YouTube: what was once a website for silly cat videos and poorly coordinated Star Wars fans has become a multimillion-dollar career for eight-year-olds. Although the shift is seismic, the website's evolution wasn't as drastic a shift as the preceding sentence would lead you to believe. A host of YouTube channels paved the way for the current landscape of content creators, and one of the most important ones was Epic Meal Time.
In the early 2010s, Epic Meal Time built a large following on YouTube for constructing artery obstructing meals that were loaded with booze and bacon. The channel swiftly became one of the flagships on YouTube, turning the show's creator, Harley Morenstein, into an internet celebrity. And within a few years, the channel's viewership collapsed. YouTuber Sunnyv2 looks into what caused Epic Meal Time's decline in the video linked above.
