Earlier this year, a popular YouTube channel with 648k subscribers was hijacked by the character Stingy from Icelandic children’s show LazyTown. For a few months, the channel would upload various video game remixes, the majority of which were increasingly complex variations of “The Mine Song,” an abrasive, minute-long song where the character proclaims that everything he sees is “mine.” The channel is SiIvaGunner, an elaborate non-profit community devoted to trolly remixes, elaborately constructed in-jokes, deeply layered storytelling, surprising bangers and, most importantly, high quality rips.
The basic elevator pitch for SiIvaGunner is simple: a YouTube channel that initially seems to upload regular video game music, but is in fact uploading elaborate edits of those songs. Currently, the most popular upload, at roughly nine million views, is titled “Athletic Theme (PAL Version) - Super Mario World.” It begins almost identically to the SNES classic, but roughly 13 seconds in, it shifts to being a cover of the 1958 novelty song “Witch Doctor” in the style of “Athletic Theme.” Finally, to drive the point home for those who haven’t picked up on the joke, vocals drop in 47 seconds from the 1998 eurodance cover of “Witch Doctor” by Danish band Cartoons.
Explaining the history of SiIvaGunner (spelled with two mixed case “i”s, as in “siivagunner”) is complicated in part because of the sheer amount of kayfabe and lore baked into its premise. “Chaze the Chat, the original founder of the channel, came up with the idea after posting a few ‘fakeout’ style video game music edits on SoundCloud back in 2015,” lead manager Emma (who goes by MtH), told me in a group interview with ten different representatives of SiIvaGunner. “Inspired by the many similar older troll videos on YouTube (think rickrolls and such) he had the idea of pretending to be a video game music uploader, in this case a parody of giLvasunner [called giivasunner; caps changed for clarity, who] was a popular uploader at the time. And so the idea originally, before both channels were banned due to copyright strikes, was to appear indistinguishable from a popular, real channel.”
SiIvaGunner’s existence is also an indirect consequence of the SoundClown movement, a mashup parody scene which focused on increasingly elaborate and absurd joke edits. “Pretty much everyone initially involved with the channel met through SoundClown (or what remained of it at the time),” MtH said, a statement echoed by fellow backroom manager Maggie.
“The lasting legacy of SoundClown, beyond the touches of it in pop culture now, is SiIvaGunner,” said Morgan Imago, a DJ and producer who was in the SoundClown scene and remembered the rise of SiIvaGunner. “They took the ball and ran with it. SiIva took that bitter, walled garden irony and turned it into a force to uplift rather than tear down. They figured out how to twist the artform into something that made people smile, without making them feel bad in the process, and for that I can't really thank them enough.”
Founder Chaze The Chat would eventually leave the channel. Though the project would have internal ups and downs like any community, SiIvaGunner would continue to grow over time, exploding structurally into a semi-hierarchical, explicitly non-profit organization for the creation of funny jokes, elaborate lore, storytelling and music. SiIvaGunner is not simply a YouTube channel, it is a community, with more in common with an artist collective, a mutual aid group, or a worker’s cooperative in the service of what they call “High Quality Rips.”
Being a fan of SiIvaGunner’s output is complicated but rewarding. A part of this is that YouTube makes it difficult to just listen to all of the uploads of a single channel, meaning you have to take a more active role when catching up. Listening to that many game rips will also just do freakish but wonderful stuff to your YouTube algorithm.
But the weirdest effect is when a rip is so appropriate that it starts to overwrite the original song in your head. This has happened to me with a rip that mixes “No More What Ifs” from Persona 5 with Laufey’s “From The Start,” “Time To Make History” from Persona 4, and “Doritos and Fritos” by 100 gecs, and one that mixes “Pigstep” from Minecraft with “Starboy” by The Weeknd ft. Daft Punk. “I unironically like this rip to the point where listening to the original actually sounds weird,” one user commented on “Bramble Blast - Super Smash Bros. Brawl.”
How To Survive On YouTube By Making No Money And Taking No Credit
SiIvaGunner’s thoroughness in their approach to the complex ethics of fair use is impressive. Copyright is a minefield and trying to make money off of YouTube is a mercenary existence that can destroy the creators who dedicate their lives to it. In the ethics statement in their official ripping guide, the SiIvaGunner community is clear: “First and foremost, you generally cannot make money from your edited video game music. Do not sell it, do not ask for donations, and to be honest, you shouldn’t even run ads against it. This is not a hobby you should come into expecting to profit from.”
