We Interview YouTuber Gifted Hater

Gifted Hater (24) is a YouTuber that makes insightful, and funny critiques of the skateboarding industry, which is why I was excited to sit and chat with him. We sat and chatted for over an hour, speaking on his influences, his pet peeves within skateboarding, and his YouTube journey. I hope you enjoy. 

How would you describe your YouTube channel for people who don't know you?

Firstly, I would say that I'm really into YouTube in general. I made YouTube videos as a little kid, tons of them. Obviously, they were all terrible, but I've always liked filming myself. And, of course, skateboarding has been a huge part of my life, and I've never really thought that much of the skateboarding content on YouTube was really entertaining – especially as I got older. 

Most skateboarding YouTube content out there is pretty much just for kids. It's like Casey Neistat type Vlogs, but with skateboards. That might be entertaining for a couple of videos, but after that, it gets really fucking boring. So, once I started to get into my late teens and 20s, I noticed that there's no skateboarding YouTube videos that appeal to a more mature audience.

If you take any other hobby - I kind of like basketball, too - and there's a ton of people that are willing to give their unfiltered views of whatever they think is going on in the basketball scene. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of that going on in skateboarding. Everybody likes to tread really lightly. And I think because it's kind of a small industry and it's really easy to get connected, so you don't want to step on any toes.

That’s why I started a YouTube channel because I'm just trying to make the videos that people around my age, maybe a little bit older than me as well would want to watch. And I've seen my demographics. I know my most popular age group is, like, 25 to 35. That's kind of like exactly the type of people that I'm going for. I know I'm not going to get, like, 100,000 views on my videos or anything when I do this kind of thing. 

While I enjoy shows like The Nine Club, it isn’t as entertaining to me as some of the more critical takes that you provide. 

I appreciate what the Nine Club does. But recently, they were talking about how ams shouldn't get paid at all. And they're like, “Oh, at least they get paid $200 a month, that goes a long way.” 

The fact that amateur skateboarders are making $200 doesn't need to be seen as a positive. That's a negative thing in my opinion. And it's okay to say that it's negative. 

On that note, what do you think would be worse? To switch 180 El Toro and get $200 a month, or to have Doritos as a sponsor and become a sell-out to get paid? 

I think that doing the Doritos thing is for sure worse. But the underlying problem is that you have to resort to either of those things, right?

I mean, I think the problem with a company like Illegal Civ, who had a Doritos sponsor, is that it’s very oriented around short-term gain. Mikey Alfred was one of the people that I picked on a lot when I first started my YouTube channel because he would say the most ridiculous things, referencing the powerful symbology of the triangle when talking about Doritos, and then he’d say in the same interview like, “Yo, I really hope nobody thinks this is whack.”

Like come on, dude. You realize that you're just setting yourself up here. TJ Rogers, on the other hand, is a pretty-well established pro now. I don't know how much money TJ Rogers is making, but I think he's doing okay. It seems like he took a more long-term approach that is paying off in some way.

Good point. How long have you skated for?

Since I was about seven years old.

@1800nipples

 

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Ah I see. I was surprised at how good you were at skating. You kind of lean into this more nerdy persona, with Weevil Underwood as your YouTube profile picture, and then I see footage of you, and you rip. 

I didn't have skate footage with my YouTube channel for a long time, and that was something that I sort of did on purpose. I was kind of testing to see how people would react to some nerd sitting in his room talking about skateboarding. I definitely saw comments like, “Oh, can this kid actually even skate?” 

I guess the implication was that if I wasn't a good skater, whatever being a “good skater” means, then my opinion would somehow be invalidated. 

This is something that I find interesting because if you take that logic and you apply it to other hobbies, like basketball, football, or whatever, the people that get paid to sit in front of a microphone and talk about those sports just played like high school basketball. And people are happy to listen to them. But in skateboarding, we're very particular about the fact that you can only really have opinions about this shit if you reach a certain threshold or something. 

Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Your YouTube channel just kind of materialized on my feed a few months ago. Did your channel suddenly blow up? Or have you been seeing steady growth for a while? 

I started out on TikTok. I was just making stupid Tik Tok videos, and I had no intention of being in the position that I'm currently in. I just made my name 1800 Nipples as a shitpost type of name. And then I ended up with a lot of followers on TikTok, because TikTok makes it pretty easy to get a ton of followers. 

