Personal History
technology
gaming & entertainment

Patrick (H) Willems Reacts To His Top 1000 Comments On YouTube

We searched through Patrick Willems’ most popular videos, picking the top 1000 comments based on number of likes, first comments, and frequently asked questions. Then, we asked Patrick to sit down and take us down memory lane. From the humble starts right up to the present, we've woven together a personal history of Patrick Willems’ fans engaging with and responding to his channel - and presented it to the man himself.

Released on 3/22/2021

Transcript

00:00
Hello, I'm Patrick Willems.
00:02
I got an email from Ars Technica, about a video.
00:05
[soft upbeat music]
00:07
There's a computer.
00:09
Okay, that's not creepy at all.
00:10
[soft upbeat music]
00:12
Hi, I'm Patrick Willems and this is my personal history.
00:16
[soft upbeat music]
00:22
I'm just, I'm scared to look at what this is gonna be.
00:24
The YouTube comment section is the place
00:26
where I would wanna go,
00:27
if I wanted to like,
00:28
feel bad about some other aspect of myself
00:31
that I didn't already.
00:33
It is not a place for support or encouragement.
00:35
Obviously, as we've seen here,
00:37
there are perfectly lovely comments there,
00:40
but they're surrounded
00:42
by just like rancid [beep].
00:44
So, all right, what do we have here?
00:47
The following comments came from the most popular video
00:51
on your YouTube channel.
00:52
What video is it?
00:54
That is obviously the video,
00:56
What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men,
00:59
which I guess explains this whole West Anderson stylists
01:04
that we've got going on.
01:06
Yes, that's it.
01:07
The most popular video is,
01:09
What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men?
01:10
Published March 3rd, 2015,
01:13
currently has 3,700,000 views.
01:17
Wow, not bad.
01:20
What do you remember about making this video?
01:23
I mean, look,
01:24
this is still the most successful thing I've ever made,
01:28
maybe than I ever will make.
01:31
Way back in 2014,
01:32
the channel had like maybe 10,000 subscribers.
01:35
It was not only not making money, I was losing money on it.
01:39
Like I would spend money to make the videos
01:40
and would generate no profit at all.
01:43
So at this time,
01:43
the most successful video that I'd ever made
01:46
was the one that re-imagined the movie Point Break
01:49
as if it were made by different filmmakers.
01:53
Oh, hey Johnny.
01:54
Oh, hi Bodhi, who are those guys?
01:56
Studying these filmmakers,
01:58
figuring out how to imitate their styles and like
02:00
how they might approach this material.
02:02
And so I decided to do this series that
02:04
took theoretical comic book movies,
02:07
but then imagine what they would look like
02:09
if made by filmmakers,
02:10
who would never normally make that kind of movie.
02:13
And, right away when I was generating ideas for this,
02:15
the one that jumped out to me, that made the most sense
02:19
was Wes Anderson making X-Men,
02:21
because if you break down like The Royal Tenenbaums,
02:25
it's about a bunch of brilliant young people living
02:28
in an elaborately decorated mansion
02:30
with a controlling father figure.
02:32
And that's just the, X-Men.
02:35
The thing about this one was that I felt like we needed
02:37
to put a little bit more time and effort and money into it
02:40
than we would a regular video,
02:42
because I've always been very bad at predicting
02:44
how videos will perform.
02:45
I think videos that will be flops end up being hits,
02:49
I think videos that will be hits end up flopping.
02:52
This was the only time I've ever really gotten it right.
02:55
One reason I was really confident that this video would work
02:59
is that at the time my apartment was a 10 minute walk
03:02
from The Royal Tenenbaums' house in Harlem.
03:05
So we were like, wait,
03:06
let's just go shoot at the actual house.
03:09
Like there are other Wes Anderson parodies on the internet,
03:12
but no one has used the actual house.
03:14
So, we had that going for us.
