The Stokes Twins Answer The Web's Most Searched Questions

I'm Alex.

I'm Alan.

[Both] We're the Stokes Twins.

And this is the WIRED Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat music]

We read every comment.

We have all your usernames written down

'cause nobody hurts my little brother's feelings.

[upbeat music]

Can the Stokes Twins-

[Both] Speak Chinese?

[Alex speaking foreign language]

No, we can't.

No, we can't.

No, we can't.

This is just made up.

Yeah, he can speak Chinese.

I can't.

It's because he was born in China

and I was born in the US,

so I never got to speak Chinese.

We're totally joking.

No, we can both speak Chinese.

His Chinese is better than mine.

No, we speak Chinese all the time,

but we try not to.

For example, look at this.

[Alan and Alex speaking foreign language]

It's funny because, like,

when he's not paying attention,

anytime I speak to him in Chinese,

he always looks up

and we start paying attention to each other

when we speak Chinese

because it just kind of breaks us

out of that autopilot

because, like,

throughout the day when we're sluggish,

switching to another language

really, really helps.

Can the Stokes Twins draw?

Oh, my gosh.

We can do a lot of things,

but drawing is not one of them.

Can I prove that I'm bad at drawing?

I'll draw each other.

Okay, here we go.

I'm not even going to look

because I know what he's going to do.

I feel like I could draw better

when I was six years old.

Like, literally,

in kindergarten,

I have pictures of me in art class

that I've hung up

and I'm like,

I do not know how I did that.

Ready for the reveal?

[Alan] I knew it.

And you know what he's going to say?

That's him, that's me.

That's what he's going to say.

You can draw!

That's not bad.

Wait, is this good, guys?

I can draw?

I legitimately, genuinely

thought this was good.

That's how you know I'm a bad drawer

because I thought this was good.

Stokes Twins-

[Both] All members names.

We have quite a big cast now.

It's Alan, Alex,

and obviously our best friend Shawn.

Then there's Kat,

there's Tanner,

there's Zac,

there's Bok.

And the most important one,

my dog Atlas.

He always sneaks his dog into the videos.

And he gets mad.

I'll literally pick up my dog in, like,

an intro to something,

and it's like,

Wait, why did you just do that?

Are Stokes Twins-

[Both] On Netflix?

Yes.

We have all your favorite videos

on a Netflix catalog.

And we have a Netflix original coming out

early 2027, as well,

so we're super, super excited about that.

It's going to blow your guys' mind.

[Producer] Toss it.

And you know what?

I want to keep this.

I don't think we should toss-

I'm going to put this in my pocket.

Yeah, it should be framed.

[Alan] We'll gently put this down.

Do the Stokes Twins have any world records?

Yeah.

So we had the world's farthest basketball shot

and the world's highest basketball shot,

which were then later on

broken by some other people.

But for a little bit,

we did hold some records.

We have to run it back.

We have to.

We're going to have to run it back.

How do Stokes Twins come up with videos?

We're always thinking of videos.

Like it's more of like a brainstorming session

that we kind of have 24/7.

Any spare moment we have,

we're just talking videos and just,

Hey, what do you think about this?

Now what about this?

And we just keep adding multiple, like,

layers until it actually becomes

a fully fleshed out video.

Are most of the ideas mine or yours?

Most of the ideas are mine.

I feel like it's 50/50.

No, it's mine.

[Alan] No.

Recently, they've been my ideas.

Really?

No.

All the ideas are mine.

I'm more of the idea machine.

The world records,

I just came up with that,

so I'm one up on you.

Huh.

What video do Stokes Twins want to do?

I feel like we have a few cooking.

We definitely have a few cooking.

I wouldn't necessarily classify them as videos,

but more so like projects outside of YouTube.

We have always wanted to tell, like,

a longer story in a different format.

Okay.

Try breaking it in half.

All right, we're done answering these.

[Alan] What?

I thought it would snap clean off.

Okay, here we go.

Okay, nevermind.

This is like titanium.

What was the Stokes Twins first video?

I feel like this is a full 360 moment.

Our first video

was actually us answering questions.

And look at us now, 10 years later,

sitting in a chair answering questions.

Honestly, back then

we were just making videos for fun,

trying to make each video better,

listening to the fans.

And it's kind of insane

thinking back to our first video,

how the only thing

that hasn't changed is we're still together.

And that'll never change.

[Alan] When did the Stokes Twins

hit 100 million subscribers?

Wasn't it like a day before our birthday?

We wanted to time it on our birthday,

but it was November 22nd, 2024.

[Alex] Yeah,

it was the greatest day of our lives.

We are super, super grateful

for all of you out there.

So it was definitely, like,

an amazing milestone.

[Alan] How did the Stokes Twins

get so many subscribers?

You know, I'm wondering the same thing.

For us, since we were kids,

we just made content for fun, right?

We made it to make ourselves laugh,

make our friends laugh,

our family laugh.

Initially,

we were just making them privated videos

and we would be sending links

just to get like two or three reactions,

just to get them to laugh, right?

So we've kind of just kept that same energy

throughout our evolution of content, right?

We want to be having fun

because it really shows on camera.

