M3RKMUS1C

Erik Phillips (born June 15, 1995), better known online as M3RKMUS1C, or Merk for short, is an American YouTube gamer, streamer, and comedic content creator. He is best known for his Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Minecraft videos, as well as some comedic vlogs and skits. He has over 4 million subscribers and has been active since 2009, accumulating over 2 billion views total.
==History==
Before gaining a large following, Erik primarily uploaded music content. His early content mainly consisted of guitar solo and guitar tutorial videos. One of M3RKMUS1C's most popular original video series is "Quad Feed with Every Gun", which features him accomplishing quad feed kills with every gun in various games, mainly Call of Duty ones. He has also uploaded various CS:GO case openings, in which he has shown remarkable luck in obtaining extremely rare knife skins, such as the Karambit "Doppler" and the M9 Bayonet "Doppler".
Apart from his gaming content, M3RKMUS1C is also recognized for his distinctive split personalities, including Melvin, FaZe Booce, and Brayden. He employs these personas for comedic effect, frequently switching between them in his videos. Melvin represents a stereotypical nerd, FaZe Booce is a stoner and a member of COD clan FaZe. The last one is Brayden, a squeaker who only plays family friendly games and he doesn't use any rough language, and refers to guns as Neepow Glunguses; he requires laser weapons and exo suits.
Fans regard the period from 2013 to late 2017 as the "golden age" of M3RKMUS1C's channel, during which he consistently garnered over 1 million views on each video, frequently collaborated with friends, and experimented with new content and series. However, the decline of his channel is attributed to the upload of the video "Meet my Girlfriend, Kayrina..." on January 30th, 2018, in which he introduced his long-distance relationship girlfriend and expressed his readiness to commit to her. Some viewers were critical of this video, advising Merk to wait before marrying and settling down. Nevertheless, he began featuring her more prominently in his videos, with her being a significant influence on the channel and contributing ideas for new content. Many fans were displeased with the shift in focus away from his usual content and his decreased emphasis on playing with friends. As a result, his channel saw a sharp drop in subscribers and views, with Merk now failing to break 100k views per video, in contrast to his previous 1 million views per video. Consequently, approximately 98% of his subscribers no longer watch his videos. Despite this setback, he continues to create gaming content to this day.
==Trivia==
*M3RK has several other personalities.
**One of them is Bespeckled Cephalopod, who mostly appeared in Infinite Warfare videos, and is based off of the Mr Smuggypuss decoration.
**Another is Dr. Enthusiastic, who appears mostly when Erik opens supply drops. Dr. Enthusiastic is overly hyper and hyped, even if he gets three common items.
**Another is the Halloween Hacker, who has a low pitch voice and wears a Nintendo Power Glove. He only appeared in one video.
*He often plays games with his friends and siblings: MmHD 1080p (Matt), M3RKRAMPAGE (Mike), M3RKMOJINX (Andrew) Kutline (Jesse), Oh Omah (Omar), Foecused (Evan), dankasorususX (Nicole), She Knives (Tina), and his wife, SodaPopCandy (Kayrina).
*He has a Second gaming channel named "Nerd Plays" & a semi-active music channel called "Musick".
==References==
Category:Users who joined in 2009
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Gaming YouTubers
Category:One million subscribers
Category:Two million subscribers
Category:Three million subscribers
Category:Four million subscribers
Category:One billion views