"Hiii. You know what's awkward?"

April 13, 2010 5:59 PM

Natalie Tran (communitychannel on youtube) is a bit of a Youtube sensation, with more Australians subscribing to her channel than any other. She has made over two hundred videos on a variety of subjects. Whether she's teaching you important beauty tips, teaching us home decor and cleanliness, or dazzling us with her music, it's true that her forte lies in discussing the everyday. (NSFW, cursing)

She can dance! If only she hadn't hurt her leg immediately before being stuck in a chase scene. Now she's stuck with the death vignette. But before her untimely deathvignette, she experienced so... much... love.

She also is capable of teaching you how to efficiently end a fight, as well as how to reorganize your home! She's also an important source of personal safety etiquette. And if you ask nicely, she'll tell you her secret, but only because she's so rebellious and hardcore.

posted by flibbertigibbet (28 comments total)

Also, Fighting with LisaNova
posted by delmoi at 6:08 PM on April 13, 2010

She broke my perk meter.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 6:28 PM on April 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wow, that lisanova link is a real buzz kill after natalie tran videos.
posted by oddman at 6:58 PM on April 13, 2010

Oh look, a pretty young woman with a YouTube channel displaying her perkiness. Not that THAT has happened before.
posted by swimming naked when the tide goes out at 7:18 PM on April 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

She is indeed very funny. Thanks!

Most popular YouTuber in all of Australia?? Holy shit.
posted by danb at 7:21 PM on April 13, 2010

I am going to start praying very hard that she gets a PhD and continues posting on YouTube for obvious reasons.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:33 PM on April 13, 2010

She broke my perk meter

Fun fact: the Australian Bureau of Statistics collates national figures for what you Americans call "perkiness", it's published quarterly as the National Sprightliness Index (ANSI). As a country, our median sprightliness is well above those of comparable developed Western countries and we're a net exporter of youthful cheery vigour. Rates have maintained steady throughout the financial crisis, and even though there's a significant dropoff of cheerfulness in the lower percentiles (reflecting pockets of fashionable anomie in inner-city Melbourne, the inner eastern suburbs of Sydney and what's left over of early '90s Brisbane arts culture), all the national trends show steady growth in overall jauntiness towards 2020. The Federal Minister for Sprightliness (Kate Ellis MP) bounces in front of the cameras every now and then to tell us that the Government is building a Cheerfulness Revolution, but honestly, it's more than any public service department can take credit for.

We've historically punched above our weight, as a nation, when it comes to being good looking and gregarious on camera.

The only black spots in the cheerfulness picture are on our infrastructure for continuing to export sprightliness; it's crumbling because of thirty years of underinvestment in saucy industry transportation, no thanks to the privatisations of the early 80s. The heavy rail lines that have taken sauciness from the mines to the pier since the 70s are old with lots of unrepaired rolling stock, and the eastern seabord ports at Newcastle and Port Kembla have a backlog of episodes of Neighbours and Home & Away just sitting in the siding yards just waiting for the Chinese bulk freighters to load them.

It's really good to see independent operators like Natalie Tran, it's enterprises like hers which are the future of Australian export sprightliness.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:36 PM on April 13, 2010 [27 favorites]

We are metafilter. Youtube does not impress us.

Well, I thought it was lots of fun. Thanks, flibber. Cool stuff.
posted by koeselitz at 7:37 PM on April 13, 2010

I've tried to like this but I can't. I find her fake and forced and her observations are nothing amazing. How is she the best YouTuber Australia has to offer?
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 7:43 PM on April 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

The number two Australian on YouTube is My Chonny, an exhaustingly hyperactive teen from Melbourne. He riffs on angry Asian parents and their expectations [warning: brief rickroll], his crazy sister, and even does a parody of Iron Chef. I'm not a big fan of the v-log genre in general, but at least this guy is funny and not too self-absorbed. [Could really do without the 'that's gay' shtick, though. Get your latent homophobia off my lawn, kid.]
posted by embrangled at 7:57 PM on April 13, 2010

Fiasco da Gama speaks the truth. I was part of the division responsible for project managing the blueprints for the proposed Darwin-to-Kupang "Joy Tunnel", designed to inject ebullience and zest into the fertile staging grounds of East Nusa Tenggara, and thence smuggled underground by clandestine Effervescence operatives into the conviviality-starved nation of Timor-Leste. These covert exports would take the form of larrikin spirits, distilled from the native jocularity shrub, and also little koala toys that you can clip on to the end of your pencil.

