Internet killed the media star!

It was 2005.  I started an internship.  I just got a taste of what a relationship felt like for once, and....gone.  Video games were still my top hobby.  Pro wrestling started to lose its luster with the WWE leaving me disappointed but intrigued, TNA being practically non-existent, and ROH not even fully on my radar.  And, my laptop computer had become my best means of entertainment and connection to the outside world.  With so many hours in a day, one has to find new means of entertainment.  Enter...the Internet video age.


Now, when I first got into the internet, my video watching days were limited.  It was all about watching WWE entrance videos and previews of games that I was interested in obtaining.  I still remember waiting all of those hours for WCW/NWO: Revenge, going mostly on videos from IGN.  I became very familiar with the various video formats.  MPG, AVI, MOV, WMV, and yes, even RM (who doesn't remember RealMedia if you're my age) were the formats of choice and expectation.  If it was downloadable, I was all over it.  I had to see it in motion, especially since my television didn't really have access to this stuff.  But, come 2005, that was all going to change with the advent of YouTube.


YouTube.  What more can be said about this creation?  I started as a one-stop shop for short videos of created content and video files of various media being converted to fit on this massive website.  Forget embedding videos of various sizes.  Forget going to FTP serves and IRC chats to upload files.  If you wanted to see it, it could be made available to you via Youtube.  The restrictions were much different back then, only allowing for 10 minutes of maximum video time and no real content filter.  Fast forward to today, and now you have videos ranging from 10 minutes to 10 hours, play lists of videos that you can put together, uploads of some of the rarest videos out there, hefty restrictions on content due to their nature or copyright laws, and now, varying amounts of playback quality.  This was a paradise for the computer lover who had his or her buns planted firmly on a seat, looking to be amused without having to do all that work to do it.


Before long, various other formats and websites came into play.  Windows Media still had its video players as did Apple with QuickTime.  Real Media has practically gone the way of the Dodo, specifically due to the lack of playback quality.  Now, you had DailyMotion making a move, along with Vimeo and a slew of others.  It went from uploading videos for saving and downloading to uploading videos for the sake of putting them on Youtube.  To me, this was my new paradise.    Now, as we get into the heart of the matter, let me tell you what I used to watch...and how I used to watch it.


First, there was the tumultuous styling of Team Tiger Awesome.  It seemed like three guys from a random part of the U.S., recording different projects and ideas to upload for your viewing and comedic pleasure.  It wasn't until I saw their video series, 28 Day Slater, that the bug had bit.  I fondly remembered watching "Saved by the Bell" for many years, in reruns and originals.  But, for someone to parody the show in a way by making a series about how Mario Lopez turns into A.C. Slater for the whole of February was not just funny to me, it was original.  I waited patiently and eagerly for the series' climax, day after day, week after week.  Once I saw every episode, I decided to download every one of them to watch as many times as I can.  I didn't know it then, but my video watching hobby was about to become an obsession.


Soon after this, I looked online for more videos to watch that may or may not have been interesting.  This is when I encountered The Game Overthinker.  I discovered this video series through another set of videos from Screwattack.com.  This was a website, utilizing a term from Metroid to put out their videos and media pertaining to any and all video games.  After watching the Game Overthinker's first episode, I was hooked.  Here we have a gamer who has at least one or two things in common with my thoughts about current gaming.  It was like, he was speaking directly to me with his ideas.  I was hooked, and boy, was I not letting go.  Since Screwattack gave me one cool video with this guy, specifically as a user submission, I figured there was more.  Next thing you know, if it was connected to Screwattack in any way, I was watching it.  It didn't matter if it was a top 10, a Vault entry, the Angry Video Game Nerd, Captain S, Nametags, or Hard News.  Screwattack had me.  Was there more?  Could there be more?  There was....


Next thing you know, I was cruising around online for the various web shows, with YouTube as my main starting point.  I found many a website and many a show.  RetrowareTV was like Screwattack, only a little more professional.  I thank the video, The Gaming Historian, for that as his knowledge of gaming history had me very interested.  There was also The Game Heroes, a rival page to Screwattack, with former members running that site.  Botchamania was always welcome, because laughing at the mistakes of other wrestlers made me feel much better about myself.  But, the real attention grabber, the big kahuna, the earner of all of my attention, ended up starting with one man...who remembered it so you don't have to.  I'm talking about the Nostalgia Critic.