03:17
And so we spent a long time,
03:19
like I pulled in a lot of friends to help make the costumes,
03:23
to help build like miniature sets
03:25
and put in all this effort.
03:28
And it was the rare time that I was right.
03:30
The video did really well.
03:32
I don't know if it's the hardest part,
03:33
but it's the part that I put the most effort into,
03:36
was just really trying to study Wes Anderson
03:39
and really figure out how he might interpret
03:42
like all the core elements of X-Men.
03:45
Wes Anderson is one of those filmmakers
03:47
where everyone can list like the standard things
03:49
that you expect from all his movies, like,
03:51
Oh, symmetry, wide shots, these certain colors.
03:56
But this may have been Overkill,
03:58
but I went through all of his movies and studied them
04:01
and tried to figure out like,
04:02
how would he handle these characters?
04:05
And it was just like,
04:06
it was like months of studying this stuff and research,
04:09
trying to figure out like what focal lengths for lenses
04:12
did he use?
04:13
Like all of these little things
04:14
to try to make it as accurate as possible.
04:16
Here is the most liked comment on that video.
04:21
Needs more symmetry.
04:23
Then in all caps, MORE SYMMETRY, DAMN IT. .
04:26
I think this is kind of a reductive take,
04:28
that if you just like watch any Wes Anderson movie,
04:30
you'll see not every single shot is symmetrical.
04:34
I think I was pretty careful about which shots
04:36
I framed symmetrically and which I didn't.
04:39
So yeah, it's annoying that
04:41
that is the most liked comment, people do better.
04:45
Okay, another comment,
04:47
the clause in this video look better than the ones
04:50
in X-Men origins.
04:52
So the clause that we used for Wolverine
04:54
are actually right here,
04:56
they are just straight up metal knives,
04:59
that you could really hurt a person with.
05:01
I did not expect them to be that sharp
05:03
when I ordered them online,
05:05
and X-Men Origins: Wolverine,
05:06
a famously bad movie uses a lot of CGI claws on Wolverine
05:11
that often don't look very good.
05:14
Look, these things have their problems,
05:16
they're just like kind of awkward to hold, but look,
05:19
actual metal claws are gonna look better than,
05:23
kind of rushed, rubbery looking CGI ones.
05:26
That's like the one part
05:27
that we actually like had higher production values
05:30
and like better effects than the real movie we were,
05:35
imagine.
05:37
The following comments came from
05:38
the second most popular video on your YouTube channel,
05:42
what video is it?
05:44
That would be the first video essay I ever made called,
05:46
Why Do Marvel's Movies Look kind of Ugly?
05:51
Yes, confirmed.
05:53
From November 16th, 2016,
05:56
came out week after the 2016 election.
05:58
And, ooh, it's closing on 3 million views.
06:01
Nice, as much as the Wes Anderson's X-Men
06:03
is the most viewed video on the channel,
06:06
this one is what actually made the channel a success.
06:10
So to make a long story short,
06:12
the Wes Anderson's X-Men video came out
06:14
and suddenly led to a lot of like new career opportunities.
06:17
I was suddenly having a lot of like meetings with producers
06:21
and production companies about making other projects
06:24
off of YouTube,
06:25
and I really thought this was launching my career
06:27
and it was all gonna happen.
06:28
Anyway, by the end of 2015,
06:30
all of those opportunities had fallen apart or dried up,
06:33
and I was back at square one.
06:35
In 2016, I took a couple of months off from making videos,
06:39
decide to like reevaluate my approach to YouTube
06:43
and give it one last shot, and if it didn't work,
06:47
then I would, I don't know,
06:49
try something else or get a real job.
06:51
So I was like, I'll try different types of videos.
06:53
For years I'd been complaining to my friends
06:55
about the color palette and color grading
06:59
of Marvel Studios movies.
07:00
So it was like, I've been ranting about this for years.
07:03
And, but I was sure that this was a boring topic
07:06
that would not get any views at all.
