Alpharad American YouTuber Born 1995 in Norman

Early life

Alpharad, whose legal name is Jacob Rabon IV, was born on 19 December 1995 in Norman, Oklahoma. He went to Norman North High School and became interested in filmmaking around fifth grade, when he began posting comedy videos for friends. In high school he took classes in video editing and cinematography. He later enrolled at a community college with the aim of becoming an editor, but left when his YouTube channel started to grow and he chose to make content full time.

Career

Alpharad opened his main YouTube channel on 13 January 2014. The channel is known mostly for video game content, with a particular focus on the Super Smash Bros. series, along with Pokémon, Splatoon, Sonic the Hedgehog, Among Us and other Nintendo games. He became widely associated with Nuzlocke runs, a self-imposed rule set that makes Pokémon games harder, and on 10 April 2023 YouTube Gaming publicly named him the "Nuzlocke King". He has also tried speedrunning, including a run of a Super Mario 64 first-person shooter fan game and speedruns of Super Mario Odyssey. His videos include challenges, streams and recounts of trips and experiences, such as visiting Universal Studios Japan, and an awards show he hosted for his friends. His channel passed three million subscribers by April 2023 and stood at about 3.7 million in January 2025. In 2020 he signed with the Creative Artists Agency.

In 2021 he joined fellow YouTuber Jaiden Animations for a Red Nose Day charity stream in which Pokémon were removed from their teams as donation targets were reached. In 2022 he played Pokémon Go at the Warner Grand theater in Los Angeles during a Halloween event. Jaiden Animations is one of his most frequent collaborators, and he and Coney host a podcast called How Did We Get Here?

Alpharad is active in esports. In January 2020 he took part in a Pokémon VGC tournament organised by Wolfe Glick, alongside other content creators and competitive Smash players. Two months later, during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, he co-hosted five online Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournaments with the YouTuber MoistCr1tikal, known as the Quarantine Series. The events were split into Minors and Majors with prize pools of 5,000 and 10,000 US dollars, and the majors featured top players including MkLeo, Samsora, Nairo and Marss. In 2018 he bought a monthly stake in the esports organisation Panda Global, becoming its content director and a minority shareholder. In 2021 he ran a "Portal Smash" tournament in which players fought on recreated stages with added hazards. In October of that year he and Panda Global's Coney hosted a charity tournament for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl on behalf of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, with creators such as MoistCr1tikal, Ludwig Ahgren, Jaiden Animations and Trihex taking part; it raised more than 100,000 US dollars.

He also works in music. He formed a band called Ace of Hearts, whose first single, "Fool for You", came out on 1 April 2020. The group followed it with the EP Monophobia in June 2020 and a second EP, Scorpion Queen, in December 2020. Further singles included "Silver Lining", "Lights Off" and "Deadbeat Boulevard", and the band's first full-length album, Frozen in Time, arrived on 10 December 2021.

Also in 2021 he staged Copypasta Theatre at the Black Box Theatre in Los Angeles, a live event where performers read out copypasta and tweets from the streamer Ninja. Clips from the show spread widely online.

Recognition

The title "Nuzlocke King" from YouTube Gaming in April 2023 is the most formal acknowledgement on record, alongside the Creative Artists Agency signing in 2020. His charity events, including the Red Nose Day stream and the Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl tournament, are among the activities he is best known for outside regular uploads.