# The Great Subscriber War The Great Subscriber War was a months-long campaign starting in 2018 to keep Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie ahead of Indian music label T-Series as YouTube's top channel. It kicked off diss tracks, printer hacks, Times Square billboards and a mosque shooter's chilling catchphrase before T-Series finally pulled away in 2019. ## Origin On August 30th, 2018, SocialBlade published a graph projecting that T-Series would overtake PewDiePie by October if growth trends held, which lit the fuse for the campaign[6]. On October 5th, 2018, PewDiePie answered the threat with the satirical diss track "bitch lasagna," the earliest signature artifact of the movement[7]. Catalyst event: the SocialBlade projection in late August 2018. Earliest meme format: PewDiePie's October 5th diss track and the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" rallying cry, which fans rapidly adopted on Reddit and Twitter[1]. - **Platform:** YouTube / Twitter (viral spread) - **Creator:** PewDiePie fandom (campaign); Felix Kjellberg (diss tracks) - **Date:** 2018 ## Overview The Great Subscriber War, also known as the Subscribe to PewDiePie movement, was a fan-driven campaign to keep Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie) atop YouTube's subscriber charts as Bollywood music label T-Series closed the gap[1]. The battle played out as a running meme format on /r/PewdiepieSubmissions and across Twitter, where every subscriber dip or surge was turned into reaction images, countdown screenshots and crisis-flavored shitposts[2]. The conflict framed a lone Swedish creator against a corporate music giant, which made it a vehicle for independent-creator-vs-platform jokes[3]. Related formats included the "bitch lasagna" diss track, panic posts about the sub gap closing, and later "Congratulations" edits mocking T-Series controversies[4]. The phrase "Subscribe to PewDiePie" bled out of fan channels and into billboards, printer paper, hacked Chromecasts and eventually a mass shooter's livestream, which forced PewDiePie himself to call off the campaign[5]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is The Great Subscriber War? It was the 2018-2019 fan campaign to keep PewDiePie as the top-subscribed YouTube channel against Bollywood label T-Series, kicked off by a SocialBlade projection[6] and PewDiePie's diss track "bitch lasagna"[7]. ### Where did The Great Subscriber War come from? It started after an August 30th, 2018 SocialBlade graph predicted T-Series would overtake PewDiePie, and escalated when PewDiePie answered with a diss track on October 5th, 2018[1]. ### What does The Great Subscriber War mean? It framed PewDiePie as an independent creator fighting a corporate music giant, with "Subscribe to PewDiePie" becoming shorthand for that creator-vs-corporation underdog narrative[3]. ### How do you use The Great Subscriber War? At its peak, people shared "Subscribe to PewDiePie" via billboards, hacked printers, Chromecast takeovers, panic sub-gap reaction memes and diss-track edits[1]. ### Is The Great Subscriber War still popular? The campaign formally ended on April 28th, 2019 when PewDiePie asked fans to stop[5], and T-Series pulled away to 100 million subscribers on May 29th, 2019[12]. ## References 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PewDiePie_vs_T-Series]() 2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/PewdiepieSubmissions/comments/b3nnw9/tseries_is_leading_by_20000_get_sub2pewds_trending/]() 3. [https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/india-s-t-series-overtakes-pewdiepie-as-the-most-subscribed-youtube-channel-1.843620]() 4. [https://iprmentlaw.com/2019/04/09/delhi-high-court-grants-injunction-against-pewdiepie-youtube-in-a-suit-filed-by-t-series-read-order/]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah5MYGQBYRo]() 6. [https://socialblade.com/youtube/compare/t-series/pewdiepie]() 7. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-great-subscriber-war-subscribe-to-pewdiepie]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d38MrVnBFXg]() 9. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiOoIO53i6I]() 10. [https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/pewdiepie-boost-following-jake-paul-infiltration-tseries-hq-573147/]() 11. [https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/1106419935390171136]() 12. [https://twitter.com/TSeries/status/1133672603460128768]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/the-great-subscriber-war-subscribe-to-pewdiepie Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library