The Ruthless Rise and Fall of FouseyTube

greetings youtube you don't know me i don't know me he doesn't know me she doesn't know me but trust me you will know me during his peak he was a king once upon a time like a really really really long time ago i was on the ellen show and is it youssef yes you got caught right oh yeah as you just saw i got so into it during the ymca a lifestyle that 99 of people could only dream of i paid 13 500 a month to live by myself 500 million views in 2015. when i had zero subscribers i didn't say nobody knows me man i'm never gonna have a million subscribers i said no i'm going to get a million subscribers 200 000 every single month revenue started coming into my life from all different angles because i told the universe and i told myself i'm going to be a millionaire at a young age however as time progressed as the youtube landscape changed as fouseytube's reputation was stomped into the dirt fousey2 began to fall out of the spotlight his views started to decline his fans began to leave and in recent times he would announce that he planned on discontinuing youtube as a creator how could he have possibly gotten to this point it's march 2011 in los angeles california despite it barely being a day after the end of winter the sun was still shining and the ambitious creative individuals that characterized the city were still creating one of these ambitious creative los angeles residents was a 21 year old palestinian-american by the name of yusuf erica who at the time had just finished a degree in theater arts and was looking to become an actor along with the other 50 of everyone in la pretty quickly yusuf realized he had to do something to stand out from the crowd and rather than taking the classic path to becoming an actor he decided to take initiative by uploading his work to youtube against the recommendation of his university dean i want to thank my theater arts major dean who told me making a youtube channel was the worst mistake i'll ever make in my acting career regardless from the get-go yousef seemed to have somewhat of a rebellious and ambitious drive and at the time his situation couldn't have gotten any worse if things went sour at the time i was broke i was a waiter at chili's and i was a cashier at best buy and i was literally living paycheck to paycheck however his awful situation his university dean's advice and his lack of experience wasn't enough to stop him from taking road less traveled yusuf erica would create his youtube channel under the name fouseytube on the 21st of march 2011 deriving the name fouseytube from rearranging the letters in his first name yusuf and all you do is switch the y and the f my name it's like magic it's fouseytube because this is my tube and you're watching me through youtube hi too fuzzy's initial goal on youtube was somewhat cliche i want to change the world one smile at a time and i really do not think that is impossible but fousey would begin to achieve this goal after uploading his first video only four days after creating the channel also introducing the audience to his bizarre personality for the first time so if you guys a little background about who i am and who influenced me to become this person that i am today i'm going to tell you guys a little about me you can call me fousey you can come youssif you you can call me useless if you like but as long as like watch my videos uh like my videos and subscribe to my channel and i promise you i'll bring you funny things and just like many other youtubers fousey was starting from the ground up with no experience whatsoever i decided to start youtube from this from scratch from zero subscribers however despite his lack of experience it wouldn't be long at all before fousey would see his first bit of success more surprisingly it would only be on his second upload only five days after beginning the channel fuzzy would upload rebecca black dancing to friday in the apple store considering friday by rebecca black had been released only two weeks beforehand the song was trending and when combined with yusuf's crazy personality the algorithm would promote the video leading to fouseytube's first bit of growth of a few hundred subscribers from the beginning it was obvious that fousey was willing to give it everything he had and would even begin to use methods of borderline desperation in order to get some initial growth on the channel i sent it to every single person on my friend's request and i am day in and out i went out on the streets and publicized my channel to every single person i saw fooseytube would then go on to upload a similar video to the rebecca black video only with a jennifer lopez song and a more provocative outfit this video once again boosted fouseytube's subscriber count and reputation however there was somewhat of a problem here there was only so many times fousey could dance in front of a webcam in the apple store he needed to change his content to something where he could implement a bit more variety and it wouldn't be long at all before he would come to discover this new video style i'm coming what's that what how do you send texts [Music] in july 2011 approximately four months after beginning the channel fouseytube would hit 3500 subscribers and upload a video titled middle eastern parents mama i just got into harvard good good mom i just got into a car accident i'm gay you're what you're gay this video had one element that all of his previously uploaded videos failed to incorporate relatability viewers who are also of middle east and descent found the stereotypes to be entertaining and fiji would gain further loyal fans this video would gain 93 000 views in the first week despite fousey only having 5 000 subscribers indicating to fousey that he should create more videos with a similar premise for this reason fousey would go on to upload an array of different videos mocking the middle eastern stereotype such as the hummus dance hello everybody um it is very nice to meet you through the you youtube my name is ibrahim right here we have my so beautiful as well as middle eastern mistakes dimmer is almost ready who are you waiting for momma already ate at school today i spent all this time cooking and you already ate okay we have a new thing on the dinner table tonight this would ultimately prove to be successful causing foositude to hit twenty thousand fifty thousand seventy five thousand and eventually a hundred thousand subscribers only ten months after creating the channel i cried my eyes up on eight hundred thousand subscribers i remember sitting on my parents couch