It started simple enough.  He had quick videos about movies he's seen in theaters like Transformers.  Then, it morphed into reviewing old movies that he had seen over the years.  He had no problem cutting the movies apart on an artistic level and an entertainment level.  Nothing was safe.  After having most of his videos banned on YouTube due to copyrights, he took matters into his own hands by making his own website with Blip as his new video provider.  Soon enough, the Nostalgia Critic was joined by a host of other video producers, creating an actual Internet television network of shows for the pleasure of the fans who would watch them.  The name of the site: That Guy With The Glasses.  Clever.


And, it is with this site that my video watching jumped up from hobby to obsession.  I would watch this site for its videos just to kill time.  Then, one entertaining video after another, and now, I'm hooked.  I would develop a morning ritual of turning on my computer and watching every video either before I left for work, or turning on my computer after work while eating something.  I even went as far as to watch these videos at work, despite the content.  I would make sure to watch these videos anytime I had a free moment.  It was my escape from the world.  I got to laugh at how bad the content they were reviewing was.  We're talking horror movies, old movies, independent movies, comics, video games, anime, board games, and whatnot.  If it was part of "nerd culture", it was covered on this site.  Then, the producers started to do crossovers, and my heart was now aflutter.  I was definitely interested and would be for years.  My vested interest with this website from 2007 or so up until December of 2013.  I did it all when it came to this website.  I got the DVDs.  I watched the videos religiously.  I donated money.  Heck, the key reason I went to MAGFest was to meet these people in person and try to befriend them.  I staked my interests, thoughts, opinions on whatever they said.  It wasn't until my wife asked me why I was watching a review video or two on things that I did like when I already know how I felt about it.  It was on the movie "The Crow".  I guess I wanted to see if their opinion was the same as mine, along with just be generally entertained by what they said.  However, at that time, my interest in the website started to wane.  The opinions shared by the reviewers started to sound very repetitive.  Also, their views and mine weren't shared on a lot of levels.  It became pretty offensive to me.  And to top it off, I got bored by watching it among other videos.  I just couldn't bear it anymore.   So, I said goodbye to the site once and for all that winter.  But, that wouldn't be the end of it.


After that site, I started to see the effect videos had on me.  I started to see how isolated I was getting when it came to these videos.  Sure, there was no more TGWTG for me, but I still held on to Retroware TV, Botchamania, Screwattack, and now new videos from Nathan Barnatt, 3V, Game Grumps, Continue?, and even any video updates from my favorite wrestling organizations like CHIKARA, Dragon Gate USA, EVOLVE, and the like.  I figured that if I don't subscribe anymore, and just watch at my leisure instead of religiously, I could get free of it all and it won't make a difference.  However, the more I watched, the more tired I got of seeing and hearing the same things over and over again.  I also got tired of waiting for new content and if the new content was or was not going to be offensive.  Throw in the fact that I was neglecting my wife on numerous levels, and I began to cleanse my pallet of these videos.


I did try again in the summer to see which videos were worth hanging on to.  The new standard video was now from WatchMojo.com.  They would make lists about different parts of pop culture and, based on voting, which ones ruled the roost among the fans.  I stayed with that for a while to pass the time, but in the end, it was no different than what I was watching before.  As of right now, I only watch a handful of video types.  It's either video game walkthroughs where the story is evident and interesting to watch, trailers of movies that I might be interested in for the future, and music-related videos on guitar covers, songs I remember from my past, or songs I never heard before.  The only definite videos I'll watch on my computer are that of movies on DVD.


I've spent a good chunk of my adult life living with videos as my main focus of entertainment.  The isolation it brought to me has done a world of hurt on my social life.  I also used it as a coping mechanism to make my life more livable due to the tough parts I had to live with and deal with.  But, now, I'm turning off the Internet television.  I don't need videos to be happy anymore.  I don't even need it to pass the time.  I have a whole world out there that I want to see.  And, I'm going to see it.


Next time I put digital pen to paper: MP3 and me - the end of a not-so-perfect friendship.