Filthy Frank – The End of An Era
Filthy Frank is the YouTuber behind characters such as Pink Guy, Salamander Man, and Chin Chin just to mention a few. Perhaps the most famous of his characters was Pink Guy, and his music album “Pink Season” reached the Billboard top 100 chart in early 2017.
George “Joji” Miller is the mastermind behind the Filthy Frank character, and he released an official statement on his Twitter account on December 29th stating that he is leaving comedy for good, due to health conditions and a lack of passion. George is now pursuing a music career as Joji, and released his first EP “In Tongues” back in November.
If you don’t recognize Filthy Frank, Joji or any of George Miller’s characters, you certainly remember the viral Harlem Shake trend that was extremely popular a few years ago. Everybody from kids in their classrooms to advertising corporations jumped on the trend, all thanks to a video posted by Filthy Frank and his friends. The Filthy Frank YouTube channel quickly rose to fame thanks to this video, as well as his video “Weeaboos”, the “Human Cake” series that involved collaborations with other popular YouTubers such as Maxmoefoe, iDubbbzTV and How To Basic.
Fans of Filthy Frank also indulged in the lore surrounding the content and characters of his videos. Every new upload added new details to the story of Filthy Frank, and there are countless blog posts and even a Wikia detailing all of the lore.
Fans not only enjoyed the lore of Filthy Frank, but also the crass and vulgar humor of his content. Filthy Frank stood by the idea of “prejudice equality” which he explained as meaning that everyone can be the butt of a joke no matter their color, ethnicity, gender, physical appearance or religion. He had no filter with his humor, and his over 5 million subscribers appreciated his “shock” comedy.
Needless to say, Filthy Frank’s content is not for the faint hearted. It’s very offensive and crude, but despite this, it is refreshing to see an independent creator pushing boundaries in his medium. Some say that Filthy Frank’s content can be classified as art due to the complexity of its storytelling and sometimes cinematographic approaches to film-making. No matter what you think about Filthy Frank, its undeniable that his era of videos and music redefined the current internet culture, and he will be forever remembered by his fans and the internet community at large.
