Welcome to Youtube
It’s the summer of 2006 and my 13th birthday is coming up. We’re in a holiday resort in Spain, and my friend has joined us on the trip. The lobby is a relic of the 80s with horrible carpets, flickering lights and stains from tourists falling in from the bar summer after summer. My friend and I sat down at an old computer every evening to pass the time while our parents drank and sang karaoke.
He showed me so many silly videos that proved seminal to my early infatuation with the internet. There was The Ultimate Showdown — a song with an accompanying cartoon about a battle between a bunch of different heroes, monsters and villains from all sorts of franchises. From Godzilla to Mr. Rogers, we just thought this was the catchiest thing we had ever heard. Brilliantly, the accompanying cartoon had so many references in it that we had it on repeat, constantly stopping to point out something new.
From there I was introduced to SMOSH. Ian and Anthony have gone on to do all sorts of content in the years since, even going through the journey of splitting up after selling the rights to their name and, now, coming full circle and creating shorts as a duo again. We rocked out to their lip-syncs of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Pokémon themes — over and over again. While not the subject of this post, my friend also introduced me to Newgrounds and the wealth of flash games available at our fingertips. The games were mostly garbage, but the wealth of choice on both Newgrounds and YouTube really changed the way I accessed content for the rest of my life. That trip to Spain was genuinely a turning point in how I spent my time and how I accessed the things I enjoy.
SMOSH were nearly ever-present for many years — I especially loved their somewhat annual Food Battles. I also quickly picked up a list of channels that I would watch regularly: Toby Turner, Seananners, PeteDorr, TVandLust, =3, Yogscast with their Shadow of Israphel… the list really does go on and on.
An interest in Red vs Blue led me to Rooster Teeth, which led to the wonderful Let’s Play channel. I remember every single Friday I would be shaking with excitement to have my breast of chicken curry, diced no onions with chips from Red Rice and sit down with the latest Minecraft Let’s Play.
It’s difficult now, obviously, that so much reality has hit with regards to some of these above-mentioned creators. Toby Turner had an avalanche of accusations made against him and largely disappeared from the limelight. Rooster Teeth as a whole fell apart, but the well-documented revelations about Ryan Haywood make it very hard for me to revisit that era. It is difficult to separate the behind-the-scenes actions from the feelings we had at the time, but I’m not going to lie and say that those creators didn’t have a huge influence on me as a teenager. It’s such a shame to have to make these caveats.
Egoraptor — who Sarah and I now watch often as part of the Game Grumps — released a handful of videos in his Sequelitis series, and Super Bunnyhop released his various Critical Close-Up videos for Metal Gear. I still revisit these regularly, as the way they approach critique is very inspiring. These videos paved the way for modern channels like Game Maker’s Toolkit and Noah Caldwell‑Gervais and helped shape how I approach my own writing and thinking about narrative design in games.
There’s a creator by the name of Craig who used the alias TVandLust for many years on YouTube. For years, he uploaded videos about his gaming collection and had a podcast talking about games with some friends. I loved seeing his collection grow, and I think his approach to content had a cosy feel to it that is probably more appreciated now than it was in early YouTube. He has a particular love for the DS and 3DS that I’ve grown to share with him over the past few years and, last year, he started a newsletter that I really enjoyed reading while he was actively writing it. It was actually the catalyst for this website. It’s very meaningful to me that some of these creators have been present for so much of my life and, as they evolve and do different things, sometimes I find myself evolving with them.
Similarly, Pete Dorr and his record-breaking Sonic collection and encyclopaedic knowledge of retro games have been a huge part of my life for many years now. His “Games I Bought Recently” videos were the reason I always documented my Comic Con hauls and, recently, he had a heart attack at a very young age. Thankfully he seems to have recovered well and has returned to making videos and streaming, but it was a reminder that we’re both getting older and, again, has influenced me to try to take better care of myself and to better use the time that I have.
In the same vein, Billy from the Game Chasers lost his battle with cancer recently. It was devastating news for so many. If any creator had come close to replicating the excitement I had for those Friday night Minecraft Let’s Plays, it was the Game Chasers. Their adventures hunting for retro games across America will be a mainstay for comfort rewatches for the rest of my life. I have a signed DVD of season one proudly on display in my game room, and I feel blessed to have been along for that journey with them all the way back to episode one. “What’s wrong with these guys?”
Today, YouTube has become an ad‑obsessed, algorithm‑focused, instant‑gratification nightmare with the introduction of shorts, longer ads and continuous changes to visibility for creators. It has made finding new creators more difficult and pushed others to platforms like Nebula, Twitch and Patreon. Nowadays, I don’t always get the same enjoyment out of the platform, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still see creators producing incredible content.
Super Eyepatch Wolf — an Irish creator — makes incredible longform videos about a wide range of topics. His deep dives into the story of Cody Rhodes, the Golden Lovers, fake martial arts, Garfield and The Simpsons are all fantastic pieces of work. Abigail Thorn, under the Philosophy Tube banner, has introduced me to a wealth of new topics and challenged my understanding of everything from abortion to housing. As someone who largely consumes video game content, especially when it comes to longform essays, Philosophy Tube feels important for me to avoid siloing myself.
As a special mention — and to highlight a creator whose type of content I never really delved into before — my most recent obsession has been the work of Ali Awada. He uses Blender to create short films that centre around Robert Muldoon, the game warden from Jurassic Park, in the lead-up to the events of the first book. The tension he builds in this series and the attention to detail are simply incredible. It truly feels like an extension of Crichton’s work, and I cannot get enough of it. This series has been a wonderful reminder that online creators can and will continue to evolve and surprise me.
YouTube has been a constant in my life for so many years. From Spain to sitting on the train home as I write this, listening to some lo‑fi beats. Its impact on me has been immense. Maybe I wouldn’t be writing for my website, I wouldn’t be picking up running or book‑binding, or I might have missed out on seminal gaming experiences without the necessary recommendations. Despite the ups and downs of my journey with the platform, I’m still very curious to see what the algorithm might find for me in the future.