When you make millions of dollars playing video games on YouTube, it's hard to avoid just a little jealousy.
PewDiePie, or Felix Kjellberg, has the most-subscribed YouTube account, period. (And has held that top spot for at least two years.) His videos, which mostly feature him wildly reacting to the games he's playing, have 9 billion cumulative views. And according to Swedish newspaper Expressen, the channel netted him $7.4 million last year, pre-tax. The money comes from pre-roll ads that appear on his videos.
Of course, not everyone is so happy for PewDiePie's success. He posted a video on YouTube to address the whole situation, as well as some of his commenters.
"Money is the topic I purposely tried to avoid for the five years I've been making videos, because I just feel like it's not important to anyone," he said. "I just want to make entertaining videos. Don't get me wrong, though, I don't hate money. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't matter to me, because it matters to everyone."
He continued by recounting his humble beginnings, working at a hot dog stand after dropping out of college and making YouTube videos in his spare time. "The fact that I could make videos was so much important to me than doing a job that was sort of less prestigious."
PewDiePie then started reading and responding to commenters, generally maintaining a positive attitude despite all the online rage. (The YouTube star famously pulled comments from his videos in the past, but has since re-enabled them. That says a lot about his attitude toward anonymous abuse.)
"I think that's what cool about YouTube. Anyone can do this," he said after reading one comment. "I do work a tremendous amount of work. Ask my girlfriend. And if you worked this hard, you could do it too."
There might be a little more to it than that, but we admire his spirit.