I spent a day with JACKSEPTICEYE

I'm Anthony Padilla and I

spent

the day with

jacksepticeye

to find out the truth about how he went from growing up in an Irish town of just 600 people to becoming one of the most subscribed channels of all time. The darkest moments of his life, while he was publicly at the peak of his career, made him question his purpose and reason for existing and will address how the power to change his way of thinking made him rethink everything. Hello shy, this episode is sponsored by better help online therapy visit betterhelp.com Padilla because sometimes existing is exhausting now so when some people look at you they can see someone with 28.7 million subscribers 15.5 billion views B yes no You get it, a coffee God owns his own coffee company, oh, could that be the title?

The Coffee God you give to Mark as YouTube King. I'm like he'll take whatever he can get. Coffee God, yes, co-founder of a clothing company, someone who has raised millions for charity, should I move on? Please, I don't feel terribly uncomfortable right now. Do you think your approach to life and challenges have allowed you to achieve so much? I think I empathized. I think I have always been someone who has liked to see things from others. People's perspectives are very easy being in Ireland and being in my little bubble and then you go online and suddenly there are people of all kinds of races, ethnicities, beliefs and sexual orientations and suddenly it was like, wow! , my problems mean nothing and I had no aspirations or goals when I was young and suddenly the doors opened and I felt like here is a huge playground for you that you can walk into and try to figure out that challenge and what I was going to do with him.

My life and discovering myself took me on different paths because all the struggles you face are the reason you are here in some way. I would like to think so. I feel like people in general just need to fight. They need friction in their life, like back in the caveman days when it was like us against nature, stuff like that, just having something to work on all the time is good for people like goals because you're left aimless and a a little boring and then you get sad, at least I do, it's almost an innate human need to constantly push through the struggle, yeah, because I think that's how we like to compare our progress every three or four years, learn something new and You overcome something and you become a different person and you either double down on things that are like a struggle for you or you try to learn from them and break the cycles and move forward on a different path.

I also like that technology has forced us to live in the past more because we are constantly shown images of how we used to look and then we reflect on how much we have changed and how much we will change and we are never really in the present. because we're always reflecting on the past or thinking about the future, yeah, and it's also very strange because if you do YouTube like we do, I have daily versions of myself that people can just go back and see the chronological order of my life. but it's still strange that people come back and be like what you said back then, six years ago you said you would never do this and now I like to do it I have had green hair for a while I like an Irish man with green hair I know, I want to tell you that I'm still trying to figure things out.

People love your green hair phase. I think it was a very sweet time in my life where everything was going so well and everything was candy and roses all the time before you did it. resisted before I was a cynical veteran Fed up with the industry and the life I've accumulated so hard to be me was your approach to facing challenges always positive not at all I think my way of dealing with things years ago was just like batten Batten down the hatches and not think about it, you know, like all the '90s kids who grew up in that era and that generation.

You have been taught to have no emotions. Yeah, you're supposed to be macho and cool and not talk about my feelings. I have feelings. I am pure logic. I'm happy with the person I am now, so I think I look at it more positively now, but there was a time when I wouldn't want to deal with those things and not look for answers to anything. Do you think you developed your core personality in your childhood? I think a lot of my childishness is still present when I make YouTube videos. I went to a therapist for a while and talked about what it's like to be in this. life and I was like, "I want to kill the boy to become the man" and she said "well, why would you kill the boy?" They both can be like letting the boy out to play whenever they want and that was like It's a great moment for me where I can still be silly and serious at the same time.

It's fascinating to still have that version of myself present. That's why every time someone says: are you the same in person? In your videos I'm like, well, no, because they're like different versions of me, it's not that I put it on for the videos or anything, it's just that it's a lot more fun than sitting around watching a TV show. I'm not going to be like that. oh my gosh see that was amazing yeah thanks for doing an impression of a current audience member anyone who reacts to this video and the thumbnails I feel like I was never stressed as a kid and now it's like everything I it has to happen.

