Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 61 Markiplier - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: March 20, 2015

Gamer, vlogger, and creator of one of the fastest growing YouTube channels, Markiplier, joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss the art of creating viral “Let’s Play” videos- walking the line between performance and reality, his emotional final moments with his father, and the extreme impact caused by his decision to share so much of his personal life with his fans. Go to http://lynda.com/rhettandlink and try it FREE for 10 days on us! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. Joining us today at the round table of dimmed lighting is vlogger, gamer, and creator of one of the fastest growing YouTube channels out there today, Mark Fischbach, AKA Markiplier. Markiplier's unique approach to Let's Play style videos

has exploded all over the interwebs, earning him four and a half million subscribers last year alone. Wow. Here's a clip of Mark playing the insanely popular and very scary Five Nights at Freddy's. If I didn't want to stay the first night, why would I stay any more than five?

Why would I stay any more than two? Hello. I don't wanna die. Oh, what was that for? than do hello. I don't wanna die. I WANT TO PUT THE POWER! UGH. AH! OH NO! HI! OH! HOW ARE YOU DOING?

GO AWAY! NOBODY LIKES YOU! IT'S STILL THERE! I WANT MY MOMMY! He likes you! He's still there! I'm on my own! I'm on my own! His rise to YouTube fame can be attributed to many things. One of them is his amazing voice. That clip didn't really do it justice

because he was yelling a lot, but you'll know what I mean when you hear him in this biscuit. His voice will tickle your ears. Tickle, tickle, tickle. After spending some time with Mark, we not only got to know him better personally, but we really found this to be a case study in connecting with your audience.

Beyond his amazing voice, his success is also a result of how open and even vulnerable he is. The viewers get more than just a walkthrough of a video game, they actually get to know this guy on a personal level because he isn't afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. In this biscuit, we talk with Mark about

our shared experience of swinging on vines as kids, his emotional final moments with his father, the events that led Mark to start creating Let's Play videos and how a Reddit post propelled him to internet fame and why he chooses to share so much of his personal life with his fans. We're really super excited to share our time with Mark with you.

But first we wanna remind you that you can support this show by checking out lynda.com slash Rhett and Link. That's L-Y-N-D-A.com Rhett A-N-D Link. Whether you wanna take better photos or shoot better videos, learn programming skills to develop your own mobile app or edit your own video footage using Final Cut Pro or Premiere, lynda.com offers thousands of video courses

to help you get where you want to be. It really is a great site. You can learn at your own pace on your own terms and you can get a free 10-day trial by going to lynda.com slash Rhett and Link. And now the people who, just so you know, it isn't just like a slideshow. I mean, this is people.

Experts. Telling you, teaching you, experts in these areas teaching you courses. This isn't like when you go ask your uncle for advice. Oh, you wanna ask me for some advice? You wanna learn how to whittle? A little. Go to lynda.com slash Rhett and Link

and try it for free for 10 days on end. Listen, 10 days for free. And then if it doesn't work out, you can go back to your uncle. Your uncle will teach you how to whittle. Now on to the biscuit with Markiplier. You had a whittle. Now on to the biscuit with Markiplier.

I'm very open about my emotions, especially on my channel. And it's strange because I am a gaming channel. So all my content is gaming oriented and it's in that aspect that I push my channel. But also, as with many gaming channels, they're not so much about the games as they are about the person. as with many gaming channels, they're not so much about the games as they are about the person. And one of the things that has taken me a long time to realize is just the kind of influence that I have and also the kind of feedback

I get from my fans. So the reason that I cried, well the most reason recent reason I cried was for my 6 million subscriber video. Was it my 6 million? Yes. It was the fan video. Like they made million subscriber video. Was it my 6 million? Yes. Yeah, yeah. It was the fan video.

Yeah. Like they made a music video. Yeah, yeah. And it was interesting because that hit me so hard because the music that was played there, it was a cover of a game that I played, which related back. It was called To the Moon.

I don't know if either of you have ever played the game. It's a rather small indie game, but it's about a dying old man who wants to relive his life and remake the choices that he's made and the mistakes that he's made. And going back into his past was really cool. It was a very deep game, very good game too.

Highly recommend it. Very narrative driven. But that's besides the point. The song from the climax of that game was what was covered. And when I heard it, like before I started recording my reaction to it, it opened up and I heard the first word.

And I just went, oh no, here they come. Oh God. So I got to turn on my camera so everyone can see me weep like a baby. And so you knew that you couldn't pre-watch it. You had to get that. So if you were going to cry, you were going to act. Yeah.

You don't want to have to re-cry because you didn't record your first reaction yeah yeah i don't leave anything on the table i'm all raw all the time whenever i record my videos but uh that was actually a promise that i made to that particular channel because they made a five million video for me and i didn't record my reaction because i didn't have internet at the time so i just watched it anyway it was very touching but not like this one was because when i'm even thinking it now, it's kind of making me a little weepy. You're going to see me cry here.

Do it. No, God, no. Yes, please. But just it was the fact that I saw so many of my fans in one place. And each of them took up maybe like a tenth of a second. But I still saw them. And I knew they took the time. Six million times ten seconds. A tenth of a second but i still saw them and they i i knew they took the time six million times 10 seconds

a tenth of a second god 10 seconds a piece that would be incredible but yeah just the fact that there were 649 people in that video wow 649 out of 6 million people was such an astronomically huge difference and yet in this video seeing all those people in one really got to me and when the song came on because the game reminded me of my own family and how i lost my dad when i was uh 18 and how like uh in the game there was a question of the brother and i have a brother that i care very much for so the game hit me very hard and when i heard that music over what i was seeing it was just it was too much and it hit me really hard in my heart and it just made me realize how lucky I was to be where I was and the video that I did before that

where I cried again like a little baby was for my actual six million and I was or no it was for five million that's right every every million subscribers you cry pretty much yeah well because I'm honored I'm very very honored at what happened. But the reason that particular one was so important to me is because when I look back at all the subscribers I have, I remember the early times. And you guys probably remember the early times in your channel when you had a one-on-one conversation with a lot of your fans. And you were able to talk with them. And one of the things that hit me hardest was I had recently been getting a lot of emails from fans. I've been making a concerted effort

to try to read through, uh, some of the emails and it really, really hit me. And I had to re record that video like 10 times cause I couldn't get through it. I was crying so much. Um, and it was because I read emails of people that were fans of me when I had just started YouTube and it was because I read emails of people that were fans of me when I had just started YouTube and it was from their family members who said that my videos helped them out in the last moments of their life and that hundreds and hundreds of fans who were there with me in the beginning of my channel are now gone they died in the progress of me getting to this point and they didn't care that i was a huge channel and they didn't care that i had five million subscribers they cared that i was able to give them some joy in their life when they were at their last moments and that really really

resonated with me and and gave me meaning because you know i i i recalled in the video that because uh i talk about a lot about losing my dad because i was there and i was there through the whole process and i was able to see what happened to him and i i visualize that when i think of fans that i've lost along the way i think of how how scared they were and how they were surrounded by family and those who love them. And even though I'm not connected to them in any way, I don't know them. Right, you don't know them personally.

