Before the era of scripted internet sketch comedy and highly produced content, YouTube was best known for posting janky home videos and found footage.

That's the context in which people first encountered the so-called "Angry German Kid" (or "Keyboard Crasher"), a low-quality camcorder recording of a bespectacled kid crashing out over his favorite game, Unreal Tournament, refusing to load.

Millions of people thought that the kid's rage was entirely real, and he was quickly lumped in with other internet lolcows of the time, like the "Star Wars Kid" and the "Numa Numa" guy.

But while most viral stars faded or floundered, the boy behind Angry German Kid, named Norman Kochanowski, arguably staged one of the most dramatic redemptions in meme history.

Now a rapper and bodybuilder, Norman Kochanowski went full Zyzz in his quest to outgrow the misunderstood clip that made him infamous.

Here's catching up with the Angry German Kid, two decades after he first went viral across the web nearly two decades ago.

What's The 'Angry German Kid' Video, And How Did It First Go Viral Online?

In November 2006, a deadly school shooting in Emsdetten, Germany, prompted a familiar national panic.

What could have made a teenage boy commit such violence? In the absence of satisfying answers, politicians and media outlets turned to an old standby: violent video games.

Less than a week after the incident, the news magazine Focus TV released a segment, titled "Killer Games and the Emsdetten Massacre," in which they aired a clip of a teenage boy named "Leopold" violently slamming his keyboard while playing Unreal Tournament.

The footage was framed as if secretly filmed by his father, and positioned as proof that video games could incite uncontrollable rage in adolescent boys, but in reality, the clip was already circulating online under a very different context. Uploaded earlier that year, it had gone viral internationally as "Angry German Kid."

YouTubers across the world were sharing the video, believing that they'd stumbled across authentic footage of a high-strung teen gamer losing his mind over lag.

While Germans referred to him as the "Unreal Tournament Kid," in Japan, he became known as the "Keyboard Crasher" after being posted to the Japanese media sharing and remixing site Nico Nico Douga.

Americans especially took a real liking to remixing the footage, adding subtitles over the video to show a hundred different reasons why the bespectacled kid would be attacking his own keyboard.

The clip soon became one of the biggest viral videos to come out of YouTube in 2006 (and its earliest years of existence), with Business Wire awarding the Angry German Kid second place in the top 10 internet videos of the year in 2006, and the Guardian ranking it as number three on its "Viral Video Chart" in 2007.

Who Is "Slikk" and What's The Real Backstory Behind The 'Angry German Kid' Video?

The boy in the video wasn't some video game obsessed crashout, and his name wasn't even Leopold. The kid was Norman Kochanowski, a teenager from the Bergisches Land region of Germany who, long before YouTube was a household name, had already taught himself how to produce and star in videos for the internet.

Online, he went by "Slikk," and the "Angry German Kid" clip was just one in a longer comedy series called "The Real Gangster," a satirical sendup of mid-2000s gangster rap culture in Germany.

"I'm a real gangster, I got a D in math," Slikk rapped in a video posted online months before his keyboard crashout, "I'm a real gangster, I burn CDs."

Norman's first videos were filmed in his childhood bedroom under the group name Leck Mich TV ("Lick Me TV") with the help of friends and a hand-me-down camcorder that only worked while plugged in.

Since YouTube wasn't widely adopted in Germany yet, his videos circulated through niche forums and humor sites like Lustich.de, where context was easily stripped away.

The fifth entry in the Real Gangster series, "Real Gangster 5: Playing PC," was the one that changed everything.

In it, Slikk's character breaks into an absurd, theatrical rage after his game fails to load quickly enough. The clip was soon uploaded to YouTube, where, detached from its original context, it became mistaken for the real thing.

How Did Norman Kochanowski React To His Internet Fame?

The humor of Norman Kochanowski's videos hinged on how convincingly over-the-top his characters were. Ironically, that same acting talent made it difficult for most viewers to understand they were watching a performance.

After Focus TV lifted the Unreal Tournament video and falsely claimed it was a secretly filmed meltdown from a boy named Leopold, the backlash against Norman intensified.

That year, he gave an interview to Counterstrike.de, in which he described the fallout: "My so-called 'classmates' make fun of me. Some even hit me."

At the same time, Norman posted a note to his blog, Hodenmumps.net, in an attempt to clarify what the videos actually were:

"I'm not sick and not insane either, I only have a humor that not everyone understands immediately. I also have acting talent. I can represent something so real that many think it would be real."

The statement, while measured, did little to shift public perception.

People continued to call him unstable, and remix videos ballooned in popularity, spreading the myth of "Leopold" even further.

Eventually, Norman took the videos down from his own site, deleted the Slikk9000 channel, and stepped away from the internet. A final message on Hodenmumps simply read: "The real gangster is a thing of the past."

What Is Slikk, The Angry German Kid, Up To Now?

In 2011, a YouTube channel named Cochan91 began posting workout videos where a pale, serious-looking guy in camo pants lifted weights in no-frills gyms and garages. The videos didn't attract much attention at first, but little by little, some viewers began to ask, "Aren't you that YouTube kid?"

The YouTuber never responded and continued to post workout videos, getting visibly swole year by year.

By October 2017, speculation that Cochan91 was the Angry German Kid had ramped up, and this time, Norman actually responded.

He posted a rap track uploaded under the alias Hercules Beaz, flexing his new lifestyle as a fitness nut, and finally drawing a connection between his childhood fame and new life.

In another English-language video, Norman laid things bare. He described a childhood of constant mockery when kids bullied him and recorded him every day for years.

As much as he tried to escape the fallout from the video, it always came back to haunt him. "I dyed my hair black, threw my glasses away," he said, "wore contact lenses so nobody could recognize me."

But all that did not help. This was followed by three more years of "daily psychic terror," as he explained, which made him embittered and "insane."

"I wanted people to be afraid of me," he decided, so he started intimidating his classmates and eventually announced a possible shooting rampage. Norman Kochanowski was expelled from his school for the threat and spent a month in juvenile detention.

Kochanowski also talks about having trouble finding work due to the Angry German Kid video, and how he spent a few years living with his parents, eating good and lifting heavier weights to build his body. Eventually, he did land an apprenticeship where he made new friends to party with, a new car and even his first girlfriend.

Still, for Norman "Hercules" Kochanowski, the fallout from the Angry German Kid video wasn't entirely life-ending. In the description of his rap video, he strikes a more reflective tone on how his life has changed over the past two decades.

"Today, I'm glad about the hype I had back then. Without the feeling of being a laughingstock and the daily psychological terror, I might never have put so much effort into everything and might have been just the same kid who hates on the internet, eats chips, and plays games."

Where Can I Find Norman "Hercules" Kochanowski Online Today?

Norman Kochanowski doesn't post on platforms beyond YouTube, and even his video presence is more or less limited to sharing workout videos and music under his producer name "Hercules Beatz."

The best way to keep up with Norman online today is through his YouTube channel @normankochanowski91, where his most recent video has him showing off his crystal stemware collection while cooking up music at his desk.

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For the full history of Angry German Kid, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information. To see the rest of our "Where Are They Now" series, you can find them all here. Stay tuned for next week's editorial!

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