I: @apetor, The Internet’s Transcendentalist
By Ted Noser
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic and the Transcendental movements represented a cultural rejection of modern life, insisting on the bounty of Nature as a means to interact with the Sublime. Later in the 20th century, America’s national parks were founded to provide the nation with an identity outside the boundaries of its chaotically capitalistic culture. Time and again culture has turned to nature’s untamable spirit for salvation from the socioeconomic repercussions of large technological booms. Thus, with the internet entering the daily habits of the majority of the earth’s population in the last four years, societal rhetoric is responding to the rapid growth of a new, technologically altered life. A resulting response is one of mass anxiety and can be best represented by the plethora of monkey meme content and the rise of anarcho-primitivist sentiments circulating social media. This mass favoring of primitivistic behavior while ironically using the defining tool of the digital/post-internet age is precisely where apetor seems to have made his mark. Apetor—note the first syllable in the name—represents the inevitable synthesizing of humanity’s celebration of nature with our addiction to technological progression.
Apetor’s YouTube channel contains 221 videos of Huckleberrian adventure through the Norwegian countryside—Tor Eckhoff’s native country of residence—where he would spend his off days chasing the sublime with a concoction of vodka, ice lakes, and video cameras. With the channel’s subject matter ranging from ice-skating stunt highlight tapes to car reviews, apetor’s content reflects the multitudes of an individual in a manner unique to internet lifestyle bloggers.
YouTube’s lifestyle category is notoriously performative, with creators urged to glamorize their livelihood to a degree akin to reality television. However, apetor’s spin on the lifestyle genre plays with the “performative honesty,” effectively blurring the line between his digital and physical identities: Ape and Tor. Supplanting lo-fi Casey-Neistatifacation with the “eep eeps!”of a deranged mountain man and iMovie royalty-free music, apetor maintains a rare, distinct aura in the mundane genre of lifestyle videos. His acceptance and celebration of nature would make even the most devoted Transcendentalists envious. Yet, Eckhoff’s devotion to his craft represents an undeniably non-natural, post-internet obsession. By embracing the changes of internet-altered life, he altered his pursuit of the Sublime from the Transcendental rejection of modernity, giving rise to his beloved internet character: @apetor.
II: Ape and Tor: The Amateur Meets the Professional
With some 221 videos on the apetor channel, Eckhoff exhibits a variety of filmmaking abilities just as ambitious as his primitivistic adventures. From reviews of his beloved Volvo 1997 V40, to chaotic, yet wholesome vodka-fueled cooking videos and travel vlogs, apetor’s broad cinematic prowess is devoted to the craft of the digital home video, specifically the YouTube video, a post-internet practice that is indebted to Jonas Meekas just as much as it is Star Wars Kid. Through the continuation of multiple series, apetor tackled many subgenres of YouTube videos. While the pragmatically titled series “Trip to Island” is anything but your routine adventure vlog, toying with the characteristics of the YouTube adventure vlog style. The series begins with Eckhoff in his fishing boat motoring to what appears as a barren island in the middle of the lake. In the first video of the series, the camera reveals the large presence of campers on the island alongside many warning signs and rules, much to apetor’s chagrin. Akin to the performativity of the lifestyle genre, the island becomes a place for campers to perform primitive behavior while adhering to a set of predetermined societal guidelines, simulating the wild frontier apetor hopes to find. However, the ever-crafty apetor takes this as a challenge to bring uncivilized, even primal behavior back to the island. Keeping the campers out of frame, and swigging lots of vodka, Eckhoff depicts the island as a wild frontier prime for his creative genius to flow.
