What does Nikolai Sobolev look like? Lies and staging

Showman "YouTube life" on the channel of the same name. Pranker, car reviewer, writer (!), new-found face-of-TV-channels and the good old caring-face-of-YouTube. Here, however, we are talking only about the “SOBOLEV” channel, which means only about the show “YouTube Life” and the rest of Nikolai’s activities (including the very successful one as one of the founders of the Rakamakafo project) will not be touched here. Just like the personality itself, we will touch upon it only insofar and to the extent that it will be directly related to the channel, to creativity, to “content”.

Cons of the show

  • Elements of a personal blog.

And platforms for expressing opinions, as mentioned earlier. It turns out that there can be two options here:

1) You are an expert analyst in issues related to video blogging, in Internet communications or, for example, in politics. And it is not at all necessary to be an expert in the profession (although it is desirable), it is enough to simply strive to delve deeply into the issue. It’s definitely not worth following the lead of the first thought that arises, the first emotional reaction (which is what our hero, Nikolai Sobolev, is guilty of) to anything. The first reaction is like “Ahhh! Why is this being done, good people! How scary it is to live, let’s publicize the resonance of this case!” - certainly does not carry any constructiveness, it prevents you from looking at the situation fully, deeply, from all points of view. This especially applies to political and near-political issues, where such an approach only interferes with the general understanding of the situation. “Especially” does not mean “only” - in other matters it also interferes. Sometimes the leader ends up like this "nonsense relay", which is depressing.

2) You appear before the viewer as a charismatic, bright personality with your own special opinion, with your own special position, and in this case response form, herself reaction, may be even more important than the events, news, and so on in question. This is already a personal video blog format and many famous YouTube personalities do this. “Life YouTube” Nikolay Sobolev specifically is about something else. Neither a special position or a special opinion nor any special form of response and individuality is presented here.

3) [If neither the first nor the second] You are the presenter-repeater. This means everything that we wrote about above. Less personal reasoning, personal comments and personal attitudes. Somehow it turns out that way.

  • One show - one host.

And no one else. Maybe we are, of course, being picky, but for news releases it would also be nice to have reporters, experts or anyone else who would make the news original. Otherwise, the news release will simply be a repetition and utterance of things that are already obvious and known to everyone. Collecting and voicing facts on some issue of interest to the people is, in general, good, but... isn’t it too little?

Yes, Nikolai sometimes takes on some role other than the presenter, sometimes he is both an expert and a reporter, or, so to speak, a “supplier of insider information” (about TV shows, about familiar bloggers, etc.). The last role, by the way, turns out very well and they give us really interesting information, but even all of them do not make a difference - they are either given insufficient time, or they “act out” insufficiently well. Therefore, it’s probably good that Nikolay sometimes borrows some formats from other shows and channels: “top of the most popular trends on YouTube” or “five most hated bloggers on YouTube” or “bloggers before they became famous” - so it turns out at least some - this is the primary creative processing of information, at least some minor novelty.

  • Image.

[We try here not to discuss the personal qualities of authors, presenters, show creators, bloggers, even if the content presented here is deeply personal. Therefore, we are talking about the image.]

Narcissism and narcissism(a little more bombast and pathos). Regarding narcissism, probably all bloggers have a tendency towards this, because... filming yourself and posting what you get on the Internet – there’s something narcissistic in that very thing. But other bloggers manage to at least somehow retouch this, at least with the same self-criticism, self-irony, or simply by showing some other qualities in the foreground.

But in the case of Nikolai Sobolev, it is narcissism and narcissism that are first striking - this is, in fact, the basic component skeleton of the image. And the image resting on such a skeleton is, as a rule, unpleasant and repulsive. Absolute rejection of criticism and non-recognition of one’s own possible mistakes and shortcomings; the lack of at least some kind of balanced and objective judgment when it comes to Nikolai himself and, for example, we are talking about his personal opponents (those with whom he has a conflict at the moment) - here too.

This image, oddly enough, did not arise from Nikolai’s activities as a presenter. And the basic qualities of this image could well be discarded without harming the content of the show. They grow from another completely unnecessary detail from the sphere of a personal blog - participation in conflicts. You can even say Nikolai "messed myself up" such participation, and it doesn’t even matter who actually won and with whose opinion the audience ended up more in agreement. Dmitry Larin, Afonya, Lykei... - no matter how many dislikes they receive, the loser in the end is Nikolay Sobolev (possibly " And Sobolev Nikolay). However, “losers” means that what loses is the lack of viewability of the video or the “subscription” of the channel – the overall loss is inevitably lost. watchability of videos And image perception, which will ultimately hit popularity in turn.

