OSU professor's alter ego is video game-playing YouTube star

Shane Hoffman is a mild-mannered professor at Oklahoma State University, but that might just be his alter ego.

“Prof Hoff” is an autograph-signing, Oreo-reviewing, video game-playing, international star YouTube persona; a not-so-secret identity for Hoffman.

In the past year, the journalism professor turned a YouTube hobby into a lucrative side-hustle. Hoffman films himself playing the mobile phone game Marvel Contest of Champions, which pits popular Marvel characters against each other in head-to-head Mortal Kombat-style battles. Viewers can watch as Prof Hoff navigates his way through the game and works to unlock new characters.

“Before that, I only had Oreo and pizza reviews (on YouTube),” Hoffman said. “No one watched except maybe stoners in their parents' basement. It didn’t do well at all.

“I threw the Marvel Contest of Champions video online, and it instantly got more views than any Oreo review I’d done in like three years."

Popularity grew quickly for Hoffman’s channel as he began adding more videos. In little more than a year, Hoffman has attracted nearly 28,000 subscribers and uploaded more than 1,400 videos that have been viewed more than 9.3 million times. Nearly 4.4 million minutes' worth of Hoffman’s content was streamed in the past month alone.

With the explosion of subscribers and content comes a valuable revenue stream for the professor.

“I have not received a penny raise since starting teaching at Oklahoma State in the fall of 2013,” Hoffman said. “In a year, I went from making probably about $12 on YouTube to over $20,000.”

Hoffman’s videos have a dual-revenue stream model. Some comes from YouTube, and some comes from viewers who send in money online.

Yes, strangers send him money after watching his videos.

“It’s kind of like the equivalent of if you see someone on the street playing an instrument and they have a little money jar and you drop in a dollar or two,” Hoffman said.

The appeal can be hard to understand for some, until you get to know Prof Hoff.

Hoffman is a quick-witted and engaging public speaker. Students speak highly of his classes, and that sincere warmth and care for others is evident in his videos. Hoffman loves nothing more than a good pun, no matter how groan inducing.

“When I was at Mizzou, we had freezing rain one day, and yours truly dropped his pizza and fell on his face,” Hoffman recently told students in class during a cold day in Stillwater. “Any way you slice it, it was an atrocity.”

The cheesiness — of Hoffman’s personality, not the lost pizza — is part of the personality viewers find endearing.

But it’s not all jokes when he’s online. Hoffman loves making these videos because of the unifying message he can promote.

“I talk about my family’s struggle with depression and even bipolar disorder with my subscribers,” Hoffman said. “There are a lot of people who play these games who are isolated, and so it’s been neat to have people reach out to me and say, ‘Hey Prof, you know I really suffer from what your family is going through, and it’s really nice to know I’m not the only one.’

“It’s kind of been a testimonial for mental health awareness as well. Which is a really cool side exposure for my channel.”

Hoffman can see which countries his videos are being watched in and sometimes hears from subscribers around the globe. He’s received photos from a watch party at someone’s home in Australia, and some doctors in Asia like to watch on an iPad during their lunch break.

Other fans aren’t that far away.

Most of Hoffman’s students don’t care about his video game videos, and OSU junior Saphire Cervantes is no different. Cervantes is from Dallas and is in one of Hoffman’s journalism classes this spring.

But when Cervantes attended her first class taught by Hoffman she had a shocking realization — her little brother watches a lot of YouTube, and Prof Hoff is one of his favorite channels.

“My little brother wants to be just like him,” Cervantes said.

She went to Hoffman and told him, “I know your voice. I know who you are.”

The event that seems most unbelievable to Hoffman occurred this fall when he attended a ComicCon in New York. He participated in a social media training at the event, but while he was there, a boy asked him for his autograph, telling Hoffman he was his favorite YouTube personality.

“And that was nuts,” Hoffman said. “That was very crazy, it’s still hard to believe that happened.”

The side hustle has proved lucrative enough to dissuade Hoffman from pursuing a PhD for the time being. He believes the work helps him better connect with his students and provide additional expertise for aspiring journalists and mass communication professionals.

Hoffman’s students are trying to develop their own personal brands and voices, and the Prof Hoff YouTube channel is a tangible example of success. He tries to encourage his students that similar success is possible, it just takes work.

“The biggest thing is just practicing,” Hoffman said. “It’s like an athlete, you don’t just see Russell Westbrook go in a game — you forget how many hours of practice and weightlifting go in.

“I tell students it’s possible to have your own YouTube channel, but you’ve got to put in the work every day."