GLOVING | NOW LIGHTING UP A RAVE NEAR YOU: CITY HALL COVER-UP ON HOMELESS DEATH

JUNE 29-JULY 5 VOL. 34/ NO. 32 LAWEEKLY.COM ( 14 ) LA Weekly / June 29-July 5 2012 / laweekly.com | As online video celebrities and fans gather at Vidcon, we bring you a guide to the new secrets of entertainment stardom

aniel Grimes, a high school student online videos — better than anyone else. began airing on Cartoon Network. from Ypsilanti, Mich., fl ew to Los We’ve always performed “covers” of As Boedigheimer’s success shows, not Angeles last July for the YouTube songs in our cars and showers, but the best all of YouTube is aimless; creators now convention Vidcon. He came to see ones, such as Walk O! the Earth’s quirky make six fi gures and secure Hollywood his favorite YouTubers, including version of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used deals. “With some of it there is an intended Toby Turner, a comedian known in to Know” (122 million views), now can fuel calculation,” Boedigheimer says. “Annoying part for his “literal trailers.” the popularity of the original song (263 Orange is to some degree me experiment- “He’ll take a video game trailer and million views). ing, hanging around, having fun, but there’s Dsing over it, describing everything that’s “Girls for millennia have been teaching always the hope of it taking o! .” happening in a painfully obvious but very each other makeup, passing along tips It’s fi tting that YouTubers are concentrat- funny way,” Grimes told me, as we sat in an through word-of-mouth — ‘I have a great ed in Los Angeles, which has always been audience of hundreds in a ballroom in the blush you should use,’"” says Will Hyde, an intersection of leisure and entertain- Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel . whose YouTube channel The Will of DC ment, says Lawrence Culver, a historian As I blogged at the time, Turner took the comments on YouTube. “Now it lives in and the author of The Frontier of Leisure: stage to perform his literal trailer for Assas- YouTube for billions.” Southern California and the Shaping of sin’s Creed: Brotherhood, playing the key- Household troublemaking extends to bi- Modern America. Like many YouTube board and singing exactly what everyone zarre subgenres. A wave of videos features trends, SoCal-infl uenced practices such as saw on the screen, e.g., “Mysterious hooded kids shooting o! homemade fl amethrow- surfi ng, skateboarding and bodybuilding man joined by other hooded people.” ers, often by fi lling Super Soakers with “started out as casual recreation done by I had a fl ashback to a family road trip lis- kerosene. While Miley Cyrus was acciden- a few, and then someone found out how to tening to my brothers spoofi ng the opening tally caught on video doing the hallucino- popularize it, whether it was the beach mov- song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: genic drug salvia, lots of people do the drug ies of the ’50s or someone making money “There goes the toilet cleaner with his and then intentionally fi lm themselves. One on swimwear companies.” plunger/The same old plunger as before.” such video, with 1.6 million views, is called It’s no coincidence that all of them are My family is weird. But as we’ve learned “Writing a Letter to Congress on Salvia” platforms for exhibitionism. “If you want from YouTube, a lot of people are weird — (the letter ends up mostly squiggles, the to show o! , this is the place to do it,” Culver GOOF OFF IN YOUR BASEMENT…ONLY BETTER How YouTube is turning leisure into entertainment By ZACHARY PINCUS-ROTH

and don’t mind sharing the evidence. The says. sort of goofi ng o! that once took place in Plus, as the Pacifi c Standard Time exhib- the privacy of your car, basement or back- its of the last year reminded us, much of yard has become a form of entertainment, L.A. art history is about fi nding signifi cance even a profession, whose practitioners in haphazard putzing. L.A. is where Bruce will gather at Vidcon this weekend at the Nauman discovered that art could entail Anaheim Convention Center. walking in a square. It’s where Edward Kien- “These in-jokes and odd bits of media holz and his ilk made art out of assembling have always existed, but there wasn’t a clothes hangers or doll heads found in fl ea distribution mechanism for it,” says Tim markets or on the street. In 1971 in Santa Hwang, co-founder of ROFLCon, a confer- Ana, performance artist Chris Burden had ence on online comedy. “You’d share it with a friend shoot him in the left arm with a .22 your friends: ‘Remember when Tim did that long rifl e. Would that he’d tried that in the crazy thing?’"” Dane Boedigheimer’s Annoying Orange just made YouTube era. Kids have played video games for the transition from online series to cable TV. “I hear the expression all the time — ‘That decades, but now game-related videos — person has too much time on their hands.’ depicting, say, a person’s actual gameplay, guy cracks up uncontrollably, but it does It’s used as a pejorative,” says Kevin Alloc- or sketches featuring the games’ characters get mailed). “Everyone screws around in ca, trends manager at YouTube. “I think to — are a massive part of YouTube, via such di! erent ways, but now you can learn about myself: A lot of the cool things in the world companies as Machinima, whose network how other people do it,” Hwang says. were made by someone with too much time of channels had 1.6 billion views in April. Dane Boedigheimer’s Annoying Orange on their hands.” The channel Epic Meal Time is a pioneer series is a classic example. One night while In our YouTube issue, you’ll read about of gross-out food videos, a descendant of 2 lying in bed, he thought up the idea of an or- lots of people who convert all that time a.m. sleepover challenges to stu! 17 marsh- ange bothering an apple. “My girlfriend was on their hands into online video stardom. mallows in your mouth and say “chubby like, ‘What are you laughing at?’ and I was Their stories show how anyone can suc- bunny.” YouTube’s No. 1 channel is by Ray like, ‘It’s stupid to