Well, a small nuance that relates to the same point. This is, to paraphrase a well-known acronym: "a sense of the importance of one's own activities", and such a feeling is quite aggravated. If the presenter suddenly did not mention the importance of the topic that he is talking about right now and the importance of the very public resonance around this issue, then this presenter is definitely Not Nikolay Sobolev. Well, this is already the case, by the way.

Summary

Watch the show if you are partial to the entire YouTube media scene: all these new trends, projects, faces, video blogger festivals, etc. Wylsacom, Sasha Spielberg, Dmitry Larin, Lykei, Ivangay - if all these faces are close and interesting to you at the same time for some reason, then this show is just what you need and its shortcomings are unlikely to confuse you. Maybe.

What to see

News from YouTube life. Just look at them, it’s simple. The more the topic concerns YouTube and video blogging (or specifically pranks and prank-making in general) and only them, the more Nikolai talks and looks like a professional expert in his field. “More” does not mean “just like”, but it is already something, which means it is quite watchable if there is a general interest in the topic, of course.

Participant's name: Nikolay Yurievich Sobolev

Age (birthday): 18.06.1993

City: St. Petersburg

Education: St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, Faculty of Economics and Management

Job: blogger

Family: not married

Height and weight: 1.83 m

Directionality of channels: Rakamakafo - social experiments, SOBOLEV - discussion of current Internet news, Ready Steady Go - about cars

Channel created: 03/08/2014/10/16/2015/05/17/2016

Number of subscribers: more than 3 million on the Rakamakafo channel, and more than 3.5 million on the personal channel, more than 375 thousand on the Ready Steady Go channel

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Nikolai Sobolev was born in St. Petersburg and always grew up as a very active boy. At school, the young man played in an amateur theater. The young man was always distinguished from his peers by his active life position and love of public speaking.

Sobolev also has singing, cabaret performances and bodybuilding to his credit! At one stage of his life, the young man even weighed 120 kilograms. After graduating from school, Nikolai entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, who graduated with a master's degree.

The craving for video blogging has haunted Sobolev for a long time, which is why he registered his first channel already in 2010. True, he was not popular and therefore in 2014 the young man easily decided to join his friend Guram and create a whole prank show.

By this they meant the creation of a channel on which various pranks would be posted that show the true face of ordinary people. The project was called "Rakamakafo".

The creators of the channel admit that through their actions they urge ordinary people not to be cruel and indifferent. Through the videos, the guys show the problems that exist in modern Russian society.

An interesting fact: the very first video, in which pranksters approach passers-by with indecent proposals, took 15 days to film! And this happened because Nikolai and Guram were wildly shy.

During the first year of the existence of the “Rakamakafo” project, it collected a million subscribers, which allowed its creators to become laureates of the “TOP 50” of the most famous people of St. Petersburg in 2015.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the blogger’s charitable activities. Despite the fact that the main mission of his project is the idea of ​​stirring up society, Nikolai is ready not only to do this in words, but also in deeds.

In May 2016, the guys organized a charity fundraiser for orphanages. Over the course of several months, thanks to Nikolai and Guram’s video, about 2 million rubles were collected. An interesting fact: the pranksters personally thanked the people who transferred more than 1,000 rubles and recorded separate signals.

Nikolai’s active position regularly brings him to various festivals, including Vidfest. And at the St. Petersburg VK Fest festival in 2016, the young man even gave a master class on successfully promoting a personal brand in modern social networks.

Nikolay is also the host of the channel LIFE YOUTUBE, constantly covers the Internet community with the latest news from the world of Youtube. At the same time, Nikolai himself is a participant in several conflicts on YouTube, the most famous with, thanks to Dima Kolya’s video, he received the nickname #kolyaheter.

In 2016, together with Alexander Murataev and Ilya Strekalovsky, he created a channel Ready Steady Go, where various shows about cars and everything connected with them are released.

In August 2016, Nikolai Sobolev’s book “YouTube: The Path to Success” was published., which describes the basics of video blogging, answers to the most popular questions from novice bloggers and the history of the creation of projects by Nikolai and his friends.

Nikolai dated Polina Chistyakova for a long time; their photos together can often be seen on his Instagram. In 2019, it became known that the guys decided to break up.

Nikolai Sobolev took part in the Channel 1 program “Let Them Talk,” where there was a discussion of rape. In turn, the blogger defended Sergei Semenov (the guy accused of rape) and spoke out against Diana Shurygina.

