Before asking questions to which he already knew the answers, Andrew Callaghan tried to take people's confessions: "What's your deepest, darkest secret?" he then asked in a standard and somewhat innocent manner with a microphone in his hand.

Back then, he stood on Bourbon Street, New Orleans' entertainment mile, between drunk tourists who came here because, unlike the rest of the country, they were allowed to drink unbridled on the street there, and had them bare themselves in front of the camera.

The simple question about the "deepest, most abysmal secret" brought to light all kinds of incest fantasies sparked by blood alcohol levels and Callaghan had the first viral hits on YouTube as - yes, as what, actually, as a journalist?

The question of what exactly Andrew Callaghan is, content creator, YouTube star, gonzo reporter or rather documentary filmmaker, is probably just as old-fashioned and stubborn as he finds the current news landscape in the USA.

"The media have failed," the 25-year-old told Interview Magazine in December.

"That's why they all resort to opinion-making instead of journalism." Opinion, that's not his thing, although as an interview guest he comes from his political stance, which suggests left-of-center common sense, a stance that has nothing to do with Trump and QAnon and gun freaks and crypto bros can start, makes no secret.

Through America in a mobile home

In Seattle high school, Callaghan skipped classes, hung out at the mall, and listened to what survivalists had to tell him: meth adventures, jail time, dark web assassins.

America the beautiful.

Big stories in little lives.

He wrote all of this down for the school newspaper, which later earned him a scholarship to Loyola University in New Orleans to study journalism.

In the evenings he, the 1.93 meter tall curly head, worked part-time as a bouncer on Bourbon Street and at night as a confessor with a microphone.

It was his actual school.

This gave rise to the idea in 2019 to go on tour with this type of interview, capturing the madness on the spot.

Out to America, to places where the land is even bigger and the minds are even narrower.

A young media company got him a mobile home, promised him a salary of $45,000 a year, would cover the production costs and a share of the subscription income on Patreon from the viewers.

Callaghan put on a slightly oversized, slightly baggy tan suit and drove off.

"All Gas No Brakes" they called the format on YouTube.

Burning Man, Area 51, Flat Earth,

That got clicks.

Within 14 months, 1.7 million users followed him on the video platform.

Callaghan stopped first at the "Burning Man" festival in the Nevada desert, then at Area 51, at the auto race in Alabama among funny rednecks, at a "Flat Earth" conference in Texas.

Politically, the contributions were only limited.

Rather, Callaghan once again exposed America's more absurd sides.

A few insights into subcultures for us normies.

He often succeeded in doing this using the simplest technique there is to elicit the ludicrous from people: asking questions to which you already know the answer.

Supposedly, at least.

At a book launch with Donald Trump Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama, he asked a black woman who reads enthusiastically from his work if she would date him, the president's son, if he were single.

"To be honest, if I'm to be honest," she says, taking a breath to choose her next words carefully, "we don't believe in mingling.

We prefer that the ethnic groups ("races" she says in the original) do not mix.

I prefer it when blacks date blacks and whites date whites.”