The island’s paradoxical status as organized and regulated yet primitivistic inspires one of Eckhoff’s most ambitious projects. In “Lawnmower Problems,” Eckhoff blends product reviews and island adventure series into a skit format, resulting in one of his most linear and cohesive videos. (Don’t worry there are plenty of vodka breaks in the narrative to quench your thirst!) The video begins with a static, wide shot of water-smoothed rocks accompanied by a tuft of tall, green grass, a harbinger of the video’s subject to come. Meanwhile, the skit’s antagonist, the softly rolling surface of a lake, lurks in the background of the frame. Suddenly fractured, the beauty dissipates as Eckhoff’s characteristically red face emerges to the surface. He accelerates toward the rocky shore of the island frenetically, the erraticism of his swimming style accentuated by the brief indulgence of fast-motion video playback, a recurring editing technique in apetor’s videos. Returning to a normal pace, another static, wide shot captures Eckhoff climbing to his feet and out of the water from his previously prone, amphibian position as if reenacting the stages of the evolutionary process. From his newfound uprightness, he speeds toward the titular lawnmower. Deep in the thicket on the isle, the lawnmower resides on a wooden pallet, its engine covered with a smoker lid. Eckhoff removes the lid, revealing the banal machine with a thrill akin to its first inventors.
The film captures apetor working tirelessly to combat the inevitable encroachment of Nature’s roots. With the lawnmower rusted and damaged from exposure to the elements, apetor must venture home across the lake, through the woods, back to his house, and back to the island with a new lawnmower to mow the grass. The struggle ends with him placing lawnmower 2.0 underneath the same smoker lid, with a bottle of vodka nestled next to its engine, signifying the inevitable repetition of this venture. Seemingly satisfied with the inevitability of his return, the last shot is a closeup selfie of apetor’s sun-worn face as he steers his boat homeward, the evening sun reflecting off the clouds with a warm glow.
The montage of his journey to retrieve lawnmower 2.0 from his home is a constant juxtaposition of apetor’s chaos and the serene countryside. A wide shot of his trusty Volvo winding down a road bordered by endless forests and windmills is followed by a selfie video of him gulping vodka. Apetor’s Sublime then is a bacchanalian chaos mixed with lawnmowers and chainsaws, as hedonism and technology synthesize in Transcendental Solitude.
The application of technology to combat nature’s growth reveals apetor’s more developed human side, while his vodka-induced dances and naked swims depict his apish, perhaps amphibian-brained, side. The film’s style perfectly reflects this marriage of civilized and anarchic, apish and human, APE and Tor. While the frames reveal a careful, critical eye, there’s a glaring continuity error, reflecting the amateurish nature of the video. During the travel montage, the sun is quite higher during the shots of him mowing the lawn than when he was driving the car to the island, suggesting that Eckhoff filmed the lawn mowing before returning home to ‘retrieve’ the lawnmower. This relatively obvious continuity problem brings into question the distinction between performance art and lifestyle documentation that Eckhoff’s videos often prompt, with it being very likely that Eckhoff came to the island with both a broken down and functioning lawnmower in order to save trips. The performativity of apetor’s videos, however, only adds to their allure. As the self-aware, practiced attitude of Eckhoff becomes more evident to viewers, it reveals an inspiring synthesis of primal and civilized behavior.
The early videos on the apetor channel reveal an entirely spontaneous, home video style, with his first video—appropriately titled “In my boat”—showing a video of Eckhoff, well … in his boat! It’s a twenty-second-long video where the only story arc is the camera flipping from a hand-held closeup of his hand on the throttle to a selfie video of him flapping his tongue about. It’s hardly a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s the building block for the iconic style.
Later in the channel’s lifespan, apetor’s videos became more refined, adding greater efforts of curation and discipline to supplant the undeniable charm of spontaneity. Apparently, Eckhoff didn’t drink outside of his videos—in fact, he spent most of his days as a sober employee in a paint factory, and was a beloved father and husband. While apetor’s lifestyle seems to be reliant on excessive (or to some, perfectly appropriate) vodka consumption in the wilderness, Eckhoff was, shockingly, a well-adjusted and subdued person outside of his internet character. The curatorial and disciplinary instincts of apetor videos thus reveal a synthesis of a human spirit nurtured by industrialized society, with an apish allure of an indulgent character that serves to remind viewers of their shared primal roots.
