Stampy

Joseph Garrett was born in Havant in Hampshire, England, on 13 December 1990.[6][8][7] His father is a graphic designer, and his mother was a stay-at-home-mum. He has two older sisters: Rachel and Annette, the latter of whom also has a Minecraft YouTube channel.[6][9]

Garrett studied TV and video production at Solent University in Southampton.[10][6] Garrett enjoyed creating stop-motion films and wanted to be an editor or vision mixer, wanting to work on projects entirely by himself.[6] Ironically, his parents refused to buy him his own video game console.[11]

In August 2006, Garrett created his first YouTube channel, where he played and talked about video games. When he started the channel, his parents thought he should spend his time more wisely, but they did not discourage him. Garrett saw his channel growing, telling ''The Independent'', "I knew that if I got fully into it, I might make it work for me." Garrett believed that the writing, editing, and voiceovers he was doing on his channel would look good on his CV.[6] He worked from his bedroom in his parents' house.[7][10] Initially, his channel consisted of live-action comedy skits and animations he made with his friends.[8] He later transitioned to Let's Play videos, playing video games such as Homefront. Garrett later shut down this channel.[12]

On 29 July 2011, he launched the Stampylonghead channel. He began making Minecraft Let's Play videos in 2012[12] when he was still in university.[13] When he started making Let's Play videos of Minecraft, which later 'blew up', Garrett realised that most of his audience were children.[14] Upon this realisation, he began to make more family-friendly content, which included stopping swearing and making his persona "bigger and brighter", along with ensuring that he did not use sentences that were too long.[15] At the time, he was working as a bartender at a pub. Once his YouTube earnings passed what he earned from bartending, which was minimum wage, he quit the job. This decision was made when he had about 10,000 subscribers. His parents allowed him to stay in their house rent-free to help him develop YouTube into his full-time career.[13] Garrett described the Stampylonghead channel as a "complete accident," saying his original aim was to become a video game journalist.[15] Garrett records, edits, and uploads his videos himself, while Maker Studios handles business issues.[15]

In December 2013, YouTube terminated the Stampylonghead channel due to false reports of community guidelines violations. After widespread campaigning under the Twitter hashtag "#savestampy" began trending, the channel was reinstated a day later.[12][16] In 2014, he attended the San Diego Comic-Con for the first time.[17]

In 2014, Garrett said he worked 11 hours daily making videos.[7] He stated that it took him around two to four days to make his 'more elaborate' videos. To keep his output high, he alternated between those videos and ones that were easier to make.[17] In 2014, Garrett has attributed some of his popularity to his upload schedule, which at the time was daily. He said that this ensured his audience knew they could return regularly to find new content to watch. He believed that another reason for his success was that his persona, Stampy Cat, became "involved in their life more ... than a kids' television presenter would be: they're messaging me, they're sending me pictures. You become more of a friend to them".[18] When asked if he would be interested in transitioning to TV, Garrett has stated that he is happy on YouTube.[19]

Garrett (middle) with iBallisticSquid (left) and DanTDM (right) at Minecon in 2015

On 25 April 2015, Garrett launched a spin-off edutainment YouTube series, Wonder Quest, in collaboration with Maker Studios.[20] The series is told through Minecraft, and is designed for educational use in classrooms.[7] Jordan Shapiro praised the show for demonstrating the educational potential of Minecraft.[21] He was a featured panelist at Minecon in July 2015.[22][23][24] He also attended Minecon in 2016.[25]

In September of 2015, Garrett signed a two-book deal with Egmont Publishing.[26] Stampy's Lovely Book, released to United Kingdom stores on 22 October 2015, is a children's activity book themed around Stampy Cat, including comic strips and "exclusive info about Stampy and his friends".[27] Stampy's Lovely Book was followed by a sticker book titled Stampy Cat: Stick with Stampy! on 28 July 2016.[28]

