YouTube's biggest star Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, has grown up before the internet. Last year the YouTuber, who built a following uploading videos of himself playing video games, topped Forbes’ first ever list of highest paid YouTube stars with $12 million. PewDiePie, now 26 years old, knows he's changed and he's made a video to address that and fans' complaints that they miss the old him while owning up to his past mistakes like making offensive jokes. Here's what PewDiePie had to say.
Making videos since 2011 PewDiePie explains to his 43 million (!) fans in the new video titled "Old vs. New PewDiePie": "Obviously, I've undergone a massive change from my first video to my last." He continues, "I am very happy where I am right now, but it still seems that many people are stuck in the old days."
And instead of just telling fans the "old days" weren't that great he shows them revisiting his catalog of videos.
As mentioned earlier he reflects on past offensive jokes, for example stopping to say he really doesn't like the fact he called a character "gay" during an old video.
"I still make kind of stupid jokes that I shouldn't make, but I feel like back then I didn't understand," PewDiePie says. "I was so immature, and I just thought things were funny just because they were offensive. So I would say a lot of stupid shit."
PewDiePie says he's not "proud" of his past behavior but says he's grown up. In another instance he finds an older video, as Kotakunotes, with the word "retarded" in its title and changes the title as the camera rolls.
But PewDiePie also tells fans why else his old videos aren't that great showing how videos were unedited and sometimes boring and in one occasion didn't even include playing time as he's seen still choosing a character at the start of one video instead of cutting to the action.
PewDiePie's success continued this year with Scare PewDiePie, a web TV series exclusive on YouTube's subscription service executive produced by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman.
