Ricky Van Veen
MTV has confirmed its wacky plans to give a TV show to the young men behind CollegHumor.com. What a good time to review all we know about CollegeHumor boss Ricky Van Veen!
- We first met Ricky and his gang of post-collegiate compatriots back in '04. They were running a website. Same one!
- Barry Diller's IAC bought a controlling stake in CollegeHumor in the summer of 2006. Worth like $20-30 million, not bad!
- They put out a couple books, and had parties.
- Ricky used to go out with the great "I stopped reading Gawker after she left" Jessica Coen. This led to some rather tawdry humor.
- Ricky drove a Prius.
- He likes to philosophize about gossip.
- He speculated somebody would murder a Gawker writer sooner or later. Hasn't happened yet, but that's probably because you have to walk up four flights of stairs to get to our new office.
- He, like, personally invented the Shocker!
- He played a small role in the invention of Julia Allison.
Overall, not that interesting, I have to admit. But hey, these guys are not even in college, but somehow managed to hustle a rich dude out of millions to prop up their website, which is a nice trick. They do make some funny videos, this one in particular. Here's a video promo for their MTV show, watch it, why don't you? And also the MTV show, you can watch that, I guess. Though in my personal experience, going "Behind the scenes" at a company that makes a wacky website is far less interesting than you might imagine.
