I don’t know how many years exactly I’ve been watching YouTube, but it’s probably more than ten already. It started rather innocently, a music video here, a funny meme video there, and then, wholly unnoticeably, it turned into sleepless nights and endless hours spent drifting on the wave of the algorithm. I don’t know what those early years looked like exactly anymore, how I was able to find interesting things (especially because back then there weren’t all that many) and anyway, back then I mainly used it as my source for my English-learning. But, of course, at some point the learning became just a pretense in order to watch hours of videos that I thought were cool, until YouTube turned into my main entertainment medium, which it is till this day.
I only knew the English/American YouTube scene. Vloggers, the first influencers – I caught all of that. I also wasn’t looking for anything else. Sure, I knew a couple of Polish figures, but that was about it. Until last year, after I’d quit my job where I spoke loads of German and suddenly felt the need to hear my father tongue again. To read ‘The Hunger Games’ in German again didn’t seem like enough, so I went on the hunt for the German YouTube scene.
And boy, what did I find there. It started with Funk, but I’ve showered enough praise on them already. In any case it brought me to the non-public media side of YouTuber and what I found there was a well-established, commercially successful, interesting, a bit moronic naturally, but overall pretty entertaining community with hours of content, which I, given the circumstances of the year 2020, had enough time for to shoot through my eyeballs. It took alarmingly little time for me to be well-versed enough to recognize names, faces and events in various kinds of crossovers.
I got caught on one story in particular, so much so that I knew, before having started this blog, that I wanted to write about it in the future. Where I live now it’s a tall order to share it with anyone anyway, because who in Poland cares about some German Dudes goofing off on the German side of YouTube. Further, this allows me the opportunity to present this story in a greater context of topics that interest me and it gives me a reason to do a bit of research.
But first, the story – as promised in the title – the story of two bros.
- TeamBro vs TeamWill
I’ve always hated tricks and ‘pranks’ even more so, especially when they became popular on YouTube and it turned out that they were mostly fake or toxic or even dangerous. Pranks, sometimes called ‘social experiments’ for the sake of the algorithm, are generally speaking mean tricks people play on each other, or, which is worse, on strangers. All of that gets filmed and clicks get made. Before YouTube there was Jackass, the crazy production from Steve-O and his daredevil gang, the pioneers of this type of content (though the guys also did other weird shit, though at least they were less rude towards strangers). In any case, the point was to get all the more extreme and play pranks on people.
When, as I jumped from creator to creator in a frenzy of watching German videos, I stumbled upon a legendary prank-rivalry between two dudes and their teams, I wasn’t too keen on dealing with it too much. But hey, you gotta know exactly what and why you judge something, so I started watching the first season.
And then the weekend was over and I had seen everything. It was fall 2020 and at that point my mental health was pretty much in shambles. And then there was this captivating story, that, for the first time in a while, provided me with a real sense of immersion. I desperately needed to know what happened next and each episode was an adventure in itself. As much as I wanted to watch the videos several times over I abstained and saved them up, so that I could view all of it again with a bit of detachment. I did so for three days in March, where I did nothing else but watch those damn videos, take pages of notes and naturally create an Excel spreadsheet, but that we’ll come back to later.
The second time around the story wasn’t as breathtaking anymore but it was still interesting enough that I want to talk about it. I’m just about to start, just one little disclaimer: should anyone, for heaven’s sake, who appears in this story read this, please don’t take it personally. We’ll dive deeper into this in the third part but this is just a story and the characters are exactly that, too – just characters.
In terms of background of the whole thing I can’t really say much more other than it was apparently common practice to play tricks on each other at the time and so the first official prank of the series came to be – 5000 Cups Apartment Prank!. Actually a pretty funny video, one of the guys fills the apartment of the other with cups, pretty self-explanatory, there’s an indignant reaction, everything the way it should be. I can’t of course be sure, but it seems to me like the two protagonists didn’t really have a plan, to make such a big deal out of it. The first video appears without context in the playlist and there’s no talk of any competition or rivalry yet.
So, the series is off to a start then, but what is it actually about? Imagine Romeo and Juliet, sans borderline problematic teen love story – two houses, two families who fight with each other about honor. Naturally it isn’t as serious in the case of the YouTube series but still, that was somehow my first association.
On one side there’s Rob, channel name CrispyRob, the head of TeamBro, actually a cooking channel, though he’s participated in some other YouTube stuff and has made different types of content as well. To be fair it’s not that important in this context. On the other side there’s Simon Will, musician, known for fast rap and as part of the Funk network. Well, I don’t actually know if he’s known for the latter, but either way, he’s part of it. He’s the head of TeamWill. I can’t really say much more about the two, they’re just two young, cool daredevils, there are a few differences in age and background but in all matters which are important in the context of this story they’re pretty much the same, which is also a reason why the show works.
The two main characters are joined by flatmates, friends and family, anyone who has had any part in the pranks, even if just as a spectator. The series takes place in Cologne in the years 2017-2019. Most of the pranks take place in the apartments of the two leads. Crews and locations change from time to time but one thing stays the same – even though it’s called TeamBro vs TeamWill, the two chiefs are always in the foreground and I’m not even saying that to be mean. The whole show only works because there are two charismatic protagonists who want for nothing else than to protect their honor. That may sound a little childish but all in all that’s what it boils down to – every prank is aimed at the other’s ego and every challenge results in ‘do this, or admit that you’re worse’. All of this is packaged neatly in a friendly competition, where it is emphasized several times that it’s all about ‘fun and friendship’, which ends up making the story so serious that one can be engrossed in it, but not so serious as to make it seem ridiculous.
As mentioned, the first season starts off with a pretty innocuous prank. Generally all of the videos of the first season are generally harmless, especially compared to what’s still to come. There are 13 episodes, in which from video to video the ingenuity and stakes are continually raised. Along with the viewers the protagonists learn how the game actually works and decide that it even is a game in the first place. It starts off with Simon wanting to get revenge for the cups, then Rob retaliates again, and so an innocent game turns very quickly into a competition, which is supposed to prove who the real prank master is.
