MillionDollarExtreme Presents World Peace - A Cancel Culture Case Study
MDE never dies.
Archived from a deleted post on Medium. Originally intended as an introduction for a series of articles analyzing World Peace that never came to fruition. Originally published 21st December, 2019. Revised and edited 18th July, 2020.
World Peace was the debut TV show by American comedy troupe MillionDollarExtreme, comprised of Sam Hyde, Charls Carroll, and Nick Rochefort, with Andrew Ruse and Erick Hayden acting as recurring collaborators (I consider them unofficial extra members, in a similar way to how Neil Innes and Carol Cleveland were considered unofficial extra members of Monty Python, or the debated existence of the “Fifth Beatle”). Sam Hyde is the most prolific of the group, with his own page on KnowYourMeme, credit for creating the “The Weak Should Fear The Strong” meme, infamy for a prank TEDx talk, and being a scapegoat for every mass shooting over the last several years.
As a troupe, MillionDollarExtreme put out a variety of content. They produced two short films, Smocaine 3 and Doctor Manslave, both of which combined absurdism, improvisational comedy, and psychedelic editing to create an unusual yet memorable masterpiece. Similar techniques were used in their shorter comedic skits, with classics such as Boston Ross, Charls Bombstrap (9/11–2), The Future, The Prodigal Stunna, Utopia, and The Heist. The sketch comedy short Ideas Man also stands out, particularly as a blueprint for World Peace would be later down the line. Sam also had his own MDE solo series called Kickstarter TV, in which he reviewed and mocked bad Kickstarter projects. The group also had a habit of collaborating with video production channel Thanks Computer, producing the infamous skits Officer Maggot and Moms, which combined improv and vulgarity into one shocking and unforgettable package.
Then, in December of 2014, they made a breakthrough. Packed in with shirts shipped out to fans was a note. It announced two things. First, a book: How to Bomb the US Gov’t. The second: a TV show.
Credit to chilldude30 for image.
“We’ve been pitching a certain TV network pretty hard and finally got a major break… man… this shit in particular is so crazy I don’t even want to talk about it, but it’s looking like it’s actually gonna happen. Instead of doing strictly comedy, the project we are gonna try and make for TV is straight-up sci-fi. We’re gonna wear so much make-up and prosthetic shit that we’ll be barely recognizable, and we won’t be credited by name, and the name of the show is going to be just a string of letters and numbers so you won’t be able to talk about it. No green screen, no CGI, purely models, set building and make-up… Adult Swim is launching a new website early 2015, hopefully, and when it does there will be five or six new high-production-value sketches shot with Thanks Computer… Already shot, editing now, we’ll announce this on our facebook if it hasn’t been taken down by a false-flagging campaign by then.”
Early 2015 came and went, but the new skits with Thanks Computer were nowhere to be seen. Then, in May, Adult Swim announced that MillionDollarExtreme would be producing a pilot “set in an almost present-day post-apocalyptic nightmare world.” The full pilot has never been publicly released, but two rough cuts have been leaked online. In regards to the first leak, entitled The Cube, I was unable to find the original source. The second, simply entitled rough cut of 2015 sci-fi comedy pilot, was leaked by Sam. The final cut of the pilot is likely a synthesis of the two leaks, based off footage from the rejected World Peace teaser and images from the portfolio of David Torvicia, who was the colourist for the pilot.
I will quickly dive into a bit of speculation. Although we have not seen the full pilot, we know it exists, along with a bunch of other MDE material from around the same time. This conclusion is based off this leaked screenshot of a folder with a collection of MDE skits from around the time of World Peace’s production:
I think that a lot of the material in the finished pilot (based on what we know was in it) was actually material from the unreleased shorts produced with Thanks Computer. First, Kid Six definitely appeared in the pilot (and even made it into the actual show) but doesn’t fit the sci-fi setting of the original concept. The baseball skit also made it into the show, but the original cut seems like a sequel to the MDE/Thanks Computer collaboration Mums. And while Kraiks has never surfaced, footage of it can be seen in leaked behind-the-scenes footage (27:16–30:37). Reference to it can also be found in the opening to episode six of World Peace, alongside reference to Planecaptain Sam from the aeroplane pilot skit that appeared in the pilot and The Cube.
