This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
Thomas Sanders | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Personal information | ||||||||||
Born | Gainesville, Florida, U.S. | April 24, 1989|||||||||
Education | University of Florida (BS) | |||||||||
Occupations |
| |||||||||
Website | www | |||||||||
YouTube information | ||||||||||
Channels | Thomas Sanders Thomas Sanders & Friends | |||||||||
Years active | 2002–present | |||||||||
Genre(s) | Comedy, music | |||||||||
Subscribers | 4.13 million (Main channel) [1] 379 thousand (Second channel) [2] | |||||||||
Total views | 534.93 million (Main channel) [3] 19.82 million (Second channel) [4] | |||||||||
Associated acts | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
Known for | Narrating People's Lives (Vine) Sanders Sides Cartoon Therapy | |||||||||
Awards | Shorty Award Streamy Award | |||||||||
Last updated: August 15, 2023 |
Thomas Sanders (born April 24, 1989) is an American internet personality made famous by Vine and YouTube. He is best known for his YouTube channel and Vine career, which lasted from April 2013 until the social media site was shut down by Twitter in 2017. [6] [7] [8] [9] After the shutdown of Vine, he continued releasing videos across various social media sites. Sanders creates long videos on YouTube, while simultaneously posting shorter videos in the style of Vine to Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. His work consists of comedy sketches, pranks, stories, singing and civil rights activism.
Sanders is mainly known for the Vine series Narrating People's Lives, also known as Storytime, for the prank series "Disney Pranks with Friends," and on YouTube for the series Sanders Sides. He reached over 7.4 billion loops and 8.3 million followers on Vine, [10] making his career one of the most successful in this social media platform's short history. As of April 2023, [update] his account on TikTok has a following of 10 million followers. [11] On YouTube, he has two channels, "Thomas Sanders" and "Thomas Sanders and Friends", with the latter being discontinued in November 2021. As of August 2023, [update] his main channel has over 4.1 million subscribers and his second channel has 379,000 subscribers. Sanders has won two Shorty Awards [12] [13] and one Streamy Award, [14] for best Viner and best YouTube comedian, and has been nominated for a Teen Choice Award [15] to "Choice Viner" among other recognitions.
As a singer, Sanders has published one EP in 2013, [16] [17] one album in 2016, [18] and several singles from 2017 [19] onwards. [20] [21] He has had a career in musical theatre in his hometown in Florida since he was a teenager, performing since 2006 in Gainesville and Orlando, Florida, and starring in a tour through 17 cities in the US and Canada with his own stage musical, Ultimate Storytime, based on his Vine series. [22] [23] [24] [25] In 2017, he made a guest appearance on the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark [26] [27] and co-hosted a special episode of the Disney XD show Walk the Prank alongside David Lopez. [28]
Sanders was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida. [29] His great-grandfather on his mother's side was born in Ireland. [30] His great-grandmother was a Ziegfeld Follies girl, something Sanders called his "ancestral connection with stage". [31] Sanders' father is a teacher. [32] Sanders has three brothers named Patrick, Christian and Shea. He started singing in public and took his first steps in acting in middle-school at Kanapaha Middle School, located in Gainesville, singing in several choruses and appearing in several school plays. [33] In his high-school, Buchholz, he started combining acting and singing by doing his first roles in musical plays. [34] Later, Sanders combined his studies at the University of Florida with community theater, joining the Gainesville Community Playhouse from 2006 until 2015. When he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering in 2011, [35] [36] he subsequently combined his daytime job as a manufacturing engineer at a pharmaceutical development company in Alachua [37] with his night-time job in theater, until his success on Vine prompted him to leave that first job and focus on Vine and theater. [29] In June 2017, he publicly came out as gay. [38]
Thomas Sanders made his debut on Vine as "Foster Dawg", named after his first dog, Foster, [39] on April 14, 2013. An impression of Stewie Griffin from Family Guy in a drive-thru was his first Vine to go viral, leading to continued success on the app. [29] He later rebranded his channel to "Thomas Sanders". His channel reached 1 million followers on Vine in October 2013. [29] His biggest success on Vine was the Narrating People's Lives series, also known as Storytime, where he approached random strangers, comically narrated everyday activities they were doing, and showed their reaction. [40] [41] Other Vine series he is known for are Disney Pranks with Friends, Pokémon Pranks, Misleading Compliments, and Shoutout Sunday, among others. [10] By April 2015, Sanders' Vine account had over 5 million followers, which made Thomas Sanders the 17th most followed Viner at the time. [42]
