Nathan Fielder

About

Nathan Fielder is a Canadian comedian best known for his Twitter pranks and his Dumb Starbucks parody. He currently stars in the Comedy Central comedic show Nathan for You.

Career

In 2007, Fielder became a writer and actor^[6] on the Canadian variety comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. That following year he and his fellow This Hour Has 22 Minutes writers were nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Program or Series and a Writers Guild of Canada Award for Variety Program. He went on to write for two Comedy Central shows, Important Things with Demetri Martin (2010) and Jon Benjamin Has a Van (2011) before gaining his own show with the station, Nathan for You, in 2013.

Online History

Social Media Pranking

Got 2 Grams for $40

Got 2 Grams for $40 refers to a Twitter prank launched by Fielder on April 24th, 2013, that involved encouraging others to text message their parents “got 2 grams for $40," and immediately follow up with a second text asking them to ignore it and tweet a screenshot of their response. The comedian later explained that he devised the idea with the help of Michael Koman, the co-creator of Nathan For You. Within two days, the tweet had been retweeted more than 4,100 times and favorited more than 2,000 times.

If You Think U Gave Someone an STD, Is It Illegal Not to Tell Them?

If You Think U Someone on STD, Is It Illegal Not to Tell Them? referees to a Twitter experiment launched by Fielder on June 6th, 2013. Fielder instructed his Twitter followers to text their parents asking them if it is illegal to not tell a sexual partner that they may have given them a sexually transmitted disease and specify that they were asking for a “friend.” In less than 24 hours, this instructional tweet was retweeted nearly 1,900 times and favorited more than 900 times.

Instagram Troll

On June 1st, 2013 Fielder created an Instagram account.^[3] The first photo he posted was a selfie featuring Fielder in sunglasses which reflected a computer screen with a pornographic image. Fielder’s next three images featured similar subtle reflections of the same pornographic image, reflected in his sunglasses, a CD, and a knife.

On June 23rd, Fielder posted a picture of the e-mail he had gotten from Instagram telling him he had violated Instagram’s community guidelines, which lead to one of his photos (an image in which the pornographic image was reflected in a rearview mirror) being removed. The same day several sites published articles on his trolling photos, including Splitsider^[4] and UpRoxx.^[5] The account has gained over 5,000 followers.

Nathan For You

On February 28th, 2013, the first episode of Nathan Fielder’s show, Nathan For You, premiered on Comedy Central.^[7] The show was a parody of a business consulting reality television show. Nathan, as the show’s main character and its business consultant, attempted to help out real struggling businesses, who were often not sure if his strange, outlandish suggestions for their businesses were real or fake.^[8] Nathan then executes the proposals he makes, often going to extreme lengths to guarantee that his premise succeeds.

Because the show is filmed months before it airs, some of Nathan’s business improvements have made headlines before it was well known that they were part of the show, especially some where external marketing and buyer response were part of the conceit. Some of the more popular examples are below; more in-depth examination can be found in the subreddit devoted to the show.^[12]

Petting Zoo Hero

In the second episode of the show, Fielder proposes to a petting zoo that a viral video may boost their popularity and earn them more visitors.^[9] He constructs an elaborate set and directs a video where a small pig “saves” a goat from drowning – in reality, the pig was running across a plastic course set right underneath a water. An actor yells “goat in the water, goat in the water.”

Posted by the user jebdogrpm on September 19th, 2012 (over six months before the episode featuring it aired), the video acquired over 9.4 million views as of November 3, 2015. A user, now deleted, posted a link to a Liveleak mirror of the video to the popular subreddit, /r/videos, where it earned 3,537 points (96% upvoted).^[10] From the subreddit, the video was consequently picked up by a variety of local and national news broadcasts and publications, often as a “Cute video of the day.” Months later, when the video’s provenance was revealed during the show’s promotional tour, Kelly McBride, the senior faculty for ethics, reporting and writing at the Poynter Institute, called the news media’s willingness to display the video “embarrassing for journalists.”^[11]

Dumb Starbucks

Dumb Starbucks Coffee is the name of a coffee shop that Fielder opened in Los Feliz, California as a parody of the American global coffeehouse chain Starbucks. Upon its opening in February 2014, the store gained much notoriety online after photographs of the storefront began circulating on various social media sites.