If you spend (or waste?) a lot of time watching YouTube videos like me, you know that reaction videos are damn popular on the platform. Movie trailer reactions, cat reactions, comedy reactions, prank reactions, all these videos fetch tons and tons of eyeballs. And if you can get someone as popular as PewDiePie to react to your act, it could be your ticket to instant fame. PewDiePie has a fiercely loyal subscriber base of around 80 million people. So, someone came up with the crazy idea of live streaming a grenade explosion and asking PewDiePie to react to it.
Is this a real grenade explosion?
Twitter user @Pink_boixd posted a live stream video showing someone holding a grenade. As per their profile, @Pink_boixd is from Vilnius, Lithuania and they have their own YouTube channel named Pink Boi. The video of grenade explosion was first spotted by Piunikaweb. The tweet says, “you should react to this @pewdiepie.”
you should react to this @pewdiepie pic.twitter.com/YCtFWHXmB2
— Pink Boi a.k.a LVL 50 BOSS (@pink_boixd) January 3, 2019
You can see the grenade exploding once in the person’s hand and again after it’s thrown away. The video has so far fetched 1.13 million views, 3.6K retweets, and 17,000 likes on Twitter. Going by the comments in the thread, it appears to be an airsoft grenade rather than the real thing because the impact is not that severe. If it were a real grenade explosion, it could have caused some serious damage.
you should react to this @pewdiepie pic.twitter.com/YCtFWHXmB2
— Pink Boi a.k.a LVL 50 BOSS (@pink_boixd) January 3, 2019
it seems to be airsoft grenade replica or atleast thats what i think.
— Peke (@seksi_salama) January 3, 2019
100% a airsoft grenade you hear the bb’s impact after it goes off
— Young Ryan IV ☃️ (@RyanCRK7) January 3, 2019
That wasn’t a real grenade right? What was inside it then?
— Mr. Sandman (@MlSTERSANDMAN) January 3, 2019
It’s an airsoft replica
Probably defective, but the explosion afterwards is the BBs going off
— BattleMike V: TT2019 (@M1k3ol) January 3, 2019
We don’t know if PewDiePie is ever going to react to this video. But Felix Kjellberg’s followers know that he has a knack for offering funny and witty commentary even on serious things. Pink Boi’s video has garnered over a million views, probably helped by the use of PewDiePie’s name. If the biggest YouTube star reacts to it, it could dramatically boost the Lithuanian YouTuber’s popularity. You can watch the full video on Twitch here.
PewDiePie seeking the support of fans and fellow YouTubers
Currently, the Swedish YouTube star himself is seeking the support of his fans, followers, and fellow YouTubers to boost his subscriber base. Felix Kjellberg has been the most subscribed YouTube channel for almost five years. But in recent months, popular Indian music label T-Series has threatened to displace him from the top spot. PewDiePie remains ahead of his rival, thanks to the massive support and campaigns by his fans.
PewDiePie currently has 79.8 million subscribers on YouTube. T-Series is not far behind at 78.8 million. PewDiePie fans have hacked T-Series’ website several times in the last few weeks and have been negatively spamming its channel. T-Series managing director Bhushan Kumar recently told BBC that the music label was not competing with Pewds. He said, “I am really not bothered about this race. I don’t even know why PewDiePie is taking this so seriously. He’s getting his people to push him, to promote him. We are not competing with him.”
Earlier this week, two of PewDiePie’s hacker fans attacked more than 70,000 Chromecast devices, Google Homes, and smart TVs and displayed messages promoting PewDiePie. They asked the victims to “SUBSCRIBE TO PEWDIEPIE.” Previously, they had hacked more than 50,000 Internet-connected printers to print a weird message asking the victims to subscribe to PewDiePie’s YouTube channel.
Our chromecast and smart TV hack is now complete. Thank you and please, stay say, and most importantly: never leave a port open someone can mess with.https://t.co/H2WOHQNkE8
Thank you to my partner @HackerGiraffe
— j3ws3r ? (@j3ws3r) January 3, 2019
Last month, the same group of hackers defaced the Wall Street Journal’s website and wrote a message asking the WSJ readers to subscribe to PewDiePie. The WSJ was hacked after it reported that PewDiePie had allegedly recommended an anti-Semitic and racist YouTube channel in one of his videos. Journalists who criticized PewDiePie have also seen their emails and Twitter DMs flooded with threats and hate messages.
