Last night I played Sims instead of being responsible and updating the blog. I’m pretty sure that it’s a little too late to claim that yesterday’s was just “late” now. It was bound to happen eventually.

This might be the end of this series (not to mention I have to make up for what I meant to post yesterday), so it’s gonna be a bit of a long one. I’ll do one last post tomorrow reflecting. Cool? Cool.

Today’s topic is vaguely “comedy”.

The first person I want to highlight is comedian Bo Burnham whose comedy is NSFW enough that I’m going to link his Wiki page instead of his channel which you can easily look up yourself (it’s not anything outside what is usual for comedians, but nonetheless not quite appropriate for this blog). Known for writing songs (and occasionally doing some stand-up) with a theme of political incorrectness and self-deprecating humor about being an awkward teenager, Bo is the youngest comedian to have his own “Comedy Central presents” special. His start in the comedy world is all thanks to YouTube. At 16, he wrote a song for his friends’ amusement about people assuming (since he attended an all-boys Catholic school and was heavily involved in theater) that he’s gay, which he stuck on YouTube to show his brother away at college. The video went viral, and since then Bo has proved himself to definitely be a comedic talent and far from a “one-hit wonder” of the comedy world like many viral video stars. I first heard of Bo when he was invited to perform at YouTube Live (an event YouTube held to showcase its more famous users in a non-prerecorded context), where he performed a song about YouTube and its culture.

He also has a Twitter.

NEXT we step into the weird sort of is-this-comedy? quirky category of YouTubers with BalloonShop, which makes videos that… are often so weird and nonsensical that they become totally hilarious and very quotable. I was introduced to them by their weird stop-motion-esque video, Poptart:

Trucking along, next is Barats and Bereta, a comedy duo who tend toward more sketch comedy. I’m not quite sure what happened, but I heard that they made a pilot for a show but it wasn’t picked up. Nonetheless, here’s the MANtage:

NEXT and second-to-last is comedian/filmmaker/actor/puppeteer/singer/musician/animator Neil Cicierega also known as Trapezoid or Lemon Demon, who is an internet renaissance man for sure. As a teenager, he more or less started a new genre of flash animation called “Animutation” and eventually branched out into other creative ventures on the internet, such as making quirky music under the name Lemon Demon and putting together short films and the popular series Potter Puppet Pals in tribute to the Harry Potter series. He has a YouTube channel where he posts a lot of nonsensical sort of videos sort of in the same comedic style category is BalloonShop above as well as an official website.

Here’s the music video for his song Word Disassociation:

Todaaaaay I have some more YouTube vloggers I adore. Let me see if I can be extra cool this time and include some pictures.

First up is Craig aka WheezyWaiter.

From wheezywaiter.com:

My name is Craig. I used to be a waiter in a downtown Chicago restaurant. It’s not as lucrative as it sounds. I started this video blog in late May 2007 out of frustration with a job that barely paid the rent and didn’t involve any of my creative skills. It was originally going to be a blog about the trials and tribulations of the dining experience, from the point of view of both waiters and customers. It became a showcase for my own brand of absurd humor which occasionally includes dining subject matter. After half a year of blogging and freelance video work, I eventually got a job as a video guy at a web development company.

Wheezy makes hilarious videos on a variety of unlikely subjects from President’s Day to Puppies which often involve punching himself and others, changing camera angles, and a choice of multiple endings but always ends with a wink.

Next up is Natalie Tran aka CommunityChannel.

From fansite Natalietran.me:

Natalie Tyler Tran is a video blogger on YouTube from Sydney, Australia, using the nickname communitychannel. She is a digital media student at the University of New South Wales, an amateur violinist and second-generation Vietnamese Australian.

Nat’s videos usually involve her making commentary on awkward social situations she finds herself in and generally involve self-deprecating humor, such as being the third wheel around couples and trying to self-diagnose using Google. Her videos almost always involve some skit to demonstrate whatever topic she’s describing, where she uses split-screen type editing to have every role in the skit (usually) played by herself just wearing different clothes. Her videos always start with a Hi! and end with her responding to comments from the last week’s video.

Last is Charlie McDonnell aka Charlieissocoollike.

From CharlieMcDonnell.com:

Charlie McDonnell is an English Video-Blogger and Musician from Bath, Somerset. Known on YouTube as charlieissocoollike, he is currently the second most subscribed YouTuber in the United Kingdom, with over 300,000 regular viewers. Currently, he has amassed over 30 million total video views. He is 19 years old, still lives at home with his Mum, and does not enjoy small talk.

Charlie’s videos are charming and include his ongoing attempts to complete a list of challenges that so far have included him painting his body purple and giving his opinions on different kinds of baby food.

Why love these vloggers? As Buck said in that video of his in an earlier post of mine — success on YouTube really is about personality. These three vloggers have charisma and an ability to make everyday topics incredibly entertaining. They have well put-together video without removing themselves from that everyday-person-talking-in-their-bedroom charm that draws a lot of people to these personal-type vloggers. They’re relatable enough to feel a sense of community and non-commercialism surrounding them, but also talented enough that they are consistently entertaining and high quality.

Today I want to talk aboooout two famous news-type vloggers on YouTube who I subscribe to. Both of these guys are YouTube partners who make a living off their videos, so if you’re wondering who those people are who are making money for vlogging and what they vlog about, here’s two examples.

Both of these vloggers occasionally use language and cover content that might be NSFW. Phil in particular. Nothing you wouldn’t hear in everyday conversation (I mean, YouTube is partnered with them, after all), but just a warning, since this is a school-y blog.

