GradeAUnderA

GradeAUnderA
Grade (left) and Under (right), the main characters.
Personal information
Born	1992[1]
Nationality	British
YouTube information
Channel name	GradeAUnderA
Years active	2013; 2014-present
Genre	Comedy
Subscribers	1M+ (10 February 2016)
Total views	52,105,833 (10 February 2016)
Play buttons 100,000 subscribers 2015 1,000,000 subscribers 2016
Subscriber and view counts updated as of 10 February 2016.

GradeAUnderA (commonly shortened to 'Grade') is a British comedian most well known for his satirical rants and commentary on a diverse variety of issues on YouTube. He keeps his real identity and face anonymous and uses drawn characters dubbed Grade and Under to show expressions and actions.

YouTube career

Grade's YouTube career began in March 23, 2013 when he uploaded the video 'Nine Things I Hate About The Barbershop'.^[2] Though the video "Girly Drinks vs Manly Drinks" had been uploaded on April 8, 2013 the video went generally unnoticed until it was submitted by Reddit user /u/bonaboy to /r/videos, where it gained nearly 3000 upvotes. This overnight following led to Grade to continue creating YouTube videos and slowly grow in popularity. From there, he began uploading videos in a similar style where he would talk about things that angered him, colloquially known as 'rant videos'. He slowly gained fame in YouTube, gaining 30,000 subscribers. In November 2015, he had about 200,000 subscribers.

On October 10 2015, GradeAUnderA published a video about a Youtube key function, which received over 2 million views and was written about by Metro, DailyDot and Liberty Times.^[3][4][5]

On January 16, 2016 he uploaded a video titled 'Nicole Arbour EXPOSED As A Liar - With Proof (Vs Matthew Santoro)' that went viral and gained him large attention.^[6] He has recently become involved with some extreme online drama with videos that attack the popular genre of react videos. These videos, according to Grade, illegally use copyrighted content for profit. He has found a moral issue with this and has started a crusade against this style of video. He had in the past similarly made a video about Ray William Johnson plagiarizing content.^[7] He has further accused youtuber Tyrone Magnus of plagiarization.^[8]

His amount of subscribers had risen to 500,000 by January 2016, and to his first million by February as one of the fastest growing YouTubers. This growth came about amongst controversy between him and "reactors" on youtube.^[9] He has so far reached 1,014,420 subscribers (as of February 10, 2016).

According to Vice he was nominated for best youtuber of 2015 by Reddit.^[10]

Channel format

Grade's content is formatted in a way that splits each point about the topic into subsections. While he does present his real opinions, it's often done humorously and hyperbolically. He uses two crudely drawn characters, dubbed Grade and Under to show expressions and actions. He makes his videos using MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker, and occasionally OBS.^[6]

Grade has a second channel, GradeBUnderB, which is a backup channel. Amazingly, the channel has over 53,000 subscribers even though no video has been uploaded to the channel.^[11]

References