Jack Douglass

Early life

Douglass was born in Columbia, Maryland on June 30, 1988, and is primarily of Irish ancestry. He has two older sisters. Douglass went to elementary school and middle school in Maryland. During high school, he started to develop a love for music. He then began to play the French horn as well as the piano. In May 2006, during his senior year of high school, he was given the task of making a video about all the books he had read during the year. He and his friends decided to film a series of short sketches that made fun of books such as Beowulf and All the King's Men. After making these sketches, he decided that he wanted to make films to a greater extent. By the next month, he had begun using YouTube and had started to upload videos.

After graduating from Atholton High School, Douglass went to American University, where he majored in film and minored in music theory.

jacksfilms

Douglass launched his main YouTube channel, jacksfilms, on June 26, 2006, and he regularly uploads new videos to the channel. The first video he uploaded was a commercial for a fictional device, the Handy Pen, which featured him and his family members. He later uploaded a video which has since become his most popular video of all time, The WTF Blanket (Snuggie Parody), on January 22, 2009. Many of Douglass' early videos were parodies, often about infomercials and Apple products.

On July 1, 2012, jacksfilms reached a total of 100 million video views on his channel, and, on June 27, 2013, the channel reached 1 million subscribers.

On December 16, 2012, the Fine Brothers released a video titled "Teens React to Jacksfilms". Douglass saw a rapid rise in subscribers, gaining almost 100,000 in the following week.

In 2014, Douglass' channel jacksfilms was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #54.

On November 20, 2015, the same day as YGS 100 released, he hit 2 million subscribers.

Douglass appeared in the 2016 edition of YouTube Rewind, YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge, which became the fastest video to reach 100 million views on YouTube, just 3.2 days after its release.

On June 29, 2017, he celebrated his 11th anniversary on the site with a 16-minute compilation of his parodies, music videos and sketches.

On July 27, 2017, he hit 3 million subscribers.

Your Grammar Sucks

Douglass' most popular series is named Your Grammar Sucks (YGS). It began in June 2011, when one of his fans requested he make a video "making fun of YouTube comments," but he says it happened on a "Sunday night, and I needed a video for Monday." His Your Grammar Sucks series has been featured on Huffington Post. In it, he makes fun of incorrect grammar, spelling, and punctuation found in comments that have been submitted by his fans. In 2014, Douglass began having a higher frequency of uploads. In the song episodes of YGS, Douglass picks short comments that rhyme with themselves or other comments, or long comments he raps alone. Douglass started collecting comments for the 100th episode in 2013, started working on songs in February, and started shooting in July. He originally intended to release the episode in late 2014, but it was released on November 20, 2015, as a one-hour video with 50 other YouTubers featuring throughout. The episode included over 60 sketches, 7 songs and 5 cartoons. Douglass called it a "huuuge hodgepodge" of parodies, music videos and sketches.

The series is also noted for the origin of Douglass addressing his fans as "biches", a misspelling of "bitches" that first appeared on the first Your Grammar Sucks.

JackAsk and Yesterday I Asked You

On January 8, 2014, Douglass launched a new series entitled JackAsk, in which he answers viewers' questions in a satirical way. The intro and logo for the series are a reference to the TV Series of a similar name, Jackass. As of July 2017, there are 79 episodes.

In February 2015, Douglass started a daily series on his secondary channel jackisanerd, titled Yesterday I Asked You (YIAY), in which he asks his viewers a question and reads his favorite answers to the viewers. After 15 days of uploading YIAY videos to his second channel, jackisanerd, he moved the series to his main channel, jacksfilms, and has released episodes on it since. As of August 2017, he has uploaded over 350 episodes.

An example of Yesterday I Asked You episodes is How do we fix YouTube?.

On August 21, 2017, Douglass released a "compliment track" as the 351st episode of YIAY as a response to diss tracks.

Parodies, music videos and sketches

On March 21, 2016, Douglass uploaded an iPhone SE parody in which he mocks the phone for the small screen size. In March 2017, Douglass uploaded a video titled Galaxy S8 first look (parody) which has earned more than a million views. In September, Douglass made an iPhone X parody which has got over 3 million views. He said the Face ID "shoot[s] thousands of lasers straight into your pores. Then it sucks out your soul, much like a Dementor." Douglass also made several references to Game of Thrones in the videos.

