Howhow: From Solo Outsider to the Sponsored-Content King Who Redefined Advertising

30-Second Overview:
Chen Tzu-hao (Howhow) is one of the most representative video creators in Taiwan YouTube history. As of 2026, his HowFun channel has over 1.54 million subscribers, with total views exceeding 760 million. He started as a "one-man team" — writing scripts, directing, acting, and doing post-production himself — and with a blunt style of "getting straight to the sponsored content," transformed advertising from an audience nuisance into entertainment. This article unpacks how this self-described "outsider" from a NCCU economics program, through precise comedic timing and internet-culture humor, carved a path no one can replicate in the crowded influencer market — and why, even amid the short-video wave, he still insists on expensive, time-consuming long-form content.

The Economics Kid Who Chose Art: From Wanli to Savannah

Born in 1989 in Wanli, New Taipei, Chen Tzu-hao was a reliable "good student" within the conventional college-track system before he entered the world of video. From childhood he harbored dreams of becoming a manga artist and played in a band — early experiences that would later seed his creative work. As an economics student at National Chengchi University, his life looked much like any other undergrad, but a quiet passion for video production was already growing. During that period he and classmate Yeh Da-fang launched the "HowFun" channel — the name taken from their initials — initially just to document life and pull pranks. The real turning point that let him feel the power of video was a 2013 graduation video he made for his parents' preschool: What Are We Going to Perform at Graduation?¹

The clip had a group of small children reciting sophisticated, age-inappropriate lines — the sheer contrast ignited fervent discussion on PTT's joke board and even made it onto television news. That success showed Chen the force of "contrast" and "comedic timing." After his military service, he decided against returning to a conventional economics career and headed to the United States, to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), for a master's in visual effects². At SCAD he learned professional skills in VFX and motion design while, in the solitude of being abroad, kept shooting his "American Series" videos — gradually discovering the slightly lonely but humor-filled "outsider" narrative voice that would become the cornerstone of his later "How-style rhythm" and visual contrast aesthetic.

📝 Editor's note: Caught between mainstream values and personal passion, Howhow chose the most expensive and most solitary path — trading two years of study abroad for the soul capable of telling good stories, fusing technique with artistry.

Birth of the Sponsored-Content King: When Advertising Becomes What Audiences Want

In 2015, freshly back in Taiwan from the US, Chen received a call that would change his life. International electronics giant Samsung spotted his distinctive visual style and invited him to New York to shoot a sponsored video for a new phone launch. His subscriber count and traffic were unremarkable at the time, and that leap of trust led him to still list Samsung in his phone as "my great benefactor"³. The collaboration confirmed his path as a full-time YouTuber and made him start asking: how do you make the sponsorship itself the content the audience actually wants to see?

He pioneered a "straight-to-the-sponsor" blunt approach. Rather than trying to hide ads inside videos like other creators, Howhow puts "Commercial Break" or "Sponsorship Starts" in large on-screen text — a bold, self-deprecating, kinetic storytelling style that paradoxically wins audience respect. He has said that facing fans with money in hand makes things deteriorate, so his best balance is: serve the client, make the audience laugh.⁴ This "honest sponsorship" style not only delivered unexpected exposure for brands — it made him stand out in the crowded influencer market as the "Sponsored-Content King." His videos proved that when a creator treats the audience as friends who "get the joke," advertising can become art — and even something audiences look forward to.

📝 Editor's note: Putting the ad in the sunlight, swapping disguise for self-deprecation — Howhow demonstrated treating your audience as friends who "get the joke." Advertising thus becomes part of the content rather than an interruption.

The Aesthetics of Solo Solitude: Craft, Persistence, and Cross-Genre Experiments

Howhow's most famous label is the "one-man team." In an era when most million-subscriber YouTubers have moved to studio operations, he long persisted in writing his own scripts, setting up his own camera, performing to empty space, and editing himself. Saving money is only the surface incentive; the real key is ensuring the "How-style rhythm" never gets diluted. In his videos he can be the anti-bullying PhD, the beta orbiter, or any edge-case loser getting pummeled by life.

Behind that "solo performance" is an enormous technical foundation. To make multiple characters in the same frame seem to converse naturally, he must calculate each character's position and speaking pace with precision, then do meticulous multi-track audio editing in post-production. During the 2017 World University Games in Taipei, his collaboration video with Mayor Ko Wen-je — even surrounded by multiple other creators — maintained that unique "awkward but never rude" one-man-show style, successfully converting a political promotion into a meme that the internet generation ate up⁵.