even explain,’ ” he recalls. ceed on YouTube — given talent, hard work It’s now a YouTube series with 2.4 million and a brilliant plan. Or maybe just boobs. PHOTO BY W.B. FONTENOT William Johnson, who does what people do now in their spare time — make fun of subscribers. A more elaborate version just As you’ll read in this issue, those work, too. | laweekly.com / June 29-July 5 2012 / LA Weekly ( 15 ) athan Barnatt wakes up each “OK, cool,” Keith said. “I like making my morning in Star Wars bedsheets. If PHOTO BY W.B. FONTENOT own rules.” the trap door in his bunk bed isn’t Barnatt in character He strapped on Virtual Boy goggles and buried under toys, he pops through as Keith Apicary a Nintendo power glove and danced with that to greet the day. For breakfast, the girls, fannypack fl opping. He busted he’ll have some candy, then go play out the no-bones and the sick cat. He threw video games. Or jump on a tram- in a backfl ip for good measure. “No one poline. Or crawl through a cardboard-box expected me to be able to dance,” he says Ntunnel maze he built with his brothers. now. “All these professional dancers were There’s only one big di! erence between like, ‘Holy crap, what’s happening?’ ” Barnatt and any other kid on summer vaca- Barnatt pulls up the video on his iPad. tion: He is 31. His brother, a frequent collaborator and Barnatt is an actor and a maker of online cameraman, fi lmed the scene on the sly. videos. And though he does not consider “The casting director asked if I had dance himself “a YouTube person,” per se, at training,” Barnatt says. “So I started listing the moment, this 6-foot-tall, lanky, dorky, video games from the ’90s that were dance- prematurely balding white guy with soulful related.” eyes and elastic body is one of the most By the end, girls were cheering. Guys popular people on the Internet. were pouting. A child’s sense of limitless wonder “He was messing everybody up,” one coupled with an adult’s creative capabilities male dancer complains on the video. “He is a powerful thing. Barnatt, for instance, was distracting everyone.” really liked the song “Que Veux-Tu,” by the Distracting doesn’t begin to cover it. Bar- French band Yelle. The band were already natt has rolled down entire staircases. He doing a music video for the song, but Bar- has dangled over escalators. He has jumped natt made his own video for it anyway. He (head fi rst) into trashcans and stumbled fi lmed himself dancing around his neigh- over shopping carts. He has fallen o! roofs, borhood — at the grocery, the pharmacy, a fallen o! bounce houses and fallen o! roofs tennis court, in a tree. The locations change, onto bounce houses. Fellow comedian but his position from the camera stays the Matthew Jay described these maneuvers same. as “some of the bravest (and possibly “I don’t really choreograph,” he says, stupidest) physical comedy I’ve ever seen perched like a tightly coiled spring on the someone do.” Most of it has been captured edge of the sofa in his Santa Monica apart- on video. ment — a large, sparse place he shares with A few years ago, the organizers of Penny his younger brother, Seth. In lieu of a dinner Arcade Expo Boston, the country’s largest table, they use a vintage, glass-top Space video game convention, invited Keith to Invaders arcade cabinet. “It’s just me going speak at a panel. Instead, Keith got kids in super hard.” the audience to toss him up and down on His moves include the sick cat — drop to a tablecloth. They tossed him so high he fl oor, arch back. The no-bones — arms fl ail- almost touched the ceiling. He led them ing at waist, also known as “the amoeba,” on a conga line through the hotel up to the because “amoebas have no bones.” The roof and jumped into the pool. Sopping wet, windmill — a basic breakdancing move. they marched through the kitchen, past There are moves resembling butter churn- the stunned employees, grabbing pots and ing and step aerobics. Barnatt makes them pans and banging on them. up as he goes along. “I’m pretty wiggly,” he Downstairs, he climbed atop a grand says. piano; kids pushed him around on it. Keith To date, more than 1 million people have picked up the “babes” sitting in the lobby. watched his Yelle video on YouTube, more By babes, he means the middle-aged moms than four times as many as watched the who’d brought their kids to the convention. o" cial Yelle video. And by picked up, he means literally picked Dance videos are but a small part of his them up and carried them around. oeuvre. At heart, Barnatt is a character ac- “They were in some couch section of tor, not a dancer. At any given time, he has the hotel,” he recalls. “And I’d go in, and be 10 characters rattling around in his head, NEVER GROW UP like, OK, I’ll just take you to my room now.” among them a self-defense instructor with Nathan Barnatt is just a big, crazy kid — and that’s When that failed, he and a kid squeezed a wooden peg leg, the world’s worst gym into a hallway cabinet and whispered in the teacher and a weirdo infomercial salesman why he’s one of YouTube’s biggest stars dark. named Trale Lewous. “It’s kind of like a panel, but it’s more like To say Barnatt fully inhabits these per- By GENDY ALIMURUNG a crazy party,” Barnatt says. “I don’t want to sonas would be an understatement. Take just sit there and answer questions for an Trale Lewous. Barnatt had an idea to make candies he eats. boombox video, which got a million views hour. That’s boring.” bad infomercials for products that don’t For two years, he made fake commercials in one week. That’s when Skittles made him need the advertising. He picked the candy for them, in character as Trale. Trale mis- its spokesman. His antics are silly, but they’re also hard Skittles — he’s vegan, and it’s one of the few pronounces Skittles as “Ski-TELLS.” The Does he even like Skittles? “They’re OK.” work. At conventions, which he is often paid fake commercials caught on. Soon even He shrugs. “But how much candy can you to attend, Barnatt barely sleeps. He stays in people in the Skittles corporate o" ce were eat?” character