Of course the operation was botched thanks to political infighting and issues with Aboriginal land rights, and a quarter of a billion dollars worth of heavy equipment now sits rusting in the hot ocean breezes blowing in to Port Darwin. The components of the tunnel itself were reconstituted into skate parks festooned with "No Skateboarding" signs, and immigrant detention facilities for fun-seeking brown people.
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:02 PM on April 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

I've only watched the furniture measuring one so far, but I thought it was funny and well-observed. I'm not sure what's so fake about just being a person making a presentation in front of a camera. I mean—everybody puts on some kind of persona when they go out in front of an audience. Am I being fake when I speak in complete sentences and project to the back of the room when conducting training sessions at work?
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:06 PM on April 13, 2010

she says "hi" and waves exactly the same at the start of all 4 videos i clicked on and its creepy. that's all i got.
posted by nathancaswell at 8:31 PM on April 13, 2010

What Fiasco da Gama and turgid dahlia are glossing over is the question of whether sprightliness and its associated emotions are really the proper responsibility of the Commonwealth Government at all - or whether these manifestations of rapture should be administered by the State governments.

Despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's desire to take direct federal government control of Australian frivolity - and return a portion of GST revenue to the State governments in consideration thereof - there is a growing realisation that the Australian people wish to have their happiness regulated at a more local level. Victorians in particular have constantly voted to bind their funbags more tightly than (say) their Queenslander cousins, and some people in Western Australia think that perkiness should simply be outlawed, at least when operating heavy machinery.

I might refer both those commentators to Section 51(xxxxi) of the Australian Constitution, which provides that "the [Commonwealth] Parliament shall ... have power to make laws with respect to ... spunk, vim and vigour". Even taking a wide view of spunk, it is doubtful that the founders of the Federation meant to include sprightliness within that head of law-making power.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:32 PM on April 13, 2010 [6 favorites]

she stole my heart months ago.
posted by djduckie at 8:43 PM on April 13, 2010

Quidnunc, quite clearly the responsibility for sprightliness falls to the Commonwealth as part of the external affairs power 51(xxix). The High Court decided matters under Commonwealth legislation dealing with international treaties fell to the Commonwealth when it ruled on the Tasmanian Dams Case, and the John Howard-era ebullience rules legislated on under the Kylie Minogue Spinning Around (Gold Hot Pants) Act 2001 settles the matter.

Sure the States have an input with the Ministerial Councils on Pop Music and Electronica but since the 1990s our bubbliness is regulated from Canberra.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:09 PM on April 13, 2010 [4 favorites]

You know, I'm normally all about Federal control, but this:

our bubbliness is regulated from Canberra.

is not right at all.
posted by pompomtom at 9:20 PM on April 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

I read how to reorganize your home as how to recognize your home, and thought 'oh this will be interesting', so I watched it and now I'm all baffled and sad because I really really wanted to know how to recognize my home.
posted by Ritchie at 9:45 PM on April 13, 2010

Fiasco, notwithstanding the Map of Tasmania case, the Kylie Minogue Spinning Around (Gold Hot Pants) Act 2001 has never been tested in the High Court. I am currently preparing a case to argue before the august and learned Justices of that forum that the Act was not a valid exercise of the external affairs power, as it clearly goes beyond anything contemplated by the Australia-UK Double Taxation of Minogues Treaty (5 May 1991).

You may be happy to have Canberra's hold on power clenched tightly between Kylie's arsecheeks, but when Danii starts signing the tunes it's clearly time for the States to say: no more - dear God - no more.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 9:53 PM on April 13, 2010 [3 favorites]

You may be happy to have Canberra's hold on power clenched tightly between Kylie's arsecheeks

Actually, that was the essence of my 2020 Summit submission two years ago. It was a five-minute long Powerpoint presentation, rated MA15+. Took a while in Photoshop, but man, I'm committed to innovative reworking of our constitutional arrangements. If you know what I mean.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:28 PM on April 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

Natalie's habit of ensuring every. single. one. of her video thumbnails includes a hint of boob is paying off! You go girl!

(I use Youtube a lot, and as an Aussie I find her Always There, on my fucking page, taunting me with her boobs-related success. Because you know it's all about the boobs, because they're always there.)
posted by Gamien Boffenburg at 10:31 PM on April 13, 2010

Whoa whoa whoa....are those Battlestar Galactica dogtags she's talking about near the end of this clip?
posted by turgid dahlia at 12:53 AM on April 14, 2010

Whoa whoa whoa....are those Battlestar Galactica dogtags she's talking about near the end of this clip ?

Correct! Natalie got them in this clip, in which she attempts to cosplay as Starbuck at a convention, with predictable results.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:16 AM on April 14, 2010

SEAN BEDLAM - from Melbourne
his take on the wikileaks Iraq copter vid
posted by zog at 2:28 AM on April 14, 2010

Darn it, quidnunc and Fiasco, you're making me use up all my favourites. Faved, faved, faved, faved, faved, faved.
posted by The Shiny Thing at 4:10 AM on April 14, 2010

Thankfully I don't think we've hit peak faves yet.
posted by kmz at 6:19 AM on April 14, 2010

I wonder if Natalie Tran is related to Dr Tran, the famous man of action.
posted by willmize at 7:38 AM on April 14, 2010

Natalie Tran ≠ MissHannahMinx, but I daresay they're in the same genus.
posted by WCityMike at 3:30 PM on April 15, 2010