PETALING JAYA, Dec 6 -- What does it take to be a YouTube star? Weird encounters with people apparently according to 21-year-old Ho Ming Yew, one of the faces behind YouTube channel dmingthing.

With popular videos such as Your Accent Come From Where, How to Make a Korean Drama and Types of Sneezes, most people didn’t realise at first that the creators of the videos are four Malaysians in their early 20s.

They were mistaken for Singaporeans or Asian Americans instead.

Using slices of life for inspiration, dmingthing consists of brothers Ho Ming Han, Ho Ming Yew and their friends Bryan Lim and Raffi Th’ng. Being a YouTuber was not a career path they chose and now two years after Ming Han’s first vlog, dmingthing has close to a 100,000 subscribers.

“It started with very simple vlogs, mostly rants. My first video was about my university’s carpark which was flooded. A lot of cars were underwater and they couldn’t claim insurance. I had my webcam with me so I just ranted about the situation,” said Ming Han. This was back in November 2011 while he was still studying.

“The next day, I woke up to find that I had 2,000 to 3,000 views on that video. I thought to myself ‘Who wants to watch this nonsense?’” he said.

Eventually, Ming Han roped in Th’ng and Lim whom he met through mutual friends. Both Th’ng and Lim are former classmates who have experience with videography and editing. Ming Yew came back from the UK in July 2012 and he decided to join the team.

“He likes doing stupid things,” said Ming Han about his younger brother. Throughout the interview and photo shoot, Ming Yew’s funny expressions and antics kept me in stitches.

“Don’t take whatever he says seriously,” warned Ming Han when Ming Yew joked about something.

Th’ng met Ming Han during a Jayesslee concert in Malaysia when Ming Han and his band, Skyward opened for Jayesslee.
“I actually like doing music. We have an official music video for Skyward.

But we’re now more focused on creating content for dmingthing at the moment,” said Ming Han.

He said that becoming a YouTuber is “the most peculiar thing to happen in his life.” The psychology graduate thought that he would be doing his Masters and practise counselling instead of making videos.

The same goes for the rest of the team who are mass communications graduates. Ming Yew is currently pursuing his PR and Marketing degree at a local university.

When Ming Han was doing his third vlog, Raffi messaged him on Facebook, asking him to do something else, a proper video instead of the usual rants.

At that time there was a viral video going around called, Shit girls say. dmingthing decided to do their own versions of it with Shit boyfriends say and Shit couples say. The next day, they were surprised to find that there were 25,000 views!

“We were like, ‘What’s happening?’” said Ming Han. It was an unexpected response and later on, they found out that most of the viewers were Americans. That was when they realised that they could actually make videos that people could relate to and like.

On Valentine’s Day last year, Lim and Ming Han were just talking when Lim asked if he wanted to do something for Valentine’s Day.

“What do you mean do something for Valentine’s Day?” Ming Han recalled asking him back. He thought Lim was suggesting something non-YouTube related. That memory cracked the whole team up.

So they started working on a video that was relevant at that time. It was 2012 and there was this meme going around called ”Forever Alone.”

“I hated that term and I wanted to give some hope to my viewers so we did a video called Alone Forever,” said Ming Han.

That too resulted in 25,000 views by the next day. The YouTube scene in Malaysia was picking up at that time and fellow YouTubers like Dan Khoo, JinnyBoy, Germani and more were making viral videos.

“The combined virality was just good for the industry. We became friends with them and we started collaborating, appearing in each others’ videos,” said Ming Han.

“But dmingthing was formed not to just make viral videos. We have a clear direction of what our viewers want to see and we just bounce ideas off each other,” said Ming Yew.

One of the most popular Asian American YouTube channels is Wong Fu Productions, who just recently had Chinese celebrity Wang Lee Hom making an appearance on their video. The team at dmingthing said that Wong Fu Productions inspired them.

“We don’t try to imitate them. What I like about them is that they don’t succumb to trends,” said Ming Han.

dmingthing is also heading towards the direction of creating more comedy videos than stereotypical ones. They aim to make videos people can relate to and laugh.

“Instead of bitching about people, we like to make fun of people,” explained Ming Han.

So far, dmingthing has not gotten any trouble from viewers or the authorities because they don’t create controversial videos.

They hang out regularly most of the time, even outside work and they would share experiences of meeting strange people. From there they would create a script out of their everyday life.

“As long as we find it funny, we would go ahead with it,” said Ming Yew.

Can you pay the bills by being a YouTuber?

“Companies would approach us to do videos for them. We also get advertising money from YouTube ads. I would say that it’s like a freelance job where we can work whenever we like without the constraints of working in company,” said Th’ng who used to work for a TV channel.

Also, the pay is better than working for a production company according to dmingthing.

Although it’s only been two years, dmingthing team feels that there is a potential in the industry and that they will be doing this for the long run.

“It is not obvious by watching our videos that we are Malaysians and we get international recognition. Only in our ‘Your Accent Come From Where’ video do we bring out the Malaysian side. We are quite lucky to have support from viewers all over the world,” said Ming Han.

What’s next for dmingthing?

“To be an inspiration for up and coming YouTubers,” said Ming Han.

“To get into Hollywood and maybe get an Oscar,” added Th’ng.

“I guess ideally, we just want to keep it going and make it better,” said Ming Yew.

From the looks of it, they are right on track. Head over to www.youtube.com/dmingthing for funny videos by the team.

This story was first published in Crave in the print edition of The Malay Mail on December 5, 2013.