When Twitter announced that it was closing Vine down at the end of 2016, Sanders announced that he would continue making Vines until the app's last day. [43] When Vine was shut down on January 17, 2017, Sanders had reached 8.3 million followers. [44] Since that date, his short videos, now known as the Sanders Shorts, are first released on his Instagram, where as of November 2018 [update] he has 2.5 million followers. [45]
On February 24, 2015, Sanders appeared as a guest on The View in a segment featuring Vine stars, where he was interviewed about his popularity on Vine, [29] and one of his Vines was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in their section Vine after Vine. [46] Sanders has collaborated with Viners such as Vincent Marcus, [47] Brandon Calvillo [48] and Amymarie Gaertner, [49] and featured cameos and appearances from figures such as Sean Bean, [50] Nicolle Wallace, [51] Stacy London, [52] Nick Pitera (with whom he did a series of Vines, Unexpected Duets), [53] Brizzy Voices, [53] Gabbie Hanna, [54] Tara Strong, [55] E. G. Daily, [56] Jim Cummings, [57] Dan and Phil, [58] Adam Pascal [59] and the main actors from Hamilton , Teen Titans Go! and Steven Universe, [60] among others.
Sanders opened his official YouTube account on March 15, 2009. [61] After amassing a following through Vine, he started publishing more frequently through YouTube. He had his first YouTube collaborations throughout 2015, consisting of pranks, games and challenges. Up until 2014, his subscriber count grew at a lower rate, with around 80,000 subscribers at the end of that year. [62] From that date, his user count growth started progressively accelerating, having 200,000 subscribers by April 2015 [63] and more than 700,000 subscribers at the end of 2015. [64]
From the second half of 2016, at the same time his Vine activity slowed following Twitter's announcement of Vine's forthcoming closedown, Sanders announced he would be focusing on his YouTube content from then on in order to create more diversely formatted content. As of July 2023, [update] his channel has 4.02 million subscribers. [65]
On October 29, 2018, he debuted a second YouTube channel called "Thomas Sanders & Friends", which would be dedicated to the monthly Sanders Shorts compilations and the unscripted, guest-oriented shows he had done previously on his main channel. The main channel would thereafter be dedicated exclusively to scripted series and shows as well as his music videoclips. [66] His second channel had 396,000 subscribers as of August 2021. [update] [67] In November 2021, Sanders published the last content in this second channel, which has since been quietly discontinued, with its kind of content being brought back to the first channel ever since.
Since October 19, 2016, Thomas Sanders has run a YouTube web series called Sanders Sides, formerly co-written with Joan S., [68] in which he discusses personal or existential issues with four main characters, collectively known as the titular "Sanders Sides". Sanders Sides consists of two seasons with a total of 33 episodes as of January 2024, released on a variable periodicity. Season 1 has 17 episodes released from October 19, 2016, to July 19, 2017. Season 2 began on September 1, 2017, and as of January 2024, it has 15 episodes. [69] It is a spin-off from the Vine/Sanders Shorts series, as the characters Patton, Roman and Logan are inspired by characters that had previously debuted on Vine in 2014, as the "Dad Guy", the "Prince Guy", and the "Teacher Guy," respectively. The Sanders Sides are usually all portrayed by Sanders himself. Sanders Sides has featured guest stars such as Lilly Singh [70] or Butch Hartman who, apart from appearing as himself, created an animated sequence exclusively for Sanders Sides. Tara Strong, who had already appeared in several Vines and Sanders Shorts, also made a voice cameo in Hartman's episode. [71] On November 22, 2019, a companion series titled Sanders Asides was premiered, featuring the Sides in lighter stories in shorter episodes designed, in Sanders' words, to feature stories not directly linked to the main narrative. [72]
The Sanders Sides are "physical-mental projections" of Thomas' mind, [73] and represent different aspects of Thomas' [Note 1] personality. Thomas usually starts each episode as an ordinary vlog about a certain topic or dilemma. The series is mostly comedic, with some more dramatic elements and several ongoing plots.
