Louis Virtel (/ˈluːɪs vɜːrˈtɛl/; born August 4, 1986) is an American television writer, comedian, pop culture commentator, and podcast host.
He first rose to prominence after appearing on a 2015 episode of Jeopardy!, where a clip of him answering a clue while emphatically snapping went viral.
[4] During this time, he also hosted the Logo webseries Weeklings!,[5] as well as a show called Verbal Vogueing that appeared on his personal YouTube channel.
[7] His success with Verbal Vogueing also led to him being hired by the entertainment website HitFix[a] to host the webseries The Snap.
[10] Though he lost the actual game to contestant Andrew Haringer, a video of Virtel aggressively snapping after correctly answering a Daily Double clue pertaining to Arthur Miller's play The Crucible quickly went viral, often being shared in the form of GIFs.
snap was used by the House Republican Conference to promote their Snapchat-based coverage of an upcoming State of the Union address, with the image captioned "#SnapOfTheUnion".
Virtel vocally disapproved of this decision, denouncing his likeness being used by the party on Twitter, in a HitFix essay, and in a Slate interview.
with excitement, self-possession, and pride has anything to do with the GOP’s ideals, and it is borderline traumatizing to see my image associated with their horrifying, regressive shambles of a party.
Every fearful, closeted kid I knew growing up in suburban Illinois had one thing in common: ignorant, blindly adherent Republican parents.
that his contributions to the 96th Academy Awards included a joke about French actor Gérard Depardieu eating his own vomit.