A little late to this (not too much though) - but I think this is just another example of how different pathways that allow anyone to create, can do something great, and how Asian Americans have done so much with YouTube.
If you are not sure who Markiplier is here's a little bit from the Wiki's:
After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Five Nights at Freddy's series; as of February 25th, 2026, his channel had over 38 million subscribers.[4] He signed with talent agency William Morris Endeavor in 2016. While with the agency, he released a clothing line, wrote and directed the YouTube Original series A Heist with Markiplier (2019) and In Space with Markiplier (2022), and hosted or co-hosted two podcasts, which reached No. 1 on Spotify.
In 2023, Fischbach signed with United Talent Agency and was nominated for a Children's and Family Emmy Award. He starred in the series The Edge of Sleep (2024) and made his theatrical debut directing, producing, writing, and starring in the horror film Iron Lung (2026).
[...]
Mark Edward Fischbach was born on June 28, 1989, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father Cliffton Morris Fischbach Jr. was a German American military officer who met his mother, Sunok Frank, while stationed in South Korea.[5] Fischbach's maternal grandfather was a North Korean defector and his maternal family history is covered in the 2022 documentary film Markiplier from North Korea.[6]
After Fischbach was born, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio,[7] but his parents divorced when he was still young. Fischbach graduated from Milford High School in 2007 and enrolled at the University of Cincinnati in a biomedical engineering program.[7][8] His father died in 2008 when Fischbach was 18 years old.[9][10] Fischbach met Wade Barnes in sixth grade and roomed with Bob Muyskens in his freshman year—they would both become his long-term friends and collaborators.[11]
In 2012, Fischbach was beset by many different issues: he went through a breakup, was laid off from his job, moved to an apartment after his mother kicked him out of her house, had an emergency appendectomy, and went into debt. After being hospitalized because of an adrenal tumor, he "decided that he wanted to do something else.
And then here's a little but from an article on Slate:
This past weekend saw one of the oddest box-office victories in recent times. No, I’m not talking about Melania, the first lady–produced documentary that Amazon reportedly spent $40 million on for the rights alone, with an additional $35 million for the marketing. I’m talking about Iron Lung, a self-financed film by a beloved YouTuber named Mark Fischbach, who goes by the handle Markiplier, and who has more than 38 million followers to his name. The movie, an adaptation of an indie horror video game, had a budget of approximately $3 million—an amount that Iron Lung has already earned back seven times over, with a box office of $21.7 million worldwide. Markiplier’s secret to getting his passion project into an impressive 3,000 theaters? According to an interview with Matt Belloni’s podcast The Town, he tapped into his network of fans, many of whom apparently work at movie theaters, and who vouched for the film to their managers. This is one of the rosier byproducts of his years cultivating a relationship with followers through videos that are usually—though not always—about gaming.
