Filthy Frank: Provocateur, Musician, Comedian, Morbid, Self Loathing Social Media Giant
Introduction:
Social media is one of the biggest technological forces of our time and is a continuous driving force that boosts the notoriety of people and organizations abroad. Social media is a tool that offers the ability for people to make something of themselves, it creates a window of one’s life, brand, persona, and is also a content creating machine. YouTube is one of the largest and most prominent platforms for content creation and has essentially evolved to be a television network. This social media platform has granted people the ability to post videos they’ve put effort into making and share them with others. As a result of social media metrics, many YouTubers experience an increase in popularity as they generate more views, more revenue through monetization, and an overall increase in production value the more positive metrics are. These days, famous YouTubers are almost on the same level as celebrities and this is all thanks to the power of social media, what they use it for, and how they use it. One YouTuber in particular, who currently has over 4.5 million subscribers, is a “jack of all trades” as he is a content creator who engages in provocative comedy, video production, storytelling, and music production. He has seen a significant rise in popularity, increased production value, and musical engagement. He collaborates with other famous, like-minded YouTubers and has been referred to as “the father of alt-comedy” on YouTube. He is George “Joji” Miller, better known by his online persona Filthy Frank.
YouTube Persona — The Filthy Frank Show:
George Miller, or as I shall refer to him by his stage name Filthy Frank or just Frank, runs a YouTube channel called ‘TVFilthyFrank’ which is the hub for his comedic content. It was started in early 2013, but Frank has been engaged in YouTube since 2008. It was in 2013 where he started the Filthy Frank channel and worked from there. He dabbles in various forms of comedic content formats such as singular short film productions, face-to-camera discussions, and others. He has a very morbid sense of humor, expresses edgy, provocative, offensive, self loathing banter as well as constantly jokes about taboo subjects and vast amounts of his fans love him for this. Frank gains a lot of positive traction from his content because his work is essentially “alternative-comedy” and he effectively normalizes this offensive form of comedy due to his popularity. Thus, he lends a platform for this type of comedy to thrive since he is popular and humorously engaging. Frank’s channel description puts this well, it elaborately describes the thematic aspect of the Filthy Frank Show. It says, “Filthy Frank is the embodiment of everything a person should not be. He is anti-PC, anti-social, and anti-couth. He behaves and reacts excessively to everything expressly to highlight the ridiculousness of racism, misogyny, legalism, injustice, ignorance and other social blights. He also sets an example to show how easy it is in the social media for any zany material to gain traction/followings by simply sharing unsavoury opinions and joking about topics many find offensive. There is no denying that the show is terribly offensive, but this terrible offensiveness is a deliberate and unapologetic parody of the whole social media machine and a reflection of the human microcosm that that social media is.” The content is very diverse in its offensive and ridiculous nature. Throughout his channel, various videos include alcohol, drunk filmmaking, dangerous activities to the point where blood is drawn, cake baking with ingredients that should never be used to bake a cake, dead rats, ramen noodles cooked in washing machines and bathtubs, universes where chromosomes are used as currency, various parodies, and of course, endless amounts of morbid jokes, and plenty more. Sounds wild, doesn’t it? And tremendous amounts of people offer their love and support for Frank, who is, at this point, a full on YouTube star.
The show is indeed very wacky and wild in several aspects. Another fun feature of his channel is that Frank plays a variety of characters. Some include Filthy Frank himself, his pink morphsuit sporting sidekick Pink Guy, a frog man, PolitikZ the SoundCloud rapper, and Chin Chin — a powerful god. In regards to the character Chin Chin, Frank’s influence spreads here, as the powerful god requests fans of the show to offer sacrifices to him. This is where the compilation videos of Frank’s fans doing a variety of strange and unusual things that are “sacrifices” for Chin Chin appear. In addition to this, he collaborates with friends who play other characters in the show such as Wheels, the Roast Master, and even a sentient Macbook that finds existence painful. Frank also collaborates with other famous YouTubers, which is another way how his popularity grows. These famous YouTubers are like-minded comedians including h3h3productions (3.7 million subscribers), iDubbbzTV (4.1 million subscribers), maxmoefoe (2.4 million subscribers), Anything4Views (201k subscribers), and HowToBasic (8.8 million subscribers). Together, these YouTubers collaboratively produce content and make for more elaborate, extra ridiculous, and hilarious videos. Filthy Frank is also immersed in meme culture, he runs an Instagram page named papafranku (732k followers) where he extends his comedy through memes and “shitposting” on top of extending his social media presence. Filthy Frank puts a lot of effort into this show and the videos in their setup go to show the production quality. He has truly become a YouTube sensation and has brought forth a different yet interesting take on comedy to prominence on social media.
