When Andrew Burris was growing up, his older brothers were already building YouTube careers he could barely comprehend. He watched them work, absorbed how they showed up week after week, and understood early that something was happening that he wanted to be part of. This week, he showed up with them.

“It is very surreal for me,” he says. “I looked up to my brothers growing up my whole life in two ways. One, because they’re older brothers, but two, as creatives, it was crazy just to see how they work. And now to all be together as a unit is a pretty inspiring and just a full circle moment for sure.”

The moment arrived on Thursday, June 25, at VidCon Anaheim’s Opening Celebration, where Andrew, Aaron, and Alex took the Spark Stage together as featured creators for the first time. Alex brings 20 years on YouTube and nearly 4.75 billion views. Aaron has built a loyal community on personality-driven vlogging and is midway through a daily vlog project running through the end of the year. Andrew is in college, documenting campus life to over 550,000 TikTok followers, and will be appearing as a featured creator for the first time. Together, they are the Wassabi Brothers, a collaborative channel still in its earliest weeks.

“It just took us a couple of years to figure out that we should just make a channel together,” Aaron says.

The Evidence Was Always in the Comments

For years, every time any of the three brothers appeared in each other’s videos, those videos outperformed the rest. The audience signal was there. Nobody formalized it.

Part of what finally made the channel possible is a logistical shift happening this week: Alex and Aaron are leaving California after the event, bringing the entire family together for the first time in more than 10 years. “Now we’re all going to live in the same state again. Our entire family is going to be in the same state for the first time in over a decade,” Alex says.

The channel has posted only a handful of videos. A car ride series, in which the three banter in real time from inside a moving vehicle, is already doing well. Aaron watches it back on his own. “I haven’t had this much fun making YouTube videos in a long time. We’ve been doing these car ride series, and I’m laughing harder than I usually laugh, crying.”

Alex reads the early signal plainly. “We’re just in the car bantering with each other, and the star of the show is our brother relationship. So I think they just want to feel like they’re hanging out with us. Not like they’re a fan, but like they’re actually there with us.”

Experience, Instinct, and the One Who Knows What’s Trending

The Wassabi Brothers channel brings together three people at incomparable stages of their careers. Aaron maps the division of labor precisely. “Alex has experience. He’s been doing this for how long? Like, 20 years. Andrew definitely has the younger [perspective] … he knows what’s trending. And I feel like I bring a little more responsibility to it, with scheduling.”

Andrew is less interested in organizational roles than in what the collaboration has taught him. He describes analysis paralysis as a persistent obstacle in his own creative process, and names what watching his brothers has given him. “What I’ve learned from my brothers is that authenticity, that’s the way to go. That’s how you get into the hearts of people, and that’s how, yeah, just be real to yourself and just show your life.”

Alex frames the group’s creative chemistry as an accident of biography. “We have very similar humors. But they’re also very different because we were raised in the same place, but we experienced different things.” He was the middle child, rebellious. Aaron is a year older. Andrew arrived 12 years after Alex.

Why Some Creator Careers Last 20 Years

Alex has outlasted most of the YouTube generation he came up with. His explanation for that survival is blunt. “I think it’s just the people who really love doing it versus the people that do it for a job,” he says. “Because if you do it for a job, the average career length of a content creator, at least on YouTube, is, I believe, two years.”

The full scope of the work, he argues, is what filters out those who treat the platform as a means to an end. “Between the ideation and the creation and the filming and the editing and the emails and transferring and working non-stop and having to do the clips and having to do socials, which you have to do these days,” he says, the demands pile up in ways most people do not anticipate. “So you have to really love it to stick with it for decades for sure.”

Aaron’s version of the same lesson is more tactical. “Instead of complaining about things changing, we’re just adapting to it,” he says. What stays constant is the core. “The content core-wise is still the same, still family friendly, fun personality-based, but it’s just packaging it differently for the newer age.”

YouTube Is Correcting Itself, and the Brothers Were Watching

A consensus runs through all three brothers’ read of the current platform scene. YouTube is turning back toward long-form content after years of leaning into short-form reach, and all of them see it as an opportunity they have been building toward.

Alex says YouTube is going back to favoring long form, and he welcomes it. “I love making clips and TikToks and shorts, but I’ve always had a passion for the long form. Just showing my life, not having to cut it up.”

Aaron frames the shift through the rise of episodic formats. “I’m starting to notice episodic kind of vibes are happening where people are like, hey, you should do like a series episode. It keeps people’s attention throughout that whole series.”

Andrew describes it as an aesthetic correction that was long overdue. “The trend of the editing of the videos has been very fast, in your face, overstimulating,” he says. “It’s like correcting itself. So now the videos are becoming slower paced, less loud, more authentic again.” 

The Wassabi Brothers’ car ride format sits directly inside that correction.

The Open Book Has Pages It Keeps Closed

Alex has been daily vlogging for years and posted his first YouTube paycheck in December 2025 to 170,000 likes. “I’ve just always been an open book,” he says. “I see it as like, you guys have lived my life with me. I’ve vlogged daily, you know exactly what’s going on.”

Each brother draws a line at slightly different coordinates. Alex’s principle is about timing rather than topic. “If my fiancé and I … something, like, awesome happened, or even if something bad happened … we process it ourselves before we share with the world if we decide to.”

Aaron kept his relationship with his wife private for four years. “I definitely think there are some things that you don’t necessarily need to tell the public right away.” Andrew reduces the tension to its core: “In our unique business, you’ve got to have a work-life balance. But it’s funny because our work is about our lives. But we don’t show all of our lives on it. We got to have some privacy.”

After Anaheim, the First Chapter Begins

Andrew is carrying more anxiety about VidCon than either of his brothers. He has built his entire platform identity around introversion, and performing as a featured creator in front of thousands at the Spark Stage is, by his own description, the kind of thing that still frightens him. His response to that fear is also the message he wants the crowd to take home.

“I’ve been excited but also pretty anxious about going to VidCon this whole time, especially as a featured creator. I have to be on stage, and I just hope that I’m doing it even when I’m afraid, inspires other people to just face their fears too.”

Alex opens with a joke before landing the real point. “We don’t need the competition, so maybe just, like, give up on your dreams. Let the professionals handle it,” he says. “Like what Andrew said, if we can do it, then anybody can do it. Because I have severe ADHD, I don’t even know how I made it this far.”

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