"I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL"
December 22nd, 2004
The Background
by Nozdordomu
Youtube Poop started with “I’d Say He’s Hot on our Tail.” It might have started sooner or later, had anyone else on the internet gotten the idea to splice clips together with crazy edits (and some of them had), but SuperYoshi’s video still stands as both the first uploaded poop and the basic definition of “poop.” He couldn’t foresee the movement it would spawn, and he didn’t even think it would influence other videos, but this community – our Youtube Poop forum – practically speaks to its legacy.
For such a legacy, though, “I’d Say He’s Hot on our Tail” doesn’t really have a definite history. If you go on Wikipedia or even our own Chewiki, you can glean the basic facts: Matt Mulligan aka SuperYoshi tested his Windows Movie Maker program by editing the SMB3 episode “Recycled Koopa,” and then uploaded the product to sheezyart. That doesn’t give a good picture of how and why the video ended up being what it is.
To shed some light on the first poop ever, I’ve interviewed SuperYoshi and included his answers below. Here, the veteran pooper discusses his inspiration, his poop’s immediate and long-term influence, and the Youtube Poop movement as a whole.
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How did you go about conceiving and creating “I’d Say He’s Hot on our Tail”?
The story has been sporadically told for the last several years but I'm usually not as concise with it so I'll try to get every little detail down. Basically, in 2004 I was in an electronic tech class that mostly dealt with computer hardware, and once my teacher let me borrow a bootleg Windows XP disc. I was still running Windows 98SE at the time so it was nice finally having XP at home. I was getting a new computer for Christmas that year and couldn't wait for it so I guess I jumped at the opportunity to have at least something new to hold me over for the next few days. I believe this was December 21st, if I remember right.
Anyway, on the night of the 22nd I went around looking at whatever new features I could find in XP, and lo and behold, it's Windows Movie Maker. I was easily amused by programs like Sound Recorder so this seemed like the perfect tool to make something incredibly stupid. And so I did. At the time I had a few assorted episodes of the Mario cartoons on my computer, because I was super into it at the time and legitimately thought they were great cartoons. I don't know why. Basically of course the big joke of “I'd Say He's Hot on Our Tail” is Luigi's "Whoa!", but I'm honestly not sure if that joke came before or after I imported “Recycled Koopa” into WMM. If I had to guess, it came after, but it's been so long that I honestly don't remember.
Why did you choose the source and "pooping methods" you did?
I've spoken on this before, but the version of Windows XP I got in that December 21st-25th week had a very old version of WMM on it. It had no effects whatsoever besides being able to splice clips. There was no slow down, no speed up; nothing -- not even the rainbow effect! This is why Hot on our Tail is just unedited clips. It was not a stylistic choice, but something that was forced on me. If I had access to the updated version of WMM at the time, the video absolutely would have had the effects seen in later videos (And, as such, when I got my computer for Christmas with the new WMM with the effects, they immediately became abused). And I do mean immediately. Shortly after discovering the effects feature of the new WMM I made a slowed down clip of the "I'd say he's hot on our tail!" scream my Sheezyart ID at the tail end of 2004.
Actually, before I get too ahead of myself, I should probably explain the deal with the Sheezyart version. I had an incomplete build that I was so excited to share at around 6PM on the 22nd and that's what I submitted to Sheezyart. Unfortunately I can't get onto my 2000-2004 hard drive with the original files on it, nor is Sheezyart up to show you, but this is virtually the same thing, anyway.
Basically right before the mid-point of the video, the last clip of Mario and Luigi falling down the pipe screaming is what got put on Sheezyart. I labeled it as [Incomplete] and finished it later that night. Unfortunately, the file had become so large when I imported the completed WMV into Flash (A little over 30 megs; huge at the time) and because I was still running dial-up in 2004, I was unable to ever update it on Sheezyart and it remained in its incomplete state for good on the website.
What's your favorite and least favorite thing about it?
I still love the video. It holds a very special place in my heart as one of the few things I made in my teenage years that I'm not totally embarrassed about. I still think all the emphasis on the amount of screaming in the cartoon is funny, but I really do wish I had access to the effects at the time I made it. I doubt it'd be all that much different, but “Hot on our Tail” always seemed barebones without it, even in 2004. In hindsight I'm a little disappointed I never decided to redo or at least update the original video in 2004 as soon as I got the new computer with the new WMM. I would have liked for 15 year old me to see what the original video would have been like at the time with the effects I had access to in 2005-2006. I'm surprised I never re-edited it right after discovering the effects (which was long before me and Joe made the Mega Man video in March of 2005), but I definitely had no wishes to redo it as the years went by, particularly when I finally uploaded it to Youtube in late 2006. That's how it is, and the original will always be the original.