Music — Pink Guy:
Filthy Frank does not only create content for YouTube, he is also a musical artist and is increasingly gaining popularity in this area on top of YouTube stardom. Frank takes this field seriously and comedically. He makes independent music and can be found on SoundCloud under the name ‘joji’. However, he is most popular in the field of music as ‘Pink Guy’ and dabbles in rap music with ridiculous, crude lyrics he makes for the show and its comedic effect. Under Pink Guy, two albums have been released thus far. These albums are self-titled ‘Pink Guy’ and the most recent ‘Pink Season’ — which contains a whopping 35 songs. Although there is a tremendous amount of offensive subject matter, Frank is actually a talented music producer, making catchy beats and melodies. To offer perspective on the attractiveness and popularity of the music from Pink Guy, the album Pink Season reached the top of the iTunes charts, was the most downloaded album on Apple Music, and reached number 70 on the Billboard 200. Pretty crazy, huh? A crude musician wearing a pink morphsuit reaching top-tier recognition on iTunes. It has gotten to the point where Pink Guy is becoming a musical phenomenon as he now conducts live performances. Recently, he did a live set in Austin, Texas and there are talks for a Pink Guy tour, which will undoubtedly boost Frank’s popularity even further. It is very apparent that loads of people enjoy Pink Guy’s weird, crude, yet oddly enjoyable music if fans want a tour to happen. One fan who commented on the live performance in Texas had this to say, “he’s still talented as fuck. he is a master of the cringe and political incorrectness” (Daniel Wallis). Filthy Frank is rocketing towards high celebrity status because of his well-received dark comedy and musical talent.
Conclusion:
Filthy Frank is a star, to say the least. He has reached a level of popularity through edgy, morbid, offensive, and ridiculous comedy on YouTube — means which seem unimaginable since he is so provocative and politically incorrect. Frank’s show contains a vast amount of crude subject matter and offensive material that many people would be turned off by, yet he sees so much positive reception and support making this sect of comedy an ever normalized and growing one. Not only is he a content creator of good quality in terms of production and interesting narratives, but he also gained and continues to gain significant popularity through his music. Pink Guy, the ridiculously crude pink morphsuit wearing musician and character of the Filthy Frank Show saw himself on top of the charts because of the album Pink Season which boosted his popularity even further. In a ‘Hot Ones’ episode that featured h3h3productions, a known Filthy Frank Show collaborator, he regarded Frank as the greatest YouTube personality in a very telling quote. This is what he had to say: “He’s so un-PC, he’s so obscene, he’s so shunned by YouTube, but he’s succeeded like against all the odds of having the most un-Disney Channel [content] on YouTube and he just like by sheer will made it, carved out this obscene space, he’s like the father of alt-comedy on YouTube” (Ethan of h3h3productions, Hot Ones). George Miller, better known as Filthy Frank made it despite the unhinged nature of his content. He has seen great success by staying true to what he makes and broke barriers. His use of social media has benefited him colossally and his influence continues to spread across the various platforms of social media. Even PewDiePie, the 50 plus million subscriber king of YouTube, makes comedic skit-style content that is seemingly inspired by Frank’s style. Filthy Frank is a notable YouTube personality who uses social media so well that even despite months between episodes of the show, fans still return to indulge in his comedy. He is undoubtedly worthy of YouTube hall of fame status, he is a social media phenomenon.
#RTA902 — Final Project
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wcgEVK4FeA
