This show is sponsored
by BetterHelp online therapy. Visit betterhelp.com/padilla
because sometimes existing is exhausting. My name is Anthony Padilla,
and I spent a day with Wilbur Soot. We'll uncover the truth about how becoming
a massively popular Minecrafter and musician has made him completely
rethink his private relationships, what he's learned
from angry backlash on the internet, and we'll also hear some stories
of some awkward fan interactions. By the end of this video, we'll find out if entertaining
millions of followers has been a wholly rewarding experience, or having countless eyes
scrutinizing your every move comes with torment more cruel than anyone
could ever imagine. [music] Hello, Wilbur. Hi. [music] You are the first guest that's ever been on my show that uses
exclusively 3-in-1 shampoo. Can I tell the story? I was going to a hotel and I realized
I didn't have any shampoo, and sometimes the shampoo
they give you is just like crap. I'll get anything that isn't that. I go into a Tesco's and I grab
the first thing I see, and immediately I walk out someone's like, "Wilbur Soot, do you want
to take a photo with me?" and I'm like, "Yes, sure." Take a photo holding
my 3-in-1 shampoo in my hands. [laughs] Was any part of you prepared for the amount of attention
that you now receive? I don't think anyone can really
come to terms with it. The human mind isn't supposed to get that. [music] How long ago did you first
start creating content? 2008. Do you still have those videos online? Yes. Can you show me a quick clip? [laughs] That was me. Oh, yes. That's the 11-year-old me. [high-pitched voice] "Hi, it's me. How are you? I'm fine. I bet you want to see my dog." I'm at the same time jealous that you have footage of you this young. I wish I could see what I would do, but also so grateful
that this technology did not exist when I was your age because I don't even necessarily know what I would have done. [laughs] I'm not that embarrassed by it. I'm actually pretty-- I don't have a problem with it. How did your content continue to evolve? I made a Minecraft channel in 2011, and then I stepped away from Minecraft. Thank God because I have progressed
beyond Minecraft. What do you think propelled you into the massive popularity
that you see today? Luck. My first big push was
on the idea of Minecraft, but. Minecraft but. Yes. Minecraft, but. Then that ended up being a really
cool little title concept because everyone started doing it. People still use it today. Some of the most popular Minecraft channels. That was your original concept? I've given myself the accolade of the first, but I don't actually know, so-- [laughs] That's probably true,
and all that matters is if you believe it. I do, I do. My heart
departs, I'm right. [laughs] [music] How quickly was that growth? I did a YouTube video with CallMeCarson. I saw on Twitter he'd made a Minecraft server so on the video I said to him, "Can I join?" and he was like, "Yes.
What's your Twitch stream?" I was like, "I don't stream." He was just like, "You've
got a stream to join?" I've never streamed before, I had no interest in being
streamed, so I was just, "Ah, fine." I made a Twitch channel and streamed
just so I could join their server. I remember my first 1000
viewer stream was a month or two after I started
my channel, and I made SMPEarth, which was like Minecraft but a big globe. Here we are SMPEarth. Look at everyone. [laughs] Should we see
what's going on in the rest of the map? Oh my God, Europe is popping dude. It was the stepping stone
between the SMPLive and Dream SMP Era, of the two biggest SMPs on my Twitch. How did you meet Tommy there? Because I feel like Tommy has been intrinsically
connected to your journey. He was a late addition. The server was literally
about to be live open, anyone could join, and I get
a message from someone, "Hey, can you add this guy, TommyInnit?" I went on the stream and he was funny. Hey, hey. What's the favorite I Am
Stones place to live? Caves. Estonia. [laughs] I was like "Yes, sure." [laughs] Just kind of-- He got let into the Dream SMP. He was the first wave of people added. I was third, I think. I basically just asked, "Can I join?" I really like Hamilton. That's the entire beginning
of the Dream SMP, is just Hamilton. Really? Yes, so we made an isolated
area for just Europeans, and we called it Le man burg. That's the entire beginning, and then it was Dream,
and then it was Hamilton. Have people put that together? Yes, people have. Are you planning and writing? Do you have just an outline
