TEEHEE
It’s strange how a YouTuber who hasn’t posted in 5 years still has a lasting impact on my life. Ryan Higa, better known by his YouTube channel Ryan Higa, was plastered on my TV screen every day after school. His content, I feel, was the epitome of YouTube during that time, and a lot of his content, due to the sheer quality, remains enjoyable to this day. At a time when YouTube was growing in popularity, so was Ryan Higa, and alongside them, so was I. Niga Higa was probably one of the most influential pieces of media that shaped a large part of my humor and opinions.
To give you a gist of Ryan Higa’s content, his channel was mainly made up of comedic skits that I still quote to this day. His videos ranged from skits of himself playing multiple characters, a series called “Skitzo,” to making parodies of songs. With his content being heavily comedic, and me watching quite literally every one of his videos, he was the biggest influence on my sense of humor. His dry humor, witty puns/wordplay, and perfectly timed delivery. His jokes back then could now be considered offensive, but he reflected a time on the internet when jokes were taken as light humor and not made to be taken to heart, something I realize that has drastically changed in today’s media.
Ryan made a video titled “Easily Butt-hurt People,” saying that these types of people are “on the rise on YouTube,” and he couldn’t be more correct. This video was posted over 10 years ago, and he was kind of right. On social media today, anyone can get cancelled over the smallest things. I had this respect for Ryan Higa for having views like this and being able to present them in a manner that combined humor to get a message across to his audience. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but he had influenced how I looked at comedy. Nowadays, I realize that this quick, witty humor is exactly what I look for when I watch comedy shows online or TV shows like Modern Family. I look for certain qualities that I had picked up from Ryan Higa’s videos that made his videos entertaining to me.
The quality and effort that went into his content were a part of why I was so entertained watching him. To this day, his videos have a lasting impact on me. When I found out that my best friend, whom I met in high school, also watched his videos, I found myself quoting his videos again, like an inside joke or reference that only a certain generation of YouTube kids would have understood.
I had watched Ryan Higa’s content basically ever since I had an account on YouTube. When he stopped posting after COVID, I felt myself transitioning in parallel as I had moved onto another chapter of my life (high school), just like he did. Every once in a while, I’ll go back to his now-inactive YouTube channel, revisiting my childhood and the person who shaped my humor.
