Sacha Stevenson, Humorist:
How to Act Indonesian

Sacha Stevenson is one of the most reviled women on the social media scene in Indonesia, with thousands of hate-mail hits to counterbalance the hundreds of thousands 'thumbs-up' she gets a week. As host of the popular How To Act Indonesian on Youtube, she sometimes takes on certain sacred cows that hit a wrong nerve for some of her subscribers. Canadian-born Stevenson has travelled extensively around Indonesia, at one time on roller blades, inspiring her to write her experience in a piece called Bule on Blades. She is a graduate of the American Open University in Islamic studies. she speaks Indonesian and Arabic. Tempo English contributing editor Debra Yatim caught up with her after her appearance at the 2014 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali recently. Excerpts:

How did you start on your merry path and become so widely known in Indonesia?

I started off treating my YouTube as a Facebook page, uploading stuff for no rhyme or reason, like you would post something on Facebook. I started getting serious when I began putting up parody; I did a parody of a pop song which I called 'BB,' making fun of how everybody in Indonesia was using the BlackBerry. It became difficult for me to do it weekly because I was doing it from my kost (rented room) and had to wait till deep at night to do it. After a while, I came up with the idea to do very, very simple sketches about Indonesian daily life. They would only take me a couple of hours, and I could upload them once a week.

Did you do that like a diary, or what? Why?

November 18, 2014