crying my eyes out because of how much it meant to me because i put blood sweat and tears into the journey however while the subscriber count was great there was a problem with the videos he was producing they still had somewhat of a limited audience considering they were mainly targeted towards those who had a similar ethnic background to fousey on top of this fousey had signed up with a dodgy youtube network who were taking a chunk of his money and giving him minimal value in return ended up being this one guy who lived in his house who had this fake youtube network and what he was doing was collecting all my money each month and then giving me maybe two percent of what i was actually earning after two years of making the content it's likely that fousey began to realize that there was a ceiling to his audience and it might be worthwhile looking into a genre that would appeal to everyone and anyone on youtube fousey's time making relatable middle eastern content was coming to an end he had learned important lessons about comedy filmmaking and entertainment and these lessons would prove to be vital for the next genre that fousey2 would venture into what are you doing don't fight it just let it happen in may 2013 fouseytube would dip his toes into a new genre on the youtube platform this genre would later become somewhat of a meme but at the time it was fresh and inviting for confident creators who are willing to embarrass themselves for their audience what up everybody yousef aka fouseytube here here with the genre we're talking about is pranking and considering fousey fell snugly into this category of confident creators he would switch his focus to making videos for this genre on the 22nd of may 2013 fousey would upload a video titled hold my hand prank where he would approach strangers hold their hand and record the reaction [Applause] [Music] what's up what's up what's up i wanted some love too this video performed reasonably well gaining around 500 000 views in the first two weeks the performance of this first video led to another video titled jim prank that's my machine bro huh you think you're doing i'm working out bruh look at that which would once again perform above average gaining 1 million views in the first month likely indicating to fousey that it might be worth investing further energy into the prank genre as time progressed and fousey continued to upload various semi-viral uploads he would switch his content entirely to pranks which by late 2013 had overtaken all of his most popular middle eastern videos in view count and by early 2014 had taken him over the 1 million subscriber mark however while fousey's success was giving him the facade of a happy pleasant guy it would be around this same point in time that his audience would begin to realize that fousey had a much more difficult life behind the scenes there's so much man that you guys don't see that happens behind the scenes of being a youtuber and these business meetings and all these things and everything that just drive me crazy and you know i might look like i'm just living in i don't know what i'm saying in mid-2014 while fousey's prominence in the pranking scene was continuing to rise it would come to the attention of his fans that while appearing content on the outside things were much different behind the scenes for the first time in my life i had a severe severe severe mental breakdown nervous breakdown and i want to call it a manic episode because i really feel like there was something psychotic in what i did next yousef explained that shortly after moving to la he would get tattoos and piercings with the goal of fitting in however would shortly come to the realization that he would not be accepted within the muslim community with these body modifications your family is going to see this your your tubians are gonna see this the people who hate you are gonna see this like it it struck a chord in me so so so deep that i felt my life was over while telling the tattoo story fousey would have his first breakdown in front of his youtube audience i know i'm a depressed emo ass dude on youtube but it's because i got so much and i'm always trying to hide it to cater to whatever your guys is this information is unimportant at this point in the story but will be vital for later parts of the video amor fousey was clearly struggling to some extent behind the scenes on the surface things were going excellently for the fouseytube channel after surpassing one million subscribers fousey would only continue to grow posting many incredibly viral videos such as cheating gf prank gone wrong and eating people's food prank you know the beach is like a really nice place to just come in and relax like i like to just bring food here sometimes to just eat you know what i'm saying however it would be with another viral video that fousey2 would become somewhat of a household name on the youtube platform the yoga pants prank yo did you stare in my butt you just stared on my butt now despite this video clearly being extremely fake to simply say that the video performed well would be the understatement of the century within only one week the video had gained 10 million views and within two months this video had doubled fousey's subscriber count to three million but fousey was really only heating up his dinner with the yoga pants prank as he was about to back it up with his two most popular uploads ever the spider-man in real life prank and the mortal kombat elevator prank both of which to this day having well over 100 million views the views from these videos once again caused fousey's subscriber count to surge pushing him to four million five million six million then seven million at which point he would upload a video thanking his audience for the insane milestone i proved everybody want for two million three million four million five million how many do we have right now almost seven almost seven years while also explaining that he had been nominated for the channel of the year at the streamies awards that is the biggest award you can get so not only is the nominator for prank channel of the year but who's two as a whole is nominated for channel of the year which he would go on to win and the winner is busy too as the uploads continued the subscribers only kept on growing and it wouldn't be long before fouseytube would hit the massive 10 million subscriber milestone 10 million the biggest plot [Music] if you combine this with the fact that fooseytube had completely overhauled his physique and the fact that fousey was doing collabs with huge celebrities like kevin