The 58-day YouTube stream that ranked more than a million people is finally over

YouTube’s definitely got its problems, we can all agree on that. The platform’s been getting swamped with AI-generated videos, to the point where it had to step up its spam filters to deal with all the repetitive, low-effort “AI slop.” In the U.S., they also rolled out a new AI age-check system, which has stirred up a lot of controversy. Still, YouTube’s a pretty fascinating place, there’s always plenty of creative and interesting content to dig into. And just yesterday, one of the longest streams finally came to an end. That means we can at last see who came out on top out of 1,252,802 people. About time.

YouTube’s insane 58-day stream and the top 10 revealed

The stream “Top 1,252,802 People” ran for about 58 days, which is almost two months. Sure, there have been longer streams in history, but on YouTube, this one was definitely one of them. There’s the legendary Lofi Girl stream that started back in February 2020 and at one point ran nonstop for thousands of hours – roughly three years. And that wasn’t the only long music stream out there, but Top 1,252,802 People was something else entirely.

To sum up the stream: it was a slideshow counting down from the 1,252,802nd person, showing their picture, name, and rank, while some tacky tune played in the background the whole time. That’s it. Absolute cinema.

Source: YouTube, @shidbot420

Who made the list? What were the criteria? How did they decide the rankings? None of that really matters. What we want to know is who claimed the crown. So, here’s the top 10:

1. Number 10: Charles Varin
2. Number 9: Abraham Lincoln
3. Number 8: Nikola Tesla (and this should be number one in my humble opinion)
4. Number 7: Marie Curie
5. Number 6: Julius Caesar
6. Number 5: Alexander the Great
7. Number 4: Albert Ehrenstein (not to be confused with Albert Einstein)
8. Number 3: Leonardo da Vinci
9. Number 2: Isaac Newton
10. Number 1: Dawyne “The Rock” Johnson

Now that the stream is over, we can’t watch the full thing right now. YouTube will probably take days to process it, given how insanely long it was. But the creator uploaded a video of the last 427 people on the list.

I think Hideo Kojima deserved a spot higher than the lazy number 78, but Dwayne Johnson earned that top spot, no question. Ballers was a great show, and now I know what I’m rewatching this weekend.

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