Stampy

Joseph Garrett was born in Havant in Hampshire, England, on 13 December 1990.^[6][8][7] His father is a graphic designer. 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]

In August 2006, Garrett created his first YouTube channel, the Stampylongnose channel.^[11] 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 eventually removed his older content from his channel. From 2016, he resumed uploading on this channel, primarily non-gaming videos such as vlogs, 'Behind The Scenes' videos, and later 'Book Diary', where Garrett would talk about his progress on writing his novels.

On 29 July 2011, he launched the Stampylonghead channel. He began making Minecraft Let's Play videos in 2012^[12][13] Garrett has described the Stampylonghead channel as a "complete accident," saying his original aim was to become a video game journalist.^[14] Garrett records, edits, and uploads his videos himself, while Maker Studios handles business affairs.^[14]

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][15] In 2014, he attended the San Diego Comic-Con for the first time.^[16]

In 2014, Garrett attributed some of his popularity to his upload schedule, which was daily. He said that this ensured his audience knew they could return regularly to find new content to watch.^[17] When asked if he would be interested in transitioning to television, Garrett has stated that he is happy on YouTube.^[18]

On 25 April 2015, Garrett launched a spin-off edutainment YouTube series, Wonder Quest, in collaboration with Maker Studios.^[19] 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.^[20] He was a featured panelist at Minecon in July 2015.^[21][22][23] He also attended Minecon in 2016.^[24]

In September of 2015, Garrett signed a two-book deal with Egmont Publishing.^[25] Stampy's Lovely Book, released to United Kingdom stores on 22 October 2015, is a children's activity book themed around Stampy Cat.^[26] Stampy's Lovely Book was followed by a sticker book titled Stampy Cat: Stick with Stampy! on 28 July 2016.^[27]

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.^[28]

In October 2018, Garrett announced he would be taking a break from his Minecraft content to spend more time working on writing books. He returned briefly in 2019, with the release of episode 658 of Stampy's Lovely World, "Mirror World".^[29] In the summer of 2020, he revealed he would soon resume uploading Stampy's Lovely World on a weekly basis. The series returned on 19 August 2020.^[30]

On 13 November 2021, Garrett released the first episode of a podcast entitled The Bonus Points with his longtime friend Oli Guy. The podcast centers around discussion and ranking of new video games.

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][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 are referred 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]

When Garrett started making content about Minecraft, which 'blew up', he noticed that his audience mostly consisted of children.^[36] Upon this realisation, he began to make his content more family-oriented.^[14] 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 their attention.^[7] This voice is high-pitched, and has a 'trademark laughter', which The Independent described as a "helium honk".^[6][38] Caroline Knorr of Common Sense Media describes Stampy's presentation as best for younger children, and that "Stampy feels like a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Mr. Rogers."^[39]

Lee Bear was a bear character who was very prominent in the earlier Stampy's Lovely World episodes as a helper, played by the Minecraft YouTuber Lee Carson. In 2015, it was alleged that Carson sent threatening messages and explicit images of himself to women online.^[10][40] Garrett removed Carson from the series in September of 2015, doing so in a manner that concealed the truth of Carson's actions from Garrett's young fanbase.^[41]

In 2018, Garrett became engaged to Kye Bates, a fellow Minecraft YouTuber known online as Sqaishey Quack. They were married in 2019. They have a cat and two dogs.^[28] In 2014, Garrett described himself as "a very big introvert" and "shy".^[17]

In February 2014, the Stampylonghead channel received 159.3 million views. At the time, he had 2.3 million subscribers and 845 million channel views overall.^[19] In May 2015, he was the 32nd most-viewed YouTube channel of all time, with 3.5 billion views and 5.8 million subscribers.^[20] 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.