Funny Faces of Jesser the Laser

YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Eight young men sit on and around a large brown sofa inside a $2.8 million house in a quiet gated community, taking turns playing Fortnite. They've been at it for at least a of couple hours now. They're dressed casually: slides, sweatpants and T-shirts. They all play Fortnite regularly, especially because it's so popular with their fans.

From left to right: Jesser, TD Presents, Kris London, LosPollosTV, CashNasty, Kobe 0802 (friend of 2Hype) and Jiedel standing behind them. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

This afternoon session, as per usual, includes lots of enthusiastic shouting. At one point an Xbox controller is angrily thrown across the room. But then the men decide it is time to go to work. Out come two boxes of hair dye. The DSLR camera soon points at CashNasty.

"All right, guys. I'm gonna show you guys how much I trust 2Hype," Cash, a 27-year old who was working as an assistant manager at Walmart just three years ago, says to the camera. "I'm gonna let 2Hype dye my hair to the saucy patch I had on my head … the (Dennis) Schroeder. It had some drip in it, didn't it?"

2Hype is a group of YouTubers who reach more than nine million subscribers and earn hundreds of thousands of views per video. Six of them live — and often work — in this house (they're renters).

CashNasty (left) explaining how he wants his hair dyed as Kris London (right) tries to help. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

The group proceeds to blindfold Cash while Kristopher London, who at 6-foot-10 towers over his friends, prepares the hair color.

Cash and Kris have the two largest followings in the squad, but five years ago, neither of them thought they'd be here. Back then, Cash was working his way up to becoming an assistant manager, a job that consisted of walking around Walmart, monitoring other employees and keeping the store in order. After work, he'd go home and play NBA 2K. Kris, now 25, was hoping to put together a college basketball career that would get him drafted into the NBA. Now they're making a living — and a robust one — by uploading videos to the internet.

Many of these short films don't have a theme, or plot, or involve anything more than the men hanging out at the house. The one they're working on today will be 18 minutes, and consist of some pick-up basketball and this hair-dyeing drama.

The goal is to get Cash to panic. Almost immediately after the blindfold goes on, Jesser begins mischievously massaging Cash's head, pretending to spread the dye everywhere.

Kris squeezes dye onto blindfolded Cash's head as Jesser watches. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

Jesser is one of the youngest members at 19 years old. In elementary school, he filmed "dumb skits" with his older brother. Ten years later he is a full-time YouTuber with millions of followers. He graduated a year early from high school and skipped college to focus on this career. His brother, who goes by Jiedel, also lives in the 2Hype house and is part of the group.

Others join Jesser in the mischief. They put lotion on Cash's hands, pour a little water on his head and rub his beard. With everyone around him laughing, Cash pleads, "No, no! Please! Please, dude! No trolling, bro!"

Less than an hour later, following all the laughs, and the apparently confusing hair dye instructions, the process was complete, though Cash wasn't exactly pleased.

"Oh my god, this is not what I asked for, ya'll," Cash says after rinsing out the excess coloring. "This is not what the [expletive] I asked for."

The finished video, published two days later, racked up 320,000 views within a week.

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YouTube was founded back in 2005 as a way to make videos on the internet easier to access and share, but has recently become the most popular social media platform among teens age 13-17, according to a Pew Research Center study that also found 45 percent of respondents were online "almost constantly."

Some of that time may be spent watching channels dedicated to sports — or at least run by people with some relation to sports (or sports video games). Today's most popular sports channel started in 2009 and has become a multi-million dollar business. You may have heard of it: the sports comedy group called Dude Perfect. They now have 30 million subscribers, more than five billion total views and, in 2017, were the highest-paid YouTube sports stars in the entire world ($14 million), per Forbes.

