The Catalyst

By Bri Castellini, Commentary and Web Editor

YouTube has a new king. For the past several months, the most subscribed channel of all time was Fred. “Fred Figglehorn” is a fictional six year old with an artificially high voice played by 16 year old Lucas Cruikshank, who started the channel as a whim in October of 2005. Since then, he has claimed his own line of “Fred” shirts sold at Hot Topic, Justice, and Five Below and has had appearances on the Tyra Banks Show and Nickelodeon’s iCarly.

“Fred” has over 1,800,000 subscribers, an incredible number for a fairly low budget, unvaried channel. There were mass attempts by Fred haters to get his subscribers to unsubscribe him on the same day, but no ploy worked; Fred fans are die-hard.

Behind Fred at the number two most subscribed channels was NigaHiga, the channel for tennager Ryan Higa and his friends. Also a fairly low budget channel, Higa specialized in parodies and satirical “how to” videos. Once realizing that people weren't going to unsubscribe Fred to knock him out of the number one position, the Fred haters hatched a new plan; subscribing to NigaHiga. The less devious of ideas worked; last week the community was aflame with the news. “NigaHiga overtakes Fred for the most subscribed YouTube channel of all time!”

NigaHiga was a admirable winner, thanking his fans and supporters without being offensive to his new number two. But he'd better watch out; YouTube's rising star Shane Dawson, an aspiring actor from LA, is moving up the ranks at an alarming pace.