Norman Kochanowski

This article is about the portrayer. You may be looking for the parody character.

Norman Kochanowski
Gender	Male ♂
Born	May 29, 1991 (age: 32)
Characteristics
Nickname(s)	Angry German Kid, Keyboard Crusher, Echter Gangster, Leopold Slikk (in parodies), Hercules Beatz
Parody Information
Appeared	Various
Personal Status
Notable For	making satirical videos of stereotypical people

“Hello, my alias is Slikk. I am 14 years old and come from the Bergisches Land. Because I've been bullied at school, etc., I don't want to give any further information about myself.”

―Norman Kochanowski (translated from source )

“Actually, I just wanted to make my humor available on the WWW and see how the others react to it. Because my videos were so well received, I just made more. Over 1500 people added me to ICQ, they were real groupies ... the majority of the video viewers understood my humor, the others who didn't understand the humor insulted me in the worst possible way. That's why I don't make videos anymore. I did not have a specific intention to mediate with my videos.”

―Norman Kochanowski (translated from source above)

Norman Kochanowski (Mostly known as Leopold Slikk in parodies) is a German internet creator, who is the portrayer and the real-life counterpart of the main protagonist in the Angry German Kid universe, Leopold Slikk. He is mostly known as the Angry German Kid or Keyboard Crusher. In the German-speaking internet, he is primarily known as Der Echte Gangster (The Real Gangster), due to Leopold's constant claims to be one, which can be seen on the videos.

His most known creation is "PC Spielen" (PC play) made in 2005 in which his character wants to play Unreal Tournament, but gets really angry and starts to smash his keyboard, either due to his computer loading the game too slow, or by getting killed while playing. Norman gained popularity for this skit after he sent it to his local television station, Focus TV, with most viewers misunderstanding the video , implying that he is mentally deranged. He is also known by other YouTubers who made parodies of the character he portrayed in his videos.

History

Early life

Norman Kochanowski was born on 29 of May 1991 in Bergisches Land, Germany. His parents are Polish, however he considers himself German and has only German citizenship. Besides his native German, he is fluent in Polish and also speaks English.

Early Videos

Norman's main style is to make satirical videos of stereotypical people (wannabe gangsters and game addicts). His 1st video was him speaking that he is a real gangster and then saying a few ridiculous things that "prove" that he is, for example, when he eats a bag of Potato crisps loudly and messily. He also revealed his "real" name: Leopold Slikk , although it was revealed to not be true. Norman's 2ndvideo was also of this kind. His 3rd and fourth 4th was Metaler, where Norman acts like a person who likes metal music and Karten Spielen where he attempts to play cards with his toys, but he kills them instead.

PC Spielen

Many people think that the "Angry German Kid" video was the first video Norman has published, but it was actually the 5th. That video was actually called PC spielen. It has been first posted in a now-defunct URL "slikk.de.vu", which is seen in the first 4 seconds of the video, as well as on "slikk.de".

As of March 2022, the earliest surviving upload found on YouTube is from March 22, 2006, titled "Ausraster Vorm PC!!!!", and has a "shown on Filecabi.net" watermark. It was not until September 20, 2006, when the name "Angry German Kid" was titled over the person in the video, Leopold, by another version of the video titled "Angry German Kid" by another YouTube user named jwfis10690, with 6.1 million views as of March 2022, and the "all4humor.com" watermark. The video has also been uploaded to other video platforms. Before YouTube, it is possibly confirmed that "PC Spielen" was actually made in 2005.

The video centers on a supposedly mental boy abusing his computer for its slow loading times and later in the video, him losing in Unreal Tournament. He goes to great lengths of abuse such as laughing maniacally, smashing his keyboard, having some of its keys fall out by it, the boy has his own abnormal mental problems such as shouting frequently if unnecessarily and everything more. At the end, he starts to smash his keyboard after he loses the game, then starts to screams out from the hidden computer monitor and finally runs out of the room. At the end, the sound track "Tokara Forest" from Unreal Tournament 2004 plays from the computer's speakers.

Popularity and subsequence

Despite mostly negative reception, PC Spielen had been one of the most popular internet memes. Numerous versions having been seen over a million views on YouTube and parodies spawned of the eponymous person and using him as a character for entirely new videos. Viewers had often criticized the nature of the actor, Leopold, from the video, as they believed that the video is like a footage despite it being purely an act of entertainment.

Subtitles are frequently added as PC Spielen is primarily in German, having been derived from a German website. Some which had attempted to translate it to English as it had reached to multilingual yet primarily English video sharing sites such as YouTube. Some of which are used to produce dialogue for satirical Angry German Kid videos, using Leopold's voice to generate it.

In his sixth video, he sings and so forth. He also made action videos with his friends, including the first debut Jake Randolf. The most famous of these being Die Mörderische Jagd 2, where Leopold and Jake got into a gun battle against Fucktucker!991 (Dave Tucker).

Doubts

There are many doubts regarding Norman. One is why Norman made PC Spielen and one is when it was uploaded.