hart so i'll see you tomorrow in dosa where the grind don't stop where the grind don't stop the tea stays green where the t stays green and the lion stay roaring and the lions stay roaring as seemed as though fousey had become completely unstoppable however while things seemed to be better than ever it would be at around the same time that fousey's views would stagnate and the empire that fousey had built would begin to come crashing down after posting his try not to laugh challenge with kevin hart in october 2016 and we are going to do the try not to laugh challenge okay fouseytube would completely disappear off the platform for seven months without saying a word his subscriber count continued to grow due to his older prank videos however at a significantly slower rate than while he was posting regularly after this seven-month break fousey would post a video titled dear youtube in which he would detail some of the struggles he had been enduring and the reason why he had not been posting i was missing love self-love self-respect self-worth everything that i needed as a person was missing and while he simply stated that there were some things missing in his life the reality which would be revealed only a month later was far worse in a comment pinned on fousey's 10 million subscriber special video he would reveal that during his seven month break he would quote sleep at 5am wake up at 6pm eat watch tv sleep repeat i was unhappy unmotivated uninspired and didn't love myself i would sleep at 5am wake up at like 6 p.m play zelda switch until like crazy hours i'll go to the gym religiously and i would just stay to myself stay to myself i wasn't but i wasn't doing things stay to myself stay to myself in my apartment this was once again backed up by another comment detailing that during his break he was in the darkest place he had ever been i started hating myself everyone started hating me i had quit youtube i stopped taking pictures of people in the street so from the get-go the beginning of fouseytube's youtube decline seemed to have come from the decline of his own mental health but it would be naive to say that these two weren't linked fousey was approaching his 10 million subscriber milestone he had plenty of backlogged videos that were gonna get him over the line fousey seemed to be incredibly goal oriented and under this assumption we could say that 10 million would have been the number that fousey was trying to achieve now what we see with many youtubers is as soon as they hit a big milestone like a hundred thousand one million or ten million the motivation drops off significantly because it feels as though there's nothing else to strive for and this would have been amplified with the fact that it was the 10 million subscriber milestone what else did fousey have to strive for a hundred million subscribers i'd say that his motivation fell out of his channel purely because he didn't have a bigger goal to set that was meaningful to him and reaching a bigger goal like a hundred million was probably a goal that was out of sight for fousey especially considering the video type he was engaged in was also beginning to fall out of the spotlight if you've already watched my video on the fall of youtube pranking then you'll already have somewhat of an idea as to what i'm going to talk about next by late 2016 pranking as a whole the genre that fousey had become known for began to slow down fousey had somewhat of a reputation for creating fake pranks hey i'm shane barbera i was in fouseytube's uber prank um it's fake and back in the heyday of youtube pranking you could kind of get away with it because people were still naive enough to think that they might be real but by 2016 as more and more people were getting exposed through h3h3 and other sources he sits down in a room with an actor who you're not supposed to think is an actor fake pranks just didn't really fly with the general youtube audience any longer this put a bullet hole in the structure of fousey's channel while simultaneously diminishing the integrity of fouseytube's videos they're watching this prank they laughed they smiled yeah what the f doesn't matter it's entertaining if the person who screamed like they didn't know or not it's entertainment it left fousey with two options he'd even continue making the fake pranks that he was known for or move on to a new video style well fousey instead picked option three to disappear altogether resulting in his seven month hiatus so let's just put all of this together fousey's main video style pranks were no longer feasible on the platform he's reached the 10 million subscriber mark likely reducing the motivation he had for making videos and he's also taken seven months off without saying a word obviously he's not really going to be in a position here for the channel to keep growing his views are going to drop which is exactly what happened fousey went from 5 to 15 million views per video before his seven month break to between five hundred thousand and three million per video upon his return this is best articulated by his monthly view count at the time we can see that fousey had one of his best months in july 2016 then he takes a break in october 2016 and his views drop dramatically they jump back up upon his return but then drops significantly once again onto his trodden down reputation and just in case this scenario wasn't already bad enough youtube was about to hit fousey with another piece of negative motivation sometimes the two million views with ridiculous watch time yeah was paying me 457 dollars at around the same point that fousey's reputation was on the decline youtube would drop fouseytube's pay significantly where he was only making around five percent of what he would normally make on the videos he was posting if you got one million views in 24 hours with this much watch time how much are you getting paid yeah the answer was between eight thousand and twelve thousand dollars wow fuji began to talk with youtube to see why he was no longer receiving a comparable income on his videos but they simply had no answers to give him all youtube giving me back was we're sorry we don't know a solution at this point we don't know what's wrong we're looking into it and i got that again and again and again and again and for someone like fousey whose motivation seemed to be primarily financial this would have been a massive hit to his motivation this hit to his motivation caused the views to once again dwindle to a point where by 2018 he was receiving an average of only one million views per video fousey's mental health