What was the initial reaction on sheezyart and (later) Youtube?
As far as the initial 2004 reaction goes, there really wasn't a whole lot. My friends, of course, saw it and enjoyed it, and I think Wonchop made a remark like "You really like Luigi screaming, don't you?" It was pretty quiet besides that. It was very much kept to myself for a long time, until Mr. Simon found it in mid-2006 and made this as a response.
(Remember that this is a new upload of a video that is pre-"Youtube Poop", so if you ignore the video intro and outro, this is exactly what the Sheezyart upload looked and sounded like.)
The interesting thing to note, though, is that, at the time, me, Retrojape, Yamino, etc. had already begun uploading the videos to Youtube, but this was still purely a Sheezyart thing to Mr. Simon. It wasn't until later on that the "Youtube Poop" name caught on (the name I'm still unsure if Mr. Simon or Duke came up with) that it really became something big on Youtube.
How do you think it's influenced poop since then?
I don't know if that video (or anything I've done in general) is very influential to anybody at all. I mean, sure, in the grand scheme of things I'm responsible for starting the chain reaction that began with me, spread to Retrojape, spread to Yamino, spread to Mr. Simon, who in their own way influenced others, and those others influenced more, and so on and so forth. That's something I've always been proud of. Even inadvertently and without anybody else really knowing or caring, the fact that without "The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 Remixed [Incomplete]," these videos may not have spread like wildfire and created this wonderful community, makes me feel very happy.
I've always wondered how things would have turned out without me. You've got Kajetokun and his Over 9000 video that was made with absolutely no influence from me or anybody involved with YTP at the time, and I can only imagine he inspired a bunch and could have potentially kickstarted this whole trend without me, but things would certainly be very different. There'd be a hell of a lot less emphasis on video game cartoons, especially Robotnik – another thing I'm proud of. While these videos were meant to ridicule and emphasize the cheesiness of these cartoons, I legitimately love AoStH and I'm so happy that YTP basically allowed the show to get the respect it deserves in a time when, before we started making Robotnik videos, the show was pretty much unanimously hated in favor of the ABC series – and I've always been curious how things would have gone down had I not had any part in it.
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The Video
by thebluespectre
SuperYoshi says that he wishes he could re-edit his creation and add effects, but I don't think that he needs to. "I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL" is funny because of its simplicity of form, repeating itself just sparingly enough to be surprising every time. We have ten or twenty seconds of some random point in the episode's plot, and then BOOM, Luigi gets hit in the butt by a bomb. The more ridiculous that any given segment is, the more it is repeated. Mario and Luigi fall down a trash chute with banana peels and cans on their heads while stock "splat" sound effects play two, three, four, more times, each cycle making their frightened "Whoa!" less nerve-wracking and more like a fourth-wall-breaking acknowledgment of how stupid the predicament is. Paragoombas scramble from Bowser's airship to attack Luigi's butt yet again, making good on their master's order to "run rings around those raccoons"; there is barely a second of the mushroom men's disorganized rabbling noises as they take off, managing to sound both nothing like and exactly like what one thinks a mob of angry fungi sounds like, and it repeats until the watcher is on the very brink of annoyance.
Other clips only play once, yet make their presence puzzling and memorable. Princess Toadstool, not the blonde and helium-voiced Princess Peach of later Nintendo games, follows the Mario Brothers (and a Toad) as they make their escape, immediately taking charge of the crisis. "Try to find a Super Leaf", she intones in a nearly emotionless iambic pentameter. Toadstool has no time for good acting, she is tired of being kidnapped by dragons and monsters and
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Most of all, I am pleased by how self-contained the first YouTube Poop is. YTPs have a long standing tendency to be self-referential, diving deeper into their own relatively short past for scavenged audio and video. Sometimes the effect can be charming- there is no way to make Hank Hill being surprised by "Boggle?" not funny- other times it only serves to harm the creation. Older YouTube Poopers have a term for videos overly dependent on references, the so-called "spadinner" poop. "I hope she made lots of SPAGHETTI", they repeat in an emotionless stream of consciousness. "I wonder what's for dinner?", they parrot from the Phillips Cd-i King in a totally unrelated context. It's not that the context is missing, of course. Luigi was only talking about spaghetti because the writers needed a cheap Italian joke and pasta was the first thing that came to mind; the King was trying to be badass by nonchalantly dismissing his daughter's warnings of danger with a blithe topic change. A lack of context makes material from these outside sources funny because the hamminess of their acting is unexpected in an unrelated situation. The issue with "spadinner" poops is that the references cannot be outside of context, because they are used so often that they ARE the context, and the video itself is only a faint background, a cake made entirely of icing.
