On PewDiePie and the Bro Army Author

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high-production superstars like Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Katy Perry, or Taylor Swift. If someone, he certainly .... and ends them like „Stay awesome, Bros! Brofist!”.
Title: Leave a Like and Subscribe! — On PewDiePie and the Bro Army Author: Ariel Kaba Affiliation: Eötvös Loránd University, Doctoral School of Linguistics E-mail: [email protected].

[5000 words + references]

Abstract This paper is a case study of PewDiePie’s success — focusing on communication. In this study, the meta-communication and the attribute of character will be demonstrated throughout his career. PewDiePie started as a Let’s Play channel but years later, his content started to focus on other topics and issues as well. Nonetheless, his channel is still a comedy channel, therefore, he has to make its content inviting and entertaining — The aim of this research is to find out how he achieves this. To thoroughly examine his methods, we introduce a new communication paradigm, called augmented communication, which is able to interpret the communication of our era — not only the real and the digital, but the virtual communication as well.

Keywords:

YouTube;

Augmented

Communication;

Attributes

of

communication;

Characterisation; Virtual communication JEL-codes: L82 D83 M31

1.

Introduction

This paper dwells upon the boundaries of communication. 1 Living in the Information Age, in the Digital Era, new ways of communication have emerged in a relatively short time, and this is perhaps the reason why neither the education nor the science could not apprehend these phenomena hitherto. Even if researching digital communication is thriving nowadays, there is still another way of communication, which is neglected, namely the virtual communication. Virtual communication is different to real-life communication, i.e. conversation, or to digital communication, i.e. chatting, commenting, because it communicates with the recipient not via interpersonal interaction, but in a reaction-oriented asymmetrical way, consider: books, comics, movies, video games, advertisements — YouTube videos. The aim of this research is within the metaphorical title, that is: to demonstrate how to attract (“Like and subscribe”) viewers (“the Bro Army”) like the best (“PewDiePie”). The key question is: How does he do it? Various media outlets draw on Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. PewDiePie whenever and wherever they can, confer the recent controversy (Winkler et al. 2017); also, there is an abundance of news articles on how much PewDiePie earns a year as well (Dong

1

This research was funded by the Hungarian Ministry for Human Resources, in form of the scholarship called: „Új Nemzeti Kiválóság”.

2017; Hussain 2015; Mandle 2015), but there is neither article, nor study about how he achieved success. In this paper, it will be revealed through an original theory that Felix Kjellberg implements communication in a strategic way that grabs attention implicitly and explicitly as well: He applies augmented communication in its entirety; in fact, he exploits the attribute of character to generate immense success.

2.

The virtual world of YouTube

2.1.

Why YouTube?

On YouTube, there is an abundance of videos for viewers to gain information, or to be entertained, but the key question is: Which one to choose? For a so-called YouTube Creator (commonly known as YouTuber) the best possible outcome is if his channel gets the views, therefore, the main focus is on grabbing attention and maintaining it by any means necessary. This is why one of the main arguments of this paper is that YouTubers are prototypical attention economists in practice. The various channels of YouTubers are the purest realisations of what attention economy is destined to mean. They do not even have to sell a product in the original sense because of YouTube policy: the time spent on viewing a video makes the “transaction” (cf. Watch Time and AdSense), i.e. the very content of the videos itselves are the products, thus they generate ad revenue. We could say, that it does not even matter what the content is as long as it undergoes the YouTube algorithm: one may clickbait, or could play games, or just gossip — money talks indeed! Yet the traditional way of consuming is also present in the form of channelbased merchandise and in-video sponsored content. To sum it up, the main goal of a YouTuber is (i.) to gain more and more views; (ii.) to maintain views by getting more and more subscribers. For this reason, everyone seeks to master the secret of acquiring the viewers’ interests. The most difficult question is: How to make them interested? — PewDiePie surely knows the answer.

2.2.

Who is PewDiePie?

The thesis statement of this research is that Felix Kjellberg also known as PewDiePie is one of the best attention economists — if not the best. He has the all-time most subscribers and had the most channel views on the site until February (SB 2017).

