Daniel James Gonzalez (born June 12, 1994) is an American commentaryYouTuber and musician who originally came to prominence for his short comedy sketches on Vine in 2014. He created his main YouTube channel that same year, subsequently moving over to YouTube full-time when Vine closed down in 2017. His three personal channels and three group channels have collectively earned around 9.62 million subscribers,[a] and 1.94 billion views,[b] as of December 2024.[update]
Personal life
Gonzalez and his wife, Laura Fuechsl, in April 2018
Daniel James Gonzalez[P 1] was born on June 12, 1994,[P 2] in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Wheaton, Illinois.[3] He lived in England for two years when he was around 8 or 9.[P 3] He has an older brother (born 1992), and a younger sister. His brother is a server at a restaurant in Austin, Texas.[P 4] Gonzalez attended Wheaton North High School.[P 5] As a child in the mid-2000s, he and his friends uploaded short comedy sketches to YouTube, but they broke off when he went to college.
In Gonzalez's sophomore year of college, a friend of Gonzalez showed him Vine,[4] an app where users could only upload six-second short videos ("Vines").[6] While initially uninterested, Gonzalez was convinced to start making Vines in late 2013 after his favorite comedian Bo Burnham posted on the app.[4]
His early videos attempted to imitate Burnham's and were based around small quips. In early 2014, he tried to distinguish his Vines by using special effects, which few Viners were doing at the time, including using green screens to insert himself into music videos. Gonzalez's Vines began to grow in popularity with this strategy. His most viral Vine was one where he edited shoes onto the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) scenes while a digital voice sang "What are those?" to the theme music.[4]
Gonzalez appeared in the Vine-produced web series Camp Unplug (2016), where he first met fellow Viner Drew Gooden.[7] As Vine was a newer platform compared to other social media, most Viners knew each other—what Gonzalez described as a "tight-knit" atmosphere. When owner Twitter, Inc. announced it was shutting down Vine in 2016, he had graduated from college and moved to Illinois to join a group of other successful Viners. He became apprehensive with this news.[4][8]
Gonzalez had 2.9 million followers on Vine by the time it closed in January 2017. With large audiences but no platform, he and many other former Viners moved to YouTube. He told The New York Times that he decided on YouTube because it was a well-known website and also expressed interest in making videos on Twitter and TikTok.[8][9]
YouTube (2017–present)
Gonzalez (left) and Drew Gooden (right) on their "We Are Two Different People" tour in 2019
From 2017 to 2018, Gonzalez wrote, edited, and starred in various shorts and "Corridor Crew" videos for Corridor Digital.
Drew Gooden also started a commentary channel on YouTube and the two began traveling to appear in each other's videos, becoming close friends.[7] A running joke between their fans is that they pretend to confuse the two YouTubers together because of their various similarities.[4] This inspired their We Are Two Different People Tour in 2019, with YouTuber Kurtis Conner as a guest star. The tour, with music, effects, and theatrical elements interspersed with sketches and comedy routines, was their first major live performance and ran from September to October.[10][11][12] The two also released a parody song called "We Are Not the Same Person" to promote the tour.[P 10]
^ ab
Subscribers, broken down by channel:
6.81 million (Danny Gonzalez)
2.32 million (2 Danny 2 Furious)
452 thousand (Danny GAMEzalez)
26.2 thousand (LazyNeighbors)
8.65 thousand (TheLazyNeighbors)
3.43 thousand (hylitezone)
^ ab
Views, broken down by channel:
1.7 billion (Danny Gonzalez)
206.57 million (2 Danny 2 Furious)
36.73 million (Danny GAMEzalez)
2.7 million (LazyNeighbors)
165.37 thousand (TheLazyNeighbors)
68 thousand (hylitezone)
^Gonzalez, Daniel (February 2, 2023). Danny Gonzalez Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED (Video). Wired. Event occurs at 9:53—9:57. Archived from the original on February 2, 2023. Retrieved February 2, 2023 – via YouTube. I was born in the suburbs of Chicago. I've lived there for most of my life. I, uh, grew up in Wheaton, Illinois.
^Gonzalez, Danny (October 21, 2020). "I Made a Viral Tiktok Song". YouTube. Event occurs at 16:51–17:10. Retrieved October 11, 2023. This is where I had to come up with an artist's name. [...] I named him Fox Szn. I also decided to make his real name Ned Flames, because I had to put that in like the credits of the song. And I just thought that Ned Flames sounded cool.
Primary sources
^Gonzalez, Daniel (January 31, 2022). someone edited my wikipedia page. Event occurs at 6:06. Archived from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved February 2, 2022 – via YouTube. 'Daniel James Gonzalez' - that is my actual middle name.
^Gonzalez, Danny (June 28, 2018). I Googled Myself And Hated What I Found (video). Event occurs at 3:45. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020 – via YouTube. I went on it one time and it said my birthday was, like, June 13, 1994, which is one day off of my actual birthday, June 12.
^Gonzalez, Daniel (June 29, 2022). i think i might have lied (Video). Danny Gonzalez. Event occurs at 2:39–2:43. Archived from the original on February 2, 2023. Retrieved June 29, 2022 – via YouTube. I did live in England for two years, but it was when I was, like, eight or nine.
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