Yeah, exactly. But you have such a connection. And I certainly want to explore your journey as a creator to bring along and amass such an audience that is so connected to you and it goes both ways. I mean, you get the impression you're not the only one crying, but like you said, it's a fascinating story that we wanna unpack

and kinda step back through with your dad and all these things you're mentioning because on the surface, it's just a gamer channel, man. You're just a guy who plays video games, an outsider would say. Yeah. So we do want to explore that, and we also want to explore a range of emotions here.

We've talked about wearing your heart on your sleeve. Let's get back there, but also another emotion, extreme pain. I know that- Have you recovered from your five million Scoville hot sauce experiment? It was terrible. You decided...

Give us the backstory on this hot sauce video. My fascination with hot sauce started with hot pepper gaming. And I actually mentioned this last year when I first met you. I love the video you did with the ghost pepper. Did you do the ghost pepper at the same time? I can't remember. Yes. You both did the ghost pepper.

And I loved, loved that video. And I started out with a habanero. So I didn't go as extreme. But after that, I got this addiction. And I found this sauce that was about two million Scovilles. And I accidentally did an ice cream scoop's worth. Because I didn't have normal spoons, so I might as well use it. That's a problem.

Yeah, that's a bad thing. You're only supposed to use a drop of that. But I use like a full teaspoon of two million scoval hot sauce and it almost killed me i like how your verb is you used it you're not tasting it you know you're not trying it you used it uh for views like we did or for something else it was a mixture of i knew people wanted to see it but i knew people didn't want me to do it and that only pushed me to do it even more just to like show them like ha you can't control me i did it anyway oh crap and what and what was that what sauce was the two million do you remember they all have these crazy names yeah it was called the

hottest sauce in the universe version two. So it beat its previous version somehow. It upended itself. And this is the one in the most recent. No, this was in the previous one. No, the most recent is 5 million. Yeah, it came in a coffin. It was that bad. I've been in a store and seen that one. Yeah? The one that was wax sealed.

It was terrible. It's like called Satan's Blood or something. I can't remember even what the name was. I don't even know if I read it on camera, but yeah, something like that. Two layers of wax. I had to get a knife and just peel off and peel and shuck it. But you took a smaller amount. You went with just a fork.

Yeah. I took two prongs of a fork and I dipped it in and that's all I did. It was just as bad. Like just those two prongs probably equated to the same as what I did before. But I was mentally prepared for it. And you did it because you had a head cold. Yes, exactly. And you wanted the views.

Yeah, pretty much. I took a picture of this like two months prior. And people were like, don't do it for two months. Like bringing it up every once in a while and just reminding me that I needed to do it. And I went like, fine, screw it. Why not at my lowest point when i'm sick and i feel awful why not kick myself in the ass because i am a true masochist in that respect and i so so didn't want to do that that morning and then i had the idea and then i had to do it so um were you rewarded for your investment?

For my investment of buying the sauce? Did it get rid of your cold? No, it made it worse. I felt so bad after that. Because the same thing happened. The first time I did the 2 Million Hot Sauce, I felt fine 30 minutes after I did the sauce. But then two hours later, it dropped into my lower intestine.

Oh, yeah. Like SpongeBob with the pie bomb, it dropped down and exploded. And I wound it up. Everything seizes up. You go into the fetal position, right? Yeah, naked on the bathroom floor. Yes, that's where I was. And it didn't happen that bad. I was not naked.

Because it was less, lower amount. Yeah, it wasn't as much. So it kind of went away quicker. But I was still like, oh, like oh no fell on ground got trash can was ready like i'm ready for this i know what's up but you didn't retch did you no no i didn't throw up that time oh because that's horrible if you do that oh it hurts worse coming up the first time yeah when i was naked on the bathroom floor yes absolutely i don't know what the rating of this podcast is so i won't go into vivid details of what happened on that floor but uh it was bad you can you can just let us know okay i was naked on the floor why were you naked i don't know that's the

weirdest thing because somehow like i i was in the bathroom and i was throwing up and i thought it would feel better if i was not wearing clothes because i was sweaty i was sweating every primal you know yeah primal you lose all discretion when you're in that much pain yeah if only i had a camera i would record it at all put it on youtube for the delicious views but no i was i somehow took off all my clothes and decided that i needed to lay down and it was so horrible because i thought i was gonna die my phone was upstairs no one else was there i knew like known in the area you thought seriously maybe i need to call like yeah 9-1-1 yeah but i didn't because you know because because then you'd be a story a new story yeah and i don't want that that's terrible yeah i want to die with some dignity naked on my floor but when you're throwing it up it burns again oh yeah

yeah it did and it looked i was so scared because I drank like a half a gallon of milk before. That'll do it too. And that probably made my stomach feel so bad. And then- Bananas are the key. Bananas are the key? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will save that for the next time. I eat a couple of bananas before and after, and it really helps. I think you ate eight before the Carolina Reaper.

I ate three before and two or three after. Link ate one before and none after because he doesn't like bananas. Fatal, fatal. And 13 hours after we ate the Carolina Reaper, which is two million Scoville units, he was in the fetal position. He was not naked. If he had gotten naked, I would have left the room. Oh, that's so crazy. But then with the five million, you didn't vomit, but did it burn when you pooped?

Yes, of course. Yeah, that's like a natural occurrence. Like with a habanero, it's going to burn when you poop. Ring of, of course. Yeah, that's like a natural occurrence. Like with a habanero, it's gonna burn when you poop. Ring of fire. Yeah. Oh, man. Just the day after. Because the day after was even worse, because I had a charity livestream the day after. And I don't know why I decided to punish myself so severely the day before this livestream,

but I only lasted three and a half hours on the livestream. But luckily, we hit our goal in like an hour and a half, so I was clear. I could get out of there. But I felt so bad for so many reasons. And the goal was? We were raising money for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, which was $54,000 was our goal.

We raised $75,000, which was really cool. Wow. Awesome. Let's get into your process a little bit before we go into your background. You release two Let's Play videos a day. Yes. And it's five or seven days a week all days seven days a week seven days a week and i mean do you have a backlog of these things uh no actually um because i like to stay on top of games that come out more recently uh and because there are less

games that come out it's hard to get the games that I want to play. Now, literally, I could play anything I want and people would probably still watch it. But I like to stay recent and play a very select band of games. Because, like, people come to see me, but they also come to see the games. Like, the games gotta be cool. And with the way my life works, I have so many other aspects that I'm trying to do because some buddies of mine just came in from South Carolina, and they want to do sketch comedy, and I want to do sketch comedy with them. So I'm dedicating a big chunk of my time working with them now because I want to do that. Where are you finding that time?

Usually in between everything else in my life, like eating and sleeping, I just sacrifice that, and then I slot that in there. So you don't sleep? Not as much as I used to. And you're picking the right games, but every day you're playing two sessions. Yeah. Or I mean, do you have to play more if you don't get what you need kind of a thing? Yeah. No, no, that's totally possible. I have a folder of games that people are very curious about that I will never ever post because they're either terrible about terrible things. I played like an ISIS simulator game. And I don't even know why I tried. It was so terrible. Like just so wrong in every way.

I couldn't actually get through the whole thing. Who makes these things? It's just on the internet. Like their indie game site and game jams all the time where people just spend 24 hours to make a crap game. But sometimes gems like Surgeon Simulator or something like that will come out of it. And it'll be a great game that people love to see because it's unique and interesting. So you got to take risks and be like, okay, I don't know what this is about, but maybe it's a joke. That game was not a joke.

