What the Hell are Singaporeans Subscribing to?
- Taufiq Rozaini
- Feb 17, 2019
- 12 min read
Updated: Feb 17, 2019
I was doing research on another article idea about how local Youtubers over-pander to their local audiences and in doing so I stumbled upon a list of channels with the most Singaporean subscribers. The more I looked through it the more I was surprised by what the hell Singaporeans are into. Did me up some research into the channels and so here's a list of the more surprising ones. The list can be ranked either by subscribers or by total video views and so I'll talk about the outliers in each. Exploring here won't be done in any particular order, I'll be ignoring the order of the list and skipping those that are expected like your everyday Loh Yeh Moh Yeh Jianhao Tan (huge throwback, I feel like he's really come a long way) or Wahbanana.
I consider myself a huge Youtube addict, at any given time it's the first tab that's open on my browser regardless of what I'm doing. I'm subscribed to about 160 channels surrounding mostly about science and infotainment, music (mostly guitar and metal), TV shows, comedy sketch channels and tech. I know the area of Youtube that I surf is just a tiny portion of the general content that's out there but going through this list and diving deep really shows me how tiny it is. I view 1% of 1% of content out there and I believe that's still an underestimation. I follow our local Youtubers mostly to support local content and also in the ever-fading hope that they will produce quality content. Having said that I have literally never heard of any of these channels that far outrank the ones we know and hate.
Let's start with Oddbods, the channel with the second highest Singaporean subscriber count that for some reason, despite being around for 4 years and having over 3 million subscribers, still does not have a unique channel URL. Surpassing Xiaxue's and Dee Kosh, the team behind these bunch of Teletubbies-inspired thingamajigs must be doing something right. The channel can be classified as a kid's channel aimed at the kids who are being e-raised by tablets (get it, erased). You know those kids, we've all seen them when we eat out, glued to the screens whilst their parents get some time off to themselves. Let's not get into the ethics of digital parenting though. Their videos basically detail, in episodic form, the antics that the 6 zanily-named characters (and...Jeff...) get up to and I have to say it's pretty great. Every character has a unique personality that's well used and intertwined to create engaging narratives and for fear of sounding like a movie critique judging a kid's show, I'll stop there and summarise by saying it's really well done. On top of that the animation is pretty tippy-toppy-notchy relative to other 3D animated TV shows. This isn't your run of the mill Pinkfong copycat rehashing Baby Shark sequels. Even the fur in their pyjama things are rendered well and the bokeh'd backgrounds is a nice touch. Though it's not said, Oddbods is run by One Animation Studios which is actually based in Singapore so yeah it's a Singaporean channel for real. They're really a diamond in the Elsagate-ridden rough. On top of the Oddbods show, they release other shows as well like Antics which, you guessed it, is about ants (in my pants, the lesser known Pinkfong bluegrass country hit). Aiming at kids, you could easily cheap out and make your 2D kid's bop videos and call it a day but I'm glad to see we Singaporeans have some taste when it comes to the content we choose to substitute our parenting with (okay I'll stop taking shots at tablet parenting now). Credit where it's due, Oddbods deserves the subscribers they get because no doubt their team cares about the toons they put out.
It might surprise you and not really surprise you then to know that number 5 and 6 on the list by subscribers goes to Tawhid Afridi and The Ajairi LTD. Let's start with Mr Afridi first. People talk about how Japanese culture is weird and things can be so Japanese-y but I think people don't give enough credit to the untouchable and unique tone of South Asians which is basically India and it's surrounding countries. Mr Afridi's channel description is as follows:
"On my channel you will discover a variety of exciting characters, full of punchlines and non-stop comedic elements! Please allow me to make you lol."
It strikes the perfect balance between awkward phrasing, unnecessary politeness and lack of self-awareness that makes it indescribably South Asian. In short, Mr Afridi runs a Bangladeshi vlog in the Bengali language from what I can tell. Besides that he also does prank videos, funny sketches and occasionally a song or two. Basically the subject of his channel is the cult of personality revolving around Mr Afridi. I can't make heads of tails about what his channel is really about because there is barely an instance of english but judging from the rapid cutting and tone, it's the Bangladeshi Ryan Higa. It surprises me even more that he's ranked number 5 even though he targets such a tiny minority of Singaporeans. Perhaps the migrant workers of Singapore regard him as an icon (living).
The Ajairi LTD on the other hand is a little bit more straightforward. They make funny sketches and songs, that's it. I'm pretty sure the merit in their songs is in the comedic value based on their thought provoking yet cheeky channel description
"Wasting time is also an art ;)".
How dare they sum up my blog. They use dialogues of famous actors to create their songs and, I quote from them "hopefully you guys will love this official music video". The niche is clear here and the content I can only assume is funny. It very much looks like your Jianhao Tan sketch kind of channel with the same recurring actors and videos very much focused on delivering the punchline rather than the quality of the video. Being yet another Bangladeshi channel, I can't help but think that they must be doing something right. If you're okay with the kind of listicle format of humour that our Singaporean channels so heavily rely on, you'll probably like this Channel and if you don't then you won't. You also won't like it if you're racist so I recommend not being that.
