Slushy Noobz: Can This YouTube Crew Make the Web Much less Poisonous?

Slushy Noobz followers inhabit one thing of an inside sanctum, fluent within the Toronto-based YouTube channel’s working jokes and lore. The channel, launched in 2023 by Hamzah Al-Emad, 24, and Martin Andrijasevic, 27, grew out of the pair’s friendship and a shared love of old-school gaming movies, and options all the things from Minecraft role-play to restaurant critiques, highway journeys, and more and more elaborate real-world challenges. On a Zoom name from a hostel room, halfway by a cross-Canada livestream tour, Andrijasevic places it extra merely: “Finding entertainment in the mundane, that’s all we do.”

As members of a technology raised on YouTube, Slushy Noobz feels quietly subversive. While on-line leisure aimed toward younger males more and more rewards nihilism, cruelty, and humiliation (see Clavicular), Al-Emad and Andrijasevic are refreshingly regular: two pals hanging out and paying shut sufficient consideration for the banal to turn into unusual. Before Slushy Noobz, each made short-form movies on their very own. They talked by DMs, turned on-line pals, and ultimately met in individual. Andrijasevic was dwelling in Ottawa; he later moved to Toronto so they might make movies extra commonly. Their early movies revived the spirit of 2010s-era YouTube: two grown males taking part in video video games and treating a newly adopted canine like the middle of an elaborate mythology. Other days, they wandered Toronto with an iPhone or just turned on the digicam whereas they have been already hanging out. The channel now has greater than 1.5 million YouTube subscribers.

Their rising reputation has additionally produced an more and more unusual assortment of celeb crossovers. Al-Emad and Andrijasevic have gone reside with NLE Choppa, whereas Andrijasevic appeared alongside the rapper in a Marc Jacobs marketing campaign and, extra not too long ago, popped up in a Lil Uzi Vert music video. This summer season, they partnered with Toronto underground music competition First Class Fest, which boasts headliners like Osamason and Lancey Foux, Lucki and Nettspend. “We’ve just brushed up so many times with this underground sound,” Andrijasevic says. “We’re friends with a couple of producers here and friends with some artists. I think we just fall naturally in this place.”

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Earlier this summer season, impressed by the globetrotting extravagance of 21-year-old streamer IShowSpeed’s marathon journey streams, the Slushy Noobz boys tried to take their friendship reside throughout Canada. On Speed’s streams, hordes of screaming followers, “stream snipers” monitoring his whereabouts in actual time, and locals who don’t know what’s happening can immediately discover themselves in the midst of one of many web’s hottest primetime reveals.

Along with their manufacturing crew, who went forward to check web connections, meet locals, and scout every cease, Al-Emad and Andrijasevic have been much less involved with manufacturing confrontations than letting native individuals present them round. They beaded with Indigenous elders and went fishing in Newfoundland with somebody for whom catching and cooking fish was merely each day life. At different stops, they sought out native figures who carried their very own form of small-town fame.

They considered tone from the beginning. As it presently exists, IRL streaming is commonly fueled by the need to see drama play out reside on digicam. Strangers can turn into props, and public areas can flip into movie units nobody agreed to participate in. During our first dialog, Andrijasevic says the style had “a harassment air to it.”

Like all content material creators in 2026, Andrijasevic and Al-Emad know fan-created clips assist unfold their movies throughout social media. A stray second may attain individuals who had by no means watched them earlier than. Earlier this yr, one in all their clips caught the eye of PlaqueBoyMax, a streamer and musician recognized for making songs reside with company. He invited them onto his stream the subsequent day. “He didn’t even really know who we were, it seemed like,” Al-Emad says. “It was just sort of ‘clips recognized clips.’”

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They ultimately joined Max on stream and recorded a vocal drop he may use as a producer tag, the audio signature that identifies a beat or producer. “I’m going to be honest, bro. Like, we on the internet, everyone’s so judgmental. We just got to stand out and be ourselves,” Max instructed them throughout the stream. Around the identical time, individuals have been choosing aside whether or not Max himself was masculine sufficient, calling him “zesty” and criticizing his tattoo of the phrase “diva.” Andrijasevic texted him to disregard it. “Being that invested in someone else’s business is crazy,” he says. “I get ‘zesty’ allegations a lot, but it is what it is.”

By our second name, the trek had cured them of some assumptions about streaming. Al-Emad says it takes “a certain type of person” to remain on for therefore lengthy whereas additionally enthusiastic about “short-form, clippable moments all the time.” They gave it their finest shot, he says, however “there’s just some people who are bred for this and that’s not us.”

Andrijasevic went into the tour pondering they’d be naturally good at IRL streaming. As the journey went on, he says, they stopped attempting to squeeze a video out of each cease. They turned extra enthusiastic about “authentically experiencing everything.” “It’s just so much harder than we expected,” he says. Their common movies draw on spontaneous moments however benefit from enhancing, permitting them to form the best way diversions can play into the bit. 

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The phrase “wholesome” follows them round, and the tour introduced it up once more. Andrijasevic doesn’t thoughts being seen as a substitute for the more durable, alpha-male aspect of streamer tradition. He says he’d welcome audiences on the lookout for a change “with open arms.” Meanwhile, Al-Emad bristles on the thought of being typecast as “safe.” He isn’t enthusiastic about promising a sanitized stream the place nothing unusual or messy occurs. He simply doesn’t assume somebody needs to be humiliated to make a second depend. Andrijasevic’s definition? Two pals “experiencing the world.” “That’s all,” he says. “There’s nothing else really there.”

If Slushy Noobz goes reside once more, it’ll in all probability look extra like an occasion than a highway diary. Al-Emad is drawn to one-off broadcasts that allow them usher in musicians or different company. He desires viewers to really feel they must be there. Constant streaming, he says, belongs to “a different beast.” Andrijasevic agrees. The tour can also be being formed right into a documentary, however on the time of our second name, particulars hadn’t been introduced but. “Real Gs move in silence like lasagna,” Andrijasevic says. By the time they get residence, Al-Emad doesn’t need to make merch or launch one other stream for the second. He desires to get again to creating “really good YouTube videos.” Andrijasevic compares it to coming residence from a protracted journey and immediately eager to declutter the home and begin understanding. “We feel re-energized in a new way,” he says.