Like it was absolutely not a joke at all. Not funny in any way. So never going to get put up. And there's a lot of occurrences like that'll happen and then they have to chuck them and there's other other times where i'm recording like a 45 minute episode because i'm playing a longer game or i'm trying to get through it or i'm playing a game that is an hour and a half and i didn't know it was an hour and a half going into it so you know it's always a surprise and so so a lot of the times you are actually discovering the game for the for the first time in the video i mean this is your authentic

experience it's not like let me check this game out let me see what my angle is going to be no no you very rarely unless it's something that's pre-planned out beforehand which it hardly ever happens i like to go into games completely blind because that gets, like, it gets authenticity out of me and I never want to put up anything fake on my YouTube channel. Like, people will say or look at my channel from a bird's eye view and be like, ah, he sometimes, like, ah, fakes reactions or whatever. But the honest truth is that that's actually just who I am and I'm trying my best to make sure that everything I do

is as authentic as possible. So what's your day-to-day like? Schedule. Today, I got up at 4.30 today because I accidentally took a day off yesterday. And I had to record videos for my 8 a.m. release and my noon release. But unfortunately, I had a meeting with an accountant and I had a doctor's appointment this morning. So I had to cram all that in before 8 a.m.,

get that done and up, and then... Both videos. Yeah, both videos. Get them recorded, done. I hoped and hoped that they were good videos, and they were, kind of, so I just threw them up, and that was it. This is not how every day goes.

This is just an example of what today happened to be. And you schedule them so they come out at different times during the day, Yeah. Or you just throw them up? 8 and 12. 8 and 12. 8 and 12 usually. That's what I'm trying to do. Since this year I try to do that. But I just spend a lot of time recording and editing because I don't have an editor.

I'm a team of one. I do all the scouting for games. I do the recording and then I do the editing afterwards. And it's just kind of an endeavor. But every day it's an interesting adventure because I built my life around this schedule. But I'm going to have to get ahead of it at some point or else I'm going to lose my mind. And you keep it pretty raw in terms of you're not jump cutting to just all the best parts.

I mean, a lot of times you'll just kind of play right through. Yeah, not all the time. I do for certain games. But yeah, I like to give people more of a view of the game itself and like the whole aspect of it. Because people will say, and I totally understand, for optimizing on YouTube, you need to have it a certain length. It can only be so long.

It can only be the best bits. You need to jump cut everywhere to make sure that people are always engaged. And I do it to some extent just if I'm totally silent i'll obviously cut them out or if i'm lost i'll cut that out uh but i've always found that people like the whole experience and because i'm very good at talking like that's my one skill i can talk for hours on end if you let this podcast run for like 14 hours and you left at some point i would still be talking about crap by the time you got back. But like, since that's my skill,

I can do that and I can go outside and then I can get on my, my life. But people do enjoy that. Well, let's talk about the talking. Um, you, you've got like a radio voice in your vlog.

It's tickling. It was tickling my ears right now. And in this microphone and these, uh, these headphones. I definitely feel like maybe this is a radio show and you're the host and we're the guests. I mean, I don't want to do a hostile takeover of your show, but if the fans demand it, I sure will. I'm totally okay with that.

But no, yeah, I've always been told that I had a radio voice. And it's the weirdest thing, too, because in high school, I was very shy. I never spoke but occasionally when you have to do like public readings or you have to read an expert in class i would actually say something and people would turn to me and be like oh my god you had that voice this whole time and you didn't do anything and i'll be like yeah don't look at me because i couldn't bring myself to be anything outgoing in high school did you have a really awkward voice change because a guy with a voice like yours,

usually there was a part, you know, or was it gradual? As far as I know, I came out of the womb sounding like this, so I can't really tell you. And what was the turning point where you became a talker, if that wasn't in high school? Was it when you started playing video games? I think actually, yeah.

Because I've always been quiet in whatever I do up until this point. Like since I started doing YouTube, I did it as a way to force myself to talk every day. Because originally when I did YouTube, I didn't want to do YouTube. Like one of my biggest inspirations, and I actually got to meet him recently, is Freddie Wong. Because I loved, loved the videos that he did. And I loved the special effects. Special effects, comic, viral videos. Yeah, I love that aspect of it.

And I love the creativity behind it. I watched all his behind the scenes stuff. And I was like, I can do this. I can do this. But I didn't even know how to hold a camera. So I couldn't set up a shot. I couldn't light it. I couldn't get audio correctly.

I couldn't do anything like that. So I was like, okay, what can I do? I've been told i have a good voice my whole life what can force me to talk i didn't even know what let's plays were before i did them my brother is actually the one that i credit me actually doing let's plays because he watched them but the weirdest thing is he watched silent let's plays which aren't around like just watching the game itself so i was like okay he just didn't know that his mute was on or no no he just liked seeing the game for the game like he didn't actually like people talking because back then there weren't these energetic commentators there weren't

personalities talking over it like me and uh to be honest i wouldn't want to talk over some of the games that he watches just because the game itself is actually very interesting and fun to play but was it but when you started doing it, did you discover a hidden gift of Gab that you could just fill space with talking? Or can we look back from the beginning of your channel and see that you developed a muscle? It was very developed. Because if you go back, you'll notice that I may sound kind of similar, but my voice is way higher pitch and my pauses are awkward and I can't come up with the things to say. Like I didn't have a bag of tricks like I kind of do now. And even

though I want to take improv classes because I have not taken any professional training, and I think that would lead a lot to me being able to craft jokes better, especially when I'm talking. But over time, it's all self-taught and took a lot of learning. Well, describe the bag of tricks. Give us, open the bag. Oh, open the bag. I could hardly tell you. A lot of dick jokes, just endless dick jokes.

You make a dick joke, it'll be funny. I'm sure you guys, as professional entertainer comedians, you know it's just a bag of dicks so um but no i mean it it it's all about letting your mind go into the game and i think this is one of my best aspects when it comes to me personally playing games i open myself up to it i let myself go into the world and i i try to live as best i can in the in the game in the moment so to speak. Yeah, exactly. So you forget the audience is there? I'm always mindful that they're there. And I look at the camera whenever I can. But sometimes, and I'll quote a game,

or I'll remember a game specifically that I played. It was called Presentable Liberty. It was a game where you were locked in a cell for like five days and you had no contact with anyone. You were just in this cell. And it was like a four foot by six foot cell barren walls but the only way you communicated with people was by them sending you letters that slid in under your door every once in a while and a lot of people didn't have the same response as i did but when i played the game because i get so into it i felt alone and I felt like my only

connection to another human being was through these letters of people that I didn't know so I had like this weird inner struggle where I knew this was a game and I knew this wasn't real and I knew even if this was real these people probably weren't real and it was all staged because it seemed fake but I cared because the premise was that the entire world was dying you committed to it yeah i committed to entered it i felt like the world was ending and i felt like these people that i barely knew were dying and i cared so what was the result more crying i didn't cry in that one like i cried a lot of my videos but not all of them but i i had this existential crisis like i literally was freaking out and i couldn't handle the idea that i was sitting in a room alone recording a video, playing a game where I was sitting in a room alone.

Yeah. It was the weirdest thing. But is that role play? Were you wigging out? Were you role playing wigging out? Were you acting? I was really wigging out. Like, I was honestly, truly having a crisis in my mind.