One might say, he is the unofficial emperor of YouTube: He raised a gigantic fan-base, the so-called Bro Army and together they established the greatest empire on YouTube with 57 million subscribers and 16 billion views (PDP 2017a) — and still counting. PewDiePie has everything a YouTuber could have: own games and book; own network; charities; own show; appearance in famous TV-shows; more views and subscribers as a self-made entertainer than high-production superstars like Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Katy Perry, or Taylor Swift. If someone, he certainly knows how to make people watch his videos. According to him (PDP 2017bc), the key of his success is (i.) first of all: luck; (ii.) to maintain connection with the viewers; (iii.) to stand out; (iv.) to make the content entertaining for not only the viewers, but for himself as well. This last statement might seem trivial, but it is easier said, than done, given that many YouTubers are apt to do almost anything to gain attention — even if it means the sacrifice of their originality (cf. PDP 2017cr). Here is how it worked out for him: In the beginning, he started to play horror games, which made him unique. This game genre was neglected at the time, but PewDiePie made it thriving, utilizing a facecam and even a pulse oximeter, adding his wits to it and making comedy out of the scary and thrilling conditions. “YouTube is all about personality” — he says (PDP 2017b). Although there are several fun gamers, gaming contents, or more exciting vlogs, or more laughable challenges and compilations than PewDiePie’s — his know-how is, that he selects and synchronizes the best of these contents, and integrates it to comedy. Other channels are generally “single-tracked”, for example: gamers play games; vloggers talk about themselves; compilations and challenge-videos are struggling to be funny. In contrast, PewDiePie’s channel is elusive: There is no definite way to categorize it to vlog, to gamer, to compilation or to comedy channel; it does not fit into any of these — he makes a complex fusion of all the previously mentioned categories. He is infamous for his outspoken style, raw content, swearing, screaming, thus he is quite expressive in a way: he makes fun of nearly everything, he states what is on his mind outright, given he has almost no restriction regarding his content; he also reflects on today’s society, while most YouTubers do just their own things without mentioning these “out-ofchannel factors”. Although this kind of outspoken attitude has given him more and more backlash in the recent times — on many occasions the accusations were made by fake news outlets (cf. PDP 2016a), or due to lack of context (cf. PDP 2017d). There is still a common misunderstanding regarding PewDiePie, namely: „He just plays games all the time”. There are a lot of channels that really just do that, mostly uncut — even

though they have millions of subscribers (TetraNinja, theRadBrad, MKIceAndFire). The fact is, he does not play so much anymore: less than half of his videos are gaming videos (PDP 2017c). Moreover, if he does play a game, he narrates it, and he is doing comedy while apparently he is playing. In a video of his (PDP 2017e) he plays a low-quality game with a bunch of glitches, and almost no challenges in it. In the footage, nothing extraordinary happens: he acts as a bodyguard and fulfils an easy in-game task of jumping to the stage and saving „Rump”. But the point is, that he (over)dramatises it: he recreated the situation like something marvellous has happened, using movie effects, emotional music, deep quotes and he even showed some fake tears. All in all, he grabs attention by using every means of communication: every communicative act of his and his videos strive for it. This way of attention-grabbing is what makes it easier to remember or relate to a person or a channel.

3.

Augmented Communication: The new paradigm of communication theory

3.1.

Augmented Communication: An outline

Communication — we all know this term too well to properly define it. It is known that when we interact, or we speak or when we use body language — we communicate. In this regard, it is easy to wonder how would people define communication in movies, in books, in video games — or in a YouTube video? Is it still an interpersonal interaction? Is it still communication? Most academics support this previous interaction-oriented framework, and they research predominantly the language, when it comes to communication (cf. Horányi 2003; Jakobson 1960; Labov 1970; Lakoff 1975; Róka 2005; Wacha 2011; 金水 2003; Maynard 2016). The traditional method of analysing communication is based on language data, which is commonly meant to be researched within the framework of discourse/conversation analysis, speech-act analysis, and analysis of politeness strategies, semantic analysis or parts-of-speech detectation. It is also believed (cf. Nemesi 2013: 179) that there are ways of language use that are considered to be non-linguistic, e.g. singing. Now recall the footage what just has been mentioned (cf. PDP 2017e). What we have seen is not the communication we know, but is a carefully designed product, which was made to be interpreted, and to make people react to it — i.e. virtual communication. Virtual communication is the concomitant phenomenon of the Information Age and the Digital Era paradigm shift: we have not only telecommunications, but also movies, cartoons,

