スラッシーの新米は今やベテランです

Rewrite

On the road unearthing Canada’s most uncharted locations on stream, internet personalities Hamzah Al-Emad and Martin Andrijasevic are clearly true to this, not new to this.

For the chronically online and brain-rot enthusiasts among us, Slushy Noobz sit firmly on our collective Mount Rushmore. One of social media’s most beloved one-two punches, internet personalities Hamzah Al-Emad and Martin Andrijasevic have comfortably outgrown the deep-fried corner of the internet that first catapulted them into the spotlight during the pandemic. These days, you’ll find them making TikToks backstage with the likes of PinkPantheress and fakemink, getting reposted by Playboi Carti on Instagram Stories, or behind the decks DJing New York Fashion Week parties.

To say they thrive in chaos would be an understatement. So, as we log onto a Zoom call earlier this summer, the pair’s unexpectedly composed demeanour reveals a different pace to their storytelling. Their unhurried cadence could easily be mistaken for post-camping fatigue after a trip just days earlier. Or perhaps it’s a quiet invitation into what life behind the camera actually feels like: mature, centred, assured. A calm before the storm, certainly, but also a reminder that becoming internet superstars requires far more than meets the eye.

Now flying the flag for their Canadian roots on a six-stop tour across the Great White North, they’re chasing the unfamiliar – unfamiliar to them, that is, as parts of the itinerary remain a surprise even to the hosts themselves. They’ll (hopefully) be milking cows at each other, embracing regional holidays with the locals and taking in the rodeos, all in the name of immersing themselves in Canada’s overlooked corners. More importantly, they’re determined to show the world a side of the country that rarely makes it beyond its own borders.

As they set their sights on the open road, Hamzah and Martin sit down with Wonderland to talk about the legacy of Slushy Noobz, the stories that never make it on camera, and Martin’s decidedly involuntary choice of underwear for the day.

From making content separately during COVID to now touring Canada together and becoming global cultural figures – how does it all feel?
Hamzah Al-Emad: It feels good. I don’t think about it too much. Just feels lucky. It feels like I won the lottery every day. That’s what it feels like.

Martin Andrijasevic: But it feels rewarding at the same time. When we do get to actually reap our rewards, it feels great. So, eternally grateful.

When did it start feeling real for you guys?
Hamzah: Well, it’s not a specific moment, really. Would you say quitting your job?

Martin: I think quitting my job was when I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I’m living a dream where I don’t have to actually work the job that I didn’t like working.

Hamzah: And for me, it would be whenever I met our fans in person for our first IRL event, which was…

Martin: Well, we did a podcast. Our first-ever IRL event was like a live podcast and I think that was insane for the people to show up and watch us talk at a University.

Well, that actually leads nicely to my next question: what sparked the shift from gaming content to more IRL concepts?
Hamzah: Gaming will always be part of something we’d always do because, us ourselves, we love to play games. It’s very natural to us. At the end of the day, our channel reflects what we want to organically do at the time. So if we want to take advantage of our ability to go out and do stuff and feel more adventurous, then it would just reflect on the channel. So I would just say we’ve just been feeling more adventurous and outgoing in the real world.

Martin: I think we have a specific way of going through life that Hamzah and I both align on where we’re very sincere and we want to just experience – we’re very open-minded individuals. We just love meeting people and experiencing things that people might not want to experience or might shy away from. We embrace everything: the weird, the fun, the cool, everything. Anytime we’re out in Toronto, we’re just experiencing and not really planning anything, just having fun.

You’re about to tour Canada. How did this idea come about?
Hamzah: Well, it actually started from a Word document I made about two and a half years ago of a shortlist of cities in the US and a couple of paragraphs of a premise of a tour that is heavily inspired by IShowSpeed. But, at the end of the day, the only thing that differentiates your content from others is you. So even if we took another format, it would be different because it would be us doing it and that goes for anyone out there. So it was basically an IShowSpeed approach, but a little bit of an Anthony Bourdain twist where we go to smaller, random towns where they themselves will feel excited that they’re being recognised, but also everyone else will think it’s funny to see a list of cities we’re going to that’s like, ‘Why would you go there?’

Martin: I think a perfect place is something like Canada because so much of the world doesn’t really know much about Canada. Maybe they know Toronto, Vancouver and stuff, but we’re not even doing the big cities. We’re going to the parts that are just unexplored, even by Canadians themselves, for our interest as well. We’ve never been to some of the places we’re going and we’re excited to experience them. Canada is such a unique place with so many ranges of biomes. I can’t wait to experience everything it has to offer.

How do you want people’s perception of Canada to change with this tour and these obscure places that you’re taking us to?
Hamzah: Well, I want them to have a perception of it. When I lived in America for 17 years, Canada never crossed my mind. Maybe that’s just because I was 17, but giving people an idea of Canada other than just Toronto or Vancouver is already exciting enough because it is genuinely so vast; the accents, the cultures, the ways of life. It’s a huge, huge country and, for us as well, we’d probably be able to answer this question better by the end of it because we’d seen it firsthand ourselves.

