He's trying his best.
Jarvis Johnson is a YouTube commentator and comedian.
Though his channel began with tech videos, it eventually shifted into commentary, analysis and comedy, featuring Jarvis and some of his friends discussing and poke fun at a variety of content, from weird animated story-time channels to High School Musical. In addition to the commentary are various skits, some to introduce and frame the subject of the videos and others as parody.
Jarvis also has a secondary channel at Jarvis Johnson GOLD!
, which is a bit less-scripted. He is also a member of the Sad Boyz channel and podcast, alongside his friend Jordan.
Tropes found in his videos:
- Black Comedy: In one video, he decides to test an apple-splitting life-hack to feed his friend Jordan. He forces him to throw away the apple he already cut, then struggles to break the apple open with his bare hands...all while Jordan insists that he has to eat the apple soon, and only the apple, because his blood sugar is getting low. Then he collapses dead on the ground.
- Deadpan Snarker: Most of the comedy comes from his sarcastic reaction to whatever he's reacting to.
- Evil Overlord: The apocalytpic-future god Zeffo, who is said to possess people, spread propaganda about staying indoors, and has banned carrots.
- The Freelance Shame Squad: During a montage of re-enacting some of 5 Minute Craft's hacks, Jarvis falls and spills coffee on himself. His friends stand back and laugh at him for several seconds, while he's still sitting on the ground being sad.
- Magic 8-Ball: In one video, he's told to do a life-hack that amounts to letting a Magic 8 Ball make all of his decisions. He pulls out three different ones, asking them things like "We're best friends, right?", and "Will this video be good?" All of the answers were negative. For the rest of the video, he carries the Mr. Predicto around and starts talking to it like it's his friend, even "feeding" it a peanut.
- The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: While he genuinely believes Troom Troom is the worst channel on all of Youtube, he at least gives them this much credit:Jarvis: At least it doesn't exploit the algorithm in like such an Elsagate way as 5-Minute Crafts does, so I'll give 'em that.
- Padding the Paper: In "These Fake Animated Stories Have Gone Too Far," he parodies the confusing prose in animated story videos with a Cutaway Gag about a student trying too hard to pad out sentences in an assignment. "The dog is brown" becomes "The dog, and when I tell you what color it was I was both happy and sad at the same time, and you will be too once you hear my story... it is brown."
- Potty Failure:
- In one video, he ends up in a The Matrix-style simulation but really has to go to the bathroom. "Mr. YouTube" explains that he can go wherever he wants in the simulation, which he takes literally, and just pees where he stands, to the disgust of Mr. YouTube, who explains that it was a joke and to just use the bathroom.
- As part of a fake laughter bit in one video, Jarvis claims he "peed in his pants" as a result of laughing so hard.
- Running Gag: In some videos, most notably his "Dhar Mann Bingo" series, he'll claim to be one of the characters in the work, especially if the character happens to look like him.
- Talking in Your Sleep: Played for Laughs and Parodied. To re-enact a hack that involves stealing a sleeping friend's finger-print, Jarvis pretends to be going to sleep while narrating everything he's doing. As his friend comes to get his finger-print, he talks about how he's changing positions, feels something tickly on his thumb, and how he's dreaming about being Yoda. All while insisting he's definitely asleep.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Parodied In-Universe, and discussed. Two characters are watching a YouTube storyteller named Billy Shakespeare who always tells stories. They're horrified and angry to find out that he wants to also write and share poetry, leading to backlash and an apology video. Jarvis then goes onto explain how he's suffered some backlash for drifting away from the tech videos, and explains that the parasocial relationship creators and fans have can be toxic, especially if the fans don't like the content their favorite creator has decided to put out.
- Time Travel: Apparently, he's the one who sank the RMS Titanic. Then he time-traveled into the future to hide himself as a YouTuber. This also makes him a...
- Time-Traveling Jerkass: Parodied. In the same sketch where Jarvis declares he sank the Titanic, he arrogantly declares he'll never be caught just before climbing into a time machine and becoming a commentary YouTuber. As soon as this information comes to light, Jarvis very quickly and awkwardly ends the video.