07:09
And then, immediately the video got like a million views,
07:13
the subscriber account for the channel
07:15
that had taken me like five and a half years
07:17
to build doubled in a week,
07:19
and then it just went from there.
07:21
And so really everything kind of comes back to this video.
07:24
Please reply to these comments from that video.
07:27
I feel like this color grading helps
07:30
Marvel achieve a more realistic look
07:33
to convey the thought that these heroes are living
07:36
in our everyday lives.
07:39
I got a lot of comments like this,
07:41
always saying like these movies are ugly and gray
07:44
and flat looking because it's realistic.
07:47
I don't really think that's true.
07:49
Throughout the history of cinema,
07:51
movies are often pretty colorful,
07:53
have like real texture and depth to the images,
07:57
and it's not like people were complaining for 70 years
08:00
about these unrealistic looking movies
08:03
that they just couldn't emotionally connect to.
08:05
Yeah, I fundamentally don't think that's true.
08:09
I know that Marvel has laid their like,
08:11
their reasons behind their visual choices,
08:14
and a lot of this just comes down to trends
08:17
and styles in cinema and the sort of like lifted blacks,
08:22
very like low contrast digital look,
08:24
has been just a big thing in cinema
08:27
for the past 10 to 15 years.
08:29
And a key thing to note here is that
08:30
I'm not arguing for like extreme stylization
08:33
and like surrealism.
08:35
I'm just saying, maybe actually make a visual choices
08:40
and have a color palette that's interesting to look at,
08:45
that's all.
08:46
Guardians 1&2, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther,
08:49
and now Infinity War all look colorful.
08:53
This is a really complicated issue
08:54
that I don't have all day to get into,
08:57
but let me boil down what I think are the recurring issues
09:03
with Marvel movies, color palettes.
09:06
If scenes are set in interior locations
09:10
or places with like extreme lighting choices,
09:13
whether they're like space scenes in the Guardians movies,
09:16
or like the sort of like astral plane in Black Panther
09:19
or like some of the interiors in Thor: Ragnarok,
09:23
they often look pretty good.
09:24
They have good art direction,
09:25
like colorful costumes and sets.
09:27
Any exterior day scene just looks like muddy concrete.
09:32
Look at any scene in Infinity War,
09:34
look at any exterior scene in Thor: Ragnarok,
09:37
it's just gray.
09:38
They all look exactly the same.
09:40
It is so boring and ugly and it will always drive me nuts.
09:46
If anything, after this video came out,
09:48
them getting criticized for this became a more common thing.
09:51
So, maybe they're more aware of this criticism.
09:55
I keep hoping they'll get better at it.
09:58
So, we'll see.
10:01
All right, that was fun, let's see what else we got.
10:04
Okay, so right now I'm in the Patrick Explains series,
10:08
a series that started in 2017 in which I visit my parents,
10:12
drink a whole lot of whiskey,
10:14
and explain to them why I think a movie or TV series
10:17
is totally rad, is totally rad a thing
10:21
that I've ever said before?
10:23
Maybe, also in the series,
10:25
I always wear sunglasses indoors to show
10:27
that I'm a more deranged version of myself,
10:31
but I'm just playing a character, anyway.
10:34
All right, this next video is your earliest video
10:37
with over 100,000 views.
10:40
Do what it is?
10:44
I'm gonna guess it's a video from 2011
10:49
called, can't believe I'm saying this, Brony Gang War.
10:53
Oh my God, it is.
10:56
Wow, that has 122,000 views,
11:00
which was a really big deal for me in August, 2011.
11:06
Wow, it's so weird to look back at this video,
11:09
and remember when like a Bronies were a thing,
11:13
like the male fans of My Little Pony
11:16
and also this period when they were kind of
11:18
like a funny thing before they became extremely weird
11:22
and creepy.
11:23
Why do you think out of all your earlier videos,
11:26
this one has so many views?