for 48 hours straight. pronouncing it Ski-TELLS. Making videos is a compulsion. “If I think The third year, the company held a con- Barnatt’s fi nest creation is undoubtedly of something, I just do it,” Barnatt says. On test. Whoever made the best video would a character named Keith Apicary, video a fl ight back from Paris, he fi lmed himself receive a Skittles vending machine. It also game uber-nerd, enfant terrible of the geek dancing in the aisle, bumping passengers gave away a couple machines to public scene. To become Keith, Barnatt dons Coke- with his elbows. “It never ends!” he says, fi gures. Kim Kardashian got one. So did a bottle eyeglasses, musses his curly brown holding his head in his hands. “It’s like, I’m Jonas brother. Barnatt was incensed. “Two hair, fl attens his voi ce into a nasal prattle on the plane, I’m going home. Nope. I have years’ worth of free advertising and they’re and adds a juicy lisp. He hunches over and to have an idea. It’s such a pain in the neck. not just going to send me a vending ma- walks from the pelvis. I have to do it, or else I’ll be kicking myself chine? All right,” he said. “I’m gonna enter Most recently, as Keith, he crashed audi- later.” He edits the videos on a computer that contest. And I have to win.” tions for the music video to Kimberly Cole’s in his bedroom for hours at a time, grow- He won, and the Skittles vending ma- song “U Make Me Wanna.” ing more and more impatient for the fi nal chine now sits in a corner of his living room. “If the female dance is easier, can I choose product. Nathan Barnatt as Keith Apicary at an audition The company then sent him a boombox to do that one?” Keith asked. Filming began for Barnatt in the eighth for Kimberly Cole’s music video covered in Skittles and Barnatt made a “Absolutely,” the casting director said. grade and hasn’t stopped since. ( 18 >> ( 16 ) LA Weekly / June 29-July 5 2012 / laweekly.com | >> 16 ) His was a happy, imaginative cutting grass and burying people, Barnatt childhood. Raised by a carpenter dad and would make up character sketches. He’d a secretary mom, he was between two fi lm videos in the graveyard after work. His brothers who have since gone on to become boss never knew. a writer and a photographer. The Barnatt “I was in a lot of people’s graves before boys spent their youth shooting videos they were,” he says, in an uncharacteristi- with rented equipment. They’d air their cally melancholy way. For two years he dug GAME THE SYSTEM creations on local cable access in their graves, saving his cemetery money to move “Reply girls” have turned boobs into views, but YouTube is hometown of Milford, Mass. to California. trying to focus our eyeballs on more high-class o! erings Asked what her son was like as a kid, He moved to Los Angeles six years ago, Mary Ellen Barnatt laughs for a bit, then right around the time YouTube launched, By TESSA STUART says: “Smaller.” and immediately started loading videos Nathan lacked “the embarrassment onto the Internet. Suddenly, the short egan Lee Heart made tens of we succeed. It’s very simple. If they don’t — button,” she continues. “We had to hold sketches Barnatt had been fi lming since he thousands of dollars in the last well, we don’t do so well.” him back a little. Because some things are was a kid had found their perfect medium. year — and did it all from her Once upon a time, a YouTube partner- not legal. You can’t keep pulling your pants home in suburban Sherman ship, which a creator needs to earn revenue, down.” Barnatt embodies the maxim that “it’s easier Oaks. No special e! ects. No was an exclusive club to which only the When Barnatt turned 20, he went to to apologize than to ask for permission.” fancy equipment. Just strategic most popular users were invited. Today, acting school and was cast as the village Security guards rushed over when he fi lmed positioning — and as many as almost anyone can join. idiot in a play. But he dropped out after one himself breakdancing in front of the Louvre. 10 videos each day. Her most popular You- “If you’ve created a channel on YouTube, semester when he started getting commer- “They were like, ‘You need to pay hundreds MTube channel, MeganSpeaks, counts nearly it’s literally as simple as going to a form on cial work. Why am I paying to learn acting, of thousands of dollars for this shot!’ ” he 38,000 subscribers and 47 million views. the site” — YouTube.com/Partners — “opt- he fi gured, when I’m already getting paid to recalls in an awful French accent. He kept Heart learned that YouTube’s algorithm ing in to the program, and you can begin do acting? dancing as if he didn’t understand them. favored reply videos — meaning if she earning right away,” Tim Shey says. He dug graves to pay the bills. A friend’s He’s been kicked out of San Diego Comic- fi lmed a video responding to another video, Shey is the director of YouTube Next Lab, dad hired Barnatt to cut grass … at a cem- Con. Twice. Once in 2009 for crashing a YouTube would almost automatically put a section of the company that helps part- etery: “Yeah, he didn’t mention the grave- panel featuring Peter Jackson hers at the top of a list of suggested viewing ners become YouTube stars. Through Next digging thing right away.” In between and James Cameron (he ( 22 >> alongside the original. Lab programs, partners can be matched If she responded to a popular video, such with mentors, receive grants and gain ac- as those featured on the YouTube homep- cess to the considerable resources YouTube age, she was almost guaranteed and Google are devoting to thousands of hits and, in turn, their development. BLOW THINGS UP, ON THE CHEAP thousands of dollars. “A video Google purchased YouTube with 1 million views is roughly for $1.65 billion in 2006, and $2,000,” Heart explains. For 47 since then there have been million views? Well, you do the questions about whether You- USC grads Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch don’t need math. Tube as a stand-alone entity Droves of video creators is profi table. Google does Hollywood to