A YouTuber with over 2.5 million subscribers was elected to the European Parliament after winning almost 20% of the vote in Cyprus, where he ran as an independent candidate. The YouTuber, Fidias Panayiotou, had the third most votes of any candidate, beating out candidates from many of the traditional parties in the country.
Panayiotou racked up millions of subscribers with extreme endurance challenges like going five days without sleeping, surviving seven days on an island with a knife, and surviving 10 days buried alive, all in a frenetic, MrBeast-inspired style.
He also courted controversy after a video where he tried traveling across Japan for free, including by not paying a fare on a train ride, freeloading on a hotel buffet, and trying to ride a bus without having the full fare.
Panayiotou has since deleted the videos and apologized.
Panayiotou also competed in MrBeast challenges—winning a Lamborghini after being the last person to take his hand off one—and appeared in many videos with Airrack, another popular YouTuber before it was revealed that Airrack faked some of his content.
Panayiotou claimed he was never running to try to win, calling the election result a “miracle.”
“Today is an important day, not only for Cyprus but possibly also for the entire world,” he added, claiming that it might be the first time that a candidate was elected without any relationship to a political party, using only social media.”
“This maybe means the world has reached a moment at which a new chapter in the book of democracy begins,” Panayiotou said.
Panayiotou didn’t run on any specific platform and admitted that he wasn’t sure how the European Parliament even worked, but he said that his election should be a warning to the established parties that they need to modernize and listen to the people.
While Panyioutou’s run was light on policy, he’s been pretty open about some of his role models on his channel, citing Elon Musk as a particular inspiration.
“Elon Musk’s my hero, he’s my favorite person on earth. I watched every one of his podcasts ten times,” Panyioutou said at a talk in Dubai last year. “He really taught me everything … because he said history is important I started learning about history. Because he said philosophy is important I started learning about philosophy. I really have admiration for this guy.”
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