of points that you want to hit? I would have a hit sheet of a treatment of what's going to happen in the story, and then how we would flow to each
piece, would be done through improv. What were your stream numbers
like during this time? Were they exponentially increasing? I think I remember the first moment
where I was like "Wow." I had 60,000 people waiting
on my starting soon screen. I remember I took a photo
on my phone because I was like "This is ridiculous." Literally, the next stream I did
there was 80,000 people and stuff. Basically, it's like an incremental job. You just got to do what you love
and then just get lucky. Do what you love and get lucky. [laughs] That's a tip for you for life. Take that one. [music] Was there a moment when you realized, "Oh shit, this could be the rest of my life." It was definitely
from YouTube, not from Twitch, when I decided it could be a career. Very early on in my Minecraft stuff, when it started to get lots of views,
I was like, "Oh, wow. Money." [laughs] What was it looking at your check
that came in the mail? Yes. I'd already been making
stuff from SootHouse before. I was getting a big cut of that. It was always an amount that was
like, "Yes, this is really good." I've got a solid amount of money in the bank, but if that channel were to go wooh, I'd be straight out looking for a job. When I got a paycheck from the new channel, the Wilbur Soot channel, and it was probably about the same as what I'd got
from my entire time. I remember being like, "That's money." Were you going to school at the time? Yes. I was at uni. Did you drop out? No. Whoa. I finished it. Whoa. My graduation was yesterday. What? I wasn't there. Yes. I graduated. I just didn't show up to the ceremony. Wait, what were you going to school for? Editing. Now you've actually been on the field,
training in editing for years. Well, I don't do any editing now. Every editor wants to be a director,
and every director wants to retire. That's what-- [laughter] Were you working anywhere else
when you first started seeing success? Yes, I was a cashier. I remember I got 10,000 subs. I was like, "That's a lot of subscribers," and I didn't quit. The only time I quit was when I went to uni. On the day I decided I was going to quit, we had a worker meeting about staff. There's been a guy with a gun, who's been going around all
the supermarkets in the area. They basically sat
us down and he told us, "Right, this is what you got to do if he comes in. Make sure the safe is locked. You gotta make sure you press
the silent alarm under the desk. You gotta make sure the doors are wide
open so the customers can leave." I was just thinking, "What
happens if I just run? I'm not doing that." You better throw your body
in front of that bullet. He was basically saying, "Do as the man says," but it was more like if he comes
in and points a gun at me, and says "Open up the safe. Don't lock it," I'm not locking that safe. Wilbur, you better die for this company. Yes. It felt like that. I remember on that day
I was like, "I'm resigning. I don't want to do this--" Yes. You're like, "I'm not going to risk
getting killed for this." Yes. I went and I got
drunk for an entire week. Oh. That probably would've been
more likely to kill you than-- More than the gun. Yes. [laughter] [music] Over 120 million views on YouTube. 500 million streams on Spotify. Your music is obviously, insanely successful. How long ago did you start playing music? Three and a half years ago. Three and a half years-- Four, I think. Just four years ago you picked
up an instrument for the first time. Yes, it was a ukulele. Now you have over 600 million
streams of your music. It's the luck, man. It's the luck? I don't think you could boil
it down to luck when you're like, "Oh, I was lucky with my music. Oh, I was lucky with my streaming. Oh, I was lucky with being tall." [laughs] Definitely. I picked up a ukulele for the first time. I was quite sad. It was a downer point in my life. I wasn't happy with who I was at all as well. Me 18, 19, 20 years old, I really looked back
and I'm like, "Fuck that guy." What was it that you didn't like? I thought I was an untouchable,
just brilliant person. I never did anything
bad obviously, thankfully. It was around the time my girlfriend
broke up with me as well. I was like, "Me. I'm fucking awful. I started playing a ukulele because I was like, "I want to give it a go." It became the one thing I did ever. Is that where you learned to reflect