create kick-ass special e! ects like Heart are starting to see not comment on YouTube’s YouTube as a full-time job. fi nancials, and YouTube By PAUL T. BRADLEY “Once they do that,” says Shiva executives who spoke to the Rajaraman, director of project Weekly would only reference nside every marketing fi rm’s board- totally wrong.” management for YouTube, very general statistics, saying, room and quadruple co-sponsored The USC grads have been doing “we know that they will focus for example, there are “more tech networking event are people this gig full-time since spring 2010, exhaustively on building an than a million” partners, squawking endlessly about the very living the full-creative-control dream audience, and nothing will get “thousands” of whom are thing that Freddie Wong does e! ort- that their studio-shackled peers may in the way of consistency, voice, making six fi gures and all lessly: Tapping into the gamer-sav- never get to realize, monetizing views personality and quality.” of whom receive “the lion’s vy market, blah blah, making your by teaming with YouTube and various Based on the volume of share” (more than 50 percent) content “clickable,” blah blah blah. sponsors. Plus, they have little to no responses to her work, Megan of revenue from their videos. IMeanwhile, on a recent Monday, overhead, they rely on partnerships for Lee Heart ought to be a poster In October, YouTube Wong is taking out the trash — literally. their gear, their actors are themselves girl for how to succeed on announced it was investing He and his business partner/consi- and their friends, and their special ef- YouTube. Instead, YouTube $100 million to produce 100 gliere, Brandon Laatsch, are ridding fects are rendered with Adobe AfterEf- tweaked its algorithm to make original-content channels; in their downtown L.A. warehouse lair of fects and DIY know-how. videos like hers less prominent. May, the company announced all the soda cans and fake pistols that Wong and Laatsch are true to the The problem is boobs. Spe- it would commit an additional accumulated during the recent E3 video open-source nature of their generation: cifi cally, the Internet-dwelling $200 million to market those game convention. They make almost as many behind-the- male’s inability to refrain from channels. Wong and Laatsch are best known for scenes and how-to videos as they do clicking on a video featuring That’s not all: Earlier this their special e! ects–laden YouTube vid- original content. For Video Game High boobs. Heart — and a handful year, the company purchased eos that combine video games with real School, a web series that follows a n00b of women known collectively Howard Hughes’ former air- life. “The Rocket Jump,” for instance, (gamer-speak for a “newbie”) through a as “reply girls” — learned that plane hangar in Playa Vista, with 11 million views, shows a live- futuristic elite gaming academy, they’ve they could lure millions of hap- where a YouTube university of action Wong in the middle of a video included behind-the-scenes tutorials on less viewers into clicking their sorts is slated to open this fall, game, watching teammates get fragged how they made it. videos if their breasts were prominently o! ering production facilities with cameras, and fi guring out how to use a shoulder- “We’re going to answer specifi c ques- displayed in the video thumbnail. And that microphones and green screens, editing fi red rocket to vault over a wall and save tions we get, like how to make a realistic is not where YouTube hopes this whole tools and facilities for workshops, panels the day. All of it is shot with realistic- gunshot, where do we get our guns, and Internet video thing is going. and screenings — all open to partners. looking blood spurts, explosions and all that stu! ,” Wong says. “At the end of Most importantly, Next Lab puts together the tight editing rarely seen outside of the day, we always ask people what they Improving the overall quality of videos on The Creator’s Playbook, a handbook fi lled Hollywood blockbusters. want to see and show them how we do the site is key to YouTube’s master plan with tips to help users make popular videos. “We just make things geared toward it,” through communication with fans as the company tries to compete with For instance, since YouTube is the second guys like us,” Laatsch says as he sits on YouTube comments and Twitter. sites like Hulu and Netfl ix, which focus on most popular search engine in the world at his desk, a warren of electronics, Wong’s channel, Freddiew, has about studio-made rather than user-generated (after Google), Shey says users are advised computers and hard drives. “It may be a 3.3 million subscribers and 650 million content. The better the videos, the longer to “really think about how your video is di# cult demographic for other people, views since 2009, all while the bigwigs viewers will stay on the site and the more showing up in search results.” Is the title but for us ... it is us. We can’t tap into are all still trying to get it. Meanwhile, opportunities advertisers will have to reach accurate and engaging? Have you included the 40-year-old mom market. There’s Wong and Laatsch clearly get that them. Everyone — creators, advertisers and tags and picked the right thumbnail? Shey nothing less cool than outsiders trying there’s nothing to get — the secret is to YouTube itself — gets richer. also advises creators to interact with their to do something like this and getting it make cool shit and be nice about it. “Our objectives are incredibly aligned,” audience. Robert Kyncl, vice president and global Heart succeeded using precisely those head of content partnerships, says of You- techniques. In her fi rst video, posted a Tube and its “partners.” “If they succeed, year ago, Heart is responding to ( 24 » ( 18 ) LA Weekly / June 29-July 5 2012 / laweekly.com | n front of the Co! ee Bean & Tea Leaf “It’s refreshing when people of all races at the Grove, someone is scraping say they don’t see an awkward black girl, lightweight plastic chairs across the they just