Social media has turned everything on its head, and is rapidly changing the way companies attempt to appeal to consumers — especially young ones. According to Google, 70 percent of teenage YouTube subscribers said they relate more to YouTubers than traditional celebrities. And as those "creators" become "influencers," marketers increasingly turn to them to peddle products. Sometimes that means through a regular paid endorsement, but YouTubers trying to build a following might tout a product just because it arrived in the mail. The market is still evolving, even as more proof comes in that YouTube stars — many of whom have no other claim to celebrity beyond having the audacity to tape their own lives day after day — are seen as more authentic and trustworthy than movie stars and pro athletes.

Which is to say: Business is booming, and not just for the massive channels up top like Dude Perfect. Last year, Long Haul Management CEO Dan Levitt decided he wanted to build a roster of smart, entertaining sports YouTubers. Levitt realized there was no real, as he calls it, "middle class of sports channels." The big guns are successful, but they charge brands crazy fees to work with them. Levitt wanted to help connect companies with sports content creators who may not be on Dude Perfect's level but are still strong influencers.

Dan Levitt (in the hat on the left) listening to Jesser during a meeting. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

After spending years working for Sony, Disney and Big Frame, Levitt's experience managing these video creators began with a guy known as MatPat, whose three channels with a total of about 18 million subscribers focus on technology and video games. After Levitt was able to get strong results in connecting him with sponsors — the first brand deal was with HuluPlus, in which MatPat asked his followers to sign up for free trials using a special link at the end of a video — MatPat introduced Levitt to other YouTubers. The first sports client Levitt found was Mike Korzemba (known for his NBA "what ifs" and conspiracy theories). Then, Korzemba led Levitt to Jesser when the two did a video together. Initially, Levitt didn't understand the hype around Jesser.

"I couldn't believe there were so many views for (Jesser) just playing basketball in his backyard with friends," Levitt said. "At first, I was like, 'Why would anyone want to watch some random kids play basketball in the backyard?' But the more I watched, I was like, 'Oh, he's actually a really engaging, fun personality. This would be like watching some of your friends play.' The fact that these guys are pretty good at basketball, and fun and engaging, really, I think, resonates with a younger audience."

Jesser, from Westlake Village, Calif., was able to get brand deals before meeting Levitt, but looking back now, he admits companies took advantage of him. He wouldn't call out the company by name, but an example he shared was the time he excitedly agreed to do a big advertisement for next to nothing because it involved an NBA player. At the last minute, they informed him the player wasn't available, and he was stuck still having to do the ad by himself.

Jesser was young and didn't know anything about the business side of YouTube, but he learned a lot from working with Levitt. Eventually, he introduced Levitt to his friends, like Kris and Cash. They had started drawing a following by playing the video game NBA 2K, and eventually came together to form 2Hype last year.

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The three 2Hype guys with the most subscribers — CashNasty (2.8 million), Kris London (2.4 million) and Jesser (2.2 million) — told For The Win that the most they've made within a month, taking into account YouTube ads, merchandise sales and sponsors, is $70,000 to more than six figures. They noted that that amount can vary wildly from month-to-month.

However, while they're all enjoying the dream life as full-time YouTubers — in a nice house with a pool, hot tub, trampoline, tetherball pole and basketball court in the backyard — their background stories are incredibly different. Kris and Jesser live in the Yorba Linda house, while Cash flies in from Louisiana every few months. YouTube has brought them together.

Cash in front of the 2Hype house basketball court. He visits the house every couple months. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

Cash started YouTubing about four years ago. He liked how people were able to express themselves and reach so many people through the platform. At one point, while he worked his full-time Walmart job, he also posted YouTube videos and live streamed on Twitch.tv on the side. He said he realized he could be successful at his two side jobs when people kept asking him to do more videos. About a year into his start with YouTube and Twitch.tv, he quit his job at Walmart to work solely on the internet.

"I was intrigued by streamers and YouTubers, so with (my girlfriend's) support I decided to get into it, and it became a huge thing that I didn't expect it to," he said. "Now we live full-time doing YouTube. We went from living in a trailer park to a half-million dollar home."

