2005 / Video / Early web-vodcast character comedy
Ask a Ninja
A masked ninja answered viewer questions with jump cuts, terrible advice, and a promise to kill you soon.
The original is off-site. HAHrchives preserves the story and a route back to it.
What happened
Each episode treated an ordinary viewer question as an excuse for the Ninja to offer wildly overconfident answers. The rapid edits, direct-to-camera performance, and catchphrase sign-off made the tiny videos feel built for replay and quotation.
Where it came from
Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine launched Ask a Ninja with “Ninja-Mart Store” on November 24, 2005. Douglas Sarine played the Ninja; the short, viewer-question format turned the pair’s low-budget character comedy into an early web-video fixture.
Why it mattered
Ask a Ninja showed that a self-produced character and a repeatable format could make internet comedy feel like a series. Its quick, creator-led episodes helped define the web video vocabulary that YouTube-era channels would soon scale up.
How it spread
Ask a Ninja circulated as a free web series, podcast, and vodcast, then through links, embeds, and early online-video communities. A steady run of episodes gave viewers a reason to return rather than simply pass along one isolated clip.
Keep going
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