YouTuber 'Destroys' Dr. Phil in Front of Millions
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This is Triggered Tro. And these are his videos.
Please don't kiss me. That is weird and also illegal. And why are we yelling?
Garbage. But why are they all across the website, and why are so many people watching them? Well, a few reasons. Biggest one, content on YouTube comes in circles. Trends certainly come and go, but when some come again, and again, and again, you begin to realize that what's going on here has been going on now for over a decade. Of course, you could immediately trace what Tro is doing to LeafyIsHere style videos that were produced beginning about two years ago. Prior to then, you could make connections to both h3h3 style of reaction commentaries, themselves inspired by even earlier videos produced by Filthy Frank and of course Ray William Johnson. And even then, you can go back even further to what the Fine Brothers were doing around 2010, and the contemporary reply girls, and of course, the origins of YouTube reactions themselves, shock videos and general vlog commentary.
1:00 And while that's a great correlation, the only thing that can be drawn out of this is the obvious. Whenever there's something to talk about on this website, someone is, of course, going to talk about and capitalize on it. And every time this style of video has been popularized, it's become oversaturated, overdone, and interest wanes until time and time again, a new video or a new personality comes to light, and interest in the commentary is re-ignited.
The first wave of reactions was wholly impersonal because of the size of the website at the time of its beginnings. But by the time Ray William Johnson had inserted himself into this style of video, he brought something crucial into it, which was his personality. An element through which videos could be diffused to the audience, the introduction of a commentator whose thoughts and opinions could be relied on week after week worked rhetorically to provide credibility to Johnson's videos, giving them greater appeal than some no-name sitting in front of a camera and giving his thoughts on a shock video.
2:00 But at the same time, Ray's critiques remained impersonal. He's not attacking anyone in the videos for any wrongdoing, because more or less, Ray's presence is kind of like a lovable TV host discussing happenstance blunders.
When his videos fell out of favor, all of that changed with Filthy Frank's "Cringe of the Week" and h3h3's conception of the reaction video. While they both maintain the idea that a personal host should be present in the videos, their attacks in the videos themselves and the information they discuss become distinctly personal. Because what's often being discussed isn't someone making a casual mistake on live television. Rather, the focus of the arguments in the videos becomes on that which is perceived to be outlandish or improper by the commentator, giving the videos increased rhetorical appeal relative to those videos only making impersonal attacks. In Filthy Frank's video against Truth Orange, for example:
Ah, yes. Left swipe that with the D! Because that's what the cool teens use. [Laughter] Hey, John Johnson, let's get all these hip, cool internet people from from the from the YouTube. Because teens are mindless and will listen to anything YouTubers say. Well, Bradley, you're not wrong about the second part.
Their mistakes are the cause of criticism for both Filthy Frank and h3h3, as displayed in this video:
Everybody's intro is out of control!
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3:00 But what h3h3 in particular added to what was generally accepted as a means of criticism is the specifics of a particular individual's personality and their inherent characteristics. And while these criticisms aren't harsh at all, they opened the door for LeafyIsHere, Pyrocynical, The Fuqers, and now Triggered Tro to do the exact same thing.
As with before, a lull in the content left the door open for new people to step in and take the place of the former commentators, and a new formula for commentary was born. First, they pick a personality. For Leafy, it was Jacob Sartorius and Keemstar. They were two of the biggest offenders in the majority of his videos. For Pyrocynical, this generally took the form of a repeated and drawn-out comedic motif referencing older videos, specifically this one and this one. And for The Fuqers, it typically focused on the YouTubers Durv and Onision, and to this day, still kind of does. Second, once you've got your personality, each of these YouTubers picks out things that are generally, again, outlandish or improper, and they talk about them. Again, and again, and again.
4:00 But now it's 2018. That wave of reaction commentary has pretty much died, and another hole has been left gaping wide for another set of commentators to step in and fill the void. Triggered Tro is the first of these commentators, and like his predecessors, he's got his personalities: Danielle Bregoli and Woah Vicky, and I mean even you could call Dr. Phil a personality a little bit. He's certainly talked about him multiple times over as well. He maintains a personalist hosting style and maintains personal attacks. But unlike his predecessors, Tro has found a sweet spot of sorts in the blatant false titling and thumbnailing of videos such that the potential audience will confuse them with legitimate, corporately produced television content. And he's certainly aware why this works for him, because it's a process he's repeated over 10 times now.
And you'd think that because his video was supposed to be about him, this concluding section would be the longest. But seeing as he's done nothing original, there's really nothing new to add, besides the fact that he represents a further distillation of YouTube commentary into quick, easily produced, money-generating content. Also, seeing as he's gained over 80% of his subscribers in the past three months using this process, that appears to be the trend for this year.
5:00 This is Mr Amazing. Thanks for watching.
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