video games, music videos, YouTube videos, which are quite asymmetrical compared to the conventional interpersonal communication. Even though there was a paradigm shift, there is no new paradigm adequate to this new era, to this new way of communication. The existing communication theories do not provide a framework nor an inventory to research communication in its entirety. Even if pioneering works have been published (e.g. Veszelszki 2017), neither of them do reform the conventional languebased communication theory. This research proposes an innovative original communication paradigm, called augmented communication — a theory and an inventory which defines communication in its entirety. This up-to-date comprehensive standalone communication-system takes into account every aspect that would affect our communication within the frames of conventional (real and digital) and virtual communication, since it deals with not only the basic dimension, but the meta-dimension of communication as well. In this theory, the notion of ‘augment’ is a lot like Pokémon GO, a game based on augmented reality: One can detect (pocket)monsters and gain information about them, even though they are not really there in reality, but exist only virtually — although they still do exist in a way. Augmented communication also operates with phenomena, which are in some cases not explicitly understood as communication. We argue that communication is more than what the traditional communication models imply. The range of communication is unbound: it has (i.) a basic- and a meta-dimension; (ii.) new levels, such as verbal, auditive, visual, sensitive and meta; (iii.) attributes like character, emotions and feelings, humour, manipulation, and eventuality; (iv.) participants no more, but communicators (actors and inactors). From now on communication can be defined not only as interaction-based, but reaction-based as well. It is common to think that communication always has to mean something “measurable”, i.e. logically and linguistically comprehensible. Still, there are more vague, imponderable, nonfactual but essential components in communication, which affect our ways of interaction and cognition. Communication is augmented because, among others, a noise or even a colour (cf. Star Wars lightsabres) can become a communicatum. A communicatum is an accumulation of various communication-contents, which may become potentially relevant, i.e. information. In this manner, a communicatum may tell us much more than we think, confer the song “Gangnam style” of PSY, or the song “PPAP” of Pikotaro: Because of their visual appearance these two artists both gain a funny, yet weird character.

Most interpretations in communication theory are based on semantics — on language. However, there is an abundance of instances, when these conventional methods do not comply, for example, the cognition of “Gangnam style” or “PPAP” are essentially beyond language: These are based on popular culture and stereotypes. Everyone may know that “Gangnam style” is not a fashion trend, but an ironic parody of Gangnam-gu; and it is a viral music video like „PPAP”. The meaning of the previously mentioned examples is not a natural, conventional one, but it is the result of a dynamic, emergent meaning-producing process. Let us dwelve into this process: PewDiePie usually starts his videos saying “How is it going, Bros? My name is PewDiePie!”, and ends them like „Stay awesome, Bros! Brofist!”. We argue that most acts of communication could not be apprehended by means of conventional communication. Although speech-act theory could determine whether it has an illocutionary force or not, but it would not cover the whole phenomena, just barely the surface. In a strict linguistic sense, the above-mentioned phrases mean a ‘greeting’ and a ‘farewell’. It is true that he greets the viewers but the problem is, that these superficial remarks have nothing to do with the true communication-content of his. If we inspect the aforementioned via the basic dimension of augmented communication, one can see he uses multiple levels of communication: (i.) verbal: “Bros”, “Brofist”, “Stay awesome”; (ii.) auditive: high-pitched voice and laughter; (iii.) visual: gestures, hand movements and the “Brofist” itself. Augmented communication can interpret not only the basic-dimension, but the metadimension as well: Meta-communication is, in fact, communication beyond communication. In this manner, communication is rescued from the grasp of linguistics, semantics and conventional communication-theory, that is, it means more than the conventional one could imply. Consider the meta-communication of the above examples: (i.) the real function of the intro and outro „greetings” is to catch or maintain attention, not only greeting; (ii.) the Brofist involves the viewer, actually invites the viewer to become a Bro, be a part of a community; (iii.) the Brofist and the whole intro/outro-situation are functioning just because (iv.) he does it; (v.) only he does it; (vi.) he does it in a specific way — a characterised way. Having put in this way, it is apparent, that it lies far much (a posteriori) meta-meaning behind the aforementioned phrases than we would think first (a priori) by applying the inventory of conventional communication.

