Community Discussion Type Thing #171 - Why Did I Subscribe To This?!

Community Discussion Type Thing #171
Why Did I Subscribe To This?!​

I've been having a really hard time of it recently as my latest scree in blog form can attest to and I'm coming towards half-way through my trial by fire as a student with four sizable deadlines in only a handful of months. I've shot down two projects so far and the home stretch is in sight. Looming terrifyingly in the distance like a brick wall I have to dismantle before I'm allowed over the finish line...

When I come home after a long day of staring at a screen of text, the first thing I do to just unwind and blow off some steam is to put on YouTube and play something. Thanks to PSN, which I brought after getting angry with Tales of Berseria (not because it's hard but because the main character rubs me up the wrong way, the miserable brat), I've been enjoying Bloodborne for the first time. Meanwhile, my phone plays all the latest from my subscriber list. Or that same H.Bomberguy video on Sherlock or something...

But it's while doing this that I realised just how many channels I have. And how many of them I have no earthly right or sound logic for subscribing to. Channels who's concepts and content are so antithetical to what you'd call entertainment that you'd think I'd avoid it, but I've watched them anyway. I've registered my interest as a fan and I'm fully aware it's not 100% clear why.

Friendly Jordies​

I don't think I should have any idea who Friendly Jordies is. Frankly, 9 times out of 10 he's got nothing to say that's in any way relevant to me and my current situation. Jordan Shank is an Australian Satirist that works out of YouTube to take the ever-loving mickey out of both the culture around him and the actions of his government. And I can't stop watching them.

I was introduced to Friendly Jordies by long-time on-off staff member and friend of the sight Berry Punch, who is our version of Gandalf. If Gandalf was Australian himself and his choice of colour was "Who cares! I've got a beer and mates. What's not to love?". He put me onto this strange little channel and I finished the whole lot in a day or two.

Jordan's low-tech videos is made up with surreal comedy skits with characters I can't help but try and do the voices of. It's like Little Kuriboh, you can't just enjoy the voices. You have to try them on for size. On top of that, the sense of humour and ideas on display carry what is still a guy mugging to the camera with a collection of wigs. It's such a lurid world he creates with nothing but stuff around his house and a dress or two.

For example, this is his version of Malcolm Turnbull, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.
He's depicted as an 18th Century Fop with only interest in himself and what he can do to ensure
he remains rich and powerful. ​

I also find that I like to learn stuff I'm interested in while I watch stuff. It's why I like channels like LGR or H.Bomberguy or Armoured Skeptic or Your Movie Sucks or Attop The Fourth Wall. I like to chill out and garner knowledge I think I'll enjoy or find useful somehow. And I want to work in games so a lot of it certainly would from that line up.

Jordan, on the other hand, talks about Australian Politics. That has no relevance to me whatsoever in the UK. I suppose I can apply some of the lessons learned there as Jordan's depiction of Australia is a desolate wasteland being ruined by the greedy and the stupid. But I can't help but realise that I know more about Australian politics than those of my own country and I've been trying to turn that around for a while.

Maybe I should try to watch Johnathan Pie more. People with 'J' in their name that shout into cameras seem to be working out for me so far...

Tech Moan​

So, I think I've made it quite clear that I'm a rather big nerd, my hopeful medium to make and create is the Computer Game and finally, I obviously like technology. So, a channel like Lazy Game Reviews or ProJared or anything like that all make perfect sense for me. Even Super Butter Buns makes some vague sense though mostly because she sounds like she's having a blast making every video.

Why do I watch some random guy play around with outdated technology that I'm not only too young to remember but also should not be interested in because it's not anywhere near my chosen field of any study?! Other channels I can explain with 'I like games, I'm studying to make games, so it stands to reason that I should watch videos about games I might know know about'.

I watch reviewers to get a cliffnotes version of a game I might not ever finish myself. I watch in-depth dissections and thought pieces and yet here I am listening to this northern bloke parade a collection of cassette tapes around in front of a camera. Or talk at length about in car-cameras. I don't drive, I don't know how. Why am I watching this?

Maybe because it's well done. He's just relaxed and anecdotal about how he found this thing then proceeds to plod through the history of it, what it was used for, how it works and why it's no longer used today. And it's pretty engaging for something so basic. He's not full of jokes or wacky hijinks (except for the puppets he has that occasionally close out videos (yes, really)), it's just you and his lecture on this piece of recent history in front of you.