And, like, people were saying like how can you respond that way it's like because i live the games i play and it doesn't always happen because games can take me out of things very quickly if they're the wrong type but this one hit all the right buttons for me but doesn't the line get blurred when you are doing it for your own entertainment but also for the entertainment of others, right? Especially when you develop the bag of tricks and the craft that you have where, okay, this many million people are watching me do this. I mean, I can say we relate to that.

There's a, I mean myself, I'm not being dishonest, but I'm not talking to Link the way that I would talk to him if no one was watching. Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's totally true.. If I wasn't recording myself, I wouldn't be saying anything out loud because I have no reason to. But because I've been doing- That's a good point. Yeah. I would seem crazy otherwise. But because I'm recording and because it's become so autonomous for me to record and talk at the same time, I can also get lost and I can start talking

to myself when there's no reason I should be talking to myself. And how would you describe that guy like if you didn't know you and you saw you playing a video game and you had to describe you to someone else you would say this guy talks like this acts like this what is your perception of yourself um i would say this is a guy who is extremely energetic and loud and i'm very conscious of how i look from the outside after i'm done recording but when i'm recording i try to get into it but if i was describing myself seeing myself alone in the room i would question that like and i think a lot of people would i think that's a natural question the question what's going on already yeah exactly performance yeah exactly Because from the outside

perspective, looking at that on the inside, and this is what I try to remember when I get criticism. People say, hey, this is not real at all. And I'm like, you're actually right. It's totally not what would happen in normal life or everyday society if you were playing a game alone. But the way it happens...

But you wouldn't be watching it if that's what happens. Yeah, exactly. If someone was just like, slack-jawed at a screen, it wouldn't be all that entertaining to watch. Although I know my fans would probably still watch it. But I'm still very mindful. Like I totally understand like the question you're asking. And it's totally true. It touches very much on the conundrum that we as Let's Players face.

Like what is real? What is fake? What is our personality? And what is our what is fake what is our personality and what is our show you know and um my goal is just to like blend them together as much as possible because when i see that like when i see that i see someone who is very energetic and probably not what would really happen but when i'm in there and when i'm recording nothing else matters because case in point the voice you know we talked about your voice, but then there's, you know, you go into a characterization, you describe it.

Oh yeah, yeah, no, I talk more animatedly. It's even happening with you. Like when you first met me, I had a hand in my pockets, you know, just quiet voice. But it's a weird switch that gets flipped. And it's like, I know that I need to talk and I know there are other people that are going to be listening to this. So I need to be careful about the words I choose and I need to be mindful of what I say and how I behave. But also at the same time, like if you ask my friends how I act among them, you would kind of get the same reaction just because I'm very comfortable in doing that and I'm very comfortable. And when I play games with friends, probably like you do, I shout and scream and I yell at them even though they may be quieter than I am. But I just love the boisterous aspect of it, being together on a couch and playing games. But what was the question? I do this. I ramble. I think you've answered it.

I answered it? Oh, yeah. I think it's fascinating. Your perception of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I answered it? Oh yeah, I think it's fascinating. Your perception of yourself, yeah. But I think it's really a, you're giving a description of the artistry that is Let's Play and being good at it

and captivating an audience and being true to yourself, channeling the part of yourself that's gonna connect with an audience and walking a line between performance and reality. And I just think that's gonna connect with an audience and walk in a line between performance and reality. And I just think that's fascinating, especially for people who aren't fans. And again, they're outsiders who are just thinking, okay, yeah, he just, he commentates over playing videos.

You know, outsiders, myself included, you just, until you experience it and you become a committed fan, it's a different art form that maybe at least I think this description can help outsiders appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. And it's good because I've never actually talked about it from this perspective that you guys have given me. Because I know that you guys probably don't watch my videos at all. And a lot of people don't watch my videos or don't like my videos. And I'm totally okay with that. I'm totally fine.

Let's Plays are not for everyone. They're not the entertainment that a lot of people need. But once people, I've noticed this transition, once people actually do get into my videos and do get a fandom, they also have a switch that gets flipped. And they're like, oh, I see it now. I see why people like this and why I can enjoy this. There's a part of what you're kind of getting at,

which is authenticity. And it's interesting because you have a desire to maintain authenticity. You're admitting that, okay, guys, if I'm 100% authentic, then I would sit here, slack jawed, staring at the game. That'm not gonna be, if I'm 100% authentic, then I would sit here slack jawed, staring at the game. Yeah.

That's not gonna be entertaining. So you are playing a role so that people will get into it and wanna enjoy it, but you're being yourself and you've made this conscious decision to insert your life into your channel in a way that other gamers have it. And I wanna get to that, but let's get into that life a little bit now. Getting back to your story,

there's an interesting thing that we have in common is that you swung on vines in the woods as a child. And that was like one of our number one pastimes growing up together. Yeah, so we heard that in your Draw My Life video. When living in Ohio, you go into the forest back there. I lived in a house where there was woods behind. Back in Ohio, you don't get that out here.

You don't get just woods that you can go into and get lost for hours and not be kidnapped and murdered. We were just able to go out there, have the time of our lives, break all bones bones in our body and just be kids out in the woods uh so we would go out and we didn't have like tools to cut vines so we would use sharp rocks and then we'd find a oh you got caveman on it yeah yeah we had machetes you had machetes yeah you were allowed machetes as children i don't think we told anybody i think ben greenwood i got hold of some machetes his His dad's machete or something. We scavenged everything. We got old pocket knives.

And we once found a hand saw that we tried to use, but it broke and shards went everywhere. So you had vines everywhere. Yeah. They would grow from the base, right? And you would chop, you would, I always thought the Amorite thing is, you know, you kill the vine in order to then enjoy it.

Enjoy it, yeah, exactly. And then it's gonna, you know, a month later, you can't swing kill the vine in order to then enjoy it. Enjoy it. Yeah, exactly. And then it's gonna, you know, a month later, you can't swing on that vine anymore because you chopped it off at the base and you killed it. But you can get a bucket of water and stick the vine in the bucket of water in between, like in a last weeks longer. I don't think us as children ever thought of that.

Me and Ben did that. You did that? Behind Ben's house. Oh, this is a good vine. I mean, yeah, we had some epic swings, like over the edge of the stream or the river. One of the largest, the biggest injuries I ever got was, and I think I still carry it with me, the scars to this day, that's why I have back problems,

is being mid swing on one that went out over a dirt road and it snapped at its full height and I landed on my tailbone from probably 10 feet up. Oh, yeah. And then he just, he like writhed around on the ground screaming. Cursing. And Ben and I just kind of looked at him and laughed. I'm laughing now.

I don't know why. A kid in pain. Did you ever get hurt? Oh, not me, but my friend did. Like the same thing happened to him. At the apex of his swing, he snapped. But he went into thorn bushes, so he was a lot better off than you were. He just got cut up and cried like a baby, whatever.

Did you get semi-naked like Tarzan or when you were eating like hot peppers? No, no, nothing like that. We didn't either. Yeah, okay, just checking. But we wouldn't tell you if we did, I guess. I have a lot of funny stories from those times. We once found an old VHS tape that said, I forget the name of it, but it was very obviously a porn tape. And we didn't understand how VHSs work.

We thought they were film strips that you could pull out and see. So we tucked it under our shirt and went back home. And we were like, oh, my God. You found it in the woods? Yeah, in the woods. In the woods randomly. So we went down in the basement, turned off all the lights, got some flashlights. And we were like, oh, this is going to be crazy.

