Bowlch (full name presumed to be Chris Bowley) is the real author of the parody Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live, which has been celebrated as one of the first Downfall parodies. His upload of the video on YouTube was at the latest 6 June 2007, while the [re]upload by MOTURK49 was dated 7 June 2007.
The whole revelation and discovery of him being the original author of the parody came to being as Venkyra21 researched the URL displayed on the parody (www.dampowls.net) through the Archive.org's Wayback Machine on 23 January 2017.
History[]
Bowlch first joined YouTube on 19 April 2006, and he also had a website known as Damp Owls. On 6 June 2007, he uploaded his parody on YouTube titled Hitler's Ultimate Downfall (video ID kYvZnTFpip0), and made a post on his website. By 10 July 2007 the video reached a million views, and by 22 July 2007 he posted the honours the video received as follows:
#8 - Most Viewed (This Month)
#67 - Most Viewed (This Month) - Global
#5 - Top Rated (This Month)
#12 - Top Rated (This Month) - Global
#45 - Top Rated (All Time)
#11 - Most Discussed (This Month)
#88 - Most Discussed (This Month) - Global
#82 - Most Discussed (All Time)
#3 - Top Favourites (This Month)
#9 - Top Favourites (This Month) - Global
#46 - Top Favourites (All Time)
#18 - Most Linked (This Month)
All links of the above list pointed at YouTube UK, suggesting that Bowlch is British.
Comments on the post indicated that as early as 2007 video stealing was already a thing, with ebaumsworld.com uploading his video and watermarking it as their own, and a Digg post of the video by Chris Bowley (presumed to be Bowlch's full name) receiving 600,000 views, not to mention MOTURK49 stealing his video, which have meme historians confused as being the original uploader.
As seen from the archive of Damp Owls, Bowlch later made two more posts labelled part 2 and part 3 respectively, announcing the honours the video had achieved on YouTube.
The parody fell victim to the first wave of takedowns by Constantin as YT rolls on Content ID, and remain so to this day (see for yourself). The Damp Owls website was later closed at an unknown point in time, probably in 2008.
In the About section of his YouTube channel, Bowlch states:
His identity as the author of the parody was unknown to Untergangers until 23 January 2017, when Venkyra21, after a series of events regarding the renaming of MOTURK49's page on this wiki, decided to research the URL displayed on the parody, leading him to discover Damp Owls as being the origin of the parody. mfaizsyahmi then looked at the About page to find Bowlch as the site's owner, and a comment on the honours post of a Chris Bowley posting a Digg post about the video, which he deduce is Bowlch's full name. Thus the original author of the original Downfall parody is finally made known to the Unterganging community.
Bowlch's YouTube channel was found to be still active to this day, with the last known activity on his YouTube channel in 2015. It is unknown if he is still active on the web.
External links[]
See also[]
- Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live, from now on ought to be known as Hitler's Ultimate Downfall