I admit to liking the bits with the puppets. Usually the joke is quite good, it's just not the best acted.
Though, the joke is usually cringeworthy to the point of a hernia.​

Sometimes its an antique record player. Sometimes it's a long dead media format no-one's heard of before. Sometimes it's a collection of niche items that only very select people will be interested in due to their particular needs or interests but are being made even today (like Nixie Tube...everything apparently).

But the one thing that sticks out in my brain is the Milton Bradly OMNI Entertainment System. This is something more up my street than music equipment or random tat or how laser disks work. It's an ancient Games Console that uses 8-Track carts to play games. This is a console from the 1980's so games either came on a cartridge or they came on a tape and tapes were often cheaper. Even if they took an age to load properly. This thing worked with these tape 'cassettes' to read in a game, play recorded words and then tally up scores as you went. It's pretty impressive for technology that's only a few steps up from an Etch-a-Sketch. The most interesting game available (because what Brit would care about Jeopardy outside of the Weird Al song?) is a movie trivia game with none other than Vincent Price asking the questions. Very cool!

Despite all this, I couldn't explain this to anyone without showing them it.

"What are you watching?"
"A guy talk about movies recorded on vinyl records and how they work."
"I wasn't paying attention to the end of that sentence because it didn't involve beards, cats or jumpscares. You enjoy your boring northern man, I'm going to watch exciting things like people being kicked in the shins for science!"

I don't think anyone would get it is my point.

Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer​

My music tastes are eclectic and weird. Mostly, I like rock. Lots of hard rock is good for me, from all across time. Sometimes I'll find a little pocket of stuff I quite like that I'm surprised by and mine it for fun. For example, when Gotye got popular with 'Somebody That I Used to Know', I checked out the rest of this discography. I discovered plenty about his work that I really liked, especially this empationed and passive-aggressive screed against call-centers. When I first saw the Wintergatan Marble Machine video, I checked out the rest of their songs too and they now sit pride of place in my 'Usual' playlist on Spotify that loops round while I work. This also happened to a couple genres that seemed to become somewhat linked by one individual: Steampunk and Chap-Hop. And I am unironically a fan of both.

Steampunk, the musical genre, is mostly what you expect: anachronistic mix of old and new instrument arrangements that often discuss ideas or topics to do with machines or the sort of things H.G Wells or Jules Verne would write about. Mad inventors, people toiling to generate power for their city in a steam powered plant, working as a chain gang or even the minute sensations, thoughts or feelings that travel through an artificial creatures head as they wake up for the first time. Bands like The Cog Is Dead and Steam-Powered Giraffe have given me plenty of music to enjoy I never would have thought to consider investigating.

And then there's Professor Elemental, a man that bridges the gap between Chap-Hop and Steampunk. The Professor is probably most well known for his decree of britishness but it's his diss track against Mr B that introduced me to our next subject of awkward appreciation.

I think this is what the rest of the world thinks a punch up between two Brits is like.
Not true, not all of us can grow as nice a 'tash. Otherwise spot on.​

Chap Hop, according to Mr B himself, is something of a revolt against the tenants of mainstream hip-hop and rap that seem to say it has to be edgy, all about gangsters, money and having all the women in the world within a moment of snapping your fingers. With few exceptions, it's full of people naming the expensive things in their house or all the places they've been before the music ends. Acts of cruelty or of greed appear common place.

Chap Hop says to keep it 'unreal'. Write about adventures, rap about bizzare ideas or things that interest you. Don't be shackled down by banality and reality when you can do anything you like with the verse set to music. Yet it seems like it's rare anything strays from the norm. Meanwhile, Professor Elemental as a fantastic song about what to do to ensure you can survive his attic and Mr B explains what all the sizes of champagne are and how big each one is in a catch little guide on how to get drunk at a royal function.

They're fun. Now, I'd still struggle to explain why I'm subbed to any channel of the acts I've mentioned but I'd find it extra hard to explain why I'm subbed to Mr B's as all of his best stuff isn't there. At all. The stuff worth listening to is on his albums which is a particularly crying shame, except for 'Just Like A Chap' (that's fun). The stuff left is either not great or just humdrum. The best on there is 'Hip-Hop Was To Blame After All' which might be divisive for any scholars on the subject, if not give a sample of why I like this stuff.

Still, I'd recommend the album Can't Stop, Shan't Stop for anyone bored or disinterested in rap or hip-hop like I was till I stumbled on this stuff.

Also, I have a lecturer that's got just as good a mustache too.

Antoine Delak​

(Strong Warning of Swearing and Risque Content in this Channel. It's Weird as All Hell On There So Sensitive Minds Should Not Watch Ye have been warned.)