Photo by Nikolay

Kolya constantly pleases fans with new photos on Instagram; the guy demonstrates his personal life and footage from the filming of various projects.














Nikolay Sobolev is a famous Russian video blogger, who is known as the author of the SOBOLEV channel (Life YouTube). And as the founder of a project called Rakamakafo Pranks.

Nikolay is a native of St. Petersburg. He has a higher education, which he received there, at the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, Faculty of Economics and Management.

He also wrote several books that are very useful and interesting for many, especially for beginners who want to conquer and climb to Olympus YouTube.

His books are called: “Video Blogging Basics”, “Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions”, “Stories of the Creation of Rakamakafo Projects”.

He became famous in the Russian-language YouTube space as a pranker. Thanks to his various social experiments.

Therefore, when he had a question about what topic to run his channel on, he decided to analyze all the niches on YouTube and realized that without options, it would be pranks, practical jokes and various social experiments. And I was right. He created the Rakamakafo Pranks project and this brought him amazing fame and money. Yes, yes, exactly money, since Nikolai earns very decent money.

Nikolay Sobolev - full biography, age and height.

Nikolay Sobolev on VKontakte, Instagram and YouTube.

  • VKontakte - https://vk.com/sobolevbro
  • YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNb2BkmQu3IfQVcaPExHkvQ

Be sure to check out Nikolay's pages to stay up to date with what exactly he's up to.

The most popular video of Nikolai Sobolev – Blue Whale

This is the most popular video on Nikolay’s channel, which has received more than 6,300,000 million views. Blue Whale is a dangerous game that can drive participants to suicide.

Also, Nikolay is a regular guest and participant in the Vidfest festivals for video bloggers, which very often take place in Russia. He also conducts master classes on promoting his brand on social networks and feels very good thanks to his work and his creativity.

After visiting the talk show “Let Them Talk,” the St. Petersburg resident gained 2.5 million subscribers in just a couple of months, becoming the fastest growing blogger in the world. His successes arouse the envy of his colleagues, but Nikolai himself, it seems, is never averse to adding fuel to the fire of universal hatred. I found out why Nikolai Sobolev irritates critics and viewers and how he makes millions from universal condemnation.

Kolyan was on his way to success

Success story of Nikolai Sobolev (pronounce needed with a unique author's intonation) did not start at all with the record-breaking increase in subscribers of the channel named after myself and not from the top-rated releases of “Let Them Talk” with Diana Shurygina, but from a humorous project with social overtones Rakamakafo.

Nikolai considers himself a very versatile person: before conquering YouTube, he was studying martial arts, rocked, sang on stage and typed on the keyboard at the speed of light.

Having become a blogger, Sobolev, by his own admission, decided to fight the indifference of Russians to others, although his co-author Guram Narmania advocated only funny pranks on passers-by. As a result, the duo alternated funny pranks with graphic “beatings” of girls and ostentatious heart attacks on the streets of St. Petersburg and Miami.

Many Rakamakafo videos really made you think about the prevailing morals in society, but the video, of course, attracted the attention of viewers "Domestic Violence", or rather the mystical appearance and disappearance of slippers on the feet of a courier who allegedly accidentally caught a girl being beaten. Sobolev and Narmania chose not to pay attention to the criticism and simply re-uploaded the video, cutting out the ill-fated fragment with slippers.

At the end of 2016, despite the growing popularity and love of 2.7 million subscribers, bloggers closed the show to pursue their own projects. Driven by the most noble intentions, Nikolai Sobolev plunged headlong into criticizing his colleagues and discussing the most hype conflicts between bloggers, and Guram became interested in producing porn actresses on the YouTube channel Popcorn Studio.

Savoring scandals

Today is Sobolev’s signature greeting (more correctly, Nikolai Sobolev) plays to 2.5 million subscribers every week. In each video, a handsome young man with a perfectly delivered speech meticulously examines the latest scandal in the world of video bloggers, going through several YouTube stars at once.

“Tell me, please, which of them is trying to convey at least something to people? Raise education topics, for example. Why shoot a blog from a museum or talk about Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin if you can just throw a condom filled with water over your head?” - is indignant Sobolev, hinting at the “creativity” of the popular blogger YanGo (2.9 million subscribers).