I'm like, oh God, I need to be here right now and then I have a call and it's like all of these things could be so much fun if I just changed my perspective on them. I feel like most of us are very nostalgic for our childhood and we think it's because that was the time period, but we are totally capable of getting to that point if we could give up some of the stress that we have associated with everything we do. Do you want it to really surprise you? yes please everyone who says I miss old Anthony or old Sean, yes it's like no you don't miss how you felt when you were watching those videos at the time because you were probably in school and you probably just got to home. from school and I just watched videos all day and had a great time, but now you're growing up and now you have responsibilities and now you're in college and you have a job and you're probably really stressed but you think it's the change in the channel, it was probably a lot of me too.

I'm not putting all the blame on you. I'm so sorry, no, it's all your fault. I grew up in a really small town of 600 people, it's only so small like everyone knew everyone, it was like before the Internet and before phones and everything, obviously phones existed. I'm not from the 1900s, being the youngest of five children meant I always wanted to make jokes and try to be as loud. a voice as much as I could to match them, I think that informed where I am now, the comedy aspect, but then my father stopped drinking when I was younger and had retired when I was 10. years old and he liked to quit smoking and all at once and I didn't realize how big an achievement that was until now my older brother Malcolm went through something like alcoholism, plus learning all that stuff and growing up with it and something like that.

I liked seeing what I can do and it taught me a lot as a child and I was always afraid that that addiction was in me somewhere as hard as it was for them, they taught me a lot of lessons without realizing that they were like teaching me things as they went, so I think even through the negative there was something positive to learn from it and you mentioned that you inherited some things from your father. I think a lot of my anxieties came from him because he was very, very like Stern. If a man didn't ask for help, it would be like if he got sick from something and had to go to the hospital and then a doctor would figure out something else about him and maybe give him medication to test it, but he would never seek help for the things he needed.

I had to because I would just suffer silently with it. Health anxiety was something I was diagnosed with earlier this year and I always knew it because I had asthma as a kid and I'm the type of person that sits around I'm like oh man I feel a little weird like I have a little headache, that's a tumor, isn't it? It's growing in my head. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what my dad was going through. through all the time and then, like now, since his passing, I still think in retrospect, like you're happy, that's like my legacy to him, to be well, I can't live with so many regrets if I have health problems, I have to look for them.

I have to discover myself I have to be more active I have to be more aware learn more about myself to break those cycles and not perpetuate the same things again Did you get along well at school and you know I can't go? without thinking about our sponsor surfsharkvpn, which of course is an app and browser extension that allows you to virtually place your computer or your phone anywhere in the world, it allows you to access the internet as if you were there, but why would you want that ? Paint the picture for you, let's say you're like me and you're a little in love with Sean's beautiful, soft accent, so you open Netflix to enjoy the Irish romantic comedy Leap Year, but it's not streaming. in your country you can now watch Surfshark to change your location to Canada where it is available and you can now feast your ears on more English that doesn't sound like English than your heart could reach and not to mention Surfshark also adds an extra layer of security when is online by encrypting all information sent between your device and the Internet, helping keep all your passwords and data safe on an unlimited number of devices with a single account, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so the only risk is that you like it too much and realize you can't live without it and if you want me to hook you up, look no further because I have the code Anthony for you to get 83 off.

Three months free, so visit surfshark.deals Anthony or simply scan the QR code on the screen to support them, support us and browse the web safely from anywhere. Now back to the world of Jacksepticeye, did you get along at school? My qualifications. and things were never surprising. I was the guy who would get by by chance or study like the night before and then get a high grade, but it's only because I have a really good memory. Most people quite liked me, except Some people thought I was an idiot and that I was arrogant and conceited.

I think charisma and arrogance are such close shadows of each other, so it depends on your perspective how you perceive it because I make jokes all the time and something like that. I get really into the moment and, as I've done many times in this interview I'm doing now, I break the fourth wall, I have ADHD and I didn't realize I had it, but I feel really stupid and dumb all the time. I'm like a man. Why do other people like to learn this stuff instantly and do their homework and all that and I was really bad at doing my homework and sometimes it was necessary to tear other people down for doing theirs? do homework and say: Oh God, you're such a good two-shoes, yeah, so it's a way of shaming people for doing what they're supposed to do in school, yeah, it's like how dare you be better than me?

