Mitch Orval - The Angry Dad Era

enjoyed researching this topic. So I want to take you back to twenty fourteen and at the time, Mitchell Orviell was eighteen years old and finishing off year twelve and growing up it was a tradition for him and his older brother Dylan to pull pranks on their dad, and this tradition had been passed down by their own dad, Mark Orville, who used to prank his own father. The only difference was Mitch and Dylan decided to start filming their pranks, and as you did back in twenty fourteen,

the boys started sharing the videos on social media. So it actually first started when Dylan shared a Snapchat story of him annoying his dad, and he got a lot of replies to it. Twenty fourteen was the peak of snapchat, I think, I know. This is when I was most obsessed with the app at the time. You could see who people's best friends were. Everyone was sharing Snapchat stories because Instagram didn't have stories then, so it was the only way you could see what people were doing right

then and there. Yeah, it was the golden time of Snapchat. Now, Mitch decided to film a prank and upload it to his personal Facebook account with the hashtag angry Dad, and unexpectedly, the video received seven hundred likes and Mitch started receiving a lie a lot of friend requests, which was kind of annoying for him. So he was chatting about it to a friend at school who suggested, well, why don't you just set up a separate Facebook page for the

prank videos. Now, miss decided on the name Angry Dad. He took inspiration from The Simpsons because there was an episode where Bart was pranking Homer called angry Dad. We were talking about snapchat before, but this also really was the golden days of Facebook, and I remember there were so many Facebook groups popping up that were getting hundreds of thousands of likes. I mean a lot of businesses now would wish that Facebook returned to that because it's

so hard to get organic traction on pages now. Yeah, because this is before Facebook ads. So if you had a Facebook following of say one hundred thousand people, most of your videos would actually reach those one hundred thousand people. It wouldn't be cap and the algorithm isn't what it is now. So this page went absolutely viral and within a couple of weeks had fifty thousand likes, and the likes just kept coming in their droves, with the page

now sitting at one point two million page likes. Do you guys remember the iconic video Honk if You're Horny that got over one hundred million collective views. Yeah, it was shared across that Jimmy Kimmel and also lad Bible and all of those big pages. And to give context to people who haven't seen it, this was of course a video where Mitch put a sign on Angry Dad's car that said honk if You're horny, and they were driving around the streets of Melbourne and he was just

going nuts. He's like, why are all these dickheads honking? I think we need to throw to a clip of it.

idea that he was Angry Dad. Like. He was literally walking around and people would come up to him and say stuff about it, and it was only then when he realized what was going on.

It's funny to think, though, that he had no idea what was going on, because I think in twenty twenty three we kind of think of Facebook as the social media channel for old people. But when you cast in mind back to twenty fourteen, parents weren't really on Facebook, and that's how Mark Orvile had no idea what was going on. I think it was a better time Facebook. I remember they used to have this activity slide in the corner so you can see what everyone was liking.

You could see remember they used to put up Oh this person's just become friends with Everyone would comment. Do you guys remember that other video? I think it's my favorite angry Dad video where Mitchell gets control of the TV remote. So angry Dad's in watching a current affair or something and Mitch keeps changing the channel and he's like, hell was just happening.

on a podcast, which was really interesting. Let's throw to what he said.

But by the end of it, obviously we had to be pretty clever with how we got him because he knew what was going on, Like he knew everything was going online and he knew that like.

money off their videos was through brand deals. However, prank videos didn't really lend themselves to product placement, and there were a lot of times that they'd get big brand deals, but they couldn't execute them in the videos. Yeah, Mitch was saying, how they'd get this big brand deal on board, However, it really depended on whether they could successfully pull the prank cord not. And I just think it shows how organic these pranks really were. A bit of a fun fact.

So my partner around this time, he had a YouTube channel where they didn't do pranks, but they did trick shot videos, and they got approached by Nike and they did this film, this video for Nike at a golf course, and it's just crazy to think that a lot of these young guys who were early twenties were getting approached by these huge brands and dealing with all of that themselves. Well, they actually ended up taking a deal with Kiss, so Kiss signed them to do prank videos for the network.

