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Writer's pictureTommaso Barbetta

How to be Funny in English (answer: forbid Italian)

Updated: Jun 9


Listen to it narrated by Tommy

You already know it by now… we've decided to switch the channel to English. The reason is simple: scalability! English makes everything bigger. English is the way to reach a global audience. We need it to be successful.


English will make us rich. We’ll be billionaires in the blink of an eye. We’ll host huge parties in Tokyo full of alcohol and drugs. Elon Musk will be our pal, we’ll give away free Teslas like Mr. Beast, and we'll live happily ever after. This is the power of the English language. If you speak English, you get money. If you speak Italian, at best you get mozzarella. This is why Italian sucks. Nobody gives a shit about Italy and Italian culture! Italians don’t have time to create culture because they're too busy eating fettuccine Alfredo all day long! Every day, every hour, every second, eating fettuccine. We must stop this!

Typical Italian eating fettucini Alfredo

I’m aware that in the previous blog post, I wrote something very different about our relationship with Italian culture. I said that I admire Italian culture and my heart is broken and blah blah blah… I was lying! The only piece of Italian culture I admire is pizza. My dream is to have my own chain of pizza parlors. It’s going to be called “Double Pizza,” and it will have double cheese by default (I know, I’m a marketing genius). I want my pizza everywhere in the world. But clearly, we need money to achieve this dream. We need a lot of money, which is why we need to switch to English! Now you know the truth.

Our first pizza parlor will open in 2029

As a consequence of this switch, in every video we film from now on, Tommy and I will communicate exclusively in English. There’s one problem though: it’s hard to be funny in a language that is not your native one. Moreover, I’m used to talking in Italian with Tommy. We talk about constipation and diarrhea in Italian, we make jokes about the pope in Italian, we even argue in Italian. We never use English, because... look at us, we emanate Italianness from our bodies. We are Hardcore Italian Boys.



So now, I’m afraid that abruptly switching to a different language might hurt us. I’m afraid we’ll become less funny, less “double tommy.” At the same time, I don’t want our videos to be less interesting and engaging because of this choice. To me, making boring videos is unforgivable. Our subscribers trust us, and I don’t want to waste their time with mediocre content.


My fear of creating inferior content is also why we kept making videos in Italian for so long. We always knew we would switch to English at some point. Even two uneducated, filthy plumbers like Mario and Luigi speak English despite their Italian roots. Switching was a no-brainer.

However, before going global, we had to learn how to vlog.


In the first few videos, talking in public spaces embarrassed us. Vlogging is much harder than it looks, especially if you’re an introvert. Our priority was to get comfortable talking in any possible scenario, and we chose to use Italian as it was easier for us. And with Italian, there is the advantage that nobody understands what we say, making it slightly less awkward.


After 50 videos and a trillion hours spent talking to an imaginary audience, we’ve become masters of the art of being funny in front of a camera. The first goal has been achieved, and only now can we move to the next stage: becoming THE GODS OF YOUTUBE, and doing it in English.


Yet, there are still many challenges. The first one is that Tommy is ugly and weak. But since there's nothing we can do about that, we’ll focus on the second challenge, which is this:

our funniness (ability to be funny) in English needs to improve. We need to make people laugh, possibly more than in Italian. But to do so, we need practice.



This is why I decided to do an experiment with Tommy.

I set a rule: from today on, in our private life, Italian is forbidden.

Whenever I’m alone with Tommy, we are not allowed to use Italian. Zero. Only English is allowed. This is because we need to become extra good as quickly as possible.


It might take a few more months to complete the transition to English, as we still have a bunch of amazing videos filmed in Italian to edit. But trust me, once this transition is over, this channel is going to be epic.


Anyway, where’s my double pizza?

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1 comentário


gianluca farina
gianluca farina
04 de jun.

Io continuo a spammare i video in italiano, magari si riesce a svoltare...non è possibile che in tanta mediocrità non si riesca ad emergere.

GLF

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