H3h3Productions

Ethan Edward Klein (born June 25, 1985) and Hila Klein (née Hacmon, ; born December 12, 1987) are an American-Israeli husband and wife duo best known for their YouTube channel h3h3Productions. The majority of content on their main channel comprises reaction videos and sketch comedy in which they satirize internet culture. Since 2017, the pair has also run a separate podcast channel, The H3 Podcast, which has been their primary creative focus since 2019, among other ventures. As of early 2021, the podcast has the fourteenth-biggest audience of any podcast, according to media analytics organization Media Monitor.
Personal life.
Ethan Edward Klein was born on June 25, 1985 in Ventura, California, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His parents are Gary and Donna Klein, and he attended Buena High School. His paternal grandfather was Leonard Katzman, the showrunner of the soap opera "Dallas". He worked as a marketing executive in Israel. Ethan has generalized anxiety disorder.
Hila Klein (, ) was born on December 12, 1987 in Holon, Israel, to a Sephardic Jewish family. Her father is of Libyan-Jewish descent, whereas her mother is of Turkish-Jewish descent. She is the younger sister of artist Moses Hacmon. Hila served as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces for two years. During her military service, she met Ethan Klein in 2007 while he was visiting the Holocaust Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem at the time on his Birthright Israel trip. She then attended the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Israel, but did not complete her studies. Hila became a naturalized U.S. citizen in September 2019.
After several years together, the couple married on October 12, 2012. During the early years of the channel, the couple lived together in Israel, in the Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv. In April 2015, the Kleins moved to the United States, first living in Los Angeles then moving to New York City in September 2015 and later back to Los Angeles in August 2016. They are secular Jews. They have one son together, Theodore Yochanan (), which they named because Hila wanted him to have a name that worked in Hebrew as well as English, in order for her family to be able to easily pronounce it.
YouTube.
h3h3Productions.
The Kleins registered the h3h3Productions YouTube channel on April 29, 2011. The channel was most active between 2013 and 2018, after which uploads have been sporadic. The primary format of videos uploaded to the channel involves the Kleins providing critique and commentary in reaction videos, consisting of clips of a source video intermixed with commentary and absurd sketches, a style which has been described as a cross between the works of comedy duo Tim & Eric and the television series "Mystery Science Theater 3000." 
Klein's self-proclaimed "most famous" video on the h3h3productions channel was released on March 21, 2016, entitled "VAPE NATION". The video features Klein on the streets of New York City--filmed by his wife Hila--and has over 28 million views as of May 2021.
The channel has gained a reputation for critiquing internet trends and a range of online personalities, as well as several YouTube policies. On July 15, 2016, after winning a Hot 97 contest, Ethan met DJ Khaled and showed him a series of comedy videos. The pair have responded to several online controversies, many of which concern badly received prank videos posted to the site. The Kleins released a short documentary on "" gambling, which involves trading skins for real-world currency. The channel criticized several YouTubers for attempting to attract young viewers to their gambling websites.
Their second channel – Ethan and Hila – was created in 2013. It began as a vlogging channel and incorporated additional unscripted videos, including reaction videos, beginning in 2015. The channel was phased out of use near the end of 2017 and has had few releases since, most of which are original music.
The H3 Podcast and spin-offs.
The H3 Podcast began in December 2016 as part of the h3h3productions channel. Their podcast-specific channel was registered by the Kleins on April 8, 2017, on which they upload recordings of their triweekly podcast. The podcast began in 2017 as a weekly interview series in which Klein would interview a variety of mostly comedians and internet personalities with support from Hila Klein. Following their one-hundredth episode, the podcast pivoted to a twice-weekly release schedule in early 2019 in which episodes would alternate between interviews and Klein discussing current events.
In August/September 2020, the podcast was further expanded with the introduction of four distinct weekly sub-series: the flagship "H3 Podcast" featuring conversational interviews with Ethan Klein; "H3 After Dark", an unscripted current affairs podcast co-hosted by Ethan and Hila Klein; "Content Court," a narrative podcast examining controversial internet personalities; and the popular series "Frenemies" with Trisha Paytas. As of May 2021, there are 34 episodes of "Frenemies", with several recent episodes focusing on David Dobrik and the Vlog Squad sexual assault allegations. Ultimately, "Content Court" was a limited series and was released in the final quarter of 2020.
Since late 2020, the H3 Podcast channel has been one of the United States' top podcasts: Edison Research ranked it #27 during mid-2019 through mid-2020 and the #23 podcast in 2020 overall based on a number of statistics; Media Monitor ranked in #14 for the first quarter of 2021. Most of their audience is on YouTube where they have more than one billion combined views between their channels H3 Podcast, H3 Podcast Highlights, and H3 Podcast Bites. They are ranked highly on other podcast directories, specifically: on Apple Podcasts, it is the 94th most popular podcast and the 16th most popular comedy podcast (as of May 2021); on Spotify, it is the 79th most popular podcast and 20th most popular comedy podcast (as of May 2021); on iTunes, it has been on of the top 100 podcasts since its premiere in 2017. Media Monitors noted a surge in listenership in early 2021, in large part due to "Frenemies".