“SiIvaGunner has always been pretty stubbornly non-commercial on pretty much everywhere it should apply, considering we're first and foremost a remix collective,” RHMan, who joined in 2018, told me in our interview. “Our community is pretty set on this principle. Although people have made things akin to us on YouTube, we don't monetize anything we make because our entire model works off the basis that nobody gets paid, and we're all volunteering for fun. The channel isn't monetized (any ads you might see are added by YouTube). On the Bandcamp platform for albums, people have the option to pay, but we expressly discourage this and all the payment we receive is redirected to charity and adding more free download credits. At MAGFests in the past, we've sold limited-order merchandise based off of original artwork from our art branch, which similarly goes to charities and making the convention events possible. However, we're still not ‘incorporated’ in any way; this has always been a loose collective of people doing this for the love of the game.”
“A point that not many people think about is that even if we wanted to make money off of this (which we don't),” circunflexo, a visual artist and backroomer who joined the team in 2022, added, “actually distributing that profit to the rest of the team fairly would be next to impossible with how many moving parts go into most of our projects. Any profit that we incur as a result of merch sales at physical events such as MAGFest goes straight into recuperating the initial investment cost and the rest to charity.”
Though originally the channel existed under the pretense that a mysterious figure was uploading all of these, this kayfabe has loosened as time has gone on and the structure changed. Still, the channel remains rooted in certain core ideological values. “There are still, and will likely always be, major parts of the channel that keep up the kayfabe, the largest of those being regular rips on YouTube, which we almost to a rule never credit the original ripper for,” backroom manager ChickenSuitGuy told me. While certain original arrangements, artwork, special releases, and fusion collaborations often give credit, the meat and potatoes uploads are by SiIvaGunner collectively, not individuals. “Ultimately not having credit also keeps us aligned with the core value of the channel, so that people make rips for fun rather than trying to get any sort of clout or value associated with our platform, especially regarding edited video game music.”
Keeping up with SiIvaGunner can be a challenge given its upload frequency – it is not uncommon to see 10 SiIvaGunner uploads in a single day. Managing this workload is a complex task done entirely over Discord and involves a tiered management system for editing and quality control. Managers, including everyone interviewed for this piece, are part of what is known as “backroom,” a title you work up to as time goes on.
“We have a whole system worked out on Discord for submitting rips, whether you're a team member or fan emailer,” backroom member minindo told me, “reviewing them for quality and accuracy, and then putting them into a queue to be uploaded on our bihourly schedule. A lot of this process was developed gradually over the years to make things easier, as the team and the amount of stuff they made increased in production value and just sheer amount.”
Discord emotes are used to denote the current status of a rip in the “QoC” channel, which stands for “Quality of Control,” a chat typo from a member that eventually became canonical terminology. Once final approval is given, the rip is added to the upload rotation in a special program specifically designed for the task, the High Quality Ripper program created by backroomer Moder. Without this specific piece of software, uploading with this frequency year after year would be tedious, if not impossible.
During a MAGFest panel, the team joked that the structure of the organization resembles a Ponzi scheme “with "Rippers" at the base level, "Quality Control/Quality of Control" above them, and then "Backroom" at the top.” RHMan told me that the structure of the organization has changed significantly even in the last year: “We have a few separate branches, each specializing on different mediums. One for rippers, one for art (SG Art Team), and one for arrangements (SiIvaGunner Fusion Records, or SGFR). Backroom serves as a group of managers from all of the branches, as the council that decides the fate of important channel decisions. For the rippers side, the base level is rippers, who can then get promoted to a Quality Control position after showing a dedication to quality in their rips, and then can be further promoted to Backroom given enough dedication for consistently helping and being involved. For the other branches, it also works similarly, but essentially people are promoted when they've shown a lot of interest and willingness to help run the channel for a long period of time.”
“I think the importance of voting is that for our management systems, since the founder (Chaze) left, we have used a democratic system for decisions whether that's in quality control, backroom, or otherwise,” backroomer Heboyi told me. “Most major decisions are put up to a vote among the channel managers. This includes organizational changes or fixing problems, but also pitches that come from any members of the team for various projects like channel events, takeovers and major collaborations. Any member of the team is able to pitch an event they want on the channel, and the managers build the schedule around the various events that people in the team are most excited towards.”
