Matthew Santoro

Summary

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Matthew Santoro (born July 16, 1985[3]) is a Canadian Twitch streamer, YouTuber,[4] and social media influencer. He compiles top ten lists and "50 Amazing Facts" videos[5][6][7] on his main channel. Other channels he owned, for vlogging and gaming, are no longer available.[8][9]

Matthew Santoro
Santoro in 2014
Personal information
Born (1985-07-16) July 16, 1985 (age 38)
Ontario, Canada[1]
Occupations
Websitematthewsantoro.com
YouTube information
Channel
  • MatthewSantoro
Years active2010–present
Genres
Subscribers6.09 million[2]
Total views1.47 billion[2]
NetworkStudio 71
100,000 subscribers2010
1,000,000 subscribers2011
Alma materBrock University (MAcc)

Last updated: February 3, 2023

As of March 18, 2023, Santoro's channel has 6.1 million subscribers and 1.4 billion views.[10]

Channel history edit

Santoro most frequently uploads top ten lists, such as "10 Forbidden Places You’re Not Allowed to Visit!" and "10 Extremely BIZARRE Phobias People Actually Have!".[11][12]

Personal life edit

Santoro grew up in Welland, Ontario and later moved St. Catharines, Ontario.[1] He is of Italian descent through his father,[13] while his mother is French-Canadian. In May 2015, he moved to Toronto, Ontario. A fan of Drake and hip-hop culture, Santoro often refers to Toronto as "The 6ix".

In January 2016, he uploaded a video titled My Abuse Story. He tearfully talked about an unnamed romantic partner, who he claimed was manipulative and forced him to turn his friends and family away in favour of her and she had also psychologically and physically abused him during their relationship.[14] It was claimed by his friend, Rob Gavagan ( Dyke), that the "unnamed partner" mentioned in the video was Nicole Arbour.[15]

Santoro moved to Los Angeles in the first week of January 2017 and possesses a U.S. green card but maintains Canadian citizenship.[16][17]

On October 21, 2017, Santoro released a video revealing that he suffers from clinical depression.[18] He has made several update videos explaining his progress and he has since been doing better.

On July 27, 2020, Santoro explained that after moving back to Toronto, someone or some group stole a trailer from the moving company that housed most of his belongings, leaving him nothing other than what he had moved back to Toronto with himself.[19] The stolen trailer was found on July 30,[20] and its contents were returned to Santoro on July 31, although some items were still missing, and several were damaged.[21]

Career edit

After Santoro graduated from Brock University with a Master of Accountancy in 2010, he became an accountant. He also started making videos on YouTube that year, mostly skits. In 2012 he got laid off from his accounting job. He described that experience in a vlog titled "I Lost My Job Today". He then started focusing on his YouTube career and thus began posting videos weekly.[22] Also during this time, he recalls in an interview, that he noticed that his opinionated fact compilation videos, such as his top ten lists and "50 Amazing Facts To Blow Your Mind" series, were viewed more than his other videos. That made him begin uploading those types of videos more frequently.[23] He believes that his more frequent of uploading of these videos helped increased his viewership from only a few thousand per video in the past, to the millions he currently has.[5][24] He is able to make a career out of YouTube through the money he earns from ad revenue, which is more than what he made as an accountant.[24][25] In 2016, Santoro was caught by other YouTube personalities plagiarizing content word-for-word from Listverse, and as a result, Santoro stated that he would cite sources in his videos from then on, including retroactively adding citations to videos he has already uploaded.[26]

In a tweet published on August 15, 2021, Santoro announced that he was leaving YouTube after 10 years of uploading, in favor of streaming on Twitch.[4]

In December 2022, Santoro announced his return to YouTube.

Notable collaborations edit

Santoro has been a special guest narrator on CinemaSins' Everything Wrong With... series. He was featured in the Underworld: Evolution video which was published on October 10, 2014. He also collaborated with Matthias, creating a song, "The Booty Song", and Barely Political in their video, "YouTube Complaints 2015". Santoro and Vsauce3 collaborated with The Muppets, in a video titled, "What if Quicksilver Ran Past You?", which was the first video in the Muppet collaboration initiative on YouTube.[27]

He collaborated with Lilly Singh, Olga Kay, Toby Turner, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, in Terminator Genisys: The YouTube Chronicles, a promotional series for the 2015 film Terminator Genisys.[28]

In July 2018, Santoro released the 100th episode of his "50 Amazing Facts" video series; for the occasion, Santoro had each fact presented by a different YouTuber. Those who took part included Rhett and Link, Kanwer Singh, Daym Drops, MatPat, Hank Green, iJustine, and the Fine Brothers.[29]

Other work edit

Santoro is the host of Quest Nutrition's "Food for Thought" webseries.[30] The first episode, "10 Incredible Facts About Chicken", premiered on May 28, 2015.[31]

Santoro, along with Yousef Saleh Erakat, Soledad O'Brien and will.i.am hosted the Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day event.[32][33] On September 26, 2015, Santoro, along with AsapScience, Stephen Colbert and Hugh Jackman hosted the Global Citizen festival.[34]

In June 2015, Santoro obtained a global publishing deal from Penguin Books for his book,[35] titled MIND=BLOWN, which was released on August 9, 2016.[36]

Santoro retired with the title of #1 "most loved" Periscoper in the world with over 177 million hearts on the live streaming app Periscope on November 11, 2015.[37]

Awards and nominations edit

Year Award Category Result
2015 Seventh Annual Shorty Awards YouTube Star of the Year presented by A&E[38] Nominated
2015 Fifth Annual Streamy Awards Breakout Creator[39] Won

