What about Troom Troom, the DIY YouTube channel people love to hate? (2023)

As a place of important news, commerce, and information, the Internet has also been awash with weird, surreal, and darkly funny things. For many of us, the first viral videos are like “salty fingers"e"Let's buy shoes' were instrumental in developing our sense of humor and understanding what the internet is about. Today, the latest YouTube sensation to captivate millennials and younger generations is less obviously weird, but somehow more disturbing.bathroom, who has almost six million subscribers on YouTube and 1.4 million followersInstagramIt's hard to describe. Apparently, it's a collective of young women who, as her Instagram bio puts it, produce "easy-to-make video tutorials." But the reality of Troom Troom is much more.

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What really started out as a fairly straightforward channel promoting step-by-step recipes and cute crafts eventually morphed into a channel focused on pranks and weird "tricks," like putting a zipper right in the middle a bag. Lemon. Colors shifted from pastels to bold and oversaturated, and the mysterious women in the videos, known only to fans by nicknames like "Curly Sue" and "The Blue-Eyed Girl," became objects of intrigue among viewers. . Other examples of Troom Troom's offbeat sense of humor include a tutorial on how to prank your teacher by removing half your sandwich and filling your boiled egg with color(?), a tutorial on how to like your lips make the inside look like an orange (??), and several guides on how to bring food to school, including one that suggests bringing a sausage to class in a sandwich bag and a box of baby wipes (???).

"I've been watching her for several months. I have no idea when his channel went from perhaps useful clues to the messy mix of fact and fiction it's become now," said John Hallman, a Troom Troom superfan who evangelizes his friends on the channel via email to Refinery29. "When I discovered them, I was looking for some kind of solidarity and sanity, knowing that these videos are just as entertaining and upsetting to other people. I needed to know that I wasn't missing anything and that other people would be just as baffled and intrigued by this group of women who built an empire with hot glue."

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This mystery seems to be something the people behind Troom Troom want to keep. They have not responded to multiple requests for comment on this Refinery29 story and appear to have taken the same position towards other curious outlets. However, as Hallman points out, they include heavily constructed characters that seem designed to generate interest. They also vacillate between seemingly sincere and parodic content, confusing and irritating some viewers in the process. Basically, they drew significant attention only to later undermine it.

"I have a sketchy theory that it's actually being run by a seasoned San Francisco millennial who hires these Eastern European women to create that perfect mix of DIY and craziness to get maximum views and followers," says Hallman.

Jessica Rocha, who describes herself as "obsessed" with Troom Troom, also has some fan theories. "One of them is that someone has arrested the Troom-Troom girls (either for employment or physically locked in a house) and is forcing them to mass-produce these crazy videos," she told Refinery29 via email. "If they don't meet their viewership quota, they take away their food and replace it with unflavored fondant and jelly. Is someone forcing you to do this?

"But to answer your question, that's definitely part of the appeal," he continues.

Either way, the elusive creators of Troom Troom are doing the right thing by standing out from the competition, according to Evan Asano, CEO and founder of MediaKix, a social media influencer marketing agency. “YouTube is incredibly saturated in almost every category. Female-focused channels like beauty, lifestyle and DIY are among the most saturated categories,” she told Refinery29. “There are hundreds of thousands of these channels and creators trying to differentiate themselves. Since YouTube's inception, personality has been a key driver of the channel's growth."

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But for all those folks out there who are amused and amused by Troom Troom's bizarre antics, there's a growing likelihood that he isn't. A quick search for Troom Troom on Facebook brings up groups like "Troom Troom is Doom Doom" with 766 members and "Stop Troom Troom Now!!!" with 129 members. Twitter is also full of tirades, some clearly joking, some not so much, against the collective. People have made YouTube videos just to complain about how stupid they are.OthersYouTube videos are.

Natalia, the admin of the latter Facebook group, told Refinery29 via email: "As I watched more and more of your videos, I realized I was having this odd fusion of hate, horror, disgust, and a weird, mundane pleasure. As a small community, we hate the double T for a number of reasons, most of them the weird blank space in the actress' eyes, the weird DIY choices, and "gimmicks". It's like junk food for your attention span.

While this is a fairly common explanation for why someone chooses to hate anything on the internet, other Troom-Troom critics are more sinister. For example, there has been much speculation in the comment columns and on social media about the nationality of the women in the videos. Because of their appearance and the fact that the videos occasionally show, for example, a bag of Lay's potato chips with the label in Cyrillic script, many have speculated that they could be Russian. In earlier episodes, some of the narrator's accents sound distinctly Eastern European. Given the current political tensions between the United States and Russia, much of which is fueled in the popular imagination by the epidemic of fake news and cyber warfare, this link, tenuous as it may be, seems a factor in some's dislike people to be opposite the canal. .

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"As for relations with Russia ... I'm not sure," says Natalia. "[But] I know there's something wrong with Troom Troom."

Interestingly, although John and Jessica identify as fans of Troom Troom and Natalia says she despises them, they both expressed a similar sentiment by looking for a community of other viewers to discuss the videos with. In John's case, that means exposing his friends to them, often sitting in meetings and laughing at the videos. In Natalia's case, that means connecting with like-minded hateful viewers online.

But whether you love Troom Troom or hate Troom Troom, it seems like no one can watch your videos without leaving the experience with a series of unanswered questions: Who is responsible for these videos? Who are the women who lead them? Where are you from? Where are they filmed? What's the problem with these strange crafts? Is this supposed to be fun? Should it be educational? And the most important,Because? Why this?

"I think what bothers me the most about his videos is the quality," says Rocha. “Obviously someone is taking care of it. The editing and camera work is very good and they are clearly on a budget. There's at least 10 dream dream girls I can count. Someone is seriously committed to this story."

Troom Troom's YouTube videos are often preceded by ads, which means the channel is "monetized." Someone, somewhere, is making money off Troom Troom, which at least offers an explanation as to why the mysterious folks behind them decided to lean on his weirdness. Like so much else on the internet, from Laurel/Yanny to the Walmart Yodeling Kid, weird or seemingly random content is often viral content. Above all, Asano has identified itself in the oversaturated, women-oriented DIY market.

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For his part, Asano, who says he's never heard of Troom Troom, says he doesn't find the channel that odd at first. "No immediate reaction as I watch hundreds of different channels of all kinds, so little surprises me these days," he says.

While YouTube content is generally considered some of the smallest of our cultural creations, "performance art" is perhaps the most accurate way to understand what Troom Troom is doing. As such, they're spoofing an expression that, despite only being created in the last decade, is now ubiquitous on social media: the overly cheerful but oddly serious host of video tutorials. Whether you're teaching her to contour her face, redecorate her bathroom, or cook an elaborate dinner, she usually seems to have an almost surprising lack of confidence. Seen through a different lens, they create the kind of meaningless and totally unnecessary content that sometimes makes the internet look like a wasteland of trolls and lunatics.

But it's also worth noting that the idea of ​​women pranking their boyfriends, albeit randomly, is also part of a response to the perennial stereotype that women aren't funny. As funny or irritating as viewers find it, the Troom Troom girls stuffing an avocado hole with sprinkles and putting it back in the fridge for her friend to discover later can be seen as a feminist statement. This shows that women like to laugh. And yes, women can appreciate and engage in silly humor. And yes, women can troll just like men, whether it's a good thing or not. Whoever is behind the channel and whatever its purpose, Troom Troom can get the last laugh.