RND/ In which this very very morning you consider and analyse yourself – whatever it is you imagine your doing artistically, via the Youtube lens of George Weidman aka ‘Super Bunnyhop’:
First, a Venn diagram that tries to capture the unique, slightly oddball appeal of George’s ‘content’.
By fun, perhaps you mean “Existentially speaking, is any of this odd shit remotely meaningful or worthwhile?” George seems well placed to answer such a challenge and philosophical provocation – more specifically, explore the interesting overlap between the various areas of his expertise.
Yet, if it’s true that ‘the artist creates the taste by which they are to be enjoyed’, then perhaps (at for new viewers) George still has some way to go in more firmly establishing his brand, which seems to currently (and non-ironically) bunnyhop between ‘Videogames’, ‘Japanese Culture’ and.. ‘The Mundane Oblique’ (?) That is, George regularly comes across as a form of sincere door-to-door salesmen, selling you the very subject areas he discusses.
And that appears a hard sell for many, given that it’s difficult to formalize and contextualize ‘areas of my cultural expertise’ that virtually nobody else is discussing – or has yet to even recognize as interesting and important.
Here’s a ‘hope’ style portrait of George: 440 x 616, 6 col .png
George’s opening intro video (parody ‘informercial’) in which he sells Weidman themed socks, does little to help his unique artistic cause, and appears as some kind of slightly crappy, ‘file under #random’ style shit that used to appear regularly on AOL or Geocities. It does not clearly convey what George is ‘about’. It’s only by regularly getting into his content that one is able to ‘correctly read’ this intro video as “Yes, that’s very Bunnyhop.”
Another somewhat obscure channel you used to enjoy was “Zero Achievements” – a videogaming channel starring two posh blokes from the UK called Tom and Dave.
It would have been cool to see such a from-leftfield channel grow into it’s own style – to more fully ‘become what it always was’, but alas the lads don’t post videos anymore. Likewise with George, there’s the perception of something good and distinctly unlike anything else on the verge of emerging. (Just not yet?) Perhaps George is content to Super Bunnyhop around. Maybe the notion of being a ‘Non Expert’ or (Brian Enoesque?) ‘Generalist’ appeals to him. It’s just that his own explanation for what precisely he does on his channel – “pseudo-journalistic content about video games” – neither seems entirely accurate, nor very engaging..
Here’s one alternative, official, formalized take on George:
“Consider George Weidman aka ‘Super Bunnyhop’ an existential ideas salesman, traveling door to door sharing his well researched thoughts about Videogame (/Industry) and-or Japanese Culture, shining his intellectual spotlight on varied Mundane-Oblique topics of similar interest.“
In a synthetic environment where consumerist goldfish eyeballs seemingly must have you and your ‘stuff’ successfully labelled in under a second – “Oh, it’s about X” – perhaps channels like Super Bunnyhop are unique in the very way they don’t appear to be ‘about’ anything much at all. Indeed the best videos on Youtube are often precisely about ‘Nothing’; the as-lived, day-to-day experience and mundane strangeness of being alive.
– Or perhaps nobody even cares about whatever S.B is ‘about’ – and will indeed watch literally anything. He does has a sizeable 31.2K following on Twitter, however.
It’s just that, one hopes Mr. Weidman can become even more self conscious of his own ‘Super Bunnyhoppingness’ and dig in even deeper to his own uncommon vibe. In short – George Weidman as the very (and only) subject matter of his own interior universe..
George’s Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/bunnyhopshow
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// how to play big science