Drawing views yet again from your kids demographic (I assume), Dan Surprise is 21st on the subscriber count list but number 4 by total number of views, mostly because he uploads videos as often as I insert a hyperlink. He uploads almost daily with at least 5 videos a week. Dan, surprise surprise, is a channel wholly dedicated to unboxing, playing with and reviewing dinosaur, shark or animal toys only. Only. Not toys in general, not experimenting with them or filming cute kids playing with them. Only animal figurines and only reviewing them and occasionally he plays with them. His videos are all from the exact same angle, with the exact same lighting and the exact same voice-over and on the same table. Dan Surprise is the definition of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Somehow or another, with such a specific video subject matter and unvaried content, Dan the man has raked in over 400 million views (damn Daniel). I watch his videos and it boggles my mind to try and understand how he has raked in videos with 14 or 17 million views. He points his camera to a fluorescent-lit table with an average camera and does an average-quality voice-over and yet Dan surprises me by making an estimated 2.4K-37.6K per month. His videos are rather lacklustre for your average kid's hyperactive minds yet he doesn't go into enough detail I feel to appeal to your actual toy collecting connoisseur so I'm really not sure what his exact audience demographic is. But he inspires me. If a man can film him handling some toys and use some simple illustrator tricks to create a logo and still make a great living, then maybe one day this blog will be my living. You reap what you sow, so help me reap goddamnit.
Reigarw Comparisons has over 900k subscribers putting it at number 14 on the list far exceeding people like TheMingThing (500k++) and Naomi Neo (370k++). This is a channel I would have totally fallen in love with as a nerdy kid. This channel specialises in those videos of size comparisons where the camera slowly zooms out revealing bigger and bigger things all set to Two Steps From Hell music. You can tell that whoever is behind this channel puts in effort. Take for example his 3D comparison of the size of the universe. There's a lot of things that we obviously can't visualise which I find his depiction of quite good. The name of the game here is fathoming the unfathomable and he does a great job. In his video of price comparisons, he shows a hand for scale to compare to a million bucks. Is it just me or does that vampiric blood-stained hand seem just a tad bit taller than a Tibetan Mastif. Mr Reigarw I don't know what you think the average hand size is but if you think it's that, I'm sure you must be blessed. Exuding BDE (or this for you 80's rock heads), Reigarw falls short in fact checking. For example in the price comparisons video he states 1 gram of antimatter as being worth $65 trillion but NASA claims it's 62.5 trillion. Small little things like that obviously don't matter to the little kid who gets inspired by these kinds of videos though (A.K.A. me) but it does matter if you want to be taken seriously. But hey, he might still be inspiring the next generation of nerds. So rock on Mr Reigarw.
FunnyPig is just...pictures. Coming in at no. 7 by views, FunnyPig's MO is basically to upload a slideshow of funny photos related to a theme and then have clickbaity captions like "Russian Artist Illustrates What Would Happen If Famous Characters Got Old And Thor Is Too Cute". Oh but it's okay though, there's tasteful royalty free music thrown over it, so it's quality. In the life cycle of a meme where it gets born in 4Chan and Reddit, gets old on Instagram and dies on Facebook, the gravedigger that displays the rotted corpses of long-buried memes is FunnyPig. I mean, they have a video all about famous protagonists with Mr Bean's face photoshopped onto them. Now if that isn't high art then slap my tibia and call me Stacey. The path to being rich is to give up all dignity. I don't have much to say about this channel except that it takes a brave man to look at that road and say "yes, I will be the man that will sacrifice my dignity." It takes a better man than me to make videos like this, I'm stuck writing a blog thinking my content is better. Who's the one making money? Not me.
I would add the logo for the next channel but then it would just be a copyrighted pixelated photo of Luffy from One Piece. That kind of gives you an idea of how little Bruce Qiao cares about his channel. His channel description is empty and his channel banner is what I can only assume is some stolen fan art or wallpaper. Bruce Qiao only has 1,195 subscribers as of writing this but has over 200 million views putting him at number 18 on the list. So what's his deal? Bruce Qiao, besides what someone would say when bidding farewell to Bruce Lee, uploads Musically videos of hot girls or current trends and titles them by numbering them in no discernible order or pattern. The videos aren't numbered in order and sometimes he'll have it as "04" and sometimes he drops the 0 and just say title it "4". His content doesn't stay consistent either as he started out uploading hot girls from Bigo Live and is currently now posting videos of cool active wallpaper. There was also a period of time where he would upload these. I think they're ads for phone games. Why they're uploaded here and titled "01" I have no idea. I half expected for the videos to end in a jump scare. Weirder still, his videos are not monetised. Some of his videos have garnered millions of views and at the rate he's uploading (which is more than daily), he could easily make a considerable amount of money. Yet Bruce Qiao remains a complete mystery. What's his purpose? Why are his videos titled as random numbers? We'll never know.