Do you remember GMod Animation? That thing that everyone and their mother was doing for a while and now seems to have died down? Or maybe it's just the channels I follow for this bizarre retooling of Valve game assets into stop-motion armatures have all slowly died. Animation on YouTube is difficult at the best of times but Antoine Delak has kept going.

And he might be one of the best among those I've seen.

This French (citation needed) animator has created some stunningly well made videos where the level of fluidity of each and every action rivals that of Source Filmmaker. And yet I'm certain it's GMod, but only barely.

Pictured (???) here in a manner that's mocking you more than you can mock it.​

However, it's also the most anarchic and strange collection of short films you'll ever see in the genre. I think they're hilarious but I also recognise that a lot of them are utterly bizarre. The crowning achievement of this channel is 'Gorgeous Freeman': a parody of the Half-Life game's story that takes the story burned in everyone's minds then tranfigures it into a Ren and Stimpy cartoon about Wallace Breen's never ending quest to make Gordon Freeman rear-end all his. The exagerated-homoerrotisism makes this surreal enough to make either hard to gauge how people will react. Some jokes don't land and some of it is just stupid but the stuff that hits me gets me every time.

My favourite and the one thing I could recommend to others as it's the most..."normal" is the OnePlays Animated: The Gameboy Creepypasta. Mostly because the visual gags Delak lands with the material make the narration spot on. He captures the humour in the poor, overly literal writing of the Creepypasta perfectly to make something weird but very funny.

But why can't I explain why I watch this? There's a part where Gorgeous Freeman's arse absorbs an entire train and then releases it again so he can kill a bunch of Combine soldiers. There's a video about the Spy requesting a spanking from the other TF2 characters. There is a video where the Heavy won't help because he's taking too many selfies. How can you gauge who would watch that other than throw it at people and see who likes what? Honestly?

What exactly do you expect from an image like this exactly? I'm interested to know
as it might bring us closer to understanding madness itself.​

And that is that. That's a few of the weird crap I watch or listen to on a regular basis but that brings me to my question: do you have a YouTube Channel you can't explain why you're Subbed to? I genuinely want to know because I want to find more weird channels to fuel my bizarre benders through the Internet. Because at this point, YouTube and Netflix have replaced TV for me. I don't have a TV Licence (a thing in the UK were you pay a small amount to be allowed to receive free Television Channels and pay for the BBC) because the TV I've seen doesn't interest me in the slightest. But the stuff I've found online, for better and for worse, keeps me far more interested.

So, please! What do you watch or suddenly remember you're Subscribed to but can't give a good reason why? Maybe I'll let all that Outside Xbox go to my head and make another one of these but with all your suggestions and what I think of them. That could be cool.

Recommended Reading

Right! Egotism out the way first. Blam! Blog Post update on where I've been for a few months. Short version is that I've been busy and burnt out on Coursework. Computer Game Programming isn't easy!

@Poisonous Nightmare, regular on the Recommended Reading list and Faithful Blogger discusses this achingly pretty and devastatingly dark depiction of Queen Chrystalis after a near fatal battle. It's...pretty touching. Check out the link at the top. We've also got topics such as Net Neutrality In the US and how a US Senator is Blocking Net Neutrality From Happening. Net Neutrality is that thing that stops companies from screwing over customers and making the Internet work for them to force you to use approved services by throttling competitors. It's a big deal.

We've got Season 8 shenanigans to talk about, including a Pinkie and The Brain Parody I giggled at when I flicked through. I am so behind on MLP it's no longer funny.

@Lioconvoy asks the simple question: Do we need Daylight Savings anymore? I'm of the opinion we don't but then again, I'm basically nocturnal so I'm not sure it effects me in the way it's supposed to.

I'm going to shout out to @Rockout E. Stringer, who's still making comics about his gender-flipping OC. And this one made me giggle, so it did.

@EccentricBrony is looking for a singer.

@Non Sequitor Madness brings us a little news from recent award ceremonies for movies. For the good, we have the Academy Awards where The Shape of Water and Coco won awards. For the bad, we have the Razzies where The Emoji Movie and Fifty Shades Darker both snagged prizes. Sort of failing hard enough to be recognised for it, really.

@Veil is asking about Monster Hunter World. Can anyone tear themselves away from the animation of Cats preparing food to answer?

Like adorable Masterchef​

@MorphinBrony is talking about Doki Doki Literature Club which seems like an adorable and pleasant dating sim game. I've heard it's popular, I guess people love the cute characters so much they can't help but talk about it.

No, I haven't played it yet.

Anyway, time for me to hibernate until morning where I have to mash my head against a keyboard until little pixels and numbers jump around the screen TO MY EVERY WHIM! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Good night.