What happened to JacksGap?

Hi everyone. Jack Harries — one half of the YouTube channel JacksGap — has been popping up on my social media feeds more in recent months than he has in the past decade. It seems like I wasn’t the only one because a lot of commenters on TikTok said the same. 

Jack, alongside his twin brother Finn, belonged to a class of British YouTubers that quickly grew in popularity in the early 2010s. But like many creators from this era, they both stopped doing YouTube, at least for a little while. 

Jack has been teeing up a new chapter in his life and content creation journey. Since it’s been a long time since people have tuned in, Jack released a video recounting his career up to this point, which got me thinking about how my favorite YouTubers from my teen years have changed. More on that below.

By the way, this year’s Coachella content (on the ground and online) has reaffirmed my thesis about the digital experience of the festival being as important as the IRL one. I’m seeing lots of people talk about how they’d rather watch the livestream than deal with the logistics of the desert. If you want to read more of my Coachella thoughts, upgrade your subscription to read last week’s Thursday letter.

Jack and Finn Harries, the twin brothers behind the YouTube channel JacksGap, were beloved figures in the early 2010s British vlogging scene — then they kind of just stopped. 

OK, perhaps that’s a little reductive. Most longtime followers are vaguely aware that the Harries twins have shifted their focus toward climate activism and environmentally-focused films in recent years. Jack made headlines for getting arrested during a protest against the gas and oil industry in 2019. But I think a lot of people still had questions about where they went.

So when Jack teased a “What Happened to JacksGap?” video, it piqued the interest of many fans. It’s been a long time since Jack had acknowledged his early days on YouTube, and he promised to tell the story of his journey from then to now. 

It’s always a treat when an early YouTuber comes back to the platform after a long time away. It feels like seeing an old friend that you haven’t seen in years. (That is the power of longtime parasocial relationships, baby!)

The version of JacksGap that many people subscribed to featured two teenage boys filling the days of their gap year with silly antics and travels. That is not who Jack or Finn are anymore, and it hasn’t been that way for a long time. 

Before Jack posted his new video late last week, the JacksGap channel had been sporadically active over the past decade. Most of the recent videos were educational projects from the Harries’ environmental media company Earthrise rather than anything personal. 

In the new video, Jack spoke directly to the audience from a bedroom just like old times. He laid out what he has done since he created the JacksGap channel in mid-2011. 

Jack shared how he felt lost in the mid-2010s, which is when YouTube began evolving as a platform and Finn quit the channel. YouTubers in the mid-2010s were increasingly churning out flashy, outrageous content — and fast. 

“YouTube was continuing to grow and it felt like the audience were demanding more videos and shorter and funnier and they wanted them every day,” Jack said in his video. “And it felt impossible to keep up until one day something in me just broke.”

A lot of YouTubers burned out and struggled with their mental health toward the end of the last decade. The platform is a bit different now and audiences are more understanding of how demanding the job can be. This has allowed a lot of creators to slow down the pace, which is why I think a lot of OGs have been more comfortable coming back to their inactive channels in the past few years.

One of my favorite things to witness as an internet culture reporter, especially one who grew up watching YouTubers, is how a creator evolves. YouTube turns 20 this year, and its creators established the blueprint for social media career longevity. Social media is so fickle and it is miraculous that some YouTubers have kept their audience’s attention for over a decade (or even two). 

Many of the early YouTubers were quite young when they started, so they have distanced themselves from their old work as they’ve matured. Jack said that he’s embarrassed by a lot of the old JacksGap videos, and many of them have been unlisted.

The Harries twins were teens when they started and so were their fans. It’s natural that their interests and those of their viewers have changed as they came of age. But even as these paths diverge, it’s still interesting to watch a creator start and end different phases of their life.

We’ve watched Jack and Finn Harries chat to us in their childhood bedroom, travel the world, go to college, drop out, and collaborate with some of the biggest YouTubers of the 2010s. Then, we witnessed as they pulled back from YouTube and focused on climate change activism over the past six years. 

Now, we get to see both of their new journeys in sustainable living and farming. Finn recently announced he’s working on a new regenerative farm in Spain. Meanwhile, Jack said he is returning to YouTube and pivoting his channel to be about his new move to a sustainable home in the countryside. 

This video felt like the closure a lot of people didn’t know they needed. I never really felt like JacksGap ended, so having Jack literally say “RIP JacksGap” was weirdly cathartic. It seems like the new series he’s working on is mixing the personal with the environmental work he's been doing, which seems like the logical next step in the Jack Harries journey.

Every Monday letter gets a playlist. Since my mind is on British creators of the 2010s, I figured today’s playlist should be about the British musicians that broke through in America (some briefly) at this time.

In this week’s playlist:

• Break the Rules - Charli xcx

• Little Black Dress - One Direction

• Want U Back - Cher Lloyd

• Troublemaker - Olly Murs and Flo Rida

• Drunk - Ed Sheeran

• Black Magic - Little Mix

• Glad You Came - The Wanted

• Price Tag - Jessie J and B.O.B.

Other things I want to share with you.

• Gaga is at the top of her game and I’m grateful to be alive at the same time as her. Can anyone help me secure Mayhem Ball tickets without breaking the bank?

• Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I feel like people were showing love to Marina’s Coachella set in a way they haven’t in years. Is the Marinaissance nigh? I hope the new album is good.

• Megan Thee Stallion came to Coachella with a STACKED lineup of guests!

• I told you guys 2016 was back. 

• A lot of girlies are getting flamed for their Coachella fits though ):

• Timothée Chalamet is an Angel, IKTR!

• Katy Perry got launched into space today. All I could hear on the livestream were screams which did not help my confidence in the flight. Luckily, everyone made it back safe.

• On TikTok, Chinese manufacturers are claiming to be the producers of luxury houses and urging people to buy directly from the source to avoid rising prices of marked up designer amid tariffs. People are quite distrustful of institutions at the moment, so naturally they are eating it up. But let’s try to practice some discernment people! So many viewers are taking these claims at face value.

• Leslie Odom Jr. is returning to Hamilton on Broadway. I don’t have money for all the Broadway I want to see this year.