Martin: I also think I just want people to hopefully come out of this a little more educated, that’d be kind of cool. Maybe they learn a few things, that’s always fun – that’s some good content, when you learn something.

So true. Could you run us through some of the concepts that you have for these stops? I know you guys have a couple of loose ideas of what you’re going to do.
Hamzah: One we’ve been pretty hyped about and hopefully pans out the way that we’re looking forward to is we want to live as farm hands on a farm, maybe in the prairies or Manitoba or something like that.

Martin: I think we want to do some surfing on the West Coast. There’s some sort of surfer community down there, so tap into that and then make our way somewhere towards the Arctic and just see what’s up and what’s going on over there because we don’t know anything. Some of the stuff is actually being kept a secret from us as well because we want to be able to just experience it. I think that’ll be fun.

Hamzah: We’ll be in Quebec for a holiday that they celebrate. They get really patriotic and possibly go fishing in Newfoundland.

Martin: I think the best part about this is that we have some stuff we’ll try and do and then the rest we leave open. If we meet someone who’s interesting or a scenario that we want to explore more, we’re setting up the stream so that there’s room for that.

Which stops are you most excited for and maybe a stop that you’re not so excited for?
Martin: I don’t have any biases toward any of these things because if I pick something I’m excited for, I don’t want to be let down in any way or let that affect my mood. So, I really want to make sure that I’m going into it as blind as I can so that I am authentically experiencing everything.

Hamzah: That’s a very PR answer. But I would say what I’m excited about is meeting people with new accents. I’ve always wanted to meet people from Newfoundland or even South Quebec where the French and the Irish mix and it’s a very unique accent. Martin and I were just two hours north of Toronto recently, on a farm camping with a man named Gary and even his voice was just soothing to listen to and his life experience was very small-town and that was just fun.

Martin: I think that’s a good thing to look forward to: just experiencing people’s small-town energy because that is just so alluring.

Have there been any concepts with your content that you’ve been kind of worried about or dreaded?
Hamzah: As the person who does the first pass of the editing, if there’s sometimes a video that we really want to do, but it’s just going to be like 30 hours of footage, that’s all logistics.

Martin: Yeah, maybe logistically. But if something’s scary or whatever, I think you just have to eat it because that’s what makes it great. Hamzah doesn’t like rollercoasters so I just know whenever there’s an opportunity to go on a rollercoaster, that’s just going to be great content.

What’s the biggest fear you face while on stream or video?
Hamzah: For me, it would be making someone else uncomfortable. I want to make sure that we’re not coming off in an intrusive or rude way. Especially if we’re in spaces that are not super connected to the outside world. Obviously, everybody’s got a phone and TikTok no matter where you are.

Martin: Yeah, I would say that my biggest fear is creating a scenario where someone is not happy to see us. Because that’s the opposite of what we want. We come in peace.

If the tour was sponsored by one uniquely Canadian brand, what would you guys pick?
Hamzah: It would be like Roots.

Martin: Roots is good.

Hamzah: Tim Hortons maybe, because we’re on the go and we’re travelling around. That’d be pretty fun. Maybe OVO.

Martin: OVO would be crazy. Yeah, I feel like literally any Canadian brand, because I think our biggest thing is actually getting someone attached to something like this. We kind of just do it and then we’re like, ‘Oh crap, we probably need someone to help us.’ But at the end of the day, we’re still going to do it regardless, whether there’s a brand or not.

Hamzah: Maybe 7 Summit Snacks.

Martin: Oh, shout out to 7 Summit Snacks.

What kind of snacks do they do?
Hamzah: They do running bars, but they’re chocolate bars based out of Edmonton and the CEO is a powerful woman.

Martin: They’re so good. They’re like these little chocolates. It’s very skinny, almost like a Kit Kat-sized chocolate bar and it has the most insane macros and it gives you a caffeine boost and everything. It’s insane.

Hamzah: Or Bell would be good, the internet provider.

Martin: And we use Bell.

Hamzah: Bell would be great.

Do you guys have like a checklist for what you guys are going to bring on tour?
Hamzah: I just found out that I’m not going to get a checked bag for all my clothes. It’s going to be the size of a carry-on, so I was just talking to our friend Cory here. I don’t know. For me, it just goes to socks and underwear. I need some stuff that’s comfy because I’m going to have to wash it in hotels or something.

Martin: You know what? You just asked that and I haven’t even thought about it.

What would you say are your travel essentials for this trip then?
Martin: Camera. I’m going to bring the camera, for taking pictures.

Hamzah: Name the camera.

Martin: It’s a Nikon Coolpix.

