Not Kidding: Squeaky-Voiced ‘Fred’ Approaching 1 Million Subscribers
Apr 1st, 2009 | By Elisabeth Lewin | Category: Video
It is April Fools’ Day, and all day long, I have been shocked and scandalized by what I’ve been reading.
- Post-menopausal friends are pregnant.
- Asheville, North Carolina’s Mountain Express is giving up its print edition in favor of an online all-Twitter version.
- Google promises a new user experience for its YouTube viewers involving upside-down images.
- An email from women’s peace group CodePink announces Sarah Palin has joined their antiwar efforts.
Gullible as I am, each of these gave me a “what the –?!?” start.
Not a joke, though, is the discovery that the web series Fred is approaching one million subscribers on YouTube. Silly every day of the year, not just on April 1, Fred features short, goofy videos voiced by what sounds like a chipmunk huffing helium, but is in fact a human young adult named Lucas Cruikshank.
The show has over 980,000 subscribers, and individual episodes have millions of views apiece.
Seems as though I should be kidding you, but this silly piece of fluff has capitalized on viewers’ love of the rdiculous.
This actually isn’t surprising to anyone with young kids in their house. Fred has been featured on the Nickelodeon show iCarly, which is about three teenage friends and the wildly popular web show they produce and star in (the web show is called iCarly). I don’t know if Fred was a star before iCarly, or if he was on the TV show because of his fame.
As a TV show, iCarly is a generic tween sitcom, but to be fair, it has dealt with some issues important to everyone involved in new media, including monetization (by major sponsor and by fan donation), stalking by a fan (not creepy or violent, just obsessive, but the subtext was there for adults to pick upon), and cybersquatting (losing the icarly.com URL to, and regaining it from, their nemesis).
Wow … that video makes me want to gouge my eyes and ears out. I could only make it for 10 seconds before I had to pause it.
To each his/her own I guess.
Steve – I have the same reaction to his stuff – so I’m amazed that he’s got a million people following him.
Those are just insane numbers for a kid! What is it about him that makes him such a draw?