Web Video / HowToBasic

"How To Describe HowToBasic Here"

HowToBasic is a bizarre YouTube channel, promising to teach the basics of everyday life. However, its lessons inexplicably involve unorthodox (and often violent) methods of performing these tasks, and smashing eggs for no apparent reason. Think of it like a way crazier and way more destructive version of You Suck at Cooking that tries to cover a wider range of topics but the host of the show can only speak in animalistic grumbles and is probably possessed by demons.

The man who runs the channel, only known as "Mr. Basic" (nothing else is known about him due to his mastering of the He Who Must Not Be Seen trope), is part of a four-man group called "The Shrimpson Boys" that engage in wild and often dangerous Witty Banter-filled antics on each others' channels. The other members of the group are Filthy Frank, Maxmoefoe, iDubbbzTV, and Dolan Dark.

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(places egg)

(smashes egg)

(places Examples:)

• Achievements in Ignorance: Sometimes Mr. Basic's insane methods actually wind up working... somehow.
• All Just a Dream: In the first part of "How To Make Authentic Spaghetti Bolognese", Mr. Basic simply... makes the dish and eats it as normal. Then he wakes up from his dream... or more exactly his Catapult Nightmare since that's Mr. Basic we're talking about.
• Appeal to Worse Problems: Often Played for Laughs.
  • In "How To End World Hunger," as Mr. Basic puts two eggs in an envelope addressed to "Africa" and smashes them.
  • In "How To Perform Open Heart Surgery", with a Facebook post claiming that he'd donate money to pay for the teddy bear's heart surgery in exchange for likes, comments, and shares (as an Affectionate Parody of similar viral "donation drive" posts; "1 Share = $10 worth of eggs Donation.")
• Artifact Title: The original videos were instructional videos of extremely basic concepts, like opening a bottle, picking up an umbrella, and shutting a door.
• Ascended Meme: The "People in Africa could have eaten _______" line, which was constantly mentioned by disgruntled viewers in nearly every video, was parodied in "How To End World Hunger".
  • Many comments would say that the instructions weren't clear resulting in their dicks getting stuck in a ceiling fan. Mr. Basic would later post this video.
• Ass Shove: ...and this is only one of many examples.
• Ax-Crazy: This cannot be emphasized enough. Mr. Basic is the epitome of everything dangerous about Australia condensed into a single human being with way, way too much spare time (and possibly too much money) on his hands. Axes also happen to be one of his favorite weapons used to destroy things.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Before 2016, his videos were only misleading via the title and the stock photo thumbnail, with the entire video consisting of Mr. Basic's bizarre doings. As of 2016 onwards, they're set up as legitimate how-to videos until the last second when he explodes and the destruction suddenly begins, or alternatively mid-tutorial when he piles a large amount of a single ingredient onto the dish. "How to Make a Thai Fish Curry", "How to Make a Watermelon Cake" and "How to Make Fruit Punch" are probably the worst offenders in this regard. "How To Make Ramen" is straightforward, presenting the complete ramen to which he begins to pile on massive amounts of noodles.
  • "How to Make a Vegetarian Lasagna" is the most legitimate video in the series, staying normal up until the end of the cooking process when Mr. Basic has one of his usual destructive meltdowns after leaving the lasagna in the oven too long and burning it.
    • Except, if you look closely at the ingredients he puts in the vegetarian lasagna, you can smell something fishy coming up.
  • "How to make Subway Cookies" is a legit instruction video. If you switch it off half way, you end up with decent cookies.
  • "How to Shave" begins with Basic caressing his legs, then it switches to him making a cup of tea reasonably well (despite holding the teabag between his legs and spilling some of the tea when he stirs it), only for him to immediately pour it down the toilet when it's done, then switches back to trying to shave himself.
  • His April Fools' Day 2018 video "How To Make a Vegan Curry" fully averts this trope as he does finish the recipe correctly, but when you except him to do his signature destruction, he instead throws hots dogs and eggs into the curry in anger, but still smashes eggs at the very end.
• Butt-Monkey: The crying doll, which is abused in every episode it appears in. Among other things, it's been kicked in the face while sitting in a toilet bowl, had eggs, cake and baby food smeared all over it, and had a whole egg shoved up into its body.
• Call-Back: In "How to Masturbate", we finally get to see what "Eggy Sluts 5" (the aforementioned freeze frame gag in "How to Install GTA V") consists of.
