MORE of Mark Vigeant

The internet is big and scary, but we have to learn about it to harness its power for good. That’s why I created Internet Explorers, a monthly live show where I take sold out audiences (and thousands of livestreamers) deep into a corner of the internet to learn and laugh about everything from memes, artificial intelligence, and e-commerce to online dating, hacking, and the dark web.

Wickedly funny web goon Mark Vigeant invites you into a world of gut-busting HTML nonsense - Timeout New York

Mark Vigeant onstage at CAVEAT in New York City doing the popular children's dance called 'flossing.'

Internet Explorers: Live Show

Mark Vigeant dressed as his character The Code Lord cracks open a Mountain Dew tallboy onstage at Comedy Central's Clusterfest in 2018

Let's Make a Website

Web development is another skill that people think is reserved for computer science majors and hardcore software engineers. Think again! I wrote this show to illustrate basic software engineering principles and poke fun at common tropes that web developers have while using a computer. At the end of each show, I launch a brand new website based on audience suggestions. After a sold-out run at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre in New York, I took this show on tour across the country from LA to the Kennedy Center.

Vigeant has created an enjoyable and silly adult-themed show that makes HTML cool again. - The Post and Courier

YouTube is the second-most popular website on the planet, where folks watch over 1 billion hours of videos a day, and 400 hours of video are uploaded every minute. With so much content constantly being created and consumed it can be dizzying to try to understand all the different communities that flourish there. That’s why I spent a week immersing myself in different YouTube communities, creating a new YouTube channel every day in order to understand what it means to be a YouTuber.

Extremely on YouTube

Bill Wurtz and Mark Vigeant seated onstage at CAVEAT in New York talking

Interview with bill wurtz

Finding the courage to be your authentic self online can be difficult. We put pressure on ourselves to look, sound, and behave a specific way, in hopes that the perfect brand or image will lead to success. That’s why I was so curious to hear from Bill Wurtz, a celebrated singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and online video creator about how and why he maintains his authenticity on the internet.

Memes. They’re everywhere, yet people have a hard time explaining what they actually are. Are they harmless or harmful? Meaningless or cryptic and brilliant? Pronounced meem or me-me? I asked a group of people who are creating and consuming the most memes these days: Gen Z teens.

Mark Vigeant's face superimposed on the meme Big Chungus in front of a pixelated minecraft block

Teens Explain Memes to Me

I Went Viral on TikTok

TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world with 500M users and growing. And like most cool, new things, people age 24+ have never heard of it. I decided to jump in and challenge myself to go viral on the platform in one week. I shared my findings in a video.

Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in 2018, we’ve been bombarded with headlines about how evil Facebook is. Yet Facebook still boasts 2.4B users (despite my friend group largely abandoning the platform) so there’s a reason it continues to be such a social and political powerhouse. I went “extremely” on Facebook for a full week to understand what it’s like to be a user today and released a video documenting my findings.

Extremely on Facebook

The PornHub Insights Game Show

5,517,748,800 hours of porn were watched on PornHub in 2018. That’s 14 videos per human on the face of planet earth! And yet, the taboo around seeking out and enjoying pornography on the internet has not been fully lifted. I dove into PornHub Insights to understand what, exactly, gets people going these days and turned my findings into a quiz show so we can turn shy, embarrassed giggling into empowered sexy laughter.

Fortnite was the most popular online game on the planet in 2018, with 10.8 million people playing at once at any given moment. I didn’t want to let teens have all the fun, so I decided to play with them and create a video to show how simple (and fun) the game can be, even for aging millennials like myself.

Playing Fortnite with Kids video thumbnail

I played Fortnite with Children

How I hacked Minesweeper video thumbnail

Hacking Minesweeper

Software hacking is often portrayed as evil, dark magic in Hollywood. In reality, hacking is simply the act of altering a system to accomplish a goal that differs from its original purpose. To show how easy and silly hacking can be, I hacked Minesweeper, a simple video game.

The argument for having a personal website is that it’s a corner of the internet that is all yours—unadulterated by a company’s changing algorithm and regulations. But what happens when you’re not quite sure what to do with that blank canvas? I created a collection of personal websites created to appeal to every type of person to show the sheer quantity of ways one can choose to represent themselves online.

“... if the boss isn’t looking over your shoulder, check out MarkVigeant.xxx. That’s where things get saucy” - The AV Club

A Cosmic Ring encircles the initials MV in front of a collage of snapshots from Mark Vigeant's websites

Mark in action

Mark in action

Mark in action

Mark in action