on yourself and your feelings? Yes. I was just on my own a lot of the time. That was really good for me. It's funny how those toughest times sometimes are the things that define us in many ways. They're the huge shift in our life,
and that was it for you. I'm so glad I didn't have what I'm having
now at age 17, like Tommy and Turbo. [laughs] [music] Do you think you were a shithead
back then because of an insecurity? What do you think it was? I guess I was a little bit
insecure because I felt like I missed out on so much of life. Why? I was the creepy, smelly, weird kid. Middle school. It was the time of my parent's divorce. My dad didn't have a bed for me. I slept on a futon on the floor with my dog. I stunk, I didn't shower much. I used to sleep in my school uniform for the next day so that I could just
roll out of bed and go to school. I was pretty repulsive. I think when I went to college,
that was when I stopped doing that. That was the time when I was like,
"Right, let's not do that anymore." Then the ego came with it. I discover everyone has when they reach young
adulthood where they're like, "Wow, I was a dickhead when I was a teenager." [music] I always wanted to write my own song. The idea of writing my own
song was really cool. It was when I met one
of my friends called Tommy. Tommy, not Innit. He had a band and he was like, "Join it." I went, "Okay." I played bass. I'd never played a bass
before, but I figured it out. You joined a band and played a bass
that you had never played before? Yes. They needed a bassist. I said, "I can learn.
It's just strings, innit?" How quickly did you learn? No, it was awful. I don't know. I'm not fooling anyone. I was really bad. I quit that band in dramatic
fashion in the rain. After our first gig, I walked
down into the rain to our van. The lead singer comes out and goes,
"I thought that went really well." [laughs] Wait, was he being serious? Yes. He was being serious. The lead guitarist
from the band is now in my band. You started a band. I wanted to be the Arty Monkeys. I wanted to be Two Door Cinema Club. Sam and Joe wrote a bunch of songs. We were like, "We need
a bassist and a drummer." I was in a burger shop with my friend James. James's friend had a bass on his back
and I went, "Do you play bass?" He goes, "Yes." I'm like, "Do you want to be in my band?" He goes, "Yes," and I say,
"Here's my address." Then on the day of studio,
we did have a drama. I booked a guy at Fiverr
and he comes into the rehearsal and we play in the songs and he's just
immediately, "This is crazy." I just said to him, "Do you want
to scrap the poem and just join?" He goes, "Yes, okay. I'll do it." Then how quickly did Lovejoy blow up? Because it's obviously huge. Yes, pretty immediately. That was
because of the previous Minecraft stuff. I had a little shortcut, a little cheat sheet. My goal with Lovejoy is to make
something that's worth it, that it could have done well without [?]. Make something that's worth
it, that it inspires people. Where do you plan to take it? Do you plan to focus more
of your energy on the music, so it does stand the test of time by itself? Music is so fulfilling to me and Twitch and YouTube is still fulfilling for me, but it's not as much as it used to be. Mainly because I feel like I don't really
have any goals for it. My goal with music is I want
to play NPR's tiny desk. That's a big dream for me. I want to be on a stage and I want to walk out and then have that wave of wooo. Then I want to be playing
songs and saying the lyrics and feeling them shouting
the lyrics back at me. [music] Do you ever fear that everything
could disappear as quickly as it came? That's always the fear, I guess for everyone. The fact of the matter is it's rare
to not lose your drive. I don't check numbers really or-- I was going to say, even when streaming,
do you have your view count on? I have a view count on, but it's very factual looking as opposed to Factual measure of your success or your worth. It's a metric for deciding
what I'm going to do next time. Numbers don't mean
how good something is at all. Being the most popular
doesn't mean it's the best. Not at all. Being the most popular means
you're the most popular, which is a good accolade in itself. If you want to treat YouTube
like a video game, do it. That's fun. You know that I get that,
but it's like, I don't. There was an uproar because you removed