In 2015, Garrett told The Independent, "I'm sometimes envious of people who have a 9-to-5 job. People can just come home and switch off. I never can."[6] The same year, he told the BBC that his favourite part of his job was meeting his fans and seeing real people enjoy his videos, rather than numbers on a computer screen. He also said that he was mostly only recognised in public by children, and if he were to walk down a street with no children, he would not be noticed. He described this attention as "nicely manageable."[29] In 2018, he broke a Guinness World Record, the fastest time to make and display ten cakes in Minecraft, which he did in three minutes and 51 seconds.[30]

On 21 October 2023, the final episode of Stampy's Lovely World aired, titled "Thanks For Watching", marking the end of the series after 823 episodes.[31][32] The final episode received 1.7 million views in a day.[32] On Twitter the same day, Garrett wrote; "thank you everyone who’s sent me a lovely message tonight. I have really felt all of the love and good wishes. It was a fantastic ride and I’m glad I got to go out in the way I wanted. Good luck with wherever your life takes you."[33]

His avatar is a character called Stampy Cat, an orange and white cat (depicted by a commercially available Minecraft skin based on the character Fidget from the video game Dust: An Elysian Tail). Garrett describes the character as "a bigger, brighter, better version" of himself.[7] Other characters in the videos (who viewers refer to as Stampy's "helpers") include iBallisticSquid, the YouTube name of Garrett's friend David Spencer,[34] and Sqaishey Quack, a duck character played by Garrett's spouse, Kye Bates[35]

Caroline Knorr of Common Sense Media describes Stampy's presentation as best for younger fans and that "Stampy feels like a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Mr. Rogers."[36] In 2015, Garrett said that the majority of his audience was between the ages of four and twelve. After discovering this, he determined that he could not swear or use sentences that were too long. Garrett has also stated that rather than referring to his audience as "kids", he talks directly to his audience. He described the former method as patronising. Garrett also 'resisted' ad breaks in his videos.[7] Garrett's Minecraft series adds a story to game which has none, while giving viewers ideas for activities to pursue with their friends in their own Minecraft games.[37]

Once Garrett became aware of his young audience, he started placing more energy into his voice to keep the children's attention.[7] This voice is high-pitched, and has a 'trademark laughter,' which The Independent described as a "helium honk".[6][38] A journalist for the American magazine Entertainment Weekly wrote that Stampy's was the "newest voice in children's entertainment," jokingly adding that it was "shrill, British, and very, very square."[10] While his demeanour attracted young children, some parents found it annoying.[6][38]

Lee Bear was a bear character who was very prominent in the earlier Stampy's Lovely World episodes, played by the Minecraft YouTuber Lee Carson. Carson reportedly sent threatening messages and explicit images of himself to women online.[10][39] Garrett removed Carson from the videos in September of 2015, doing so in a manner that concealed the truth of Carson's actions from Garrett's young fanbase.[40]

In 2018, Garrett became engaged to Kye Bates, a fellow Minecraft YouTuber known online as Sqaishey Quack. They were married in 2019. The two have a cat named Ori, and two dogs called Alyx and Mei.[30] In 2014, Garrett described himself as "a very big introvert, I'm very shy."[18]

In February 2014, the Stampylonghead channel received 159.3 million views, 50 million more than One Direction. At the time, he had 2.3 million subscribers and 845 million channel views overall.[20] In May 2015, he was the 32nd most-viewed YouTube channel of all time, with 3.5 billion views and 5.8 million subscribers.[21] His YouTube channel surpassed 10 million subscribers on 8 February 2021.[9]

In 2014, Garrett was in the top 10 most-viewed YouTube channels worldwide. That year, his audience consisted largely of six- to 14-year-olds, about sixty per cent of whom were girls.[34]

• Stampy's Lovely Book (Egmont, 2015), ISBN 978-1405281560
• Stampy Cat: Stick with Stampy! (Egmont, 2016), ISBN 978-1405284219

• Dezuanni, Michael (2020). Peer Pedagogies on Digital Platforms: Learning with Minecraft Let's Play Videos. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262539722.