Stokes Twins

Alan and Alex Stokes were born in Shenyang, Liaoning, China, and spent their childhood between Liaoning and Knoxville, Tennessee. Their maternal grandfather, who helped raise them during summers in China, influenced their work ethic and philanthropic outlook.

The twins enrolled in pre-medical studies at a California community college but left in 2016 to pursue social media full-time. For about eighteen months, the pair lived in their car, used public gyms to shower, and uploaded short sketches to Instagram before shifting their focus to YouTube.

The Stokes Twins created their joint YouTube channel on March 11, 2017, after initially making videos separately. The pair reached four million subscribers within two years by combining prank skits with dance trends associated with Musical.ly. Their original YouTube username was alanalan9635, and the first public video was a question-and-answer upload published in May 2017.

The twins also became associated with the collaborative YouTube channel Sunset Park, where they met Andrew Davila. In 2020, Brent Rivera invited the pair to join Amp World, a creator group that included Andrew Davila, Alexa Rivera, Ben Azelart, Dom Brack, Jeremy Hutchins, Lexi Hensler, and Pierson Wodzynski. The Stokes Twins later expanded their output through additional YouTube channels and TikTok videos featuring questions, pranks, challenges, and myth-testing.

The Stokes Twins are known for mixing comedy, pranks, challenges, vlogs, dance trends, and myth-busting videos. Producer and photographer Jordan Matter characterized the pair's approach as combining multiple popular formats, including hidden-room builds and large-scale hide-and-seek concepts.

Their episodes are tightly storyboarded, with scripts running between 15 and 20 pages. The productions use a small in-house crew, freelance set builders, and visual-effects editors. Multi-language dubbing and a stronger emphasis on YouTube Shorts contributed to a major increase in the channel's daily views during 2024.

The main Stokes Twins channel reached one million subscribers in February 2019 and recorded one billion views in August 2021. Its subscriber growth accelerated during 2024, moving from about 27 million subscribers in early March to more than 50 million by May. The channel passed 100 million subscribers in November 2024.

The twins were included on Forbes' Top Creators lists in 2024, 2025, and 2026. They were also included in the 2025 TIME100 Creators list, which recognizes influential figures on the internet.

The Stokes Twins have incorporated charitable acts into several videos and have also made private donations. Their community work has included appearances at Southern California food-bank drives and participation in the #TeamSeas campaign in 2022.

In 2025, the pair served as lead creators supporting the #TeamWater initiative. The campaign helped provide clean water to two million people.

In October 2019, the twins filmed a fake bank-robbery prank in Irvine, California. Alan and Alex wore black clothing and ski masks, carried duffel bags filled with cash, and acted as though they had robbed a bank. The incident caused bystanders to call emergency services, and the pair repeated similar behavior hours later at the University of California, Irvine.

In August 2020, the twins were charged with false imprisonment and reporting a false emergency. Both pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and received one year of probation and 160 hours of community service in April 2021. YouTube temporarily suspended monetization of the channel, which was restored later that year.