It’s fun to watch. Building things, raiding the hardware store with friends, it all just looks like damn fun. Then the anticipation related to the reactions, since every video needs to take it a step further. 5000 cups, which is already crazy, turn into entire stagings with DIY-catapults and such things. Every prank must surpass the last one and the suspense must rise, of course. It has to be more challenging, more creative and more shocking for the rival. I think in that moment, when one has been in the game for months and it’s one’s turn again, the need to deliver is strong. It’s not only about making a good show, it’s also about proving oneself. And, mind you, there are no producers or TV budgets. I know, authenticity on YouTube is a whole separate issue (especially since by now it’s become a serious contender on the media market, but let’s put a pin in that) but I believe the guys that, in 2017, they really just wanted to play tricks on each other and had more motivation than a sense of strategy.
My favorite episodes, or favorite pranks, actually, from this season are on the one hand the XXL catapult (which was actually just a punchline of a game show) and the XXL laser game. With the catapult Simon has developed his own little gameshow (Beat the Will – a play on a German TV game show of a similar name) and what was fascinating to me there was how imaginative and comprehensive this prank/challenge/whatever was. Naturally it’s about setting a clever trap for Rob and continually raising the bar, but just for the effort itself I have to admire this prank. The other one I like is the laser game because I like spy movies but also because this took a lot of effort as well and it’s kind of exciting, since in that case there’s time pressure, too.
A true flagship prank however is the one with the desert, to put it succinctly Rob distributes 2 tons of sand in Simon’s apartment and creates a small 1001 nights fantasy, with a little jumpscare, of course. But this prank in turn, even though it’s not one of my favorites, is easy to understand and to remember and shows exactly what the whole game is about and the possible ramifications of the creative endeavors.
Towards the end of the season the pranks become more malicious, doors and windows and even toilets are stolen. Personally I’d hate to fall victim to something like that but as a way to build tension within the story of the two bros it’s pretty moving. At first I thought it was perhaps a bit too mean even but actually it was just good groundwork for what was yet to come in season two. The show must go on and what would a good prank game be without a few personal attacks.
The first final is an easy decision, a demolition party and a pretty well-produced song, which sets up season two. Say what you will about YouTube music but it cannot be denied that a few of ‘em really know their onions, especially when the community develops their own, ambitious standards.
Season two is a different kind of show. It’s the longest season, with 32 episodes. It’s not just prank videos however, it’s vlogs, too. It immediately becomes clear that this is more serious, because the production looks different. There’s a specific starting point, the prank-vow, that settles the only rule of the game – there are no rules. So everything is permissible, which sounds dramatic at first, but also opens the door for all kinds of weird stuff. I can’t really pick one of the pranks as my favorite from this season (apart from perhaps the visually stunning one with the confetti machine) and I prefer to look at the bigger picture – a pure escalation. I don’t know how much of it was planned but I believe the guys that it wasn’t staged, but of course, you notice that it’s not just about the pranks anymore. There’s also vlogs and cross promo of the two channels, which isn’t anything bad, by the way.
It all starts relatively innocently again, with painting the walls of each other’s flats. A recurring character in the story is Rob’s ‘evil landlord’, who absolutely cannot become aware of all the shenanigans going on at his place. There’s too much noise, walls need to be painted white all the time – as much as I’m rooting for the guys, I think as a homeowner that can be pretty stressful. At any rate, walls get painted then, attacked with paint bombs, logos get defiled, it gets all the more precarious. Then it all takes a more personal turn when Simon is put up to the challenge of getting a tattoo. Or he loses the season and admits that ‘Team Bro is the better team’ – perhaps this seems reckless or ridiculous but in that moment it must have been an incredible thrill and incredible pressure. As the pivotal point in the story it shouldn’t be underestimated either – it becomes clear that it’s about all or nothing.
From that point on it all just gets crazier and more complicated, I’m just saying DIY escape rooms, singing guides, bricked up walls and tarantula vaults. It’s coming to so much of a head, it must have been unbearably suspenseful to wait for the next video, to see what the two leads were going to do next and if they would perhaps go a step too far.
And then, suddenly silence. Three months of nothing and then it starts with such a slap in the face that it’s pretty understandable why the last month of season two got out of hand the way it did. Simon had brought his apartment back to top shape and three days later Rob painted everything pink again. Something broke then, something was set off that couldn’t be turned back anymore. The next few moves were few but they really packed a punch: wallpapering rooms with wrapping paper, stolen furniture and the prank that seemingly almost broke the friendship – when Simon stole the self-built home theater from Rob. The moment of Rob’s reaction was worth its weight in gold but I wouldn’t have traded places with him for anything. As far as I can tell this move of Simon’s was very controversial and realtalk vlogs had to follow in order to tame everyone’s mood.
And then it was time for the final showdown. It was clear that there was tension between the two protagonists – they seemed ready for a fight, wanted to prove themselves and they didn’t shy away from taunting each other. The final took place in Simon’s defiled apartment, the audience sat in the stolen theater. The host was another YouTuber, Danergy, who had also produced and sang the season two song and had appeared as a side character in the show a few times. The showdown took place on Christmas Eve and the video was the longest the show had ever seen – almost 40 minutes.
The final competition was exactly that, a tournament to find the winner. There were a few events, dexterity, knowledge, team spirit and so on. What fascinated me the most was how much of a thrill the whole thing was. I mean at the end of the day the guys just duelled with toys or played party games, and there was really nothing at stake there, and yet I was so engrossed that I couldn’t pull my eyes from the screen. The climax came in the form of the last event – luck. The score was 2:2, so there needed to be a ruling. Another controversy, because it ended up being a coin toss (done by a master of coin tossing, no less, how do people even come up with such things) and everyone was aghast. “And that’s it or what?”, Simons asks dumbfounded, as the coin lands anticlimactically in the fist of the coin master, but the result isn’t known yet. Then, after a very TV-like build-up of tension the winner is announced and it’s palpable how done with it the guys are, how positive feelings towards each other return, since the fight is over and the decision has been made. I think there couldn’t have been a better ending to this season. No rules – and the coin toss embodied that perfectly.