This synthesis between Ape and Tor can be read as a response to the confusion caused by technological advancements that change the nature of how we interact, calming this confusion by balancing our natural tendencies with the nurturing effects of civilized life. Culture, being the great landscape for the synthesis of Nature and Nurture, has always found ways to fulfill the inexplicable desire so many people have for the great outdoors, the great unknown, to regain their agency. Characters like Davy Crockett and movements like the Romantics and Transcendentalism unearth this instinct. Similarly to Davy Crockett, apetor is a commodified character, mythologized and romanticized. While hindsight permits most critics of the Romantic poets and Davy Crocket today to recognize their mythological status, apetor’s home video charm compromises the viewer’s eye to discern the content as performative, suggesting an honesty that has been long associated with the home video.
It’s this masterfully crafted illusion of honesty that makes apetor’s videos so inspiring. After a long series of watching apetor, the typical boundaries that civilization enacts around human behavior melt away. Suddenly, drunk-driving a Volvo station wagon in the forest becomes both feasible and appealing, swimming in the East River doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, and before you know it, you may even start eyeing those half-empty beer cans around the city! Ironically, apetor’s content is the perfect antidote to the internet-borne disease of the infini-scroll, constantly reminding its viewer of their capability to enact their will on their surroundings, and possibly find an ecstatic state within Solitude while doing so.
III: The Legacy of Ape and Tor
Through monetizing the apetor videos and selling merchandise, Eckhoff became known as a professional filmmaker. However, despite the usual connotations of “professional” movie making, there is no studio and certainly no stuntmen. Further, unlike the typical lifestyle video, there are no lo-fi hip-hop beats or drone footage. For YouTube videos, selfie videos, continuity errors, and royalty-free iMovie music connote spontaneity rather than amateurish practice, and it’s this balancing of spontaneity and methodical filmmaking that gives the apetor videos their distinct charm and thus, their interaction with the Sublime.
YouTube fandom is rabid and often manipulated for monetary gain. While Eckhoff profited off his character’s fame, it played a larger role for his fans. In the extremely young and shallow field of YouTube analysis, one of the blessings (and greatest curses) is the comment section, which allows the critic to interact with everyday viewer feedback. Thus, the YouTuber’s artistry is extended to their existence in the comments, their brand, and their public effect. Eckhoff left an overwhelmingly positive and inspiring brand to his viewers.
“One of the most fun to watch … vids on earth. His connection to universe, his awareness and joy of the moment is maybe the best antidote to cope with the pain and sadness and state of Paralyses. Hugs my friends.”
-NealCassady
“What I’ve learned by watching apetor’s videos? I’ve learned, that if you truly are your self in this world, and Don’t try to copy others, the content you make in this world will be unique, and with only your dna on it. Nobody can copy apetor. Rest In Peace you absolute legend.”
-Robert Bordevik
(All comments on “The Haircut”)
He also inspired, like this review, many other profound reviews, the quality of which far exceeds the average YouTube comment. Messianic worship and Transcendentalist ideals of intuition and individuality abound throughout the comments, and he truly does become the internet’s Davy Crockett figure. It’s as if the algorithms’ haunting trickery that convinces us of our unoriginality is counteracted by apetor’s originality.
One could categorize apetor’s refusal to follow trends in YouTube filmmaking as being so blatant it may have been conscious. YouTube videos find themselves in a strange frontier of cinema where the author is given the power to determine the genre of their piece. A right often reserved for the audience, the publishers of YouTube videos are prompted to select the categorical focus of their video before posting it. This self-categorization dramatically shapes the filmmaking process as videos must compete with others in their category for visibility, making the “gaming” of the algorithm just as relevant as the content of the video for someone trying to amass views. Thus, YouTube shapes its creator’s video-making process so profoundly that they become their own distinct cinematic genre. However, the apetor videos subvert the common practices that have come to distinguish YouTube videos from videos uploaded to other platforms. From the now-retired practice of making videos just over ten minutes in an effort from creators to generate more ad revenue with the least amount of effort to explicit thumbnail videos and clickbait titles, vying for the attention of viewers, apetor avoided these trends and maintained his home-video charm despite commodification.
