We Tracked Down YouTube's Lost Viral Legends... Where Are They?

hey there just want to let you know that a portion of this video is sponsored by google one what happens to a person after a video of them goes viral not like a few hundred thousand views viral like worldwide viral all of a sudden you go from being an ordinary person living your normal life to becoming an international celebrity some people's lives have changed overnight from this kind of internet fame creating a small group of people that one can today call memes we've been on youtube for almost six years now and some of these people were the early day icons of the platform but what are the stories behind these legends does overnight fame transform your life for the better or for the worse and where are they today well after weeks of investigating searching through corners of the internet we found three of them antoine dobson in alabama from the heidio kids viral video david after dentist is this real life yeah this is real life who's now in college in florida which made me feel very old and the final one will be a surprise for those of you who have been watching youtube for a long time these stories were incredible and surprising in so many ways so we're excited to take you along on this adventure to three corners of the country to track down some of the earliest legends of the platform we now call home also if you're not subscribed please take a second to do so right now it would mean the world to us hit like on this video and now enjoy the adventure i mean we literally have no plan right now we're just rolling up we're going to meet this guy who once upon a time was a complete legend and now i have no idea what he does no matter what it's going to be an interesting day he's climbing in your windows he's snatching your people up trying to rape him so y'all need to have your kids hide your wife and have your husband okay oh there he is antoine what up bro hey how are you good to meet you man how's it going nice to meet you man nice to meet you nice to meet you man i can't believe i'm i can't believe i'm seeing you in person that's crazy the goal of the day will just be to get like a huntsville tour from you as we do that get to ask you a little bit about the craziness of being seen by 140 million people and you're what you're saying is one video oh man yeah exactly actually uh we're in a deal right now with nft oh yeah sick how do you feel about it i just see dollar signs but it has been 11 years so i thought people come up to you and things like yes all the time all the time do you need your cell phone or do you want to leave that there i'll leave it there nobody gave me a handbook on being antoine one day i did a video because my sister got attacked i was upset and the next thing i know i'm just super famous and everybody know me and now a few days later i got this uh the gregory brothers then and created a song he's climbing in your windows he's snatching your people up trying to break i'm sure y'all need to have your kids hide your wife magic kids had your wife have your kids hide your wife super viral and everybody calling me ask me to do this come to this city come to this state we'll pay you this amount of money i'm like i never got off with this type of money in my life so it was a lie when you're in the hood you think you're the smartest monk in the world until you sit down with them corporate people you just realize how dumb as hell you are i didn't got into a lot of bad contracts because i did not understand yeah it sounds like you have a you've had a full odyssey of a life i come from a family of nine children no father around disabled mother i'm the oldest of all of them who do you think is gonna pick up the slack when i was a kid i wanted to be an entertainer i wanted to write i thought i was the neighborhood celebrity because everybody liked my hair and my shoes so in my mind i'm just celebrity but i didn't think that many years later that i would actually become one it's not something i thought would happen what makes your video or virality uh so unique is that you went viral because you were being you i always doubted i always thought it was like some producer for the news goes there and they're like okay turn it up for the camera but i mean evidently it's just who you are and this moment was just like a reward for you sticking to who you are unapologetically and the way i'm experiencing you in person even when the cameras are off i would say it's very consistent with the character that i saw on the news 11 years ago all right we are we are currently headed to where antoine did the interview 11 years ago to get like a scene by scene play for how it all went out my childhood dream happening all at once when was the last time you were here i was here the last time like three or four years ago when i got here i realized that my neighbor that was out here when we was out here still stay out here all right well here we are let me show y'all let me give y'all a little walk through wait so what happened exactly i guess maybe i'll let you tell the story because this is the living room and her couch was on that wall this was my sister's room where it all went down and i would sleep on that couch i hear a scream in my sleep and i immediately jumped up and i go to her bedroom and when i bust open the door i seen in the silhouette like image i could tell it was a man that was on top of her i just remember pulling him off because he had no shirt you know i keep long nails and i dug my nails into his shoulder and pulled him and swung him into the uh hallway he did this little you know this little basketball move you know i'm tall as hell so i can't get that low but he did a little basketball move under my arm i'm with a whole bunch of girls they all out of control i don't know how to calm them down i mean that is the yeah the strange part about the whole thing right is that you were you were being serious yes you know even us we're here we're like wow this is crazy but it's a real story yeah yeah it's a disconnection between the reality of an event when it's become like entertainment you know people don't put themselves