Every now and then, the rabbit hole of the Internet spews up a perverse morsel for those of us who don’t ordinarily live our lives in the realm of used flight attendant stockings and shoes, goatse.cx, clip art hotel websites, and human attractions.
YouTube is no different; it’s a grand repository of some of the weirdest moments caught on camera. Most of these are strange one-offs, caught out of context or by accident. But occasionally someone will create something longer, aligned to their own interests but no less odd.
So here’s our picks for the five most bizarre webseries to be found on YouTube, collected in one place for your convenience and sanity. (Trust me, you don’t want to be surprised by a few of these when you’re looking for Pitbull’s latest video.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiMQhbyXclo
Jonathan Harchick is currently up to video No. 322 of him eating bags of carrots. Usually baby carrots, if you’re still interested. Filmed through what we earlier guessed was “a peephole in a horror film,” he accompanies each nose-bag with songs played on repeat or podcasts.
Harchick is a serial offender when it comes to the creation of l’art de l’ennuyeux. His other seminal work, Jon Drinks Water, is currently up to episode 2,231 while a now sadly deleted series where he counts to 100,000 resulted in an interview on MSNBC.
But forget the fame—you’re thinking about the side effects of all those carrots, right? Well, sure, they will turn your skin orange, but considering Harchick seems to live most of his life in semi-darkness, he might do well with what people in the carrot scene probably call an “indoor tan.”
Adolfo Mateo laughs in the face Harchick’s output. Don’t like this video of him smoking his “Jeantet Curved” pipe while wearing a “Black Light Blue White T-shirt of Surf”? Well, just go ahead and choose another from his library of over 6,450 smoking videos. The Argentine’s videos—an old Reddit thread claims that he once had another YouTube account, now deleted, that had another 10,000—are invariably of himself, smoking a constantly changing collection of pipes, cigars, and tobaccos while wearing assorted attire, all of which he chronicles in the title and description.
But there is—as we originally revealed—a sad note to Mateo’s channel, as it also includes touching tributes to his wife, Ana Maria, who he confirmed has passed away. Say what you like about the man and his pipes, but unlike some poor, repressed souls at least he’s not afraid to show the world his great loves.
Even the best of us don’t get to choose our hands: Mine are too small to the point of self-consciousness (two people have commented), Nicole Kidman can’t keep hers out of the news, and Vince Vaughn rocks an additional phallus. But the premise behind Things for Hands—outlining the services available at a clinic for people who are suffering from having various objects as hands—is nonetheless still strange. Hands as soda cups? Hands as toilet brushes? It just seems like some sort of creepy future where people are bred for specific jobs. And that woman whose hands are sandwiches? I bet after each take she forgets what she’s filming and keeps biting her fingers.
4) Gigahoes
Long before humans start being bred with shoehorns for hands, we will be having sex with robots. In fact, it may be happening right now with Roxxxy, she of the “beautiful skin,” dead fish eyes, and Skank Mode.
Gigahoes, a mockumentary set in a sex-bot escort agency, avoids the sickening uncanny valley of Roxxxy and friends—just imagine the post-coital tristesse when you look into those lifeless, Crispin Glover eyes and realize what you’ve done—through the use of human actors, but it’s a nervy, close-run thing. Some of the acting is so wooden and bereft of emotional authenticity that, robotic role or not, you can almost hear gears grinding within the actors’ groins.
5) Vikram Yadav’s Medical & Surgical Education Videos
You may have already experienced the work of Dr. Yadav. Nobody ever knows just how they got there—his videos’ comments are littered with things like, “I was just watching Clay Matthews at USC videos eating garlic parmesan fries AND THEN THIS HAPPENED”—but like some grotty dive bar that everyone ends up in at 5am, many YouTube journeys finish at his channel.
Simply put, Yadav is the king of the Internet zit scene. And he revels in it: “Hi friends, for better enjoyment watch this video under full HD,” he trumpets at the beginning of the classic “Gold Mine of Black Heads on Nose.” “Later in the video you will see that someone is licking it.”
Some of his videos are far, far beyond disgusting (tip: don’t watch this), but it’s usually only when he can get his trusty “comedone extractor” dirty that Yadav becomes particularly passionate and creative. And if he’s the David Lynch of this artistic movement, the clogged pore his muse, then his series—the immodestly but accurately titled “The World’s Best Blackhead Videos“—is his Twin Peaks.
As a collected piece, it is remarkable in its emotional breadth, from the horror of “Monsters Crawling in Me” and the sheer (explosive) power of “Sebaceous Cyst and Keratin,” to the comfortingly relaxed “Draining a Huge Abscess on Neck” and the mystique of the series’ “deleted” video.
Like all auteurs, Dr. Yadav is a man who lives for his work—going so far as to seemingly only eat food that looks like blackheads and puss. So when his wife recently found an infected pore on his own back, his excitement was palpable. Here was a chance to bring work home! Here was a chance to finally be the subject of his own art!
The result is, as expected, brilliant. Unhurried, respectful, and photographed “from all angles,” I could think of no more fitting way to celebrate the delivery of his new child into the world.
Screengrab via Things for Hands/YouTube