Apart from his Internet-based career, Sanders has worked in musical theater at the Gainesville Community Playhouse [29] for productions including Hot Mikado (2007), [74] Singin' in the Rain (2009), [75] [76] The Producers (2010), [77] Anything Goes (2011), [78] Into the Woods (2014), [36] and Les Misérables (2014). [79] In 2015, Sanders did his first professional theater work starring in Heathers: The Musical as J.D. in a production performed in Orlando. [80] From August 8 to September 2, 2016, Sanders went on a stage musical tour, Ultimate Storytime, written by him with songs composed by Jacob Fjeldheim, and based on his Vine series Narrating People's Lives, performing in 17 cities in the US and Canada, including Toronto and New York City. [22] [23] [24] [25] In 2019, Sanders was cast as the understudy for The Beast in Beauty and the Beast [ citation needed ] In 2022, he joined Heathers The Musical in Concert, a benefit concert reunion of the 2015 Orlando cast of Heathers: The Musical, portraying again J.D., which earned him a nomination to Best Performer in a Musical in the 2022 BroadwayWorld Orlando Awards, as well as another nomination together with the rest of the cast to Best Ensemble Performance. [81]
Though critics often classified Sanders as a baritone, [82] he considers himself a bass singer. [83] He has sung primarily on Vine and YouTube. He has performed songs in a wide variety of genres but has personally showed a preference towards jazz music, mentioning Nat King Cole as one of his favorite singers. [84] He has musically collaborated with dodie, Jon Cozart, Ben J. Pierce, Deedee Magno Hall, Adam Pascal, and AJ Rafael. He released his first EP, titled Merry Christmas, on Bandcamp on December 21, 2013; the EP consisted of Christmas songs. [16] [17] In 2016, he released the soundtrack of his Ultimate Storytime stage musical, recorded alongside his co-stars, Terrence Williams Jr., Nicole Visco, Jay Harper (also known as JayIsJo) and Leo Anderson (also known as Leo the Giant). [18] On July 22, 2017, Sanders released on YouTube a new original song titled "The Things We Used to Share", [85] inspired by real events in Sanders' life. [19] It was followed by more singles in 2018 and the announcement of a new EP. [86]
Year | Title | Duet with | Data |
---|---|---|---|
2013 | "Snow in Venice" | Jacob Fjeldheim (piano) | Cover of a song by Elizaveta |
2014 | "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" | Jazz cover of a song from Cinderella | |
2015 | "Proud of Your Boy" | Cover from the musical Aladdin published in Sanders' Tumblr account. [87] | |
2016 | "Vine vs YouTube" | Jon Cozart | Song based on "Anything You Can Do" from the musical Annie Get Your Gun |
"Middle of a Moment" | Cover from the musical James and the Giant Peach | ||
"Freeze Your Brain" | Cover from Heathers: The Musical starring Sanders in 2015 | ||
"What You Own" | Adam Pascal | Cover from the musical Rent | |
"The Internet is Down" | AVbyte | Original song by AVbyte | |
"RIP Vine: A Song" | Jon Cozart | Song nominated to a Streamy Award [88] based on "Agony" from Into the Woods | |
2017 | "Lies" | Original song written by Thomas Sanders and Chris Shaw and performed on Sanders Sides | |
"Birds" | dodie | Cover from Sanders' Ultimate Storytime musical | |
"Dear Happy" | Original song by dodie | ||
"Warrior Girl" | Deedee Magno Hall | Cover from Sanders' Ultimate Storytime musical | |
"A Lovely Night" | Ben J. Pierce | Cover from La La Land | |
"Waving Through a Window" | dodie & Ben J. Pierce | Cover from the musical Dear Evan Hansen | |
"Aggressive Bouts of Beat Poetry" | Rap song written by Joan S. and performed on Sanders Sides | ||