The Irish are very good. knocking someone else down some people would say man look at that guy with his mansion on the hill one day I'll be up there and the Irish say who does he think he's better than the rest of us in his mansion? The feeling of comparing yourself to others and feeling stupid at school never completely went away. God, no, even to this day it doesn't affect me all the time. I'm especially talking about doing a job like this where you can actually compare yourself to other people all the time. There is a number.

Yeah, saying whether someone is better or worse than you in terms of success in this space is very difficult, especially when things are going really well for a while and then they plateau and then they can go down and then you never know if that's the case. Sometimes I'll go back up, the algorithm changes and I'm like, oh, I'm the best thing in the world and then the next day no one hates you and you suck. I started exploring my passion in college and then failed and then explored something completely different. I did sound engineering for two years I wanted to be in a studio I wanted to learn how music was made like music theory, which was terrible in what is a theory what is music theory exactly a theory is something that you have to prove that it is not You can try the music.

I did that for two years and then had the same problem again. We felt stupid for not keeping up with everyone else, so I dropped that course and then went off track for a while. I started dating someone from Korea that I met online and then I thought okay I'm going to go teach English in Korea so I need a Bachelor of Arts to do that so I'm going to go study hotel management and it turns out it's hard to run a hotel, but it was during that period that I started making YouTube videos. that's like a release, I was also super depressed and I didn't have friends or anything and I got really anxious and I liked to immerse myself in games all day and search on YouTube for stuff about this guy called Level Cap Gaming and then I went. to your channel and I really felt likeat home in the comments then a video he liked was a vlog someone asked him if he was working on YouTube full time and he was like yeah YouTube pays me and I do this as my job and I was like what and I was like if you got paid to not only do YouTube but also play games, that's sick and I thought I'll never be able to do that but I thought I'd try so I started doing it myself and people started watching and it was kind of like my awakening moment It was like oh, this is my calling, this is what I'm good at, my spontaneous genius personality and my quick weight and everything fits so naturally into that and then I was able to figure out the sound design in it.

I could do all these other things that I already wanted to do and it really clicked and you feel like it helped you overcome some of your insecurities, what were the insecurities you had at the time you overcame them? Oh man if you go back and watch some of my early videos you hear that accent hello horrible people hello to all you beautiful people yeah all I was doing was like wow let's go here that kind of voice because I wanted to sound more great and more similar. intense and deep in my voice because I was like a light-voiced Irish guy, yeah, I hated how it sounded too, it's like a classic, like you listen to yourself on a tape recorder and then it's like, oh, this is what I sound like. you, yes.

You absolutely sound like that, but everyone hears you like that and you're the only one who freaks out about it, so I would listen to myself in my recordings and then after a while I'd think that doesn't sound so bad, that's okay. I think having that channel and having that motivation to keep working really helped me gain confidence in myself to be well, now I finally have something that I'm good at, something that people care about, there was no time to feel insecure, So in a sense I helped you embrace all your unique quality. Yeah, I think that was the defining moment for me where I felt like I was someone else with that voice and that accent and then I realized I wasn't really going anywhere and I was like, I'm not going anywhere and that's it.

I'm adopting a kind of personality from the beginning, why would I keep doing that when I could be myself and then I could still go nowhere, but the possibility of it going somewhere I prefer? be myself than someone else, that's when I started leaning towards the more Irish things and the beginning of the morning took over the beginning of the morning, the beginning of the morning, the beginning of the morning, my name is Jacksepticeye and welcome back to Happy Wheels and I thought what is the most stereotypical Irish look I can think of? My accent has changed quite a bit since I started.

I sound a lot more American than I used to. What was your accent like before you hurt the load of cats? I don't even know what it sounded like back then so I say I say then instead of den oh you used to say Den yeah this that and the other one this that and the other one back then it's that good no damn that sounded more like I was from Wisconsin or something like that, yeah, as you started to be more and more yourself your video started to get more and more popular, yeah, I mean those other factors like the PewDiePie scream and things like that that were like a big motivator where If the guy at the top of the platform watches your videos and says I think you're doing something good, then that did more for me than the numbers because I thought, "Okay, this is it.