relate to who she is,” Rae says. pavement instead of picking them up, Rae, the daughter of an African-American and the sound is akin to fi ngernails be- mother and a Senegalese father, grew up in ing dragged down a chalkboard. Issa Los Angeles, Potomac, Md., and Senegal. Rae, the 27-year-old writer, director In her last year at Stanford, she fi lmed a and star of the web series The Misadven- web series about her group of friends. She’d Itures of Awkward Black Girl, continues to also written a script, Naima, that was a Issa Rae talk as if nothing is happening. semifi nalist at Sundance, but being 19 and The scene feels plucked out of ABG, “cocky,” she balked at the notes she was as the show’s fans a! ectionately call it. given and instead took solace in the web. Spurred by the absence of characters in TV Online, she likes that no one tells her to and fi lm like her — normal, slightly nerdy change in order to appeal to a particular black girls dealing passive-aggressively demographic. “[Being] successful is about with awkward situations — Rae created a se- fi nding that niche and engaging with them,” ries about J., a 20-something who works at she says. “There are so many loyal people a call center for a weight-loss pill company. on the web waiting for a voice to represent One of the funnier fi rst-season episodes them. It’s creepy for that reason, but also revolves around J.’s fi rst date with a white very enriching. It’s a thirsty audience.” FILL A (TINY) NICHE When Issa Rae didn’t see any awkward black girls in fi lm and television, she thought: Why not me? By REBECCA HAITHCOAT dude who (cringe) takes her to a soul food It’s also a vicious audience. Emboldened restaurant and spoken-word night. by anonymity, Internet commenters have ABG began its run on YouTube in Febru- posted shocking racial epithets about her, ary. Broke midway through, Rae and her but Rae takes the spite as a positive sign. production partner, Tracy Oliver, launched “I got excited when YouTube featured one a Kickstarter campaign to fund the second of our videos and a comment was just the half of the season. Their goal was $30,000. word ‘nigger’ 60 times in a row,” she says. By their deadline, they’d received almost “I took a screenshot, put it on my blog and double that. said, ‘We made it, y’all.’"” A happy side e! ect of that campaign She attributes her success to being very was a healthy boost to the show’s profi le. patient. “People who go viral don’t have Pharrell Williams, musician and member lasting power,” she says. “It’s important to of production duo The Neptunes, cherry- take your time, build your audience, have picked ABG for his I Am Other YouTube a relationship with them, write what you channel (devoted to “thinkers, outcasts know.” and innovators”), and its second season Another chair is being raked across the PHOTO BY W.B. FONTENOT premiered on June 14. sidewalk. We both crack up.

Pasadena, moved back to L.A. from New months, like: crickets.” York last year. Both were feeling stymied, “We still have really good jokes about HITCH YOUR WAGON TO A MEME bouncing around in theater and improv the Academy Awards!” Crevello adds, groups, before they fi lmed the short. laughing. “Sometimes you just need to get away YouTube networks have asked if they How “Shit People Say in L.A.” changed the from it, because it can be so daunting want to make money o! their videos ... and overwhelming when things aren’t but they haven’t really followed up. lives of the women who made it By TESSA STUART just falling into place,” Crevello says. “We could, probably, make money o! of “You just get caught up in I-need-to-be- YouTube,” Crevello says, hesitantly. et’s make a sketch and though, when they saw “Shit New Yorkers successful-I-need-to-be-successful. “But, at the same time, our end goal put it on YouTube!” Elena Say” on a Monday in January. By the next “I think the success comes when you’re isn’t to be YouTube stars,” Niedermeyer Crevello says excitedly Monday, they had shot, edited and posted having fun with it,” she adds. Nieder- adds. “I don’t think it’s as important to me to Heidi Niedermeyer, as the Los Angeles analogue. meyer nods. to be putting so much energy into this they walk down a Los An- The video racked up 300,000 views by After the video was released, the YouTube channel. We want to be on TV.” geles street. Cut. “I can’t, the end of its fi rst day, and a million after actresses were stopped on the street The exposure from “Shit People Say I have improv,” Nieder- three days. It ricocheted around the Inter- constantly. They were asked to make a in L.A.” might get them there, too — it meyer, sitting alone on a ledge, says into net, picked up by Perez Hilton, LAist and pledge–drive video for KCRW, the public landed them a literary agent, and hooked “La cellphone. Cut. (ahem) L.A. Weekly. Carson Daly aired radio station referenced in the video. them up with the Mark Gordon Company, These bits of dialogue are from “Shit the audio on his morning radio show. The They met with E! Entertainment Televi- producer of Grey’s Anatomy and Crimi- People Say in L.A.,” which has 1.9 million meme eventually would include dozens sion’s talent development team about nal Minds. views, but they’re also not far from a of videos, including “Shit Sri Lankan being talking heads at the Oscars. These days, when not at their day jobs description of how the video got made. Mothers Say.” But the heat from the “Shit People Say” — Crevello is a Pop Physique instructor, Crevello and Niedermeyer met at a Crevello, originally from California’s meme cooled, and the people from E! Niedermeyer works at a pizzeria in Pasa- middle-school theater camp in Illinois central coast, moved to Los Angeles never called back. dena — they meet at co! ee shops to work before both ended up at college in New seven years ago after college, to pursue “She’s like, ‘Great! We’ll defi nitely use on the sitcom the company is helping York City. The pair was living in L.A., acting. Niedermeyer, who grew up in you,’"” Niedermeyer says. “And it’s been them pitch to ABC.