• The Cameo: In Face Reveal, too many to count, aside from Vsauce's Michael in the initial "reveal", to the crapton of YouTubers collaborating for the second half (consisting mostly of those YouTubers proclaiming "I am How To Basic!"), including Matthew Santoro, Anthony Fantano, Ricky Berwick, Markiplier, h3h3productions, Jacksfilms, Muselk, JonTron and so on...
• Camera Abuse: Whenever Mr. Basic gets out of control, expect some of his mess to end up in the lens.
• Character Catchphrase: "Shhhh...."
• Character Exaggeration: As the series goes on, Mr. Basic uses more and more destructive tactics, diversifying from egg-smashing to wielding household implements and fire. In the 2018 April Fool's video, he actually successfully makes a vegan curry, but has to physically restrain himself from shoving frozen hot dogs and smashing eggs into the recipe. Said implements appear out of nowhere.
• Cosmetic Catastrophe: "How To Apply Makeup"
• Covered in Gunge: Mr. Basic covers his body with food in several videos.
• Covers Always Lie: The thumbnails for each video usually have professional stock photos attached to them, and the descriptions are well-written and sound completely normal, developing a guise of being a real instructional video. The contents, however, are a different story.
• Deconstructive Parody: Primarily of channels like eHow, right down to Word of God acting as if they are legitimate.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Anything involving an uncooked chicken usually devolves into him penetrating the carcass through its neck cavity with his foot. Squelching noises coupled with copious moaning then usually follows, usually caused by him rapidly pulling his foot in-and-out of the cavity.
• A Dog Ate My Homework: In "How to Do Homework", Mr. Basic tries deliberately invoking this. It doesn't boot.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The earliest clips on the channel are straight-up instructional videos, where Mr. Basic performs a single step demonstrating how simple things (like closing doors and picking up an umbrella) work. No eggs are used and nothing is smashed or destroyed. It isn't until "How to Wash a Blueberry" that he smashes something - a blueberry - for the first time, and the early videos don't involve the "egg smashing" gag at all.
• Egging: Eggs-aggerated. They throw and break eggs in almost all of his videos. The Logo of his channel is even a broken egg.
• Every Episode Ending: Mr. Basic tends to end episodes by giving a thumbs up, showing that the results of his instructions were successful.
• Exact Words: Face Reveal. As in, faces aside from Mr. Basic's.
• Eye Scream: "How to Correctly Cook Salmon".
• The Faceless: As every video is from the point of view of Mr. Basic's camera, we never see his face. Though he might have finally revealed his face in Jacksfilms's Your Grammer Sucks #100.
  • See Wham Episode below
• Fleeting Demographic: The viewers that enjoy it for the Bait-and-Switch factor, which loses its appeal after several videos.
• Flipping the Bird: Happens in several videos.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • His browsing history in "How To Install iOS 7".
  • The CD stack in "How To Install GTA V".
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Most videos have Mr. Basic frantically throw food, smash eggs, flush objects down the toilet or give it the finger when it becomes clear that whatever he was trying to make isn't working out.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: In the face reveal episode where almost all big YouTubers screams "I AM HOWTOBASIC!" at eachother.
• Hard Cut: Happens several times, notably in "How to Crack Open a Coconut" when Mr. Basic slamming the side of his palm into the coconut instantly cuts to his hand smashing into an exposed watermelon.
• I Am Spartacus: Face Reveal has practically every YouTuber under the Sun claiming to be Mr. Basic.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Has a tendency to emit rather suggestive female-sounding sexual moans.
• Informed Species: In "How to Correctly Cook Salmon", the "salmon" looks more like a red snapper…because it is.
• Kill It with Fire: From late 2015 onward, Mr. Basic has a growing tendency to immolate things in his destructive antics, even resorting to committing arson in his own house several times.
• Leave the Camera Running:
  • The April Fools 2020 video "How To Make Pulled Pork". After the usual 'legitimate how-to' part of the video, from 1:38 to 3:01:35, we are treated to an uninterrupted shot of the pulled pork being cooked for the entire three hours as a clock sits nearby with no background music. During this 3 hour shot, apart from him briefly tending to the slow cooker 1 hour and 46 minutes in and burning his hand a little, you can hear what sounds like Mr. Basic drinking soda, a truck loudly driving past outside at 11:38, listening to Joe Rogan at 41:06, farting and moaning at 1:17:36, watching V Sauce and eating at 1:23:35, and a list of other either mundane or weird things, before the video picks up when he looks at the clock, takes a big sigh and the BGM kicks back in at 3:01:35.
  • Amplified in "How To Make a Slow Cooked Beef Stew". Similarly to the above video, the entire section from 1:13 to 8:02:13 consists of the stew cooking, a nearby clock, and occasional interruptions.