This was all during the height of the pandemic in the US, and I was putting a lot of effort into it each day. I figured it would be nice if I could translate this into some form of revenue because otherwise I'm going to have to get back to real life and the unemployment checks aren’t going to come anymore.

So, I made a YouTube channel, and it was called 1800 Nipples because that was just what everybody knew me as. And then I kind of started to realize that I need a different name, one that didn’t have the word nipples in it. I actually hate my name now, to be honest, but once I changed it, the YouTube algorithm really primed me to get a lot more views. 

That’s funny because the post you made about changing your name is the first thing I saw of you on YouTube. And do you think skateboarding is purer in the sense that you have to reach a certain talent threshold in order to critique the industry? Or do you think we should aspire to be more like basketball and football?

I think you can be bad at skateboarding, whatever that means, and still have valuable opinions. For example, I keep bringing up the NBA just because I listen to this podcast called the Bill Simmons Podcast, and it's really entertaining. In the NBA there's a guy, Kyrie Irving, and he's one of the best players in the League. But he has tons and tons of opinions that are absolutely bananas. 

So even though this guy can dribble through five people and basically make them trip over themselves because he's that skilled at handling the ball, would I want to listen to this guy's advice about basketball versus an established coach? No, even though those people are not nearly as skilled as him, it doesn't mean that they don't have insights and knowledge about the game of basketball that Kyrie Irving probably doesn't think about.

It's a different thing to be, sort of… I don't know if cerebral is the right word necessarily, but to be cerebral about something versus to be somebody who actually does it at the top level. Nyjah Huston is a perfect example of that. I’m personally not a fan of his skating, but there's no denying his skill level. 

Now, imagine if Nyjah sat in front of a webcam and tried to make a YouTube video. Jesus, that would not be something that people would really want to watch.

@1800nipples #stitch with @thyrealty ♬ original sound - Joa

Yeah, I suppose when you’re more of an intellectual or cerebral person, you’re more likely to think about all the damage you could do to yourself. 

That’s partially why I'm such a big fan of the Bunt, because you get an hour and a half of just a professional skateboarder being asked questions, and it’s very interesting. Whereas typically a lot of professional skateboarders just can't really talk about skateboarding in a way that's super interesting. 

There are examples of some pretty interesting pro skateboarders. I think Arto Saari is a really interesting guy from interviews that I've heard of him. I think Max Palmer went to school for photography, and then Mark Suciu is obviously the one that everybody knows. 

There might be a couple of other ones, but I think the vast majority of professional skateboarders, and that might have something to do with the track that you kind of have to follow. But the vast majority of skateboarders, I don't think, have, like, a college education and not that that's, like, a strict indicator of intelligence or anything.

Did you have role models in the YouTube or video-making space?

Well, starting off on Instagram, I liked Weck’s videos a lot. I thought those were really good. I think Weck is really funny. I was really late to Feedback_TS, but I was super into those videos. I thought he was the funniest dude, and he really changed the way that I thought about skateboarding because people don't really get into the nitty-gritty of skateboarding – but he did. 

Like, I was obsessed with Dylan Rieder in my teens, and I never sat down and thought, like, what is it about this guy that I like? I was just like, “this guy is the fucking sickest dude ever.”

It wasn't until I started watching Feedback_TS videos where I saw someone consciously breaking down the things about skaters that he likes and doesn't like. That was like a massive breakthrough to me. 

And then Evan Hay really affected me as well. He's out of the game, so I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this, but he was a big influence. He, Weck and Feedback Ted were my biggest influences when it comes to whatever the fuck I'm doing now.

And then what do you plan for the next stage? Now that the pandemic is kind of under control and quarantine is over, do you plan on balancing your channel and working at the same time? 

A lot of people ask me what I do outside of YouTube. Fortunately, I can live off what I'm doing. I have a Patreon, shout out to people there, and then my YouTube revenue. And between those two things, I can live off that while I live at home. I do have enough money to where I can move out. And I probably will. Maybe sometime next year, I have a ton of money in cryptocurrency.

Nice, man. Was it weird to have Steve Berra talking about you? Was that surreal? Were you upset that you probably can’t go to the Berrics? 