in the shoes of this person actually live that the police came and they escorted us up and he was like well let me show you how he got in and the dude used the city garbage oh my god prop to jump on that and get in with it's still almost set up like it could be a step look boom boom boom so the police came and escorted us and i'm just thinking like i know this guy's not gonna be soft if i don't do something about it so i sat there and went through the yellow pages and talked to a um investigator and he came out and met me the next morning and we went through everything he just dusted all the fingerprints and stuff he picked up the t-shirt you know i'm walking around i'm like look this way he was he was right here so i know he got like a little sweat mark right there this t-shirt right there he touched that you watched some csi yeah you know i do you probably use in jail now he's in jail for another crime so no need to hide your kids anymore hell yeah there's somebody just like him around the corner you hired an investigator that came and helped you figure this out and then how did it lead to news so when he pulled up but we going through everything i guess he hit up jenny and was like girl look i got a little investigation girl y'all need to come out here and talk to her you know i see jenny and her cameraman getting out the car they try to hurry up and set up because they see i'm about to clown and as soon as i was getting ready to say something to her jenny was like do you want to say something in front of the camera i said well obviously we have a rapist in lincoln park he's climbing in your windows he's snatching your people up trying to represent when he was standing next to him and he did the whole part and the news i i had a moment i was like this is like a weird merge of like reality and the internet where i'm standing where an actual thing happened and the man that said the thing is saying it again i thought it was so trippy thank you for sharing all this yeah also a very vulnerable story so i appreciate you being thank you vulnerable and fully yourself appreciate you man thank you a huntsville legend people high school on the map okay i did competition cheer in morovian middle school we had hydro kids hydro water yes like that was literally one of our transitions she came up and she said that she didn't want to make a big deal out of it because she didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable but right away she knew who he was it makes me teary-eyed annoyed because she was like i was a little girl i was in morovian school uh elementary see her all growing up working it just warmed my heart to know that i had that impact on people like oh my god i hope i didn't teach these kids to be thoughts back where we started what a journey it's been oh my god it's been such a journey i had so much fun i now have a friend in huntsville i got a l.a for you thank you so much what do you think of beeps i'm pleasantly surprised you know this whole time we were just seeing one element of it which is his way and his personality but he's actually a hero he was doing something pretty heroic and dangerous to make sure that he's there for his family so that's the part that i'm like pleasantly surprised about and i hope that through this more people remember him for the fact that he was doing something that put his life in danger for others as well as how'd your kids happy there you have it now that we're done in huntsville alabama off to the next destination before we do so a quick message from the sponsor of today's video hi there before we move on with the rest of the video let me quickly thank the sponsor of today's video google one google one what is that you may ask what is that what is that google one is a paid membership that allows you to back up and protect everything that matters to you in your digital life that's right it provides you with expanded cloud storage works with gmail photos google drive to give you more freedom to store more memories photos and who knows maybe a couple emails all right you see let me tell you a story recently i lost my phone and had not upgraded my cloud storage and i ended up losing a devastating amount of photos that were highly dear in my heart but with google one 100 gigabytes of storage is only a two dollars a month 15 gigabytes comes with your google account so all you got to do is download the app straight to your phone back it all up and manage your cloud storage settings all in one place get it google one i'm saying google one also offers security features like a vpn for android to make sure that you are safely protected while you are connected so be sure to download the google one app today or go to one.google.com to find out the different plans thank you once again to google one for sponsoring this portion of the video and now back to the youtube legends we are currently in orlando headed to gainesville game what is it what is gainesville we're gonna go see david after dentist [Music] yeah this is real life he goes to university of florida and right now we're gonna go find him on campus pick him up and uh catch up hey powell how you been man big day you know oh what's up dude i was like is that him what's up bro how are you guys oh man great to meet you um yeah so my girlfriend's actually here and she um we're gonna load up her car because she's headed out of town oh cool um so like give me like 10 minutes or so and i'll be good to go amazing we literally came from a different state and he's like oh let me just go pack my girlfriend's car we flew here to hang out with you bro and then i gotta go pack my girlfriend's car what up take two came all the way just with us nice to meet you man it made me feel very old to find out that you were in college i don't know if you get that a lot yeah a little bit what are you studying computer science oh wow the first thing i was going to do with you is question your life choices of not becoming a dentist because i feel like you would have had the greatest mark thing honestly probably yeah like nobody gets what it's like to leave a dentist office more than they would actually yeah so how big is