Any words and actions of colleagues in the shop that, for some reason, caused his righteous anger, risk coming under fire from criticism. It’s even better if the Internet community is keenly interested in everything that happens. Sobolev is ready to discuss nude photographs and bullying of Internet star Maryana Ro (4.8 million subscribers), the chaos of participants in the social project “Lev Against” (799 thousand subscribers), the tomfoolery of idols of 12-year-old schoolchildren from the HalBer channel (1.3 million subscribers) and the behavior of the most popular blogger on the Runet, Ivangay (11.2 million subscribers).

And he is not at all shy about his reputation as a “yellow press” in the world of bloggers. Moreover, according to rumors, Sobolev is actively developing a public "Life YouTube"(569 thousand subscribers), where the hottest news, rumors and, of course, viral videos from top Runet bloggers are published daily.

Fame through the show

At the end of February, following his clear plan to “cut videos based on news feeds,” the author of the book “YouTube: The Path to Success. How to get truckloads of likes and tons of money” makes a strong-willed decision to make a highly social video about the suicidal game "Blue Whale". How to resist the temptation to click on this title: “The whole truth about the deadly game “Blue Whale”. Why do children wake up at 4:20? List of tasks, communication with the curator, complete information about new deadly games. Is it time to stop child suicide? Cutting news footage and retelling several articles in the media brought Sobolev a record eight million views.

Nikolai quickly realized that he had stumbled upon a real gold mine, and therefore happily agreed to take part in the filming of the talk show "Let them talk", where, in his own words, he “took away the microphone in time” from other guests and clashed with the main character of the issue, 17-year-old resident of Ulyanovsk Diana Shurygina.

The blogger allegedly tried to help a man convicted of raping a girl, but in the end he made five videos about Shurygina and his attitude to the talk show, collecting three to four million views for each of them. Moreover, participation in “Let Them Talk” made Sobolev the fastest growing blogger in the world: in just a month and a half, the number of his subscribers tripled.

Inspired by success, Nikolai rushed to conquer new horizons, having already managed to complain about illiterate schoolchildren in "Evening with Vladimir Solovyov" And having distributed advice on educating young people at a closed meeting with bloggers in .

Logical truth

Sobolev understands perfectly well that not all YouTube residents have warm feelings towards him, and he knows how to turn any scandal to his advantage. For example, when the famous prank director, aka “AFONYA TV” (1.6 million subscribers), took up arms against Rakamakafo, Nikolai immediately filmed a separate release with the exposure of the opponent's videos.

Most viewers were unlikely to be interested in who was actually right, but the loud statements gave Sobolev 1.4 million views and dealt a serious blow to Andrei’s work. “Afonya”, in its corporate style, managed to sentence the enemy to “lifetime dislikes,” but views of his videos have been steadily declining since then.

But Sobolev lost the duel of rap videos with the YouTube star to pieces. Trying to break into the Versus Battle project, Nikolai fell victim to one of the main musical hits summer. Borrowing a motif from “Patimemaker,” Larin collected 17 million views and made fun of his opponent, and the apt nickname “Kolya the Hater”, it seems, will never leave him.

Answer Soboleva became the record holder for the number of dislikes on his channel and naturally led to a wave of trolling on social networks. True, the blogger still attracted the attention of the audience, and therefore probably did not grieve too much because of the constant jokes. He immediately began to bombard the blogger with awkward questions, tried several times to catch him in contradictions and along the way asked him that he earned either two or three million rubles a month from his videos. Moreover, Sobolev, without any hesitation, described the purpose of creating the videos in literally two sentences.

“I need to live on something. Every move, every step was calculated from the very beginning, I realized that this was the right format. Issues can be published frequently and can easily include advertising. This is my business project, and it is successful,” he admitted and instantly removed all questions from ill-wishers.

He does not hide the fact that he is saving money for a three-room apartment in Moscow and wants to switch from Mazda to a more sophisticated car. Therefore, it is stupid to criticize him for promising officials to bring culture to the masses, and then immediately withdrawing video clip about the worst clips of bloggers. After all, while competitors like BadComedian watch tons of bad comedies, come up with funny jokes for weeks and collect 1.5-2 million views, Sobolev criticizes everyone against the backdrop of a wall every few days and collects 3-4 million.

And it is not he who is to blame for this, but the audience. Who will watch his video with equal pleasure and write “Kolya-hater” in the comments. Because it's fashionable.

Nikolai Yurievich Sobolev was born on June 18, 1993 in the northern capital of Russia - St. Petersburg. Kolya was born into a rich family. Dad was an entrepreneur for 15 years. Mom worked as a pianist at the Mariinsky Theater for a long time.