Beyond video, Howhow has actively crossed into music. He was the bassist in the band "Seven Fat" (七月半) and contributed to multiple songs, bringing his distinctive rhythm and "narrative swerve" style into music. More recently he participated in the production of the acclaimed music video Happy Things Are Hard to Remember by Accusefive, demonstrating deep skill in image and sound editing⁶. This commitment to "high-cost solo production" and precise command of musical and visual rhythm is the core of his "solitary aesthetics" — and it is why, even amid the 2026 short-video wave, he still insists on making time-consuming long-form content against the pressure of declining view counts.

📝 Editor's note: In Howhow's interpretation, "outsider" means someone who maintains their own rhythm while in a crowd — and converts that clarity into a singular creative energy.

Child of PTT: Bridging Internet Subculture and Mainstream

Howhow's success is deeply linked to PTT culture. He is fluent in netizen slang — from "tool man" and "Wake up, you don't have a little sister" to "outsider" — and transformed labels that existed in text forums as negatives into embodied performances. He is both user and creator of these memes. Lines in his videos — "H-how could you", "Da-gei-hou", "Deng Fu-ru, where are the chopsticks?" — became shared language for Taiwan's young internet generation and influenced many subsequent creators' styles⁷.

This deep fluency in subculture gave him the credibility to maintain the feel of "one of the netizen community" even as he took on large-scale commercial partnerships. He once pledged to donate all first-print royalties from his book to the Family Welfare Foundation, revealing a warm concern for Taiwanese social issues beneath his comedic exterior. He also compiled his creative experience into a book — The How-Verse — successfully extending his personal IP from video creator into the publishing world as an important content IP representative⁸.

From "Tool Man" Alliance Leader to Father of Two: Identity Shifts and Content Evolution

On Valentine's Day, February 14, 2019, Howhow and his long-time partner singer Deng Fu-ru (A-Fu) registered their marriage. To the self-proclaimed members of the "tool man alliance," this was the ultimate betrayal. But that "betrayal" opened a new creative chapter. In 2021 a son arrived; in 2023 a daughter was born, officially making him a father of two — a boy and a girl, together forming the Chinese character for "good" (好)⁹¹⁰.

Even as his identity changed, Howhow has stayed true to his core persona. His content themes have gradually shifted from early themes of student isolation abroad to the mundane frustrations of parenting, but still maintain that awkward, dry humor. He rarely posts couple content on social media, emphasizing "public and private life are separate," and has publicly thanked Deng Fu-ru for her sacrifices for the family. He has also shared their "no hitting, no scolding" parenting philosophy, and has even been asked by media about interest in having a third child — showing his genuine and candid approach to family life¹⁰. He has quoted a line from the film Silenced (Silenced/도가니): "We fought this fight not to change the world, but so the world would not change us." This line may be the founding spirit that has sustained him through ten years of creative life and through the challenges of identity change and real-world pressures.

📝 Editor's note: From the awkwardness of solo life to the happiness of four, Howhow has held on through his identity transformation to the original heart that wants to make Taiwanese people laugh — and to honesty about both creation and family.

Recent Challenges and the Future: Long-Form Persistence in a Short-Video Era

With the rise of the short-video era, Howhow's content faces new challenges. Some long-form videos have seen declining view counts, sparking public discussion about his creative model. He has candidly admitted that in pursuing creativity, he faces the pressure of creative fatigue and brand feedback, and must keep squeezing out ideas to maintain content quality. Despite these challenges, Howhow continues to insist on high-cost long-form production, using long videos to carry complete stories and emotions — extending his "solitary aesthetics" into the 2026 short-video era against the pressure of declining clicks.

Looking ahead, Howhow will keep exploring the edges of his "How-verse" — whether through music, books, or new video formats — deploying his core aesthetic of "contrast, rhythm, narrative swerve, and self-deprecation" to keep bringing surprises to Taiwan's internet culture. His influence lies not only in entertaining audiences, but in modeling a creative paradigm that is honest, genuine, and full of life — proving that even in a rapidly shifting digital era, holding firm to one's own style and core values can still carve a wholly unique path.

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