August Cover Story: The Launch of the YOMYOMF Network and What It Means for Asian Americans
Look What’s on the Tube!
The new YOMYOMF network on YouTube has the potential to cash in on the Asian American audience, while bringing together two generations of Asian American artists. Will it become a for-us-by-us factory of Warholian proportions?
by EUGENE YI
The end — of the world, of course — will consist of the following elements: fighter jets, exploding cars, flamethrowers, automatic weaponry. Beheadings by lightsaber. Necks broken by starlets. And the solemn intoning of the Bruce Leeism, “You offend me, you offend my family.” T.S. Eliot was wrong. The world won’t end in a whimper, apparently, but with a series of very loud bangs.
At least it will in the revelation as revealed in “The Bananapocalypse,” the trailer for the new Asian American YouTube channel YOMYOMF (pronounced yawm-yawm-eff), an acronym of the Bruce Lee bon mot that gives the channel its name. Millions have already witnessed the Bananapocalypse, so to speak (2,162,711 and counting, as of this writing). The channel has 404,865 subscribers, and it’s been in or around the top 10 original YouTube channels since it started on June 4. That’s a big win for its players, an Asian American Dream Team of stars from screens big, medium and small: YouTube’s KevJumba, Chester See and Ryan Higa; Danny Pudi of NBC’s Community; Fast and Furious director Justin Lin and one of that film franchise’s stars, Sung Kang. It would appear that for-us-by-us entertainment is finally here.
