| “ | You know, a lot of people today are saying that this generation of kids are in fact are the stupidest.
Now, that's debatable. Now, I believe there have always been stupid people, but the internet provides greater opportunity for stupidity to be expressed and paraded. In this day and age with the internet, ignorance is a choice! AND THEY'RE STILL CHOOSING IGNORANCE. |
” |
―Frank sharing his wisdom on the types of people on the internet. | ||
George Kusunoki Miller[1] (Japanese: ジョージ・楠木・ミラー; born: September 16, 1993), better known online as Joji (formerly Pink Guy, DizastaMusic and TVFilthyFrank), is a Japanese-Australian musician, and former YouTuber and comedian. He since retired in late December 2017 due to health problems, lack of interest to continue the series, and to pursue his music career.
YouTube Career[]
Miller's true start as an entertainer began on YouTube through multiple channels such as Cosmochino, 2cool4u92, AussieAsianBoyz, DizastaMusic, TVFilthyFrank and TooDamnFilthy that consists of music videos, rants, ukulele performances and "The Filthy Frank Show", with most of the main characters played by Miller. This included the titular character Filthy Frank, a persona who was described as the anti-vlogger of YouTube. Miller first created the Filthy Frank character during his time on his DizastaMusic YouTube channel, which started gaining popularity in August 2011.
In 2013, Miller also began producing surreal comedy hip hop music under the name Pink Guy, who was of one of his many personas, with his discography spanning two full-length albums and an extended play.
On August 15, 2014, Miller uploaded a video, announcing that he would not be posting any more video content onto the DizastaMusic channel, under the risk of losing the channel due to the numerous copyright and community strikes it received.
Miller is known for starting the meme called Harlem Shake, which features a clip of one person dancing as the song Harlem Shake plays, then cutting to a clip of multiple people dancing in the same room after the beat drops. The viral trend also helped the song atop the Billboard Hot 100 and was responsible for Billboard's decision to factor in YouTube views towards chart position.
Filthy Frank's videos were known to push the extremes of YouTube, with such videos as "VOMIT CAKE", "WORST ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST", and "RAT CHEF". He also has a secondary channel called TooDamnFilthy and his own unofficial wiki.
Filthy Frank often collaborated with fellow YouTubers and friends iDubbbzTV and maxmoefoe.
On September 27, 2017, Miller announced the release of his first book, titled Francis of the Filth, the same year he decided to retire from being Filthy Frank, thus ending his comedic career on YouTube. On December 29, 2017, he released a statement on Twitter explaining why he has decided to do so, and henceforth his music career began.
Early Life[]
Miller was born on September 16, 1993, in Osaka, Japan. He attended an international school, Canadian Academy, in Kobe, Japan, where he graduated in 2012. At age 18, he left Japan and traveled to the United States. He is half Japanese and half Australian.
Not much is known about his personal life, as he attempts to maintain his privacy. In his video uploaded to the DizastaMusic channel on May 3, 2014, titled "FILTHY FRANK EXPOSES HIMSELF???", where he breaks character and revealed that he was a college student in Brooklyn, New York, and he didn't want to reveal personal information for fear of not being able to get a job later on due to the nature of his show. He also explained his struggles with his health, such as his seizures when stressed, caused by an unspecified illness and stated that he needed to slow down on the show for his own well being.
Personal Life[]
Miller currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Miller often flies to Los Angeles, California for work and has a residence there.
Miller has an undisclosed neurological disorder that causes stress-induced seizures. This is one of the reasons that led him to quit his YouTube career.
Retirement[]
On December 29, 2017, Miller officially announced in a tweet on his character's account that he was done with his online persona as Filthy Frank. He stated that the reasons for his retirement were:
- Health problems − Miller got damaged throat tissue (which is actually ironic, seeming his character claims to have gotten throat cancer and doing the voice impression actually led to similar damage), and got seizures from an undisclosed neurological disorder, which was aggravated from the stress of impersonating all of his characters.