And this was at a time when prank videos were under the microscope. So you remember there was that awful Royal Nurse prank where sadly a British nurse took her own life after being duped by some presenters. Yeah, it

was Mel Grigg and Michael Christian. They were the radio presenters and it was pretty wild because Mel pretended to be the Queen and Michael pretended to be Prince Charles and they managed to bluff their way through and get information from the nurse about Kate Middleton, who was suffering from morning sickness at the time. The prank was really successful, but it had disastrous consequences for everyone involved. Now back to Mitch and Dylan. They also got paid to do

nightclub tours, which feels very of the time. I remember all the reality stars were out there appearing at nightclubs. That's where we met Gary Beadle from Jordi Show. Now to demonstrate just how quickly Angry Dad took off, Mitch started sharing prank videos at the end of year twelve and he was recognized on his schoolies trip to Fiji. So a schoolies trip to Fiji that seems very bougie. I know when I saw that, I was like, hang on, most of us just go down to Victor Harbor or

maybe the Gold Coast. Now, Mitch only lasted three months at what he called his first and last job, selling memberships at Fitness First, because his social media career took off. I think we need to get into the Chloe zep era because I feel like Mitch and Chloe together they are now a huge social media power couple. But it's

really interesting to find out how they first met. So they've been together for seven years and met back in twenty sixteen when Mitch was eighteen and Chloe was sixteen, and funnily enough, they met through social media and it was actually Chloe, who slid into Mitch's DMS. So it all started when Chloe spotted Mitch in a photo with Kurk Coleman. Doesn't this guy have so much to answer for in the social media world? Ops up all the time?

a good move by Chloe. This would be a great wedding story if they do get married at a future Well, despite Chloe being being on Instagram, Mitch had no idea who she was. Let's throw to what Mitch said on a recent podcast interview about meeting Chloe.

little bit. However, when things turned serious with the girl he was originally talking to, he stopped talking to Chloe, and Mitch said that this was great for his future relationship with Chloe because now she really trusts him. Well, things ended up fizzling out with the other girl Mitch was seeing, and he was on holiday in Hawaii, but his cousin wanted him to come back to Melbourne for his Bucks party, so much so that he booked him

a flight. And while flying back from Hawaii, Mitch had stopped over in Brisbane and this is where Chloe was living at that time, and so Chloe happened to be flying out of Brisbane to Sydney that very day. Now, Mitch noticed that Chloe was at Brisbane Airport on Snapchat and messaged her asking if she was around, and it ended up that her flight was delayed, so they got sushi together at the airport. Is this just like the social media and the airport? God's all working together? Oh,

It's definitely fate. And after their hour long day at the airport, Mitch ended up inviting Chloe to come stay with him and his family in Melo for five days and the rest is history. She really moved state very quickly to be with him, and you think how young they were at the time, they were teenagers. Meeting Mitch obviously had a big impact on Chloe's life, but it also had a big impact on his life, and it wasn't just his personal life. It was also on his career.

While Angry Dad was a viral success, it wasn't a career with longevity. It's not like he could prank his dad forever. So when Mitch met Chloe, he had actually taken a step back from social media. But with Chloe's career as a YouTuber booming, Mitch became a very important part of her channel and a pivot from prank videos to vlogging allowed Mitch to share more about himself rather

than just setting up pranks. I always feel like Mitch has been the driving force though behind their YouTube channel, because eventually they did combine the YouTube channels and have a couple channel. And he's the one that seems most passionate about it, which isn't surprising when you do see how he established himself with Angry Dad. I think he

has all needed Chloe to go that step further. Like while Angry Dad did provide the foot in the door for his influencing career, it was Chloe Zepp that pointed his career in that new direction and really drove it because she was much more popular than him. I really loved the era when they moved out to their own place, but they were living with Tommy Bug, who ended up dating Shany Grimman. We need to do a deep dive

on Shaney Grimman and all her relationships, definitely. And I remember they'd always be going out late night to get like zinger boxes and stuff, and then they'd be sleeping until early afternoon. It was a very different lifestyle to you know, how they live now. Could I please get an ultimate box.

You just enjoyed actually seeing their lifestyle. Sadly, though, it hasn't been smooth sailing for Chloe and Mitch's relationship, though having their relationship in the spotlight for seven years has taken a toll. And you would assume Instagram fame at a young age would mean a lot of temptation with people sliding into your DM. So Mitch interestingly said that that's not the case for him. Let's throw to what he said in a podcast interview, and your dms must be getting lit up at this point.

That's the thing. So if they were so incredibly popular as a couple, and that's why everyone was left absolutely shocked in June twenty nineteen when they announced they were no longer living together anymore. In a YouTube video filmed in Bali, they addressed their followers questions, revealing that they had actually broken up during Chloe's solo trip to the US. I remember this trip because Everyone's like, why she by herself?

