another hacker under the pseudonym "j3ws3r" did the same to around 80,000 printers in December. Messages were printed out saying "PewDiePie is in trouble and he needs your help to defeat T-Series!" and urged printer users to subscribe to PewDiePie, unsubscribe from T-Series, and fix their printer's security settings. HackerGiraffe claimed that he had discovered more than 800,000 vulnerable printers using the search engine Shodan used for finding vulnerable devices. In January 2019, more than 65,000 of Google's Chromecast streaming dongles were hacked by HackerGiraffe and j3ws3r, displaying a message on smart TVs urging people to subscribe to PewDiePie and adjust their security settings. However, despite positive feedback from some people, one of the hackers anonymously revealed to the BBC that he suffered a breakdown due to the prospect of facing jail time and angry messages urging him to commit suicide, but did not regret lowering the number of vulnerable personal devices. Also in January, dozens of Nest cameras were compromised by a hacker under the pseudonym "SydeFX" using credential stuffing, who spoke to victims through the cameras, demanding they subscribe to PewDiePie.
Hacking was not limited to hardware. In December 2018, one of The Wall Street Journal's websites was hacked to display a message apologizing for articles accusing PewDiePie of antisemitism and to tell readers to subscribe to his YouTube channel. The hacker j3ws3r also took down T-Series's website with a denial-of-service attack. In February 2019, Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of Tampa, Florida, had his Twitter account hacked to post malicious tweets, one of these encouraging users to subscribe to PewDiePie. On 22 March 2019, a user on the PewDiePie subreddit developed ransomware by the name PewCrypt that encrypted files on other peoples Microsoft Windows machines. The attacker claimed he would release a decryption key when PewDiePie hit the 100 million subscriber milestone, however, the author claimed that if T-Series claimed that goal first, the decryption tool would be deleted permanently.
Other activism
On 4 November 2018, a group of young fans began to hand out posters in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, which PewDiePie acknowledged in a YouTube video. On 27 February 2019, Basketball Club Žalgiris based in Kaunas, Lithuania, had cheerleaders performing "Bitch Lasagna" during a time-out.
Several marches were held in support of PewDiePie. On 27 February 2019, a parade was held in Tallinn, Estonia in support of PewDiePie. Up to several hundreds of people took part in the march, which went through Tallinn's Old Town and other busy areas of the city centre. During the 2019 India–Pakistan standoff, T-Series removed the music of Pakistani pop artists from its channel. In response, there was a march in Pakistan where protesters held signs reading "Unsubscribe T-Series" and expressed their support for PewDiePie. On 10 March 2019, a rally was held in Moscow for internet freedom, coordinated by the Libertarian Party of Russia. During the rally protesters played "Bitch Lasagna" and held signs which read "Sub to PewDiePie".
On 12 March 2019, indie game developer Thomas Brush released a video game on itch.io based on PewDiePie vs. T-Series called Zero Deaths, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where PewDiePie must defend Marzia Bisognin, his wife, from fake YouTube subscribers known as "sub bots".
On 29 April 2019, a plane flew over New York City with a banner attached saying "Subscribe to PewDiePie". More than 21,000 people watched PewDiePie's live stream on DLive showing the plane with its banner fly over the city. During the live stream, PewDiePie said that the event (which happened after his request to end efforts against T-Series) was "a nice little wrap up" to the Subscribe to PewDiePie meme. The flight and banner, which costed more than $4,500, were crowdfunded by PewDiePie's fanbase.
The right-wing populist UK Independence Party announced their support for PewDiePie in a tweet. In an October 2019 interview with Kevin Roose of The New York Times, Kjellberg said of UKIP's support that "It's kind of funny how a political party would post about a meme" but that "it's also kind of like, Ehh, don't drag me into your politics."
Criminal acts
Although PewDiePie told his fans not to do "anything illegal" in their activism, some supporters committed criminal acts of vandalism to spread the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" meme. In March 2019, the Brooklyn War Memorial was vandalized with graffiti reading "Subscribe to PewDiePie". The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation said that they would remove it. PewDiePie later condemned the action, and stated that he had made a donation to the park. Another vandalism case occurred two days prior when "SUB 2 pewdiepie" was written on a school's property in Oxford, United Kingdom.
In the moments leading up to the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, the perpetrator said on Facebook live, "Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie", as he live-streamed the shootings. PewDiePie stated in a YouTube video that after this incident the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" meme should have ended, and that he delayed the announcement "out of respect for the affected families".
Support of T-Series
The rivalry between PewDiePie and T-Series received more attention in India due to controversial actions by PewDiePie and his fans. PewDiePie's "Bitch Lasagna" diss track contained some derogatory lyrics about Indian people that some Indians found offensive. Many of PewDiePie's fans had engaged in negatively spamming and trolling the T-Series channel, which included swarming T-Series's videos with PewDiePie-related comments, disliking videos, and flagging their videos with false reports. A number of PewDiePie's fans and supporters had also been making anti-Indian remarks and using racial slurs.
The actions of such fans led to several independent Indian YouTubers announcing their opposition to PewDiePie and support for T-Series. In November 2018, Indian-Canadian comedian and YouTuber Jus Reign uploaded a video called "In Defense of T-Series", where he talks about T-Series, mentions his childhood listening to their music, and shows a short music video at the end celebrating T-Series. In response to PewDiePie's "Bitch Lasagna" diss track, several Indian YouTubers responded with their own Hindi-language diss tracks against PewDiePie. Tatva K released his diss track "Pew Ki Pie" in November 2018, followed by Asif Bantaye releasing his diss track "PENDUBHAI" in December 2018. On 1 January 2019, Indian YouTuber CarryMinati, released a diss track called "Bye PewDiePie", which garnered nearly 5 million views in 24 hours.
Response
PewDiePie
In August 2018, PewDiePie posted a video titled "this channel will overtake PewDiePie" in which he jokingly rallied his fans against T-Series. The video also referenced the KSI vs Logan Paul YouTube boxing match, which similarly involved a rivalry between two major YouTubers. On 5 October 2018, PewDiePie, in collaboration with musician Party In Backyard, posted a diss track against T-Series, titled "Bitch Lasagna". The title of the song is in reference to a viral Facebook Messenger screenshot, in which an Indian man demands nude photos of a Western woman, and when his requests remain unanswered, refers to her as "bitch lasagna". In the song, he insults T-Series and their video contents, makes references to contemporary Indian stereotypes and accuses the company of using sub bots to gain false subscriptions.
After he was asked about his "serious opinions" about the situation, PewDiePie said: "I don't really care about T-Series, I genuinely don't, but I think if YouTube does shift in a way where it does feel more corporate, [then] something else will take its place. I think people enjoy this connection so much, I think something else will just show up, if it feels too corporate." He also blamed YouTube for a lack of support toward individual YouTubers. Speaking to Metro in November 2018, PewDiePie said that he was "surprised no one has stepped up sooner", referring to T-Series competing for the most-subscribed spot.