"A lot of gay men don't like lesbians, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because we're not attracted to women," says journalist and YouTuber Matěj Smlsal, who makes videos explaining the world around us

Matěj Smlsal started as a journalist while studying journalism at Charles University. At Hospodářské noviny he learned the basics of the craft, at Blesk he learned to work under pressure and at iDNES TV he became one of the prominent faces of video reporting. It was there that he created the Smlsaloviny format, which opened the door to topics that rarely appear in traditional news coverage.

But after several years in newsrooms, he decided to go "freelance". He left his stable background, launched the YouTube channel TEN SMLSAL and started creating under his own name. The journey was not quick: the first videos had minimal reach and Smlsal rotated between several part-time jobs to have the means to continue creating. Only gradually did the channel start to take off, and today it is one of the most visible Czech infotainment projects on YouTube.

Over the years, Smlsal has developed a recognizable style that combines journalistic accuracy, hyperbole and the ability to explain even seemingly ordinary phenomena in a way that both entertains and informs. In this interview, we revisit his career path, what made him leave big media and how his most watched videos are made.

You were recently on holiday in the Canary Islands with your partner. How did you enjoy it? Did you get any rest?

I had a wonderful time. We went to Winter Pride and it was our first really good holiday, without a single row. And that's thanks to the quiet holiday voucher my partner gave me. Part of it was, among other things, that he wouldn't complain about anything, but more importantly, he wouldn't talk too much. He won't shut up. So he promised no more than 3,000 words a day.

And you counted that for him?Did he fit in the3,000?

I think he went over it every day.

You've mentioned in several interviews that you're prone to workaholism. Were you really able to switch off? Did you have any thoughts ofneeding to sit down at your laptop?

Because I'm a Capricorn. It's a given there - I like work and I like money. I didn't have my laptop with me at all. I didn't even put up storms because people respond to them, and then you respond to their responses, and then suddenly you're on your phone all the time. So I was just putting posts on the wall, they had a life of their own. And I was thinking about work? Not at all.

So you took a break frombeing an influencer?

Well, I'm definitely not an influencer.

Butyou gotsome numbers there. I'm sure you could be called a microinfluencer.

Mini-influencer, maybe? So I took a break, and I really wanted to come in full of energy... and then I got a fever of 39 on the plane, and I came down with type A flu, and I was completely out of energy. I haven't been this tired in a long time.

And it's getting better?Are you feelingbetter?

I'm much better. We were on Breakfast with Nova today, but I waited a minute in my T-shirt in the freezing cold before they let us in the back of the studio. So I expect I'll be seeing the doctor again.

When did you decide you wanted to be a journalist?

Probably in elementary school, when I was nine years old, when I published Gregor's World magazine. Back then, the internet was still the dial-up thing, and I would always download articles after 7pm, when it was cheaper, and make my own magazine out of them. Plus I added coloring pages and jokes and stuff. So that's where it started, for me it was the obvious choice from the start.

Eventually you started studying journalism at Charles University...

I enrolled in journalism and political science. I was accepted to both and I chose journalism. A week after graduation, I started working in radio thanks to my partner at the time, so school was more of an afterthought. I was fired from radio after a year... I don't want to say I was fired, but they didn't renew my contract because of too much initiative. I had a juvenile voice - well, to be honest, even now I can't quite speak, I don't pronounce all the syllables - so I wasn't allowed on the air. But I had a lot of initiative, and I did talk on the air from the field sometimes. So they didn't renew my contract and I went the written media route. But then again, it's better to be fired for wanting to work too much than for being lazy, right?

After that,you went through Hospodarske, Blesk, but you probably became best known as a video reporterat iDnes TV, where you had your show Smlsaloviny.

Yeah.

Did you always want to be areporter"in the know", that is, not one who just writes, but who has his own show?

My grandmother told me recently that when I was a kid and we watched Television News, I said, "One day I'll be on TV." So I think, yes, it was moving towards that. And I'm the extroverted type, I have no problem performing on camera. It's a more natural form of work for me than writing articles.

You've gotten into a whole lot of things on that show thatthe average person doesn't get to experience. For example, you slept among homeless people. Do you have any bizarre experiences or stories from the set?

I think the most bizarre video is the one where I tested a silicone doll in a brothel. That's probably my most famous. And then the second episode where they brought in the silicone dummy, of course I enjoyed that one even more (laughs). I would never have believed all the things you can film and all the things a reporter can do. However, I can't imagine testing something like that at Czech Television.

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Sources: archiv Matěje Smlsala/ Se svolením

And at iDNES they were open to everything? Did they ever mentionatopic youbrought up?

They approved practically 99% of them. They told me at the interview that they wanted me to be like Lada Hruska 2. Now on YouTube, a lot of people are telling me that I must be related to Honza Tuna, because we talk and look alike. Really, every week I explain to someone in the discussion that I'm really not his son. So my career path goes from Lada Hruska to Honza Tuna.

