On occasion, I check out what my kids look at on youtube. Looking at The Daughter’s subscriptions, it struck me that the majority of them were to Asian American themed channels. I looked at one, NDTitanLady, and I noticed from the channel page that her style was “Asian”. Asian style? What’s that? We had a post a while ago about the next generation of Asian Americans and how they are forging their own identities and media. This generation’s situation is so much different from when I was growing up, even though I grew up in the Bay Area. There really wasn’t anything produced by my generation for my generation, and youtube has really enabled this. The Daughter subscribes to some typically well known channels such as happyslip, kevjumba, and nigahiga, and some less popular but still known like ninjadrops. The Daughter and her friends even gossip about some of them. “A sister of my friend goes to UC Davis with Kevjumba and says he’s really cocky and stuff and blah blah blah…” You get the idea.
NigaHiga has even managed to get a movie made based on his work. Here’s a trailer:
Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure – Exclusive Trailer from Ryan and Sean’s Movie on Vimeo.
It’s played in Hawaii and the Bay Area. Not exactly something that the Wife and I would go out and see, but it’s interesting to see how Asian American media had evolved, and it’s fascinating how a movie would be made and inspired by something on youtube (it’s usually the reverse).
Anyway, here are some of my favorite examples of how this next generation of Asian American looks at things. Here is NDTitanlady talking about Asian stereotypes.
I wasn’t even aware of a few of these – maybe some of them are very southern California. The Daughter does do the annoying peace sign thing, though.
Here is a kevjumba with a take on interracial dating. I am usually pretty tired of this subject, but I found his take on it to be pretty funny (plus some extras at the end).