appeared to be on the decline again likely owing to his declining channel a lot of the times other people around your life don't fully recognize what you're going through because we choose not to show them because we don't want them to know this led up to an apex in july 2018 a month in which all of the negatives that were plaguing fousey's life will be brought to the surface beginning with an event that fousey would host fuji began to explain that he was hosting an event that would be the next coachella we just birthed the next coachella called the hate dies love arrives motivational event for his fans many youtubers were skeptical about the event because of fousey's declining mental health and the motivation behind the show what about the criticism that like maybe you want to do this to show that you did it however fousey would go on to host it anyway and it was an absolute disaster he organized and promoted through social media what he called the hate dies love arrives concert at the greek theater but when someone called in a bomb threat 1500 concert goers had to evacuate before the show started someone would call in a troll bomb threat causing the entire event to be shut down no actual device was located however due to the direct threat it was uh determined that the venue should be evacuated and rather than heading home after it was shut down he took the show out onto the street where he would completely embarrass himself in front of the live audience and ultimately the internet i'm about to give a speech for the people that was delivered to me from god fousey was clearly having some mental issues during his speech framing himself as some kind of prophet from god in front of his fans even getting into a fight with keemstar who was in the audience of the event i have bipolar and depression that what you put into my head made me want to kill myself fruizi would then go on to tell a story about how drake was going to be at the event the story how i met drake i guarantee you i'll be with drake tonight in the club i promise you that which was later debunked by other youtubers we reached out to like drake's people and they said that he had no plan to play there okay i want you to hit up the number that i have on my phone drake was in new york during this event by the way he was most definitely not gonna come following this event keemstar would release a documentary titled the hard truth about fouseytube in which he would expose fousey for the insanity of the event i go i can't even convince my own mother that i'm not crazy on the same day that keemstar would post his documentary fousey would once again disappear off youtube this time for a full year upon his return in august 2019 fousey would lose 90 000 subscribers in two months also uploading a video talking about his one year break so thank you guys so much for embracing my return so well i thank you guys i couldn't thank you enough but now we got to get down to business and despite fousey talking about getting down to business his business had dried up significantly fousey went from getting around 1 million views per video before his break to around 300 000 views per video upon returning however despite only getting 300 000 views per episode on the vlogs fousey would experiment with a new video idea that proved to be extremely successful his youtube crib series here on youtube cribs we like to show you the luxurious life of youtubers in this series fousey decided he would meet with various big youtubers giving them an opportunity to show off their properties so basically we want you to take us around and show us what you want to show us like showcase your home tours fousey met up with individuals like logan paul lance stewart tanner fox and alex wasabi with most videos gaining more than one million views could this be the return of fouseytube back to his former position of glory well unfortunately not as shortly after posting these four episodes frieza would take another six month break failing to upload any more youtube cribs episodes after this six month break fousey's views would drop to around only a hundred thousand per video where they've remained up until this day on the 2nd of february 2021 fousey seems to have given up on the fouseytube channel after uploading a video titled my last video on this channel in this video fuzzy explained that he will be releasing a book which is currently available for pre-order on amazon it went out for pre-order it's the number one bestseller right now yeah fousey now seems to be primarily focusing on music as well as his podcast channel titled gotta get it in which fousey has been posting what seems to be weekly videos we'd like to welcome you to our new podcast this is going to be episode number one and we're super excited for you to be a part of our adventure however the likelihood that this channel will return him to where he was at his peak is extremely slim however i could be wrong over the years fouseytube has proven that he has the mindset work ethic and intelligence to grow an impossibly small piece of media into an online behemoth as seen with fouseytube however what was the cost for fouseytube not only financially but mentally the toll that the youtube roller coaster took on fouseytube seems to be immeasurable from crazy rants to his audience on the street to depressive breaks sitting at home doing nothing for months on end you might question as to whether or not his journey was a positive did his manic episodes contribute to his success or were they the eventual result of his downfall what was the true price of fame for use of eracat what lies in the future for fouseytube these seem to be the most prominent questions when reflecting on the rise and fall of fouseytube aka yusuf erakat [Music]

Channel: SunnyV2

Views: 4,831,424

Keywords: fouseytube, fousey, the rise and fall of fouseytube, what happened to fouseytube, who is fouseytube, the downfall of fouseytube, vitaly, fouseytube vitaly, where are they now?, a brief history, documentary, youtube documentary, where is, Biography, narration, video essay, twitch, youtube, entertainment, education, joon the king, fredrik knudsen, down the rabbit hole, no swearing, family friendly, sunnyv2, sunnyv2 downfall, downfall, demise, rise and fall, internet ajay, vitaly downfall

Id: Q-YnC4Wc1WE

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021

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Who is FouseyTube ?

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Mods please tell me if the above flair is correct or not. Idk if its this or the photo/video.