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Draft:Gregory Guevara

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Gregory "Jreg" Guevara
Guevara in 2022
Personal information
Born
Gregory Guevara

May 22, 1997
NationalityCanadian
OccupationYouTuber
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2009–present
Genres
  • Comedy
  • Political Commentary
  • Political Satire
Subscribers510 thousand[1]
Total views121 million[1]
100,000 subscribers2019

Last updated: June 9, 2024

Gregory Guevara, also known as Jreg, JrEg or jREG (/d͡ʒɹɛɡ/), is a Canadian YouTuber, musical artist, journalist, political satirist, and politician.

Early life

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Gregory Guevara was born in Ottawa, Canada on May 22, 1997. He attended Holy Trinity High School and graduated in 2015.[2][3] Greg started writing and performing poetry at a young age and calls himself an amateur musician.[3] Guevara studied journalism at Carleton University.[3]

Guevara uploaded his first video in 2009 for a 6th grade school project which he describes as being meant to critique neoliberal consumerism. Greg had trouble gaining any traction and eventually started to post content too, and sometimes specific content catered to several different subreddits. Guevara got his first viral video called "Shut The Fuck Up", which was shared by Philip DeFranco as his secret link of the day. It has garnered over 1.1 million views as of now.[3]

YouTube career

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Guevara's videos have been described as "millennial/zoomer-friendly", and he has covered topics such as the Peterson–Žižek debate, COVID-19, and climate change in parody videos.[4] He uses a persona that is "an all-knowing, hyperaware, and slightly-troubled individual whose statements are always drenched in multiple levels of irony."[5] His channel rose to prominence after a video of his titled Political Compass Rap went viral on Reddit.[6]

His YouTube channel focuses on sketches and music videos, often political in nature, focusing specifically on extreme, obscure, or contradictory political ideologies, such as anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-monarchism.[4] In particular, he is credited with popularizing the once-obscure ideology National Bolshevism on the Internet because of a popular skit in which he "came out" as an "Anarcho-Nazbol". Later, he released a video titled Does irresponsible political satire have consequences? in which he admitted to worrying about how his videos influenced the political views of others, and wondered if joking about niche extremist ideologies helped to create unironic followers of those ideologies.[7]

Guevara stated that he became interested in political vlogging from an Internet meme perspective, and was never into politics for its own sake.[4] He stated that he was "deeply forged in meme culture", and believes that Internet memes are important to the spread of political ideologies.[6]

Political career

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Guevara's 2022 campaign logo

On August 9th, 2022, Guevara announced a "post ironic"[4] campaign running for the mayor of Ottawa. He claimed to be running as both a libertarian and a socialist, and aimed to build a wall around Ottawa, the “Ottawall”, and nationalize the city through "Ottawexit". The "Ottawall" would prevent non-Ottawans, who Guevara called "Nottawans", from committing crimes in the city.[8] He also promised to make Ottawa bilingual, speaking both Franglais and "government speak."[9] Once these goals were to be completed, Guevara planned to give everybody stay-at-home government jobs with high wages to create a booming economy.[4] The jobs that he would have prioritized include policy analysts and a "guy who copies Excel spreadsheets back and forth for six hours".[8] According to Guevara, the emphasis on remote government jobs under his leadership would have reduced carbon emissions by reducing the need for transportation.[10] Guevara also planned to address homelessness by deliberately attempting to stop Ottawa's population growth and providing a guaranteed one-bedroom apartment for every individual.[11] He wanted to make all international businesses in the city rebrand to be more "Ottawa-friendly".[12]

He opposed having a police force and supported police abolition, but said that he would have kept a police force for protection from political enemies. On the topic of climate change, Guevara believes that it is too late to do anything. Guevara stated that he is "cut from the same cloth" as satirists such as Vermin Supreme and the Neo-Rhinoceros Party, but that they "reach different conclusions." His campaign was run "based on irony and an element of nihilism toward the political system."[4]

Guevara lost the election, receiving 584 votes and 0.19% of the popular vote.[13] Despite this, he declared victory and proclaimed himself "King of Ottawa".[14]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "About JREG". YouTube.
  2. ^ Greg Guevara (2015-06-26). Holy Trinity Catholic High School Valedictorian Speech. Retrieved 2024-06-11 – via YouTube.
  3. ^ a b c d "YouTuber And Satirist Greg "Jreg" Guevara Explains His Eccentric Brand Of Political Humor And Why Centricide Is Our Only Hope". Know Your Meme. 2020-05-14. Retrieved 2024-06-11.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Donovan, Mckenzie. "Gregory Jreg Guevara is running a post-ironic campaign for voters with post-modern grievances". Ottawa Life Magazine. Archived from the original on 2022-10-21.
  5. ^ Cristian Eduard, Drăgan (2021-12-15). "Foregrounding the Digital Medium: Self-reference and Metareference in Video Essays" (PDF). Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media. 26 (2): 111–127. doi:10.24193/ekphrasis.26.8. ISSN 2559-205X. S2CID 245367312.
  6. ^ a b "YouTuber And Satirist Greg "Jreg" Guevara Explains His Eccentric Brand Of Political Humor And Why Centricide Is Our Only Hope". Know Your Meme. 14 May 2020. Retrieved 2022-10-22.
  7. ^ "Nazbol Ideology Is the Weird, Meme-Loving Child of the Left and Right". www.alittlebithuman.com. 2022-04-07. Retrieved 2022-10-21.
  8. ^ a b Maystruk, Daria; Baldin, Natasha; Wilson, Jack; Adwan, Ali; Lindquist, Evert (2022-10-16). "Public safety: Ottawa mayoral candidates speak about crime and emergency services". The Charlatan, Carleton's independent newspaper. Archived from the original on 2022-10-17.
  9. ^ "Beyond the big three, Ottawa's mayoral hopefuls struggle to be heard". ottawacitizen. Retrieved 2022-10-21.
  10. ^ Maystruk, Daria; Baldin, Natasha; Wilson, Jack; Adwan, Ali; Lindquist, Evert (2022-10-16). "Transit: Ottawa mayoral candidates speak about sustainable transportation". The Charlatan, Carleton's independent newspaper. Archived from the original on 2022-11-10. Retrieved 2022-10-21.
  11. ^ Maystruk, Daria; Baldin, Natasha; Wilson, Jack; Adwan, Ali; Lindquist, Evert (2022-10-16). "Affordability: Ottawa mayoral candidates speak about housing and homelessness". The Charlatan, Carleton's independent newspaper. Archived from the original on 2022-11-03. Retrieved 2022-10-21.
  12. ^ "Tourism, tech and taxes are top of the list for many of Ottawa's mayoral candidates". Ottawa Business Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-10-23.
  13. ^ "2022 Election Results". Elections Ottawa. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  14. ^ Guevara, Gregory (2022-10-24). "I have decided to pre-emptively declare victory. I am now King of Ottawa". Twitter. Retrieved 2022-10-24.
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