Nikolai Sobolev childhood

From about 5 to 14 years old, Nikolai Sobolev was engaged in karate, but he got tired of karate and the guy took up taekwondo, but at the age of 14 he was injured and could not continue to engage in martial arts.

At the age of 12 (at my grandmother’s dacha) I began writing a book in the fantasy genre.

By the age of 16, he had grown his hair long and became interested in computer games (Ragnarök Online). He invested about 80k rubles into this game. But then Nikolai’s account in the game was blocked and he stopped playing online games.

During his school years he played in the theater.

Nikolai Sobolev after school

At the age of 18, Nikolai Sobolev cut his long hair.

Entered the Faculty of Economics and Management of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.

In my first year I became interested in speed typing and this hobby lasted for about three years. He participated in all kinds of speed typing competitions and over the course of his time he typed about 15k texts. His record was 895 signs/min.

In his second year, Nikolai became interested in bodybuilding. After 2 years of training, Nikolai began to weigh about 100 kg.

In 2014 he performed in a cabaret.

After studying for 5 years, Nikolai received a bachelor's degree and entered the master's program, but was disappointed and did not quit studying.

Personal life

Nikolai Sobolev is one of the most popular video bloggers today, which is why Kolya has more than enough fans.

Kolya himself says that he is a serious guy and if he falls in love, it’s for a long time. The story of his personal life is proof of this. There weren’t many girls in Sobolev’s life and all the relationships were serious (judging by the time criterion).

Nikolai Sobolev's first relationship began at the age of 16. He began dating a girl named Anna (the relationship lasted 1.5 years).

Nikolai Sobolev’s second girlfriend was Yana Khanikerian (the relationship lasted 3.5 years).

Yana often appeared in Rakamkafo videos. Now Yana has a cool Instagram yhanikerian And .

How did Nikolai Sobolev meet his girlfriend? Nikolai met his current girlfriend, Polina Chistyakova, quite by accident while filming another video for the Rakamkafo channel. But at the time of his first meeting with Polina, Kolya was in a relationship with Yana.

Only 9 months after meeting (and breaking up with Yana) Nikolai Sobolev found the very girl who fell into his soul. Now Nikolai and Polina live together. Polina Chistyakova is active on her Instagram _poposha_. Nikolai is actively encouraging Polina to create her own channel on YouTube, but the girl can’t decide on the format.

The couple started dating on June 27, 2015. “Pusya” is how Nikolai Sobolev affectionately calls his Polina.

The same episode where Nikolai Sobolev first met his girlfriend Polina Chistyakova. (time 2.38)

Nikolay Sobolev and YouTube

Nikolai Sobolev has become incredibly popular recently. Not surprising. The guy managed to promote as many as 3 channels on YouTube. Gain millions of subscribers, touch on a lot of pressing topics, plunge into a sea of ​​hate and a sea of ​​fan love.

Rakamakafo

March 8, 2014 Nikolay Sobolev together with Guram Narmania create a channel on YouTube with the familiar name “Rakamakafo”.

The guys started making pranks and social videos. The first video is called “Group sex? /Group Sex Prank"

How did Sobolev meet Guram?

“Guram and I met at a mutual friend’s birthday party and became friends. Over time, we realized how similar we are in our outlook on life and sense of humor.”

The popularity of the guys from “rakamakafo” came quite quickly. A year later, Kolya and Guram became laureates of the “TOP 50” most famous people of St. Petersburg in 2015.

Pranksters were repeatedly accused of staged videos, but they denied everything.

At the end of 2015, guys began to put less and less video on the rakamakafo channel and started separate channels on YouTube (Sobolev and Guram Gruzin)

The development of the rakamakafo channel took a little more than 100k rubles

In 2016, pranksters organized a charity fundraiser for orphanages. And in a few months they collected about 2 million rubles.

Life YouTube. SOBOLEV

On October 16, 2015, Nikolay Sobolev, together with the VK community, creates a new channel “Life YouTube”, where he begins to review current news in the blogosphere. In 2016, he changed the name of the channel to “SOBOLEV”.

Thereby reorienting the channel towards discussion and criticism of hype topics.

SOBOLEV- this is a purely commercial project, strategically calculated from the very beginning, every move and every step, as Kolya himself says about the channel.

Nikolay Sobolev at Let Them Talk with Diana Shurygina
Initially, the channel gained popularity smoothly, but at the beginning of 2017, Nikalai managed to get the then-resonant news about “”. After several video reviews and a visit to the “Let Them Talk” program, the rating of the “SOBOLEV” channel and the number of subscribers skyrocketed. His channel has become the fastest growing in the world.