In reality I don’t think it was ever solely about the stunts, but the personalities and the jokes and the pranks. A random YouTuber doing the same stunts won’t compare without humor and personality.
I don't know if it was the way they filmed it, or the fact that they were so casual and normal around the cameras, even the setups for the scenes were kind of goofy and "home video" style.
This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media.
Maybe I'm misreading the situation, but I'm pretty sure political AM radio show hosts beat them to that. Casual, conversational, "unlike those morons, you and I both know..." style, tons of in-jokes. Extensive call-in segments.
This can also be seen in the Trailer Park Boys TV show. Seasons 1-7 under the direction of Mike Clattenburg do have a lot of swearing and dirty jokes, but it is always genuinely good humor, or serving plot and character development maybe. I'm sure I don't describe it well, but "I know it when I see it."[0] The following seasons with other directing/production have lost that tact and restraint; like they just call someone 5-6 dirty words in a row, funny only for the shock value of the words. Not funny.
They quickly realized that people liked the filler as much as the actual content and capitalized on that interest with Jackass.
It felt authentic because it was. The people making the videos had a genuine connection / were actually friends, and were really just doing it for fun in the beginning and that makes it feel different than a lot of the manufactured content that people are exposed to today.
Videowise, there was another skate vid during that period called "Whisky: The Movie" that was in the same hilarious vein as the Jackass stuff. Looks like it might have been DMCA'd off of youtube.
It's really just a group of people making funny content. They feel genuine and that draws people in.
I find now they're more mature and aware of their influence. I watch mostly because it's just fun to watch them have a great time (you can tell they really enjoy their job and that makes it for me).
Their laughter invited you to laugh with them.
There was a while there where it was genuinely upsetting to see some of those people. They really didn't understand the difference between pranking a friend that's opted in to the behavior and random people in public, and what's acceptable as a prank in both instances.
I'm sure Jackass had a few misses in this department too, but at least by the time they were famous the public stuff seemed more along the lines that might leave public people that saw it or were unwittingly involved thinking "WTF did I just see" or a story that later they would start with "You wouldn't believe the stupid person I saw today" and if the person realized it was a prank would generally think it was rather funny since it didn't affect them.
Contrast that with youtube "pranksters" of the time when they first started being popular physically assaulting people, or stealing things, or tricking someone into thinking they had lucked out and then making them feel the loss of that when it was shown to be fake as well as humiliating them in front of the world. "Haha you thought that $100 bill was real? Psyche! It's fake, you didn't find anything! Hey everybody, look how sad he looks now. Why are you sad, bro? It's a prank, be happy, the whole world is watching!"
I remember having to very carefully counsel my young son who kept stumbling on them and watching them on why these people weren't being funny, they were being mean, and this wasn't how people should be treated.
CKY had a few bad ones though (throwing a life-sized doll off a motorway in front of cars is a good example of a bad one...) but they seemed to grow out of it.
I laughed at some of the jokes on each other but the ones involving innocent bystanders were almost all just horrible.
Makes me think of Filthy Frank, he was one of the worst. But it had some great fourth wall breaking moments, when they crack up themselves after idk, a neighbour yells at them for screaming from the roofs in the middle of the day.
They looked like they really cared about eachother.
I didn't know the torn urethra was that bad. Ouch!
Until now, I wasen't sure if he was acting when Butterbean knocked him out in that retail store. It was real. I remember thinking, he's a great actor with the tremors, or it was real? Never forget his first words after the knockout, "Is Butterbean ok?". Priceless.
My favorite clip of him is when they did an intervention for Steveo. Knoxville went into the room, and told Stevo to stop taking drugs. Stevo wanted the intervention filmed. I guess he thought it would be a good footage. Knoxvile told the cameraman No. I gained a lot of respect for him that day.
I hope Bam gets sober, or at least cut way back on the alcohol.
(Off topic, but to guys interested in fashion. I have a sister who made her huge wad selling shoes. She told me, in LA the higher the price, the more desirable people think your product is. Crazy? (Shirt, his own. Hoodie, $268, by Odessa 1919. Pants, $375, by Connor McKnight. Sneakers, $50, by Vans Authentic. Glasses, his own by Ray-Ban.))
Many luxury items are 'Veblen goods' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good) - the high price is a feature, it keeps the riffraff from having the same things you have, which makes your things better status symbols.
> Well, the price, for one thing. Yetis work like a Veblen good, which are luxury items that turn the laws of supply and demand upside down. Take Swiss watches: “A guy who buys Rolex watches doesn’t want a cheap Rolex,” Williams says. “Part of the prestige of that brand is when you wear it, everyone knows they cost at least $8,000 and up. If Rolex brought out a low-end model, it would kill their brand.” It’s why the iPhone 5C — a low-priced iPhone — flopped. [0]
[0] https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/why-are-coolers-so-expen...
Yeti 45: $300
Engel 45: $275
RTIC 45: $200
Sure, $300 is quite a bit more expensive than $200, but they're also not the same:
- Yet 3 years vs RTIC 1 year warranty
- Yeti performs better
- Yeti has better design (form & function)
- You can pick up a Yeti at your local REI vs RTIC is only available DTC
- Yeti is a household, lifestyle brand, that's done the work to create this market (alternatives would most likely not exist without Yeti doing this work)
The difference between a Rolex and another watch that has the same capability is a couple orders of magnitude apart in price. $200 vs $300 on a cooler isn't that big of a difference.
If they sold their flagship phone at entry-level prices then I'd expect it to do as you suggest, selling like hotcakes but devaluing the brand. Even then it wouldn't do half as much damage to the iPhone brand as a $100 Rolex would do to the Rolex brand, because iPhones have a lot of utility that makes them worth having whereas a watch is, these days, almost entirely a vanity item.
That was done years earlier with America's Funniest Home Video Show
The Jackass guys got managers and actively sought to stay in the business. At most the AFV contestants might have made an appearance somewhere on a talk show.