After a half-year break, during which viewers probably kept asking when new pranks would come, Rob started the third season with a small announcement in the style of Game of Thrones – or Game of Pranks, rather. He built a set in Simon’s apartment, dropped by as Jon Snow with an Iron Armchair, forced Simon into a Khaleesi-costume and in a storm of fake snow the two guys discussed the future of their rivalry.
In the end they strike a deal that every prank has to come with a challenge, one the other has to champion. Further they agree to leave their apartments in peace and that every video has to have a specific theme. This season is shorter, with 18 episodes, and every challenge is stretched into a few episodes, so all in all there are less pranks but the production value has increased so significantly that you can’t hold it against them.
In this season actually all pranks are impressive and I have a few favorites. The first real prank, when Simon lures Rob onto a desert island in the Mediapark in Cologne, is one of them. It’s not even just the thrill or the audacity of the whole thing, but also the clever deceit. A few days prior a video came online which didn’t really have anything to do with the big game, it was just a bit of ASMR fluff. And still, in the video Simon pretends to read a fanfiction, when it’s actually a hint for the next prank, but Rob doesn’t notice. To me that was pretty exciting and inventive.
After that there were big pranks, scavenger hunts and challenges, The Pranking Dead, Pranking Bad, Prankos and to finish off the Jokester. All of those events are entire stories, with costumes, characters, IRL video game elements, produced graphics and lots of acting. Participants get picked up at airports and brought in front of the cheese-mafia-boss, they’re forced to run through the woods at night, escaped prisoners are encountered and deserted trailers are perfect for setting off smoke-bombs. One of the peak moments was saving flatmates out of an abandoned factory, where Rob had to urbex through the facility and climb on a chimney. The penultimate prank was an escape room in the new house of TeamBro and at the very end was an intense, Gotham-inspired escape room in a cave.
It’s easily noticeable that this season isn’t like the others. On one side it was a good choice to avoid further devastations to each other’s personal spaces and on the other the show must still go on. The stakes have to keep rising and where are you supposed to go, when you’ve already done everything you can to the other person’s apartment and it almost being the straw that broke the camel’s back? These foolhardy challenges outside of their comfortable four walls also provide an additional layer of suspense and there are more possibilities, since the space and wriggle room in the apartments is limited after all.
The final is another competition, this time with host Marc Eggers, a model/amateur actor/influencer. This episode seems as if it was at least produced for TV – crisp cuts, good lighting, entertaining suspense, simply very well-made. You can see how the skills of the teams have improved over the years in all aspects and it makes for an awesome episode. Again there are a few events and at the end luck comes into play again – however this time with a semblance of agency, in the form of one of my favorite games – Egg Roulette, or ‘Russian Rawlette’, as it is called in this instance. A carton of eggs, all of them hard-boiled except one, and you hit yourself against the forehead with one of them each round. Whose hair gets conditioned with raw egg, loses – and what a beautiful end to the third season. “It can be over so fast”, Rob acknowledges and there’s no exaggerated jubilation, more of a contented confirmation of friendship and lots of relief.
I think this development in the series is impressive and most of all, smart, because when it comes to telling a story, you need to find an extremely careful balance between ‘give the people what they want’ and ‘something new that keeps their attention’. I’d have nothing against it if the third season were the last one. Every story has its time and to keep it alive artificially for money or clicks or whatever else usually doesn’t make sense, not when it’s about the value of the story itself anyway. This seems to be a common problem these days, I think, when big studios don’t realize that the stories they’re telling are actually already over. Endless remakes and sequels, where dead people suddenly come alive or when plots are tried to be made more interesting with time travel – a topic I can rant about for a long time. Better, then, to appreciate it when it’s not happening, and I think in the case of TeamBro vs TeamWill that’s a given. Not that I wouldn’t watch a next season, especially to see how the two creators would turn the concept on its head again – but it’s also fine as it is. It’s a significant heirloom of German YouTube history and, intentionally or not, a damn good story.
As mentioned before, now it’s time for my spreadsheet to step into action. I want to write a little about the data I’ve collected and analyzed, in order to give this whole thing a bit of a defined context. The whole TeamBro vs TeamWill show, as per the playlists that I examined for the purpose of this article, has 63 episodes in total and its entire length is 14 hours and 38 minutes, which means it takes about the same time to watch as Rick and Morty (season 1-4). The guys from Cologne can’t compete with the viewership of that series, since the views of Rick and Morty in the States alone is 75,46 million, according to Wikipedia anyway, though I’m sure that in reality they’re way larger. Still, the two YouTubers did reasonably well. Luckily it’s fairly easy to follow the amount of clicks on YouTube, which makes this part of the job for me a breeze. The whole series had, in the days when I did my research, meaning 13.03.2021 – 16.03.2021, an overall amount of around 60 million views (59,766,595 to be exact), around 3 million likes (2,856,000) and only 65 thousand dislikes (65,296). Not bad, especially considering that that wasn’t the plan in the first place, at least not in the beginning.
The statistics for each season didn’t overly surprise me. The longest and best-received one was season 2, with a duration of 6 hours and 36 minutes and more than half of all clicks – 30,249,483 – and a majority of the likes – 1,379,000. Season 3 performed the worst, because even though it lasted almost as long as season 2 (5 hours and 7 minutes), it only garnered just over 8 million clicks (8,282,200) and only 679,000 likes. Season 1 was only about the length of a feature film, shorter even than The Wolf of Wall Street. But it made a respectable amount of clicks, 21,234,912 and 789,000 likes to boot. The shortest episodes were announcements and the longest the final rounds of season 2 and 3.
