Siswanto recording one of his videos at his home in a farming community in Banyuwangi. Siswanto was a down-on-his-luck mechanic until his improbable pivot to Internet videos turned his neighbours into stars and vaulted his poor farming community into the limelight as Indonesia’s ‘YouTube Village’. — AFP
BANYUMAS, Indonesia: Siswanto was a down-on-his-luck mechanic until his improbable pivot to Internet videos turned his neighbours into stars and vaulted his poor farming community into the limelight as Indonesia’s “YouTube Village”.
The rags-to-riches tale begins four years ago as he struggled to keep his auto shop business afloat in Kasegeran – a remote town in Java that most Indonesians would struggle to find on a map.