Kris in front of the 2Hype house pool. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

Kris had dreams of being an NBA player and says that, to this day, sports agents approach him to ask if he'll think of trying out for pro teams overseas.

As he detailed in a video three years ago — since watched 1.5 million times — knee surgeries, heart issues and concussions led to a rollercoaster of a basketball career for Kris. He went from the Division I program at Oral Roberts to the University of Worcester in England to the Division II program at Newman University. Ultimately, his fourth diagnosed concussion — which took six months to recover from — left him with a choice: drop basketball or risk permanent brain damage. He decided to quit the sport.

"For it to just be stripped away from me from something I couldn't necessarily control, it hurt," Kris told For The Win. "I literally couldn't look at a basketball for two-something years because I would get flashes of, 'What if, what if … I feel like I still got it.'"

Kris was YouTubing for fun through all of that, but it wasn't until he had what he said was a "terrible video" go viral when he was a college sophomore in England in 2013 that his eyes were opened to the large audience he could draw on YouTube. When he dropped out of college in 2015, a year after his basketball career ended, he continued to create YouTube videos while living with his parents in Texas and working at a men's fashion store. One year later, he started a second YouTube channel, which made his income stable enough to quit the retail job, and he moved out to Los Angeles to join the 2Hype house.

Although he's not an NBA player, his YouTube stardom has led to opportunities to film with NBA stars and meet top executives at Nike. Kris said he has worked with companies such as Adidas, Under Armor and EA Sports. Typically the deals involve Kris using a product in one of his videos. Sometimes he'll be asked to document an experience.

"Eight years ago, I thought I was gonna be in the NBA," Kris said. "That's what I was striving to be, and then sometimes, things change and don't work out. It's like that door closed and another one opened, and I still got to the same place. It's really dope."

Jesser in his room while holding his dog, Humphrey. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

For Jesser, becoming a YouTuber wasn't so much a fallback. In many ways he's been training for this his entire life.

With a dad working in the movie industry (Guy Riedel was a producer on Office Space and Wedding Crashers, among other films), Jesser enjoyed filming skits with his brother, Jiedel, when he was in elementary school. In middle school, Jesser moved on to learning how to edit by making videos about Minecraft. He was inspired by a still-popular YouTuber called Syndicate.

Jesser's work paid off his freshman year of high school when his video called "NBA 2K14 In Real Life," about the funny glitches in the NBA 2K video games, garnered hundreds of thousands of views. He kept at it, and he was able to "finesse" his parents into agreeing with his belief that he didn't need to go to college, since he earns so much money from YouTubing. When he successfully argued that point, he went further and convinced them he didn't need to go through with his senior year of high school either. He graduated early by passing the California High School Proficiency Exam.

Now, Jesser operates two channels, one main and one for video games, that average 500,000 and 400,000 views per video, respectively. Plus, he partnered with Ballislife, a company he dreamed of being sponsored by. They sell shirts, backpacks, socks and wristbands for his line called "BucketSquad."

When asked about the craziest moment of their YouTube journeys so far, Cash said as a sneakerhead, he was thrilled to meet the people who designed Nike shoes when he worked with them to help reveal Paul George's light-up PlayStation shoes. Kris, who did the reveal video with Cash, had a similar answer, saying that experience of getting a look at the shoe with George, playing NBA 2K with the Thunder star and talking with top Nike executives when the company reached out to him about the opportunity was "a dream come true."

Jesser cited playing 1-on-1 with James Harden, even if the game was brief, as his favorite moment. He said the fact that his NBA fandom led him all the way to actually going up against a superstar was incredible and "was the craziest thing I've ever done."

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Maintaining massive channels with millions of followers isn't as easy as they make it seem. It can be dangerously stressful.

Kris said he used to look up to the top YouTubers and think, " Man, why doesn't this guy post as much? Ever since he got big, he's slowed down on the uploads." But now that he's someone who has amassed millions of fans, he gets it.