On October 24, 2016, Douglass made a parody of the Hamilton musical playing a "guy dressed up as Alexander Hamilton, who hasn't seen the show, but thinks he knows one of the songs but totally doesn't, but just goes with it".

On January 30, 2017, Douglass referred to The Emoji Movie for the first time in his video How do we fix YouTube? (YIAY #309). Douglass referenced The Emoji Movie frequently in 2017, making a parody of the trailer and selling merchandise of the date of its release, July 28. His videos, "Frame-by-frame analysis of The Emoji Movie Trailer," "THE EMOJI MOVIE - Trailer #2," and "Counting down to The Emoji Movie while spinning 15 fidget spinners and dabbing every 60 seconds" have over 4 million views combined.

On July 20, Douglass received a package from the marketing team at Sony Pictures Animation, thanking him for being "the #1 fan of The Emoji Movie", inviting him to the world premiere on July 23, and sending Emoji Movie-related merchandise, including fidget spinners, face masks of Emoji Movie characters, and a plushie of Poop. The video in which Douglass unboxed the package and discussed his invitation has received over 2 million views. On July 28, Douglass uploaded a review of the film, hinting at the large amounts of product placement but generally acting as if he enjoyed the movie. The review has received over 4 million views.

Additional channels and content

Douglass has three other channels, dubbed jackisanerd, featuredfridays and SHUTUPDENNIS. He uses his secondary channel jacksfilms mainly for video blogs. It has earned over 30 million video views and over 371,000 subscribers as of December 14, 2016. Across his four channels, he has over 1,059 videos, as of February 2017. featuredfridays was originally a series on Douglass' main channel before having its own channel for a brief period. The channel has been inactive since March 11, 2011. The channel SHUTUPDENNIS has also been deemed inactive.

On November 20, 2015, Douglass started a new series on the Regal Cinemas YouTube channel named "Jack Talks Trailers," in which he gives a brief recap of new movie trailers that are released within the past week. At the end of each episode, Douglass reads the opinions of people's thoughts about a specific trailer shown in the episode.

Collaborations

Douglass' relocation to Los Angeles from Maryland offered opportunities to collaborate with fellow YouTube users and expand his audience. The success of his collaborations with Toby Turner and Sean Klitzner led to the trio being nicknamed "The Sideburns Crew". Douglass also filmed videos for Los Angeles-based YouTube partner Olga Karavaeva, more commonly referred to as Olga Kay. He has also collaborated with Shane Dawson, Vincent Cyr, Onision and Stefan Li among others. Douglass was featured as a voice guest on Thomas Ridgewell's animation. On September 26, 2011, Douglass uploaded "Take Off Your Clothes (Like Scarlett Johansson)". On July 23, 2012, he uploaded "The Ray William Johnson Song", which featured ten other YouTube stars including Olga Kay, Felix Kjellberg, and Steve Kardynal. On September 23, 2012, he uploaded "Your Grammar Sucks #40", which featured YouTube performers including the Fine Brothers and Brock Baker.

Events

In June 2011, Douglass visited Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 (E3 2011) to help Toby Turner film footage for a video. In 2012, Douglass attended E3, this time to promote GREE. Later that month, during VidCon 2012, Douglass performed a live edition of his Your Grammar Sucks series. Douglass, alongside Toby Turner and Sean Klitzner, performed a live version of their Sideburns Song at VidCon 2012 as well. Douglass appeared in YouTube Rewind 2016.

Outside jacksfilms

Douglass is also known for playing the role of Intern 2 on MyMusic, a show funded by YouTube's $100 million original channel initiative. MyMusic has over 492,000 subscribers and over 44.6 million video views as of December 30, 2014.

In 2014, Douglass began voicing Jimmy, the protagonist in 16-Bit High, an animated series launched by Smosh Games. In October 2015, Douglass portrayed "Pippen" in the movie Bob Thunder: Internet Assassin.

Personal life

On January 1, 2017, Douglass became engaged to his longtime girlfriend Erin Elizabeth Breslin.