April Fools

“Grilled cheese, on the rocks!” Roberto yells, pointing to a bartender friend as we walk in.

Roberto Hidalgo, Milo Tucker-Meyer, and Alex Carlson tuck into a booth in the back corner, opposite a grand piano, a red velvet curtain, and a disco ball. Roberto orders a manhattan (“I’m gonna do a manhattan because we’re in fucking Manhattan!” he yells, shaking his head around), and Alex orders himself, as well as Milo, a gin martini. “They’re objectively bad,” says Alex. “It’s actually kind of refined, isn’t it?”

The faintly swanky bar is not necessarily where you might have expected a trio of late-twenties/early-thirties Internet comedians to have filmed their seminal “suck-it-from-the-back” video in the bathroom. Yet, that’s exactly what it is. The video — their first together — is also a relic of the night they all met last year.

Since then, Roberto (_Dalgo), Alex (Internet Gentleman) and Milo (wasipthawerld) have emerged as the latest faces of short-form Internet fame, representing a particular New York strain of hyper-aware and highly-logged-on anti-comedy, played by guys who seem like Dimes Square insiders rather than comedy's usual outsiders.

Their self-referential and absurdist videos have forced past the usual pile of sterilized dance videos and homogenized virality, making for reels that feel like both a result of — as well as an assault on — society’s idle scroll. They match the pace and reality of the feed, assuming distraction as a starting condition. Roberto, Alex, and Milo are forcing us to face the anti-social, Internet-addicted monsters we’ve become.

In one video, Roberto is confronted by a friend for watching a video of an anonymous blonde girl dancing in a red halter top. Halfway through, he turns straight to camera: “And so the fuck, what if I was? Okay? It’s my private bathroom time. And you know what? I’ll like it,” he says, looking straight at you, smashing the like button.

Roberto and Alex first met about two years ago when Alex recognized a then-non-viral Roberto working the door at now-defunct LES venue and club Heaven Can Wait.

They ran into each other once more serendipitously. “And then naturally, as guys do if they hit it off with somebody, we didn’t speak again for six months or something like that.” Alex says.

“You gotta let it breathe,” Milo agrees, nodding.

Milo met Roberto a bit earlier when Milo became a regular, and eventually a fellow employee, at a West Village coffee shop.

“I had been doing videos with my friends but my account was always private. It was just for us,” Alex says. “Then Hunter Schafer followed Roberto and I was like, ‘Okay I’m going public.’”

Milo, 27 and originally from Michigan moved to New York to pursue playwriting. Fittingly, his characters feel fully formed, if not batshit insane, and ultimately a bit off-putting. Being on his page feels like being in the room with someone who has never been socialized in real life, desperately trying to replicate human interactions via a 12-hour screen-time understanding.

“The great challenge of Reel-making is that no Reel we could ever make would be funnier than a Reel that a guy in Kansas made and he forgot he uploaded. I’m striving towards getting close to something that feels like some sort of found object,” he says.

One of his most popular videos features a 90-second straight-to-camera monologue from a seemingly yesteryear plumber, who gets pissed off when the camera man interrupts his mental health break: sitting next to a boiler in an unfinished basement, listening to Juice Wrld’s 2019 hit “Robbery.”

Of the three, Milo is the closest to traditional cringe comedy, citing Tim Heidecker as one of his comedy heroes. When his account first went public, he was banned on TikTok.

“People thought I was impaired. They were like ‘this guy shouldn’t be posting because he’s gonna get bullied.’ All these Reddit heroes rushed to my rescue,” he says. “It was exciting to me that people believed I could be like that,” he explains.

Later, when I tell him that his videos evoke a thrill similar to that of watching a horror movie, he says: “That’s a great compliment.”

Alex, 33 from Wisconsin, leans more commercial and palatable, and somehow — simultaneously and impressively — more political. Prior to committing to videos, he was the lead singer of a band, and his current day job is in product development for men’s clothing. He’s like if late night hosts were 20 years younger, funnier, and not controlled by major media conglomerates.

