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It's the YouTube show that has blown up so fast over the past few years that I'm seeing oblique references pop up everywhere (the most recent example was Ralph Wrecks the Internet). Usually these references are
What those who don't really know the show wrongly perceive is that the show is about watching people suffer. That's just a sideshow, and more subversively, a tactic Sean Evans uses to psychologically disarm his guests. He's the best casual celebrity interviewer alive right now. Small production team of six people. The questions he asks are infinitely more interesting than the ones you see on the Late Night shows, and the format favors it. Nobody will top Ricky Gervais's summary of the show, "It's a cross between Charlie Rose and Jackass."
Complex media is the parent media company that owns the First We Feast YouTube channel that produces the show (and is now owned by Verizon and Hearst media). It's very weird to see how this media company has grown because it was actually conceived as a really high-end, glossy magazine that catered to hip youth counterculture back when I was at school:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_(magazine)
Ironically the magazine is no longer in existence. It had incredibly high production value for a magazine: the quality of paper, the photos, and the printing were all as good as they come. It was on the cutting edge of the metrosexual boom at the time. Yet they stacked these things halfway to the ceiling at various newsstand depots around the university, for free, for the first several issues when it launched in 2002. Companies did that all the time in the city, and especially around the college campuses like ours.
I remember Axe use to throw their mini spray bottles like candy to the students on Broadway/Astor and in Union Square when they were first promoting themselves. They were pulling them out of garbage bags and giving us as many as we would take. That's one I remember because it lines Wal-Marts everywhere today. For every free product that got thrown at you on any given week that became 1/10th as successful as Axe there was nine others that I won't remember because nothing became of them. Print startups (magazines, tabloids, newspapers, joke mags) definitely pushed harder than any with students, understandably.
First We Feast is putting out some pretty cool culinary programming. Some of it feels like "sponsored content", so you probably aren't going to see any James Beard awards, but then there is stuff like the "Burger Show" if you missed my post in the Fast Food thread. I love learning about the history of cuisine including its regional evolution and styles before being shown simple recipes or ideas to demonstrate the style. This is one of the reasons America's Test Kitchen & BBQ with Franklin are among my favorite cooking shows.
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