More on content, however. I’ve divided all episodes into different categories and what came of it was that the most frequent kind of content appearing on the show were vlogs. In second place were actual pranks, then there were different kinds of challenges, scavenger hunts and escape rooms. Then there were yet other kinds of content, announcements, game shows, reactions, a song, mini-pranks and alibi-challenges (meaning various games to distract from the actual prank). In terms of the channels where the series was uploaded Simon definitely wins, because 35 videos appeared on his channels, Simon Will and simon will freunde. CrispyRob uploaded 27 episodes of the series and one of the episodes is on Danergy’s channel – the song.
What I have also calculated in terms of content was where the pranks took place. Here it’s equal – 16 times in Simon’s apartment and 16 times at Rob’s. Vlogs and announcements didn’t count in this metric, which is why the sum of this category doesn’t add up to the overall number of episodes. Additionally 9 pranks took place outside of both apartments, in and around Cologne.
The only thing missing from this part is my rating. It’s easy to tell from my writing that I think positively of the series. If it weren’t so I wouldn’t be writing about it in the first place, after all this is my corner of the Internet where it’s about what’s interesting (to me).
And yet I’m still surprised that I got so involved in this story. I marked every episode with keywords, then I counted them all up and the most frequent assessment was ‘sick’. Because that’s what I actually thought the most while watching – ‘damn, that’s so sick’. Independent of the high quality of the videos in terms of cut and such, the sheer effort was just sick. I couldn’t stop marvelling at how creative it was and to what lengths the guys were willing to go with it.
Another part of it is, naturally, that I’m not a daredevil, but that’s how I view the protagonists. I could live vicariously through them and experience all of their adventures, feeling the same thrill, which is the cathartic goal of stories in the end anyway, I suppose. And by the fact that it’s ‘just two guys’, who ‘just post videos’ it all felt closer, more real, more authentic, of course, making it all the more impressive, but, let’s put another pin in that.
As I’ve mentioned before it was simply fun to watch all of the events take place. Storming into the hardware store to buy wooden planks or metal cages or whatever else you need to make traps or devices by yourself. Perhaps that’s not special for everyone, but for me such audacity is inconceivable. I’d never have thought to put my own place, least of all someone else’s, through the ringer like that. Still, it was enticing in a way and if I could have, if I had been a YouTuber in Cologne at the time, I would’ve loved to take part in this competition. And I don’t think I’m alone with this.
Then I appreciate the series for its story, the arc of suspense, that the two YouTubers, consciously or not, have created. You can look at all the seasons just as pranks or videos but I find that the main thread and the development running through the whole thing make it more than just a video project. And that’s coming from someone who hates pranks!
The way in which both of them dealt with the topic, as I’ve said, consciously or not, made an innocent game into a competition that millions of people followed. Which isn’t pivotal to assigning quality but it’s also not something that should be underestimated. The characters are so charismatic and the motivations so clear, it’s all packaged into sensational and impressive stunts that keep progressing with each step, that you simply can’t look away. Tale as old as time, true as it can be – and two young guys who battle for honor are undoubtedly cornerstones of classical storytelling.
The two leads appeared generally likeable and honest to me and it was clear what the game was doing to them. From a dramaturgical perspective that’s simply the perfect foundation to tell a captivating story. Behind the scenes, in everyday life, it must’ve been way more stressful than we can glimpse from the compilations in the videos, Rob even comments on it at the end of the season 3 finale: “The thing is, people will never feel it how we felt it, this constant fear of being fucked over every single day.” And perhaps it’s better this way, that it all happened naturally and that no one really geared up for it, so that the story could take shape the way it did at all.
My assessment includes further terms such as ‘quality’, ‘exciting’, ‘intense’, ‘funny’, ‘effort’, ‘creative’ and ‘clever’, so I don’t think I need to say much more on that. As a whole I would recommend watching the series. It’s not everybody’s taste and YouTube entertainment in general is it’s own thing but for me it’s exactly right. I like its DIY-aspect, even though I also think that YouTube productions such as the one described should be taken more seriously. Not only because the clicks are up there but also because the online communities in many countries have become professional enough that they can simply keep up with traditional forms of entertainment. There’s more to it, of course, but to be part of this development as a viewer is a pretty cool thing. And when all of it results in such entertaining stories that I can, as a hobby YouTube journalist, describe and analyze for sport, well then, everything’s good.
- Reality TV & authenticity
YouTube in itself is an interesting medium. The same as with the story of the two bros, so has the platform itself developed in a very organic way. In the beginning at least, now it’s overrun with commercial content and clips from traditional media, who try to increase their reach even more this way.
Over the years YouTube has developed many of its own formats but a lot was also taken over from traditional media. Generally however what you want to produce is relatively free, which is why I couldn’t really find a name for the thing I’m describing here. I keep writing rivalry, game, show, competition – but what it really is, no idea. The protagonists themselves describe it as a show, but show is such a broad umbrella term that it really can mean anything and, on the other hand, a show presupposes a certain amount of planning and structure, which wasn’t there in the case of TeamBro vs TeamWill, at least not in the beginning.
Be that as it may, while looking for a fitting name I had the thought that the whole thing is reminiscent of reality TV in a way. I used to be interested in that topic during my studies once, so it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory. For example, one category of reality is the game show, and some of the pranks of TeamBro vs TeamWill were game shows, not to mention that the entire rivalry was portrayed as such in the end. Perhaps there’s more to this comparison after all.
A short insight in the definitions and ramifications of reality TV do seem to suggest that the production I’m writing about falls into the same, or at least similar, category.
The first time I really got interested in reality TV was when I saw a video professing the theory that the same tactics which would lead to a win in a reality game show, would also lead to a win in the Hunger Games, out of the novel by Suzanne Collins. The idea was that the Hunger Games aren’t a real competition but just a game show, to amuse the people of the Capitol. I thought that sounded reasonable and it got me into diving deeper in the topic of reality TV.