( 20 ) LA Weekly / June 29-July 5 2012 / laweekly.com | >> 18 ) jumped onstage with a toy gun; shoot a second video. When Yelle per- “Crazed fan attacks Peter Jackson,” cinema formed in Los Angeles last year, he danced blogs wrote). Again in 2010 for climbing up onstage with them in a safari outfi t. the façade of the Convention Center onto Kimberly Cole loved Barnatt’s dancing the glass roof and sliding down. as well. Her entire video is being rewritten Last year, he got kicked out of his own to feature Barnatt as Keith, crashing the MAKE US BEAUTIFUL panel at Boston’s Penny Arcade Expo, the taping of Cole’s video. The fi lm crew tries West Hollywood’s Blair and Elle Fowler are two of U.S.’ largest consumer video game conven- to pull him out, but he cleverly fi nds a way tion. In character as Keith, he did backfl ips back in. He starts dancing. Then everyone YouTube’s most popular makeup and shopping gurus o! the stage. “One of the security guards starts dancing, but goofy like Keith — es- was telling me not to,” he says. “But that’s sentially, what happened in real life. By AMANDA LEWIS Keith’s thing. He gets really energetic.” Rap artist Flo Rida also wants Keith to be Fans booed the security guard. The guard in a music video. “Really? You want me?” emember when you were 13, and confuses me.” called the cops. The audience, in one blog- Barnatt said when they called. “Are you sure all you wanted was a cool, beauti- The two worked closely with a ghost- ger’s words, proceeded “to lose their shit.” about that?” He is not quite sure who Flo ful, older friend to show you how writer to produce a young-adult novel After that debacle, Penny Arcade Expo Rida is, but the idea of Keith, goofy white to be cool and beautiful, too? For due out in September, part of a two-book show director Robert Khoo made Barnatt guy, dancing amidst rappers tickles him. teen girls everywhere, beauty deal they hope will become a series. sign a contract saying he wouldn’t break “It’s weird to think this is all from shoot- gurus Elle and Blair Fowler, aka We meander over to the Co! ee Bean & allthatglitters21 and juicystar07, Tea Leaf, where Blair puts four Splen- are those friends. das in her 16-ounce iced co! ee and the REach produces three 10-minute videos sisters reminisce about how, as children, “We had to hold him back a little. Because some things are not legal. a week, specializing in makeup how-to’s, they cherished Halloween, the one time product reviews and mall hauls, where of the year they were allowed to wear You can’t keep pulling your pants down.” they catalog the plunder from a recent makeup. shopping trip. In high school, the popular Elle curled —Mary Ellen Barnatt Combined, the two have more than her hair every morning and wore craft 1.5 million subscribers and 400 million glitter from Michael’s around her eyes views; an average video will receive until a boyfriend told her she looked like a few hundred thousand views within a disco ball. days. Blair, however, struggled socially, anything or be a nuisance. Or, if he abso- ing dumb videos,” he says now, tapping his Graying magazines like Elle and Marie especially once the jealous girls in their lutely had to, could he please keep it to his feet absently. He’s wearing fuzzy monster Claire clamor to feature the Fowlers to town found out the sisters did a photo own panel? slippers. One monster foot bobs rapidly as reach their teen audience, and the sisters shoot for Seventeen. Bullies repeatedly Barnatt signed, then promptly went next he thinks. door to his friend’s panel and pulled his As a member of YouTube’s partner pants down. Khoo kicked him out. program, Barnatt makes money from his He’s been kicked out of every convention videos in exchange for letting YouTube he’s been to except for one, in Canada. (He run ads on them. (See “Game the System,” came close, moving all the furniture from by Tessa Stuart.) His YouTube videos have his hotel room to the parking lot and then racked up more than 30 million total views. covering himself in maple syrup.) For each 3 million views, he gets about Airport security guards fi nd him particu- $3,000. In the past year, he made $70,000 larly vexing. “Hey, do you want to shoot from his “dumb” videos. something for me?” Barnatt asked the “I could defi nitely live o! just my You- intern who picked him up for a convention Tube,” he says. “It’s kinda absurd what I’m in Dallas. making.” “I’d love to,” the kid said. For years, he’d been shooting these vid- Barnatt clambered up the baggage claim eos for free. “Now there are checks that just conveyor belt and started tossing bags keep showing up.” around, much to the consternation of TSA o" cers. (Strangely, he’s never actually been Barnatt began inventing characters during arrested.) that time when pretty much everyone At Los Angeles International Airport, seems schizophrenic: high school. The he climbed onto a baggage claim carousel early characters were vague — random again. “Why did you go up there?” the weird guys who spoke in a fey voice while police demanded. walking around the mall. “There were no Elle, left, and Blair Fowler talk fashion on YouTube. “I went up there because I wanted to see jokes; there was no nothing,” he remembers. what it was like,” said Barnatt in Keith’s “It was just me rambling.” typically receive seven or eight product- egged and poured acidic wood cleaner nasally drone. “I played a game on a Sega Then came Merle. Merle was Barnatt’s sponsorship o! ers a day. over the brand-new car she received Helio, and it was very similar to this device.” fi rst real character, a homeless man who Although they prefer the stores at the for her 16th birthday — she had to get Searching his bags, the cops turned up does stand-up comedy. Merle made people Beverly Center, these Tennessee natives the body of the vehicle replaced three nothing but video games. They scrutinized uncomfortable. “I wanted people to think and West Hollywood transplants shop at separate times in the fi rst three months his photo ID. “But all my licenses have crazy a homeless man had stumbled in o! the least once a week at the Grove, where we she owned it. faces,” he says proudly. The Barnatt broth- street for an open-mic stand-up night,” met up with them on a recent weekend. Distraught, Blair dropped out after ers have a long-standing contest trying to Barnatt explains. Both wear a size double zero and have 10th grade to fi nish her GED online and outdo each other by making goofy faces in Barnatt still does Merle o ccasionally at perky, piercing voices, so how do you tell focus on YouTube. ID pictures. Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Merle them apart? Elle and Blair avoid using the word “I’ve been in handcu! s and I’ve been in lies on stage, immobile, for four minutes. Elle, 24, is blond and doesn’t like to “fans,” because it ruins the illusion that zip ties and I don’t break character until “At the end he gets up to fi nish the joke, sweat; Blair, 19, is brunette and works their chatty, breathless videos create they say, just get out of here,” he says. “It ‘And then she said—’ and then they cut the out fi ve days a week. something more meaningful. always happens. But I fi gure if I get stopped lights on me,” Barnatt says. “The joke is that Blair tends to blurt things out, while Viewers are sometimes startled when by the cops for doing something, it’s gonna he wasted all of his time. So the audience is Elle is more eloquent and measured. the sisters don’t recognize them when be a good video.” totally ripped o! !” Elle keeps her dating life private, they approach in public. Good video is the reason that, for every Barnatt, who is a member of Upright Citi- but Blair does joint videos with her Once, at Barnes & Noble, a girl authority fi gure who hates Barnatt, there zens Brigade, regularly tries out material boyfriend, aspiring actor and fellow You- knocked over an entire display while are a dozen underdogs or rebels or geeks there. The jokes that get laughs, he throws Tuber Sawyer Hartman, 22. drooling over Elle before chasing her to or artists who love him. Within a day of into a video. Elle, who was pre-law at Miami Univer- the Apple store. upload, his Yelle dance video got 50,000 sity in Ohio, reviews young–adult novels “Sometimes it can be a little over- hits. Within a week, half a million hits. Yelle ! e devotion to cra" that serves Barnatt so in a segment she calls “Glitteratures.” whelming,” Elle says. “They really feel loved it so much they made him their of- well in his professional life has been prob- Meanwhile, Blair says to me, “Wait, non- like they are your friends. And [when fi cial remix guy. Now, every time they remix lematic for certain aspects of his personal fi ction [means] not real?” as we peruse they watch our videos] they are, in that a song, they send it to him to make a video. life. Girls, namely. Girls are tough. beaded headbands at Anthropologie. “It moment ... for sure.” Recently, he fl ew to London and Paris to Not long ago, he saw a cute girl ( 24 »

| laweekly.com / June 29-July 5 2012 / LA Weekly ( 23 ) » 18 ) with blond pixie hair at a restau- they are drawn to Keith’s geek bravado. sponse from executives at the Adult Swim “Oh my God!” they say, “Are you Trale rant and asked his waiter to deliver a note to They send him drawings and refrigerator network, to whom he has pitched a TV show Lewous?” her with his phone number. The girl called magnets and love notes. based on Keith. In it, Barnatt plays Keith. Delighted, Barnatt yanks o! his hat, him, and he cast her in one of his videos. But It can be hard to tell where Barnatt ends Barnatt’s real-life older brother, Josh, plays exposing his bald head. The girls start the minute fi lming wrapped, the romance and Keith begins. Keith is an exaggerated Keith’s brother. There is a dorky friend screaming. waned. Barnatt believes himself to be “the version of Barnatt. Barnatt, like Keith, who lives in a van, who is based on (but not The pilot for his Adult Swim series, Youth worst boyfriend.” He can’t even really say considers himself to be “a cheerleader for played by) Barnatt’s dorky younger brother, Large, begins shooting soon. Someday, the word “dating.” He prefers “hanging out.” nerds.” Keith just cheers louder. Seth, who currently lives in a van. perhaps the Barnatt brothers will be as As in, “I’d rather be fi lming than hanging Barnatt doesn’t like to admit that Keith In real life, said van sits in the driveway recognizable an entertainment commodity out with someone.” isn’t actually real. “I don’t want them to outside the duo’s apartment, pissing o! the as the Coen brothers, or the Wachowski He sighs. “I just wanna be making see Nathan,” he says. “Because Nathan is neighbors. It has no toilet, so Seth pees into brothers. Until then, Barnatt is making something all the time. It kinda stinks for like … a di! erent person. I feel like Nathan an empty two-gallon plastic jug. A couple good use of his remaining anonymity. He someone I am hanging out with, because I is the no one who becomes all these other mornings a week, Seth torments Barnatt by sneaks into spas at fancy hotels in Santa don’t give them much attention.” people.” emptying the urine jug into the tub while Monica, eats the free fruit and chucks it in That is, if they make it past his bedroom. Barnatt is brushing his teeth. “Special deliv- the pool. He runs around the hallways play- Upon seeing his Star Wars sheets, one girl His whole life, Barnatt has been pushing ery!” Seth cries. ing laser tag. bluntly asked him when he was going to for bigger things — bigger stunts, bigger A few weeks later, Barnatt is at Dis- “I always play,” Barnatt says. “I never got grow up. “And that was when I had an even crowds, bigger laughs. For someone with neyland, on the rope bridge at Tarzan’s that thought where a lightbulb goes o! in taller bunk bed with a rope swing attached this kind of ambition, the worst response is Treehouse, when the call comes in from your head and you get the desire to do nor- to it,” Barnatt adds. no response at all. “Maybe they didn’t want Adult Swim. “Is that a yes?” he asks. “Can I mal things. Like adult things? I guess I do, Keith, on the other hand, has quite a few to give me the satisfaction,” he says frown- tell my mom?” because I work hard. But my work doesn’t female fans. Perhaps they are being ironic, ing, of one stunt that fell fl at. “Whatever.” At that same moment, three teenage girls feel like work. I feel like I’ve never actually or sarcastic, Barnatt speculates. Perhaps At the moment, he is waiting for a re- who’d been eyeing him make their move. grown up. I legitimately don’t think I can.”

