Mark Edward Fischbach ( ; born June 28, 1989), also known as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, he began his career in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently based in Los Angeles, California. In addition to uploading videos on his main YouTube channel, he is a co-founder of clothing company Cloak with fellow YouTuber Jacksepticeye and a co-host of the ''Distractible'' podcast alongside LordMinion777 and Muyskerm. He also co-hosted the now defunct Unus Annus channel. , his channel has over 19.2 billion video views and 34 million subscribers. Fischbach specializes in Let's Play videos, commonly of survival horror video games.

YouTube career

Channel format

Fischbach has collaborated on sketch comedy and gaming videos with a number of fellow YouTubers, including CrankGameplays, Jacksepticeye, LordMinion777, Muyskerm, PewDiePie, Matthias, '' Game Grumps'', Cyndago, Yamimash, jacksfilms,

CaptainSparklez Jordan Maron (born February 10, 1992), also known by his online alias CaptainSparklez, is an American YouTuber, Twitch streamer, gamer, and musician. Maron is primarily known for playing the video game ''Minecraft'', which is featured on his m ...

Egoraptor Arin Hanson (born January 6, 1987), also known by the pseudonym Egoraptor, is an American YouTuber, actor, rapper, and animator. He is well-known for his Flash cartoons, as well as being the co-founder and co-star of the popular YouTube Let's Pla ...

and LixianTV, who currently works as his editor. He has also collaborated with celebrities such as

Jack Black Thomas Jacob Black (born August 28, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is known for his acting roles in the films '' High Fidelity'' (2000), ''Shallow Hal'' (2001), ''Orange County'' (2002), '' School of Rock'' (2003), ''E ...

and Jimmy Kimmel. A recurring staple of Fischbach's channel are charity

live streams Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but ...

, which features him playing games while campaigning and collecting donations for various charities, including Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), formerly the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (NDMDA), is a nonprofit organization providing support groups for people who live with depression or bipolar disorder as well as t ...

, and Best Friends Animal Society.

History

Early years and growth (2012–2014)

Fischbach first joined YouTube on March 6, 2012, creating a channel under the username "Markiplier", and uploaded his first video on April 4, 2012. Fischbach's original intent for the channel was

sketch comedy Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is ...

where he would be portraying all of the characters in the sketches. This led to the creation of the name "Markiplier", a portmanteau of ''Mark'' and ''multiplier''. Fischbach's first series was a playthrough of the video game ''Amnesia: The Dark Descent''. After playing several other game series, including ''

Penumbra The umbra, penumbra and antumbra are three distinct parts of a shadow, created by any light source after impinging on an opaque object. Assuming no diffraction, for a collimated beam (such as a point source) of light, only the umbra is cast. Th ...

'' and ''

Dead Space ''Dead Space'' is a science fiction/horror fiction, horror media franchise created by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, developed by Visceral Games, and published and owned by Electronic Arts. The franchise's chronology is not presented in a lin ...

'', YouTube banned Fischbach's AdSense account, and he created a new channel on May 26, 2012, markiplierGAME. In 2014, the MarkiplierGAME channel was listed on NewMediaRockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at number 61. That year, Fischbach announced he was planning to move to Los Angeles, California to be closer to other resources for his channel, such as the YouTube Space and other content creators. In August 2014, Fischbach began his famous '' Five Nights at Freddy's'' playthrough, which became his most popular playthrough to date, the first part having over 100 million views as of February 2022. Due to the success of this series, Fischbach played the other games in the FNAF franchise, and also had a cameo in '' Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery''. Fischbach and fellow YouTuber Jenna Mae appeared on ''

Jimmy Kimmel Live! ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' is an American late-night talk show, created and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, broadcast on American Broadcasting Company, ABC. The nightly hour-long show debuted on January 26, 2003, at Hollywood Masonic Temple in Hollywood, Los ...

'' in September 2015 following backlash Kimmel received regarding jokes he made about YouTube and Let's Play videos. In 2015, he was rated sixth in a list of the twenty most influential celebrities among teenagers in the United States.

