Hacker Cinema
Nathan for You
2013 · TV series · documentary · 21 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Nathan Fielder, Michael Koman
Nathan Fielder uses his business degree and life experiences to help real small businesses turn a profit.
16 positive17 neutralfrom 33 commenters
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36 comments on Hacker News
Reminds me of this "Nathan for You" episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9KeopXHcf8
Could be a Nathan for You episode
Is this a Nathan for You episode?
This is a scheme on the level of a Nathan for You episode, although the execution is is not quite so deadpan.
In fact, Nathan did create a fake band once. In that case its purpose was to release a song featuring the “blues smoke detector” as an instrument, to lend plausibility to his scheme of rebranding smoke detectors so they could be imported using the lower “musical instrument” tariffs.
It would be fitting, there is an episode of Nathan For You where he devises a scheme to advertise a restaurant to a bathroom stall's captive audience.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaws
> Lots of people seem to enjoy those "ugly mouse statue things".
Sorry, they're still crap. Seriously, taking the MTV VMA statue and robotically slapping his characters head on it? I recently watched the Nathan For You episode "Dumb Starbucks" and those statutes remind me the lazy, deliberately terrible parodies he displayed at an art gallery to establish his bona fides as a "parody artist."
I can't find the YouTube clip of it, but here are some screenshots:
https://www.vulture.com/2015/11/test-your-logos-with-nathan-for-yous-quiz.html
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3844774/mediaviewer/rm3413413889/?ref_=tt_md_1
And here's him singing some equally-terrible parody songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I71IJOym2ic.
Nathan Fielder (who graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades) tried to address this in an episode of Nathan For You (s04e07).
The plan? Put customers at ease by offering the world's first asexual computer repair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9I04Oa-hU
Reminds me of a great Nathan For You episode:
https://youtu.be/jf9I04Oa-hU
Noted management consult Nathan Fielder had an excellent idea to fix the computer repair business by hiring only asexual technicians. At least they wouldn't want to search your files for nudes.
https://www.cc.com/episodes/1xvf7u/nathan-for-you-computer-repair-psychic-season-4-ep-6
That is funny, this thread reminded me of a completely different "Nathan For You" episode. He hired a Web Dev to build an evite template that included a bunch of spammy foul language in "invisible" text in the footer, causing the invite to go to receiver's spam folder. The idea was that you could invite people to a party whom you didn't ACTUALLY want to show up, but also didn't want to hurt their feelings. If they asked why they weren't invited, you could incredulously claim that you DID invite them, and suggest that maybe it went to their spam folder.
The Nathan For You episode where he makes a video of a goat being saved in a pond by a small pig that went insanely viral pretty much made me aware that anything I could be watching has been manufactured.
I'm of the opinion that most of the "dark, gritty" stuff we keep seeing in media just boils down to standard trend-chasing and market pressures to continue to use existing IPs. The cheesy, feel-good stuff from the 60s has already been done, so the darker stuff, especially when it's a darker take on those same characters, is still somewhat subversive to most viewers. When artists can't get real novelty, subversiveness is at least still generally respectable. Eventually, as the audience gets tired of this and it gets done to death, it will shift. Maybe not to the happy-go-lucky stuff, but I think surreal and absurdist humor is still fertile ground (see shows like: Nathan For You, The Review, Informercials, Corporate, American Vandal), and could be another future avenue for continuing to exploit existing IPs.
As for the general happiness of the population decreasing, I think that's mostly unrelated to the media trend. Economic troubles (low wages, housing unaffordability), societal strife, and social media all seem like obvious causes. However, Movies and TV are still generally viewed as an escape to most people, so while they reflect greater trends to some degree, I don't think they're as tied to it as the author may expect.
Nathan for You is a great show. Thought of this episode as soon as I read the title.
This was a bit in an episode of Nathan For You.
Reminds me of that Nathan For You episode where he created a way for party planners to “accidentally” get invitations lost in spam:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p9KeopXHcf8
EDIT: As elektor pointed out, this was already mentioned in the footnote on the site. :-)
It sounds like a Comedy Central episode of "Nathan For You"
Reminds me of the great "Nathan for You" episode where Nathan creates his own film festival so that he can award his own movie a judge's prize.
Here's a video of the original system from the TV show Nathan for You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9KeopXHcf8
There is a Nathan for You episode of this that is quite brilliant.