• Man on Fire: Mr. Basic's hand catches on fire towards the end of "How to Remove a Stain from a Sofa".
• Made of Indestructium:
  • The doll, which has survived more abuse (including getting thrown headfirst at the wall of a shed multiple times) than almost anything else on the show.
    • He has multiple dolls, all of whom are Made of Indestructium, although one of them meets its end in "How To Teach A Child To Walk.
  • The blender, which still keeps working despite Mr. Basic throwing in all manner of food/objects that would normally break the rotors (including an entire block of butter, dog food and much more).
    • The toilet, and by extension the drainage system, which seems to be able to handle very heavy loads. It is a surprise to many that it hasn't exploded yet.
• Made of Iron: Maxmoefoe, whenever Mr. Basic and him crossover in Max's challenge videos. Max has been shown drinking vast amounts of alcohol and eating actual broken glass in the Cider Challenge, takes countless objects to the head and still keeps going, and has been forced to eat Basic's 'Krabby Patty' and survived. He's not that good at keeping stuff down, though.
• Men Can't Keep House: Averted - the house is always spot-clean by the beginning of the next episode.
• Meta Twist: The video on how to add milk to your coffee has an egg on-screen for the entire video, but he doesn't smash it. He smashes a tomato, instead.
• Naked People Are Funny: While not confirmed, Mr. Basic seems to be naked or at least only wearing briefs, since the camera has seen up to his upper leg, which isn't clothed at all.
  • In "How to Walk at Night Time" he was seen to wear shorts, although that may just be in public, or he may have abandoned them along side his sanity.
  • After a long wave of seemingly pants-free videos, the shorts made a return in "How to Correctly Make a Stir Fry," which he promptly takes off.
  • Subverted in the "How To Use a Douche" video, where what's assumed to be Mr. Basic's penis is actually a fish squished between his thighs.
• Once an Episode:
  • Eggs being broken get involved in some way, to extremely lethal drinking game levels.
  • All episodes finish with Mr. Basic doing a "thumbs up" to the camera accompanied with a grunt. If the result is edible (more or less...) he also eats it first, and often gags or chokes on the sheer awfulness of the result.
• Overly Long Gag: "How to Cool Down Your Laptop" has 10 seconds of nothing but Mr. Basic dumping bucket after bucket of ice on his laptop.
• Pet the Dog: Done frequently, especially when Mr. Basic's antics go over-the-top.
  • In "How to Quickly Stop a Crying Baby", after breaking eggs on a doll's body, shoving another egg into a slot between its legs and basting its face with egg yolk, Mr. Basic gently caresses the doll's face.
  • In "How to Crack Open a Coconut", after kicking the doll against the wall of a shed, Mr. Basic walks over to a severed mannequin head laying in a bush, says "Shhh..." and leaves an egg behind. Then he comes back at the end of the video, gives the mannequin head the finger and takes the egg back.
  • He literally pets the dog in How To Make Meth.
• Poor Man's Porn: "How to Install iOS 7" and "How to Install GTA V" (among others) show that Mr. Basic has a bizarre obsession with egg-based porn.
  • And then we finally get to see "Eggy Sluts 5"; how he gets off is, well, a little bizarre.
• Powder Trail: Mr. Basic tries to do this to a stuffed Pikachu he caught... with milk. He quickly gets fed up and just throws it into the trash.
• Product Placement: "How To Make An iPhone App" ends this way.
• Rage Quit: "How To Play The Ukelele" can be interpreted as this.
  • Many videos can also be interpreted as this.
• Random Transportation: Bet you can't guess his method on teleportation. Go ahead, guess. Yes, eggs. And a Hard Cut
• Recursion:
  • Videos on how to make beef jerky and ice cream involve the use of prepared beef jerky and ice cream, respectively.
  • One of the ingredients in his Coca-Cola recipe is Coca-Cola. Same for making Dr. Pepper. It will involve a can of Dr. Pepper.
  • Exaggerated in "How To Make Vegemite", where two jars of Vegemite and a tube of Vegemite are brought into the equation.
  • Also amplified in "How to Make a Big Mac"...which apparently requires about five Big Macs.
• Refuge in...Everything
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: God knows just how much of Australia's prosperity has funded Mr. Basic's expensive and highly destructive tumult. In some videos, he manages to waste thousands of dollars worth of groceries or household appliances within minutes or even seconds. As time went on, he decided to move on to destroying parts of his house, especially his kitchen bench.