We were like eight at the time. We didn't even understand what porn even was, except that we weren't allowed to see it. So we pull all the magnetic strip out like idiots. We could have just popped in the VCR, but no. We pull all of it out. Oh my goodness. And we take a flashlight and we shine it through. We're like, wait a minute.

Wait. Can't see anything. Oh no. Yeah, we couldn't see a damn thing because that's not how VHS is working. They're magnetic strips and... But there was a VCR like literally two feet from you. Oh, it was so close. But I think it was like dirt on the VHS and we didn't want to get dirt in the VHS for some reason.

And we were idiots. Trying to create a projector situation. Yeah, exactly. It did not work that way. We were eight at the time, okay? We did not think things through. This was Ohio, right? Yeah, Ohio. We would find

pieces of porn in the woods. Mags. Magazines. Not whole magazines, like papers and parts of trash piles. Abandoned porn. Abandoned porn as adolescents.

That's a shame. They probably discovered the internet and were like, I don't need this anymore, and threw it out the window. Yeah, well, this is still before the internet. This is pre-internet. Oh, okay. But it's amazing what people are throwing in the woods. Yeah, maybe they didn't like a particular girl on a page and just ripped it out and

threw it away. So, paint a picture of growing up okay all right growing up ohio kind of rural um did you move from hawaii yes well yeah to ohio because my dad was in the military and that's why i was on hawaii and that's why my brother is born in massachusetts because i was only born 23 months later exactly in Hawaii. So we moved very quickly from place to place. And then he left the military. And apparently I was wrong because I confirmed this just recently.

We didn't go to Ohio right away. We went to some place else that I don't know to stay with family. And then we moved to Ohio. So grew up in Ohioio i had no idea what hawaii was like so i didn't have any chance to miss it uh grew up in a very very rural area you know in the suburbs woods very isolated very fun i thought it was greatest thing in the world had no idea of the scope of the world until i went to korea my parents were getting divorced and that was very sad and whatnot,

but it was probably for the best. They got divorced, and then we were spending a lot more time with each parent, and so I got the Asian side from my mom and a lot of the Asian experience, and I got to understand what that meant that I was half Asian. And then I got my dad's side, which was very American.

He was as American as it comes. He was a military man, very proud of America and all that stuff. So I got two sides of that. And I got a very broad perspective early on of people can come from anywhere and people can be anything. But when I faced in schools and those

types of towns, you face a little bit of racism. If you're just a little bit not white, then that's just enough to hate you. Some people were very racist towards me. How bad did that get? It was worse towards my brother because he had more Asian features growing up than I did. So his own teachers would openly discriminate against him in class and belittle him and berate him. And mostly because they didn't like our mother, who was very, very much the typical Korean mother.

And if you know a Korean mother, you know what they're like. And she was very very much the typical korean mother and if you know a korean mother you know what they're like and she was exactly like that um and and that bled into our lives but as we grew up it got less and less i i don't know if it's because the world became more understanding or just because we grew more into our white features or something like that but you know it always stuck with us a little bit. You grew into your white features? I think so, yes. I think that actually is a thing that can happen. You became more white.

In a weird way, yes. Actually, I would honestly say that's true because me and my brother looked very similar when we were kids, and we both looked very Asian. But people who meet me today, it's like a 50-50 chance if they think I'm just pure white or if I have any Asian in me, they're surprised. It's a

big toss-up, but early on it was much more distinct. But that didn't stop Asian jokes and whatnot, but I don't really care. It's totally fine. Racism happens. I'm not saying that I need to be a charity case just because I had racism and it's affected me. It really didn't. But your mom took you to Korea?

Is that what you were saying? On a trip or like you were living there? We took trips for a few weeks at a time because we had family in Korea. She was the only daughter of seven that moved to America because my grandparents on that side actually have a very interesting story. They were originally in North Korea

before the Korean War and they were right on the border of China, like way, way, way up north. And they came from a very wealthy, well-off family. They had everything they needed. My grandpa had a beautiful wife and lots of inheritance. And then he heard from his buddies in the American armies that was going down, like things were getting bad. So he basically said to his family, like, if you won't come with me, I am leaving. And they didn't come with him. So he left everything behind.

Wife, kids, everything? He only took the wife. He had no kids at that time. He was just freshly married. He grabbed his wife, my grandmother, and ran down south on foot all the way down to Seoul, Korea, which is where they lived outside of Seoul, Korea. And that's just what happened. They cut off all ties. And a year later, war was broken out, borders drawn, and he never saw his family again.

Wow. Just for the rest of his life, he never saw a single member of his family. So you were going back and gaining an appreciation for this stuff with your having your parents having split up yeah yeah because that gave me another worldview too like oh i guess relationships don't last forever or something like i don't know if that's bled into my life now probably has in some way and i have deep-seated issues about that but i think in a way it was actually better for me to see that early on and understand it because i've always been inquisitive and I like I've always been trying to appreciate things from a whole view and that's what I try to do with my channel

today I try to appreciate everything that I see from a whole view and look at it from all angles because that's why I look at myself and I'm able to appreciate the perspective of someone doesn't like let's plays they can see that I'm you know, I wouldn't do this in normal circumstances. But that all led into me growing up in this rather diverse, rather multi-location childhood. With your, so you were, it was shared custody? Did you live with your dad? I lived with my dad, mostly, which was actually unusual. How was that decision made? Well, actually, I don't know the specifics of it.

I was only put in, like, brought into court once or twice. And how old were you at that time? Nine? I can't actually remember. Maybe I was younger than that. Maybe this was like seven. But in the end, it was just like my mom thought it would be better if I lived with my dad. Years later, she would regret it, and then she'd accept it because she thinks –

like nowadays, if I have my mom, she thinks that I was better off for growing up with my dad because he taught me he was like the greatest dad in the world like he taught me such to keep such an open mind about things and i wish i could have asked him more stuff down the road uh after i had really grown up and found myself uh when i was like 22 is about the time that i really started discovering myself uh i wish i could have asked him so much more, but that's in the past. I can't do that. When did he...

It sounds like you were really close to him. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he was the smartest man I knew and the most understanding man I knew. And probably still to this day, like, I don't know a person who was more wise and had a better perspective on the entire world than my dad. And it sucks because I would want to ask him so many things.

What was the circumstances of his passing? Oh, he had cancer. And he would have only blamed himself because he was a smoker for 46 years. He started when he was 14. And even though he quit like eight years before he actually got cancer, he kind of accepted that he did this to himself. So it really sucked. So it was emphysema or lung cancer?

Lung cancer, like straight up lung cancer that spread to a few different places. How old were you when he was diagnosed? I think I was 17. I had just turned – yeah, no, I was just about to turn 18. So I think I was 17 when he was diagnosed. just about to turn 18. So I think I was 17 when he was diagnosed. And that was really hard for me to take at that point just because the person who I understood

as the person I wanted to be was dying and I saw him waste away basically from the very outgoing, very strong character that he was and anyone who has experienced anyone with cancer would know this too. Just how they waste away as a person and eventually just kind of fade away into not the person that you remember.