[Alan] Why are the Stokes Twins

growing so fast?

We are so obsessive and passionate

about making videos.

Every video has to be better,

and eventually when you're enjoying

what you're doing,

you're good at it.

Like, there's going to be growth.

[Producer] What day do you think

you'll hit 200?

Well, I mean,

that's kind of up to you guys.

If everyone watching subscribes right now,

I think we can hit 200 mil-

When this video drops.

[Alex and Alan laughing]

[Alan] That was lame, dude.

Just toss it-

Oh, so you want me to break it again?

Okay.

[Alan] The Stokes Twins-

[Both] Hide and seek.

I feel like we're definitely, like,

the ultimate hide and seekers.

Like, we always come up with the best spots

whenever you watch one of these videos.

So I think we're the hide and seek champions

on YouTube.

[Producer] Is there a hide

you're most proud of?

Yes.

And that person is still hiding.

[everyone laughing]

It's our triplet.

Sometimes we sub each other out.

Wait, imagine that was true.

[Alex] Imagine that was true.

Wait, he's the triplet.

I'm the triplet.

The old Stokes Twin was 2019.

The one who's still in shape is hiding.

[Alan] The Stokes Twins busting 100 myths.

That was literally

one of our favorite videos we've ever filmed.

We were thinking like,

okay, how do we do our version

of like modern day,

like, you know, MythBusters?

And we're testing like the most bizarre things.

That moment it works feels like magic to me

and I'm like,

Oh, my God,

like there's no way this works.

The Stokes Twins-

[Both] Conjuring house.

If you watch any horror movies,

you know what the Conjuring house is.

So when we went there,

I went into it blind confidence,

nothing is real,

none of this stuff is real,

it's 100% just in your mind.

We were hearing and seeing things

that were just completely unexplainable, right?

Like, we were hearing knocking noises

throughout the house

that was able to communicate with us.

We would ask questions like,

Hey, is someone here?

And we would hear, like,

if we were outside,

we would hear a person walking on the grass.

If we were inside on the wood,

we would hear-

Wood creaking.

Wood creaking.

I woke up to a chair rocking.

Stokes Twins-

[Both] Banned products.

I bought myself a realistic muscle suit.

And I bought two different colors.

One that was a little bit more pale,

one that was a little bit more tan,

so it legitimately looked like my body.

And what I did there was,

I kind of just went through

and I pranked a lot of my friends that,

Hey, like,

you haven't seen me in two months?

New body.

Transformation reveal.

And it's funny

because they were saying like,

Oh, like, that's got to be illegal.

You're not allowed to do that.

So it's just like the framing of it was,

Oh, this is a banned product.

Even a lot of our viewers were,

I feel like,

tricked by it.

[Both] Stokes Twins secret rooms.

Our house is like an empty canvas.

It's literally just a content house.

And we didn't even realize.

When we first moved in,

we were like,

There's actually a lot of secret rooms here.

Pantries, under the stairs, movie rooms.

And we were like,

Okay, if we were to do a secret room video,

like, we got to just go all out

and just build the best ones.

And it just blew up.

And even to this day,

when we meet fans or parents,

they always say,

Hey, my kids will walk around, like,

knocking on walls,

trying to find hollow walls

to build secret rooms.

They buy hammers

and they're, like, hitting walls and stuff

trying to build their own rooms.

And I'm like,

I don't know.

[Both] Stokes Twins strictest school.

After watching 21 Jump Street,

we got heavily inspired

by a lot of, like, the comedy there.

And strictest school,

we're like,

Okay, what is the world strictest school,

almost like a level impossible

that, like, no one really wants to go to?

And that was-

A lot of the fan favorites, honestly.

[Both] Stokes Twins life hacks.

So this was like around the same time

we were doing like Busting 100 Myths.

So we felt like something natural

was testing life hacks

and it was like a natural crossover.

This is so ridiculous,

but we had a crane drop me down

in a car underwater

and I wanted to see, like,

if I could escape a car

that's filling up with water.

I think it was one of the craziest moments

I ever put myself through.

I was like,

You know what?

I can hold my breath for like three minutes.

And the second it happened,

I'm like,

Oh, God.

I was able to break out the car window.

And in that moment when people are like,

you know,

in a state of panic,

they're not really thinking.

So in that video,

I was just really trying to break down

the strategy of, like,

okay, first instinct is open a window,

and if you can't,

find something to break the windows with

and go for like the corners

because that's the weakest.

So I was just showing that before I went down,

and when I actually went down,

I was showing like,

Hey, look, I can't even open the door.

I can't even lower the window.

You know,

just showing real time

like how to actually like break the window

with, like, tools.

Legitimately, in the moment,

it was a lot of adrenaline

and a lot scarier.

I thought I could hold my breath for two minutes,

but I did it in like 20 seconds

because I just couldn't hold my breath

for much longer.

But it was one of the coolest,

but scariest moments of my life.

There we go.

But hopefully that we answered

some of those questions for you guys

and you guys can be searching up

other questions now.

Like, how did Alex get in shape?

You guys should make that the most searched.

Yeah, how did Alex Stokes

get in such great shape?

Make that the number one most searched thing.

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