Some people are born in front of a camera. Jonas Flanagan was born about as far from one as you can get, 2002, Tasmania, an island of half a million people where opportunity is thin, and the smart money says you leave. He didn’t have a film school, a mentor, or a single reason to believe it would work. What he had was a laptop, a stubborn streak, and an obsession with making things that wouldn’t let him sleep. Today, the world knows him as More Parz, the wildlife creator whose short, electric, screamingly funny videos have rewired what a nature documentary is even allowed to look like, and pulled in an audience of well over 2 million followers in the process.
His rise reads like fiction. A rough childhood, a stretch of effective homelessness in his late teens, years of editing through the dark with nobody watching, and then, almost overnight, a spider video that exploded past 10 million views and pointed him straight at the thing he’d loved since he was a kid: animals. Now he covers wildlife from every corner of the planet, smuggling real science in on the back of jokes so sharp you don’t notice you’re learning until it’s already happened.
But what makes Flanagan worth watching isn’t the view counts. It’s the craft. He is, beneath the chaos editing and the gleeful titles, one of the most precise communicators working online, a one-man studio who has reverse-engineered human attention itself. We sat down with him to talk about the hard road, the editing secrets, the documentary instinct, and where a kid from Tasmania goes after he’s already conquered the algorithm. He was, predictably, a lot of fun.
You grew up in Tasmania, which you’ve called a place people leave. When did you first realise content was your way out?
Jonas Flanagan: Honestly? Long before I had any right to believe it. I had a pretty rough run as a kid, neglectful household, kicked out at sixteen, effectively homeless not long after, couch-surfing and chasing cash jobs just to put fuel in the car. It was grim. But every night, after a full day of labouring or whatever gig I’d scraped together, I’d come home and edit. At the time, there was absolutely nothing backing it other than refusal to give up what I loved. It wasn’t making me money, it wasn’t even reaching that big of an audience, but I loved it, I knew it was what I wanted to do, and for better and for worse, I am INCREDIBLY stubborn. I describe it as a north star, it kept me pointed in the right direction even when everything else was dark, even when to someone on the outside looking in It looked like I was slamming my head into a brick wall. Issue was I couldn’t get the breathing room to gain any momentum. Any time I had a step, it was immediately followed by getting shoved 3 or 4 back, funnily enough it’s a bit difficult to get work done when you don’t know if you’ll have a roof to be under next week. But I kept it in my head and clung to the idea like a life raft. If I could just work to get myself the breathing room, I could do it. And funnily enough, when I did get the space, I was right, and the skills I learned going through the worst parts of my life came in incredibly handy, so I guess it came in handy in the end
That’s a brutal stretch. What kept you from quitting?
Jonas Flanagan: Put simply, it’s all I had; there wasn’t an option. I had quite literally nothing. The idea of making this work was the only thing barely holding me together. If I entertained the Idea of quitting it likely would have been the end of me, to be honest.
Was that healthy? No, but in that scenario I didn’t really get to do healthy, I haven’t had the luxury of a safety net to fall back on, I couldn’t treat it as a maybe, I couldn’t. Content and editing were basically the tiny little piece of control I had when everything else was a crumbling mess; the one thing I COULD make sure of was that whatever I edited was the best I could do. Sure, I lost sleep over it, and I put in ridiculous hours, but that’s because it was my choice; I knew if I just did better, I could make it work; I had to, or nothing mattered. I mean, looking back on being that stubborn was a blessing, even if a lot of people thought I was a tad unhinged. And funnily enough, being stubborn paid off because when someone gave me an opportunity, I was ready to do the work to grab it and take it for or it was worth
The opportunity is Natt. Tell us about that.