"New York, New York" | dodie | Cover from the musical of the same name | |
"The Things We Used to Share" | Original song written by Joan S., first original single [19] [89] | ||
"Tomorrow Never Came" | Ben J. Pierce | Cover of a song by Lana Del Rey | |
"12 Days of Christmas" | Christmas song performed on Sanders Sides | ||
2018 | "Rear View" | Foti | Original song by Foti |
"Disappear" | AJ Rafael | Cover from the musical Dear Evan Hansen | |
"I Won't Say I'm in Love (mash-up)" | Terrence Williams Jr., Jamahl Rawls & Foti | Single, [20] cover of a song from Hercules mashed up with several Disney songs [90] | |
"Crofter's: The Musical" | Single, [21] performed on Sanders Sides. [91] | ||
"On the Borderline" | Single, [92] original song written by Joan S. [93] | ||
"breathin" | Foti | Single, [94] cover of a song by Ariana Grande. [95] | |
"Incomplete (The Puzzle Song)" | Single, [96] original song performed on Sanders Sides. [97] | ||
2019 | "Seasons of Love" | A chorus with several of his friends | Single, cover of a song from the musical Rent . |
"Friends on the Other Side – Disney Villain Mash-Up" | Brittney Kelly, Valerie Torres-Rosario, Foti, Jamahl Rawls, Terrence Williams Jr., & Leo Anderson | Single, cover of a song from The Princess and the Frog mashed up with several Disney songs | |
"Forbidden Fruit (The Duke's Theme)" | Single, original song performed on Sanders Sides | ||
"A Gay Disney Prince" | Jon Cozart | Single, original song mashed up with several Disney songs | |
"Recipe for Me" | Single, original song written by Joan S. and Jamahl Rawls | ||
2020 | "Rhythm Redux" | Single, original song performed on Sanders Sides | |
2021 | "Seventeen" | Nicole Visco | Reunion cover from Heathers: The Musical which Sanders and Visco starred in 2015 |
"Hallellujah" | Caleb Hyles, Jonathan Young, Dan Vasc & Colm McGuinness | Single produced by Caleb Hyles, cover of a song written by Leonard Cohen | |
"Landslide" | Thomas Sanders' father (guitar) | Single, cover of a song by Fleetwood Mac | |
2022 | "Trying Too Hard" | Single, Cover from a song from Central Park | |
"Stranger Things Mash-Up" | Single, mash-up of the songs "Running Up That Hill", "The Neverending Story" and "Time After Time". | ||
"Into the Unknown" | Single, cover of a song from Over the Garden Wall performed for a Sanders Sides short. | ||
2023 | "Disney Friendship Mash-Up" | Joseph Fote, Jay Harper, Terrence Williams, Valerie Torres-Rosario, Quil Darling | Single, mash-up of several Disney songs. |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Sanders Sides | Various characters | Webseries 32 episodes Nominated for Streamy Award for Best Writing |
2017 | Bizaardvark | Ian Finkelman | 1 episode [26] [27] |
Walk the Prank | Himself | 1 episode [28] | |
2020 | Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe | Throat-Lobster | Voice [98] [99] |
2022 | Hamster & Gretel | Neighslayer, Additional Voices | Voice, episode "Neigh, It Ain't So!" [100] |
2024 | Kabu | Bearemy | Voice [101] |
Year | Award | Nominee | Result |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Ryan Seacrest's Favorite Vine Celebrity Contest | Thomas Sanders | Won [102] |
2015 | Univision's Shorty Awards – Vine Star of the Year | Thomas Sanders | Won [12] |
2016 | Streamy Awards – Viner of the Year | Thomas Sanders | Won [14] [103] |
Teen Choice Awards – Choice Viner | Thomas Sanders | Nominated [15] | |
2017 | Shorty Awards – YouTube Comedian | Thomas Sanders | Won [13] |
Streamy Awards – Collaboration | Thomas Sanders and Jon Cozart for "RIP Vine: A Song" | Nominated [88] | |
Unicorn Awards – YouTuber of the Year | Thomas Sanders | Nominated [104] [105] | |