  • It's been speculated that the eggs don't cost him much since he owns a henhouse.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: In How To Dry A Shirt in 30 Seconds, after drying a shirt in 30 seconds by cooking it for 3 hours, then punching it until it gets clean, something can be seen and heard under the shirt chirping loudly. Mr. Basic lifts the shirt up to reveal that it's an adolescent duckling.
• Rockers Smash Guitars: They also throw eggs at them.
• Running Gag:
  • A lot of the how-to videos incorporate the smashing of eggs for no apparent reason, even (or rather, especially) if what is being demonstrated doesn't involve eggs. The gag actually started, fittingly enough, with "How To Correctly Crack Open an Egg", and was taken even further by "How To Get 1,000,000 Subscribers".
    • In videos with narrators, occasionally Mr. Basic will run out of eggs after throwing them all at his creations, followed by panicking as he tries to find more.
    • Subverted in "How To Make A Fruit Salad" - after pulverizing numerous fruits, he lays an egg in the middle of the pulverized watermelon on top, and does nothing with it.
  • Many of Mr. Basic's videos involve putting something inside a chicken and baking it.
  • He also has a fascination with sticking things into a toilet for some reason.
  • Mr. Basic has a tendency to pretend to perform bodily functions, then use whatever came out (usually a raw chicken).
  • Comments will inexplicably include discussions about how the food he "wasted" could be sent to starving kids in Africa. Which in turn became a running gag, involving the non-edible items shown in the video (Example: "Kids in Africa could have eaten that toilet!") Double points if the comment comes from a Youtube user that's actually named "A Kid in Africa".
  • Also, true to "Mr. Basic" pretending the instructional videos are completely legitimate, the commenters often pretend that the instructions are either very clear and well-done, or they've missed one step somewhere and, say, got their dicks caught in a ceiling fan.
    • In videos that involve the preparation of food, commenters will typically pretend that they served the "food" at a family gathering and that it was so good, everyone is on the floor and/or twitching "happily".
  • "Shhhh..."
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: His Mie Goreng video has Maxmoefoe smashing his finished cooking with a baseball bat and then knocking him out cold, so he travelled back in time to steal the bat and hit Max with it, preventing the finished dish from being destroyed. Subverted when he smashes his dish and throws raw eggs at it anyway.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: How To Make The Perfect Roast. After an hour of him patiently waiting for the roast to cook, he ends up dropping it by pure accident after lifting it off the counter-top.
• Shamu Fu: Completes the recipes for sushi and tuna sandwiches.
• Spin-Off: Possibly BestWerldRecords, which supposedly features world record attempts by a voiceless (aside from heavy breathing) man, that ultimately end up failing spectacularly. There's speculation they might be the same person (given the similar style and the fact they're both Aussies). "Most Bricks Counted Ever" almost feels like it could easily be re-titled "How to properly count bricks", given how it quickly it diverges into food-based violence.
  • That table looks familiar.
• Status Quo Is God: His house is wrecked at the end of most videos, but in the next video, the house is clean and everything is fixed again.
  • Averted since "How to Make a Watermelon Cake". He axed his kitchen counter, and in the next episodes the counter only has a slab of wood covering the broken parts (which gets destroyed again).
• Stealth Pun: How to Correctly Make a Stir Fry has him smacking an eggplant...which turns into several (broken) eggs
• Stock Sound Effects:
  • A generic "growling dog" sound clip is heard several times in "How To Make Someone Quit Smoking".
  • The stock sound of a bear roaring is heard throughout "How To Defend Yourself From a Bear Attack".
  • The sound of an excited (and lather cheering) crowd is heard in "How to Win the World Cup".
• Stuff Blowing Up: Promised for both lettuce and watermelon. However he simply sticks a sparkler in it, lets it fizzle out, then just smashes an egg on it.
  • Played straight in "How To Correctly Cook Salmon" - the pyrotechnics do ignite as planned.
• Strictly Formula: Step one for any recipe: perform task. Step two: Smash egg. Rinse and repeat one hundred billion times over.
• Suddenly Shouting: The narrator in "How To Skin and Debone a Fish", after eggs were thrown onto the fish while one of the steps was "Don't egg the fish". Eventually, he calls it quits, and the rest of the video is spoken by a robotic voice.
  • This also occurs in "How To Make A Giant Chocolate Easter Egg", when the narrator is asking for eggs at the top of his lungs.
• Suddenly Speaking: Downplayed; no speech per se, but the silent host does mutter some sounds:
  • A brief "Shhh" in "How To Correctly Cook Salmon".