"I'm starting to see the more things you're involved with outside of YouTube, it's hard to upload consistently," Kris said. "Not just upload, but upload good videos every single week, every single day. Being a YouTuber, you want to keep that genuine connection, and that's me editing everything, making everything. It's almost impossible. It's not healthy."

Unfortunately, Kris found out the hard way how pushing yourself too much can affect your physical and mental health. It happened three summers ago, before he could afford to hire an assistant and the editors that help him when he gets overloaded with work today.

Kris was uploading videos and putting himself through intense workouts every day that summer while living with his parents in Texas. He was in the process of building his channel, and he wanted to put in time in the gym since it made him feel good on camera. Plus, at this point, he had stopped playing basketball and wanted to stay active.

Then, he began to have chest pains, he would randomly have what he described as "cold shivers," and he couldn't sleep because of sharp pains in his upper back, shoulder area. Kris tried putting off seeing a doctor, but after a week and a half, the pain was unbearable, and he had no idea what was wrong. His mom drove him to the hospital where the doctor told them the symptoms were mostly due to stress. The doctor ordered Kris to not go to the gym for six months, and he had to spend a night in the hospital.

Afterwards, Kris said he cut back to uploading two videos per week and didn't work out for four or five months. And now, he pays closer attention to how he's spending his time. He won't stress out and force himself to produce a video. Instead, he'll step back, take a break, maybe leave it for the next day. He has been able to hire video editors who step in when he's too busy to do the edits himself, a video thumbnail editor and an assistant to handle his schedule.

Kris also said he's not as much of a "hermit" as he once was. He goes on weekend trips and longer vacations. For instance, this year between attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and Vidcon in mid-June, he went on vacation to Hawaii because he knows he'll have an extra packed schedule of uploading daily in the summer.

Following his "wake-up call" years ago, Kris has been able to give advice to his housemates and fellow 2Hype members when it comes to balancing life and work, especially to Cash, who recently had a similar stress-related hospital visit.

Prior to flying out to the 2Hype house in May, Cash went to the hospital for what he found out were stress and anxiety reasons. Kris said when Cash told him what happened and he heard their symptoms were exactly the same, Kris shared what he believed.

"I was telling him it's literally just from stressing over YouTube, I feel like," Kris said. "Just having a lot of workload, and not giving yourself time to ease your mind and get away from it all."

Cash said he took time off for himself to relieve his stress before heading to LA and that "everything is good." He learned "you just have to know who you are as a person inside or outside of YouTube, and not try to be someone or something you're not."

After talking about what he and Cash went through because of stress, Kris reflected on the importance of staying grounded.

"I think with YouTube mental health is pretty important, and some YouTubers can get lost in the space," he said. "I think they lose their self. You see there's stories around them filming ridiculous things that aren't right as a human. I feel like it's easy to lose your human decency. Sometimes because you're chasing the views, you can't separate reality from the virtual world.

"If you don't keep yourself grounded and escape to have your own personal time, you can get lost and you can get messed up. Some YouTubers have to face it head on, and others, I advise my roommates, if you're not feeling it, don't force yourself. It's hard because it's our jobs, so you almost have to force yourself and you want to be a people pleaser, but at the end of the day, we're blessed to just do what we want to do."

As for the future of the YouTube stars, none of them are too sure of what comes next.

Cash said he's focused on YouTube and himself at the moment, and he doesn't know what his future holds, though he's aware that the power he has as an influencer on YouTube means "the sky's really the limit."

From left to right: Kobe 0802 filming as Cash and Kris discuss hair dye with the 2Hype crew. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

Kris said his current goal is to get to 10 million subscribers. Once he reaches that milestone, he'll tackle the next challenge.

Jesser said in the near future, he'd like to try acting lessons for a year or two. Beyond that, he's not sure, but he was the only one to admit he doesn't see himself working on his YouTube channels full-time forever.