Hiatus and breaking 10 million subscribers (2015)

Markiplier at PAX Prime 2015 (21089673355)

Beginning in 2015, Fischbach lived with fellow YouTubers Daniel Kyre and Ryan Magee, who created and ran the YouTube

and music channel Cyndago. Matt Watson from Kids w/ Problems later joined Cyndago after they moved to Los Angeles. Their work was noted for having unexpected endings and dark, often disturbing, humor. Cyndago disbanded following the death of Daniel Kyre. At the time of their disbandment, the group had made forty sketches and fourteen original songs, many of them featuring Fischbach. After the death of Daniel Kyre and disbandment of Cyndago, Fischbach temporarily went on hiatus from September 17, 2015 to October 5, 2015. He returned and reached 10 million subscribers on October 15, 2015.

Continued growth and larger projects (2015–2019)

Fischbach co-hosted the 2015

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

Gaming Awards with '' The Legend of Korra'' voice actor Janet Varney, and was featured in YouTube Rewind. Throughout 2016, Fischbach moved some of his focus to comedy sketches, showing his aspiration of improvisational theatre. In 2017, Fischbach posted an interactive '' Choose Your Own Adventure''-style video titled ''A Date with Markiplier'', which was well received by fans. On March 29, 2018, Fischbach announced his YouTube channel had surpassed 20 million subscribers. Markiplier (29479429937)

In October 2019, Fischbach announced a new ''Choose Your Own Adventure''-style story similar to ''A Date With Markiplier'', a '' YouTube Originals'' production titled '' A Heist with Markiplier''. Produced by Fischbach and Rooster Teeth, the series contains 31 possible endings and features other YouTubers such as

Rosanna Pansino Rosanna Pansino is an American YouTuber, actress, author and singer. Pansino is one of the highest-paid content-creators on YouTube, and was listed first on ''Forbes'' ''Top Influencers: Food'' list in 2017. Pansino has hosted the internet ser ...

, Matthew Patrick, and ''Game Grumps''.

Unus Annus (2019–2020)

On November 15, 2019, Fischbach launched a new channel with fellow YouTuber Ethan Nestor (known online as CrankGameplays) called Unus Annus, a channel which planned to upload a video every day for one year, after which the channel would be deleted along with its videos. The channel rose to early success, gaining 1 million subscribers in its first 5 days and 4.56 million in its last few minutes, and over 11.5 million video views in its first week. Following a final 12-hour live stream that peaked at over 1.5 million concurrent viewers, the channel was deleted by Fischbach and Nestor on November 14, 2020, at 12:00 a.m. PST.

Other ventures

Fischbach joined the board of comic book publisher Red Giant Entertainment in November 2014. In June of that year at the San Diego Comic-Con, he co-hosted a panel with figures from the company including CEO Benny R. Powell, and writers David Campiti,

Mort Castle Mort Castle (born 1946) is an American horror author and writing teacher, with more than 500 short stories and 17 books to his credit, including ''Cursed Be the Child'' (Leisure Books, 1994) and ''The Strangers''. Castle's first novel was publi ...

, David Lawrence, and

Brian Augustyn Brian Augustyn (November 2, 1954 – February 1, 2022) was an American comic book editor and writer. He often worked as editor or co-writer with writer Mark Waid, such as on ''The Flash'' in the 1990s. He wrote ''Gotham by Gaslight –'' which i ...

. In 2016, it was announced that he would appear in his own line of comics. Fischbach signed with Endeavor in late 2016, having expressed interest in branching out from YouTube content. Since 2017, he has voiced the character 5.0.5 in the

Cartoon Network Cartoon Network (often abbreviated as CN) is an American cable television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. It is a part of The Cartoon Network, Inc., a division that also has the broadcasting and production activities of Boomerang, Car ...

series '' Villainous''.

Podcasting and streaming

Fischbach, along with Wade Barnes (LordMinion777) and Bob Muyskens (Muyskerm) has streamed a podcast on Twitch called ''3 Peens in a Podcast'' from 2018 to 2021, where the trio discussed current events and plays multiplayer games. In 2019, Fischbach co-produced and starred in ''The Edge of Sleep'', an episodic audio drama released on iTunes which follows a night watchman and a group of survivors in a world where those who fell asleep suddenly died one night. In May 2021, Fischbach announced that he, Barnes, and Muyskens would be launching a podcast called ''Distractible''. The podcast is prerecorded and produced by QCode's label Wood Elf, and streams on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Within a week of its debut, its first episode rose to No. 1 on the Spotify and Apple Podcast charts. In February 2022, he launched another podcast co-hosted by Tyler Schield, named ''Go! My Favorite Sports Team'', which also became the No. 1 ranked sports-related podcast on Spotify.