this as a part of your life still today is it still like a part of your life or is it just like a memory i think it's a part of my life honestly you know there's david devore and then there's david after dennis kind of thing yeah you have an alter ego yeah exactly being on drugs coming from the dentist did you expect that i mean i guess you can't really expect virality to happen oh yeah no he was just doing it to share with uh family and friends because it was funny dude should we go see if we can do a drop in at a dentist right now how beautiful mom needs a checkup anyways hello are you the dentist can i pitch you something do you remember the the viral video david after dentist this game yeah 13 years ago yeah so that's him right now and we're trying to get a dentist appointment with him because it would be really funny to take david into the dentist's office yeah courtney there you go dear oh my god this almost looks safe this is great it literally looked like stage i didn't think it was gonna work okay and bring it back okay he definitely regrets saying yes to any of this i've just had a normal afternoon in my college we are seeking discomfort with him in the end david after dentist yep that's him how you doing very good wow this is a full circle moment are you ready to relive it no it's not great david is not doing well uh-oh oh god well obviously david has been away from the dentist for a long time no yes it is and your dentist hasn't been telling you straight man here's the key four minutes in the morning okay four minutes in the afternoon okay so two minutes brushing okay one minute water picking okay 15 seconds tongue scraping okay no less than 45 seconds mouth rinse okay four minutes this got real for we got david and it's kind of because david finally came back to the dentist after 20 years is that how you hold your floss no how do you hold your floss like for real man for real david i got time david david's gums are not good just like most of the population i don't think you should look at mine then i shouldn't and the reason i know that your gums aren't good is because you've never heard of a water pig so how could they be good that's it you're cuter when you're younger oh thank you i don't know what the hell happened oh my god guys thank you so much yeah thank you it was great that was fun yeah thank you hi have a good one david was very uncomfortable i'm sorry the most spontaneous dentist visit of all time that was worse than normal dentist it just roasted me so hard oh i'm sorry david you already don't like the dentist oh yeah and now you got roasted in front of everyone there was like eight people watching you get roasted yet he has like four hairs on his head clapping back dog all right buddy we got your little gift oh you got me a gift i got you girl oh you got one of these i gotta show up the water pick oh pretty cool you gotta be the model for dental hygiene kids all over the world thank you for everything now uh hopefully we'll see you around yeah let us know if you're ever in l.a man put this into good use yeah if you ever think about being a dentist you just hit me up i'll invest him and anton were so different in terms of like their how this how that video affected their lives for sure for him he was a kid it was a fun thing that became an anecdote for him and some people work nights for him and he's got a story but he's not what he's trying to do he's studying computer science i guess next is seattle how's my hair here's fantastic amazing we're in seattle the third city we are here to meet with pesante he i think has the oldest viral video of all the ones that we've looked at so far uh chocolate rain chocolate ring the school books say it can't be here again chocolate rain i personally didn't know about it because i wasn't a part of the youtube world back in the day i was in egypt still but whenever i mention it to anyone everybody always knows what i'm talking about i know exactly what chocolate rain is yeah it was the birth of youtube i remember watching on like e-bombs world i was like what is this i'm like starstruck a little bit and you're about to meet him like hello mr chocolate rain so thomas should be here but he's not because he's currently in north dakota a whole other story for another episode which you'll probably watch coming after this also hit me with some news yeah yeah there's we've got some news i think there should be some sort of a scavenger hunt every time yes theory films in a city where we end up leaving a prize of some sort when when we leave people can see the places that we filmed that in in that specific episode and try and figure out where we might have hid this qr code that i'm going to tell you about at the end of this video so stick around hello hey hey everybody great to meet you nice to meet you yes we're going tommy okay you the full story of how this man became an internet sensation 14 years ago i had uploaded chocolate rain as an afterthought it was not intended as a finished finished version just kind of like an experimental concept like a lot of the stuff i uploaded on youtube i mean youtube was just kind of a repository for my creative afterthoughts you know place where maybe i could share a thing or two that i sang and see what people thought about it that was the spirit that i came to youtube with in 2007 i think at the time that it went viral the experience of having a viral video that led to worldwide exposure was an unfamiliar experience to the public that meant there were no breadcrumbs to follow i couldn't ask what did rebecca black do what did antoine dodson do the way youtube virality worked where you know either with soulja boys dance or you have people like yeah i don't know soldier boy that's my very bad invitation that was great or you just said chocolate rain in front of your own bed sheet in your own living room chocolate green i didn't understand my moment and what made it special to other people i feel like taezon day was sort of this character and then adam botter which is my government name adam bonner had his own mental health journey and unfulfilled dreams and things that he wanted to be popular as