This is the story of Corb Fucker — or, at least, the story as we know it so far. Like God created Adam himself (“formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” [Genesis 2:7]) so too comedian Conner O’Malley created Corb, a whole human being born out of infinite nothingness, fully-formed and prepared to be filmed on camera peddling his train language, “epic cheat meals of human shit,” and, most recently, his “fuck coins.” Though O’Malley has thus far offered only three short videos surrounding the exploits of the enigmatic renaissance man, each one offers a wealth of new insight into both the hustler himself and the culture that has continued to allow him to fail upwards time and time again. Donning his trademark basketball shorts, unkempt hair, and spray-painted boardwalk t-shirt — which depicts Winnie the Pooh holding a honey jar full of cash with the phrase “Forget the Honey” scrawled above it — Corb is seemingly undaunted in his quest for his fifteen minutes of fame. And so is the world, in its forgiveness and forgetfulness of Corb’s misguided endeavors.
The impetus for Mr. Fucker has surely been gestating somewhere in the depths of Conner O’Malley’s mind for some time now, the natural progression for O’Malley’s numerous, deranged internet video characters which aim to make a mockery of the social, political, and media landscapes since the mid-2010s. For those unfamiliar with his work, the Chicago-born O’Malley got his start uploading demented short videos to the now-defunct Vine — the majority of which involve him foaming at the mouth over expensive cars and their elite-class owners — which ended up landing him a job as a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2014. After leaving Late Night in 2017, he then went on to write for the Adult Swim series Joe Pera Talks with You. O’Malley (married to fellow comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant) has appeared in a number of comedy shows such as Broad City, Horace and Pete, Search Party, and Shrill, pops up frequently in collaborations with fellow comedian Tim Robinson (Detroiters, The Characters, I Think you Should Leave) and stole every scene he was in as a groomsman in 2020’s Sundance hit Palm Springs.
But on O’Malley’s YouTube channel exists a bizarre treasure trove of aggressive, irrational performance art videos, and YouTube, in lieu of his Vine, has become the home for his signature style of disorienting alt-comedy. O’Malley’s various subjects of interest range from far-right, basement-dwelling militants to anti-ANTIFA fear-mongers, Wall Street enthusiasts, comedian Dennis Miller, sex obsessives, and the self-created “#MinionSquad,” spouting non-sequiturs to innocent bystanders and all of which he embodies with the utmost lunacy. He’s become a zealous Trump supporter named Mark Seevers, New Jersey’s #1 Masturbator Tony Camarabi, and wannabe teen militant Scott Andrews defending his Wisconsin strip mall from ISIS. And he also portrays his namesake, Conner O’Malley, though in the form of a “Christian in Action” crumbling raw meat next to the highway, a bike-riding or river-bound late night talk show host with a bone to pick with Greg Kinnear, and a 5G conspiracy theorist.
Corb Fucker’s journey in particular began during the coronavirus pandemic in July 2020, when his first video, “Wonderful story,” dropped onto social media. An audience rife with desperation, loneliness, despair, and eager for something uplifting to cling onto, Corb entered the world at the perfect time. The one-minute video — hosted by fictional platform “Damn 4 Real,” an obvious parody of “NowThis News” — chronicles Corb’s initially heartwarming story, in which it is revealed that he has learned how to communicate with trains, after spending “months and shit looking over ancient scrolls in a dusty ass library.” Upon asking trains what they want (by hollering “DING DING DING” over and over at them), Corb discovers that they simply wish “for everyone to just chill and come together with sex and smoking a fat ass bowl and hot box the whole world.” This liaison inspires him to write a rap song to bring people together entitled “Everybody Sip on the Slurpee.” But after going viral with the song and being invited to perform on the Late Late Show with James Corden, Corb unexpectedly decides to masturbate on live television as part of his performance, subsequently engendering his downfall in the eyes of millions. #CancelCorb goes viral, and poor Corb Fucker is fired from his job at the piss and shit factory.
Yet this was not the end for the tenacious Corb, who returned just four months later with another Damn 4 Real story in November as he sought his own social media resurrection. And somehow, the world could not turn away from the man they’d so callously and effortlessly cast aside that summer, nonetheless willing to allow him a second chance at feel-good, viral fame. After all, the COVID-19 pandemic was still far from over — there was still an ample void left open for anyone willing to distract us with something both inspiring and entertaining. So Corb came back to fill that void in November with his “epic cheat meals of human shit.” Acquired from public restrooms, his fascinating new diet paired with a strict workout routine was all in an attempt to get cast as the “Galactic Senator” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s remake of American Sniper. After Corb’s hard work paid off and he was rewarded by getting cast in the role, Vin Diesel personally congratulated him, encouraging Corb to chow down on even more feces.
Yes, it seemed that things were finally coming up Corb. Perhaps, this time he had finally won over the hearts and minds of the world for good. But as the saying goes, nothing gold can stay, and Corb was eventually caught on camera eating shit in a women’s restroom. Once again, social media was set aflame and Corb spiraled back into perceived villainy. He was promptly booted from his role on Marvel’s American Sniper (only to be replaced by Sean Penn). In a last ditch effort, Corb made an appearance at November’s “Stop the Steal” protest in Philadelphia, attempting to make an appeal to President Donald J. Trump to get him uncancelled. But it was no use — Corb’s desperate pleas to the president went unheard. However, this second installment in Corb’s journey has a happy ending: the woman who caught Corb eating shit on camera and cancelled him in the first place ended up taking his hand in marriage. The two young lovers were wed in a beautiful car-themed ceremony, “where all 200 guests died from carbon monoxide poisoning due to car exhaust.”
