5-Minute Crafts

5-Minute Crafts is a DIY-style YouTube channel owned by TheSoul Publishing. , it is the 9th most-subscribed channel on the platform. The channel has drawn criticism for unusual and potentially dangerous life hacks and its reliance on clickbait.
Video format.
5-Minute Crafts' YouTube videos are compilations of videos previously posted on Instagram or Facebook. The channel's content consists largely of videos relating to crafts and life hacks, styled in how-to formats, and occasionally, science experiments. The channel's videos employ a style where the camera is focused on a table with objects while only a person's hands appear in the frame, making content with aid of these objects, usually food and DIY ingredients and tools.
Tubefilter described the channel as a "kid-friendly purveyor of DIY videos."
History.
TheSoul Publishing was founded by Russia-based entrepreneurs Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, a team with backgrounds in social media content creation, who launched AdMe. In March 2017, the company founded the YouTube channel, Bright Side. On November 15, 2016, 5-Minute Crafts was registered on YouTube by TheSoul Publishing. The channel's first video, "5 essential DIY hacks that you need to know" was uploaded the following day.
In 2017, the channel's subscriber and video view counts started to grow rapidly. In an article published by Mic in June 2017, 5-Minute Crafts was noted to have accumulated over 4 million subscribers. In 2017 and onward, various sub-channels were also created by TheSoul Publishing.
In April 2018, "Tubefilter" covered a trend regarding springtime cleaning videos on YouTube, noting 5-Minute Crafts' participation. By November, "Vox" wrote that 5-Minute Crafts was a "wildly successful" channel, citing its then over 10 billion video views and its ranking as the fifth most-subscribed channel on YouTube, having nearly 40 million subscribers at the time. During one week in December 2018, the channel received over 238 million video views.
In May 2020, 5-Minute Crafts created their first English-language channel on Pinterest.
In July 2020, 5-Minute Crafts collaborated with Mattel for a custom brand campaign that included multiple DIY videos focused on family-friendly crafts and at-home activities.
As of May 8, 2021, the channel has 72.3 million subscribers, ranking it as the ninth most-subscribed channel not operated by YouTube.
Criticism.
"Vox" characterized 5-Minute Crafts as "bizarre," describing its content as "do-it-yourself-how-to's that no person could or should ever replicate," and criticizing the channel's heavy use of clickbait thumbnails. "Mashable" described the channel's videos as "nonsensical" and possibly a form of trolling, singling out a video which claimed to demonstrate how soaking an egg in vinegar and then maple syrup will make it "bigger than before".
BBC's "Click" criticized 5-Minute Crafts for its "fake kitchen hacks": when following the instructions of a video in which a fresh corncob produced popcorn when microwaved, the presenter found the cob was only warmed up. Ann Reardon of How to Cook That described clickbait recipe channels including 5-Minute Crafts as the "fake news of the baking world". In particular, she criticized a 5-Minute Crafts video in which a strawberry was soaked in bleach to produce a "white strawberry", saying it would be dangerous if a child were to replicate it and eat the result.