This speculation is further evidenced by the fact that there is no reference to any of these skits in the leaked World Peace production script. It’s also not beyond Sam to recycle old unseen material: the Parking Lot Genie skit seen in the folder of unreleased material surfaced recently in Sam’s new independent sketch comedy series Happy World Daddy.
Now back to the facts. In March of 2016, Adult Swim announced that World Peace would have a six-episode series, described as “a super pure tragicomedy rosary of pious prayers bringing unity, joy and excellent living to the people of all sizes, sexualities, and colours” that will “unlock your closeted bigoted imagination, toss your inherent racism into the burning trash and cleanse your intolerant spirit with pure unapologetic American funny_com.”
Production, however, was troubled. In an interview with YouTube documentary creator Porsalin, Sam details tensions within the network resulting from friction between the right-wing beliefs of MillionDollarExtreme and the left-wing staff of Adult Swim. He notes that production staffer Valentina Tapia was fired after trying to break into the editing suite to delete all the recorded World Peace footage, and that the lack of promotional material for the show resulted from the marketing department producing slogans such as “World Peace is Racist, Hateful, and Takes No Prisoners”, which the group rejected. In a separate interview, Sam recalls an incident at “some Adult Swim party thing. We’re not L.A. or industry dudes. We had this one girl come up to us at that party and give us this whole tirade about how, ‘You pieces of shit! I’m going to get you fired!’ This whole angry drunken rant from some girl. I don’t know who the hell she was.”
Despite this, the show aired to great success, pulling in over a million viewers on both the first and last episodes of the series. But soon, controversy arose. Fans began noticing a heavy amount of censorship within the show, and began to complain on 4Chan. Meanwhile, more tension within Adult Swim grew. Adult Swim alumni Zandy Hartig and Vic Berger begged the network to cancel the show. Tim Heidecker, half of the famous comedy duo Tim & Eric, also campaigned for the show's cancellation, according to Hyde. Adult Swim comedian Brett Gelman referred to the show as “an instrument of hate,” then left the network, citing World Peace as a primary reason. But the final nail in the coffin was Joseph Bernstein.
Joseph Bernstein is a journalist for BuzzFeed who has gained notoriety over recent years for his smear campaigns against conservative journalist Andy Ngo and YouTube celebrity Soph (formerly Lt. Corbis). But few people recall his vitriolic smear campaign against World Peace. He alleged that there were “coded racist messages” within the show, including “hidden Swastikas.” Hyde has disputed these claims, and no evidence has ever surfaced proving Bernstein right. Yet Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Adult Swim, finally caved in and ordered the show’s cancellation. Following this cancellation, most of the musical acts that appeared on the show disavowed their involvement. Hyde notes that this was in spite of Adult Swim’s enthusiasm for another season:
“Our development executive, Walter Newman, is a black guy and he’s as normal as they get. If you hacked into his phone you’d probably see a bunch of crap about the NBA and Beyonce. Every step along the way he was approving stuff and laughing about it. My suspicion is that he’s pretty bummed out about the show getting the ax. The executives weren’t worried until the articles started coming out and the heat started getting turned on to Turner corporate. They had agreed to pick up a season two. [Senior executive vice president] Mike Lazzo said he wanted to shoot a hundred episodes. We were in talks to have season two be ten episodes instead of six. Everyone was on board until the pressure turned up and the marketing people started getting pissed off, so Turner gave it the ax.”
In the years since the cancellation, MDE has drifted apart. The group’s YouTube channel and Reddit community have been deleted. Sam now hosts his solo work on Gumroad under the name HydeWars. Charls is now a Twitch streamer, and occasionally produces surrealist comedy with World Peace director Andrew Ruse, under the collaborative brand Bombstrap. And Nick currently runs Chamonix Antiques with his wife(and occasionallyworkswith Sam for his HydeWars projects). The cancellation of World Peace represents the tragedy of Cancel Culture: a comedy troupe with infinite potential that was destroyed by ideologically-driven journalists.