The first is Philip DeFranco aka Sxephil who is the 6th most subscribed YouTuber of all time. He makes 3-4 minute long videos on a schedule where he discusses popular news items. Part of why news vloggers are worth talking about these days is a ton of people get their news from sources like Phil. Here’s a video of his where he talks a little about this:

I’ve noticed he’s made some references, especially in his personal videos, about what it takes to be a top YouTuber — and the fact that I have to put a NSFW warning on his channel at all. He seems to be suggesting that it is his belief (and no doubt he has paid a lot of attention to this — you don’t end up in the top 10 by accident) that his sort of fast-paced, occasionally bordering on offense, self-deprecating style is what it takes to keep up his viewership. Both he and the YouTuber I’m featuring below seem to view the style of their videos as a sort of persona they put on for the purpose of entertaining rather than an actual reflection of themselves personally (and both have separate channels for personal videos where they reveal themselves to be nicer and calmer people than their main channels would suggest.) It makes sense, I suppose — think about popular stand-up comedians, etc. Isn’t that more or less what Phil and similar vloggers do? There are definitely people on YouTube who have gained a following for a more personal format, but news vloggers don’t seem to go that way.

The other vlogger I want to discuss today is a little tamer — he’s Michael Buckley aka WhatTheBuck who is the 13th most subscribed channel on YouTube. (In case you’re wondering, the full list is here (I’m not talking about anyone above Phil and Buck as I don’t subscribe to them, though I do intend to talk about a couple people below them on that list later.)) He also talks about popular news items, but while Phil is more quirky news in general, WhatTheBuck is more entertainment news and aimed toward a bit of a younger audience (and has a much larger following of women, as far as I can guess)

Buck has actually made quite a few videos on his personal channel discussing his status as a top YouTuber, the culture of YouTube, etc. Here’s a personal video of his where he discusses product placement in YouTube videos (and how personality often means so much more than content in vlogging):

Today I’m starting with something in the “funny and useless” category of things I like on the internet.

And that is… ShadyURL, which is the latest source of useless hilarity among my friends. What is it? Well… the tagline says it all: “Don’t just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening.”

It becomes like an awful test of your friends’ trust to see if you can convince them it’s safe to click a link that looks very much like it will lead to a virus or some other unpleasantness. Often they really do look creepy, and other times, the links are trying so hard to be creepy that they come out sounding completely hilarious. Thus far the reigning champion of most ridiculous shadyurl I’ve encountered is “horse-slaughter_u5c0f_click-on-this-and-youll-be-taken-to-page-that-will-create-pop-up-windows-until-your-browser-crashes.” Very to the point.

And I also want to share xkcd which calls itself “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” One cool thing about xkcd is its creator, Randall Munroe, is able to make a living off the merchandise sold in the store while continuing to put up the comic not only for free but under a creative commons license.

Randall Munroe is also awesome because he has a ball pit in his house. True story. His blag is pretty worth following as well, especially if you’re a mathematical sort of geek.

On today’s edition of Cool Stuff I Like On The Internet, we’re going to take a look at two of my favorite people on the internet who created one of the most awesome communities I’ve seen on the internet.

The Vlogbrothers, Brotherhood 2.0, and Nerdfighteria.

The Vlogbrothers are, well, two brothers: John and Hank Green. John is an author of young adult novels (such as Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns) and Hank runs the internet’s biggest environmental technology blog, EcoGeek. They sort of came to realize that as they’d gotten older, married, and ended up on different sides of the country, their relationship was far from what it was like when they were children. They decided to try a fun project to get to know each other better: a year long video blog project called Brotherhood 2.0. The rules were simple: they would switch off making 4-mins-or-less videos every weekday (excluding holidays) and stop communicating textually (meaning, no e-mails, IMs, etc.). Any time one of them failed to follow these rules, they would be punished (and they were several times, with punishments over time including eating a blenderized Happy Meal and spending an entire day in Target).

What started as a random project between two brothers EXPLODED. Hank wrote a funny song about Harry Potter and it got featured on YouTube (which is when I first heard of them), and it started these two brothers on a rollercoaster leading to crazy internet fame.

Since Brotherhood 2.0 ended at the end of 2007, John and Hank have continued to be a huge presence on YouTube. Their fans are called Nerdfighters — nerds who fight to “decrease world suck.” Nerdfighteria has been associated with a ton of awesome projects, including Project For Awesome, which is a yearly project to overrun YouTube’s rankings of popular videos with videos about charities, the record label DFTBA records, the upcoming convention VidCon, Truth or Fail, and a ton of charity projects.

They’re centered around their YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers. The Nerdfighter community lives at a Ning community they refer to simply as “The Ning.” Both John and Hank have Twitters as well. 

I was fortunate enough to see Hank and John when they did a giant tour of the country to promote John’s latest book (I’m also a big fan of John as an author — when I sat down to read his books I was shocked that the same sort of mixture of humor and intellectual commentary I see on their channel is very present in his writing as well) and it was an awesome experience. Shall I try and embed a picture? Let’s try it.

Why love the Green brothers? John and Hank have said it before and I think it’s definitely true — when it comes down to it, Nerdfighteria isn’t about John and Hank anymore. They’re just two guys who are intelligent and entertaining and they’ve managed to organize their following into more than just a fanbase for themselves but rather a community capable of accomplishing things. They make it cool to be uncool.