Fewer than 40 people showed up at the international vlog Nas Daily’s Valletta meet-up on Wednesday.
Nuseir Yassin, better known by his social media and Youtube tag Nas Daily, is a vlogger who rose to fame on Facebook, where he would upload daily one-minute videos for 1,000 days.
Although Yassin wrapped up his one-minute videos in 2019, the vlogger’s Facebook page boasts over 21 million followers while his Youtube page has 11.3 million followers.
Held by one of Nas Daily’s producers Aishwarya Kumar and videographer Justin Amores, the Wednesday event saw fans of the vlogging team take photos, shake hands and recite lines for the page’s future videos.
“That’s one minute, see you tomorrow,” they shouted as Amores recorded and directed a famous line from Nas Daily’s one-minute montages.
The Nas Daily Facebook page originally promoted the event for 1pm. The time was changed to 5pm on Tuesday to allow more children and fans to attend after school or work, Kumar said.
Although the change in time was done to make the event more available, it could possibly have led to a lower turnout, she said.
"But there was still a good amount of people," she said.
Although the post clarified that only Kumar and Amores would be in the country, there was some confusion as the post referenced the team as ‘Nas Daily’, leaving some to believe that Yassim would be present.
“Where is Nas,” one fan asked Kumar.
“I thought he was here, everyone did,” they said.
At the meet, the team found a new follower in Leonard Zerafa as he asked Aish about the page and its content.
“How wholesome,” he commented as she explained the positive themes the channel aims to promote.
“Oh, my Malta!”
The last time the Nas Daily team visited Malta was in 2018 when, joined by Yassin, they made a one-minute video showing off Malta’s culture through quick snippets.
Back then, dozens of fans had made it to the meetup which spawned the phrase, “Oh, my Malta,” a term that made its rounds on social media.
At the time, Nas Daily had around 5.5 million followers on Facebook.
While on the island, Yassin had appeared on an episode of Times Talk. The influencer re-told the story of a drunk Libyan migrant hurling abuse at him in Malta.
In the episode, he said that he feared he might be accentuating the rhetoric against foreigners, when the reality was quite the opposite.
"I'm surprised that the Maltese fight each other politically so much. From an outsider's perspective, this country is incredible. Even a**holes like taxi drivers are nice after you haggle with them... Malta has been one of the most welcoming, if not the most welcoming countries we've been to,” he said in 2018.