And how long of a process was that? It was over a year, but that year went by so quickly just to see it all happen. I was just going into college too, which really took a toll because I had this college relationship or high school relationship

that ended before college and that's totally fine. Like we moved on. No relationship survives really from that perspective. But that on top of my dad was suffering through school and I didn't perform as well as I did. And then I got bad grades and my dad was disappointed in me and I felt so terrible because like, ah, I wish I had tried harder. And then I made a concerted effort to do that. But just seeing the process by which my dad kind of, you know,

just drifted away from the person I knew. But still. What was the final, you know, how did it resolve? Were you there? I was there, yeah. I was there when he died. It was a very scary time. And, you know, I was lucky enough to be there when he died. It was a very scary time. And, you know, I was lucky enough to be there when he died,

even though it was very scary to see. I would always rather be there in times like that and face it head on than try to run away from it and not see it because, you know, you need to be there because it's another experience in your life that you need to get perspective on. Because one of the things that I've been through myself is I have a tumor. I had a tumor about three and a half years ago. And it, along with that, made me realize that I'm going to die someday. I know this.

I know full well that I'm going to die. I know full well that it's going to happen probably when I least expect it and at the least convenient time in my life. And because of that, that very much motivates me to do whatever I can now. Here and now, I need to be the best person I can because I won't have enough time. No matter what I do, no matter how I approach my life, I will not have enough time.

And no one will. No one on this earth will have enough time to do what they need. Was your tumor cancerous? No. will. No one on this earth will have enough time to do what they need. Was your tumor cancerous? No, it was a very rare tumor called a ganglioneuroma, which basically means it's a tumor made of nerve cells. It can become cancerous, but this one was not. So I'm in the clear as far as that goes. I seem to have a clean bill of health thus far and medical science only improves. So I may not die of something along those lines. How did the experience of your dad passing

impact your trajectory? Actually, that's a really good question. Because when he passed, I was kind of in a toss-up of what I wanted to do in college. The idea of being a YouTuber wasn't even a thing back then. Maybe the first fledgling YouTubers were

just starting, but they weren't getting paid for it. So it hadn't even crossed my mind. I just knew that whatever I did, I needed to try to do it 100%. So the year after my dad died, the first quarter was very hard, but I tried very hard in school and I did very well. And I got a very good job and I tried my best at that job even though it was the most boring job that I've ever had in my life. I tried very hard and I wanted to do the best I could in what I did. So I pushed myself.

And even though I fell off the horse sometimes and I got a big World of Warcraft stint like that consumed a lot of my life. Because games have always been a big part of my life. I've always been a gamer. I always wanted to play games. So that's just kind of how it went. And then I rolled forward with that until I was kicked in the ass with the tumor. And also before that, I got laid off from my job.

And then it just kind of compounded into this moment where I had this self-reflection. And this is what I meant when I said before that I discovered myself when I was like 22. It was after all of this shit compounded and all this stuff happened to me and all of like I had this struggle with why even bother? You know, everyone has that moment who has pushed past it or let it consume them. They have had the

why even bother moment. And I, fortunately enough, pushed past it. And a lot of people may not be able to and a lot of people try really hard to do that. By doing what? Well, that's the thing. You don't know what you, what is going to make you push past it and get the will to keep moving forward or get the will to do something different or take a risk. But it's just the, the only thing that question needs to be answered is that I will push past it. And then everything else is like, I don't know how,

I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know why I'm even deciding to do this. I just need to do something. So I tried writing. I tried, uh, making a web comic. I tried art. I dropped out of engineering to pursue, like go into art school. And then I dropped out of that cause it wasn't working for me. It didn't feel like what I need, but I tried so many things. I didn't find what I wanted to do until like way way later after this but I had the realization before I did YouTube like after all the went down I had the realization and I knew that I don't know what I want to do the weirdest thought that I've had recently was that uh the some of the greatest artists or people that have the greatest potential

to be incredible artists are not artists you know the people that have the greatest potential to be incredible artists are not artists. You know, people that have incredible potential to be athletes or stuff like that are not athletes. They chose something else because that appealed to them or some circumstances put them in that situation. They didn't know that they could because they didn't try. And that's not a discredit to them. They weren't, may have been in the situation. But I knew that I was good at something. I had to be. I had to be great at something. And I wanted more desperately than anything in the world to have something that I could say that I was great at. So it was more of, for you, was it more about saying, finding the thing that you were great at

or with finding the thing that you enjoyed the most? Both. I wanted both. Like it sounds selfish to say I wanted it all, but I really did. Cause I wasn't, I wasn't at the point where I was trying to find what was fun. I was trying to find what was most satisfying. Like to me as an individual, I didn't even care about making money off of it really. Because I, I, I was a college kid. I was used to very limited budget. I didn't come from a rich background. I actually had a very poor background. Like a child had grown up, like I didn't have

Christmas presents for many Christmases because we didn't have the money for it or whatnot. And that's totally fine. That's a different story. So you tried a whole bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah. All the time you were very passionate about gaming, but you didn't connect those dots until a while later.

Yeah, yeah. But you eventually did, obviously. So how did that happen? Well, that happened because, like I said, my brother knew about Let's Plays. And when I was looking at that, I was like, can they even make money off of it? Ah, whatever, I'll try. Because I didn't know. I didn't know that they made money. And I picked horror games because I didn't know I didn't know that they made money and I picked horror games because I saw this one Compilation video which was like a whole bunch of people playing amnesia the dark descent and I never played the game before and I never Known about the game, but I watched that video and it was the funniest thing I've ever seen to see people scream like little girls in the face of these monsters and I said like yes

I want to make people laugh with my screams of terror because that is the funniest thing I've ever seen. And I did that. And that's what I did. And I thought it was great. And no one watched it, really. Just some of my friends subscribed to me. And then I made a compilation because that's what I wanted to do. That's what I saw.

I saw a compilation that was really cool. And I thought I'd make a compilation. And I didn't even know how. I didn't even know how to cut things together. I didn't even know how. I didn't even know how to cut things together. I didn't even know how to make subtitles. So I had to like struggle and learn like just how to put words on a screen was just a challenge for me. And then I did it. I spent like two days straight, no sleep, no food, just straight up making this video. And I was like, yes, it's done. I showed it to my brother and my brother laughed. And I was like accomplished everything i set out to do is done

my brother laughed at this it made him laugh i am so happy so i threw it up on my youtube channel and i knew that no one was really watching it and uh somehow someone found it and someone posted it on reddit and oh yeah it made it to like number three in videos our videos it made it to number three and i was sitting in the middle of. And I was sitting in the middle of, I remember, I was sitting in the middle of church. My mom dragged me to her very, very pompous big church. So we went there. And I was just sitting like bored out of my mind because no one is excited at church. And I looked at my phone and my emails were just blowing up.

How many views are we talking about on that video? It got, back then, it got 100,000 views. And for a channel that had no subscribers, that was unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. This is like 2010? Yeah. No, probably 2012. No, it was 2012.

Okay. Yeah. So to me, that was unheard of. Like, I couldn't fathom that many people. And it was my first exposure to negative comments. That was not your first video, but it was your first compilation. Yeah, it was the first compilation. I made like a 12-part series on amnesia, and then I made that video.