References edit

  1. ^ a b "Eat like YouTube star Matthew Santoro in St. Catharines!". June 20, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
  2. ^ a b "About MatthewSantoro". YouTube.
  3. ^ Matthew Santoro [@MatthewSantoro] (July 17, 2022). "37 🎉 🎈" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  4. ^ a b @twitch.tv/MatthewSantoro (August 15, 2021). "Thank you to everyone who's become a part of my @Twitch community. Leaving behind a YouTube career of 10 years is tough, but the right decision for me. I'm excited for my future again!" (Tweet). Archived from the original on August 17, 2021. Retrieved August 17, 2021 – via Twitter.
  5. ^ a b Oliveira, Michael (September 3, 2014). "How a laid-off Ontario office worker became one of YouTube's biggest stars". CTV News. Retrieved June 6, 2015.
  6. ^ Fitzgerald, Sean (August 11, 2014). "Five Canadian YouTubers you should know about". Toronto Sun. Retrieved June 29, 2015.
  7. ^ Cruz, Arlene (February 18, 2015). "VIRAL VIDEO 50 Amazing Facts To Blow Your Mind [Watch] Discover Things You Never Thought Could Happen!". Food World News. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  8. ^ Matthew, Santoro [@MatthewSantoro] (April 24, 2018). "The reason I deleted my vlog channel was because I associated it with too much negativity" (Tweet). Archived from the original on January 9, 2019. Retrieved January 9, 2019 – via Twitter.
  9. ^ "Why I Deleted My Gaming Channel". YouTube. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
  10. ^ "MatthewSantoro". YouTube. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  11. ^ Boone, Faith (January 26, 2015). "10 forbidden places the public is not allowed to visit in the world: Video". ABC15. Archived from the original on July 7, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  12. ^ McCarthy, Tom (February 23, 2015). "Watch: 10 bizarre phobias you never knew existed". Irish Examiner. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  13. ^ YouTube, a Google company. YouTube. Archived from the original on April 7, 2019.
  14. ^ My Abuse Story. January 11, 2016 – via YouTube.
  15. ^ Nicole Arbour Abused Matthew Santoro Interview with Rob Dyke. September 9, 2015 – via YouTube.
  16. ^ "LA House Tour! (My New Place!)". YouTube. January 3, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2017.
  17. ^ I'm Moving to Los Angeles. December 4, 2016 – via YouTube.
  18. ^ Santoro, Matthew (October 21, 2017). "There's Something I Never Told You". YouTube. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  19. ^ Santoro, Matthew (July 27, 2020). "Everything I Own Was Stolen". YouTube. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  20. ^ Santoro, Matthew (July 30, 2020). "They Found My Stolen Truck!". YouTube. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  21. ^ Santoro, Matthew [@MatthewSantoro] (August 1, 2020). "My stuff was delivered.
    Some things were damaged. Some expensive things stolen.
    But I'm sleeping in a bed for the first time in a month and a half and I couldn't be more grateful" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  22. ^ "YouTube stars get screen time at Buffer Festival". The Star. October 16, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  23. ^ "Canada AM: YouTuber gained fame after layoff". CTV News. October 27, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  24. ^ a b Fitzgerald, Sean (November 24, 2014). "How Matthew Santoro became one of Canada's most popular YouTubers". Toronto Sun. Retrieved June 6, 2015.
  25. ^ "Matthew Santoro brings his YouTube fame to Just For Laughs". CBC News. July 25, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  26. ^ Kranske, Sean (May 9, 2016). "On Plagiarism And Matthew Santoro". The Odyssey Online. Retrieved February 26, 2019.
  27. ^ Brouwer, Bree (May 4, 2015). "The Muppets Take Over YouTube Space LA, Collab With YouTube Stars". Tubefilter. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  28. ^ Regan, Helen (June 24, 2015). "See What It's Like to Hunt Down YouTube Stars as Terminator With This Virtual Reality 360 Video". Time. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  29. ^ Weiss, Geoff (July 24, 2018). "Matthew Santoro Fetes 100th Episode Of '50 Amazing Facts' Series With Star-Studded Video". Tubefilter. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  30. ^ Brouwer, Bree (April 20, 2015). "Quest Nutrition Taps YouTube Star Matthew Santoro For 'Food For Thought' Series". Tubefilter. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  31. ^ Brouwer, Bree (May 21, 2015). "Quest Nutrition, Matthew Santoro Drop Trailer For 'Food For Thought' Series". Tubefilter. Retrieved June 6, 2015.
  32. ^ Kreps, Daniel (March 5, 2015). "No Doubt, Usher, My Morning Jacket Headlining Global Citizen Earth Day Event". Rolling Stone. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  33. ^ Brouwer, Bree (April 16, 2015). "FouseyTUBE, Matthew Santoro Host YouTube's Earth Day Live Stream". Tubefilter. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  34. ^ "Huge Global citizens Announcement!". August 13, 2015. Retrieved August 13, 2015.
  35. ^ Deahl, Rachel (June 26, 2015). "Book Deals: Week of June 29, 2015". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved June 28, 2015.
  36. ^ Santoro, Matthew (June 30, 2015). "Mind = Blown Amazing Facts About This Weird, Hilarious, Insane World". Penguin Random House. Retrieved August 9, 2016.
  37. ^ "Top 10 Most Loved Livestream Periscopers List". November 9, 2015. Archived from the original on November 10, 2015. Retrieved November 9, 2015.
  38. ^ Lee, Ashley (March 2, 2015). "Shorty Awards 2015: Nominees Include Shonda Rhimes, Chris Pratt, Laverne Cox (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  39. ^ "Streamy Awards 2015: Nominees Include Lauren Elizabeth, Rachel Levin, Jenn McAllister, Arden Rose, Matthew Santoro".

External links edit

  • Matthew Santoro's channel on YouTube
  • Matthew Santoro Vlogs's channel on YouTube
  • Matthew Santoro at IMDb