2019 | Streamy Awards – Best Writing | Thomas Sanders, Joan S., Adri White, Quil Cauchon and AJ Hentges for "Sanders Sides" | Nominated [106] |
2022 | BroadwayWorld Orlando Awards - Best Performer in a Musical | Thomas Sanders for "Heathers The Musical in Concert" | Nominated [81] |
BroadwayWorld Orlando Awards - Best Ensemble Performance | The whole cast of "Heathers The Musical in Concert" | Nominated [81] |
The Young Turks (TYT) is an American progressive news commentary show live streamed on social media platforms YouTube and Twitch. It additionally appears on selected television channels. TYT serves as the flagship program of the TYT Network, a multi-channel network of associated web series focusing on news and current events. TYT covers American politics, wars and conflicts in the Middle East, sports, and a vast majority of other topics. The program was created by Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz and Dave Koller. Uygur is Turkish-American and named the program after the Young Turks movement of the 20th century. Currently co-hosted by Uygur and Ana Kasparian, it is also often accompanied by various other in-studio contributors. The Young Turks began as a radio program that premiered on February 14, 2002, on Sirius Satellite Radio before launching a web series component in 2005 on YouTube, and then later Twitch; at some point it was also carried on Air America.
John Patrick Douglass, better known as jacksfilms, is an American YouTuber, videographer, and sketch comedian, best known for his series Yesterday I Asked You and Your Grammar Sucks, in which he commentates on content sent by fans.
PrankvsPrank, also known as PvP, is a YouTube channel created by Jesse Michael Wellens and his then-girlfriend Jennifer "Jeana" Smith. In 2007, the two began to play pranks on each other and post videos of the pranks on websites, eventually forming a channel on YouTube. They became one of the most-watched channels. The channel has more than 1.8 billion video views and more than 10.2 million subscribers as of February 2017. After Wellens and Smith split in May 2016, Wellens became the sole user of the channel.
Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, better known by his YouTube username VitalyzdTv, is a Russian-American YouTube personality, content creator, online streamer and website owner. His YouTube videos, as of November 2021, have reached over 1.8 billion views and over 10 million subscribers, while his video blog channel has more than 270 million views and 1.93 million subscribers.
Mark Edward Fischbach, known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, actor and filmmaker. He mainly uploads Let's Plays and is known for his videos of indie horror games. After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and the Five Nights at Freddy's series. As of August 2024, his channel had over 36.8 million subscribers.
Roman Bernard Atwood is an American YouTube personality and prankster. He is best known for his vlogs, where he posts updates about his life. His vlogging channel, "RomanAtwoodVlogs", has a total of 5 billion views and 15 million subscribers. He also has another YouTube channel called "RomanAtwood", where he used to post prank videos. The channel has been inactive since 2016. His pranks have gained over 1.4 billion views and 10.4 million subscribers. He became the second YouTuber after Germán Garmendia to receive two Diamond Play Buttons for his first two channels.
Yousef Saleh Erakat, also known as FouseyTube or Fousey, is a Palestinian-American YouTuber and online streamer who produces prank videos, parodies, vlogs, comedy sketches and interviews. He also has two other channels, Fousey and DoseOfFousey.
