Full SCREEN

At 20, YouTube has hosted billions of videos, launched stars—and made Hollywood nervous.

- Joy Press

DRIVE FIVE MILES north of the Hollywood sign and you'll find yourself in Burbank, where they actually make the dreams for the dream factory. Casablanca, Reservoir Dogs, and Euphoria were all shot here. Today, tucked inside an unmarked warehouse in a particularly drab patch of the city, Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal are filming their own contribution to entertainment history: a segment called “Will It Dip?” for their delightfully goofy and imaginative YouTube series Good Mythical Morning. After taste-testing a soupy dip made out of mashed Girl Scout cookies, the duo are presented with a bowl of black goo served under glass. McLaughlin removes the lid and thick smoke fills the set, which is designed to look like a ramshackle fishing lodge. When the cameras stop rolling, Neal tells the show’s culinary producer, “I do feel like you were trying to kill us a little bit.”

McLaughlin and Neal are friends from small-town North Carolina who met in first-grade detention. They experimented with making films as teens and, at 21, McLaughlin auditioned for The Real World. Unsuccessfully. In 2006 the guys were shooting comic skits and songs after work in a basement when they realized that YouTube, still very much in its infancy, could be a great outlet for their stuff. These days they operate out of this 17,000-square-foot maze, which comes complete with writers rooms, test kitchens, and a prop department full of bizarro pieces from episodes past and future. The Mythical company now makes multiple series and podcasts, as well as having a food website, merchandising, and an investment fund for the next generation of digital creators. Their YouTube channels have a combined audience of 30 million subscribers, and Good Mythical Morning alone has twice as many viewers aged 18 to 34 as Seth, Stephen, Jimmy, and Jimmy combined.