Saving the strangest for last, with 450,000 subscribers is Elixir De Vie. 22nd in views and 31st in subscribers, this channel is nothing to write home about but it still beats Treepotatoes' and Ridhwan's channels. Buried in the "meh" part of the list this channel is just so doo-diddly weird that it brings out my Ned Flanders Tourettes. Elixir De Vie is an "anti-aging" and "cometic surgery" clinic based in Indonesia. This place is really sketchy, their website looks like something coded back in 2004. Just take a loot at the photos of the clinic.
I appreciate the thought of adding a large watermark in the highly-likely case that someone would steal their photos. The channel itself is run by Dr Tjandra who's view of plastic surgery leaves a lingering scent of "horror movie psychopath doctor."
This channel showcases Dr Arthur Tjandra's artistic works, who is world famous for his body sculpting skill, which combines 3-dimensional liposculpting and autologous fat grafting to breasts and buttocks. Besides breasts and buttocks, autologous fat grafting can be done to face, as well as female genitals to rejuvenate both face and genitals. It can also be performed on male's penis to increase the girth. Dr Arthur Tjandra has probably performed the most number of whole body transformation surgeries in the world. Every single patient who goes to him eventually opts for whole body transformation. As body sculpting surgeries involve breasts and buttocks, as well as genitals, most of our videos show naked bodies. Those who are offended by naked images, please DO NOT click on any of our videos! INDONESIANS ARE NOT ALLOWED ON THIS CHANNEL! OUR VIDEOS ARE NOT MEANT FOR INDONESIANS! IF YOU ARE INDONESIAN, PLEASE LEAVE NOW!
Many, many questions arise. Firstly, what does it say about a doctor when he views his patients as "artistic works." He seems to treat plastic surgery the way Dr Frankenstein viewed his monster. How sketchy is it to say that he has PROBABLY done the most whole body transformation surgeries? Why does every patient opt for whole body transformation? Are people going "hmm I only want to have double eyelids but since I'm here might as well Michael Jackson me up Dr Tjandra make me unrecognisable"? or is it by accident like "whoops accidentally grafted all your skin onto different parts of your body so you look like a patchwork blanket now"? Lastly, what does Dr Tjandra have against Indonesians? It's one thing to not have an Indonesian target audience it's another thing to not want them at all.
You may have noticed the naked images part of his message. If you don't want to see them, don't click on any of the links in this paragraph. Elixir De Vie is where Dr Arthur posts highly detailed and graphic videos documenting his "works of art." The patients seem to have no qualms about being filmed and have rather little to say at all. It's also kind of freaky how casual he treats all this. In this video where he performs surgery on a vagina he makes a pun on the video title calling it "chee-bye-plasty". He begins the video by explaining the surgery with his hands in his pockets whilst his patient lies, vagina-agape on the bed next to him. There's also a camera pointed right at the lady's thing. In this one he talks about the same surgery casually flexing his marathon completion shirt. I'm not quite sure what Youtube's rules are on nudity but I'm guessing Dr Arthur gets away with it cause of 'educational purposes'. I'm not sure who's watching all these videos. Is there a huge demographic of on-the-fence plastic surgery consumers? Is there a huge market of wannabe plastic surgeons? Do people just love Dr Arthur? Or are there just perverts out there who can only access Youtube to see naked women? This whole thing doesn't make sense and it just gets weirder.
As of Feb 2019, Dr Tjandra has taken a huge change of tone, mostly in the religious sense. An avid practitioner of Tantric Buddhism, Arthur McTantric has begun releasing short videos documenting his experience with spirituality. Here he talks about pre-determined fate by doing a cover of Que Sera Sera and I Wanna Be Rich. Here he talks about choosing a religion where he gets interrupted by a crying baby and has to switch locations. This brings up more questions then answers first and foremost being: what the hell is a plastic surgeon doing giving religious advice on the SAME channel where he cuts naked women up? He is so serious about his religious endeavours in fact that he has his own Wordpress. Guess what, he hasn't posted a single thing there. Sporadically, he will post vlogs of his trips where he is always mysteriously alone. Dr Tjandra is an enigma. Elixir De Vie is by far the weirdest channel on this list and the man behind it is even weirder.
This just scratches the surface of weird channels that far exceed the viewer and subscriber count of your traditional Youtube channels. There's a lot of weird, niche and unexpected channels that just beg the question "why is THIS what gets views?" It goes to show that the Youtube formula is simple if you really wanna hack it. Post often and don't post your own content when great content is already out there to rip off. People like Jianhao Tan, contrary to popular wisdom, are putting in way too much effort. I'm reminded that I'm such a narrow portion of the whole demographic that's out there surfing Youtube and I'll never come close to seeing all that Youtube has to offer. Having said that I can't help but scratch my head when I see these channels and ask: Who the hell is watching this?
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