So it was like my 13th or something video. And I read through every single comment. And I got the same thing that I get today. Like, oh, this dude's faking this. What a bunch of bull. And this guy is the worst. But some people were like this is really funny and that resonated with me so did you think okay this is the key i've got to

compile yeah no you're dead right i thought like oh this is what i wanted to do i gotta do this so like every week i would play a game and then compile it and i would play a game and compile it highlight reel yeah exactly highlight reel uh stuff and i thought that was really cool because Every week I would play a game and then compile it. And I would play a game and compile it. Highlight reel. Yeah, exactly. Highlight reel stuff. And I thought that was really cool because it condensed everything that I did for hours into one cool video and people could enjoy it. But I never got the same response. So it never got posted to Reddit again. And it never got the big blowing up.

And I was like, oh, man, I thought they were good enough. But it wasn't that they were good enough. It was the timing thing and the luck. Was it, for something to blow up on Reddit, was it a specific speculation about you being nuts or something? I mean, for something to really resonate on the video subreddit, there had to have been something more than it was just, this guy's funny, right?

No, that was it. Or that was it. That was it. And I was so honored because the good comments on that were like, people actually laughed. And it wasn't a cynical speculation of something that you didn't intend. That wasn't it at all. Okay, good. It was pure and simple. People found it entertaining.

And that's what set a spark in me. And even after the other videos didn't get the huge response there were people that saw my first video that subscribed to me and were now commenting on a regular basis saying like dude you're funny your voice is great and i was just like oh my goodness people like the things i do this is what i liked like i like this i i heard you say in one vlog that at first you wanted to make comedy sketch videos. Was that before you started the Let's Play or was

that in tandem? That was before, yeah. Because you were seeing successful YouTubers in that genre or because of some other reason? I thought it was just really cool. I only wanted to do what I liked and i liked those videos so this is one of the things i tried before i did you know let's plays i tried this for

months i tried i spent the last of my money that came in on a tax refund on a t2i uh i didn't even have a microphone with it just you thought hey it's got onboard mic why not use that um a little green screen that i stupidly it was a blue a blue green green screen a little fold-out one and i would take it outside in the green grass and the blue sky and i would just put it up like this will work right and i had no idea what i was doing so and those are sketch videos yeah yeah yeah they were sketch videos and i made three of them or i i filmed three of them and i had no idea how to edit them together get special effects in there I had no idea I was at a

loss and I looked at it I was like this is going to take months and months of trying and effort and when I'm done with it it might not even be good and I still did it like I still tried and then I tried and tried and then I was just like oh man but you know they didn't get finished no no they did not get finished because I kept

hitting my head against a wall like sleepless nights trying to figure it out. Because I love solving puzzles. But this puzzle, I kept coming to the conclusion that these people had been doing this for years. Like they had learned in college how to do special effects. I don't even know how. And so in the middle of that process, that frustration, and your brother is the one that kind of says, why don't you try something like this? Or at least points out out let's play videos. Yeah.

And that's when you get that idea. And that's when I was like, I could do that. It'll be good practice for my voice. So when you started getting that initial response, people coming to your channel, people commenting, reading every comment, how did, because this is a process that happens without you even knowing it, but as you look back now,

how did the initial reactions from fans the initial comments shape who markiplier is today it was everything like at that point the fact that people were even talking to me was unknown i was the kind of kid that had facebook but never talked to friends i don't text my friends proactively so i i lived a very isolated life, like without people actually saying anything to me. And in that way, they didn't expect anything out of me. And so I didn't drive myself to try to impress other people. And then when suddenly comments were rolling in, both positive and negative, like I got tons of hate in the beginning, which was totally fine.

I can ignore hate all day long. But the positive comments of people saying they really enjoyed it and they were like but you could do this differently and i took that to heart like like i want to see more of this or i want to see these videos or or i what kind of things were they saying at the time minecraft was big so people were like oh could you do a minecraft video and people were like no i hate minecrafter it's like and i was like oh one or the other what which do i do so i actually created another channel and called it markiplier2 and made Minecraft videos. And people loved it. Like I was like, oh, my God.

People love this. And then I went through the unfortunate thing where YouTube actually banned my AdSense account for one reason or another. I have no idea to this day. And that was almost. On your second channel. On both. Like it was the same AdSense account. And I almost stopped YouTube right then and there.

When was that? That was in like the first month and a half of my channel I almost would not have been here if I just kept just said okay YouTube banned my AdSense account because you don't know the reason but it had something to do with let's play and rights of yeah yeah I think so yeah because for some reason I wasn't monetizing my main channel videos but but I thought Minecraft even said in its terms of use, you can monetize videos of this on YouTube. So I thought, oh, okay. I guess this is okay.

But I kept getting emails that were like, do you have the rights to monetize this? And I would be like, I think so. And I quoted Minecraft's terms of use and I put it up there. And so I think it was this constant. I got so many email responses like, these are all automated in the days when everything was automated. And I think I flagged the system enough that it was just like this guy must be doing something wrong here. Get rid of him. And I was just done like that. I tried calling everyone I could. I tried asking everyone I could. I couldn't get in touch with anyone. I almost gave up. I was so heartbroken because the thing I wanted to do that I could have possibly done as a career, which I wouldn't have even made money off of enough

to live off of for months, months, months down the road. But it was just, the door was shut and YouTube itself did this. And I was like so disheartened. What was the resolution? I just made another channel. I was two steps away from getting signed under an MC. A third channel.

Yeah, a third channel. And we're called Markiplier Game. And that's why my channel is called markiplier game right now and not markiplier because i can't use markiplier it still exists and then you re-uploaded old videos i re-uploaded every single video i did and i had done about 150 at that point because i uploaded five videos a day back then when i was first going i was like everything every every single second of my day was recording videos and uploading them it was it was amazing and so how did you make how did you make the decision uh at what point did you say i'm going to insert myself personally not just the gamer mark but i'm gonna. You know, what was the first video

where you kind of went into that vlog? I had always put my heart and soul into it but I never really connected deeply. It was only when I went to Comic-Con San Diego in 2012 for the first time with my brother because he has a very successful web comic, by the way.

That's why I- Two kinds, right? Yeah, two kinds. Yeah, yeah. It's a really, really great web comic and it's been online for a long time. But he got a booth at Comic-Con San Diego. So I went with him just because the company that he works with was nice enough to get me an exhibitor badge,

which I was totally grateful for. But when I went there, I had maybe 2,000 subscribers. This was on my new channel, Markiplier Game. I had 2,000 subscribers. I didn't expect to see a single person there that knew me. And four people came up and knew me. Like, I didn't even know. The astronomical odds of 2,000 people all over the world subscribed to me. And four people at Comic-Con came up and said hi to me. And I saw the real people. I saw who they were. They were actual people that enjoyed my videos and actually knew who i was

and that blew my mind and i've said to myself holy crap every single person that is subscribed to me is real and is their own person and it has their own hopes and dreams and has their own life that they live and they take a small moment in that life to watch my videos so you decided to talk directly to them in vlogs yeah and last time i did that as soon as i got back i made one of the first vlogs i ever did and i just stood in front of the camera i was awkward as hell i didn't know what i was doing and i was just like hello this is me i'm going to tell you about this person that is me and then that's just when i started doing it and what was the response what do people say people loved it like people loved like seeing me in person and seeing who i was because i didn't

even have a face cam back then like i people voice yeah all voice and people didn't know who i was and people were very surprised to see me people had critiques on how i was people said i was cute you're korean but you got a lot whiter yeah at that point i was very, very, I was like 70, 30 white Korean at that point. You grew into your whiteness was the comments. Yeah, exactly. Even though no one had ever seen your face. Yeah, yeah, and it was just, it was a really, really cool time.