Annette Hill, a researcher who deals with exactly those issues in her book “Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television” writes: “Reality TV is a catch-all category that includes a wide range of entertainment programmes about real people. Sometimes called popular factual television, reality TV is located in border territories, between information and entertainment, documentary and drama.” Definitions of the same in other texts that were available to me, meaning in English, German and Polish, don’t stray from this interpretation very much. A few texts also focus on specific characteristics of reality TV, more so than on the definition itself. And so it was described by Richard Kilborn in 1994 for example, who notes: part of reality TV is “a) recording ‘on the wing’, and frequently with the help of lightweight video equipment, of events in the lives of individuals and groups; b) the attempt to simulate such real-life events through various forms of dramatised reconstruction; c) the incorporation of this material in suitably edited form into an attractively packaged television programme which can be promoted on the strength of its reality credentials.”
Then there are discussions about the interactivity of the those types of television programs and the ever-growing willingness to be surveilled, as per Mark Andrejevic in his book: “Within the context of an emerging interactive economy, reality TV appears not simply as one more programming trend but as a format uniquely suited to its historical moment insofar as it bridges these two versions of interactivity. The promise deployed by reality TV is that submission to comprehensive surveillance is not merely a character-building challenge and a “growth” experience, but a way to participate in a medium that has long relegated audience members to the role of passive spectators. It therefore works neatly as an advertisement for the benefits of submission to comprehensive surveillance in an era in which such submission is increasingly productive. Its promise – that of access to the real via comprehensive monitoring – lines up alongside those of the interactive revolution generally: spectators shall become participants. The many shall take on the role previously monopolized by the privileged few […].” Further still there’s even an entire Wikipedia entry detailing criticisms of reality TV, related to staging, negative political and cultural impacts and the fact that it might serve as a spectacle of humiliation.
Another part of this topic are discussions about the actual genres and format that reality TV has to offer. At first it was just about recording ‘real’ events, but over the years several subgenres emerged, like the game show, for example, but also docusoaps, dating programs, reality sitcoms, celebrity variations of already existing format, lifestyle games and programs and talent contests, just to name a few. Those specific ones are proposed by Susan Murray and Laurie Oullette, though generally terms vary between countries and researchers.
Hopefully what comes out of this short scientific crash course about reality TV (with a few of my favorite quotes on the topic) is that much of it is also present in the content available on YouTube. The mixing of different formats and the focus on realness on the one side, and on the other the creation of own genres and the use of specific, light equipment. Of course not all of it is the same and I don’t want to insinuate that anybody creates ‘cheap reality TV stuff’, but these types of formats seem to appeal to both viewers and creators, and perhaps not only because they’re relatively cheap and easy to produce.
Add to all that the specific character of new media. Owing to its increased interactivity, and other aspects such as media convergence, to sound really smart, the communication model of traditional media has changed from the one-way option (one speaks to many) to the multi-way option (many speak to many), which creates a highly interactive net of communicational connections. The community in every YouTube comment section becomes a vital part of being a YouTuber, as it not only plays the role of viewer, but also partially the one of producer. It influences content, is the source of income and the creator has to take care of it, to always please. I like to imagine it a bit like the stereotypical image of the Roman viewership in a colosseum. Thumbs up or down, somehow fully in control, and yet unaware of its power.
Which is why I’m happy to have found the competition after it was already over, to avoid the possibility of being pulled in by the roaring crowds and perhaps develop views that only happen when you’re too close to a certain thing. Meaning, when you’re so carried away by a thing that you can’t even pretend that you can be objective about it anymore. Then again it’s also a shame, to have been able to follow the series in real time and to be a part of the audience also would’ve been an interesting experience and, most importantly, I would’ve had the chance to look at all of these phenomena up close.
Now I only have this one one viewpoint and that’s alright, too. I think I would’ve come to the same conclusion either way, namely that TeamBro vs TeamWill isn’t classic reality TV but a development thereof. Many elements are the same but there are also new things to observe. It’s reality plus, where you watch real people in real situations, people who really just point a camera at themselves without a big production machine behind them. As a viewer you have a bit of influence and there goes a closed loop between creator and community, both changing each other, and still in somewhat of a traditional framework – since it’s still the creator who acts as the dominant part of the power, or rather, attention imbalance.
What’s more interesting however than the category of the described show itself is, in my opinion, the question of authenticity. It was a big selling point of YouTube – same as of reality TV. I’ve already mentioned something about the DIY-aspect of the productions on YouTube and I have expressed my view that Rob and Simon entered the whole thing with good intentions, without really planning for a big thing, that was only supposed to make money – the only comment to that comes in the form of a line from the season two song from Danergy: “Show me […] someone who doesn’t give a shit about views like that!”
If that’s true I’m not able to say, but I assume as much. It feels like it anyway, and I can’t really imagine that someone could pretend to be somebody else for such a long time. It happens, of course, but the closer you push viewer and creator, the more difficult it is to keep up a game of pretend like that. And with YouTub, the only thing standing between those two parties is usually just a camera, meaning the line is quite thin.
The bigger that YouTube got and the more commercially viable it seemed, the more people began to question what was actually authentic on it. There were problems with it right from the start, because already the webseries lonelygirl15, sold as a ‘real experience’, showed in the years 2006-2008 that it’s easy to fall for feigned vlogging realities (which wouldn’t be the first time where that happens with new media, either – just think about the radio and Orson Welles and his War of the Worlds). Youtuber Lindsay Ellis deals with this topic in her video essay “YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!)” and the main takeaway from it is that authenticity is a commodity that you can successfully manufacture for profit, although that isn’t always what happens. There are creators who start video projects with honest intentions, just for fun or because they want to express themselves. Then again, you need to keep in mind that nothing on YouTube is 100% ‘real’ and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Content gets edited and every cut means a viewpoint. Not to mention, “All content is cultivated”, Lindsay says, “no one can portray a fully lived experience on this platform.”
The best analysis on the topic of authenticity was done, in my view, on the channel Philosophy Tube. The video “YouTube: Art or Reality?” deals with the issue not only from the perspective of the viewer but also the creator, and in a masterly acting performance the created characters debate the line between art and reality and what truth even means (and if it’s necessary to have it every context, especially because there’s more than just one kind of it). But we shall return to that video in a moment.
