What Happened to Fred?

“Hey, it’s Fred!” If that read in your mind with a high-pitched, 1.5x–speed voice, you likely remember the channel of Fred Figglehorn, a YouTube character who had one of the highest performing channels in the early 2000s.

Fred became the first YouTube channel in 2009 to reach 1 million subscribers. Then in 2015, he left the channel. The only sign of Fred since has been a TikTok made in 2020 of his old clips. Why did he leave, and where is he now? Let’s take a look:

• Fred was a character created by Lucas Cruikshank. He made the channel in 2005 when he was 12, the same year that YouTube was founded. Though he didn’t start uploading to it until 2008.

• In 2009 Fred became the most-followed YouTube channel, with 1 million subscribers. At the time, the platform was known for one-off videos, and Fred was part of YouTube’s first class of creators that made consistent, quality content.

• Nickelodeon recognized the accomplishment and signed Cruikshank to star in a few projects. They produced a made-for-TV movie in 2010, Fred: The Movie, which also starred John Cena. Two more movies followed in 2011 and 2012. They also made two TV shows, Fred: The Show and Marvin Marvin.

• By 2013, none of the shows took off and Cruikshank returned to YouTube, but didn’t receive the same success. Between a more saturated platform and new styles like vlogging growing in popularity, his new sketch videos didn’t receive as many views as his earlier work.

• In 2014 Cruikshank sold the Fred channel to a Korean media company, who tried to reprise the channel with new segments and characters, even doing a show with Jake Paul.

• Meanwhile, Cruikshank started creating on another channel, Lucas, as himself. He did parodies, vlogs, and reacts videos to his old Fred content.

• Today he continues to post react videos and cultural commentary, and has amassed more than 3 million subscribers and 288 million video views. Most of his content is unsponsored save for an ad he did with Hot Topic earlier this year. He also makes regular appearances on his brother's channel, Jacob Cruikshank.

Our Take

The career of being a creator is new and ever-changing. It’s unknown what a 20-30-40 year career looks like. Lucas was a trailblazer in the mid-2000’s and is still forging a new path today. Studying careers like his will help the next generation of creditors build long term careers.

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