I need to change what I'm doing." I'm doing and having a lot more fun." this really started to work it became a lot more consistent and that's where it started two videos every day at the same time every day and that's two videos every day not just five days a week yeah that was seven Days of the week. Over five and a half years, how many hours are you spending on yourself in that hour? Oh, all day, every day, that would be waking you up in the morning. Prepare the first video for 5 p.m. m., record a video and then finish the next video. 8 p.m. and then record something else, then edit both and then you go to bed and then you wake up and do it all over again.

I mean, if you're in this and it's just starting out and you really enjoy doing it, let your whole being come in and surrender to it, but don't let that happen for five and a half years. I think it was like 14 hours a day of content so easily 80 85 90 hours a week yeah something like that was crazy but you were growing as fast as your Skyrocket number it was like exploding it went from 30 thousand to a million in nine months and I think by the end of next year after I had 9 million, that's crazy, which back then was completely unheard of and today it's like there are people who get like 2 million subscribers a month, but for me it was like 500,000 every month and it was constant for three four years, like in 2015, 2016, a big gaming boom, everything changed to see time-dependent games, just placed. perfectly on that, the 2017 era after that was when I really started to feel insecure again and I started to be really contemplative about what I was doing and I was already like, well, I'm doing this for so long, what else?

Can I pretend that the five-six-year-old house started to take effect from the outside, even though you were on top of the world? Yes, and that was coming from my most important year and I think that's why it was probably the worst year of my life, because then what goes up has to come down over time and you start to compare yourself with yourself and be like a man, I'm not what It used to be, just the numbers fall, yeah, and obviously those things can never hold up forever, they're always going to change over time, but that was the first time I had to deal with that kind of stagnation and things that don't win and if you're not winning you're losing in this industry, so I came out of that year and tried to figure out what I wanted to do. with myself and how I deal with it.

It got into my head a lot. Have you ever talked about how dark that year of 2017 really got? I have a video on my channel of how the worst year of my life was or something. It sounds like clickbait but it was legitimately true and I, at the end of that year,

spent

Christmas alone and I was sitting around being like a man, I'm so miserable and then I had this moment where I was like a man, would it be? I'd be better off if I wasn't here I'd be better off if I just killed myself but for me it was just a lot of self-esteem issues and a lot of confidence and self-esteem and just feeling like the biggest piece of all time.

What a failure at everything I do I'm not happy with where I am in life I have no motivation to get out of this or go further I don't know what to do with my channel how to fix it I should quit, should I leave? Does that make me a bigger failure, like asking people for help? It was the biggest change for me. It took me a long time to realize that I can be happy as Sean outside of Jacksepticeye and that again was like another big teaching point for me that made it easier to get back to work because I realized that if this ever went away I could to be happy without it, it was in those moments like learning about philosophy and stuff and realizing that since the dawn of man and Consciousness we have been trying to figure this out, so I got really into Stoicism and Buddhism for a while. time and the great Buddhist that I saw as a TED talk about that was that they talked about inner peace and how you adhere to yourself. -is it worth it and if it is an external factor versus an internal factor and I realized that my happiness depends a lot on external factors like YouTube videos and numbers and my audience, while if I am left alone internally without that I have no happiness , then it's trying to figure out how to be happy on my own when nothing else influences it outside of my own brain and then when I discovered that it was much easier to please, I found that, as I have done that, I have discovered inner peace, the guys pack it up. we have the enlightened one sitting in the room right now ladies and gentlemen and you all enlighten me thank you

jacksepticeye

yeah eat it everyone else sees life as a journey where you never figure yourself out but constantly work in yourself.

I think that's what makes living life day to day feel satisfying because you can constantly work on yourself, you can have that to strive to be better, people are always trying to figure things out but it's like you never get there. there when you discover something. something else appears and then you realize that you come back here or something else appears, it's always like you said something to work on in the pursuit of happiness is just that it's a pursuit, it's not, there's no goal, there's no final for that, is constantly moving, you were dealing with anger, yeah, I think anxiety comes with feeling like you're not good enough for something else and then someone else does something that's amazing and then you get mad at yourself for not doing it discovered soon or so to speak.

