Digital Young

Bahoi is a Romanian youngster from Constanta, a department in south-east part of Romania. He became a star on the Internet. Everybody’s watching his videos. But the question remains: who is he and what did Bahoi do so interesting?

He started by making little videos at his home, with the webcam. Videos that have subjects as “how to do breakdance”, “hot to dance hip hop”, “how to dance house”, “how to dance manele” (a music genre very listened by a sort of pop culture mainstream in Romania). Bahoi is around 19 years old and he practices the kind of humour today very practiced by youngsters, Jackass style.

All he needed was a webcam. After that, he uploaded his videos on Youtube (ex: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bahoi+constanta+tampiti&search=related&v=TFGklvecxg0&page=1) and on Trilulilu, Romanian version of Youtube.

Having so much success, he started after that to make films as he teaches everyone interested to hack passwords: “how to hack messenger”, “how to download free softwares”, “hacking yahoo” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh886P1xLCE).

These type of videos are completed by fragments of his everyday life: how he jumps from a bridge, how he sings hip hop, how he parties: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_la17yY4XiY.

Filming with a webcam, with a cell phone or a video camera, Bahoi uploads the videos on Youtube, gaining points, having a lot of visions and becoming well known in his town.

His videos are a melting-pot of everyday scenes and basic humour. He likes to ironise manele singers, but he also declares himself a fan of this musical genre. He is looking recently for a sponsorship.

This is only a case of what a certain category of Romanian youngsters prefer: to see/make videos or photos of themselves, showing their sa called qualities, specially their financial status. Their exterior marks of standing-out are kitsch objects: very big chains made of gold, throwing with money (ad litteram), having big flashy cars or items. If girls are called “printese” (princesses), the boys call themselves “cocalari”. There is no equivalent in English, but that says it all, I think. One website was created to ironise these two categories: www.cocalari.com. The site is a pamphlet, but you have to understand that the pictures and the films are real, with people (mostly youngsters) who dress like that and want to stand out with any occasion.