>>Bassem Youssef:
My name is Bassem Youssef.
Thank you very much for having me in this.
And I'm the host of a show called "The Show"
or (saying name in Arabic).
This is the story of my program since I started
on the Internet as a show called "The Bassem
Youssef Show."
Well, it all started in a room in my apartment:
One table, one camera, bad hair, banner behind
me made of a collage of Tahrir photos that
only cost $100.
All that in a spare room in my apartment where
we used to dry our laundry.
To give you a better idea of how it was, that
was the setting.
That's me.
Yeah, I'm going on.
And that's the laundry.
And that's me.
Excuse the exposed toes and the hung underwear.
Well, actually, no, it all started me watching
the events in January 2011 in my apartment.
I remember watching the protesters clashing
with the security forces over the bridge on
the 28th of January.
For the first time in my life, those dark-suited
men with their clubs and their guns were pushed
back and overcome by massive numbers of people
just wanting to reach Tahrir Square.
To give you an idea of how it was before the
25th, this is what protests looked like, delusionary
protesters surrounded in a ratio of two to
one by security forces.
This is what we had after.
So that's up to the end of the 18 days.
I thought the country was having multi-personality
disorder.
There was the revolutionary personality in
the square, and there was TV.
Only when I went back home, I would watch
the television.
I would realize that there is no revolution.
It was a conspiracy carried out by CIA, Mossad,
Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Kermit the Frog.
If they knew, they would have incriminated
him as well.
But we were so proud of our revolution not
being a reason to rise against a regime but,
rather, a reason for uniting all of these
enemies for the first time in history.
War at Peace was finally at hand.
All day long, television was swamped by calls
of people crying, howling and providing eyewitnesses
accounts of armed gangs terrorizing the neighborhood.
It was a terror generated entirely by TV because
when you go out and see for yourself, there
was absolutely nothing there.
We had people giving eyewitness accounts of
undercover agents giving out 50 euros and
KFC needs in order to bribe demonstrators
to stay in the square.
If you were watching TV, you would find out
that the square was filled with people who
were drug addicts, Jihadists, Mossad operatives,
Mossad operatives, spies together with obscene
homosexual parties and orgies.
We do have a picture of one of these orgies.
Yes, that's it.
If there was one word to describe the state
of the media at the time, that would be Fox
News.
We had a singer claiming that he was arrested
foreign spies trolling next to his house and
asking every Egyptian to arrest any foreigner
he sees and hand it them to the military.
Two side notes.
First, Egypt's number one income is tourism.
So we had to change our slogan from "Please
visit Egypt" to this because suddenly everybody
was fleeing the country.
Second, he claimed that the two foreigners
he arrested was two Swiss Islamists.
Seriously.
But, you know -- and we had all kinds of fun.
We had celebrities calling in suggesting innovative
ways to end the protest in Tahrir.
One suggesting a siege till they all die of
hunger.
One suggested a tank going in and shooting
a round of warning shots.
And another suggesting that the whole square
should just be burned down.
Still people stood their ground.
And at the end, came the happy ending of Mubarak
stepping down.
In March, one month after the revolution,
I started to document what happened in the
media at that time.
So this is how I started my show, and I have
aged so much since then.
So the 18 days provided a sort of goldmine
of material to make fun of.
I only hoped for about 10,000 hits of my YouTube
channel.
But after a few episodes, we had more than
5 million views in three months and that is
a record by Egyptian and Arab standards.
Then I found myself negotiating with major
TV networks setting my own price.
At that time, I was packing my bags to start
a fellowship in pediatric heart surgery in
Cleveland.
So I had visa papers and Cleveland in one
hand and starting a career in media on the
other.
People who live in the states maybe think
that Cleveland was not a very good idea.
So I took my chances with the media, hoping
that things have changed and the TV establishment
would have changed.
But the lies kept on coming.
It was so hard to still keep the sarcastic
and funny tone while we were having a rising
body count in each protest with an overwhelming
deceiving media.
But still we came out three times a week on
TV, not just to make people laugh but to expose
the amount of lies injected into media and
politics.
What started as a five-minute Webisode on
YouTube turned into one of the most viewed
programs in Egypt.
On YouTube alone, we have now around 75 million
views making us the most watched program and
the first successful convergent from Internet
to TV.
Our 20-minute satirical show has had a significant
effect on people how view media and politics.
Every time I log on YouTube, I find more and
more young people starting their own shows
on YouTube from their own rooms.
Many of them pay tribute to our show as the
one which inspired them.
Social media now is such a powerful tool in
Egypt.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube became the new
media.
Even the veteran anchors on TV who used to
be the main and only source of information
and opinion became almost two steps behind
social media.
That alone gives me hope.
The mainstream media can spread its lies distort
the truth, but there is the resistance.
The youth who used to use Facebook and Twitter
to pick up chicks use cartoons, mems, and
smart slogans to attack the government and
even the Islamist majority in the Parliament.
We are not passive recipients to news anymore.
If anything came out this revolution, it is
that people now watch Parliament sessions
more than TV soap operas.
We started as a product of our company, which
is a YouTube partner, first on the Internet,
but then we signed our first season for half
a million dollars for 104 episodes.
We are now at the end of season one, negotiating
a $4 million deal to make the first political
satire show in the Arab world with a real-life
audience.
We didn't get the money yet.
So if Google has any surplus money, we would
be very glad to take it.
Amongst the many setbacks of this revolution,
this comes as good news for me not because
we have increased our worth eight times in
one year but because we can see the difference
we made in the media, from a room with one
camera all done through a small digital company
consent primarily with YouTube content management.
There have been delays and setbacks in the
course of this revolution, but a revolution
is not an event.
It is a process.
And it is changing Egypt, not from the head
of the regime from its grassroots.
No one can fool us again.
Even if you have the military, the media,
and even a pretentious bit of religion on
your side, there is now a million eyes watching
your every single step.
We will not be taken as obedient, passive,
frightened subjects anymore.
The voice now belongs to the people, the media
belongs to the people, and the power belongs
to the people.
Despite what you hear now in Egypt about the
remnants of the old regime trying to manipulate
the country or the rise of Islamic radical
movements, I still see hope.
We will not be oppressed anymore because after
a year of freely expressing yourself in the
most innovative ways, we can withstand shortage
of gas, money and even food.
But we cannot let anyone take our voice again.
And that is the real revolution because we
have finally found our voice.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
