Today we’d like to introduce you to Ali Shahriari.
Hi Ali, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have been creating silly videos since I was a child using my father’s giant Sony Camcorder, bad disaster movies, bad stop motion, bad kung fu movies, bad action movies, and that sort of thing.
Being the son of Iranian immigrants (I was born in Iran, and lived in France for three years to get our visas) my parents wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer, well I hated blood, authority, and dealing with people so I tried several different majors in college, from Mass Communications (found out later not high enough starting pay), to aeronautical engineering at Embry Riddle University (too boring), to computer science (also too boring), until I took some film classes(this all at St. Petersburg community College).
This excited me, creating content, something that can entertain and make people laugh. After graduating, I got a job as a videographer for an engineering company called Belquette in Clearwater creating all kinds of videos. They let me be creative. During that time, I started doing stand-up comedy, I loved to entertain and make people laugh and it was a test for me to see if I could do it, but doing comedy to 30 drunk people in a smokey room wasn’t big enough, I wanted to reach more people with my jokes.
My friends and I always made fun of commercials during our weekly Sunday Buccaneers games, “We kind of did our version of Mystery Science Theater but for commercials instead of B-movies.” It wasn’t until we saw this trend of “real people” commercials that it clicked. We were watching TV and a Deal Dash commercial came on. It was awful. The acting was horrendous, and they weren’t acting like a normal person would in that situation. At the engineering company I worked at, I was learning how to do green screens.
So, we asked ourselves: “What if we green-screened ourselves into the commercial and roasted it?” We did it for the Deal Dash commercial and it got over a quarter of a million views. We did the same to a Chevy “Real People” commercial that was airing during football games and on January 19th we uploaded “If ‘Real People’ Commercials Were Real Life – CHEVY Emoji Ad,” which received more than 3 million views. That’s when the magic started and I knew I was on to something.
We were huge on Reddit and Funnyordie, front page almost every time we posted a video. They loved we roasted and called out huge corporations on their lies in their advertising, especially Chevy and JD Power. Soon we reached over 1 million subscribers, and after that, the phones started ringing (they were emails but still you get it), pretty soon we were doing Dell commercials, Adweek was writing articles about us, talked to celebs about creating viral content, even talking to William Shatner’s team to create a fictional twitter war, we were writing and creating new Television series’ (“Floriduh” never got past a shopping deal unfortunately).
Celebrities and even politicians (yes, Herman Caine) were sharing our videos and praising how funny and educational our videos were for exposing misleading ads, and I was doing this all while I still had a day job. Chevy then suddenly stopped creating Real People Commercials, we had won the war. I wanted to expand and create different types of sketch comedy, but Zebra Corner wasn’t the platform for that. So, I created another sketch comedy group, Paid Vacation, with my stand-up comedy friend Zac Townsend. We created vertical-style videos on Instagram REELS and TikTok, we focused on parody & satire, specifically viral TikTok/Instagram videos, Get Ready with Me videos, stolen valor videos, kindness videos, Mr. Beast videos, etc.
It wasn’t long before our videos like “Doctor Helps Blind Man See,” Horny Batman and Inappropriate Gynecologic were getting millions of views and getting featured on podcasts like Fighter & the Kid. Zac & I were even invited by Barstool Sports to their “Barstool Idol” competition in New York, a content creator competition between 10,000 contestants to get a contract with Barstool, we both got in the top 10 (I got in the top 5, heh), right now paid vacation still creating videos, as for my day job? No longer at the engineering company, but I do work for a celebrity Marketing Company called Mawer Capital in Clearwater, where I’m currently creating ads and viral videos for celebrities like Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone, Ric Flair, Floyd Mayweather, and more.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not an easy road. Comedy is a tricky thing, there is very little pay involved for a lot of hard work before you reach a certain status. And the same goes for creating sketch comedy, you may think you have just created the funniest video on earth, but it only gets a few thousand views, whereas a short silly video you DIDN’T work very hard on goes viral.
Copycats and joke thieves have always been an issue, After Zebra Corner went viral several YouTube channels tried to do the same thing of green screening themselves into commercials, but their problem was they didn’t write good jokes, that’s where we excel. Copycats even came at higher levels, Some Saturday Night Live writers must’ve been a fan of ours because it wasn’t long after that several sketches seemed VERY similar to ours, including a “December to Remember” sketch that aired exactly one year after ours (with the same premise).
You would think making parody videos about big companies would get you a lawsuit, but it’s the total opposite, Deal Dash for example liked our parody so much, that they paid us for it. They said, “You guys make better videos than we do.” Even Jeep contacted us to create a parody commercial about them, just because it’ll get their brand out there with little effort. Sure, Chevy may have taken down some of our T-shirt designs we created (it said Sh*tty instead of Chevy with their slightly altered logo), but we haven’t been sued…yet
Now our struggle is oversaturation. There are so many content creators now because apps like Capcut & TIKTOK (which I call “editing software for dummies”) make it so easy to create videos. Paid Vacation is even getting content creators from other countries to take our content and recreate them shot for shot (the Arab community loves “inappropriate Gynecologist”.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Company – Paid Vacation & Zebra Corner (want to focus on paid vacation).
We do Sketch comedy, parody, satire. Most notably recognized for creating the YouTube channel “Zebra Corner” which has amassed over a million subscribers, accumulated over 190 million views, and putting an END to “Real People” commercials and exposing false advertising.
What sets us apart from others is quality over quantity, JOKES, actual well-formulated JOKES, premise, set up, and punchline. Nothing agenda-based. We don’t make fun of Republicans; we make fun of Democrats Republicans AND Libertarians (especially libertarians). We will make a joke about anything, no matter how dark or controversial, we believe EVERYONE should be made fun of equally.
The problem with YouTube now is that content is a business, back then, people just posted videos to make people laugh, now it’s all about creating a hook in the 1st 3 seconds, giving them some helpful information, but leaving them hanging for more, have an end card at the end, like & subscribe blah, blah, blah. It’s a formula now, it’s not about being creative or funny. We just want to make people laugh and if we can have a little underlying theme to make you think? Even better
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
We are both huge fans of Larry David, Mike Judge, and Matt Stone & Trey Parker.
These are the people we want to become. Matt Stone & Trey Parker make fun of EVERYONE, not just certain groups, EVERYONE and they’ve conquered TV, Theater, and even film. That’s talent.
Don’t listen to podcasts or read much, because when you’re constantly consuming, you aren’t creating. Now go subscribe to my channel.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.instagram.com/paidvacationcomedy/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ali_zebracorner/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004917816805
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ali_ZebraCorner
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/paidvacation
- Other: https://solo.to/ali_zebracorner