But "I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL" has nothing to call back to, no evolutionary ancestors. All it has is itself, so all it can splice into the video is more of itself. Some might say that this reveals one of YouTube Poops' weaknesses, that it is chained to whatever pop culture the authors know and can grow no more, that it cannot do more than be an imperfect mirror of what already exists. But this is also the strength of YTP; as that imperfect mirror, it can both celebrate and mock almost anything in the same sentence, the speed and surreal nature of the video's editing tearing through mental defenses like a plate of mom's spaghetti. SuperYoshi's creation is that fast-paced mashup that manages to impart life lessons in a storm of gibberish, a tag of digital graffiti for an audience of pedestrians to shake their heads at and secretly wish they could make for themselves.
The original YouTube Poop ends in a way that perfectly describes everything about Youtube Poop. For the second time in the short video clip, an environmentally unfriendly Bowser has his own garbage dumped onto his face. One of the Koopa Kids walks up to the half-buried king and comments that they used to have a lot of neat stuff like that, but they got rid of it.
"It's not 'neat stuff', you nincomkoop," the justifiably irate king shouts, "it's the same trash we had before!"
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The Poop
by TheOneManBoxOffice
The very first YouTube Poop (henceforth YTP), which was originally called “The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 REMIXED!!!”, was primarily intended as an inside joke, as well as an experiment with the XP version of Windows Movie Maker (those were the days) created by SuperYoshi in 2004, using various clips from an episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, entitled "Recycled Koopa". At first glance, it can be seen as a series of re-arranged clips of said episode complete with repeats. No visual jokes, no masking, no ear rape, none of the stuff we use today. This was understandable, because the idea of YTP did not come to anyone's mind whatsoever. YouTube was basically just a site where you just recorded yourself doing either everyday shit, vlogging about doing said shit, or re-enacting stunts from MTV's Jackass (the ones who did the latter were really desperate). It was then SuperYoshi made a video out of "Recycled Koopa", primarily as an inside joke with a group of buddies and first uploaded it to Sheezyart, to mixed reaction. It was then when he uploaded it to YouTube two years after its creation that YTP was born.
As the video starts, it starts like a normal episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, but then, bam! We see a shot of Luigi getting hit in the ass by a Ba-bomb and saying a quote we'll be hearing time and time again throughout, "WOAH! I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL!". It is followed by various re-edits of the episode, with a lot of memorable moments including heaps of garbage dumped on King Koopa (a.k.a. Bowser), which in the show itself, is so cardboard cut-out, it's hilarious, and my personal favorite moment in the poop where Mario goes "There's only one real solution to this mess...a stray Christmas tree?" In the end, it's to the point where it doesn't matter whether people think it is visual garbage or simply genius. It is the prime definition of the word "random", and a result of what you can do when suffering from utter boredom, and quite frankly, only a few of us got the general idea from the get-go. It was not long until other videos of its kind started to pop up on YouTube and with several worthy sources at our disposal that were going around the internet, primarily the soon-to-be-discovered Phillips CD-i games featuring Mario and Zelda characters, and, of course, the DiC cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh, what have we brought upon the world...
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I see this video not only as the very first YTP, but as a time capsule for how far we have come over the past 10 years since its original creation. What started as one little experiment on YouTube became an on-going series of mindfuckery created by those who devote their spare time warping various TV shows, movies, and cartoons into something that would make the late Andy Warhol question our overall sanity (or for some of us, what little of it there is). We've actually come a long way since then, when we found other software we could use to make YTPs (Vegas, Premiere, etc.) and what effects and sources we had in our disposal. It kind of reminds me of how a lot of us first got started making YTPs with Windows Movie Maker as our only video-editing software, and with very few effects on hand. This was before we got our hands on Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere/After Effects and showed the community the definition of what I like to call “visualized brainfucking”.
Overall, this is a video worth seeing to look back on how this little (and I use that term loosely) cult following came to be a decade after its inception. Today, the video might not look like much, as it can be seen as bare bones editing and nothing more, but in 2004, it was something interesting, and without it, YTP wouldn't exist, and unfortunately, neither would this site. SuperYoshi, we have you to thank.
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The Concept
by SkyBlueFox
There's a saying that goes around often when it comes to making Youtube Poop, one I heard long ago and one that's stuck with me to this day, though I've forgotten who actually coined it: that the aim of making YTP is – or was – always more to confuse and befuddle the viewer(s) rather than to amuse or entertain them.