So you're heading into investigative reporting?

No way. I'm scared shitless. The idea of being Janek Rubes somewhere chasing after a roulette man... ever.

But in the end you decided toquit iDNES and go freelance. What made you do that?

My friend Stanek. He kept telling me that I was too old to go out on my own. And I finally realized: I'm 30 years old, I have no commitments, no kids, I've saved up, I'm in! I had always had another job in addition to my journalism - I drove for Uber and Bolt as a driver in the evenings and weekends, delivered food, sold in Alberta. So I had money saved up. I think the YouTube front was a natural progression, and more and more media people are taking that step. Of course, starting out is terribly hard: suddenly you have a channel with zero subscribers and no employer behind you to give you a regular income no matter what.

And convincing companies to let you shoot when you have zero subscriberswas probably not easy either.

Yeah, it was. Fortunately, I was able to use some of my contacts in the media, so for example, the very first video I shot was at Penny Market, where I worked as a sales clerk. But everybody warned me, "It's going to take two years to get your channel going, just hang in there!"

How did you handle that period?

First I spent all my savings, then my parents supported me for a few months. Finally, I decided that they couldn't support me all the time, so I went shopping in the Basket. Then I became a trainer of new couriers there. I enjoyed it a lot, but I didn't have much time for my channel, so it was heading towards being a delivery driver rather than a YouTuber. And then the idea of having a Celebrity driving school show came up. Working with Paul Greiner from King's Driving School, who said, "Do what you love, I'll sponsor you," it all took off.

So today it's 100% your job?

Exactly - I make my living from YouTube ad revenue, collaborations, and our partnership with the driving school is ongoing. But I have to say, I'd love to go shopping again sometime. I enjoyed it so much - driving and talking to people, making them happy.

Would you consider charging for some of the content?

I've always wanted the viewer to get all my content for free and without restrictions. I also set up Hero Hero for a while, but just because I need to have the videos complete and with all the information that goes with the topic, I didn't have anything extra to offer there. And because I don't do interviews, I can't add hourly bonuses or exclusive material like others. So in the end, Hero Hero didn't make sense, so I cancelled it again.

Where do you get inspiration for your content? Do you ever run out of ideas?

Finding a topic is the hardest part. When I worked in media, I had to come up with an idea almost every day, even two every day at Blesk. And that was a lot of pressure, I was always anxious in the evening. But otherwise, inspiration is everywhere. You stand at a level crossing for ten minutes and wonder why the train is still not running when the barriers are down. So I'll write to the Railways Authority and make a video explaining the principle.

Or bananas - I've been told since I was a kid not to eat the tops, because they bite and have spiders in them. So I arranged for an expert at the Faculty of Tropical Agriculture, and in the greenhouse we revealed to people whether we should really be afraid of it.

Or another example: I can't urinate with someone else standing at the next urinal. So the urologist and I broke down why it blocks someone. The topics are just all over the place, you just have to be curious.

I noticed you've been working quite a bit onPrague'spublictransportation. Are you targeting the "gawkers"?

It's terribly interesting. First of all, I love transport. And secondly, more and more gay men are driving public transport. And I don't know why we like trams and rail transport so much.

I don't have any research on it, but even inmy neighborhood I see that a lot of my gay friends love public transportation. It might be worth doing a statistic on how many gays are just gawkers.

An awful lot. Well, let's see: A lot of my viewers are gay, a lot of my viewers love public transport. So these videos are usually a success.

If we look atyour target audience in more detail, is it mainly gay men, or is there another group?

On Instagram, I'm mainly followed by the gay community. On YouTube, if a video has, say, 200,000 plays, we certainly can't say that the vast majority are gay. Statistics show me that about 80 percent of the audience is male, and most of the audience is in the 18 to 44 age group. But of course, orientation doesn't tell me that.

However, what has really surprised me lately is the growing number of child viewers. Recently, a boy of about seven years old ran up to me on Flora, snapped at his mom and exclaimed, "You're the youtuber, I love your videos!" That always makes me so happy.

What do you thinkis missing intheCzech LGBT sceneand where do you see room for progress?

I think the biggest deficit is in tolerance. And often it's not the heterosexuals who are doing the heckling, but the gay people. My friend Karin once put it exactly: "You want straight people to accept you, but you have trouble getting along with each other."

It also applies to very basic relationships within the community, like the dynamics between gays and lesbians. A lot of gay men don't like lesbians, and I don't really know why. Maybe it's because we're not attracted to women, and so we can't form relationships with them - and their expressions of intimacy. It's hard to say.

Staying onthe topic of tolerance - part of the gay community rejects more feminine men or trans people. Added to this is the pressure to look young, attractive, muscular. Do you feel that pressure too?