This level of organization was also reflected in how the interview was conducted. How do you go about interviewing a collective? The solution was worked out in the interview, and reflected the organization itself: I was invited to a newly created temporary Discord for this specific purpose, and 10 representatives of the backroom were chosen. As I dropped my questions for this interview into Discord, different backroomers took turns drafting individual responses while others communicated the status of those responses. This allowed for a collective distribution of work while fairly representing a broad section of different viewpoints. Watching the team figure out how best to answer my questions itself became a shining example of how to democratically run a collective.
Though everyone I interviewed was technically “backroom,” certain members within the organization take on different responsibilities based on their specific interests, such as side projects, collabs, storytelling and even an art team. “The production of artwork for the channel has some interesting facets to it,” SG Art Team director moralem told me. “The direction tends to be more freeform as it tries to adapt to the people who are actively interested in contributing to a specific thing. Despite the size of the team, a lot of channel projects tend to become small circles as writers, editors, musicians and artists refine their finished products, bouncing ideas off each other with reduced input from the rest of the team besides some backroom/lead oversight to ensure a proper pipeline.” Since the art team came from the ripping team, it shares some with how project management is done.
On top of managing a complex system of “QoC,” collaborations, and artwork, the channel is also a platform for storytelling, much of which is documented in explainer videos and on the SiIvaGunner wiki. “The amount of lore on the channel may be surprising, and probably overwhelming to many viewers trying to get into it, but we have playlists on the channel to act as a guide for those willing to (try to) understand it the best they can,” backroomer Grambam36 told me. This began back when the original channel was deleted and rebooted in 2016 – individual characters and running jokes came to the forefront, and the channel underwent various story arcs. One of these story arcs, a visual novel style pastiche known as the The SiIvaGunner Christmas Comeback Crisis was originally meant to terminate in 2016, but has taken over 10 years to complete and is only now reaching its conclusion. “It may be strange to have such a large and somewhat complicated story for a channel such as this, but we do these stories to this day because we find it fun and compelling, and we are always coming up with new ideas,” Grambam36 said.
“The current face of the channel is an original character dubbed The Joke-Explainer™ 7000,” circunflexo told me. Originally meant to be a side character, Joke-Explainer™ 7000 now serves as a de-facto ambassador for the channel, a helpful voice to onboard new users into a world of increasingly complex lore.
For Fans, By Fans, And (Sometimes) Against Fans
Most people within SiIvaGunner started off as a fan of some sort, which is often seen in the comments. “The SiIvaGunner ‘community’ is definitely more complex than it is at first glance,” backroomer Madinstance told me. “There's a group of people in the comments, a group of people in the fan server, there's groups of people that make fan channels (such as TimmyTurnersGrandDad), and there's groups of people who submit and are part of the team.” It’s a conversational relationship, one which is often playfully confrontational and slightly sadistic. Madinstance cited “Snow Halation,” a song from the anime Love Live which was included in so many rips that the community eventually turned on them, resulting in dislike bombing. “Snow Halation,” in turn, would lead to an entire narrative arc of its own.
Another recent example: flooding the channel with rips involving the aggressively annoying “Burning Desires” by Sān-Z and HOYO-MiX for the character Burnice from the game Zenless Zone Zero. Spotting negative reactions in the comments and driving the joke into the ground until the community experiences a form of Stockholm Syndrome is quintessentially SiIvaGunner. “Though even though some of the commenters have turned into contributors, we still try and keep our eye out for comment reactions that we can capitalize on to involve our audience... for better or worse,” Madinstance said. This confrontation is a part of the culture. “A lot of the team tends to gravitate towards jokes that objectively suck,” they added later.
The LazyTown Stingy takeover that dominated the channel for a few months is a perfect example of how a joke driven into the dirt can become beloved by the community through sheer insistence. “It's still hilarious how quickly people accepted Stingy into their lives,” circunflexo said. “We got fanart day 1. People falter fast." Madinstance added. The Stingy rips numbered in the hundreds by the end of the takeover, melting the heart of even the most cynical commenter. “You know what, I'm giving in. Everything truly is his. There's nothing we can do. That's all there is to it,” commenter @jongarfield6508 admitted. Since conducting this interview, Stingy has taken the channel over again for "the month of June."
