Why did George ‘Joji’ Miller quit his YouTube career?
Starting the channel DizastaMusic in 2008, Joji released his channel’s first video around 11 months after Google had just introduced the first advertisements on the site. This wasn’t actually the very first video that Joji had posted to Youtube, however, as on October 17th 2006 Joji released a video to the channel 2cool4u92, which shared the name of the channel. This video features a 12 second clip of Joji attempting to breakdance at the age of 14. Two years later, the first video on his DizastaMusic channel, titled “Lil Jon falls off a table” is released. It pales in comparison to the video quality of his later videos, but the abstract, unorthodox style of the ‘Filthy Frank’ days ahead were clearly visible from the start.
The DizastaMusic channel lasted a good few years, with Joji finishing to post content on it by the 8th of March 2015, but the youtuber wasn’t finished there. Before he stopped posting on the original channel, Joji had created a second channel named TVFilthyFrank on the 22nd of January 2013- two years before DizastaMusic had stopped posting. The change had happened, according to Joji, because his original channel had been reported and demonetised so many times that it had made him scared the channel would be shut down, which would mean all his videos would be lost from the site. As well as this, in the two years that had passed between when TVFilthyFrank was created and the original channel stopped posting, the TVFilthyFrank channel had eclipsed its predecessor and become one of the fastest growing channels on youtube. It was the end of an era for the seven year old channel, yet it was forever immortalized by it’s ‘Magnum Opus’: the Harlem Shake. A viral craze that took the world by storm, the Harlem Shake, was actually created by Joji and his friends on the DizastaMusic channel, a seemingly pointless joke/dance that sent the world crazy shaking to Baauer’s Harlem Shake song in 2013. Still not many people know that the viral activity started with Joji.
The TVFilthyFrank era did not last as long as his previous channel by a long way, but it certainly brought Joji’s career to fruition with numerous features from people like Ethan Klein (H3H3 Productions), Ian (iDubbbzTV) and Australian gaming and comedy youtuber Max (Maxmoefoe). In fact, on a recent podcast from the H3H3 team, featuring Ian from iDubbbzTV, both Ian and Ethan agreed that Joji played a significant role in the formation of their own careers and fame, saying that he was an idol and friend to them when they started out.
It was during these TVFilthyFrank years that Joji decided that it might be time to show more of his personal life, his experiences, and his friends to his growing community. Instead of just posting more “normal” content to his primary channel TVFilthyFrank, or even his secondary account TooDamnFilthy which was made for extras and BTS videos, he created a channel called Jojivlogs. This way he had a space where he could focus his more personal and intimate content, without it breaking the flow of the ongoing twisted comedy skits that appeared on the primary channels. Furthermore, it was a way Joji could incorporate himself into his content more, and relieve some of the stress of being the content creator he was. Joji needed to relieve stress for actual medical reasons, as it was around this time he started having non-epileptic seizures for an undisclosed medical reason. As well as just personal videos, he started releasing some of his musical projects, like the incomplete album Chloe Burbank Volume 1 which featured two songs: ‘thom’ and ‘suck it charlie’. Unfortunately for Joji, his fans were not as hopeful about the change in dynamic, and became very hostile to the internet comedian. The constant harassment that Joji received from the ‘fans’ on the Jojivlogs channel became all too much, and the channel was closed down, with all of its videos being deleted.
Unlike youtubers who made content without constant explicit language, sexual themes and grotesque imagery, Joji struggled to get almost any of his videos monetised, due to the very strict nature of Youtube’s regulations. He also suffered many community strikes, and threats to his channel. With all these stresses on his channels, it’s impressive that Joji actually managed to reach the level of 5.7 million subscribers by 2018 on his main channel, and approximately 8 million+ over all his active channels by the end of it all. Joji made himself a perfect example of someone being able to beat the system and make it to the top, when the very system is against them, and became an idol to many starting youtubers- even existing ones. This is why it was such a shock to many across the platform when Joji revealed that he would be stopping to make the content that made him famous, and gave him such a cult following.
Joji wasn’t short of options though, as while he was not making videos in his spare time, he was studying a Bachelors degree in ‘Communication and Media Arts’ at the New York Institute of Technology; based in Brooklyn. Following from his passion of making music, and his understanding of technology within media, Joji decided to follow his true passion and make music full time under the name ‘Joji’. By the 3rd of November last year, Joji released his first full length EP, featuring the single Will He that was released a month before. The album made a huge splash in the ‘sad boy’/R&B genre, with its melancholic beats, and it’s interpretative lyrics. Joji is currently signed onto the upcoming 88rising label, who also work with favoured Asian artists like the Higher Brothers who hail from China, Rich Brian from Indonesia, and Keith Ape from South Korea.
The question remains though; why did Joji quit Youtube? Well, in his tweet regarding the retirement he was taking, he posted a picture explaining it all. He raised two points as to why he can’t carry on making the content he’d been making for close to a decade.
“Unfortunately, I no longer enjoy producing that content.”
“Several serious health concerns, including but not limited to; throat tissue damage, and neurological conditions (that I prefer not to get into).”
Although many fans, including myself, may be upset about the end of an era for Joji, it’s clearly a fresh start that he needs to grow. I’m sure I speak for all his fans when I wish him the best of luck in his future ventures.
Leo Rowley
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