Australian YouTuber Alpacahawk has officially laid his account to rest after eight years of service. AlpacaHawk is one of only a handful of YouTube Poop (YTP) creators to amass more than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, and there is only one clean YTPer, Yoshimaniac, with more subscribers. 

“I think it was sometime during middle school when he reached the 100k mark,” said junior Holden Browne. “It had been kind of a fun challenge of mine to attempt to be his 100,000th subscriber, even if it was just a symbolic gesture. I remember that I invited [my friend Robbie] over to my house somewhere around the 99,900 mark and we both waited as the numbers slowly crept up. As I saw it reach 99,999, I quickly switched tabs and clicked the subscribe button. So that is how I became his 100,000th subscriber.”

Now, for the uninitiated, a YTP is a video where an audiovisual source is remixed using video editing software in order to create something new. YTPs are usually made for comedic effect, often employing forms of surreal, satirical, and sometimes obscene humor in order to mock and ridicule traditional media. Despite being older than YouTube itself, and peaking in popularity during the late 2000s, YTPs continue to permeate the site to this day, and the genre has constantly evolved and changed over time. 

“What I like about AlpacaHawk’s videos is his style of editing,” said junior Carl Bouma. “This includes things like freeze frames, repeated lines for comedic effect, and the fact that he does tell a story during his [videos].”

In the vast unknowns of YouTube that the YTP community calls home, AlpacaHawk always represented a return to simplicity. By his own admission, he only edits with iMovie, and, possibly out of necessity due to the limited scope of that software, his videos are always primarily fueled by sentence mixing. Sentence mixing is an editing process that involves rearranging scenes and cutting together bits of dialogue to change what a character says, and it remains one of the core tenets of making a YTP. 

AlpacaHawk got his start editing Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, focusing on the latter two films with his breakout series “Peter Parker Fails At Life.” He produced six videos, three for “Spider-Man 2” and three for “Spider-Man 3.” The series follows a fairly linear plotline, but the individual videos are all tonally loose and carefree. The audience is meant to simply bask in the absurd hilarity of Peter’s continued misfortune, which is very much in line with how YTPs are often structured.

Over the years, AlpacaHawk expanded his repertoire considerably, branching out to make the “Revenge of the Sand” series while also dabbling with the newer “Star Trek” films and classic Pixar movies. His most viewed videos to date are edits of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2,” although he never truly abandoned Spider-Man. The vast majority of his videos feature at least one reference or callback to the Raimi trilogy; most commonly in the form of the infamous Peter Parker scream from “Spider-Man 2” or Harry Osborn’s line, “Hey, don’t push me!”

His latest YTP, “Jameson Fires Everyone,” was published several months ago and, besides a final send-off video he planned to commemorate the aforementioned retirement, there are no more coming. It wasn’t his longest or most thought-provoking video, but he returned to his roots for one final crack at “Spider-Man 2.” 

“I was definitely sad to see him go, as his video’s always brought joy and entertainment,” said Bouma. “In the end, sometimes you have to choose what’s most important to you and AlpacaHawk chose his personal life and its challenges over his channel. I respect his decision, and so do many of his fans, and [I wish] him the best of luck in future endeavors.”