3.2.

Attributes of (Augmented) Communication: The Character Theory

It has been shown, that augmented communication can refer to communication beyond conventional communication, i.e. certain communication contents have effect on the perception of how we think about a communicator. One not only understands the basic conventional communicative act but also gets to know, for example his intention, communication-strategy and the setting where he operates — and most importantly: the uttering person’s (fragment of) identity, i.e. character as well, which is easy to identify and to get familiarized with. In the theory of augmented communication the ‘character’ has an inherent and essential role as an attribute of communication. As the micro- and mezzo-level of character theory, it contributes to the process of character-building and character-representation, i.e. to characterology, since the character as an attribute expresses a unique (characteristic) feature, which is a trait of a communicator. Character markers are the signs, which (i.) identify characteristic features relating to the communicator; (ii.) identify its users in a specific, yet definite way. Consider for example Pikotaro in his viral video of PPAP, where he is dressed in a yellow coverall, and has a funny moustache, glasses, thus a strange looking face, and cringeworthy dance moves with ludicrous lyrics. In fact, he has a set of characteristic (unique) features, i.e. character markers, which definitely identify only him — no other. Whatever one may think about Pikotaro’s actions and the video-clip of PPAP, it is the result of a dynamic, emergent meaning-producing process, because one understands not (only) the meaning (basic-dimension) but also the sense (meta-dimension) of a communicatum. The point is: In the aforementioned examples the sense is “not there”, it does not exist within our language system, but emerges in the reality via meta-communication — which is often triggered by the basic dimension of communication. Given that, the attributes of communication are inherent factors of communication, therefore, every act of communication has potentially a dimension, which is determined by one of them. Having put in this way, the argument is that every word of a language is a potential character marker — depending on the level of character-intensity (cf. Kaba 2016, 2017)

4.

Characterisation of the PewDiePie channel

The aim of the analysis is to give a comprehensive account on making of the biggest star on YouTube, and to prove the theory and theses introduced in this paper. Although the analysis is conducted on more than 300 videos made by PewDiePie throughout his career, it can not be

elaborated on all of them due to textual restrictions — the material had to be shrank and cut in a way, that only the most representative examples remain.

4.1.

Characterology of PewDiePie

In practice, characterology means the following. Even though conventionally it has literally no substantial meaning when PewDiePie: names a crab, a chair, a statue, a stone, a barrel, a shark or a monster, and gives them catchphrases; is ranting and goes outside begging for likes/dislikes/views half-naked; runs like anime characters (cf. NARUTO); rides children’s vehicles; does (crouching) doubledabs; pours water on his face; mocks his former assistant editor, Michael (a.k.a. Kapuzenwurm) often labelled just as “Romanian” — but in augmented communication it makes sense, namely, all of them are character markers relating to him. PewDiePie makes his videos more entertaining by implementing characterisation, thus utilising character markers. Confer some examples: In the Amnesia series a barrel is no more just a barrel, it is the archenemy of PewDiePie, while Mr. Chair, the chair, Piggeh, the pig and Jennifer, the stone are his friends, and the statue named Stephano is his guide in the dungeon full of Bros, i.e. monsters; a potato is no more an edible thing, but it represents his trending YouTuber colleague, jacksepticeye; Danny de Vito as a cardboard is now a friend of PewDiePie, who recommends him funny videos; Ainsley Harriott is no more a chef, but an evilish companion of PewDiePie, who knows gibberish Japanese as well; in Stranded Deep the marooned PewDiePie’s only two speaking “BFFs” are Shannon, the shark and Dr. Crab, the crab (often misspelled as Mr. Crab); his pets (Maya, Edgar, Slippy) and Garble, the CPR Manikin take over the channel from time to time. He invents different characters (“personas”) for himself as well. The actor-characters of PewDiePie are thoroughly characterised: all of them have specific traits, communication styles and audio-visual representation. These are like amongst others (i.) the Beastmaster 64, a survival-man and Pokémon hunter in one person, who has an American accent; (ii.) the ranter, hype-maker, hater blocker PewDiePie, who is harsh and can not be “defeated”; (iii.) the „good old fabulous” PewDiePie. There is but a common misunderstanding about actor-characters: It is vague for many that there is a gap between identity and character. A character is not a real person: it is virtual and it is no more than a dependent identity segment of a person, which is thoroughly designed, and performed — just like an actor would do. In a similar fashion, a YouTuber and an actor are

