Q&A with YouChewPoop

YouTube Poop videos have been thoroughly confusing and inspiring YouTube users for the past few years as well as unearthing hilarious found footage such as the Zelda CD-i games, obscure anime English dubbing jobs, and strange Australian commercials.

Matt "SuperYoshi" Mulligan and Andrew "Yaminomalex" Hartford are two of the "Founding Fathers of YouTube Poop" and were among the first to edit these unique videos and put them on YouTube under the intent of confusion. We also got a hold of Misselaineous10, one of the current administrators of YouChewPoop and an experienced YouTube Poop creator of many years. Note: You may want to turn your speakers down before clicking on any links in this article.

Interview

Q: Before we get started I have to know one thing, have any of you played the Zelda games for CD-i?

Hartford: Me, no, but I've played a CD-i before.

Miss: I've only seen the cut scenes like most people have.

Mulligan: I've not, actually.

Q: So what exactly is the origin of YouTube Poop?

Hartford: You see, back in 2004, my best and longest Internet friend who calls himself SuperYoshi (Mulligan) online got a new computer. With it, he tried out Windows Movie Maker for the first time. What he did was take a video file of an episode of the Super Mario Bros 3 cartoon and mess with it in Windows Movie Maker by splicing scenes and cutting them around.

It's uh… not very good. But you see, for some reason he and I kind of have that sense of humor wherein we find video remixing funny or amusing. Now then, he posted it on this art site that he used to go onto (Ed. It was SheezyArt) but he didn't share it with me until about Spring 2006. His friend who calls himself RetroJape also messed around with Mario cartoons in Windows Movie Maker. In 2006, we joined YouTube and decided to make a mockery out of the site. We were pretty young and kind of dumb back then, SuperYoshi was 16 and I was 15. We got a few of our other friends involved and had a ball making these weird random videos for the sake of confusing people. Thing is, it kinda backfired and became somewhat popular. There was a group of us, at the beginning: SuperYoshi, his friend RetroJape, my best friend who calls himself DukeOfFortuneMan, KingNecroPope, JingWu, Dr. Strangebutts, and another online friend, Tetsuo9999.

Mulligan: In 2006 we all joined YouTube and started submitting stuff. Some new, but most of it was old previously never uploaded videos, Mama Luigi being one of these. That was the one that caught most people's attention until CD-i came along in late 2006. That was all DukeOfFortuneMan back in, if I'm remembering this right, November of 2006. I also have a strong feeling he was the one who came up with the "YouTube Poop" title. It's one of those things none of us positively remember, though.

Hartford: We were retroactively referred to as "The Founding Fathers of YouTube Poop" but some of us shun the name and/or the name YouTube Poop because we thought it took the fun out of the joke.

Q: The “Founding Father” title doesn’t seem to be advertised much.

Mulligan: Yeah, mostly because I like being credited as the starter of the chain reaction but not to video editing in general, something I'm obviously not the first to do. I started that Hot On Our Tail video which made me do other videos with friends. Then I inspired people like MrSimon who inspired other people who inspired hundreds others who went onto the thousands, etc… Then there are special cases like Kajetokun whose Over 9000 video has absolutely nothing to do with YouTube Poop. It is essentially the same thing in terms of video editing, but he wasn't inspired by me or anybody else doing the other stuff at the time. I remember when he submitted that to YouTube I got a lot of comments saying Kajetokun ripped me off or the other way around when really it's just one big coincidence.

Q: One of the trends we see a lot in YouTube Poops is that they are cartoon or video game related. Any specific reason why?

Miss: Well, I believe part of the reason is nostalgia, because most people who do YTPs grew up with cartoons and video games. Plus, it's easy to make fun of the content at times, due to an animation error, bad dubbing, etc…

Hartford: I made my early stuff out of Power Rangers episodes. It's very campy, cheesy and silly.

Q: There are tons of vids out there but very few hit that sweet spot of 1 million views. Quite a few hit 100,000 but that’s it. There are about ten YTPs still up that pass a million views and that’s not including takedowns. Is that something to be expected?

Mulligan: To be honest, I'm not really sure. There seems to be a lot of popular artists these days with thousands upon thousands of subscribers who are really avid fans. A lot of us originals try to keep our stuff under the radar, for different reasons. Personally, I think seeing "YouTube Poop" in the title or tags is like seeing a punch line to a joke that hasn't been told yet, kind of destroying the original confusing factor I wanted to have when originally submitting my videos.

Q: YouTube account banning used to be, and in a way still is, pretty rampant among Poopers, what is the issue?

Miss: Our evil enemy, companies claiming copyright. Especially Viacom.

Mulligan: They're really heavy on deleting things with their footage. SpongeBob in particular got a lot of videos removed and people banned back then. I remember Family Guy footage got many banned too. However, flipping the video horizontally seemed to get past their radars. Disney's always been pretty hard on these as well.

Q: On Japanese video sharing sites they have this phenomenon known as MADs. They are very similar to YouTube Poop Music Videos in editing and style but clearly from a different culture also culminating on the internet. Thoughts?

Mulligan: From what I can tell they're very musically oriented, usually by repeating and shifting the pitch of a second of footage to match some anime or video game song. I think when that Ronald McDonald video was ripped and uploaded to YouTube the popularity of those spread to the YTP community. See: Ran Ran Ru

Q: Finally, favorite YTP videos.

Miss: WE GOTTA FIND THE PRINCESS by Bobomb99 (the first YTP I saw and it still makes me laugh), Robotnik want KFC (a mrSimon classic), and Captain Rescue Blocks Odor for 16 Hours by KroboProductions.

Hartford: I'm a huge fan of what JingWu and Strangebutts do. It's hard to pick a favorite.

Mulligan: For the more laid back old style I'd have to say JingWu, or now under RockoMyler after getting banned, was the best of us. All of his videos crack me up, especially his three Ronaldo and Metal Phillip videos. For the newer quick paced style I love SeductiveBaz, who’s The Enigmatic Rise of My Penis Gun will always be a favorite.

More Information

To learn more about YouTube Poop videos, visit the YouChewPoop forums. This interview was conducted by AJ Mazur on January 20, 2011.