Fans of H3, specifically the podcast, have given themselves the name "The Foot Soldiers", referring to their massive influence on WikiFeet ratings. When Klein negatively engages with other celebrities or internet personalities, his fans take to the site to tank such personalities' foot ratings. Recent targets include Logan Paul, Daniel Keem, Phillip DeFranco, Jeffree Star, and several members of the Vlog Squad. As of March 2021, Klein himself has a rating of 7.12 out of 5 stars.
In May 2020, Ethan was dropped as a sponsor for Old Spice because of resurfaced footage of Ethan saying derogatory slurs in a 2017 interview.
Fair use lawsuit.
In April 2016, Matt Hosseinzadeh, an American YouTuber who goes by "MattHossZone" and "Bold Guy", filed a civil action against the Kleins for copyright infringement. h3h3Productions made a reaction video to Hosseinzadeh's video "Bold Guy vs. Parkour Girl". Hosseinzadeh claims that he initially contacted the Kleins "to politely ask them to remove my content from their video", but that they refused. Hosseinzadeh's lawyer, Tim Bukher, claims that the video used more than 70% of his work "while contributing nothing substantive to it."
After a video on this was released by h3h3Productions the following month, fellow YouTube personality Philip DeFranco started a fundraiser on GoFundMe to help raise money for their legal fees, citing the need to protect fair use on YouTube. The fundraiser raised almost $170,000, receiving large donations from notable individuals including Fine Brothers, Markus "Notch" Persson, PewDiePie, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, Justin Roiland, and Garry Newman. On May 26, 2016, Ethan and Hila announced that the funds raised will go into an escrow account called the "Fair Use Protection Account" (FUPA), overseen by Morrison & Lee LLP to be used to help people defend fair use. On June 27, 2016, Lee announced on Twitter that he had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Court filings from November 2016 state that Ethan and Hila Klein had new attorneys and were no longer represented by Morrison & Lee LLP. Later claims by both Ethan and Hila that the switch was due to among other reasons, "things not working out". They also discussed that the alleged fees charged by the new firm were US$54,146.57 for one month of work. There is currently no evidence that Morrison & Lee LLP had ever controlled the funds raised by H3h3Productions, and Morrison & Lee LLP has not confirmed the allegation. On March 17, 2017, the trial set for April 17, 2017 was adjourned in anticipation of ruling on summary judgment motions.
The Kleins won the lawsuit; U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that the Kleins' commentary video constituted "fair use as a matter of law", describing it as "quintessential comment and criticism." The case is the first of its kind to receive a judgment, and while not binding across the United States, provides a significant and persuasive argument to be cited in future cases relating to fair use on YouTube.
Allegations against "The Wall Street Journal".
H3h3Productions, alongside several other channels, supported YouTube personality PewDiePie amid a 2017 controversy over Nazi jokes in one of his videos from January. On February 14, "The Wall Street Journal" ran a story about PewDiePie's previous references to Adolf Hitler, which brought nine other videos into the debate and elicited frequent discussions on whether they were taken out of context. When YouTube subsequently released tools to allow advertisers to avoid offensive videos, Ethan Klein claimed that the tools were overly broad and negatively affected unrelated content, including his own channel.
One of the authors of the "Wall Street Journal" piece, Jack Nicas, wrote another article on March 24, claiming that YouTube did not do a good enough job of keeping major advertisements away from racist content. Klein accused the report of being written selectively to maximize outrage. Specifically, the article showed a Coca-Cola ad playing on a video of the country song "Alabama Nigger" by American white supremacist Johnny Rebel. Upon seeing that the video was not contributing to the uploader's income, Klein alleged that Nicas had used an altered screenshot and asserted this in a video. Hours later, he was informed that the video was indeed monetized, but through a copyright claim rather than an explicit choice of the user. Klein withdrew his accusation in response and "The Wall Street Journal" released a statement that it stood by the authenticity of the screenshots.
Other ventures.
From September 5 to 12, 2017, Ethan and Hila, along with Justin Roiland, Alex Hirsch, and Dana Terrace raised over US $200,000 in donations to Direct Relief for relief efforts in Houston, Texas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
Ethan and Hila also appear in a character pack for "Payday 2" titled "h3h3 Character Pack". Although originally appearing as an April Fools joke, the character pack was later confirmed for an actual release. The profits from the pack sales are donated directly to the Kleins, helping them with their legal fees.
In 2017, Hila Klein founded her own clothing company named Teddy Fresh. She has created collections in collaboration with Care Bears, SpongeBob SquarePants, and RIPNDIP.
Discography.
Podcasts.
The following are distributed via the H3 Podcast channel.