Ryan Higa

It might come as a surprise to his fans that Ryan Higa's life wasn't supposed to be at all like what it is now. In fact, he was training to be a doctor of nuclear medicine. What is more surprising is that when he first tried YouTube back in 2006, he used it to share videos with his friends and family. Only after receiving encouraging comments on his 'personal' videos from strangers, he took up the format more seriously and started making videos for his fans as well. He has gained over 2.9 billion views on his channel, with ‘Nice Guys’ being the most watched video. With Higa and Sean's popularity as YouTubers growing, director Richard Van Vleet helped them create the movie ‘Ryan and Sean’s Not So Excellent Adventure’ which has them in lead roles. He later starred in the short movie ‘Ninja Melk’ along with Tim Enos and Tarynn Nago who had helped Higa and Sean in setting up the Nigahiga channel. Among his films, Higa is most fond of the 35-minute short called ‘Agents of Secret Stuff’ which features many other YouTubers and actors.

The name Nigahiga, according to Ryan, is a combination of 'niga' which in Japanese means 'rant', and his last name. He has an 'Off the Pill' series on his channel which captures him 'ranting' on camera without taking his ADHD pills. He also has another 'rant' series which is 'On the Pill'. His videos, however, contain not only rants; parody, spoofs, sketches, all find equal space in his videos. Higa is a person who loves what he does, and he doesn't mind being labeled or criticized. He doesn't mind being mentioned merely as a YouTube personality, rather than as an actor or a comedian, as he thinks that instead of being particularly good at something, he knows "how to do a little bit of everything". He also takes discouraging comments lightly as his experience of being subjected to racism in school has made him stronger inside. According to him, internet is the toughest place for sensitive people. His advice for young YouTube aspirants is not to let negativity ruin their determination.

Higa's journey as a YouTuber has not always been a smooth experience. He started his channel back in a time when it was not so popular a platform, and as such, not everything was under tight scrutiny as it is now. His initial uploads of lip-synced videos and some of his popular comic videos were taken down from his channel in 2008 as they contained copyrighted songs. In 2009, he even faced temporary account suspension and he had to either remove videos or audio-swap them. At this time monetization on YouTube was gaining popularity and big companies were starting to take this platform seriously. Higa then started to compose music for his videos to avoid copyright claims. Later he moved to Las Vegas to study nuclear medicine at University of Nevada. During this time he created videos all by himself, sometimes collaborating with other YouTubers. In 2012, he founded Ryan Higa Production Company and Sean Fujiyoshi joined him again to create videos for the channel. Higa is also part of the upcoming film ‘Tell Me How I Die.’ *Instantly hears that high pitch female voice singing "fast and furious, drift, drift, drift!"* A video posted by notryanhiga (@notryanhiga) on Aug 1, 2016 at 9:26am PDT