Flula Borg is a German actor, comedian, and musician. Borg's acting career includes roles in feature films, including Pitch Perfect 2 and The Suicide Squad, as well as in a number of television shows, including Curb Your Enthusiasm,The Good Place, Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin, and The Rookie. He has made multiple appearances on Conan and has participated in a number of other collaborations with Conan O'Brien.
Mark Rober is an American YouTuber, engineer, inventor, and educator. He is known for his YouTube videos on popular science and do-it-yourself gadgets. Before he became a YouTuber, Rober was an engineer with NASA for nine years, where he spent seven years working on the Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later worked for four years at Apple Inc. as a product designer in their Special Projects Group, where he authored patents involving virtual reality in self-driving cars.
Logan Alexander Paul is an American social media influencer, professional wrestler, YouTuber, entrepreneur, and actor. He has over 23 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, and has ranked on the Forbes list for the highest paid YouTube creators in 2017, 2018, and 2021. He is the co-founder of beverage company Prime and snack brand Lunchly. Paul has also run the Impaulsive podcast since November 2018, which has over four million YouTube subscribers. As a wrestler, he has been signed to WWE since June 2022, where he performs as a "free agent" that would allow him to appear on the Raw and SmackDown brands.
Jonathan Charles Cozart, also known by his online alias Paint, is an American YouTube personality, musician, and comedian. As of January 2024, his main YouTube channel has 4.58 million subscribers.
Elizabeth ShailaKoshy is an American YouTuber, media personality and actress. Her main YouTube channel has amassed almost 17 million subscribers, and her two channels have a combined total of over 3 billion views. She has received four Streamy Awards, four Teen Choice Awards, and a Kids' Choice Award.
Robert James Rallison, known online as TheOdd1sOut, is an American YouTuber, cartoonist, animator, author, and voice actor. He is known for producing storytime animations on his YouTube channel and co-creating, starring in, and executive producing the Netflix animated series Oddballs.
Dávid Julián Dobrík is an Internet personality. He found early success on the video-sharing platform Vine before starting his vlog on YouTube in 2015. In 2019, he co-founded the photography app Dispo. Dobrik entered the United States as a child, and was later protected under the DACA program, before eventually being granted permanent residency.
Jaiden Dittfach, known online as Jaiden Animations, is an American YouTuber and animator, known for her story-time animations. Her videos explore a variety of topics, spanning from her experiences to personal stories. She now primarily creates videos centered around video game stories.
Yes Theory is a Canadian digital media brand built around a YouTube channel founded by Thomas Brag, Ammar Kandil, Matt Dahlia, and Derin Emre. Originally founded as Generation Y Not, Yes Theory first gained national media attention in November 2015 with their message of inclusivity in the wake of terror attacks in Beirut and Paris. They have been featured in a range of national and international media.
Drew Gooden is an American commentary YouTuber and comedian who makes comedic videos, mainly on internet culture and pop culture. His YouTube channel has over four million subscribers. Before YouTube, Gooden was a Viner best known for his "Road Work Ahead" Vine. He often collaborates with fellow YouTuber Danny Gonzalez; the two went on their We Are Two Different People Tour in 2019. In 2021, Gooden won the Streamy Award for Commentary.
Brandon George Rogers is an American comedian, actor, filmmaker, and YouTuber. He plays many characters in his eponymous YouTube channel and is a writer on the adult animated web series Helluva Boss, in which he primarily voices the main character Blitzo, as well as voicing reporter Katie Killjoy in Hazbin Hotel.
Daniel James Gonzalez is an American commentary YouTuber and musician who originally came to prominence for his short comedy sketches on Vine in 2014. He created his main YouTube channel that same year, subsequently moving over to YouTube full-time when Vine closed down in 2017. His three personal channels and three group channels have collectively earned around 9.44 million subscribers, and 1.88 billion views, as of August 2024. He posts on his main channel about once a month and his second channel twice a month.
Jarvis Allen Johnson is an American YouTuber and podcaster. He is also a former software engineer who has been operating his YouTube channel since October 12, 2006.