science

I Did a Thing

I Did a Thing is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand I Did a Thing rather than just read about it. In short: Alex Apollonov is an Australian YouTube personality and comedian, better known for his online presence as I Did a Thing, and his YouTube channel of the same name. He is also the co-star of Boy Boy which he created with fellow comedian Aleksa Vulović who also stars in his videos.

Key takeaways

I Did a Thing belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect I Did a Thing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of I Did a Thing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Alex Apollonov is an Australian YouTube personality and comedian, better known for his online presence as I Did a Thing, and his YouTube channel of the same name. He is also the co-star of Boy Boy which he created with fellow comedian Aleksa Vulović who also stars in his videos. Much of Apollonov's content involves using his engineering and fabrication skills to design and build a variety of projects, including recreating the Utah monolith in Australia, simulating the Aurora Borealis in his kitchen with a high voltage transformer to parody The Simpsons, and making a scaled-up chainsaw powered Beyblade with a giant circular blade that is spun by a chainsaw motor. Other projects have included building a laser guided drone that drops steel darts, creating a hammer that uses blank rounds to drive nails, and mounting a submachine gun to a robot dog. Many of Apollonov's projects have gained widespread media attention in Australia, including his trip to North Korea to get a haircut, his successful attempt to enter Star casino in Sydney with overt COVID-19 symptoms, and for recreating the Utah monolith in Australia. His content is often uploaded by the comedy group The Chaser, and has collaborated with other internet celebrities and YouTubers including Boyinaband, Maxmoefoe, William Osman, IDubbbz, Hasan Piker, and the comedy group Aunty Donna. Many of Apollonov's videos also star fellow comedian Aleksa Vulović, as the two are close friends and often work on their individual projects with help from each other. Apollonov also has an X following of 231,900 followers. In May 2022, Apollonov participated in the Creator Clash event set up by fellow YouTuber Ian Jomha (iDubbbz) alongside many other YouTube personalities. He fought against James Rallison (TheOdd1sOut) and won.

Early life In the January 2021 episode of the Cold Ones podcast, Apollonov stated his family arrived in Australia from Siberia. He later clarified that both his parents were Chinese-born Russians, and he was born in Australia. Before starting his career as a comedian and YouTube personality, Apollonov began five separate university degrees and failed to complete any of them. He also held over thirteen jobs, eleven of which he was fired from for reasons such as eating cheese from a restaurant's fridge, giving his friends free drinks, and failing to turn up to work. In a 2022 stream with Hasan Piker, he called himself a socialist.

YouTube career

Boy Boy (2016–present) In 2016, Apollonov and fellow comedian Vulović founded the YouTube channel Boy Boy. Much of the content centered around myth-busting sensationalist claims in Australian media, while also using comedy to bring light to issues of such as climate change, colonialism, police violence, and racism. Boy Boy's patreon says as of 2024 that they are "making communist propaganda for idiots". One video produced by this channel included Apollonov calling an Australian anti-terrorist hotline and reporting Vulović for wanting to join a violent militaristic organisation with ties to violence in the Middle East, which at the end of the video was revealed to be the Australian military. Due to the low traffic of the Boy Boy channel, Apollonov created a new channel in 2018 titled "I did a thing", although he still uploads videos to Boy Boy on a less frequent basis. Much of the content on this channel was inspired by Louis Theroux and The Chaser's War on Everything.

The Haircut (2017)

The short documentary-style movie titled The Haircut (2017) was the most successful comedic project produced by the Boy Boy channel and would gain widespread coverage from Australian media which would help launch Apollonov's comedy career. In the movie, Apollonov and Vulović both travelled to North Korea to investigate dubious claims in Australian media that North Koreans were either forced to cut their hair like Kim Jong Un or that their government orders which hairstyles their citizens are allowed to have. During their investigation, neither Apollonov and Vulović could find any evidence to support the claims of government-mandated hairstyles and came to the conclusion that these stories were most likely fake. "When we started to look into some of those media stories we found out that a lot of them weren't true." Apollonov further described his opinions on Australian/USA relations with the DPRK, saying that "North Korea has tested four [nukes], and that is very scary… but imagine how scary it is for them to think that the US alone has tested 1,032 nukes? … We've used ours… against real people." Vulović shared Apollonov's opinions, saying that "What the haircut law and all these other 'amazing' stories share in common is at the very centre of this media whirlwind, they are based on absolutely nothing."

The Hooligans (2018) To investigate news of violence among Russian football hooligans, Apollonov and Vulović travelled to Russia together to interview fans of various Russian football clubs and embedded themselves within groups accused of hooligan violence. Apollonov said that his reasoning for creating this short documentary was that "As a film maker I'd never miss the opportunity to film my mate (Vulović) getting beaten up overseas."

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with I Did a Thing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what I Did a Thing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to I Did a Thing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about I Did a Thing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of I Did a Thing

In research: I Did a Thing appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses I Did a Thing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: I Did a Thing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century Australian comedians, Australian YouTubers, Australian communists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for I Did a Thing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study I Did a Thing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what I Did a Thing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain I Did a Thing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is I Did a Thing in simple terms?

Why does I Did a Thing matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study I Did a Thing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on I Did a Thing.