Stevin John
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| Stevin John | |
|---|---|
| Personal information | |
| Born | Stephen J. Grossman May 27, 1988 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Children's entertainer/educator |
| Website | blippi |
| YouTube information | |
| Also known as | Blippi, Steezy Grossman |
| Channel | |
| Years active | 2014–present |
| Subscribers | 8.33 million+[1] |
| Total views | 6 billion+[1] |
Stevin John (born May 27, 1988 as Stephen J. Grossman), better known by his alias Blippi, is an American children's entertainer and educator on YouTube and Amazon Video. The Blippi videos are intended to be educational and appeal to young children, as John's Blippi character is portrayed with a childlike, energetic and curious persona, always dressed in his blue and orange beanie cap, blue shirt, orange suspenders and a bow tie.[2] Grossman was formerly a gross out comedian known as Steezy Grossman.
Early life
Stevin John grew up "surrounded by tractors, cows and horses", in Ellensburg, Washington, and has stated that as a child he wished to be a limousine driver and a fighter pilot.[2]
Military service
Stevin John served active duty in the United States Air Force as a loadmaster for the C-17 Globemaster airplane at the 4th Airlift Squadron and is a military veteran. His duties were to perform the calculations and planning cargo placement to keep the aircraft within permissible center of gravity limits throughout the flight.[3]
Blippi
The idea for Blippi came to Stevin John after moving back to Ellensburg, and witnessing his then two-year-old nephew viewing low-quality videos on YouTube. Blippi has been described as, "an adult human man who dresses up in bright clothes and dances around America’s deserted soft play centres for the benefit of YouTube".[4] The first Blippi video was published on January 27, 2014, with John starring as Blippi and doing all of the filming, editing and graphics himself on the initial videos. Taking inspiration from children's educators and entertainers before him, such as Mr. Rogers, John wished to portray Blippi as educational, but also as thinking and acting as a child would.[5]
The videos would eventually garner a large following with over a billion views on YouTube, and the production staff expanding. The Blippi team would begin producing videos in Spanish, establish Blippi Toys, and begin offering DVDs and digital downloads from the Blippi website. Although Blippi's childlike demeanor has met with much success from children, some parents have questioned the simplistic nature of the character in regards to his tone and repetitive songs about things such as garbage trucks, fire trucks and pizza.[6]
John was criticized in 2019 when he performed a "bait and switch", advertising a Blippi tour for which parents paid hundreds of dollars, but not making it clear that Blippi would not be played by him, but by an impersonator.[7]
Steezy Grossman
Stevin John started making gross out videos in 2013 under the persona of Steezy Grossman, a boy born as poop.[8] Under his Steezy Grossman alias, John developed videos such as "Turdboy" and "Underwear Man". In a 2013 video John performed the Harlem shake on a toilet and defecated on a naked friend.[8][4] When the video was unearthed by Buzzfeed in 2019, John said, "at the time, I thought this sort of thing was funny, but really it was stupid and tasteless, and I regret having ever done it."[9] John used DMCA takedown notices to remove the video from social media and internet search engines.[10]
References
- ^ a b "About BlippiVideos". YouTube.
- ^ a b "Who Is Blippi?". blippi.com. Retrieved 2018-11-01.
- ^ "Security Verification". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2019-11-06.
- ^ a b Heritage, Stuart (17 July 2019). "YouTube Is Destroying My Child's Mind (And One Person Is To Blame)". Esquire.
- ^ Cuming, Emma (2018-08-22). "Who the fluff is Blippi??". thespinoff.co.nz. Retrieved 2018-11-01.
- ^ Brockes, Emma (2017-05-04). "I was trapped by a YouTube clown – but the Wizard of Oz saved me". theguardian.com. Retrieved 2018-11-01.
- ^ "Viral influencer Blippi is so fake, he hired an impersonator". 2019-10-10.
- ^ a b "Kids' YouTube star Blippi once pooped all over naked friend in Harlem Shake vid". Metro. 14 February 2019.
- ^ "Kids YouTube Star Blippi "Regrets" The Viral Video In Which He Poops All Over His Friend". BuzzFeed News.
- ^ Koebler, Jason; Maiberg, Emanuel (15 February 2019). "How Kids YouTube Star Blippi Used Copyright Law to Hide His Harlem Shake Poop Video". Motherboard.