11:28
So, this was in the very early days of the channel, right?
11:31
When I started thinking like,
11:32
hmm, maybe we should try to find things in pop culture
11:37
that people are into that maybe we have opinions on
11:40
or like a funny take on.
11:42
Because if a video is connected to something
11:45
with a built-in audience,
11:46
maybe it'll get more views,
11:48
which is the most obvious thing in the world
11:50
and took me like three months to start to figure out,
11:53
but that was like a really big audience.
11:56
And so, we released that video
11:58
and it seems to kinda catch on,
12:01
please reply to these comments from that video.
12:04
Is gonna be so weird.
12:06
If sometimes will be a war,
12:09
it will be between Bronies and haters,
12:11
not between Bronies themselves,
12:13
because we are connected with power of elements of harmony.
12:18
So, this from the video is just a joke,
12:21
it's not a possible scenario of Brony war.
12:26
Comments like this are essentially,
12:29
they sound like they're just dialogue from the video
12:33
because they are people talking really, really passionately
12:37
and taking very, very seriously
12:38
something that is inherently, just incredibly silly.
12:41
The next comment,
12:42
I would definitely love to see more videos like this.
12:45
You should make some flashback videos about each gang,
12:49
where they live, what they do, et cetera.
12:51
Oh, and long-lived the Twilight Sparkle Gang.
12:55
I mean, this is kind of representative
12:57
of why that video did well.
12:59
We did actually make a followup video a year later
13:03
and it was called like Brony Gang War, one year later.
13:06
[man shouting] [gun shots]
13:11
Anyway, sorry, Bronies,
13:16
that we didn't make more videos about you.
13:18
Question, do you still make videos in this style?
13:21
Obviously, I have not made any more videos
13:27
about My Little Pony fandom.
13:29
I do not intend to, it is not something
13:31
that I have really thought about in years,
13:33
but that style, fake news reports, that kind of thing.
13:37
Yeah, I have used it since then.
13:39
I probably will in the future.
13:42
The following comments came from your
13:44
Patrick Explains THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS,
13:47
and Why it's Great video.
13:48
The first video in the Patrick Explains series.
13:52
I think you should do a series
13:54
where you just explain movies/franchises in this fashion.
13:59
Wow, this is hilarious to look at now like,
14:03
almost four years later.
14:06
Originally that video was not intended
14:08
to be a series at all.
14:10
This was when I was just starting to try out
14:13
some video essays,
14:14
some more commentary type analytical cinema studies videos.
14:19
And I was trying to figure out ideas.
14:21
And when I was, I mentioned this to my friend, Jake Torpey,
14:23
who works on all the videos with me.
14:25
Immediately he said,
14:26
oh, you should just make a video
14:28
about your fast and furious rant.
14:30
Referring to the fact that for years,
14:32
as all my friends knew, anytime I was at a party,
14:35
back when parties were things that existed
14:37
that we could go to,
14:38
pretty much every time I would hear someone in a room say,
14:42
yeah, I've never seen a Fast & Furious movie.
14:44
I would leap across the room and launch into this
14:47
rehearsed, memorized monologues, I gave it so many times.
14:50
And I would give them this speech about
14:52
why the Fast & Furious series
14:54
is like arguably our best ongoing modern franchise
14:58
and why everyone needs to watch it and about how,
15:00
and the way it evolved in such a fascinating way,
15:03
the way it has a non-linear timeline,
15:05
all of these amazing things about it.
15:06
And my original plan with that video
15:08
was just to sit in front of like a white, seamless backdrop
15:12
and deliver my speech to the camera.
15:14
And then a day before that, I had this silly thought of,
15:18
what if I added this kind of like
15:19
narrative framing element to it,
15:21
where I'm visiting my parents,
15:24
'cause I was visiting my parents at the time.
15:26
And I'm, I don't know,
15:27
just being kind of crazy and like,
15:29
drinking whiskey and wearing sunglasses indoors
15:32
and giving this monologue to them.
