Subscribe to PewDiePie began as a grassroots meme in late 2018 when PewDiePie, the channel of Swedish creator Felix Kjellberg, was close to being overtaken by Indian label T-Series as YouTube's most subscribed channel. Fans printed flyers, bought billboards and repeated the slogan everywhere online, turning a simple subscription plea into a running joke. The phrase stayed in meme edits and soundboards long after the subscriber race ended in 2019, kept alive as shorthand for early YouTube nostalgia.