Marina Orlova / Hot For Words

About

Marina Orlova is the Russian host of the YouTube channel Hot For Words, sometimes written as HotForWords, which was popularized during the platform’s early days. Well-known for her content which explained and traced the origins of English words or idioms, Orlova’s channel began in 2007 and generally followed the same format until 2014 when she stopped posting videos. She returned briefly in 2018, but only uploaded a few videos until 2020 when she began regularly posting new clips, which were far removed from her channel’s original content. Due to the bizarre nature of her content in 2020 and personal experiences shared with her channel, many online expressed concerns over her mental health.

Career

In February 2007, the “Hot For Words” trademark was registered alongside the website hotforwords.com (now defunct) and the YouTube^[1] channel was created on the 26th. On March 7th, 2007, Orlova uploaded the first video to the channel^[2] under the name “What is Philology?” that explained the origin of the word as “a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.” The video (shown below) received over 300,000 views, 1,400 likes and 258 comments in roughly 13 years. In the description, Orlova explained that “each week I am going to put up a new video teaching the origin of a word” which also included links to her channel’s Facebook^[3] and Twitter^[4] accounts.

On July 11th, 2007, the Hot For Words YouTube^[5] channel began its first “Guess the Word” series, accumulating over 234,000 views, 515 likes and 330 comments in roughly 13 years (seen below, left). On July 20th that year, the second “Guess the Word 2” video was uploaded to the channel,^[6] which went on to accumulate over 1.1 million views (the first over a million), 2,900 likes, 2,700 dislikes and 1,000 comments in roughly 13 years (seen below, right).

On November 27th, 2007, the YouTube^[7] channel uploaded the clip discussing the term “Antidisestablishmentarianism,” which went on to become Hot For Words’ most viewed video of all time with nearly 25 million views, 20,000 likes and 4,600 comments in 13 years (shown below, left). On March 28th, 2008, YouTuber^[8] LisaNova posted a clip spoofing Hot For Words and Orlova, which received over 6.3 million views, 17,000 likes, 18,000 dislikes and 6,800 comments in roughly 12 years (seen below, right).

On August 23rd, 2008, Hot For Words uploaded a video celebrating the channel’s 100 million total views, receiving over 11.6 million views, 6,400 likes, 3,600 dislikes and 2,800 comments in roughly 12 years (shown below).^[9]

On August 18th, 2009, Orlova published a book with Harper Paperbacks under the title Hot for Words: Answers to All Your Burning Questions About Words and Their Meanings that largely followed a similar format to her YouTube channel.^[10]

2020 Return and Concerns Over Mental Health

After a long hiatus from uploading content to the Hot For Words channel, Orlova posted a video titled “HOW IS YOUR BOWEL MOVEMENT?” on November 1st, 2020, marking a reemergence of her YouTube.^[11] The video (seen below, left), which received over 5,800 views and 173 likes in one month, discussed mental health during the coronavirus pandemic, where Orlova claimed to have methods for aiding people via their diet while also advertising her OnlyFans account.^[12] On November 28th, the video “Toilet paper dress” was uploaded to the channel,^[13] which showed Orlova donning a roll of toilet paper as a dress (seen below, right). Several users commented on the video citing concerns over Orlova’s mental health due to the strangeness of the new content.

On December 7th, following a slew of off-brand content posted to the Hot For Words channel over the previous month, Redditor LessWeakness posted to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[14] subreddit asking “What is going on with the lady from Hot For Words?” and “Saw the new video, and she doesn't look very well. Anyone know how she is doing?” The post received over 1,500 upvotes and 78 comments in eight hours, with the top reply coming from Redditor reddumbs (shown below).

Answer: I’ve never seen her channel but according to some of the more recent videos (within the past two years) she speaks about being admitted to mental hospitals several times between 2010 and now. Skimming through a video she even mentions an incident of eating her own poop and spitting it at the hospital staff… 26:50 in this video.^[15] I don’t know exactly what she’s diagnosed with but there’s definitely something wrong with her mental health.

Personal Life

Orlova was born in Arzamas, Russia (Soviet Union) in 1980 where she worked for a year before applying to an international recruitment program and then moved to a small town near San Francisco. A year later, Orlova moved to Hollywood where she attempted to start a career in modeling but eventually gave up that pursuit after being told she was too short. Orlova has two degrees in philology and taught English and world literature to high school students in Moscow before moving to the U.S.

Search Interest

External References