Everyone expresses themselves differently
There are a shocking number of angles to approach a rip, and everyone has their own favorites. Simply search for YouTube playlists called “SiIvaGunner bangers” or SiIvaGunner Essential and you’ll see loads. I wanted to know the favorite rips of the people who manage the channel. Backroomer minindo prefers rips where vocals are pitch shifted and recontextualized into a new song, but the song still works. “The joke is ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ (2011) by Gotye, and it's just perfectly combined with ‘Mice on Venus’ in a way that's funny and sounds actually beautiful, in my opinion.”
“One of my favourite things to see in a rip is when someone does a musical joke that isn't necessarily a reference, like looping a repeated section for the whole track or extending an ascending/descending melody to keep going,” MtH said. “A recent favourite in that category is ‘Angel Island Zone (Act 1) (Alpha Mix),’ which adapts the entirety of Herbie Hancock's ’Come Running To Me’ into a seven-and-a-half minute (without looping!) Sonic 3 arrangement complete with nods and references to songs from the game.”
“I love arrangement rips,” Maggie said. “There are a ton of good ones and I've even made a few, but my favorite not made by me is probably Boss (Beta Mix) - Plok, which turns the original song into a cover of ‘Roller Mobster’ by Carpenter Brut. I especially love when there's a certain artificiality or crunchiness that comes from sequenced music, arrangement or not, and I think hearing songs get transferred to that kind of style is fun.”
Backroomer Moralem also has a Plok-themed favorite, Main Theme (Beta Mix) - Plok, “which is an arrangement of the title screen from Solstice, if you haven't listened to the original, you should do that too!”
“I really love it when rips do something outside of the original bounds of its sources,” ChickenSuitGuy said. “For example, there are rips that take a song with let's say, a simple trap beat, but in the rip they add on their own extra instrumentation to make the rip fuller and more interesting. There are also rips that take advantage of the original source's vocals being synthesized and use that to come up with their own lyrics in the rip.”
If there is a SiIvaGunner magnum opus, it is probably the Showdown with the Ultimate Chimera - MOTHER 3, the final rip of a beloved and deceased community member. “Aside from the personal connection of it being made by a close friend of mine who's no longer with us, it is a very impressive rip designed to incorporate every single MOTHER 3 battle theme into a singular arrangement of ‘Dancing Mad’ from Final Fantasy 6,” Madinstance told me. “It ended up inspiring a trend of rips in the years since its release, and I think has put a lot of emphasis on SiIvaGunner as a place of artistic expression.” Showdown is indeed impressive: a more than 16 minute long masterwork with fully original, beautiful sprite work that totally recontextualizes the final boss fight against Kefka. It is a final work of a beloved friend, one who passed far too young, and the comments in memoriam are a tribute to the strength and beauty of what is possible in a community like SiIvaGunner.
Finding a future in the silliest place possible
When I started listening to SiIvaGunner’s channel years ago, I signed up for one thing: High quality rips. That hasn’t changed, but I have, and so has the community that SiIvaGunner represents.
“We've worked a lot to actively improve the team and its communications throughout the past year, always trying to make sure that we're doing the best we can do for our team and for the benefit of running things smoothly,” RHMan told me. “Like originally, people were just sending things to Chaze to get them uploaded. Now, there's a system for that. Channel events used to be mostly sources backroom+chaze found funny enough to make rips for an entire day with, but now there's a whole system for any ripper to pitch their own event (though sometimes we'll still have a spontaneous funny event because we feel like it). We're very much learning and adapting to a world where SiIvaGunner is increasingly a multi-medium platform where we have to balance creating large art projects while keeping a steady output of rips onto the channel. As backroomers, it's very much a team effort.”
Workers and artists managing both themselves and each other is an atypical arrangement in the current world. Often you realize that you are workshopping new or forgotten structures as you try them out, like trying to interview 10 people simultaneously. What you come up with is often imperfect, and can take a long time to get right. Aftermath as a worker’s cooperative is a work in progress, and I pray that we are ultimately successful. But when you see something that works, that survives in an otherwise toxic environment, it plants the seeds of something better elsewhere.
In our case, the salted earth we struggle against is the collapse of a media ecosystem. In SiIvaGunner’s case, it thrives in the foul topsoil of YouTube. They have managed to survive thanks in no small part to a lot of work and because they have each other. It is democratic and constantly trying to be better, with each contributing according to their ability – from lowly ripper, QoC, to art, planning, and everyone in Backroom. And even, or rather because, it makes no money, it represents the best of what the internet can be. It’s a reminder that, to quote David Graeber, “the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” SiIvaGunner is a song about life, and it’s high quality.