  • "How to Save Power", one of the earlier videos, begins with a shocked gasp as Mr Basic realizes that a power socket - which has nothing plugged into it - is switched on.
  • His voice is also hinted at during the Vomit Indiscretion Shot in "How to make Vegemite".
  • "How To Make a Dessert Pizza", as well as his more recent videos, also have hints of what his voice sounds like due to the numerous screams and grunts he makes in the videos.
  • He hired an uncredited female narrator for "How to Speed Up Your Internet", who may or may not be "him".
• Synthetic Voice Actor: The "victim" in "How To Prank Call Someone" is portrayed using a text-to-speech voice.
• Take That!:
  • "How To Revert Back To The Old YouTube Channel Design", where Mr. Basic smashes a monitor and sticks a printout of an old page to the screen.
  • Justin Bieber in "How to Have Swag", via a mannequin head with a cutout of his face on it that gets doused in milk and eggs.
  • Miley Cyrus in "How to Twerk Like Miley Cyrus" is represented by a raw turkey wearing a cloth on the lower half of its body, and shaking violently before being smashed with eggs.
  • "How To Remove Google+ From YouTube"
  • "How To Arrest Justin Bieber"
  • To Vegemite, after he vomits all over some Vegemite in How to Make Vegemite.
  • The end of "How to Upgrade to iOS 7" has Mr. Basic take a bite out of an apple and drops it in the toilet.
  • The end of "How to Uninstall Internet Explorer" has one for the aforementioned program and Firefox.
  • "How to Read Twilight." He straight up burns the book after the first sentence makes him cough up blood on it.
  • All of Basic's videos which involve vegan or vegetarian recipes involve tossing meat into the recipe, suggesting he has at least some sort of distaste for vegans and vegetarians.
• Take That, Audience!: "How To Get 1,000,000 Subscribers" has Mr. Basic smash a good 50 eggs or so before walking into his bathroom, stopping just before he gets to a mirror and giving the middle finger to the audience.
  • Also the 'how to end world hunger' video, which can be considered Mr. Basic's own criticisms towards the comment's obsession with "CHILDREN IN AFRICA" meme.
• The Unreveal: In "Face Reveal," we don't have any idea who he looks like, or who he is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Most of his videos feature lots of food getting destroyed rather than eaten.
  • Although it has been stated that the food products that he use are expired.
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: In the aptly-named "How to Teleport", Mr. Basic goes through Random Transportation whenever he drops an egg onto the floor. The resulting transport takes him to various locations throughout his house, then to an aisle in the middle of a supermarket before returning back home.
• Toilet Humour: Mr. Basic seems awfully fond of sticking things in his toilet. This includes a fish, a whole chicken, a pumpkin, a baby doll (multiple times), dozens of eggs and his foot.
  • Exaggerated with "How To Cure Constipation"
• Unconventional Smoothie: In How to Correctly Eat Sushi.
• Visual Pun: In "How to Masturbate", everything he "does" are literal puns of various slang terms for the act (i.e., tossing a salad, beating a slab of meat, flicking a bean, and choking a rubber chicken.)
  • "How To Shave" begins with him putting a tea bag apparently dangling from his legs on the face of a doll. He's literally teabagging the doll.
• The Voiceless: There is never narration, and there are only momentary occasions where his voice is heard.
  • Mostly consists of shushes and grunts.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Mr. Basic often vomits milk or other liquids on his creations.
  • The end of "How To Make Vegemite"
  • Whenever MaxMoeFoe is involved, he'll normally throw up at least once, as he's normally tasked with eating or drinking unhealthy amounts of various food items.
• Wham Episode: With 10,000,000 subscribers, the channel uploads a video titled Face Reveal We see a person with their face covered in two layers, slowly removing them, to reveal "Hey! V Sauce! Michael here!" Except Michael isn't How To Basic, but a guest visitor to the channel to put on a joke. After going on for a few minutes as though he were serious and being berated by the camera man for flubbing his lines, the real creator Max Stanley ends the joke and comes out as How To Basic for real. And then the guy working the camera, Warrun, says HE's the real creator, followed shortly by several more, and then it culminates in about a hundred different YouTubers making cameos to proclaim themselves as HowToBasic.
• Wham Shot: While "How to Make a Cheese Burger Pizza" is the usual HTB video, the ending has Mr. Basic take the Pizza Hut box where he put his "pizza" in and sets it down on the floor on a busy street, opening it to the audience to reveal it is a real Pizza Hut pizza with a cheese burger on it. He then turns the camera to a homeless person and quickly leaves before the person can see he left them food.

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(smashes tomato)