Low Effort Skit Show (Patreon)

Here's by far my favorite thing i've done this year, The Low Effort Skit Show. A very, very dumb collection of haphazard silliness from the Flint Rat Gang, which i like to consider myself a part of despite spending most of my time living in the woods.

I loved the process of making this, and i love the final product even more. I love its roughness, and rawness, the complete disregard for any kind of production value or mass appeal whatsoever. It’s exactly what i feel youtube videos should be, what they once were and should have stayed.

Not some 100k sub-club faux-pro making sure his lighting and background are as perfectly sterile as possible to deliver the 50 millionth hot take on whatever’s trending while shilling sponsorships and begging for shares.

Just friends filming dumb shit to make themselves laugh. It’s not about views, subs, or influence, just a genuine love for creation, comedy, and most importantly having fun.

All of these skits were ideas we came up while just hanging out and trying to make each other laugh, like a bunch of 30 year old high schoolers. There’s a frenetic, spastic energy that comes from getting together whenever our increasingly busy adult lives can allow, and trying to get as many of these dumb ideas filmed as quickly as possible. The skits are low effort because as you get older, just finding time to be friends is the part that requires the effort. The result is something beautiful. A sincere and genuine sense of fun that i don’t see in a lot of youtube videos anymore.

I love these guys and I love making videos with them. The feeling i get reminds me of how it felt when i was first beginning to make videos in my early 20s, a feeling that became harder and harder to hold onto over the years, as my hobby became a career.

I find a lot of joy and fulfillment in doing these kind of dumb, humble videos with my friends. It's something that becomes lost when you hit a certain sub-count, and start garnering all kinds of attention that you never really wanted in the first place.

It becomes harder and harder to fully express oneself when the audience begins to form their own idea about you, haters and Stans alike have a way of chaining their interpretations and expectations around your ankle. Public perceptions are the walls of creativity's tomb. Or like… maybe the bars of its cell? Either way you get the point, it’ll sound really deep when i get the wording right.

Okay enough sentimentality, the first skit is called "Pervert Truck". 

Skits:

Pervert Truck - Cody bought that hideous truck hoping to use it for something. It sat in his driveway for a bit and then he got rid of it, but not before getting his money's worth with this candid slice of life, starring me and Dylan. Fantastic.

Koegels - I was the camera man for this one, which we came up with and filmed in about 10 seconds total. We got the idea by someone saying "okay let's come up with a skit about whatever is in the fridge." Brilliant.

What if anime was real? - I'm especially proud of this one. We had the idea to shoot these PSA style "What if anime was real" things, but we didn't have a punchline. We filmed it anyway and decided to just stick it in the video as it was. Later, in the darkened quiet of my bedchamber, inspiration came to me, and i had a complete vision of how to end it. I told the guys my idea, we filmed it, and slapped it in there. Perfection.

Armpit Farts - This was Theo's idea, then Cody made it even stupider in editing. Genius.

Gaslighting Friend - This one was all Cody's idea. We walked to the store to get snacks for boys night because we are all still 15, and in between paying for his sodey pops and coming out to meet the rest of us he had formulated this entire skit. Hell yeah. 

Jennifer Aniston - This is just straight up a real interaction i had with Jeff one night and a real thing that i actually said. We just remembered it and reenacted it. Rad. 

Therapist - Another Cody original, we were watching Dirty Work and trying to come up with a joke that sounded like something Norm Macdonald would do. Successful. 

Man Cave - This is simultaneously the most elaborate and most improvised skit. We just had the basic idea of a guy getting cucked in his man cave and filmed it on the fly, figuring out our lines in between takes. We'd do a take, get a little further, realize we didn't come up with the next line, figure out what it should be, film the next take, repeat until we had a good place to end it on. Cool.

It's the only way i can bust - This is another one like "What if anime was real" where we had the idea to just all say this one stupid phrase, and then come up with a punchline later. We didn't manage to come up with one before finishing the video, so it just has no punchline, which in some ways makes it even funnier. I did finally come up with one after the fact, so who knows, it might get a sequel. Nice.

Guy Talk - This is another reenactment of a real conversation. You know how it is when you get together with the boys and start talking about broads. Someone who's not a guy might get the wrong idea. Excellent.

...And that's where this masterpiece ends. You might feel differently but for me nothing else i did this year even comes close to topping this. 

For all the “2020 bad amirite” circlejerking that’s become our new national pastime, a highpoint of the year for me was all the time i got to spend got to spend with these guys, either just hanging out like the old days or making stupid crap like this.

It’s rare now that i get to spend time back home with my old buddies, and i wasted a lot of the time i once had being wrapped up in my own career, my own problems, and my own head.

I hope you can dig these very dumb, very low effort skits as much as I do. Making them took me back to a time when i was just making videos for myself and my closest friends, and that’s the realest shit there is.

Alright, i'm outta here. See ya next year.