Yeah, I was devastated about not being able to go to the Berrics. I was curled up in the fetal position on my floor. No. I mean, when you put YouTube videos out there, especially about somebody like Steve Berra, who has a reputation for just being a neurotic individual, I would be more surprised if he weren't taking notice of the videos I’d made about him.

But it did reach a moment where I was like, “I fucking got this guy. He's really pissed.” 

And I don't aim to piss people off. I say what I genuinely feel, I don't have an intention to upset Steve Berra or anything. That's not why I do this. 

I do this because I think the Berrics is throwing their whole operation in the trash can, and either they can listen to me or they can just censor and block it all out, which is what they have been doing, and we'll see where it gets them.

But to answer your question, I kind of saw it coming. I think I was waiting for it to happen. I just didn't really expect Steve to sort of serve himself up on a silver platter the way that he did. He really threw me an alley-oop with my response video there. But there you go. Especially because the topic that he was commenting on was just such a ridiculous fucking situation, those $1,400 pants. 

Do you ever wonder what will happen if you run into someone you’ve made a video about? Like, what if someone’s really pissed and wants to fight you? 

Definitely. I mean, I go to Los Angeles a decent amount, and I skate the skate parks a decent amount. And sometimes I think like, “Hey, there might be somebody here who's not going to fucking like what I say about them.” 

For example, one time I made a video about Nakel Smith and how he sort of impacted Lottie’s shutting down.

I don't know how long he's going to remember this, but I was genuinely thinking like, this dude might want to punch me in the face, and I don't know if that's going to go away or if he cares, but that's the one sort of situation where I was like, Nakel Smith would probably want to punch me in the face. And I don't even know if the video that I did was good at all. It might have been complete shit. I was a lot less careful about the sources that I used back then, so I could have been totally wrong.

And he may have every right to punch me in the face over the situation. I'm not entirely sure, to be honest with you. It was a while ago, and I deleted the video.

Other than that, I don't think it's too bad. I think a lot of people have a pretty good sense of humor about it, like, Carlos Ribeiro DM’d me, and he was like, I liked that video that you made.

@1800nipples #stitch with @bestsk8clips ♬ original sound - Joa

Sure. Okay. And then who is your least favorite skateboarder? 

I could say someone easy like Nyjah, but I'm not going to say that. I think the most interesting person that I've been chronically hating on is Elijah Berle.

@1800nipples

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I'm going to be fully transparent, and you’ll probably hate me for this, but I subscribed and unsubscribed to your Patreon just to watch that video where you highlight his plagiarism of Dylan Rieder’s aesthetic.

*Laughs* That's fine.

Yeah, that video, I thought it was so fucked up, man. I'm sure whoever was interviewing him was just sort of hinting at that, like not even subtly. When I saw that video, I took that shit personally. I was like, come on, dude, it's the elephant in the room. You're being fucking asked about it and you're not addressing it. It's just like, I don't know. I just thought that was whack.

People get confused when I say Elijah because they see how skilled and how talented he is. But to me, that's not the only thing that matters about a skateboarder. But yeah, there you go. That's probably my least favorite. 

And your favorite skater? 

My favorite skateboarder is Max Palmer. He has been for the last year or so because the way that he approaches an obstacle to me is so different to what anybody else will do. People will see a ledge and think like, “I’ll do a kickflip tailslide big flip out” in this very linear progression. 

Meanwhile, with Max Palmer, there's this clip in the 917 video of this red ledge where he locks his wheel into it, and he's just sliding on top of it backside and then ends in a lip slide.

Nobody else in the world would think to fucking do something like that. So there's, like, linear progression in skateboarding that I feel like goes up and down, and then there's like a whole other fucking area that almost nobody else looks into, which is like, left to right. And I feel like Max Palmer operates in the left-to-right sort of world of skateboarding that so few skateboarders look into. 

@1800nipples #greenscreen ♬ Singing Battle: me vs my friend - El amor de tu vida

All right. Well, that's all the questions I had. Do you want to add anything, any, like shade throw at anyone before you add things up?

I don't think so. I think I've been throwing around plenty of shade on the Internet. Sometimes I feel kind of bad about it, but whatever.

Alright dude, thanks for doing this. 

Thanks, you too. Peace 

 

Check out Gifted on Youtube and give him a follow on Instagram.