Let’s be honest. College can suck sometimes. Doing loads of work on top of the existential stress of figuring out what you’re going to do in your future is a scary feeling to think about. But in the meantime, it’s always important to live in the moment, as one might say. Enjoy the little things in life and keep trying to do your best. There are many college students who have YouTube channels that show their experiences in university as a way to look back on their triumphs, struggles, and incredible memories. And in 2023, YouTube had to say goodbye to an underappreciated legend in the community: a recent Rutgers University student named Anthony Potero or Anthpo for short.
Cutting right to the point, I love Anthpo. He has been one of my favourite YouTubers to watch in my spare time. If you don’t know the main gist of his videos, Anthpo posts videos of his high school and college experiences. But it’s not just the typical day in the life videos you see on every student YouTube channel (e.g. going to classes, preparing meals). He goes above and beyond in making unique content that stands out above all others. This all began as early as 2019 where he made a satirical video in which he went around posting pictures around his high school of Fat Yoshi in a lighthearted manner. He would continue making funny skits and clips of himself doing wacky things, including dressing up in a full Perry the Platypus costume (from the TV show Phineas and Ferb) as well as going around a fair in a Mario-Yoshi hybrid costume in a sequel video to the first Fat Yoshi video.
In 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world, Anthony would continue his rise in content creation by developing low-budget parodies of beloved TV shows and movies, including iCarly, The Office, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. However, his most famous parody came from when he joined a TikTok-related house in the summer of 2020 with other content creators known as The House Nobody Asked For. In this group, he posted his parodies of the hit Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender which consisted of 3 separate videos for each respective season/book of the show. On top of the rise in popularity after Avatar was added on Netflix that year, the videos blew up, shooting to around 4.5 million views on average.
With this rise in popularity, Anthony then decided to take a unique route in terms of his content: going back to college. This was when in my opinion, he entered his prime in terms of videos. Along with his college roommates and/or friends, he has created a variety of different videos each with creative ideas. This includes things such as doing dare challenges based on the number of times you swore, hosting a wedding for his friend and a stuffed bear, playing in a volleyball tournament with anime-inspired jerseys, competing (and winning) in a Korean beauty pageant, and making incredible birthday parties for his friends. He even made a K-Pop group with some of his friends (most of whom were not Korean) in which they went by the name OKPOP. They would end up creating a full album of songs sung in Korean (If you want to get into Korean music, this is a good starting point in terms of music to listen to).
In addition, his collection of videos has caused the creation of a “cinematic universe” of sorts with his closest friends to which he calls the Anthpo Cinematic Universe. This primarily involves his roommates and/or friends Kieran (his childhood best friend), Henry (his on and off-again cameraman), Colin (his newest roommate who immersed himself into Anthpo’s videos quickly), and Hanbon (his quirky, energetic friend). If you watch his videos, it almost feels as if each character has a unique personality and development of sorts that the audience can fully enjoy. People in Anthpo’s videos have better character arcs than most current superhero movies (you can fight me on that claim).
However, the most important part of Anthony’s content is that all his work seems very genuine. A lot of social media influencers in modern times make these grand-scaled events that are eye-popping at first glance but lack a sense of genuinity in how they present themselves. Sometimes, those types of influencers seem like Chat GPT and are just hitting all the generic beats of a must-see YouTube video. But Anthony is different in the sense he is capturing everyone’s emotions in real time. Every person in his videos are having fun and feel as if they are not forcing an emotion. It is genuine content at its finest. He has mentioned at times in his videos he sometimes loses money in the process of making his content. But he doesn’t care. For Anthony, he believes that it is important to try a little harder in life and to enjoy what you are doing right now.
It reminds me of times when I hung out with my friends during university, whether that was chilling at the park, going to parties, eating at restaurants, and more. Those times of pure fun and excitement with your close friends is the best feeling you could have. And Anthpo’s videos are full of this concept. Right now, it can be stressful to get through school and it’s important from time to time to go outside and do something fun and exciting. Relieving your stress with the help of people close to you is truly important to get through obstacles, and Anthony has a ton of videos that resemble that feeling.
To sum up, if you’re looking for cool videos of people just having a good time, Anthpo is definitely the channel for you. Despite officially leaving YouTube on May 14, 2023 after his official graduation from Rutgers University, he will remain a legend in the YouTube community.
If you want to get into a deep dive into his content, here are some videos from his channel to check out:
every episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender – BOOK 1 – https://youtu.be/5TCdjbMWrzQ
if you curse you lose – https://youtu.be/msMmm6WRAfE
grown adults go to chuck e cheese – https://youtu.be/LeOmnyRYJw0
i held a wii tournament and nothing went right – https://youtu.be/9xyKzvA0QY8
Can a White Guy make a KPOP Group? – https://youtu.be/TPNwnX2PNJI
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And here’s the OKPOP YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@THEOKPOP
(to check out Anthony’s K-Pop Group)
Image Citation:
[1] A. Karl, Anthony Potero at Vid Con. What’s Trending, 2022.
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