your Nice Guy Ballad. It was the first comedy song I ever wrote. Making fun of the idea of the nice guy, the misogynistic girls who want bad guys. I was really nice to this girl
and she didn't have sex with me. That restraining order was a bit far. All I did was attach a tracker onto your car. Half of the course of this kind of people is that they tend to have a lot
of other skewed beliefs. I was trying to tackle all of these. I was making fun of all of them while playing the character of this nice guy. One of the lyrics in the song, I say that he was checking to make
sure she wasn't seeing any black guys. I thought it was funny making fun of this guy. I played the song live once. This guy came up to me after the show and when I thought that song was really That lyric was really crap. I went, "Here you are." I said, "Yes, that was shit." I changed to seeing any other guys. I was just like, "I'll leave the video up." Whenever I played it live
after that, I never said black guys. It was other guys after that. Years later, someone finds it and says,
"Look at this. This is bad." Everyone came at it and was like,
"This is [sound cut]. Will sucks." I was like, "Yes, it does suck." This was me three years ago. Yes. I left the song up because it was like, what's the point in apologizing
and then hiding everything. I actually deleted it fully
a couple of months ago. I didn't want to make it about me. It was about the song. I waited until the backlash
died down and I deleted it. Has that pushed you away
from making comedy music? No, not at all. I had decided that long before I released
even half of those songs I am. I just feel like you can definitely
make, be funny and not offend people. I think it's more fun that way. [music] I've heard some people imply that Minecraft stan culture is particularly toxic. Have you encountered any of that? I've had weird ones, obsessive stalkerish. I've had ones who call themselves
stans, who are just fans. It's weird because I would've definitely been a stan had that culture
existed when I was a teenager. Was it more so about the community
rather than the people that you were? Absolutely. I think that if you swapped all
of us out for different people, they would just stan different people. Most of the things that happened that denote Minecraft stans being toxic occur
amongst maybe one or two people. The problem isn't stans. Stans are happy. They are enjoying a connection
in a time when everyone's locked inside and they found friends who also do that. The difference is that Twitter will promote the parts that make people angry. Twitter promotes rage culture. Yes. That's all it is. You have to remember that everything
you see is based on anger and it just takes one person saying
something stupid for everyone to-- How do you prevent yourself from getting
too caught up in the negativity? Go outside. Touch grass. Genuinely it's a meme but is-- Tommy does this vlog where he goes
out and does all these cool stuff, and he always says, "I haven't
thought about Twitter once." [music] Speaking of controversy, I feel like we needed to squash the biggest controversy
that you've dealt with. Before we continue learning
about the world of Wilbur Soot. How much money is in your bank
account right now? When was the last time you had sex? I'd like to really quickly
bring your attention to a couple of other episodes
that may pick your interest. Such as I spent today with Dream,
Corpse, Ranboo, Tubbo, Karl, Tommy, [?] legendary OG Minecrafters,
the LDShadowLady. Holy shit, I have done a lot
of episodes relating to Minecraft. Many of those episodes, by the way, are available completely
uncensored in their podcast form, links down below for that. While you're here,
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month at betterhelp.com/padilla. That's better H-E-L-P.com/padilla. Now back to the world of Wilbur Soot. Speaking of controversy,
I feel like we needed to squash the biggest controversy
that you've dealt with. I haven't brought this up with you. You haven't. Your glasses. Are they real? I was panning through my mind,
like "It's sipping out. What is it? I'm not very controversial." [laughs] The fear in your eyes. Are your glasses real? No. Wow. I'm a sucker for fast fashion. I'm a problem. Try them on. There's nothing. My God. I now know what it feels
like to be Wilbur Soot. [laughs] Now you got far too strong, [?]. [laughter] [music] Do you get recognized in public a lot? What's a lot? Probably at least one time crowding. It's about two or three
