UK YouTubers Confirm They Started by Filming Themselves in Bedrooms and Have Arrived at Private Jets; Nation Reassesses Advice It Gave About ‘Getting a Proper Job’
Welcome to Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat — the satirical media dispatch from a country whose bedroom video creators have built media empires that make the traditional broadcasting establishment mildly anxious.
The United Kingdom has produced some of YouTube’s most globally successful creators: KSI (Olajide Olatunji from Watford, now one of the most-subscribed British YouTubers and a boxing promoter), MrBeast is American but several British-adjacent creators are in his orbit, the Sidemen (a London-based creator collective with hundreds of millions of subscribers across their individual channels), Zoella (Zoe Sugg from Brighton, whose lifestyle content pioneered the British beauty and lifestyle YouTube genre), and a generation of creators in gaming, comedy, commentary, and vlog formats whose combined audience makes the BBC’s linear television viewership look like it is in the process of being succeeded. The BBC has noted this. The BBC has not panicked, publicly. The BBC has launched several YouTube channels and a podcast strategy. The bedroom creators have continued building empires.
The Sidemen: London’s Most Successful YouTube Collective, Whose Members Were Filming FIFA Videos in Their Teens and Are Now Running Businesses
The Sidemen — KSI, Miniminter (Simon Minter), Vikstar123 (Vik Barn), TBJZL (Tobi Brown), Zerkaa (Josh Bradley), Behzinga (Ethan Payne), and Wroetoshaw (Harry Lewis) — formed as a YouTube collective in 2013 when they were teenagers playing video games and filming the results. By 2024 they had individually accumulated hundreds of millions of subscribers, launched Sides (a food delivery business), produced charity football matches watched by millions, and established the Sidemen as a media entity whose commercial value significantly exceeds that of many traditional British media companies that were dismissing YouTube creators as a novelty in 2013. “We just kept going,” confirmed one Sidemen member, which is accurate and also the most important piece of media business advice available. YouTube UK’s trending page documents who is currently winning the attention economy, which changes daily.
Why Britain Produces Successful YouTube Creators and What This Says About British Culture
Britain’s YouTube creator success rests on several structural advantages: English as the primary language (giving access to the global anglophone audience without localisation), a culture of self-deprecating humour that translates well internationally (British comedy has been exported successfully since the 1960s; the YouTube format is the latest vehicle), access to London’s media infrastructure (production facilities, talent, collaboration opportunities in a city where creative industries are concentrated), and the specific combination of irreverence and craft that British creative culture at its best produces. The bedroom-to-empire arc — filming in your childhood home in Watford and arriving at a business with multiple revenue streams and a global audience — is possible in other countries and has been achieved in other countries but has been achieved in Britain with unusual consistency. The parents who told the YouTubers to get proper jobs have mostly updated their position. The ones who told them to keep going were correct. For satirical British media journalism, visit The London Prat.
More satire: NewsThump | The Daily Mash
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
Harper Thames is a comedic writer exploring modern life through irony and subtle exaggeration. Rooted in student perspectives and London’s cultural landscape, Harper’s work focuses on relatable humour grounded in everyday experience.
Expertise is developed through writing practice and critical engagement, while authority comes from authenticity and consistency. Trust is reinforced by transparent satire and ethical humour choices.
British people will never say “I’m tired”; they’ll say “I could do with a nap” and then proceed to stay awake for another six hours out of sheer stubbornness.
Someone should make this mandatory reading for anyone who moves to London. Orientation material.
Peter Cook avrebbe recitato tutto questo con voce piatta in un programma televisivo e distrutto chiunque fosse presente. Sarebbe stato trascendente.