Every episode of “Nathan for You” is amazing. The episode about this phenomenon is no exception. “The Diarrhea Times”...lol
Nathan For You proved the lengths that people will go to claim a rebate: http://www.cc.com/episodes/z5sar1/nathan-for-you-gas-station-caricature-artist-season-1-ep-103
I'm not sure how far and wide the show Nathan For You reaches, but there's a fantastic episode where he proposes a local electronics store mark TVs down to $1 in order to buy up new inventory from Best Buy for his own store using their price match policy.
Rather than trying to explain it poorly, I highly recommend everyone watch this clip from the show:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/i6q9t5/nathan-for-you-the-price-match-plan
The Nathan For You episode, "The Ancecdote", along with his subsequent appearances on Kimmel and Seth Myers, are required viewing on this subject.
Reminds me of a Nathan For You episode that lampoons the idea of ranking something as subjective as a burger.
Nathan convinces the owner of a burger joint in LA to go on a popular local radio station and promise that he has the best burger in LA, and offer $100 to anyone who eats there and disagrees. The comedy in this is apparent to pretty much anyone, but people will still refer to different restaurants as 'the best'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A-wUs-fofs
Nathan for you is absolutely hilarious and brilliant. He has quite a few incomplete episodes on youtube if anyone wants to check it out. For example: https://youtu.be/xMW-SzZKJ-Q
I used to watch "Nathan for you" which is the somewhat comedic version of the business hacking theme. The difference is that the main protagonist did not always succeed. But when he got lucky and it worked, it was funny as shit.
My favorite episode is the best buy tv episode.
everyone has to see the Nathan For You episode "The Anecdote", where he constructs a perfect "talk show anecdote" for his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, and then retroactively orchestrates the bizarre events of his anecdote in real life so that they "actually" happened to him. the supercut of several nearly identical, and obviously fake, stories told by "real" celebrities on late night talk shows is amazing.
https://www.avclub.com/nathan-stages-the-perfect-talk-show-anecdote-on-a-stunn-1819702888
see also: his later appearance on Seth Myers where he explains the deal and then re-tells the anecdote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L7GsGc5adk
Nathan For You did a really funny take on this for a gas 'rebate' in S1E4. Basically jumping through hoops until everyone would give up.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2777064/
These cause me to often laugh out loud, but warning, they're a bit of an acquired taste (like all good things):
- XFM Series (you tube, start season 1 episode 1) - Nathan for you - People just do nothing - Alan Partridge
Nathan For You is one of the best shows out there. It's a satire of other business advice shows -- the host pitches ridiculous business schemes that are usually borderline scams, and it's crazy how often they work out. He's had a couple episodes go viral, like Dumb Starbucks (he opened a Starbucks lookalike called Dumb Starbucks and justified it by saying it was protected under parody law). I highly recommend it!
This reminds me of a very, very complicated episode of 'Nathan For You' (a phenomenal show for those unfamiliar) - where he pays someone to legally change their name to a celebrity's name in order to open up a fake bank account with said name, then go into a restaurant and fake a "celebrity big tip" scheme to bring the restaurant some needed PR.
But there's a snag! Nathan's lawyer lets him know he has to legally announce the name change in a circulated newspaper. This might draw attention to his scheme, right? So in order to get around that, he creates a fake newspaper, and circulates it around a handful of major cities for four weeks to make the name change announcement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU1U2Eyep_4
"Redux for babies" sounds like an insult.
It reminds me of this Nathan For You episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNuuiydKlI0
Can't wait for the Nathan for You episode that generated this
It kind of makes me think of the Dumb Starbucks episode of Nathan for You (parody law).
> Spectators and media commentators questioned the stunt's authenticity, viewing it variously as performance art, a statement on consumerism, a viral marketing achievement or the work of street artist Banksy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_Starbucks
Reminds me of the Nathan for You episode with the dating site that sends a bodyguard with every woman that goes on a date.
I would bet money that this is a stunt for the Comedy Central show "Nathan For You", which is coming back for a second season soon and does all kinds of weird business-y stunts like this.
In the first season he got a gas station to offer gas at a steep discount, but only after rebate- but you had to drop the form off in person at the top of a mountain:
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/zhbu8g/nathan-for-you-gas-station-rebate
It increased business because people came for the low price, but only a handful of people actually decided to try to redeem the rebate. Those that did try to redeem it had to camp out overnight and solve riddles:
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/q9ibj6/nathan-for-you-gas-station-rebate---campout
On another episode Nathan tried to help a Haunted House to create buzz by getting someone to sue them for being too scary:
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/nf0ws2/nathan-for-you-haunted-house-pt--1
He did this by making a couple think they'd contracted a disease and were being rushed to the hospital:
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/wvuntb/nathan-for-you-haunted-house-pt--2