and that's just the walk to the shops. If I'm spending a day outside,
I'll be lucky if it's less than 10. The majority of the weird ones
are just people shouting my name at me. One time I was at a theme park
and this kid just goes, "Smash," and then no one was paying any attention. Then all of a sudden it was just hordes. I had one where I was being
recognized quite a lot and then this kid on a scooter wearing a Fortnite hoodie just rolls
up to me and just goes, "Amog us," and just points at me and I go, "Yes." He just stares at me and I go,
"Do you want to take a photo?" He just goes [shakes head]
and just scoots away silently. Did your feelings get hurt that he didn't want to take a photo with you? Yes. I had this one person confess
I was their sexual awakening and she goes, "Can I have a hug?" I'm like, "COVID. Sorry." She goes, "Okay, bye," and leaves. Then this lady comes out to me and goes, "Does she know you, or are you famous?" I go, "Neither, Miss." [laughter] How private do you keep your personal alive? Pretty private. It's one
of those things where it's like, if I share it with my grandma,
I'll share it with Twitch. My grandma has no need to know
I'll go to a party tonight, but I can tell my grandma
what my favorite food is. Do you have a limit? Do you have something where you're like, "Oh, that's something
I will not share," though? 100%. How much money is in your bank
account right now? When was the last time you had sex? There's loads of stuff
that they'll never know. [music] Do you keep your dating life private? Yes, for sure. It's not something my grandma needs
to know, but I have been on this. Is it the fear in your mind
that they know who you are? Yes. Every single YouTuber
at streamer has that. There have been times
when I've definitely caught on, like, "This person knows who I am." The worst part is when they lie
and pretend they've never heard of you. They're just like, "Oh, yes.
My fault. You may be a little bit." You can definitely tell when they know and there've been times
where I've had to cool off like, "Hey [?] I am out. Don't really
want to see you anymore." [music] What is next for Wilbur Soot? Lovejoy's album. Full album or EP? Full album. I also just have so many dumb
ideas for things like-- Can I tell them? Yes. Can you bleep them or something? Yes, I'll bleep them. Okay, cool, so-- [laughs] I like how this is a common theme
in my videos. Tell me your ideas but the world can't know. Okay. I've got [sound cut]. It's going to all be like [sound cut] but we're like [sound cut] sort of like [sound cut]. Some of them will be really strange, but some of them will just have [sound cut]. They're all [sound cut]
and they're all like [?]. Without any announcement or anything? No announcement at all
and that's how I want to start it all. Woah. Yes. [laughs] That makes sense why we have to bleep it. Yes. Bea wants to know
what you're most proud of in your career. My music in L'Manburg. L'Manburg. Just one element
of the Dream SMP lore? I think it was a pretty powerful part. I've seen in public
the L'Manburg flag on their car. Damn. What? Seeing people inspired
and motivated by my work. All right. You got five seconds to shout out or promote anything you want
directly into camera. Go. Hi. WilburSoot on YouTube
and Twitch, and Lovejoy on Spotify. Anthony Padilla. Subscribe. A small percentage of your viewers
aren't actually subscribed. [laughs] Oh, it's a large percentage. Here's the stat on my face. Covering my face right now. Oh, yes. It is right there. Now, I'm going to make it really hard. Oh, shit. My editor's love [?]. Here's the stat. Now I'm going to rotate the stat with me. Go subscribe. Well there you have it. I spent a day with Wilbur Soot
and there's just something that is so incredibly contagious about Wilbur and the way that he perceives the world. [music] You are very well-dressed, sir. Thank you. [laughter] So are you, Anthony. You're fishing for compliment. That's all I want to tell you. Thanks for coming on my channel. All right, thanks. Yes. [laughter] Where was it meant to go from there? Just because you told me that you like to tell
a story with your outfit. Yes, but just visually. What are you wearing under there? There's got to be a story that's deeper
hidden right beneath the surface, right? How did you know? I knew. How did you know? Of course, I come first. I've got a fish to catch. [laughs] Can I see how some of those words
are just spelled on there? No. [laughter]