Norman agreed to give the rights to his video to Focus TV, a German news network. They made up a backstory but said that Norman was mentally ill and is undergoing treatment. Norman obviously didn't like this, but he continued. The backstory goes a little like this: a father secretly recording his angry son playing his favorite violent video game.

In Know Your Meme, there are some people claiming that PC spielen was actually related to a school shooting in Emsdetten, Germany in November 2006, where one man was killed. Some other people claim that PC spielen was uploaded in 2002, which is related to a shooting in Erfurt in 2002, where 17 people were killed. Some people also claimed that at the gunman's house the police found: Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft and so forth. This might be what Norman wanted to parody.

However, the Emsdetten shooting actually happened after PC Spielen was uploaded. The earliest AGK video was uploaded to Youtube in around February to April 2006. The earliest archives about AGK were also in 2006. And there is no evidence that there were games found in the gunman's house, as well as this is the reason Leopold made PC Spielen. Therefore, we were neither able to tell why Norman made the PC Spielen video nor when PC Spielen was actually uploaded. The video was actually made in the year 2005 but is currently unknown when it got uploaded on the internet.

Sudden disappearance and return

Around Late 2007/Early 2008, all signs of activity from Norman... quite faded away, there wasn't any new videos produced, either one of his well known or gangster videos or just a simple filler, the website that hosted most of his videos, Hodenmumps.net slowly started to stop updating to the point of fading to obscurity. During this time, most of Leopold's videos were posted on YouTube, either by other German users or KeyboardCrasherTV. Leopold started getting more known as an internet character because of his videos being posted in more public websites or either the AGK meme as a whole. During this dormancy, people started questioning where he was at the moment, even to the point of people making rumors of him committing suicide. However, around January 12th 2018, Leopold decided to show his face once again after many years , making it obvious that his appearance has changed . As of now, Norman goes now under the username of Hercules Beatz , his official channel where he makes and composes his own rap music. On some occasions, he makes videos similar to his content back in the 2000s.

Post PC spielen

According to Norman, his fame did him more harm than good. As a result, he used to be bullied by other students and mocked in the streets of his hometown. In 2008, Norman got drunk on a school trip to Amsterdam and said he was going to shoot several students at school with the gun he had at home. His words were recorded by another student and shown to a teacher, who then called the police on him, but also on his parent's house. For this incident, he was expelled from school and sentenced to 14 days in juvenile hall and 250 hours of community service. Eventually Norman graduated high school and decided to cut his ties with everyone he knew and spent two years unemployed, leaving home only for gym or groceries. By the age of 19, he got over 2 meters tall (ca. 6'7) and weighed 125 kg (275 lbs), but in two years he dropped 20 kg and even found job and a girlfriend. He claims that due to his stature barely anyone has managed to provoke him ever since. In 2012 he started working for Microsoft, but he also became a drug addict and would get high for a week, which led to him being fired. Then he started working for another company, but claims that he hated the job. After a year, Norman was fired once again, and remained jobless for 3 years. Around 2017 he came back to Youtube as Herculez Beats and focused on creating rap music. In 2018 he tried methamphetamine for the first time and claims that after taking it he saw the devil, which led him to become a practicing Christian. In 2021 Norman suffered two personal tragedies - his 16-years-old dog died before his eyes but also he found his girlfriend to be unfaithful and broke up with her. Both these events led to his depression. In a video made in 2023 for his Polish fans, he says that his life is going well as he got a new dog named Annabelle, but also a new girlfriend. He claims that faith in God made a major contribution in helping him to get back on track.

In Parodies

Main article: Leopold Slikk#Personality

Archives

• A now-deleted Chinese Wikipedia article regarding AGK; July 15th, 2014
• http://www.freshbeatz.net/news/slikk.php; March 13rd 2006
• Angry German Kid's Real Information, 2015
• Norman Discussing With Counterstrike.de (Translated To English), November 2009

Trivia

• Some people claim that Leopold has a middle name: Andreas. It is probably a reference to the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
• Some people confused his hair color for black or brown in the original video.
• There is a Korean keyboard company named after Leopold, founded in 2006.
• Norman was actually acting to show the effects of people playing violent video games.
• His last name is "Kochanowski", which means that he has some Polish descent. Moreover, he can speak German, Polish, and English.
• Vocal samples of Norman can be heard in multiple songs, the first being Alligatoah’s Counterstrikesong. Other notable songs include Skrillex’s My Name Is Skrillex, M4Sonic’s Relapse, and most recently BTS’s Not Today.
• Norman liked MTGSC, it is still unknown to this day.
• Norman has a pet dog named Andy (AKA Leopold the Dog) who passed away in November 12, 2021, 3 days after his birthday.
• Norman's former real channels were Slikk900 or Slikk9000, DerOwnende and Cochan91. Now he currently has a new Youtube channel which is Slikk Hercules AGK.
• Norman's younger version represents a little bit of Norman Price from Fireman Sam as he also has red hair and the same name