15:34
And then people liked the video,
15:36
and I got comments like that.
15:37
And, so Hey Peter Cummins who left that comment.
15:41
I hope you're happy, there are now, like,
15:43
I don't know, 10 or 11 videos in this series.
15:47
I actually really appreciate seeing someone
15:49
explain the appeal of something
15:51
that isn't considered 'artsy.'
15:53
I think it's a real gap
15:54
in our art appreciation culture.
15:56
This has been honestly like so much of just the videos
16:00
that I've made, especially in the realm of film YouTube.
16:04
There are these certain films and just categories and topics
16:09
that are covered over and over and over again.
16:11
And in general, I try to avoid those,
16:14
because they've just been covered to death.
16:16
And, I usually don't think there's much new
16:19
to say about them.
16:20
And in college,
16:21
there were a lot of very pretentious film students
16:24
in my department
16:26
who would roll their eyes at anything, populist,
16:30
like if a movie made money,
16:31
they'd be like, well, that's,
16:33
just a piece of [beep] who,
16:35
like that isn't worth taking seriously.
16:36
And I kind of pushed against that 'cause I was like,
16:40
look, there are plenty of masterpieces that happen
16:43
to be like, made for mainstream audience.
16:46
Alfred Hitchcock made big mainstream movies
16:48
that people liked a lot.
16:50
And maybe I'm just like a contrarian
16:52
who likes pushing against what popular opinions are.
16:55
I don't really think I am,
16:57
but I think there's something fun about defending something
17:00
that is usually dismissed and considered like low-brow
17:04
and not worth being taken seriously.
17:06
Especially when I think it has artistic merit.
17:08
I think the Fast & Furious movies have artistic merit.
17:10
I think Michael Bay is an important filmmaker
17:14
with a unique perspective on the world.
17:17
And I enjoy the fact that not a lot of people,
17:20
at least on like film YouTube
17:22
are talking about these things.
17:24
So, it's kind of this void for me to hop into
17:26
and claim it all for myself
17:28
because if no one else is gonna talk about it, then I will.
17:32
Tell us what you remember about making this video
17:35
and the series of videos that followed it.
17:37
So, as I already mentioned,
17:38
this was not supposed to be a series,
17:40
it was supposed to be a fun one-off video.
17:43
I actually had to kind of coerce my parents
17:46
into appearing in the video.
17:47
My parents had like over the many years of me
17:50
making movies and stuff like that,
17:52
they had helped out and made little cameos
17:54
and stuff like that,
17:55
but they were not really excited to appear in this video,
17:59
and then what happened was, my parents saw the comments.
18:02
And like 50% of the comments were just about,
18:04
oh my God, your parents are the best,
18:05
they're so funny, they're so adorable,
18:07
I love them, put them in more videos.
18:08
And as this went on, I realized like,
18:11
oh, this is a format that could be a fun ongoing series.
18:14
My parents were suddenly really down
18:17
for appearing in more of these.
18:18
And as it went on,
18:20
we started building this ongoing story
18:23
through all of the videos.
18:24
At this point in the series, I am in jail,
18:28
because the IRS prosecuted me for a tax evasion.
18:32
It makes sense if you watch it, I promise.
18:35
But yeah, it's become this really enjoyable activity
18:37
that my parents and I do together,
18:39
where we'll make, usually make two or three a year
18:41
and they've become like real collaborators.
18:44
And the thing is, the audience loves my parents,
18:47
they like my parents so much more than they like me.
18:49
I think if the audience had their way,
18:51
it would just be my parents on screen, like 90% of the time.
18:55
And then, I show up to, I don't know,
18:57
like say a few words about the movie.
19:00
How did your approach to your channel,
19:02
and the way you produced your videos
19:04
change around this time?
19:05
Okay, I started making video essays in November, 2016.