I think a lot of that pressure comes from ourselves, we just want to look good, to have developed muscles. Of course, there's this idea of the ideal body, and when someone has it, more people look at it fondly than at a "belly button". But at the same time, there are plenty of gay men in the community who don't fit the "ideal" look, and I think there are even more of them than the perfectly fit ones. So yes, there is definitely pressure, but I don't think people are succumbing to it. They decide for themselves what they want to look like. And some people will exercise, some people won't.

And isn't that pressure more pronounced than in the heterosexual population? It seems to me that we're much more concerned with appearance.

They say gay men retire after 40.

I've even heard that they're in their 30s.

Then I'm a senior citizen. No, I think the older people get, the better they often look. I've always compared it to Václav Klaus, for example: if you take him in the 90s and then in the new millennium, he looked better in the new millennium. And I personally like guys who really look like guys - that kind of masculine style. I've always had older partners, not Václav Klaus' age, of course, but maybe 10 years older than me.

How do you think Czech society accepts LGBT people today? Is there a shift for the better, or doprejudices still prevail? I also ask because if youlook atthe comments under articles - for example, on Novinky- hatred is still rampant there.

If I were to go by the comments on the internet alone, I would fall into a depression that everyone hates us. It's easy to get the impression that the whole Czech Republic is against us. But it's distorted, the negative voice is always heard the most. Example: I put a photo on the net, there are fifty nice reactions and one really nasty comment. And that's the one you remember.

Sopeople tend to follow the bad, while thegood doesn't stand out as much.

That's how the human brain works. And you can see it in the news media. There won't be any information that they laid a nice sidewalk in Litoměřice. But if there is a one-metre crater, they will write about it right away, because something has gone wrong, something is wrong.

Do you encounternegative reactionstoyour work? Do you make no secret of your orientation - does it reflect in the comments under yourvideos?

I went through a decent school of resistance on iDNES. But it's a completely different environment on YouTube, I would say most people there are welcoming and positive. Occasionally I'll report a downright vulgar rant that just doesn't belong there. I feel that many people today confuse freedom of speech with being allowed to write any kind of nasty remark to anyone.

And as for equal rights in theCzech Republic?

I confess that I have never encountered any form of bullying. I live a normal life, I don't shout "I'm gay" everywhere because it's a completely natural part of my life. I don't like it when the expression is used that someone has "admitted" their orientation. For God's sake, what is he supposed to admit? It's just that I like guys. So in terms of rights, I personally don't feel any discrimination. I know there's no marriage here, but it's not a particular problem for my life.

You have a partner. Wouldn't you feel discrimination, for example, the moment you wanted to enter into marriage?

I've been in a partnership once before, we registered at Karlštejn, then we broke up and I haven't thought about it again since. And frankly, I don't care what it's called. The important thing is that the rights are aligned. And I feel like a lot of progress has been made in that direction, although I don't follow it in all the details.

Other than the name, the rights have been straightened outalmost completely, except for one thing: joint adoption by a same-sex couple. Are you thinking of having children?

I'm not considering children. I can't imagine having to care for a child 24 hours a day. Frankly, I'm more comfortable with a job and a "free" life. And as for adoption - I have plenty of gay friends who have children. Close friends of mine have adopted now. So I'm not completely versed in the details.

To clarify: adoption is possible for individuals. If someone adopts alone, it's ano-brainer. The problemarises if something happens to one partner, the other is not automatically entitled to the child. Therefore, there often has to be a double adoption process, which is difficult forboth the partners and thechild.

So that's a problem, but I think it will get straightened out anyway. Everything has an evolution. Unfortunately, it takes a long time, but I believe we'll get there.

How do you view those isolated, more critical voices from the LGBT community? Take Martin Hranac, who has repeatedly said that he doesn't want marriage for all and thatthe LGBT agenda is being pushed too hard - while recently announcing that he has entered into a civil partnership. How does thisaffectyou?

Martin Hranac... First of all, I have to say I really enjoy his tiktok videos. And at the same time, he knows perfectly how to get the media's attention with his statements. He travels the country with his show, he needs the publicity and he gets it. But when I think back to VyVolené in 2006, back then a large part of the community was rather ashamed of him - for the way he behaved, how he was overly effeminate. He was exactly the kind of gay man that many people didn't want to identify with. And now? Suddenly he's the "normal gay" that straight people adore. It's a strange paradox.

Do you have a new project in the works? Something you'd like to take your work to?

I've started to enjoy the travel videos and vlogs that have been produced as collaborations, and I'm thinking about doing more of them. A lot of people have appreciated the unconventional format I've been using to film them. At the same time, I'm tempted to develop more of the transport themes - as I said, they've proved to have a great response. Today, my channel is based on infotainment videos and a "Celebrity in Driving School" format, and that's the ratio I want to adjust: instead of alternating week to week, there will be three episodes of my own work and one episode with a celebrity in driving school. The trend has reversed, and viewers are now watching more "stinkers" than celebrities, so I want to focus on those.