Cloak

In 2018, Markiplier announced the launch of a new fashion brand called Cloak, in a joint venture with Jacksepticeye. The brand was envisioned and launched as a gamer-focused athleisure line distinct from their personal merchandise. The brand has released collaborations with Mojang Studios, Five Nights at Freddy's, and The Oregon Trail. In 2020, fellow YouTuber and streamer Pokimane joined Cloak as a partner and creative director.

Philanthropy

Fischbach has participated in multiple charity

and fundraisers. In 2017, ''Forbes'' reported that Fischbach and his fans raised around $3 million for charity through these events. In March 2018, in celebration of reaching 20 million subscribers, Fischbach announced he would donate all proceeds from a 48-hour sale of his "Tasteful Nudes" Charity Calendar to the Cancer Research Institute; he raised over $490,000 for the charity and won the 2020 Oliver R. Grace Award.

OnlyFans

The success of the Tasteful Nudes Calendar inspired Fischbach to start an account on OnlyFans, whose proceeds will be split evenly between the Cincinnati Children's Hospital and the World Food Programme. He had a set of conditions that had to be met first before launching the page: The first condition was that his ''Distractible'' podcast had to become the most popular podcast on

Apple Podcast Apple Podcasts (known as simply Podcasts in Apple operating systems) is an audio streaming service and media player application developed by Apple Inc. for playing podcasts. Apple began supporting podcasts with iTunes 4.9 released in June 2005 ...

and Spotify, the second condition was that a sports podcast he created with a friend had to become the most popular sports podcast in the United States and the rest of the world. The third and final condition was that fans had to pay an admission of $12 for his documentary ''Markiplier From North Korea'', a documentary based on his mother's life story about him getting back in touch with the rest of his family. The conditions were met faster than he was prepared for. On November 2, 2022, he announced in a YouTube video that he was going to create the page at the end of the month, after making an initial batch of "tasteful nudes" and getting the username from someone who was impersonating him. The page was launched on December 9, 2022, and the influx of traffic caused the site to crash.

Personal life

Markiplier Video Screenshot From Youtube May 26 2014

Mark Edward Fischbach was born on June 28, 1989 at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Cliffton M. Fischbach (1941–2008), a German American who served in the U.S. Army, and to Sunok Frank (born 1964), a retired Korean nurse. His parents met when his father was stationed in Korea. After he was born, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was raised. He grew up in Milford, Ohio, and attended Milford High School where he was a member of the school's marching band where he played trumpet. He has an older brother, Jason Thomas "Tom" Fischbach (born 1987), an artist and author of the webcomic ''Twokinds''. While Tom Fischbach is featured in some videos, he mostly stays away from allowing his face to be filmed. Fischbach studied biomedical engineering at the University of Cincinnati, but dropped out to pursue his YouTube career. On June 19, 2018, Fischbach's step-niece, Miranda Cracraft, was killed in a car accident at the age of 19. On June 26, 2018, Fischbach released a video with her father, thanking his fanbase for their support. Through GoFundMe, he raised more than $79,000 for Cracraft's funeral.

Political views

While not endorsing a specific political party, Fischbach described himself as a " liberal". He has expressed support for universal health care and stricter

gun control Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians. Most countries have a restrictive firearm guiding policy, with on ...

following the

Stoneman Douglas High School shooting On February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami suburban town of Parkland, Florida, murdering 17 people and injuring 17 others. Cruz, a former student at t ...

. Fischbach is an ally of the LGBT rights movement, having raised money for the

Human Rights Campaign The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGB ...

in one of his charity live streams. In 2020, he condemned the murder of George Floyd. In 2022, Fischbach opposed the

overturning of Roe v. Wade ''Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization'', , is a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a righ ...

, describing it as "an erosion of women's rights".

Filmography

Film

Television and web series

Video games

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* * * {{Portal bar, Biography, Video games, California 1989 births Living people 20th-century American people 21st-century American male actors 21st-century American people 21st-century philanthropists American people of German descent American people of Korean descent American YouTubers Charity fundraisers (people) English-language YouTube channels Gaming-related YouTube channels Gaming YouTubers Internet memes introduced in 2014 Let's Players OnlyFans creators People from Cincinnati People from Los Angeles People from Honolulu Revelmode people Twitch (service) streamers Video game commentators YouTube channels launched in 2012 YouTube vloggers American male YouTubers