With the lifestyle genre of YouTube videos originating from the home video, apetor distinguishes himself as a traditionalist amongst fellow lifestyle YouTubers. Unlike other lifestyle ‘vloggers,’ like Casey Neistat, who ramp up production techniques in an effort to give the impression of effort and quality, apetor’s video style simultaneously disproves the notions of professionalism connoting effort and effort connoting quality. Rather, apetor conveys quality by focusing on the content, ingeniously reflecting the sentiments of the content through editorial choices, thus concocting a distinct aura within his videos. There’s a wonderful acceptance of nature and circumstance with a soft stubbornness to always assert himself as an agent in nature that, in many ways, leads the viewer to see Eckhoff as a master of his fate, in complete control. Not in the sense of an all-controlling god, no, but rather in the sense of remaining in control of his reactions. Eckhoff marries his internet presence with his natural presence, reacting to the trends of the internet with the same composure he kept in the face of nature’s will.
In “The Haircut,” apetor’s path is obstructed by a tree branch. This does not deter him, as the next shot follows apetor retrieving a chainsaw and drunkenly taking it to the branch. “Lawnmower Problems” displays a similar agentic urge, showcasing his trimming the weeds on a deserted island. For apetor, if there is spare food lying on the ground, then by all means! It should be consumed! If there is a thin sheet of ice at the edge of the lake, then it must be tested.
Yet, whenever crafting the videos, no matter how banal or how extreme the action is, Eckhoff edits them similarly. Bathing in the East River gets just as much screen time as his opening of a candy bar, and belly sliding over a frozen lake. With his reliant vodka bottle in hand, beloved Volvo in frame, and Christmas bells on head, his style connotes a deep celebration of every action of life, both dramatic and mundane.
Eckhoff’s style is simultaneously ever-expanding and yet immediately recognizable, with each nuance adding to his cultish allure. The internet age has brought with it a strange conundrum, with the idea of its connecting capabilities battling the performative practices that come along with the camera. The internet, more specifically home videos, simultaneously permit an understanding of common humanity rarely explored in other moving image mediums, as it heightens self-perception to a degree that makes even mundane action feel, if not performative, capable of being performed. A bountiful amount of mental health awareness work surrounds the combatting of mistaking people’s internet presence for reality, an endeavor as foolish as comparing oneself to a superhero. Yet Eckhoff’s videos strike the perfect balance of documenting his daily life and performing for the camera. Whether it’s pretending to be a dog or reviewing his new Volvo, the breadth of content allows his viewers to feel the presence of apetor as both friend and entertainer.
Apetor’s relationship with nature is one that the likes of Thoreau, Emerson, Twain, and many more dreamt of achieving in their technologically accelerating ages. Like an internet-age Transcendentalist, Eckhoff’s videos offer an idyllic sense of peace, permitted by a lack of self-restraint and gorgeous cinematography of rural life that let his videos live well beyond their release date in the hearts and minds of viewers worldwide. It’s this ethereal acceptance of circumstance that begets a peace profound enough to carry the memory of the recently deceased Eckhoff with a note of hope and heavenly joy rather than tragedy. Notably, it’s this same sentiment that allowed apetor to thrive during the wake of the internet’s invasion of social life. Through his reaction to both, Apetor marries the untenability of both nature and mankind’s will. This marriage is what allowed apetor to buck the notoriously cutthroat produce-or-die sentiment on YouTube. While most successful creators, from Ray William Johnson to Ryan Higa have seen their subscriber counts dwindle as they produced less and less, apetor’s channel has only grown since his death. While apetor never quite went viral, his channel maintained a close cult following due to its soul-lifting ability to connect fans with their agency and inner spirit, recognizing the longevity of content that emits genuine joy. I’d like to think that if someone were to sneak a camera into heaven, they’d probably come back with an Apetor video.