all but characters — with a crucial difference: No one would blame an actor for his (wrong)doings in a movie, but would a YouTuber in his videos.

4.2.

Characteristics of the PewDiePie channel

The intro/outro shown before in this paper is PewDiePie’s main character marker, one of the channel’s essential characteristics. Characteristics is the macro- and sometimes mezzo-level in the field of character-theory. Its focus is to collect typical and characteristic features of broad categories, such as mediums — for instance YouTube channels. The PewDiePie channel is rich in content because of the various topics in it. Starting from 2016, he became less of a “YouTube-dataller”, and opened up space to a more mature content, and started to make the videos what he really wanted to make (PDP 2016bg, 2017cfrtu). Since then, besides the usual content, his videos deal with YouTube issues (PDP 2017g’), like Watch Time (PDP 2016cdh), the so-called Adpocalypse (PDP 2017gh), clickbait (PDP 2016i, 2017ijky), demonetisation (PDP 2017lmnh’), legacy media (PDP 2016e, 2017ckyf’h’) and social issues (PDP 2016f, 2017gopq) as well — in a sincere, concise and entertaining way without taboo nor censorship, which is scarce in today’s society (cf. the mission of Róbert Puzsér in Hungary). Whenever he rants or makes hype, he does it in order to make fun of or criticise other YouTubers, legacy media, or any phenomena in a comical-but-serious fashion. In 2014, PewDiePie dealt with the increasing comment-spamming problem by creating a fake account himself, namely Falcon Lover, and made a caricature of the spammers (PDP 2014) — eventually he ended up disabling the comments under his videos for a year. The same attitude was utilised when he reacted to Watch Time by making exactly ten-minute videos — if his content was not enough he just inserted a picture or music in it like many other colleagues of him (PDP 2016dh). Earlier this year of 2017, PewDiePie has suffered a public character assassination carried out by Wall Street Journal publicists (cf. Winkler et al. 2017) — including the questionable Ben Fritz (PDP 2017f’) —, stigmatizing the YouTuber as an anti-Semite. He wanted to show that there are not quite proper services on the internet, which would do practically anything to get money — In fact: 5 dollars (PDP 2017e’). His unlikely bid turned out to be “successful”, yet absolutely offensive. In this way he has lost his contract with his MCN (multi-channel network) and got severe restraints by YouTube as well. In response, he started to elicit the working mechanism of legacy media by pointing out to fake news and to

