Bald YouTuber many know as the ‘slingshot guy’ goes to war against Google
- Joerg Sprave says he used to make around US$6,500 per month after going full-time as a YouTuber. These days he’s lucky to break US$1,300
At his out-of-the-way house in the forested German hills, Joerg Sprave spends his time building mutant crossbows and powerful slingshots – and hounding one of the world’s biggest technology companies.
The 54-year-old has for years uploaded clips of his ever-wackier projectile-throwing creations to YouTube, where hundreds of millions of views and 2.4 million subscribers put him in the top 50 channels nationwide.
But years of hard blows to those making their living on the platform have turned him into a campaigner against YouTube itself, claiming to have enlisted some 26,000 fellow creators worldwide in a fight for better conditions and the unexpected backing one of Germany’s biggest unions.
“I’m not fighting for myself, I’m fighting because I love YouTube, and I fear that the management’s mistakes are endangering it,” Sprave said.
Sprave and the members of his “YouTubers’ Union” Facebook group aren’t global YouTube royalty, like gamer Felix Kjellberg with his 102 million followers under the alias PewDiePie.