Is Natalie Tran for Real?

Prof. Michael Hawley, Renaissance man

Everyone once in a while one of your friends says, ‘you have to talk to this guy’.

Your normal response is… uh.. sure.. fine.

So when Mark Bittman said, ‘you have to talk to this guy’, my feelings were… uh.. sure.. fine.

Aa such,  I was a bit unprepared for the tsunami of thoughts and information that inundated me this morning when I spent an hour on the phone with Michael Hawley.

Hawley runs the EG Conferences, which are an outgrowth of TED.

Would I like to speak at one? Well, if they’d have me.

But that’s not the point.

First, a few lines about Hawley:

-Alex W. Dreyfoos Professor at MIT Media Lab

-Founder ‘Friendly Planet’, ‘Toys of Tomorrow’, and a lot of other really cutting edge concerns.

-Won Van Clyburn piano competition 2002

-Duncan Yo Yo Champion

-Luger and member US Bobsled Federation

and that only begins to scratch the surface.

It’s that kind of stuff that makes me either want to work harder of kill myself, I am not sure which.

In any event, this is not talk about Michael Hawley, (go read his bio). Rather, Hawley turned me on to the video of a 24-year old vlogger in Australia named Natalie Tran, and sent me a few clips of her work from Youtube.

It’s clever and she’s got a great command of video. It may need a bit of editing and tightening, but at 24, I am intrigued by the potential.

Am apparently not the only one, and it seems I am a bit late to the party, with more than 259 million views on her Youtube channel.

Peruse her videos and you’ll see that she has a great command of the medium and a kind of snarky but funny commentary on society via video.

It’s what Andy Rooney could be if 60 Minutes were starting today (as opposed to the Museum of Television).

I started to research Tran to find out more about here and I came across this blog, which asks “Is Natalie Tran a Hoax?”

In other words, is Natalie Tran so clever that she has to be product of an ad agency?

I don’t think so, but just to be sure, I checked out this link that Hawley sent me – a lecture that Tran gave. The audio is bad, but it’s worth the effort.

She needs a little work, a little editing and a little tightening, but clearly there is something very clever and interesting here.