Pogo

About

PogoMix (AKA Fagottron on YouTube, or simply Pogo) is the persona of Nick Bertke from Perth, Australia who samples sounds from various locations, such as nostalgic films, and then sequences these together with a rhythm he creates, to make a whole new piece of music. His most famous hit is 'Alice', which has gained over 9,400,000 hits on his official YouTube channel and at least 2,200,000 more from an unofficial upload by YouTuber Realtje.

Online History

On December 25th 2009, DisneyPixar released 'UPular', a remix that Pogo made based on the Pixar film 'Up'. Since then, Pixar have commissioned him to make two other remixes, both based on the first two Toy Story films, and these were released on Pixar's channel on June 14th 2010.

In October 2010, Pogo's 'Gardyn' which comprises of sounds found in his mother's garden (and is also his first remix of the real world), made it into the finalists of YouTube Play, and he was invited to the Guggenhiem Museum as a result, along with the other finalists.

In February 2012, he made a remix of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and this quickly rose up to be his 5th most-viewed remix.

PogoMix Himself

Pogo has hosted two competitions. One for creating a logo for himself, which was finalized as the space bunny (Pogo has said that if you look closely, you can also see the face of Mickey Mouse) and another for creating a video which would become the official video for 'Mellow Brick Road'.

On his website, he has original songs at a fixed price, but all of his remixes which contain copyrighted material, have been offered at a pay-what-you-want level, wherein entering $0 into the price box lets you download the song for free. Some of Pogo's songs cannot be released for copyright reasons, prompting fans to create petitions and other stuff to force companies to allow release of these tracks, however, some of the legal costs of acquiring the rights would be too much, according to Pogo on his Twitter.

During his September 2011 tour of America, Pogo was arrested for not carrying a proper work visa, and is not allowed to return to America for 10 years.

Reputation

Homophobic Rant

On May 31st, 2018, Redditor^[1] synapsekisses uploaded a video of Bertke explaining the reasons behind his then-YouTuber username "Faggottron." In the video, he explains that he used the name to express his disdain for "homosexuals." He says, "I thought to myself 'How best can I express to the world that gays are just an abomination?'" Additionally, at the end of the video, he expresses his joy for the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (re-upload shown below). The post received more than 18,000 points (75% upvoted) and 3,000 comments before the thread was locked for violating Reddit's code of conduct.

That day, the website Digg ^[2] published an article entitled "Pogo, The King Of YouTube Disney Remixes, Turns Out To Be An Awful Homophobe," which details Bertke's political leanings as well as his ability to monetize on YouTube, despite violating their code of conduct with the username. The article also showcases Bertke's various blogposts, which express sexism and mysogyny, supporting the views of Men's Rights Activists.. He write, "The irony of feminism is that, by focusing largely on one gender, it in [sic] inherently supports the segregation of genders and raises a breed of self victimizing gold diggers who think historical injustice to their sex makes them personally deserving of special treatment today."

These views were supported by a 2015 reuploaded video (shown below, left) of Bertke talking about feminism and his belief that women want to be belittled and abused.

That day, he posted an apology on his personal page Nickmix. In the video, he says that the video was intended as a shitpost to incite rage in people that would be offended by homophobia and "grinding people's gears." The video (re-upload shown below, right) received more than 46,000 views in less than 24 hours.

Fandom

Some people have made tributes, or Pogo-style videos, and have labelled these as Pogo Mixes. Others have re-remixed Pogo's work or made videos for songs which Pogo has yet to make videos for himself.

There are other artists out there which make music don't quite qualify as being tributes to Pogo. However, these people deserve an honorable mention, as many people have spotted similarities to Pogo's music.

Search Interest

External References