Wasn't she partying at Coachella acting very much single? I think so because, unbeknown to Mitch, Chloe had embarked on this trip with the mission to find herself and this is where she became really in touch with her spiritual side. And I suppose the Chloe Zepp that we know now with the moon water and all of that, not the KFC zing a boxer. No, it was a very different

shift for her. And Chloe said spirituality had always been an interest of hers, but she had kind of hid because she wanted to pretend that she wasn't into it to fit in with everyone else. I suppose it wasn't very popular at the time. Now, during the trip, Chloe made the decision to break up with Mitch, and when she returned home, they had a good week together until something undisclosed happened. Now, the undisclosed issue was the catalyst that made them decide to move out from one another.

So Chloe and Mitch explained that a big part of the decision to live separately was because they got together really young and no longer wanted to step on each other's toes. You can imagine it would be hard because they were only sixteen and eighteen at the time, and they essentially had been living together ever since then because of their long distance relationship, and they said they kind of felt like this old married couple and weren't doing

anything adventurous or interesting. It'd be particularly hard because most times when people get together as teenagers, they do split up and get back together, but they don't have this public attention on them and people really rooting for them to get back together. They can't afford to be living in a house together with all these expensive things, So Chloe ended up saying, Oh, I'm stuck in this place.

That's eight hundred dollars a week. Again, this was a couple of years ago when eight hundred dollars was probably the norm now for a lot of people. They also revealed that they'd been to a counselor who taught them about their love languages, and they revealed that theirs were

just so different. Yeah, it was so interesting because Chloe revealed in that video that she felt like Mitch didn't love her because he wasn't very affectionate and he didn't say nice things to her, and that's what she needs from a partner.

more about glamorizing your relationship. Yeah, a couple goals was a bit thing. However, they did the exact opposite of that, and they really let their audience in on their relationship issues, which was so refreshing. It really made you like them more. And in a podcast interview, Mitch spoke about how as an influencer, he felt like to a degree that he owed his audience transparency. Let's row to what he said.

I mean, you can't just serve them with you know, branded deals, ads, the good parts of your life and then just completely shut off the bad and pretend it doesn't exist, because it's not realistic.

many years. Yeah, he did say, however, if you're transparent with what you're going through, people can relate, and if people relate, then they like you. And that is so true.

It's quite interesting because he said that he experienced this situation firsthand at the start of his career, because he admitted that he used to wear fake designer jewelry and clothes and pretend that he had a lot of money, more so than what he actually had at the time, because he thought that that's what people wanted to see from him. And then he discovered that all that did

was make people feel bad about themselves and jealous of him. Now, the real reason behind Chloe and Mitch's relationship problems came to light in May twenty twenty when Mitch shared that he had been battling a secret cocaine habit. He began by saying he felt like he had a moral obligation to share what he'd been gone through. In the YouTube video, he revealed he was five months sober from both drugs

and alcohol. He said he had been a frequent drug user for years and would go on absurd cocaine bingers up to three times a week and had no control over himself when he was under the influence. Let's throw to a snippet of what he said.

stop drinking. I stopped doing drugs, and you know, I'll do it for two weeks, three weeks, and then I'll gain no trust back, and then I'll do it again. And it was that was that was all part of for me. I wasn't ready to stop, so I didn't want to stop. I wanted to keep my relationship because I was in love with my partner, but I didn't want to give up that side of my life.

this promise. He disappeared with a flat phone that was dead for over eight hours, and when his friends found him, he was at a random sixtieth birthday party off his face. Chloe's sister was one of the people that found him and called Chloe straight away on FaceTime, and Mitch says he can remember just how broken she looked on FaceTime and this was the turning point for him. How brave

to open up about that on YouTube. I remember at the time everyone was congratulating Mitch for his transparency, and he moved into this motivational space. I know, he appeared on a lot of podcasts talking about what he'd been through, and we hadn't seen this sort of vulnerability from men

before online. It was only starting to happen slowly. Yeah, I definitely think that his YouTube videos would have helped a lot of male followers who found themselves in a similar situation but didn't know how to deal with it well. In a recent podcast interview, Mitch opened up about his problem with drugs, citing his sudden rise to fame as a big part of the problem. Let's throw to what he said.

Everyone was giveing me cocaine. Everyone's doing whatever they want it because at that time we were getting millions and millions of views in Australia and Australia only our audience for Angrier. I only ever went Australia, and I'm eighteen years old. All of these perks.

You can sign up on Apple Podcasts or Patreon by following the links in the show notes this podcast was recorded on the traditional land of the Ghana people of the Adelaide Planes. We pay respect to elders past and present