clickbaiters, and by showing that the media does not consider context in general (PDP 2017c’d’) — He even started a successful merchandising campaign where he sold his “context matters” apparel (PDP 2017s). There are seasonal corners on his channel, like Let’s Play series and live-streams (PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS); vlogs, in which videos he tries out viral challenges (“You Laugh? You Lose!”; “Can this video get 1 million likes/dislikes/comments?”) and tools (fidget spinners; hot knife; VR), or criticises and parodises other YouTubers (Marina Joyce; Keemstar; Minecraft and Happy Wheels channels; Sorsha; Jake Paul), or makes rants and fights with his “haters”, or deals with news and everyday problems. Lately he started to give weekly tasks for his viewers, which he reviews in a video every next week (PDP 2017t). Nowadays he occasionally dwells upon gender-equality (PDP 2017pq) and family friendliness (PDP 2017ghxh’), while indicating that exaggeration and far-fetched ideas are impractical. For instance, he states in his videos constantly that he is family friendly but a minute later, he swears or shows explicit content. Furthermore, to enhance gender-equality, he changed his all-time fan-base’s name from Bros to Sisters, as well as his outro: from Brofist to Sisterfist and Sisterfister (2017z). In general, changes of character, even small ones, are fairly big risk for a communicator (cf. cast changes in Mortal Kombat sequel: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation), but PewDiePie delivers these changes smoothly by inventing character markers possessing almost the same level of character intensity. There was a time when his video-intro was a distorted Windows XP intro melody and a white background with his name written on it (PDP 2016h, 2017w). It worked because it is plain, yet exaggerated, on the other hand it reflects on some YouTubers fancy and in some cases relatively long intro scenes, which provides them valuable seconds (cf. Watch Time). The outro went through changes as well: nowadays he says farewell by “Jiu-jitsu” and “Squad Fam out”, while making hand signs based on NARUTO (PDP 2017na’). Some of his other seasonal jokes are as the following: “My name is Jeff”; “England is my city” and other Team 10 memes; “zero deaths”; “Just like Dark Souls!”; “gottem”; “wamen”; “christian PewDiePie activated”; “family friendly Felix”; “Why are we still here?” meme; “core message” (cf. Sorsha); “context does not matter”; Japanese words mixed in his utterances (kawaii, sugoi, kun, chan); “Oh my Gah” meme; “Notice me Senpai”; jokes about his beard; “I am a buddhist” (cf. Marina Joyce); talking pets; talking CPR Manikin (Garble); talking cardboards (Trump, Revelmode members); “Kazoo kid and ducks as PewDiePie’s alterego” memes; “disappointing”; struggling with haters (3PAC, Malcolm 1466 and Dillon The Hacker); “PewDiePie is only in it for the money” meme; “Quality/original content” meme; mocking

Michael “a.k.a.” Romanian; mocking jacksepticeye “a.k.a.” jacksepticeye 2 or Jackspedicy 2; Nokia ringtone; misspelling words (cf. *animu; *Game of Thrans); fake tears; high pitched voice and (random) prolonged screams; Sponsor Eagle; WSJ meme; outfits (Sailor Moon; flame shirt; hater blocker glasses); deep quotes (“Keep spinning” and “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less”) and more. It goes without saying that this is just the tip of the iceberg of the PewDiePie phenomenon. To give a comprehensive account on his videos it would be needed to integrate the audio-visual factors as well, but in a paper, it is hard to convey these characteristics. PewDiePie uses audio-visual elements strategically: he emphasises situations by adding the adequate sound and visual effect to it. Whenever he wants to convey (fake) emotions, he uses the correspondent effect, and then he forces it to the situation. In practice, this means that he exaggerates and overdramatises everything because it will make entertaining even a situation, which is originally not, or not that exciting (cf. the intro of PDP 2017v). He often achieves the desired result by the extensive use of meme and audiovisual effects, which do grab the attention of the viewer. This kind of mechanisms are zooming, black and white effect, slow-motion, audio-visual distortion, fade and opacity effects — All of these mixed with jokes, catchphrases and “acting”. The attention catching begins even before the video — at the thumbnail. PewDiePie’s videos might seem clickbait at first sight, but his thumbnails are always connected to the video’s topic. Most of the time he does not use the original image but the self-edited one, including a strong reaction, to make the thumbnail look more click-friendly.

5.

Conclusions

YouTube has started a new generation of entertainment industry. In this new context, we might say entertainment 2.0, the viewers can maintain a direct connection with their favourites and may even have an influence on what they do. Most YouTubers invent themselves, and they are able to rise to fame and success by relying on their fans — without any substantial supervising production team (cf. MCNs). In fact, they may even get more views and subscribers than their high-production “colleagues” on the site. With multimillions of views, YouTubers become Influencers, thus they gain the power to influence millions of people, which is a huge responsibility, yet a considerable and aspired asset in our society (cf. politics, public figures, legacy media, education, marketing). YouTubers “rule the moment” (original in Hungarian by Puzsér 2017) — it is on them how they deal with this power.