19:11
The format that I chose was kind of just
19:15
the standard format popularized by like
19:17
Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter
19:20
and many other channels,
19:21
you record a voiceover of the essay,
19:24
and then you edit movie clips
19:26
of what you're talking about over that.
19:28
And when I made a video essay,
19:29
I thought it was going to be like a one-off experiment.
19:32
I was positive, no one would watch that first one
19:34
that I made, and so I just used the format
19:37
that most people used.
19:38
And then when the video essays performed well,
19:41
and I kept making more of them,
19:42
I just kept using that format and found that
19:45
I was really bored with it.
19:48
As much as the ideas being discussed in the videos, like,
19:53
came from my perspective and were things I cared about,
19:54
the actual process and approach to making the video
19:57
felt so impersonal.
19:59
And, I realized I needed to change the way
20:02
that I was making these videos,
20:04
if I wanted to stay excited about it.
20:06
And I realized that in all of 2017,
20:09
the only videos that I really cared about
20:11
were the Patrick Explains videos.
20:13
I realized like, it's not just that I need to like
20:15
use this series for every video,
20:17
but I need to use that kind of philosophy and approach
20:20
that I'm bringing to those and carry that
20:22
into the rest of my videos.
20:25
To treat them each like their own kind of filmmaking project
20:28
and figure out the best most interesting way
20:31
to tell the story of what each essay is going to be.
20:35
All right, well, I think that wraps up this series.
20:38
So, back to regular glasses, let's go.
20:43
Okay, so we're now in The Quarantine Talk Show.
20:47
This is what I pivoted the videos into last year
20:50
when I unexpectedly got stuck at my parents' house
20:52
for several months.
20:54
Now this show I must note,
20:55
had much better audio quality than some other
20:59
internet talk shows started during this period,
21:01
such as one,
21:02
Good evening everybody hosted by John Krasinski.
21:04
Very clearly. Well, who is
21:05
on Ars Technica now Krasinski?
21:07
Me, baby, me.
21:11
The following comments came from your first
21:14
Quarantine Talk Show Video, this title is a mouthful.
21:18
Cats! Michael Bay! Music Biopics!
21:21
The Big Follow-Up Video.
21:24
This was a video that basically just followed up
21:27
on several other videos I'd made over the past two years
21:30
about like filmmakers or genres,
21:33
anything that had a new installment
21:34
or people had asked me like,
21:35
oh, what do you think of this?
21:37
I just covered it all in this one.
21:40
As a newly minted fan who spent
21:42
a disproportionate amount of time,
21:44
the last couple of weeks watching the last three years or so
21:46
of vids you've made, putting out a follow-up
21:49
on many vids that I've just watched,
21:51
feels like fanservice made for me specifically.
21:55
And I appreciate that.
21:56
I'm always wondering if I'm actually getting new viewers,
22:00
if like, I like what people are thinking
22:03
when they're finding the videos,
22:04
now that they've become so dense and full
22:07
of just like strange esoteric stuff.
22:09
And since I was starting this new format for the videos
22:11
to kind of roll with what was happening,
22:13
I felt like a good, relatively easy way to kick that off
22:17
would be to just answer a lot of questions
22:19
that people have been asking for the last couple of years,
22:21
cover all of them in one video.
22:25
And I guess if you're a recent viewer,
22:27
I was kind of answering all those questions in one.
22:31
Next up,
22:32
Tell us what you remember about making this video
22:36
and the series of videos that followed it.
22:39
Spring 2020 was a strange time to be doing anything.
22:46
And look, I have a pretty easy job by most standards.
22:49
I make videos on the internet
22:51
where I talk about movies that I like.
22:54
And last year, I actually started the year
22:58
and I outlined my whole schedule of videos
23:01
for the full year.
23:02
I knew exactly what I was going to make.
23:03
I had a really clear plan that I was excited about,
23:07
and then in mid-March while visiting my parents to shoot
23:12
one of the Patrick Explains videos.