By the way, another interesting part of hobby YouTube journalism is realizing how self-reflective the medium is. Especially in that ‘lefttube’ or ‘breadtube’ scene, one both Lindsay Ellis and Philosophy Tube belong to, things related to YouTube are often discussed on a high meta level, though not only there. Another example of that is Content Cop from iDubbbz. Whatever one may say about the creators themselves, it is notable that they and their communities differentiate themselves from other media by analyzing themselves and distancing themselves from people who create problematic content. Which is the essence of being self-reflective – which is also why most of the sources for this article are typical web sources, and many of them YouTube videos.
But, going back to the subject, the point of YouTube is to watch normal, ‘real’ people, who really just show themselves. That has a certain amount of appeal. Not only because it’s more extreme than just seeing someone on the telly, because suddenly the ‘celebrity’ is very close, or not only because it’s easier to get a feeling of ‘hey, that could be me’. Add to that the human propensity for voyeurism and, which is what I’m trying to say, the need for a good story. The key to all of these issues is authenticity, as it is the common factor. We want ‘real’ things, things that ‘really’ happened. We want to peep a bit, see a bit how other people live. I definitely do that, I always think about authenticity, what it really means and why it’s so inspiring. It’s pretty obvious that I like YouTube, but I also massively enjoy biopics and movies based on true stories, so all of this is a question I deal with pretty often.
Though I generally have more questions than answers in this case. How is it even possible to decide what’s ‘real’ or ‘authentic’? With movies it’s a bit easier, they’re products, no matter how pretty, or how much we’re willing to suspend our disbelief. More and more it becomes clear that movies based on true stories aren’t really that real after all – it’s easy to double check everything on the web. But what about YouTube and especially the story of the two bros? At what point does authenticity stop? When does the persona that you put on become your character? Or is it the other way around, that your own character turns into the persona? Does the decision to officially make TeamBro vs TeamWill into a competition make the whole thing ‘produced’ and ‘unauthentic’? Because the same thing just keeps happening – people play pranks on each other. Where’s the line that turns a simple video idea into a story?
I wrote in my previous articles about Studio Accantus, a group of musical singers whom I followed all over Poland, to see their concerts. It was an interesting time in their career because it was their exact turning point between amateurship and fame – no matter how that sounds. Their first concerts were cheap and small, you could always talk to them afterwards and take pictures, hug and get to know the people behind the voices. In the course of one year the community grew so large that it escalated at some point and we endangered the safety of the singers, simply because there were too many of us. The concert halls became bigger and there were no more post-stage meetings. A crowd turns into a mob very easily and the people you were once able to get to know suddenly were only performers, strangers (which they always were anyway, no matter how many times you shook their hand, but it appeared differently) and stars of a YouTube band. To witness this change was something else altogether.
But it also raises further questions in regards to Youtube creators – where’s the line between person and persona? Can you always stay the same, when you suddenly, or over the course of many years, turn from a boy-next-door into an Internet star? What does it even mean to be ‘real’? I don’t know and there’s probably not even a right answer for that, it’s always relative and you need to assess and judge in every specific context anew. But, since we’re at the point of bringing up ‘persona’ anyway, there’s one last issue in this article that I’d like to touch on and which is actually the most interesting to me.
- Parasocial relationships & persona
I’ve already mentioned Abigail Thorne’s (Philosophy Tube) video “YouTube: Art or Reality?”. It’s one of my favorite videos because it shows a really good story, even though it’s relatively simple – an interrogation. And, the topics discussed are pretty interesting. As I wrote, the piece tries to answer what truth is and what it means, along with art and authenticity. An important part of it touches on parasocial relationships – the focus of this part of this article and a terribly fascinating phenomenon.
Parasocial relationships are mentioned for the first time in an article from 1956: “One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media – radio, television, and the movies – is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. The conditions of response to the performer are analogous to those in a primary group. The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one’s peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.” Even though the article is relatively old it’s important to keep this definition in mind. A lot of the things that the authors Horton and Wohl write about are still true today.
To put it simply, parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships with public figures or fictional characters. I think the phenomenon is well-known, even if its name isn’t. Already as children we form attachments to favorite characters from books and television and that doesn’t change no matter how much we’d like to think of ourselves as adults later in life. We still have favorite heroes, like certain voices of radio or podcast hosts and even when there’s a movie that’s not that good, if our favorite actor’s playing in it, it’s still worth a viewing.
And parasocial relationships, as an expression of emotional engagement, contribute to us liking a story. There aren’t that many stories, frankly, in the sense of singular sequences of events, and in general people have a tendency to prefer stories they already know. The only thing that’s always different is the form. Different things appeal to different people and people engage differently with all types of plots. With YouTube it seems like stories are less important anyway. People outside the medium may wonder how it is that people watch other people eat and just do their everyday things. But that’s exactly the point – you like watching them because it’s about the person, the one telling the story, and more importantly about the emotional attachment, or parasocial relationship, that the viewer builds in regards to the viewed person.
Personally I don’t think parasocial relationships are bad, as a whole. I know it’s easy for me to form them and I’m totally aware of it. I have enough merch from artists and movies that it’s pretty clear to me what’s happening. Any fondness or attachment I may feel only happens in my brain and that’s totally okay. I know that as soon as I find something else that’s interesting my fascination will change and I’m not the type of person to stalk others online or offline in the first place (well, with those singers it seems like that perhaps but that’s really my limit of effusiveness and luckily I’m past that age in the meantime anyway). And as Abigail points out in her video, parasocial relationships can go both ways, since a creator also has some sort of emotional attachment towards their fans – I can’t be the judge of that but if she, as a relatively known creator, says it, then I believe her.