Why am I not as good as them and then it's tempting to say this isn't as good? Yeah, it's not that good. I could have done it. I just didn't think about it. It's such a toxic way of thinking because then I don't have to deal with anything else, it's easy to be distant about everything because then you keep the world at a distance and nothing can make you vulnerable. I mean it's the same thing with toxic positivity, yes what I've realized in the last few years is such a thing, positivity sometimes makes me feel anxious, like I do the smallest things and people turn it into something huge, like good for you, you did it, very proud of you and I think I need a little more.

I like toughness because it's unhealthy, it's almost dehumanizing to feel like you're seen as a perfect God all the time, so I just want to live in this middle ground where I can do evil, I can do good, we can. get in and out of it, we don't have to be locked into any of these and we can just be human and live our life, all you can do is take the things from your past and make them exactly better, and I try to like being a little more honest about that side of things The human experience is primed, we're going through this all the time, it sucks.

Conscience is a burden sometimes and we are social creatures and we should all work together to try to figure these things out. Instead of putting each other down, I started to think about judging other people based on things they said in the past if they are now doing something different and I feel like it's natural for humans to say what they think. it's the best thing in the moment to grow, evolve and be completely open to saying something different or acting differently than what they said with technology so freely showing us things we said in the past ways we used to be mindsets we used to have it's almost like we feel guilty in a sense for passing by to evolve because then you feel like a hypocrite oh I said I would never do this I said I would never be this kind of person but here I am doing this but it's natural for humans to constantly grow but now we're forced to look at things we've said in the past and we feel like we have to stay that way forever, yeah, because it also means that if you get over it it means that everything you did before is a lie or you've betrayed him or he was wasting his time or everything was false before that because now I have changed, which is obviously not true, but sometimes facing negativity means that you are going in the right direction that you are pushing. push back against something that needs to be rejected in what has been your strangest fan experience and you know I can't and won't stop thinking of a better way to help sponsor this episode.

Therapy has helped me reframe my view of the world and myself by allowing me to empathize with my younger self and therefore better understand who I am today, but therapy can be personalized to what's right for you and what you want. be useful to help with motivation or feelings of depression, anxiety, stress, insecurity or anything else you may need. therapists to make sure they are experienced and certified and licensed and provide one-on-one therapy offering video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone or talk on the phone if that's not something you're comfortable with.

To make you feel comfortable, as you may have already discovered, therapy can be expensive and the price of finding a therapist you like and connect with can be overwhelming, which is why Betterhelp offers a more affordable alternative to in-person therapy where You can start communicating with your therapist in less than 48 hours, so thanks to the Better Health we bring to you. I spent a day with the viewers and listeners of the uncensored podcast with 10 off your first month at betterhelp.com Padilla, that's better h-e-l-p.com slash Padilla now returns to the world of jacksepticeye, what has been your fan experience more strange.

Luckily, 99.9 of them have been absolutely lovely and people just reach out and want to share their life experience with you and reflect the lessons they've learned from you. I come back to you and it is so touching and endearing that every now and then you will find someone who is not so favorable and who has turned you into something that is not a person but a caricature. I had it when I separated from my ex. There was a lot of like an upheaval in the community with people who had a very specific standard set for what they thought you were and I was doinga meet and greet and everyone was so friendly and lovely and then someone came up that I had met before the year before and They were like taking pictures telling stories and everything and then they said: Can I ask you a question?

And I was sure and they leaned in very close, put their hand on my chest and slowly lowered themselves and then whispered into me. Hey, I wish you'd stay single longer. Normally I would be very accommodating to everyone and I didn't really want to rock the boat or anything and that was the first time I didn't look them in the eye and I just thanked them and they left and that was the first time I liked it. I buttoned up or said oh, I'm so sorry, what do you mean? I tried to find common ground. I thought, I just bought, no, that's so uncomfortable, I don't care, it's tempting to want to make every single fan, every person who has allowed you to have the career that you have, you feel comfortable in every situation and it's hard to realize that Sometimes they don't deserve to say the things they are telling you, my worst fear of myself. was that I was going to be someone who would grow to have an ego, what I did was I forced myself to think that I had to be the opposite.