and it's almost like instead of just kind of knowing what the moment was and having self-awareness i think part of me almost played out my own anxieties and was kind of like well i'd like if i could pivot this to be popular in this way and i'd like to be popular in the way someone like robbie williams or someone like frank sinatra now i think i'm in a place where i'm much more self-aware and leaning into that journey of hey i'm autistic i've been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder that's a huge part of my experience used from my mental health experience at the time when chocolate rain was blowing up and i had all of this pressure applied to me three of the four major labels at the time were interested in signing as an artist everyone was contacting me to sing at their kids bar mitzvah singing their corporate party literary agents wanted to sign me i was just a kid who had an accident in my living room that led to this exposure this frenzy and you know the next year being parodied on south park etc um what i didn't know what i was saying yes to or no to i mean i said yes to things but i didn't have a preconception of what's saying yes to doing it at what dr pepper would need though the moment of heat was happening and fame was happening i was still very much knowing that i had a tremendous amount to learn about myself i knew that the journey of learning about myself could not i had no fast forward button i couldn't say well i'm very hot now and the world is super interested in me so i need to be the person who i would be after 20 years of learning about myself um i uh i kind of had to learn and figure it out as i go somebody meets you in public they want you to immediately be that moment that made them most happy i find that the more i have to be presentable out in public etc all of that behavior is what would be called in the context of autism spectrum disorder masking when an autistic person attempts to seem neurotypical seem like they do not have autism public attention caused me to have to engage in a lot of masking and i feel like masking takes me away from my best creativity not any continent i mean it happens in in other cities wherever i grow on this earth someone is going to recognize me someone is potentially going to be filming me uh that's what i love about putting something in a song as opposed to typing it in a tweet or saying it if it's in found footage somebody hears you talking at a restaurant like oh i heard him saying this when it hit a song you are controlling the narrative from beginning to end and in many cases that narrative cannot be pinned down for 10 years i did not talk about chocolate rain and it's being initially written as a ballot about institutional racism i would dodge the question honestly i'm a bit starstruck to be here with you because i've not only seen chocolate rain but obviously but i've seen like you kind of pop up in the past 14 years and like other youtube channels and like watch yours as well i'm super inspired by you as a creator because i feel like everything you make is so genuine yeah i just want to say that it's not so much of a question it's more of like an acknowledgement of your creativity and your talent like i can't wait to see what you make next in a way oh well thank you so much you're one of the most articulate people i've ever met you're like spot on with what you're saying about these things these elements to the human experience oh wow that's very kind i don't really like filming myself living alone trying to film myself the moments that come out when someone like yes theory films me in interviews i think a better truer version of me comes out than if i'm just sitting around inside trying to create stuff [Music] she's like your friend looks like he's on it i was like oh it is it stays on oh my goodness so thank you so much decide to get this it's for you hopefully oh oh my goodness thank you one final mission and that is to hide this code for one of you who's gonna see the video come find the code scan it to win a trip their dream destination that they will enter when they scan the code think about our spot done seattle check seven days after this video comes out we're gonna pick someone to win flight to their dream destination and every city that yesterday travels to we're gonna try and do the same here we go we have the form qr code head try and find out it's somewhere in there try and clear it up okay well this is three out of three viral legends we are incredibly grateful for the time that you gave us and for just like you sharing your perspective and your life and your story with us so thank you if you're ever in la you know that you have a place to come and hang and i hope that you think of us as as friends and as people you can always reach out to oh thank you so much i appreciate that you have a huge fan right here i'm waiting for more music oh thank you i appreciate that should we get a producer for you any biggest producer in the world to help you out i'm putting it out there it's good energy i appreciate it can i give you a hug going viral at the scale that these three legends have is not something anyone can predict some of our most viral videos were surprises to us as well all i can say is that connecting with these highly different yet fascinating individuals shows us that the internet truly is a remarkable and unpredictable place and i hope that as the internet becomes more and more of a respectable way of earning a living that there will be better infrastructure to support overnight sensations like them we're excited to be a part of this platform and we're excited to have the freedom to tell stories we want to tell this is one of the only platforms on earth we get to create at the scale that we are while getting feedback directly from the audience so thank you for being a part of the yes theory community and we'll see you next week

Channel: Yes Theory

Views: 2,298,834

Keywords: yestheory, seek discomfort, yes theory strangers, yes theory travel, yes theory subscribers, getting out of your comfort zone, Amazon FBA

Id: 7FWwjVHMgEU

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 20 2021