sxephil

Personally I enjoy his take on the news. A lot of newspapers and even local news channels get a lot of their news stories from Reuters so I don't have a problem with him getting his off Reddit. He's way more entertaining to watch than to read the article online (which I often will do if I want more details).

I loved his office tour he did of his new office space he's moving into. He may be a douchebag, I wouldn't know - I haven't met him personally. However he's using his fame and money to employ other people instead of just pocketing all that bling. Personally I think that's pretty cool.



Also his long-time girlfriend seems to really care about him - and she doesn't strike me as a ditz - so he can't possibly be all that bad.

Love him or hate him... Phil's definitely becoming quite a successful entrepreneur. I love that YouTube is giving young people a venue to find this level of success.

Article in the San Francisco Chronicle: YouTube’s Phil DeFranco building an empire

I find sxephil average in every single way imaginable; looks, talent, charisma, and production value. His Youtube popularity seems illogical. Although it never hurts to dream, I can't see how he could build an empire on mediocrity. However, I understand that everybody might not like what I like. But its weird when popular Youtubers get mainstream press, their articles have little to no comments. While their Youtube views consistently have hundreds of comments and millions of views. Seriously? Mainstream articles written about Rebecca Black or Lonelygirl15 get more hits and comments than these "famous" Youtubers. Which is a little odd because people who comment on blogs tend to be those who watch a large amount of Youtube videos and love having an encyclopedia knowledge of pop culture. So if they are able to comment on the atrocity of Rebecca Black, why wouldn't they comment on Sxephil's article? Also, why is it that Youtube's most popular personalities are never routinely featured or embedded on popular entertainment blogs? Especially, ohnotheydidnt; those people cover EVERYTHING pop culture related. It may be because they aren't as popular as their view counts make him seem.

For instance, I watched Madonna's new video within several hours after it premiered on Youtube. I was alarmed that the video had under 10,000 or so hits. Knowing that Madonna has a huge fanbase, who no doubts Google alerts her. it would seem odd that she would only have that few hits. While someone like sxephil hits 500,000+ views in the same amount of time. Also, its completely illogical that Madonna only has 162,000 subscribers (Lady GAGA has 560,000 subscribers) but yet sxephil has 2,000,000+. Something isn't right here, especially since most Youtube members search for copyright content. But according to those stats, Sxephil is more popular than Lady Gaga and Madonna combined. His channel views accumulate to 798,910,339 total channel views vs 312,485,890 Lady Gaga and Madonna's combined (Gaga's 166,066,661 and Madonna's 146,419,229). Even if that number included repeated viewers and video views older than 3 years, that's still an insane number to be completely unknown to the mainstream. There has to be some sort of trickery going on here.


If those views are legitimate, than it make you wonder why:
He would still feel the need to resort to keyword spamming titles and fake thumbnails to get views.
Why he hasn't taken the show on the road and tour the world. He has an eventful app, trying to get his fans to demand a show in Atlanta but it hasn't been very successful
Why he hasn't gotten a book or tv development deal? Perez Hilton has had a VH1 show, has guest starred on tv shows, written 3 books, and was a Miss USA judge. However his website averages around 1.7 million viewers at month. While sxephil gets that much views in a week.
Why he hasn't go rich off of selling merchandise? Antoine Dobson's "Bed Intruder Song" was on the Billboard top 100 and itunes chart, he was paid to be interviewed by newspapers/tv/magazine reporters, featured on popular blogs, sung his song the BET Hip Hop awards, and made money selling a lot of merchandise. He made enough money to move out of the projects and buy a house. So it begs the question on why a "one hit wonder" got rich off a single video, while sxephil has made over 839 videos (the bulk received 500,000+ views) and hasn't had the mainstream success Anotoine Dubson had.

Even "Cake Boss" did a tour and charged $49 for a ticket; toured 23 cities in 1,000 capacity venues sold out and made $1 million dollars in 2010. So its baffling as to why, he'd rather upload videos on Youtube than leverage his fame into a tour, book deal, and tv show development. The only explanation that makes sense is that a bulk of his viewers are fake. And don't get me started on Ray William Johnson's 1 billion channel views. If that number was real, he'd be more famous than Britney Spears; who surprisingly doesn't have 1/10th of his channel views.

The Truth about Perez Hilton's Traffic: http://gawker.com/276369/the-truth-about-perez-hiltons-traffic
Youtube Viewer Fraud: http://rookiejournal.com/youtube-views-fraud.html
How to Cheat at the Youtube Game and Get Millions of View:http://nofilmschool.com/2010/12/how-to-cheat-youtube/

Phil has actually gotten quite a few opportunities. Remember that no name move "Alice in Wonderland" that had that no name actress Anne Hathaway in it? He got to interview her.

He was also suppose to get involved with MTV, but when they wanted to script the show and censor it some, he decided that he liked being in charge of his own production. He liked being able to say as he wished. And what truly mattered to him.

I started watching Phil in 2008 and have been watching him almost daily since then. I think it's pretty remarkable what he has been able to do.

La-D-Da wrote:

If those views are legitimate, than it make you wonder why:
Why he hasn't taken the show on the road and tour the world.

He has. He did a big European tour last year and had to hire security at every venue because way more people showed up than he expected. Just check out the show he did in Dublin:

La-D-Da wrote:Why he hasn't gotten a book or tv development deal?

SourceFed is a joint development deal with YouTube. YouTube is officially sponsoring that channel, which allows Phil to hire 3 additional on-camera hosts, not counting the behind-the-scenes production that goes on just for that channel. I think he prefers to remain independent then be beholden to a TV studio.

La-D-Da wrote:Why he hasn't go rich off of selling merchandise?

How do you know he hasn't? Have you seen the house he lives in? A house like that is *not* cheap, especially in L. A.