100 million views is a big number but before I talk about that I need to talk about an even bigger number 1,000 million views uh usually referred to as 1 billion views as of recording there are currently a little over 500 videos on YouTube that have exceeded 1 billion views at the top of the list with a mildly impressive 14 billion views is of course baby shark as we go down this list of the most viewed YouTube videos of all time you'll probably notice that they are virtually all either music videos for children or music
videos by extremely popular artists I'll explain why I think that is shortly but just to drive my point home the only video I could find that has reached a billion views that is not a popular music video and not explicitly made for children is titled crushing crunchy and soft things by car floral foam squishy Tide Pods and more it is exactly what the title suggests as we move down the list to videos with less than 1 billion views the same pattern continues the next non-m music video and non-specifically kid Centric content I could find is
this one and the first video that isn't a music video isn't specifically kid-centric content and doesn't involve squishy noises is this one about a Spider-Man flash mob although let's be honest while these these videos are not tagged as made for kids which is something YouTube requires for Content made for children I'm sure a lot of kids are still watching them anyway now it's not hard to see why this list is so dominated by music and children's content both of these have two key features Universal appeal and replayability and I think replayability might be the most
important factor baby shark does not have 14 billion views because 14 billion different people have watched it in part because that number is a little less than double the entire human population of Earth no it has 14 billion views because Millions upon millions of desperate exhausted parents have come to the conclusion that hypnotizing their kids with it multiple times a day is the only way for them to get 2 minutes and 16 seconds of sweet sweet relief likewise if you can't get enough of the despacito music video and love to watch it on endless repeat
you've done your part in pushing it up to 8.5 billion views but forget about billions of views for now or forever realistically I want to focus on one simple question what does it take for a YouTuber someone who isn't already famous outside of YouTube to get one of their videos up to 100 million views and just a quick side note for the purposes of this video I'm only talking about long form videos if we bring shorts into the picture it's a completely different ball game and those view counts will always be inflated just by the
nature of the format now as far as I can tell there's no easy way to compile an exhaustive list of all the videos that have reached 100 million views and then filter out all of the music videos kid- Centric content random viral memes game trailers movie trailers Etc until all you are left with are videos that have been made by quote unquote professional YouTubers so instead of trying to do that let's just take a look at a random sampling of popular YouTubers and see how many of them have one or more videos that have reached
100 million how about PewDiePie one of the most famous YouTubers of all time he has three videos with over a 100 million the First with 322 million is a music video so again replayability helps here the second is him congratulating T-Series on being first to reach 100 million subscribers which was just a huge moment in YouTube history and the third is an episode of his scare PewDiePie series except it's only 4 seconds long and I'm not going to get into that right now he has other videos that have come close to 100 million but none
have quite hit that Mark so already if you had been thinking how hard can it be to get up 100 million views the answer is uh pretty hard Mark applier another longtime veteran of this platform actually has four 100 Millers three of which are these weird animal things I don't fully understand Jack Septic ey has one and it's a music video which was was made by legendary YouTube musicians Schmo Yoho they have one other video over 100 million which you may have heard before surely good old Logan Paul has broken the 100 Mil Mark he
has once and of course it's a music video Jake Paul has two both music videos smos has two one is a music video Casey neistat has none with his closest Contender currently at 79 million views A's most viewed video has just 39 million Ryan Tran's most viewed video is 45 million Marquez Brown ley's most viewed video is 40 million Popular Science Education YouTuber veritasium has one video at 102 million views about this crazy looking Reservoir even more popular science and engineering YouTuber Mark Rober has eight videos over a 100 million and eight more that are
very close to getting there dude perfect has an impressive 35 video over a 100 million and Mr Beast has 160 videos that each have over a 100 million views now I'm sure that I'm missing a number of other relevant examples especially when it comes to non-english-speaking YouTube channels but to say that Mr Beast is in a league of his own is putting it mildly but the point of this video is not to try to explain the incredible success of Mr Beast per se or to unpack the growing controversies that are threatening to engulf his media
Empire for now let's just focus on one important aspect of his over 56 billion total views and that is the spectacle from the Roman gladiators to the modern Super Bowl humans have always been enamored with awe inspiring spectacles I am not personally a huge fan of Mr Beast style content but the ambitious nature and massive scale of his many spectac is often simply impossible to ignore I mean as ridiculous as it sounds to have ages 1 through 100 compete for half a million dollars just the fact that he gathered one person from every age together
into a single room is a spectacle even without the massive cash prize so if your goal is 100 million views it definitely helps to have incredible amounts of time and or money to devote to a single video my last video was about low effort content and these spectacle videos are the exact opposite of that but just making extremely high effort content isn't enough on its own you could easily spend a year of your life working on a single video that no one would watch no a good spectacle is something with that all important Universal appeal
something that almost anybody regardless of their interests backgrounds or political leanings will be instantly curious about but not all spectacles need to have a massive production budget to be effective Ive before Mr Beast had millions of dollars to spend on his videos and before a rapidly Rising Deluge of scandals threatened to destroy everything he's worked so hard to build he tried simply sitting in front of a camera and counting to 100,000 3100 and 40 40 3141 3142 3143 dude Perfect's most viewed video is about flipping water bottles and while the tricks are of course impressive
and clearly took many hours to get right you don't necessarily need access to say a billion doll yacht to pull it off although I will say that if you are thinking oh great I'll just make an insane trick shot video and that will be my ticket to 100 million views uh I think that trend has more or less run its course but if you really think you can pull something crazy off that no one's seen before you know what go for it in the case of Mark Rober many of his videos are indeed Spectacles on
fairly massive scales but he's also built squirrel mazes in his backyard which well certainly not an easy thing to do is a little more accessible for an average YouTuber than uh dropping an egg from space without a doubt our innate human curiosity is one of the biggest factors in what videos get the most attention when you see a thumbnail of a reservoir filled with mysterious black balls and a title that promises to reveal their purpose it's very hard not to want to find out what's going on so maybe it makes sense that this video specifically
got to 100 million views but then again there are many other videos that seem equally intriguing and haven't hit that Milestone this probably goes without saying but to reach 100 million views assuming you've not missed your beast and assuming you're not on the verge of losing everything due to a suffocating miasma of accusations that seems to grow larger and larger every day requires a multitude of factors and almost certainly one of those factors perhaps the most important one is luck another important factor is time again assuming you're not Mr Beast it will probably take several
years of consistent algorithm recommendations to finally Ascend to the lofty Heights of the 100 million view Club when you're talking about the most viral of viral videos it's probably impossible to ever fully isolate one single factor that explains a given video's success but if you have the ability to do something crazy that has rarely if ever been seen before or you know just write an extremely catchy pop song that has essentially been seen and heard thousands of times before but for some reason just catches fire well there's the chance you could get 100 million or
even 1,000 million views but one thing I can say with almost 100% certainty is that this video will never be among that elite club I'm not sure what the most viewed video essay of all time is but the most views I can remember seeing on a video essay in my travels through YouTube is this one by let me know about the the cicada 3301 mystery posted 6 years ago it currently has 35 million views I could be wrong but my personal belief is that video essays will just never be able to compete with true spectacle
style content they will always cater more to certain Niche audiences and will never be as easy to watch or have as much Mass Appeal as the videos you see on the tops of the charts I mean look I've tried this stupid reverse psychology title thing before and sure it's possible that people may try to this video to success but even if it gets say one or two million views which would be pretty chill it will never reach a 100 million the enthusiasm will simply die out because 100 million is just a really big number [Music]