Consequently, another intermission in Corb’s story commenced, as he fled to the safety of obscurity once more only to reappear after another handful of months later in the new year. Corb’s steadfastness is admirable; his unflinching ability to forge on in the face of consistent misfires and professional setbacks harkens to the very foundation of the American Dream. Corb Fucker is, without a doubt, a man of innovation and endurance. So in the wake of recent reignited interest in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, Corb wanted to join the craze with his own form of currency set to disrupt the culture at large. Corb planned to make strip club tokens a bona fide form of legal currency called “Fuck Coin:” physical coins that can be held, though are used electronically like Bitcoin. These coins can additionally be exchanged for “sexual favors between consenting adults.”
And so Fuck Coin prices took off, taking the world by storm. Of course, Corb Fucker is nothing if not a deeply flawed man, and another facet of his exceedingly problematic personality was uncovered not long after Fuck Coin gained traction. Home surveillance video caught Corb red-handed outside a stranger’s house, where he seen engaging in intercourse with an Amazon package left on their front porch. This was, perhaps, the most internationally devastating of all Corb’s prior cancellations: the markets plummeted, governments collapsed, troops were mobilized. But Corb nevertheless attempted to promptly rehabilitate his image and unite the world again, this time with a song entitled “1000 Years of Apology (For Fucking).” In the song, he desperately tries to explain that he’s a virgin who doesn’t know how to have sex — hence his heinous compulsion to fuck inanimate objects. Citizens and celebrities around the world ultimately found sympathy in their hearts for poor Corb and his song went viral. It generated responses and reactions from the likes of Lin Manuel-Miranda, Ed Sheeran, Robert de Niro, Colin Powell, Ron Howard, and more — including the Amazon package-owner himself, who took Corb in as his son and taught him how to properly fuck an Amazon package. Another happy ending for Corb Fucker after all. Perhaps, third time is truly the charm.
Since Fuck Coin’s dissolution in February, Corb has remained silent — for the time being. I have no doubt in my mind that he will resurface on Damn 4 Real in another month or two, ready to further capitalize off of the cultural zeitgeist in some newfangled way even as lockdowns ease, vaccination statistics rise, and more people spend less time online, alone and isolated, and more time out in the world. The public froths at the mouth for an underdog story — pandemic or none — just as much as it does for a villain caught and vanquished, and Corb Fucker provides both of these engaging, real-life narratives thrown into one unflappable man. The caricature of Corb Fucker illustrates, to an absurdist degree, how our culture is a snake eating its own tail. Corb cannot climb the inane social ranks that he desires without inevitably being torn down, but the potential for fame and glory seemingly outweighs the ceaseless inevitability of his own “cancellation.” We revel in average, everyday people just like us reaching the biggest, most unnecessary spotlight possible until we discover that they no longer deserve it. Then we do it again, and again, and again — and so do they.
As Conner O’Malley abundantly understands, our society fosters a never-ending conveyer-belt of creators who are desperate to make it big, to be seen, catering to an alternately hungry culture ready to destroy them once they do. We necessitate the idea of hustling at any cost to satiate a way of life that hinges on our ability to produce labor. We are encouraged to use all the time available to us as a means for money-making and finding success, even better if we can do so in a way that generates overwhelming attention. But it’s a seemingly impossible task to accomplish in an environment that breeds a carnivorous impulse to see people who climb up the social ranks be utterly destroyed, our 15 minutes of fame no longer created out of declining interest but out of rapid-fire destruction. The irony of these quick bite “NowThis” videos, and the manufactured, overly-edited heartwarming sentiments they cultivate is that not only is our culture as eager for someone to love as it is for someone to hate, but it’s so anxious for the next thing to consume that it can forget what it already greedily disposed of. No one can be in the spotlight for too long without the subsequent epiphany as to why they no longer deserve it. Our gods must be faultless, otherwise they’re only human.
In the end, all of Conner O’Malley’s videos are perhaps most thematically connected by the very American devotion to capitalism. His videos are disarming and carnal ideological satires which imbibe the most base-form impulses that act as the bedrock for modern conservative politics. As written about by Chloe Lizette for Reverse Shot, “O’Malley’s satire isn’t trying to diagnose ‘Trump’s America,’ but rather channel the id of the mainstream contexts surrounding him.” To this day, O’Malley succeeds as one of our greatest political and social satirists (who produced arguably the best comedy to come out of Trump’s four years in office) in part because his comedy both fully embraces the repulsive personas he takes on and often foments the environments which have allowed them to thrive. He is interested in the conditions that have given way to the existence of these personalities in certain kinds of people and their overall cultural strongholds, rather than focusing his satirical energy on solely making fun of them. They are not separate from us — they are us.
Thus, Conner O’Malley’s characters are both completely unhinged and the most honest depictions of our current reality; chaos reigns in his micro worlds, but so it does out here. Corb Fucker is, if anything, a man wholly of this moment.*