Almost always filmed in front of his loft-style plant-filled apartment background, the videos on his own page are largely real-time responses to breaking news. He’s addressed the impending start of WWIII and why he shouldn’t be drafted (he takes a long time to get ready and has to post three TikToks a day), the good things about 2025’s government shutdown (his parole officer stopped coming into work and the airport under-staffing meaning less mean TSA agents), and student debt (“Prepare for that and if you can’t, it’s punishable by death, so not a big deal; your family will incur the debt”).

He also serves as the pseudo business manager of the three, often forwarding and sharing potential ad deals to the other two.

“I’m approaching this from a pretty business-minded perspective. I just want to be making stuff, so if I have to be more serious about the business side, that’s just what it takes to differentiate yourself,” he says.

Roberto clarifies: “And we give it back to charity, like we donate it all.”

Where Alex’s page comes with opening text slides and a uniform “breaking news” intro, Roberto, 29 from Staten Island, is a charmingly erratic live wire. His videos distort at full speed, spinning through competing POV’s and inexplicable interruptions, erupting into self-made brain rot clip compilations.

“You ever feel like we’re living in a simulation?” he asks in one video before glitching into the (very-visible) abyss.

He’s technically the group’s most storied veteran, having put in his years on YouTube, Vine and Musically, and now Instagram and TikTok. “My first ever viral video was on TikTok with my mom,” he says.

Years of content conditioning have made him quick on the draw when it comes to ideas. As Alex pitches a What-New-Yorkers-Are-Wearing-Today style video, Roberto adds: “What if it’s a really good fit, but I got assassinated? Like ‘Boom!’ and there’s just a really big bloodshot and ‘pppppssshhhhh,’” he leans back, imitating a slow and seemingly graphic death.

When Milo starts detailing his background in theater and tap dancing, Roberto ideates a character immediately: “[He] wants to rob a bank but he’s very passionate about tap dancing. So he’s holding the gun tap dancing, like ‘Give me your fucking money,’ and it gets in the way of him like doing his robbery.”

From the view on TikTok, it can appear like Milo, Alex, and Roberto live on the same block. They’re always on each other’s pages, appearing in a handful of familiar, recurring settings: a shall-not-be-named coffee shop where Milo and Roberto both work (they prefer not to be interrupted there) and Tawny, Roberto’s recently opened Lower East Side coffee and wine bar — described by online tabloid On The Rag: “I feel so seen here. Never a chill moment. Always seeing someone you recognize. I love it. I’m scared. so worth the 16 dollar glass.”

Their New York also seems to include its own Sesame Street cast of alternative comedy characters and familiar, semi-viral faces, including cameos from recent SNL inductee Veronika Slowikowska, Kareem of Subway Takes, downtown boy band Laundry Day, close friend Rob Klein, and dancer-influencer Max Evasion.

Though, the scene is more amorphous than it likely appears on feeds. “There’s a scene, but I don’t know if it’s downtown; it’s just on the Internet. There’s somebody making videos, you like their content, you DM them like ‘Maybe in the future we work together,’” Roberto says.

“It’s not like there’s a finite level of likes to be given out on Instagram,” Milo says. “And there’s nothing better than likes for me!”

If there’s no longer a finite audience to compete for, there’s also no obvious hierarchy to climb. Anyone can make something that circulates widely for a moment; what seems harder to replicate is the feeling that a group of people are making things for each other. And for all of their irony, the three boys really do seem to love each other.

“The group element and the genuine friendship seems to shine through for a lot of people,” Alex says, noting it’s the one thing people repeatedly have said when they approach.

As for what’s next, none of them seem especially interested in pretending there’s a particular plan.

“You see the potential that you could live off this,” Roberto says. “It’s inspiring.”

“I take it day by day,” Milo says. “I think I have no sort of particular plan or path.”

“I don’t want to be in a nine-to-five. I want to just be making stuff all day,” Alex says. He continues: “I want to get my money up and like …”

Milo leans over immediately: “And get your funny up.”

“Get my money up and get my funny up,” Alex nods.

Natalie Maher is a journalist and lawyer based in New York.