This 22-year-old makes thousands of dollars a month by pulling off weird viral stunts

James Shamsi
James Shamsi giving an interview about #KardBlock to Entertainment Tonight. Screenshot via Entertainment Tonight

You may remember James Shamsi from when he created the Chrome extension that bans all Kardashian content from your computer. Or perhaps you remember his name from when he mocked Instagram’s double-standard policy concerning female nipples. Or maybe it was from two years ago when he put his resume on Tinder.

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Even if you've never heard of Shamsi, one thing is clear: This kid knows how to capture the internet zeitgeist.

Shamsi calls himself "the ultimate growth hacker" on his website, and that description isn't far off: The British 22-year-old figured out what people want to click on and how to leverage that talent to his advantage. His actual job, as he describes it, mainly consists of inventing viral videos and PR stunts for his company Chameleon.LA as well as the various businesses that hire him  at daily rate of $1,500 or a monthly rate of $4,500  to get media coverage.

And his methods work. While he can’t disclose what companies have hired him (or how much he pulls in monthly), Shamsi likes to prove he can go viral by himself, just because. In addition to creating the Kardashian blocker #KardBlock, he hid $10,000 in 200 fleshlights buried on a beach, made $2,000 with a 10-second Snapchat video, and created an app that adds a puppy to people’s Tinder profiles  — and those are just the stunts he's taken responsibility for.

"The creative side of it is super fun," he says about his job. "I love the whole process of coming up with a dumb idea and making it happen."

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This interest in viral content all started when Shamsi and two friends at London's King's College created a prank YouTube channel called "JesterLad" where they orchestrated and filmed awkward moments across London, including something called the "Star Wars Elevator Prank," wherein a man pretended to 'use the force' to open the elevator doors.

As one of millions of prank YouTube channels, Shamsi's endeavors might have died as soon as he uploaded his first video clip if it wasn't for a slapdash decision that became the group's main strategy : promoting the videos during the exam period, when more kids would be on their computers and phones.

"It was kind've lucky that I thought of that," Shamsi says. "I just kind of said it without thinking."

That strategy of appealing to college students paid off. Within two months, JesterLad had over two million views and 11,000 subscribers on its channel. Websites like Good Morning America and College Humor began to cover the content thanks to Shamsi’s on-brand pitches to the networks.

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"It ultimately comes down to finding something that blogs will write about and Facebook pages will share," Shamsi says on his strategy for going viral. "I think most people will say virality is something people share amongst themselves, but if you don’t have a blog or a publisher or Facebook page showing your stuff, it’s much harder to go viral."

Shamsi pitches his ideas to the press the way he expects they would end up covering the story. If he’s sending a pitch to BroBible, he’ll cater to frat boy stereotypes; when he emails a tech website, he makes sure to have the tech angle front and center.

His ideas always come from what’s trending or what people are already talking about — "It’s always easier to continue a conversation than to start a new one," Shamsi explains — and craftily hide brand-promoting motives.

Take the #KardBlock stunt. His real goal was to drum up publicity for his agency Chameleon.LA, but he pitched #KardBlock to specific websites that he knew would be interested in Kardashian coverage.

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"I genuinely don’t care about the Kardashians, but I started my agency and I was reading up on how to get good SEO," he says. "[The advice was to] get a good agency and they’ll get you back links and mentions from big sites — but I was like I can’t afford an agency, I’m 22."

kardblock
A smattering of the headlines #KardBlock generated. Megan Willett/Tech Insider

Surprise surprise, his #KardBlock stunt got coverage. Suddenly, Shamsi was getting tons of traffic to his website and LinkedIn, all at the low cost of $5 to register the domain name — and the occasional death threat.

"It was weird, I traced the [death threat] call back to somewhere in the valley in California," he says. "It was good fun though. We had a BYOK [Ed note: Bring Your Own Killer] party because we didn’t know what to do, so we just had a party instead."

Shamsi says he’ll continue to produce these viral stunts in the future, whether it’s having two guys hug for 27 hours for charity or launching an Indiegogo campaign where people bid on dates with a famous social media star in order to help pay for a dog’s cancer treatments. He's even about to start his own jewelry line.

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"A lot of people just assume that they can put out content and hope it goes viral," Shamsi says. "But we have to find that little hook to make someone want to share it on their personal timeline."

The next time you see a cool viral video or crazy stunt, take a closer look — it might have James Shamsi’s signature written all over it.

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