At the beginning, the novelty of YouTube was that it lacked the attributes of legacy media, for example the sponsored content, the censorship and the one-way oriented producing. It was more personal and free than now (cf. PDP 2017h). Nowadays the site is changing to a heavily mediatized direction: it has a strict, automated, yet imperfect demonetisation algorithm (cf. Vm 2017; PDP 2017h’), which makes (quality) content-creation much more constrained than ever before — Not to mention ambiguous legal issues, like “Fair Use” controversies (PDP 2017b’, hP 2017). It is not an easy task to provide original content when YouTube regulations overwrite community guidelines from time to time (without any notification), in a way that it makes not only possible but gives even support for relatively long videos — without considering its content quality — to profit more, compared to videos, which are shorter, but days of work is invested in them (cf. PDP 2016h, 2017h’). Among others, PewDiePie also has to deal with this situation, yet he succeeds by accommodating to the obligatory prescribed format, while providing his customary genuine entertainment. The aim of this paper was to investigate how PewDiePie manages to entertain, how he controls attention. The presented examples were just few of the many character markers and characteristics of the PewDiePie Channel, what fans enjoy — and not just the fans, but it seems, other YouTubers as well, thus they are utilising the same methods like him, for example actorcharacters (Anna Akana, Hollywood Hírügynökség, Videómánia, Smosh, Shane Dawson, sweetandtasty TV, Jake Paul, Logan Paul Vlogs), characterisation of the intro/outro by saying or using something unified all the time (DramaAlert, Engineering Explained, DanQ8000, Hollywood Hírügynökség, Smosh, Anna Akana) and naming their fan-base (Ilonka néni, Jared Dines, Marzia, Hollywood Hírügynökség, Animegyetem, Jake Paul, Logan Paul Vlogs). It is no wonder that these characteristics are to be found throughout the site. YouTube is an intersection of communication and economy, and the phenomenon that forges these two factors altogether is — characterisation. It has been demonstrated, based on PewDiePie’s career, that the best way of catching the viewers’ interests is using augmented communication and implementing characterisation. This is what grabs attention, enhances entertainment, and makes it easier for a YouTuber to make himself memorable — thus achieving success. The framework of augmented communication is able to interpret and analyse this phenomenon, as well as conventional and virtual communication, unlike those existing researches and theories, which still do not implement the products nor the communication methods of our age.

This concept is a new paradigm of communication that reflects on today’s society and today’s way of communication, because it raises consciousness and awareness of communication as a whole, and helps discerning and organising the vast information we encounter every day. Moreover, it provides a comprehensive, complex framework for educating our generation, the so-called digital natives.

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PDP (PewDiePie). (2014): Falcon Lover Videos [playlist] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPGHrgHWO7s&list=PLYH8WvNV1YEkS0WchBRKsg UlBfFmlmZw9 (2016a): WHY I GOT UNVERIFIED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnkmQ2rllAM (2016b): OLD VS. NEW PEWDIEPIE! (Fridays With PewDiePie - Part 111) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dAPKYPhDQ (2016c): Can this video get 1 million dislikes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx9Jv5uxfac (2016d): WHY PEWDIEPIE IS THE DUMBEST YOUTUBER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQfzqXiNfug (2016e): 50 MILLION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ku_iNKOv38 (2016f): TRY NOT TO SMILE CHALLENGE #1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOgo5rZ6qbs (2016g): READING COMMENTS (Fridays With PewDiePie - Part 117) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOlnF4jgSJ0 (2016h): YOUTUBE'S NEW SECRET! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTv5fXMwSz4 (2016i): YOU WONT BELIEVE THIS CLICKBAIT (PewDiePie React) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHNbitDDW3A (2017a): PewDiePie’s YouTube channel. YouTube. URL (retrieved: 28/09/2017): https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie/about (2017b): How To Get Started On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVu8OWN90eY (2017c):

Talking

about

some

stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_c4uruJV2U (2017d): My Response. URL (retrieved: 17/02/17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwk1DogcPmU (2017e): who im voting for president.. (part 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL080idp3OQ (2017f): FUTURE? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteM_Jy9CrQ

Ive

never

talked

about..