- Lack of interest − He no longer enjoyed producing comedy and wanted to pursue a career in music. This had been said numerous times before, but most of his fans seemingly didn't care about George's personal life.
It is also been speculated that the channel wouldn't survive much longer after 2017. The Adpocalypse had already damaged the channel, and the atmosphere and political climate of the platform was rapidly changing at the time. What was considered "Old YouTube", was transforming into a "New YouTube" to appeal more to advertising. TVFilthyFrank would have been considered far too extreme, offensive and edgy for the "New Youtube."
It has been said that if Miller continued to make TVFilthyFrank content, his channel would've likely gotten bogged down with strikes and complete demonetization. It is also a possibility that he could have faced termination from the platform.
The majority of his fanbase respected his decision, but still mourned the end of Filthy Frank. Miller's career completely moved on to music, which has been described as a mix between R&B/Soul, lo-fi and trip-hop. However, shortly before closing down the Filthy Frank channel, he released a novel titled Francis of the Filth, which was written to conclude the lore of Filthy Frank. Despite this, the book contradicts events that happened in the videos. So it isn't known whether the book is truly canon to the show, or if it is supposed to take place in a separate timeline.
Characters[]
Filthy Frank was the titular protagonist of the TVFilthyFrank YouTube channel and was known for offensive, shocking, alternative, and filthy humor.
Pink Guy was the most known lycra creature (morphed humanoids) in the show and was known for his famous quote: "Gime de pusi bos".
Salamander Man was a salamander who played the recorder and said "NYES" a lot.
Lemon was a character who suffered from a severe mental disability.
Safari man was one of Frank's many roommates. He was a very stereotypical Japanese tourist with Frank's Secret and had a liking of homosexuality.
Red Dick was a friend of Frank and Prometheus.
Prometheus was friends with Red Dick and was very strong.
Chin Chin was a god who controlled the many realms of the Filthy Frank universe and was the main antagonist of the channel.
Subscriber Milestones[]
Note: The following dates are according to Social Blade. Dates may vary by one or two days due to differences in time zones.
TVFilthyFrank[]
- 1 million subscribers: August 15, 2015
- 2 million subscribers: March 19, 2016
- 3 million subscribers: August 18, 2016
- 4 million subscribers: December 31, 2016
- 5 million subscribers: July 25, 2017
- 6 million subscribers: October 6, 2018
- 7 million subscribers: April 10, 2020
Joji[]
- 1 million subscribers: October 18, 2020
- 2 million subscribers: June 10, 2022
- 3 million subscribers: November 18, 2022
DizastaMusic[]
- 1 million subscribers: April 8, 2021
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Despite Filthy Frank's videos appearing to be mostly random, there is a story connecting most of them. However, it's not obvious and in order to get the story, viewers would have to watch them in a certain order and pay attention to the events that occur in each video.
- He can speak fluent Japanese.
- He helped film The Weeknd's official video for Party Monster.
- One of his Pink Guy songs that being Meme Machine was played on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon which Joji would make his TV debut on performing Run 2 1/2 years later.
- Sub Urban is a massive fan of his and even likes his old stuff.
- He was planning on ending the Filthy Frank character off with a limited series TV show on Netflix before the deal fell out. Instead, he wrote an indie-published novel titled Francis of the Filth that serves as a satirical tome/Bible that explains the lore in full and more concretely details Frank's origins and ultimate fate, where he takes I'm upstairs over as the Ultimate God once Pink Guy finds him.
- In the video FILTHY FRANK EXPOSES HIMSELF?, George reveals that there was a planned animated series based on the show in the works, but it was never mentioned again nor released.
- His first Joji album Ballads 1 is streamable on the Emirates in-flight entertainment system, on the music tab.
- He posted a Pink Guy Tweet on Twitter on December 8, 2019, this is the last confirmation of his activity as FilthyFrank, the reason it was posted due to Twitter's new policy on deleting inactive accounts on December as it was mentioned his Instagram.
- George is a relatively skilled ukulele player.
References[]
