About

Dimitri Finds Out, also known as “musical personality" ("Музыкальная личность”) in Russian^[2], is a series of parody videos that use false subtitles in a similar manner to the Hitler Reacts series. The videos feature a clip of an interview taken inside a Russian night club and are accompanied by custom subtitles used to make Dimitri (invented Russian name for the protagonist) appear as if he cannot contain his excitement about a subject, forcing him to dance.

Origin

The interview was recorded in the night club "Compass" ("Компас") in the Russian city Veliky Novgorod by the local television company "Triada".^[16][17] The first video clips of the interview appeared on March 28th, 2008 on Russian websites often titled as "Very Bad Music" ("Очень плохая музыка”) in Russian.^[18]

The oldest known Youtube upload of the video clip was on October 11th, 2008 by user 4gfdy.^[1] A subtitled version was posted by YouTuber Rammsteinchile95 with the title "Very Bad Music" on January 5th, 2010. The translation revealed that the interviewer was asking a man about the genre of music playing in the club, to which he responds by breaking out in dance to the song "Sound of Sunday" by Joonas Hahmo.^[4]

On March 12th, 2013 the television company uploaded the full interview in high quality on Youtube providing more information about the video clip. The full interview reveals that the reporter Varvara Brandl (Варвара Брандл) wants to learn about trance music in the club for the show "Rayn" ("Рэйн").^[16] The music in the end of the full interview is "Atlantida" by Alexander Popov feat Syntigma.^[19]

There is almost no information about "Compass" in Veliky Novgorod on the internet. The few sources show that between 2008 and 2009 it was a location where every Thursday DJs played music for students.^[20][21]

The man in the video is unknown, but the blog Tribute to Dimitri^[5] tracked down several photos from other sources of at least someone looking like Dimitri. The earliest parody video was uploaded to YouTube^[6] on January 27th, 2010 and was accompanied by subtitles complaining about bots found on the online game "Silkroad online" by Joymax. Joymax has been failing to fight the bots for many years.

Credible information about the protagonist

There are multiple independent comments from seemingly local people who state that the name of the protagonist is Denis (Денис). Two independent comments from 2013 and 2018 on the Russian social media service VKontakte stated that Denis worked as a taxi driver in the past. One added that Denis has a negative attitude towards his fame.^[22][23][24] "Окорочков", "Корочков" and "Козлов" were named as possible last names for the protagonist. There is also information which indicates that he made effort to keep low profile and even deleted traces when someone found him which is the reason why numerous attempts to locate him on social media failed.

Spread

On July 7th, 2010, one of the first popular Dimitri remixes was uploaded by YouTuber NiteHighway.^[7] This version posed the conversation as a troll being interviewed about Blizzard's Real ID system for Battle.net. It was shared on Reddit^[8], GameTrailers^[9] and FunnyJunk.^[10]

On March 16th, 2011, YouTuber adipuppy uploaded a version in which Dimitri finds out that it's Friday^[11] as a response to the Rebecca Black video. This video appeared on FunnyJunk^[12], VideoSift^[13], pop culture blog Blame It On The Voices^[14] and the Body Building forums.^[15]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Search for Dimitri Finds Out peaked in March 2011, coinciding with the Friday version.

External References