“Besides, lemmings don’t actually fall off cliffs; that’s a persistent and
widely held misconception.”
My parents weren’t convinced, which was understandable. Some
say this mischaracterisation of lemmings originated over 200 years ago.
Even if they had understood, making money online was an alien
concept to them, like extraterrestrials, which they’d never heard of.
Luckily my parents have always been supportive of my crazy pipe
dreams, ever since I dreamed of playing the bagpipes. For Ollie and
me, it was a calculated risk. We knew we could make good content
that resonated with people, so we decided to make videos for as long
as people wanted to watch them, which was usually between five and
fifteen minutes. Working full-time on YouTube wasn’t as easy as we
thought it would be. We’d assumed it would be a walk in the park, but
it was more like a run in the Botanical Gardens. The first thing was
making sure to keep up with our subscribers. As our views and
subscribers grew, we had to re-strategize because we knew people
wanted more. The videos had to be well edited and of a higher quality
than when we first started, but luckily one of Ollie’s greatest qualities
is a maddening devotion to perfection, so each video was more
dazzlingly wonderful than the last.
In 2014, a year after we’d started our channel, something amazing
happened. Jordan conquered his fear of calendars. Then Ollie and I got
invited to a Korean culture convention, or K-Con, in Los Angeles, or
L-Ang. I’d wanted to visit the United States, or U-Stat, ever since I
met my roommate Dustin Dustin in my first year at SOAS, and the
invitation was a big step for us. Being able to quit our jobs was one
thing, but we never thought that ‘Korean Englishman’ was going to buy
us our first tickets to the U-Stat! Second or third, sure, but not first!
Fourth, possibly. Fifth? It was certainly plausible. But first? Get out of
here. Muncho was over the top with excitement. He loved going on
planes, he loved everything Korean and he especially loved boy bands.
He carrotwheeled with excitement when he heard that we had been
invited to interview a new band called Bangtan Sonyeondan, or BTS.
We had never heard of them, but we did a little research and thought
about fun and important questions to ask them.