Digital Media Concepts/Ryan Higa

Early Life and Education
Ryan Higa was born on June 6, 1990 in Hilo, Hawaii. He is Japanese-American. At five years old, Higa was forced to join judo by his mother, Luci Higa, and admitted he hated the sport because he wasn’t as good as his older brother, Kyle Higa. When Higa attended middle school, he was placed with older students, and this made him think he would make new friends. But instead, this led him to getting bullied by his older classmates. To end the bullying, he decided to make fun of himself in front of his bullies. Higa noticed he liked being funny, which made him start making random videos for his family to watch. Higa attended Waiakea High School where he joined the wrestling team and later graduated in 2008. He then attended University of Las Vegas to major in Nuclear Medicine, but later dropped college to pursue a career in Youtube.

Youtube Channel
Ryan Higa has two channels on YouTube, “nigahiga” and “HigaTV.”

The “nigahiga” channel is filled with many different skits, “How to” videos, rants, and music video parodies. He also answers fan's questions, and he calls this series “Dear Ryan.” This channel has over 20 million subscribers with over 3 billion views.

The “HigaTV” channel are mainly blogs and Behind the Scenes (BTS) of the “nigahiga” channel videos. This channel has 4.8+ million subscribers with over 600 million views.

Career
Ryan Higa is best known for his YouTube name, “nigahiga.” It is a combination of “niga” which means rant in Japanese, and “Higa,” which is his last name. He started making videos just for his friends and family; he recorded his videos on VHS tapes and played them on VCR's. Higa then realized he didn't want to give his family and friends each a tape of his videos, so he convinced his parents to buy him a digital camera. And that is when he joined Youtube on July 20, 2006 and that’s when he also uploaded his first video of him lip-syncing to Freddie Mercury’s “The Great Pretender.” But this video was taken down due to copyright issues. He started his channel with his good friend, Sean Fujiyoshi, who to this day is still making videos with him.

When Higa moved to Las Vegas to attend the University of Las Vegas, most of his videos were made by himself and some featured other Youtubers.

In 2010, Higa worked with Wong Fu Productions and created a thirty-five minute short film called Agents of Secret Stuff (aka A.S.S.) which featured Arden Cho, Dominic Sandoval, and Higa himself. A.S.S. was uploaded on November 24, 2010 on the "nigahiga" channel. A.S.S. now has over 32 million views. For another video, Higa collabed with Youtubers, Kevin Wu and Chester See, and made Nice Guys. Nice Guys is a music video Higa uploaded on May 31, 2011, and it is his most viewed video on his “nigahiga” channel with over 73 million views.

In 2012, Higa developed a group with his friends and called it Ryan Higa Production Company (aka RHPC), and this group includes his good friend, Sean Fujiyoshi. Higa writes all his scripts and RHPC helps shoot and edit the videos.

In 2016, Higa was in a thriller film called Tell Me How I Die. Higa worked with Nathan Kress who is known as playing Freddie Benson in Nickelodeon's iCarly.

On May 30, 2017, Higa's book, Ryan Higa's How to Write Good, was published.