Who is Natalie Tyler Tran?
Communitychannel is a YouTube channel and video blog from Sydney, Australia, created by Natalie Tyler Tran, a 2nd generation Vietnamese-Australian. As of March 2009, she had made over 130 videos. Her first video was created on September 25, 2006. Tran vlogs about her daily-life situations as a student at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Her videos include self-deprecating humour and stream-of-consciousness commentary on social dilemmas, such as how much money to spend on gifts for friends and what is appropriate telephone etiquette. Other videos include multi-role skits, where (with occasional exceptions), Tran plays all roles, combining multiples takes using video editing. Examples include dialogue between the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy; and the opportunities for unethical practical jokes available to unscrupulous ultrasound technicians. More serious topics have included Tran's responses to the February 2009 Victorian bushfires. Her video response to racist viewer feedback has been described as "astute and scathingly funny."
Tran's vlogs often contain pop culture references, such as T-shirts with Internet slang acronyms including "PWN" , "epic win", "epic fail", and "ftw". There are also frequent in-jokes, such as describing the soundtrack to her summary of user feedback as "porno music", picking an "ugly word of the day" for each video and trying to combine them in one sentence, and elements of blue comedy.
Tran's YouTube channel is the most subscribed in Australia, as well as being widely watched internationally, with more than 196,000 subscribers and over 77 million views in total. This popularity has led to media coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald (February 4, 2009),Western Australia Today, B&T Magazine (March 2009), Báo Viêt Luận Online, Việt Tribune, VnExpress and Triple J radio.
She was one of the Australian YouTube celebrities invited to talk about the site at the launch of YouTube Australia, YouTube.com.au, in 2007.