Did you get any negative response though? Because it's striking, I mean, the way you've mixed, the way that a vlogger, like a guy like Tyler Oakley, the way that he will connect with his fans and it's like his brand is connecting with his fans. You know, he's not playing games, he's just connecting with his fans, right? Yeah.

But you brought that same vibe in. I have to assume that in the way that the gaming world interprets things and the way they think about things, there had to be some negative reaction to that. Like, we don't want to hear about your life. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I get that all the time. Like even today, like there'll be comments that I'm like, what is this? I only signed up for games. Why are you doing vlogs? And like, I,

I appreciate your view there, but I don't care. Like I want, I've always set out to do this and connect with people because that is the only reason I'm here is because of the people that are subscribed to me. And I always need to pay respect to that facet of my channel. Do you think that is a big factor in the astronomical growth of your channel? I mean, you're saying going from 1,000 subscribers just a few years ago,

6 million subscribers now. How many of those over the past year? Over the past year, I think I only had about 1.5 million this time last year. So yeah, 4.5 million in a year. 4.5 million over the past 12 months. How did that happen? What do you attribute that to?

I think I would say the fact that I directly connect with people um people don't so the vlogs i i don't think it's solely to the vlog yes i i play games that kind of lead into a certain brand and five nights at freddy's don't get me wrong took off like crazy and really grew my channel 25 million views oh yeah 26 million i think actually now it's okay nuts just to correct you you, get it right. And growing. It'll be more in a couple weeks. Yeah, when Five Nights at Freddy's 3 comes out, it's going to be nuts. And that really did help,

and I'm very grateful that I was lucky enough to be on the forefront of that. But I think what really has kept people here and what I see a lot of is that people on the internet outside of YouTube say, oh, I know of this guy. I don't like his videos but I like the person and that's all that I ever care about like I want people to know who I am and not the games I play because I will play games like for as long as people want me to play games because I love playing games but in the end in the end so long as people know who I am as a person and see that I try my damnedest to do what is right at all times, that's what matters. Now, one of the things you said in your Draw My Life video

was that, and you made that when you had less than a million subscribers, but you characterized what YouTube had given you, the opportunity YouTube had given you as if opportunity YouTube had given you, as if it had almost given you a new purpose. On the other side of that success now, passing six million subscribers, being able to raise money for these charities

on a regular basis. Pushing half a million dollars, approaching that, right? We passed that, I'm pretty sure, yeah. What would, how would you react if all of it was taken right now? So you go back home and YouTube, you can never upload another YouTube video, like this career is taken from you. I think I'd be okay. Because I have long thought about the fact that we as YouTubers run the risk of YouTube going away.

It could just go away at any day. And I think there would be a lot of people that would be upset that I wouldn't be able to upload videos anymore. But me as a person, I would want to pursue other avenues. Like those things that I tried before YouTube that didn't work, I would want to keep trying different things and see what happens.

And it may lead to the point where I am not in the public eye in any way. I am totally alone. I'm working a nine to five at some mill somewhere. That could happen. Like that could be where it leads. But I'm not going to stop trying to find what I enjoy and what fulfills me. More fulfills me than joy. Well, we're not going gonna take away your YouTube access.

I hope not, do you have that power? Well, I was just, based on his answer, that's how I was gonna make my decision, whether I was gonna pull the plug. Do I work? Do I survive? No, we do not have that power, and I don't think that's gonna happen.

So given that, what plans do you have? Give us a nugget. More sketch comedy. More exploring different avenues because gaming allows me the ability to do different things and launch different things and try different things. It's just a matter

of time at this point. Are we going to see those on your channel? Yeah, all on my channel. Like sketch comedies, music videos. I've got a whole bunch of stuff that I can't wait to do. We're filming something tomorrow actually and I'm very excited for it it is Five Nights at Freddy's related but you know that's just because my buddies have this idea and it's actually a really cool idea

so alright we'll look forward to it and we we really enjoy getting to know you it's time for you to sign the round table of dim lighting oh boy here you go thanks for coming in man to sign the round table of dim lighting. Oh boy. Here's the Sharpie. Sure. Thanks for coming in, man.

And there you have it, our Ear Biscuit with Markiplier. Let Mark know what you think of our conversation by tweeting at him. His Twitter handle is Markiplier. It's like multiplier, but Mark instead. Use hashtag Ear Biscuits. We really do appreciate it when you give feedback to our guests, that's helpful.

As well as leaving a review on iTunes. Those things are both really helpful to us. I'm fascinated by a guy like Mark. I love it when we talk to somebody who has helped to define a genre. Not that he obviously is, he didn't invent Let's Play videos but he's not defining the genre, he's refining the genre. I have a feeling that more and more Let's Play guys

are going to start being vulnerable, if not crying, dare I say crying in their videos because he- You're right. You know, this is the kind of thing that you turn a genre on its ear a little bit because you've got these gamer guys who are not necessarily known for being emotional guys or definitely not being that open.

In fact, the genre was defined for a long time by guys who never showed their face. And then you got guys showing their face, and they're, oh, the guys who showed their faces are getting popular, PewDiePie, fill in the blank. Now you got guys who are showing their faces and crying. And their faces are crying. Their faces are crying.

And I'm not poking fun at Mark. I mean, he's a genuine guy. He's really, really good at what he does and I like him. And he knows how to connect with people. And you know, I applaud him for going on instinct and really refining his genre, just like you said. He's got a knack for connection and there's so much to learn from that to be successful.

But it's not something that you should calculate. Right. That's what I wanted to get into. But it's not something that you should calculate. Right. It's something that I think is. That's what I wanted to get into. It's a reflection of who he is and he wants people to know the real him. If he, you know. But doesn't the producer in you,

because I know the producer in me wants to think also that, well, he could also know that this was going to work and so he started doing it. I don't actually believe that, but there's this, the producer in the back of my head is like, well, if he's not doing it, at least somebody else is gonna start doing it. And so now you're gonna have guys

who are feigning emotions for subscribers. You got people eating weird stuff, Rhett and Link are two of them, that's us, for subscribers. What about people crying for subscribers? Well, the audience is smart. I mean, they're a good judge of authenticity and character. They'll know if it's fake. You know, for a guy like Mark, I mean,

look at all the money he has raised for charity. It's amazing, you know, it's challenging for me personally and professionally to see a guy who instinctively put so much of his time and effort into channeling his audience and empowering them to give to something that there's no direct tangible benefit for him. I think that's awesome. And like I said, I kind of privileged to have gotten to know the guy.

My only disappointment is we didn't make him cry today. You know? But we made a song biscuit with him. We did. That's pretty cool. So if you haven't checked that out on our Good Mythical Morning YouTube channel, our song biscuit, we wrote a song

about Five Nights at Freddy's. We did. And he kind of brought us up to speed on that. I am preparing. He was our guide into that. I am preparing for the judgment that is going to be unleashed on us for writing a song about Five Nights at Freddy's.

I'm a little scared. We usually don't go into those areas that we're not really experts on, but we felt that we could because he was there. He was the Sherpa for Five Nights at Freddy's. Yeah, so thanks for that, Mark. And thanks to you for listening and supporting the show. We appreciate it.

And of course, we'll be hearing your ears next week. Baking a biscuit.