(2017g): THE DELETED PEPSI AD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MqnE7TPcRw (2017h): YOUTUBEISOVERPARTY (deleted version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MeFId_k1LA (2017i): MY FIRST TIME... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbr8bRUDdv8 (2017j): Why i'm joining team 10... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjxzkmf3ks0 (2017k): PEWDIEPIE CLICKBAIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-5OVj7KJvk (2017l):

TRY

NOT

TO

GET

ANGERY

CHALLENGE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn6puoLXuhI (2017m): SHE WANTS MY YOUTUBE MONEY! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJuqRbqepFI (2017n): HARDEST. GAME. EVER. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLJiK8BFv7U (2017o): KATY PERRY IS A GENIUS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB4znOVsfnA (2017p): How to: RESPECT WOMEN! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsevBxOWFXs&t=1s (2017q): This man has -1000 respect for women and the reason why might SHOCK you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrDD5NTnoU4 (2017r): WHY I DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES ANYMORE.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osPKCm7jmeQ (2017s): My fanbase is the absolute worst... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj9HzJqzMoA (2017t): Tired of trying... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u57obOmxrts (2017u): I'm stepping back.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPMVM6wsSWE&t=210s (2017x): DON'T PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPkP1WTZ3xg&t=35s (2017y): FAMILY FRIENDLY (Official Announcement) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8G0zn-uRa4

(2017z): THERE ARE NO MORE GOOD GAMES.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sooupr87gEg (2017v): W T F A M I W A T C H I N G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDKED5Nt4PM (2017w): The funniest thing in the universe.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpPI2K4QZog (2017a’): MY FLAWS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od5w-cXfr1g (2017b’): About A Copyright Strike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah7LYxysuJ8 (2017c’): CONTEXT. (times are thouhg: creativity + demonetisation!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sYNMf6AIbs (2017d’): I KILL HITLER! *notclickbait* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9SFQTrfUwc (2017e’): just to clear some things up… http://pewdie.tumblr.com/post/157160889655/just-to-clear-some-things-up (2017f’): How About That… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTCDfE_sKnM&t=3s (2017g’): I'M CALLING OUT YOUTUBE! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLAXxAoWAok (2017h’): YOUTUBE MADE A MISTAKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyw0GhtZAYc Puzsér, R. (2017): A tíz legtehetségesebb magyar [The ten most talented Hungarians]. Sznobjektív 1(37). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JV4mKsbvHc&t=2s Maynard, S. K. 2016. Fluid Orality in the Discourse of Japanese Popular Culture. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Nemesi, A. L. (2013): A pragmatika mint kommunikációtudomány [Pragmatics as communication studies]. Magyar Nyelv. 109(2): 177–184. Róka, J. (2005): Kommunikációtan [Communication theory]. Századvég. SB (SOCIALBLADE) (2017): TOP 100 MOST VIEWED YOUTUBE CHANNELS. URL (retrieved: 20/02/2017): https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/100/mostviewed

Veszelszki, Á. (2017): Digilect. The Impact of Infocommunication Technology on Language. De Gruyter Saur. Vm (Videómánia) (2017): Hogyan csinálj családbarát tartalmat? [How to do family friendly content?] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n32OxoMpro Wacha, I. (2011): Nem csak szóból ért az ember: a nonverbális kommunikáció eszköztára [*Hungarian saying*: The inventory of non-verbal communication]. Tinta Kiadó. Winkler, R. et al. (2017): “Disney Severs Ties With YouTube Star PewDiePie After AntiSemitic Posts”. Wall Street Journal. URL (retrieved: 20/02/2017): https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube-star-pewdiepie-after-antisemitic-posts-1487034533 金水, 敏 (2003):『ヴァーチャル日本語 役割語の謎』[Virtual Japanese. The maze of Yakuwarigo] 東京:岩波書店.

*PewDiePie intentionally misspells words in his titles. **Every YouTuber is accessible by their alias. ***If not shown, the URL is last retrieved at 30/09/17.