I felt like I had to be the most humble person in the world, even if it was hurting me. oh yes, you are a mirror right now because you are reflecting on me, it wasn't like that, you look much better, it's exactly the same way, you feel like you must like to go completely in the opposite direction and also be complacent about everything which is just handing over your self worth to other people like no one should have control over you on that kind of level and I used to think my goal was to make sure I had no ego so by doing that I also never allowed myself to feel good about the things I did.

I was doing. I get that all the time you do something great and then everyone else thinks it's so amazing and it could have been better and it just makes me uncomfortable. I feel like you did it. Well yeah, because I think if it's good I'll post it and then the audience will react, that'll be the validation I need because if it's good it will speak for itself, is it really cool if I talk about it? something I've been working on really fast for just a second, I can't say exactly what it is yet, but I feel like I can't hold on anymore.

I'm very excited for you guys to see what I'm doing. I've been working do you want to see just a little preview? The first big hint I'll give you is that I reviewed each of these samples in this keep your eyes on your own secret project and that's it. I can still legally let you watch, anyway, what I think elevates you to Legendary, oh God, here we go, what I think elevates you to the realm of YouTube Legend is that you constantly strive to grow to see that fear in you. the face and simply. Go ahead and see if you can do it.

There's something so appealing about seeing someone who isn't afraid to face their fears. Well, thank you, that's really nice to hear because it's sad to validate something like, "It's okay, I'm still here." I'm still doing the things I wanted to do the way I wanted to do them. I really haven't strayed from my core values ​​since the beginning. The only thing I'll give myself credit for is leveling the playing field in the conversation. I'm very good at talking to anyone because I always find the commonalities and I find the jokes that crack us both and I'm like, "Okay, this is the area we live in." then bring everyone to a more comfortable level where they feel like they can open up more and talk more.

I think that's what I've been best at, having that kind of honest, open, sincere environment. I just want people to be happy. I just want to empathize with people and be kind and let people have a good time and not judge anyone too harshly and it's like I don't know who I am so it's like we're all in this together, that was profound. yeah, just therapy anyway, how's your sex life fantastic? three to five times a day, you know that with yourself it doesn't count oh oh, well, I guess it could count. I disagree, yeah, okay, live your king of truth, whatever fun upcoming projects you want to hint at. uh I think I'm going to do the world's first live-streamed colonoscopy oh yeah, yeah, but this like narrative stuff and like Iris and world building and directing and acting is always something that's always fascinated me and I have a little bit of that with my YouTube videos, but I always wanted to do bigger things all the time and this Iris thing was the biggest one I've done in terms of production so far and I had like a full team and I was able to be a director, writer, actor, any detail that you wanna hint, I'm going to ring this, yeah, ring, we'll ring it, yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, people don't know and people have been theorizing for a while, but you better, otherwise I have a whole story, pinky promise, okay, it's rung, it's locked in your records, in fact, it won't let me go, yeah, it won't let me go, you swear, right, ice pinky swear, okay, where is it? ?

May you find the motivation to do these charity events. I think just being someone who grew up with very little and then likes to struggle so much and then finding myself and then getting really lucky with YouTube and having a massive voice on the internet, it's just that feeling. of wanting to give back anyway, but then I would do things like make a wish, I would go to the packs and there would be like three Make-a-Wish kids who wanted to meet me and that's a huge, eye-opening experience. like you could have met anyone and you chose me first of all, it was a dumb decision, wrong choice.

I think just seeing the different walks of life and seeing the struggles of so many different types of people and hearing so many different types of stories and realizing it. how much good you can do by rallying your entire community around something good and bringing a sense of hope back to people in some way, and I always keep saying that because people inherently want to do something good, you just have to do it. guide them in the right direction, so if I can build that ship and guide them towards that, then why not? It's fun to do it.

I spent a day with Jacksepticeye and one thing that really moves me is how he realized his entire feeling of happiness was tied to the outside world, external factors that he had no control over, which makes me wonder where in the world outside I have linked my happiness and how much happier would I be if my internal feeling of happiness radiated more brightly than anything I can receive from the outside, thank you, this is a lot of fun, I had a great time, before I cut, is there anything you want to remove of the video? You editors watch it, okay, yeah, can it be all about me?

Mike, I'll do it. I give you a basic chance without me. Can you give us a good plate? Nice to meet you, man. Yeah, that's just me talking to myself.