Naturally parasocial relationships also have pretty damning dark sides and I don’t want to trivialise them in the slightest, even though it pains me a bit to talk badly about something that I don’t think is that bad. Another creator, Shannon Strucci, has started a whole series about the topic of parasocial relationships that talk about exactly those dark sides. The main video has the same length as a feature film but it’s still worth checking out. The most obvious negative side of parasocial relationships is, of course, the potential for abuse. That’s pretty visible in cases of teenage stars, independent of the era, may it be TV, movies, YouTube or TikTok. Especially prominent cases involve young men and their fangirls – often minors – who buy into the idea that if their favorite star says into the camera: “I love you”, that that’s true. Everyone’s had an obsession with a star at some point and as long as it doesn’t escalate it’s okay, those are feelings that one needs to learn how to deal with anyway.
It starts getting bad when suddenly the parent’s money gets spent on fan products and travels, when celebrities can’t walk across the street in peace or when young groupies suddenly find themselves in backstage areas where the flour ain’t for baking. All of that is the result of parasocial relationships. And I don’t want to put the blame on the public figures, either, they’re as much a victim of this system. I can’t even imagine what that has to be like, to live in a world like that. To be inhumanely revered and expected to stay grounded and sane, exposed to so many psychological and sometimes even physical threats, and you’re not allowed to complain, either – since ‘you’ve got it better’. And then there’s an incredible amount of responsibility, because, as mentioned, as the known person you’re the dominant part of the power, or rather attention imbalance, between celebrity and fan.
And YouTube’s no different. Whenever a Youtuber says “Hello friends” they foster a parasocial relationship with their audience – knowingly or not. The usually pretty specific and intimate insight into the everyday life of these people leads to the impression that you know them. No matter how limited, or, as discussed before, edited this view might be – it appears as if you’re watching a real person live their real life and that they even like you. Without fans I’d be nothing, you hear often, and that’s true on more than one level.
Of course that’s nothing new, either, heroes and idols, and public figures by now as well, are there to be a role model and to provide precisely that insight into their lives, and on top of that, when they’re part of the entertainment industry, then we want to reward their efforts with appreciation.
Not to mention that not everybody produces authenticity or fosters parasocial relationships to make money. Not everybody sells a specific image to make clicks or abuse minors. Most of the time it probably just works out. That people like to watch others, perhaps buy a book or a T-shirt, the creator feels affirmed and cherished and can start new projects with their earned money, which the viewers and fans can then enjoy again.
But even if you engage in or foster parasocial relationships without bad intentions, you still need to be careful and that’s actually the point I’m trying to make here. There are so many different phenomena in the world of mass communication, spirals of silence, echo chambers, filter bubbles and so on, and parasocial relationships are just another part of it. If you want to consume (or produce) media responsibly you simply need to be aware of such things and recognize when they happen to you, in order to deal with them accordingly (which is, by the way, a pretty good argument for media education in school, starting in the first grade).
I’m so interested in this because precisely with the story of the two bros I fell a bit out of touch with all that for a moment. As I mentioned before, when I stumbled across the show I felt bad. I mean, even leaving aside the pandemic – it was fall, I didn’t know what to do with myself and I was battling loads of dark thoughts. And since it’s easy in general for me to obsess about media products, I should’ve noticed immediately what was going on.
But I let it happen anyway, at the time it was the only thing that gave me any semblance of joy and I thought, better this than something else. It’s so easy to fall into parasocial relationships, it’s easy not to talk to people in real life, when there are those cool guys somewhere who are always in a good mood and don’t expect anything from you. It’s easy to go into a world where everything always works out, where everyone is high on life and where every day seems better than your own.
Of course, looks can be deceiving, and fortunately I got a grip on the emotional attachment I’d let fester fairly quickly. It’s a bit cute even, when I think back on it, how important that performed world seemed to me at the time. Which, as I said, isn’t in and of itself anything bad, it helped me survive a few crummy months, I didn’t turn into an obsessive stalker and I noticed early enough that the parasocial mechanism had taken effect.
And, in the end, it brought me to writing this article, where I can write about issues and the years I’ve spent with YouTube, and pretend as if what I’m doing has any sort of pseudo-journalistic value. And if that’s not a reason to be jolly, I don’t know what is.
The last piece missing in this mosaic of mass communication curiosities is this – the persona. Just as Horton and Wohl defined it, the object of a parasocial relationship is an artist or performer and further yet – a celebrity or a public person. But parasocial relationships also happen in relation to fictional characters, so now the question I’d like to ask is, is there a connection perhaps?
My hypothesis, and the reason why I have put a very specific disclaimer at the beginning of the first part, is that between the two there’s not much difference, meaning between a public person and a fictional character. Perhaps this is just a justification to consume and produce not exactly PG products of fan labor, meaning fiction and graphics, with a clear conscience, but I think there’s more to it than that.
Looking at it from a strictly operative perspective, meaning in the way it works on the day-to-day, there aren’t many differences at first glance. Youtuber or superhero – both can be objects of parasocial relationships and often they are. At the same time they’re pretty unavailable to the consumer. Of course it’s more probable to meet a creator rather than Superman, but the question then becomes, who are you meeting, really? Because it certainly isn’t the private person, who the celebrity actually is. It’s the persona you meet, the identity, the one you get to know through curated clips on a platform or on television.
Another part of this discussion is the aspect of emotional labor, meaning the emotional deliverables you need to produce in different contexts. As it stands, public persons need to keep up certain characteristics that are part of their image, no matter how they feel. When you know somebody as a clown, well, then they’re a clown. I think John Mulaney once quipped in an interview that Eminem surely doesn’t always feel like being the cool rapper, that he’d certainly like to just be relaxed and goof off sometimes. Because people aren’t just one thing, just one character trait. Sometimes you don’t get that feeling with celebrities however, you expect them to always be the way you know them to be. But that’s impossible, everyone has good and bad days and luckily we also learn more and develop ourselves, which means that personality can’t be seen as something static.
With topics like this I always have to think of the pop culture essays by Chuck Klosterman, titled “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”. There he describes, again in the context of reality TV, how important it is to have specific traits as a character on a show, ones that define your persona. Only when you’re someone Specific, someone the viewer can clearly identify, do you have the chance to be recognizable in a sea of individuals. Which basically means that in such circumstances you have to design your personality in a way, adjust your own thoughts and behaviors, in order to match them to a story-friendly vision.