23:14
[beep]
23:17
So I was like, maybe I'll stay here
23:18
until the end of the week.
23:20
And then that became until the end of the month,
23:22
and then it became, I am here indefinitely.
23:25
And suddenly all of these plans just got blown up,
23:28
and I'm now stuck in a house in the woods
23:31
with only my parents around
23:32
and only the gear that I brought with me.
23:36
So, suddenly I was in this situation
23:37
where I had to figure out a new way to do
23:40
what I'd been doing.
23:42
And I decided the best way to do this,
23:44
was to pivot completely,
23:46
postpone all those videos that we had on the schedule,
23:49
but also try to create some kind of format
23:52
that I could do consistently
23:54
because I was stuck in this house.
23:58
And what I had noticed during this time was that
24:00
late night talk show hosts were all having
24:02
to stop going into their studios
24:05
and do their shows remotely from home.
24:07
I found this really interesting to watch,
24:09
but also pardon me, was like,
24:11
hey, they're like encroaching on my territory.
24:14
So what if I then tried to beat them at their own game
24:17
and just did a late night talk show,
24:19
but better than they're doing it right now?
24:21
To be clear, this was mostly a joke.
24:23
I was not really feeling competition from like Jimmy Fallon,
24:28
but it felt like a good,
24:29
at least a good premise for the videos, to be like,
24:31
huh, I'm gonna beat these talk show hosts at their own game
24:35
and just do that, but from this empty room
24:39
in my parents' house.
24:40
Okay, next up, the following comments
24:42
came from the longest video on your YouTube channel.
24:47
What video is it?
24:48
I believe it is on my most recent video, which is called,
24:53
A Complete Guide to Pop Music Needle Drops in Movies.
24:59
Yes, that's it, the longest video is
25:01
A Complete Guide to Pop Music Needle Drops in Movies
25:04
published on February 15th, 2021.
25:08
Okay, please reply to these comments from that video.
25:12
Now, one thing that I should acknowledge is that
25:14
in this video that we were talking about right now,
25:17
I do say to the camera that I'm not going to read
25:21
any of the comments.
25:22
And so, congratulations, Ars Technica has made me a liar.
25:29
This goddamn coconut went from a weird gag,
25:32
to an annoyance, to a year-spanning plot
25:36
that I am invested in.
25:38
Oh boy, how do I explain this?
25:41
So the coconut, refers to this guy here.
25:44
Okay so, at the beginning of 2020,
25:49
I am thinking about, a new year of videos.
25:53
I'm thinking what if we took the 2020 season
25:56
and really did treat it as a season,
25:59
where it was still about myself and my friends
26:03
making these videos,
26:04
but there was this ongoing story through it all.
26:07
And then my friends and I were talking about like,
26:09
what we might do for the first video.
26:11
We were saying like, oh, it should start with like
26:12
Patrick coming back from vacation.
26:15
And I think my friend Mike, threw out this silly idea like,
26:17
oh, you should bring back like a rock with googly eyes.
26:20
It was a very silly idea.
26:22
And then I started thinking more about it.
26:24
So, I had this thought of like, what if it was a coconut?
26:26
And by the way, the coconut's name is Charl.
26:29
It's like Charles, but singular.
26:31
And so we introduced Charl in the video,
26:33
and then made him a recurring thing.
26:36
And, I had no idea how the audience would react,
26:39
but the audience really kind of embraced
26:42
this bizarre new element we'd thrown in.
26:45
And as time went on,
26:46
people were making fan arts of Charl
26:49
and we kind of like expanded the story as it kept going on.
26:52
We found a way to give Charl a segment in the talk show,
26:56
I am fully aware that some of the audience
26:59
has been alienated by this bizarre new development,
27:03
but also we have produced Charl merchandise
27:06
that has sold exceptionally well.
27:08
We produced Charl enamel pins that sold out in a day.
