Stinkpit Gladiators takes the #1 spot!

How we doing, folks? Primal Instinks HERE, and I'm proud to announce that my channel now has a new most-watched video! That's right, "Stinkpit Gladiators" recently overtook the #1 most-viewed spot in my YouTube catalogue, and it's also the first video on my channel to achieve over 200,000 views and has the most likes to date, with nearly 1,500 likes at the time of this writing.

The first "Abs of Steel Contest" from 2016 was the most-watched video on my channel for years and held that position with no sign of being passed, until a special video I filmed in 2020 slowly grew in popularity over the years and eventually took the crown. Ironically, "Stinkpit Gladiators" was age-restricted and demonetized by YouTube shortly after being uploaded, but it still managed to find an audience who love it and its quirky, gross humor; so much so that it's now the most popular on my show!

In celebration of its top-view status, I wanted to share the story behind the filming of it. I was hanging out with T-Wrex and Lord Rubix, two former featured friends of my show who participated on camera with me for several years until they left to start families with the women in their lives, and we were hanging out in my bedroom at the time. Rubix was sitting on my bed, and I went to put him in my "stinkpit dragon sleeper" signature move for fun.

Rubix laughed and resisted the surprise attack, saying "hey, we're not filming! We don't do that off-camera." In response, T-Wrex grabbed a camera, began recording, and said "now we're filming!" and that's where the video fades in and begins, after Wrex said that. It was an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment video, which is a variety I'm still a fan of and utilize to this day! What happened next is Rubix gave in and allowed himself to be "stinkpitted," and the three of us then took turns putting each other in "armpit locks" and laughing about it while taking turns filming it.

I originally planned to offer this video as a behind-the-scenes Extra (paid content) because I feared YouTube would take issue with it and strike it down in a homophobic manner, based off prior ridiculous decisions they had made against videos in the past I had filmed with my male friends. Seeing as it fit too well with the "no deodorant" humor of my show, I ultimately decided to post it on the channel anyway and title it "Stinkpit Gladiators" since it looked to me like the three of us were battling it out against each other using our individual odors, seeing as none of us were known to use deodorant on a regular basis (and in my case, never use it at all!).

My fears were confirmed when YouTube age-restricted and demonetized the video shortly after uploading it, claiming it was "sexual content" despite it having no sexual context and clearly being filmed from a fun and entertaining standpoint by close friends. I had faced homophobic attacks from YouTube employees in the past, and this was sadly nothing new for my friends and me to experience. I appealed the decision but was instantly denied, confirming that the company stood by the homophobic attack, and I decided I had to let it be.

Despite the effort to suppress the video, it still managed to break through in views and be recommended and shared across YouTube and the internet as a whole, and fast forward to today, it's now the most-viewed video on my channel! It just goes to show that when you keep your head up and fight back against hateful attacks, you still have a chance to shine and make an impact on the world, and this video is proof of that.

The gross humor of "Stinkpit Gladiators" was inspired by the shows I watched when I was a kid: re-runs of "The Ren & Stimpy Show" (I'm wearing a Ren & Stimpy t-shirt in the video, which I sold to a fan years later who bought it from me), and shows like "Rocko's Modern Life" and MTV's "Jackass." You can see where that combination ended up yielding a video like this with my friends: you take the wild antics of the Jackass crew, which was a group of young guys doing weird and gross things to each other for comedy and entertainment, and you add the strange and gross humor of those two Nickelodeon cartoons, and the resulting idea is a video of three male friends who don't use deodorant making each other smell each others armpits for laughs and raised-eyebrow reactions!

It was always interesting to me how the "Abs of Steel Contest" was the most-viewed video on my channel for so long, though not surprising since it was a popular challenge video that was trending on YouTube back in 2016 when I filmed it with T-Wrex. While I was proud of my performance in that video, withstanding the full weight of the heavier T-Wrex on my abdomen for a grueling 60 seconds, I didn't necessarily like the fact that a video that wasn't my own original idea was the top viewed. I equated it to me being a musician and having my most popular song be a cover song when I had plenty of well-established original songs out there. 

But now that "Stinkpit Gladiators" is #1, I'm a lot more proud to see that my impulsive decision to put a former friend of mine in a stinky headlock turned into a hilariously gross and sporadic event that so many people around the world have watched and enjoyed! "Stinkpit Gladiators" deserves the crown on a channel like The No Deo Hero!

Thanks to everyone who's seen this video and help it achieve record-breaking status. For everyone out there wondering, "will Primal ever film a video like that with anyone else again?" ... The answer to that question is actually up to you guys! My short answer is "yes, absolutely," but in order for there to be a sequel, it would require other people agreeing to come by and film it with me on camera. So in other words, if you guys want a "Stinkpit Gladiators 2," one of you is going to have to travel to me so we can film it!

You don't just meet people on the street or in grocery stores who are going to want to be publicly filmed with someone's armpit in their face and vice versa, so you guys would have to be brave and step up to the pit -- I mean, plate -- and participate if you want that to happen. Until one of you out of there does, we'll still have the original masterpiece to continue enjoying, but a sequel would be absolutely epic if anyone came forth to honor it.

To all the stinkpit fans and fellow gladiators out there: raise your armpits in a toast to the new champion video on my channel with the most views: STINKPIT GLADIATORS!