Which isn’t me saying that a persona is necessarily a false representation of a person. The behavior and image of a persona can be 100% the same as the ‘real self’ of the private person and still, it’s not the same. You still have to adapt to situations, repeat characteristics the viewers know and expect and no matter how open or honest you want to be, you can only show an extract of reality. This is where things can get tricky, of course, both for the viewer and the creator. Viewers imagine they know a stranger and know what they do or who they are as a person beyond ‘time spent together’, meaning the consumption of their content. On the creator’s side you’re overwhelmed with a substantial emotional burden, thousands of friends you don’t actually know, and who aren’t really your friends to begin with, more your employers, but also, not really. There seems to be a big issue with burnout among Youtubers and when you look at this part of being a creator, that’s hardly surprising.
So, when talking about personas there are lots of questions about boundaries, too. In a way we all play roles, there are enough sociological and philosophical theories to choose from regarding that, which model you’d like to adhere to. But with public persons, and especially Internet stars, who, thanks to the medium that they use, appear way closer, it’s simply that these roles appear all the more clearer. Like it or not, it’s part of their job.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”, Abigail affirms at the end of her video, quoting Shakespeare. And she’s right. The only thing you can’t forget with all of this is that on the other end there’s also just people. I think we’re allowed to interpret performers and Internet figures as characters, we’re allowed to enter parasocial relationships, it’s just a question of not going overboard. Those relationships forming between creators and communities are unique, they’re mutually beneficial and mutually detrimental, depending on how you handle them. And I think it’s on both parties to find a healthy balance in such situations
My plan was to explore what makes TeamBro vs TeamWill a good story. However, as it tends to be with streams of consciousness like this, the whole thing got away from me a little, as it seems I landed somewhere else entirely in the end. Sure, I had it in mind to touch on issues related to authenticity and parasocial relationships but what would come of it I found out while writing.
So, just to draw a few conclusions from every part of the article: as a video project I consider TeamBro vs TeamWill well-made and as a story – fascinating. I’m surprised every time when I find dramatic plots in stories that aren’t stories in a classical sense. For me it was like this with this rivalry. Apart from that it was fun to take the whole thing apart a bit and analyze it, since there was loads of content but not so much that it would be unfathomable. And, as an exercise in data sport I couldn’t have wished for a better example.
The questions of reality TV and authenticity remain unanswered. As I wrote before, it’s all relative, though that doesn’t really mean anything, of course. My takeaway from that part is that authenticity is a commodity with a specific value, people respond to it and you have to be careful with it, in order not to exploit others or be exploited yourself. But what it means, fundamentally, to be ‘true’ or ‘real’, I have no idea.
In terms of parasocial relationships it’s important for me to note that these processes are part of our reality and that we need to take them into account. It’s easy to overdo it and bring people into uncomfortable or dangerous situations, though it should also be recognized that public persons can act as fictional characters. Which isn’t to say that the privacy of celebrities is unimportant or violable – quite the opposite, I’d propose to keep the private and public identities of performers even more separate, for the sake of all involved. Which isn’t happening in today’s world but perhaps it’s an idea worth considering.
Finally, concluding the whole text – my main thought while researching and writing this article was how important it is, in all aspects of life, to be able to keep things balanced. To define such a thing isn’t easy, of course, and viewed from various perspectives it might look different to some, which makes all of it all the more complicated, but as a rule of thumb I think it’s worthwhile not to fall into extremes. You have to be able to recognize when a story is over, where the line between illusion and reality is and where personal boundaries are, so that we don’t hurt each other.
TeamBro vs TeamWill
- Mental Floss, Here’s How Long it Takes to Binge-Watch More Than 50 Popular TV Shows, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/622536/how-long-it-takes-binge-most-popular-tv-shows
- Wikipedia, List of Rick and Morty episodes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rick_and_Morty_episodes
- TeamBro, Team Bro vs Team Will (Staffel 1), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-uN0duRMbAmqMttYOTJynaQUBRgIU5tR
- Mellow, staffel 2 TeamBRO🔥 vs Team WILL🚀, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL00DxC9ia8WA9Rya5jgZPUheaXA4A8VKH
- K3k53 84ck3n, Team Bro vs. Team Will Staffel 3, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeXI85t6n2wT7jxATHezh7vvzYSpTJCUo
Reality TV & authenticity
- The Film Theorists, Film Theory: How to NOT DIE! – Hunger Games pt. 2, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXvWxZlfBlw&ab_channel=TheFilmTheorists
- Annette Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television, 2004, Routledge, London
- Richard Killborn, ‘Drama over Lockerbie’ A new look at television drama-documentaries, in: Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1994, London
- Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, 2003, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham
- Susan Murray & Laurie Ouellette, Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, 2004, NYU Press, New York
- Wikipedia, Criticism of reality television, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_reality_television
- Wikipedia, New Media, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media
- Wikipedia, Technological Convergence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence#Media
- Wikipedia, lonelygirl15, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15
- Theater Mienenspiel, Orson Welles und der Krieg der Welten. Ein Livehörspiel., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHAHJZCX6vs&ab_channel=TheaterMienenspiel
- Linday Ellis, YouTube: Manufacturing Authenticity (For Fun and Profit!), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJEtCvb2Kw&ab_channel=LindsayEllis
- Philosophy Tube, YouTube: Art or Reality?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVav1ri65Ws&ab_channel=PhilosophyTube
- iDubbbzTV, Content Cop – Jake Paul, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bukzXzsG77o&ab_channel=iDubbbzTV
Parasocial relationships & persona
- Donald Horton & R. Richard Wohl, Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction, http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/short/horton_and_wohl_1956.html
- StrucciMovies, FAKE FRIENDS EPISODE ONE: intro to parasocial relationships, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vD_CAYt4g&ab_channel=StrucciMovies
- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, 2004, Scribner, New York
Outside Max 