This week, Joe Santagato hit 1 million subscribers on YouTube after having a channel on the site since 2011. For years, his channel SantagatoTV was home to his rants of all kinds including girls, family and school. His subscribers were introduced to the many characters in his life like his brother Keith who has remained one of his most frequent guests in his videos and his lively group of friends. With this group of friends, he started a vlog channel, MFA Everyday where he started recording their fairly normal adventures that somehow always turn out hilarious and make you wish you had a group of friends just like them.
Then about two years ago he restarted everything. He switched his channel from SantagatoTV, a channel where he had been posting videos on YouTube without getting paid, to Joe Santagato where he could now get paid for the content he put out weekly. He started a podcast with fellow comedian Kate Wolff called "Invasion of Privacy", was a producer at Media Platform Elite Daily, and eventually started his own podcast called "The Basement Yard". He now is putting out two podcasts and at least one video every week.
I have been following Joe Santagato on his YouTube journey since 2011 and has been the only YouTuber that I have watched religiously. And there are plenty of reasons for this. Joe is a real person. His videos have always been one of his ideas and something that he does by himself or with the help of his friends. He has never tried to piggyback off another person's success to make his content more popular. And being popular isn't even something he is concerned about.
Joe is constantly real with his followers as well. He was put on a list of the most influential Twitters in New York and immediately said, "If I have ever influenced you to do anything, that is a f*cking disaster." He still lives at home in Astoria Queens with his siblings helping their mom pay off their house. And while he used to go on tours with the channel SDK, no longer does saying, that people shouldn't have to pay anything to meet him.
He's real and that's what makes him hilarious. He has never done anything out of the ordinary like extreme pranks gone wrong or "social" experiments to try to go viral. He makes videos like Madlibs Madness with his brother Keith or his series "Idiots of the Internet which has brought him the most amount of views.
He is a regular person that has never gotten wrapped up in the fame that can come from being a YouTuber in this day and age where people have begun to use it as a platform to further their careers in the entertainment industry. Joe was at the beginning of this movement but still hasn't changed the kind of person he is. He always remains upbeat and positive about life and the most important thing about making his videos is making people laugh.
Joe deserves way more than a million subscribers but as someone who has been watching him since 2011, it is insane to see how far he has come on that platform and to see his videos being shared all over Facebook by so many different kinds of people all just expecting a good laugh on their Tuesday.
