Joe Santagato

Joe Santagato, who enjoyed being in front of the camera since he was a child, got his first camera, by nagging his mother, when he was thirteen years old. He immediately started making short movies, sketches and parodies. After dropping out of college, he worked as a pizza delivery boy and a waiter for about a year. During this time, one of his friends suggested that he should post videos on YouTube. Serious about quality since the beginning, he soon learnt how to edit videos and posted his first video on September 29, 2010, on his YouTube channel "SantagatoTV". It was a funny video of him waking up his brother by screaming at him. His next post would come almost a year later, followed by a "get to know" video about himself a few days later, answering fan question from Tumblr. As he started to get more and more views, he continued to post regularly every Tuesday and reached over 300k subscribers. In 2014, he created a new channel titled "Joe Santagato", which currently has nearly two million subscribers. He also has another vlog channel named "Extra Joe" where he posts videos about his everyday life.

According to his mother, Joe Santagato was always more mature than his age and was quiet and independent as a child. He was also the most sensitive and loving among his siblings. Ironically, he is now most outspoken and humorously criticizes almost everyone in his videos. Most of his content, however, is based on exaggeration of predominant traits among particular groups of people. Growing up among a diverse population in Queens, he is very good at studying people and their behaviors, which provides him with the resources for his observational comedy. Also, being exposed to a diverse community at an early age made him more acceptant and less judgmental. In fact, he often stands up for others who are being bullied or discriminated for their different cultural backgrounds. While he often sounds Hispanic in his impressions of girls, he asserts that it is not because he is racist, rather, it is because he knows more Latinos in his close circles.

In October 2015, Joe Santagato accused another famous YouTuber, Alfie Deyes, for making a video based on his ideas without giving him any credit. Alfie posted "The Mad Lib Story Challenge" video on his channel with couple of his friends, which showed them performing the challenge with water in the mouth. While there were many "mad lib challenge" videos available on YouTube, Joe was the first one to bring this twist. He was quick to point it out when Deyes denied even seeing his video. The incident escalated soon as fans of each YouTuber started commenting on the rip-off incident, and Alfie's girlfriend Zoella, another famous YouTube star, came in to defend Alfie. Interestingly, another YouTuber posted a video on similar content a few days back, giving Joe his due credit, which intensified the question of fair-play on the part of Alfie.