If you don’t know who Kevjumba is, you need to head on over to YouTube right now and check him out. Kevjumba, whose real name is Kevin Wu, is an internet celebrity and former contestant of The Amazing Race. With over a 1.3 million subscribers, he is one of YouTube’s most subscribed comedians, and one of my personal favourites.
After his one-month hiatus from Youtube, he posted a video about Googling himself. He found that if you type in “Is Kevjumba”, Google finishes his query with “gay”. He decided to enlist the help of his subscribers to change it to something more “manly” and funny. The result: “Is Kevjumba a heterosexual bear wrestler”.
If you happened to take a look at Google’s Hot Searches list on January 20, 2011, you’ll see that Kevjumba’s crafted query made it to the list within a few hours of the video being posted.
This is an example of the power of the Internet. According to Jenkins, two traits of the new media landscape is that it is global and networked. YouTube is a popular video-sharing site that connects users from around the world. Video makers can collaborate with subscribers by asking them to post ideas for their next video in the comment section.
Kevjumba’s silly plea for help to change the Google queries was only heard by a small fraction of people - the people who watch his videos - and it still brought about a change relatively quickly. Compared to world affairs, this change was tiny and completely useless, but it was a change nonetheless. But this makes me completely in awe about the power of the Internet. If Kevjumba’s message could spread so quickly to such a wide audience, imagine what would happen if someone (slightly more) important broadcasted a message about political change. If that person gained enough followers, would it bring about a dramatic global social change?
Anyway, that’s just my two cents. As of right now, if you type “Is Kevjumba”, Google returns, “Chinese”. So I guess Kevjumba was only a heterosexual bear wrestler for a short period of time.
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