Jonas Flanagan: Natt completely changed everything, and I will never forget that. I still remember the day he reached out to me for the position. I’d sent in my portfolio a week earlier, not expecting to hear back. However, lo and behold, while I am covered in mud and sweat shoulder deep in a fence post hole trying to pull out a rock with my bare hands, my phone goes off in my pocket. He did, in fact, reach out. Gave me a trial, and instead of responding with the expected single edit, I came back with three, and he hired me on the spot. For the first time in my life, I actually made money doing what I loved, and I had the room to try new things and learn. But it wasn’t just work or money. Ian was kind enough to take me in, introduce me to new friends, and, for the first time in my life, someone who wasn’t me told me I could do it. From day one, he was telling me I had the potential to be my own creator; he encouraged it, gave me pointers on structure and timing, gave me
those little nudges where I needed them. He probably saved me at LEAST a year or two of learning. But more than that, he’s just been the best friend I could ever ask for. He’s been there through lows and pulled me out of them into highs. He’s a bloody amazing person who gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, and I am forever going to be grateful for that. It’s why he’s my manager now, because he’s about the only person I’d trust to do it
Then San Diego. People talk about that trip like it flipped a switch.
Jonas Flanagan: Yeah, the best way I can describe that is I need you to imagine you were born with a blindfold and ear muffs on for your entire life, and then someone comes up to you and goes, “Why are you wearing those?” and takes them off. I had never left the country. Natt invited me to go with them to TwitchCon, and I was so excited, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to pull together the money to go. Thankfully, some friends, who i would basically consider found family at this point, saw how much it meant to me, saw the opportunity for what it was, and said, “We’ve got it; just pay us back later”, and believe me, I did the absolute second I could because it was possibly the most consequential trip of my entire life. Getting off the plane in a different country was like getting splashed in the face with “oh, the rest of the world is a real place I can go to,” which sounds silly. And then I met my friends, got to see the con, and had a sudden realization of “oh this is real, this is a thing I can do”. It was intoxicating, meeting new people, talking to others who are doing the same work as I do, and hearing their ideas. For the first time in forever, it was a tangible real thing, and that lit one hell of a fire under me. My brain was so unbelievably wired and loud that I did not sleep a WINK on the 11hr return flight. I sat there with my face buried in a notebook, planning, scripting, pingponging ideas around in my head. I got off the plane, and instead of going to bed, I started working until I passed out, woke up, and did it again. 7 days a week, nearly 10 hours a day, and I haven’t stopped since. Once you get a taste of that, it’s addictive; you can’t let it go; you need to make it real.
And then the spider video. Did you know, in the moment, that something had changed?
Jonas Flanagan: Not in the slightest. I had no clue that was going to happen when I’d hit post. I mean, I’d had a good run leading up to it, had my first few videos creep over the million-view mark. But it was a bit of a happy accident; I’d been trying out applying my style to some different topics, and that spider is one of my favorite stories because it’s so ridiculous and INCREDIBLY Australian. To tell you the truth, I threw together that whole thing in an evening after coming back from some labor work. I was happy with it and threw it up. There was nothing for a day, and then my notifications EXPLODED, and suddenly it was over ten million; it gave me whiplash; I was over the moon. I’ve had a lot of people say it was pure luck, which I mean, they can say that it doesn’t make it true. I tend to find the harder I work, the more “pure luck” I tend to find. Luck is the opportunity presenting itself, but it’s useless if you don’t know what to do with it.
Wildlife is clearly stuck. Why does it suit you so well?
Jonas Flanagan: I mean, I have always LOVED wildlife since I was a kid. Tasmania is a beautiful place, and I am grateful to have grown up here and had so many amazing wildlife encounters. I still remember a seal blocking the road to my old place of home. I was always glued to the TV for David Attenborough and Steve Irwin, and I annoyed everyone around me with any fact I could get my hands on. I love them to bits and that’s never really left me, I considered being a vet or
zoo keeper when I was little. So when Spidey here slingshotted the channel into the stratosphere, I figured I’d be stupid not to keep going with it. Animals are fascinating; it’s an ENDLESS source of entertainment; there’s always more to teach people, more to show people. Nature is inherently insane. So, with that in mind, yeah, sometimes the universe shows you a sign that’s rather difficult to miss.