It's a simple idea in words, and I think most people would agree with the idea, but soon after the whole genre of videos got started, the idea became somewhat lost along the way, which is why the saying exists in the first place. Admittedly, a lot of people probably would be confused if you showed them a YTP, but once the initial shock wears off, it starts to become more interesting or engaging rather than weird. Many people on the forums have been directly or indirectly involved with YTP for years, so I imagine it is, for lack of a better term, more thought of as a culture shock rather than truly confusing.
The reason I'm getting at all this is because I think the contrast between the two ideas of confusion is actually well-illustrated by "I'd Say He's Hot On Our Tail," not just compared to recent videos but even compared to ones people made all the way back in 2008 and 2009. Obviously there's differences between the original YTP and others, since the original will always be the very first, unrefined, raw, whatever you want to describe it as, but there's a lot more to it than that.
What shines about "Hot On Our Tail" is how dis-coherent it is. Many poops, even at the turn of the year from '07 to '08, were often more about flowing from one thing to the next; repeating certain clips for too long or too little would be odd, choppy sentence mixing was frowned upon (SPA-dinner can attest to that), so on and so forth. Videos like Deepercutt's highlight this quite clearly, since his videos often followed a source from beginning to end. For example, "Racism in the Mushroom Kingdom" went from pooping the start of the episode all the way to the end of the episode, and sentence mixed, repeated, and inserted clips as it went along, rather than tossing in anything and everything anywhere and everywhere.
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This particular aspect of the videos is one of the best examples of the difference between the confusion that "Hot On Our Tail" does and the confusion any other poop would make. If you sat a random pedestrian down and showed him "Racism in the Mushroom Kingdom," he'd probably be quite baffled, somewhat disgusted, definitely shocked, and maybe a little bit amused, simply because of how unrestrained Youtube Poop is in the first place. If you're sentence mixing beloved and/or well-known characters into making sex jokes and having buckets of semen dumped on their heads or things like that, there's no denying that it's tremendously weird. But if you kept showing that random pedestrian more and more videos, he would eventually be less and less taken aback, and would probably get used to the weirder touches about the medium. Desensitization, to put it one way.
Every medium has something to do with flow in order to be entertaining. When writing fiction, authors need to make sure that scenes transition well, that characters develop naturally, and so on. When making movies, scenes and filming often need to be steady and smooth, unless choppiness is used for dramatic effect, of course. Videogames need to polish their game mechanics and are often at their best when everything works and synergizes fluidly with the core gameplay. And poops, through the years, gained a sort of flow when it came to making them; making sure repetition wasn't used too much or too little, making sure sentence mixing and that sort of thing didn't have blips or cut off improperly, and many other things like that.
"Hot On Our Tail" has almost no flow to it, unlike other poops then and now. It's almost entirely disjointed and haphazard, as if SuperYoshi took the various clips, chopped them into pieces, and then copy and pasted some pieces into other places seemingly without rhyme or reason. It's still clearly recognizable as the Super Mario 3 cartoon, but without that flow to it, it comes off as confusing, even to me, someone who's watched poops for a long time. Why does the scene where Mario and Luigi discover Mario's koopa tail immediately move into Luigi's buttocks getting Bullet Bill'd? Why does the scene where King Koopa and the kids spot the heroes have a short bit missing in the middle of it?
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Watching the video nowadays can be a bit of an experience for people because of this key difference. It's not really that entertaining in the way I think most expect poops to be, but that's also part of the point. "Hot On Our Tail" was never made with the intent to entertain people, mainly because at the time, well, who was going to watch it? It was the product of one young man who sat down with a new OS, found and booted up Movie Maker, and decided to goof around and see what he could do with it.
There are other poops that have the same sort of universal confusion, but the ones that do this – that I can remember – are difficult for me to really consider poops at all. A lot of the time they're barely even recognizable as anything, period; just a mess of visual and audio effects that garble the source so much that you can't tell what the source even is at that point. It becomes less of a YTP and more of an experiment to see how much a video can be distorted, like taking a JPG image and bringing in more and more JPG artifacts until the image is unrecognizable. It's confusing, sure, but without knowing what the source is, it's still quite different.
"Hot On Our Tail" feels rough around the edges, but I mean that in a completely and unambiguously positive way. You can tell it's a Mario cartoon, but have no idea what exactly is going on or why clips and things were chosen, placed, used where and how they were. It's just somebody taking a virtual machete to an episode of a cartoon for no reason other than kicks and giggles, and it's the reason why it ends up embodying the spirit of YTP so well. Every time I watch it, I'm never able to fully grasp why this happened here or why this was repeated two and four times there, but in the end, that's what makes "Hot On Our Tail" great.