That's Ka-blamo!

It isn’t easy for an individual comic to make it in TV—even as a writer—but it’s even harder for a preassembled team.

Sure enough, the threesome quickly ran up against all the usual barriers in their hunt for work in Hollywood.

However, rather than subject themselves to endless rejection, the three took their act—now named after their home—online. Borrowing some video gear, the Lonely Island crew started producing short-form comedy videos and songs. Schaffer’s kid brother Micah—a tech consultant and Internet agitpropster—threw together their Web site, thelonelyisland.com, in 2001.

The Lonely Islanders started with white-boy rap music videos, presented with signature deadpan humor.

One of the first videos was about things that are “ka-blamo!” (as in, “You kissed Shannen Doherty”) and things that aren’t (“I majored in pottery”). As is sometimes the case for such amusing ephemera, the video circulated widely on the Internet.

At one point, a Dutch DJ “mashed” it up (mixed it with other video footage), further boosting its popularity.

Soon more videos and fan mashups followed, something the group encouraged by releasing their videos under a Creative Commons license that freely permitted creative reuse.

In just a few years, the Lonely Island was “Internet famous,” which is to say they were big with the demographic that has traded its TV time for online time, constantly surfing the contours of online subculture.