chartreuse, wine, seafoam) of the same cleavage-bearing shirt. At one point, she was making fi ve to 10 30 OTHER WAYS Robert Kyncl, vice president reply videos a day . A lot of Heart’s views, and global head of content though, were driven by her detractors, pre- partnerships at YouTube dominantly teenage boys who would return TO SUCCEED ON again and again to express their outrage at being “tricked” into clicking the videos. “We men can’t help ourselves! Titties are YOUTUBE like Venus Flytraps for our dicks!” one user ranted on the site. 1. Be a kid. He’s not the only one upset . “I get death threats probably every 10 minutes, every 2. Be a kid, come home from the dentist stoned on drugs. day. People messaging me, ‘Stop your reply 3. Be a kid, kick your dad in the balls. videos or I’ll slaughter your family,’#” Heart says. Plus, other YouTube creators com- 4. Be a kid, get finger bitten by baby brother. plained that reply girls like Heart were si- 5. Be a kid, love cupcakes. phoning o! their revenue by replacing their content in the suggested-videos section. 6. Be a kid, love ripping paper in half. YouTube didn’t see reply girls as contrib- 7. Be a baby panda, sneeze. uting to the kind of high-quality content it wants on the site. In March, the site 8. Be a middle-aged woman, sing very, very well in a talent show. changed its algorithm to keep videos like 9. Be a cat. Heart’s out of the suggested-videos section. Instead of focusing on the number of clicks 10. Be a sleepy cat. a video had, it would prioritize the length of 11. Be an angry cat. time a video was watched. YouTube addressed the change in a 12. Be a surprised cat. statement on its o$ cial blog: “Sometimes 13. Be a talking cat. thumbnails don’t paint the whole picture.” “This was a pretty big change,” Rajara- 14. Be a wet cat. man says, referring to the tweak to the al- 15. Be a fat cat. gorithm, “but we felt like if we didn’t do this change, the way we measured and rewarded 16. Be a fat Japanese cat, jump into boxes. audience creation would be out of sync with 17. Be a cat, play the keyboard. PHOTO BY W.B. FONTENOT this message, which is all about building great channels.” 18. Be a cat made out of a Pop-Tart and rainbows, sing “nyan nyan” Rajaraman thinks Heart could potentially until the end of time. ( 22 » someone else’s footage of a video creating the list of “suggested videos” that fi nd success with her other channels, “but game–themed marriage proposal at Comic- appear on every page. Then she noticed, replying to every random popular video — 19. Be a chipmunk, be dramatic. Con 2011. by watching other reply girls’ videos, that probably not a sustainable thing moving 20. Be an otter, hold hands with another otter. “Hey y’all,” she says sweetly, bouncy YouTube’s users prioritized breasts with forward.” blond ringlets framing her face. “Have you their clicks. Since the change, Heart says, “my income 21. Be a dog, talk. ever been proposed to, and how was it? Tell With every video she made, she learned is down around 800 percent.” 22. Be a baby, talk. me the story; leave me a comment below.” how to craft the next one to get even more Shortly after she spoke to the Weekly in “I kind of sucked,” Heart said in a recent views. Using methods straight out of The May, Heart followed up with a cryptic email. 23. Be a cute girl. video critiquing her fi rst. Creator’s Playbook, Heart adapted by “I am going through some major problems 24. Be a cute girl, sing about Fridays. Over the course of a year, though, as adding graphics to her thumbnails, like the right now personally and fi nancially,” she Heart became more and more popular, neon arrow pointing directly at her cleav- wrote. “I won’t be available for a while from 25. Be a cute Japanese girl, spray yourself with soda. she transformed from the nervous blonde, age, and a bright yellow, all-caps word (like this point on.” 26. Be a cute fake–Japanese girl, stare unblinking into camera. visible only from the neck up, into a brash, “FAIL” or “SEXY”) to attract more clicks. The next day she posted a video saying boob-bearing brunette. Wading through her videos — and there she was done with reviews forever, and 27. Be a bro. Heart took to the YouTube “ecosystem” are thousands of them at this point — you telling her audience everyone should work 28. Be a bro, ask to not be tased. (as Kyncl refers to it) like the velociraptor can fi nd Heart opining on every imaginable together to “clean up” YouTube. took to Jurassic Park, quickly learning the topic (Justin Bieber, Muammar Gaddafi , Today, even that video is no longer on the 29. Be a bro, make a video about Uganda. most e! ective ways to exploit the system. the iPhone 4, a video titled “Baby Put in site. In its place is an error message: “This 30. Be Justin Bieber. First came her realization that YouTube’s Oven by Father”) while wearing di! er- video is no longer available because the up- —Jake Swearingen algorithm prioritizes reply videos when ent colors (red, black, blue, pink, violet, loader has closed their YouTube account.” ( 24 ) LA Weekly / June 29-July 5 2012 / laweekly.com |