Hamzah: My Old Spice, fresh aluminium-free.

Martin: We can share that because we don’t have that much room.

Hamzah: We don’t have to share.

Martin: Another thing I want to bring is a water bottle.

Hamzah: Air pods. I actually ordered this neck pillow, but it’s like a special one where it’s only on one side.

I saw that on TikTok shop. Looks great.

Hamzah: I got off Amazon, but I could send some TikTok shop vibes around it.

Martin: I still have a couple of squirts left of this Le Labo LA exclusive fragrance. So I’m going to bring that just so I can smell good on the road. Hopefully, I can get a couple of sprays out of it.

Which event on the tour do you think will humble you guys the most?
Hamzah: I think probably the one where we work as a farm hand.

Martin: I think that’ll be so hard because we’re going to come in there being like, ‘Oh, we’re going to milk some cows.’ But then, when you’re actually milking a cow, like that’s going to be hard.

Hamzah: There’s really no punchline to that stream. The punchline is you tuning into our stream.

Are you guys excited to milk some cows, though?
Hamzah: I am.

Martin: I want to do the thing where I milk the cow and then I spray it into your mouth.

Hamzah: Okay. Let’s see if that pans out like Tom and Jerry.

Someone’s clipping that for sure.
Martin: We’re going to clip farm the entire time.

What’s one unexpected moment in your friendship that never made it into the content, but probably should have?
Hamzah: I have a weirdly specific one. Martin and I were recently camping as I mentioned, and living off of PR packages and we were just sitting in the tent and I got no sleep the whole night because we were sleeping straight on the floor. It was super cold and it was about noon and the sun was shining and Martin was just reading this book to me about survival fun facts and I just fell asleep to his reading. He read me to sleep.

Martin: There was no camera or anything.

Hamzah: It was just him and me peacefully. He just read me to sleep and I woke up and I was like, ‘Wow’.

Martin: I would honestly say, like most things in mine and Hamzah’s life, we really try our best to film or recap it in some form, but there are just things that just happen. It’s like our lives are a movie.

Hamzah: Martin’s wearing his fiancé’s underwear.

Martin: I’m wearing my fiancé’s underwear right now because I checked my underwear and I didn’t have any underwear and so I panicked. But then I asked her, ‘Do you have extra underwear?’ And she said, ‘Yes’. So I’m wearing that right now.

Are you G-stringing right now on Zoom?

Martin: It’s not a G-string. It’s actually these kind of shorts that have a built-in pad.

Well, comfy sitting then.

Martin: Yeah, it’s comfy. It’s kind of weird, though. It feels like I’m wearing a diaper.

What’s something about Slushy Noobz that fans tend to understand but maybe media slash journalists like me don’t?

Hamzah: We’re one of a kind.

Martin: Oh!

Hamzah: Because from the outside, it seems like you can kind of assume the subtext of our content, but you have to tune in to see the actual message behind it, which is we’re just trying to show people how to live day by day by having fun whenever you can and taking things easily. Don’t stress yourself out, leading by example. I think that’s what’s hard to describe, that feeling that people are getting.

Martin: I think at first look, we probably just look like two straight males.

Hamzah: Well, one of us.

Martin: Hey, stop it. There are a lot of them on the internet and I think at first glance, you can group us in with them. But I think if you tune into our content, I like to think we’re somewhat unique in how we approach life and how we try to get people to go outside and try to encourage friendship.

Hamzah: It’s a positive masculinity that is hard to describe to people who aren’t watching.

When the cameras turn off and straight after filming, what are the first couple of emotions that you feel?
Hamzah: I usually laugh to Martin. Like, ‘That was so funny, what just happened?’

Martin: And then I usually say, ‘are you hungry? You want to get some food?’

Hamzah: That’s probably the next feeling, and then we’re on our phones and trying to source some sort of food.

Martin: And then we kind of bicker about which food we should get because sometimes Hamzah likes to follow a certain diet some days and then some days he doesn’t. So then I’m kind of like, ‘Are you healthy today or are you not healthy?’ And then we scroll a little bit on our phones, waiting for the food to arrive.

What is the post-filming ritual? What do you guys order in? What are you guys doing? What are you watching?
Hamzah: We might watch some YouTube while we’re eating. Some body cam footage, maybe some of our friends videos or some podcast that we might want to put each other on. Maybe even Love Island these days.

Martin: Yeah, these days probably Love Island. Chick-fil-A is very popular, or could be sushi or smash burgers.

Finally, you mentioned the idea of a documentary. If one gets made about Slushy Noobz 10 years from now, what’s the one sentence you’d want on screen to define your legacy?
Martin: “Is this real?” I think that would be fun.

And how would you roll the red carpet for your documentary?
Hamzah: I would say: Do what we say, not what we do.

Words — Jotaro Joden

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