"Five years down the line, 10 years down the line, I don't see myself going hard on YouTube like I am right now, but doing something else. It's really in the air," Jesser said. "So much in my life, my passions, everything changes every year. It's so hard to say what I would want to be."

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Life at the 2Hype house "isn't as active as you would think," according to Jesser, who said usually most of the guys stay in their rooms to hang out, film and edit videos. Jesser's room became the impromptu interview space for this story while everyone else kept their doors closed. His room includes film equipment, computers, framed movie posters, a cardboard cutout of Donald Glover and his sweet, attention-loving wiener dog named Humphrey.

Kris echoed what Jesser had to say about what the house is like day-to-day.

"Living with seven other people, it can be a lot, but because the house is so big, you won't even see the people on the other side of the house because we're doing our own thing," he said. "No one's loud and obnoxious and hard to live with, so that's cool."

Jesser added that one thing they do together most nights is meet in the hot tub — their "sanctuary" — for brainstorming sessions. The night before I was there, Jesser said they talked about their big video plans for the summer. They're hoping to post more videos per week since all their young followers will be out of school. One of them mentioned a house tour might be coming soon.

2Hype's LosPollosTV shooting around with Kobe 0802. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

Not all of their work is done in the house. Their jobs sometimes involve being flown out to locations for brand deals or partnerships, like when Nike flew Cash and Kris to Arizona to shoot shoe reveal videos with Paul George.

In June, several members of the 2Hype crew, including Jesser and Kris, attended E3 in Downtown Los Angeles where they were part of the EA Play livestream and played the new NBA Live 19 as part of a sponsorship deal. Jesser and Kris were also at Vidcon in Anaheim, a week after E3, to check out the conference and meet with their brand sponsors.

On the Thursday afternoon in May that I dropped in, aside from playing Fortnite and dyeing Cash's hair, they gathered around the kitchen island for a 40-minute meeting with a merchandise company that their manager, Levitt, scheduled. Two men representing the company introduced themselves, and had a conversation with the group to talk about what new gear they'd like to sell and how they'd like to brand themselves moving forward.

They may only be nine 19 to 29-year-old men, but their content influences a large numbers of young people. Markus Frieske, senior manager of marketing communications at EA Sports, said that in the six years he has worked for EA, he has noticed "the rise of the creator" over the past three to four years.

"These young individuals that play our games, they look to guys like Jesser, Kris, Cash and others as true influential people that guide them on what they should care about," Frieske said. "What clothes? What games? What sports? What favorite teams? It's not to say these younger kids are trying to be copycats … They're trying to find ways to express themselves and be a part of a community."

2Hype's merchandise meeting. Photo: Alysha Tsuji, FTW

Frieske has welcomed the change. He said that out of everyone he has worked with — from star athletes to celebrities — the creators are the best.

"It's not a transaction. It's not, 'Hey, say this thing and post it.' It's, 'Hey, here's an idea. What if we did this?' And they bounce back off," Frieske explained. "It's true collaboration. It's creation and creativity in its purest form. To get the best out of something, it's not one-sided. When you do it right, you create truly viral content that flies further and faster than it ever could."

The merchandise meeting concluded when the food delivery of Chick-fil-a and Denny's arrived, distracting the hungry group. They distributed the food, and got ready to make more videos and watch that night's NBA playoff game.

Earlier I had asked Cash what it felt like to be living this life, earning in one month more than what he used to make in a year, all by being himself on video.

"Sometimes I ask myself (that)," Cash said. "When a fan approaches me, 'Oh my god, I love your videos. I love who you are. Don't quit making videos.' It touches a spot, a soft spot in me because I don't picture myself as that big person they see me as. I see myself as an average person, just making videos, just making people laugh. I just put a camera on and you don't. It's unreal. It really is living a dream."

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Source: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/06/youtube-stars-2hype-house-jesser-cashnasty-kris-london-sports-nba-money-sponsors-2k-creators-video-interview-story-photos-influencers-job-career-full-time