Let’s talk craft. Your titles alone, “Just a lil guy,” “That’s not a snake… IT’S A BUG”, are little works of art. What’s the secret?
Jonas Flanagan: Titles are a fun one; sometimes they’re a gimme. If something is the world’s best at what it does, it’s easy. But sometimes they aren’t quite AS easy. Titles often go neglected in shorts; you don’t often see them, but I find, especially with YouTube, it’s a great way to bring in viewers you might not otherwise. So I try to put some good time into finding a title and something that gets neglected, a decent thumbnail. If you bait the hook right- something that gives you an idea of what it is but not the whole picture, also something that’s actually true, coupled with an interesting thumbnail that makes you go “Ok what IS that I gotta see” and voila, title and thumbnail. But that’s only a small part; it deserves time and effort, but that’s just getting people in the door. You can have the best title and hook in the world, but if people hate the video, it doesn’t matter. I think a lot of emphasis is put on titles and intro hooks, which is absolutely fair, these things are incredibly important, but equally so is, yah know, the remaining 90% of the video
That mix of comedy and real science is your signature. Is that a deliberate strategy?
Jonas Flanagan: Veeeeery deliberate. People WANT to learn, humans have an innate drive to learn new things, the issue 90% of the time is the delivery system. As someone who does it for videos, I can see how reading academic texts or very plain content can be a challenge. So I took what I learned doing gaming content and applied it here, which is what makes it stand out: it’s paced differently, it’s kinda loud and chaotic. People already love learning, and now they get to do it while doing a spit take because I said something silly. It’s also great for breaking down fear around many animals. It is a LOT harder to be scared of a spider when I call it a stupid name and put it into a funny outfit, and in turn, I hope that makes people realize that a lot of these things are just like you and me. They are out here, trying to live, and we erected a whole society around and in the way of that, so when you see them, leave them in peace.
Your proudest piece isn’t a viral short, though; it’s the long-form cane toad video.
Jonas Flanagan: I loved making that video. I’d had the script rattling around in my head for so long that once I started writing it, the thing just spilled out. I loved the freedom to work with more than 3 minutes of air. It was so much fun, jokes got more time to breathe, I was able to go more in depth on certain pieces, it just FELT more complete. I poured a lot of time and effort into that, and I really loved how it turned out. I am still floored by the fact that it cleared 3 million views and INSANELY grateful for it, so I’m incredibly keen to do more. I love the short form, and I will always continue to do it, but the long form offers so much more freedom for big projects.
So what’s next? You’ve conquered the feed. Where does More Parz go from here?
Jonas Flanagan: Everywhere, ideally. I’m really want to get back into live streaming and gaming content, and I’m really keen to experiment with some more passion projects too, irl content, potentially some automotive stuff because I love my cars; I’ve got a serious run of conventions coming up: Dreamcon, TwitchCon, Anime NYC. At the last TwitchCon, I went from the editor standing in the background to people stopping me for autographs, which was complete whiplash but a hell of a lot of fun. I absolutely love actually getting to talk to and hear from people who watch my content. I wouldn’t be here without all of those people, so I actually met everyone. And the big one, I’m gonna be moving to the USA. Tasmania’s beautiful, but the industry just isn’t there, and I’m done with a twelve-hour flight standing between me and every Collaboration overseas. So I’m gonna be splitting my time between AUS and the US to make life a bit easier. It’s a weird whiplash going from I can’t afford groceries to I’m moving countries. But I love my work, and I’d be stupid not to keep pushing. I’ve been given the opportunity of a lifetime, and I don’t intend to waste it. I’m just getting started.
Follow Jonas Flanagan, More Parz, on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where over two million people have already figured out that wildlife has never, ever been this fun.