27:13
A fairly sizable portion of the audience really enjoys
27:17
this bizarre thing we've been doing.
27:19
And so we've really kind of leaned into this
27:21
and to be clear,
27:22
this is not going to run forever,
27:23
[Charl laughing]
27:24
but every single day,
27:26
I am so happy that we have actually gotten people
27:31
invested in this bizarre story
27:34
of a coconut with googly eyes.
27:38
Next comment, Patrick,
27:40
I love how you always go so much harder than you have to.
27:44
Your guys' production value is unmatched.
27:47
This is sort of my general philosophy to the videos
27:51
to just put in way more effort than is really necessary.
27:55
We're kind of in like this dangerous spiral where,
28:00
I keep wanting to top what we've already done.
28:03
Like we've now introduced a full theme song
28:06
with like a James Bond style title sequence.
28:09
[soft music]
28:11
♪ It's Patrick Show ♪
28:13
[soft music]
28:15
As the channel kept doing better,
28:17
it's just given us the resources to go further
28:20
with everything and do more, and it sounds silly to say,
28:23
but I'm just trying to make the videos
28:25
that I would wanna watch and the best videos
28:29
that I can make.
28:30
And so, that means just trying to go further
28:32
with each successive video.
28:34
Okay, answer the following comments as quickly as possible
28:37
because otherwise we'll be here all day, accurate.
28:40
You're right your, 'explains' videos are your best,
28:44
they're awesome.
28:45
Thank you, your parents are cool.
28:46
I agree.
28:47
Keep up the good work!
28:49
I will, next comment.
28:51
How about a challenge?
28:54
Do Zack Snyder, I dare you.
28:57
So, for many years, people have requested
29:01
that I do a career overview video essay
29:04
examining the work of Zack Snyder.
29:07
The way I did for Michael Bay or Terrence Malick,
29:10
or Francis Ford Coppola, and I always said,
29:12
no, I'm not going to do it.
29:14
I was not interested in the idea.
29:16
Also, as many people are aware,
29:19
talking about Zack Snyder on the internet,
29:21
is a great way to make your life worse.
29:25
And then last summer, after they had confirmed
29:28
that the Snyder Cut was actually going to be released,
29:30
I thought of a way to do a Zack Snyder video
29:34
that I would actually enjoy,
29:36
but I also decided I would make it a Patreon goal.
29:40
So, people had to like put their money where their mouth was
29:44
if they wanted this to happen.
29:46
And, we reached the Patreon goal very quickly.
29:49
And so this spring, I am finally giving in
29:55
to the cool complexities,
29:58
2018 comments and doing a Zack Snyder video.
30:02
God have mercy on my soul.
30:04
[soft music]
30:15
Moving on.
30:16
This is the best comment.
30:18
When Charl isn't onscreen,
30:20
the other characters should be talking about Charl.
30:23
Great comment,
30:24
obviously a reference to the classic Simpsons episode,
30:27
The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show,
30:29
when Homer pitches the idea that,
30:31
whenever Poochie isn't on screen,
30:33
all the other characters should be asking,
30:35
where's Poochie?
30:36
So look, you're praising Charl,
30:38
you're quoting the Poochie episode,
30:41
you're speaking my language.
30:42
Final questions.
30:44
What are you excited about these days,
30:46
and what's on the horizon?
30:49
I don't really have concrete plans
30:51
for what's going to happen after the season ends.
30:55
So I'm, well being as vague as possible,
30:58
I'm kind of excited about everything coming up.
31:02
How does it feel looking back on your career,
31:05
and do you have any final messages to your fans
31:08
who have supported you?
31:09
I will admit, it feels incredibly strange
31:11
to be sitting here, in a studio
31:15
talking about my silly 10 year YouTube career,
31:19
which didn't even become profitable until like
31:23
three or four years ago,
31:25
like I still haven't come to terms
31:26
with the idea of having fans.
31:28
That is still deeply weird to me.
31:30
Every day, I'm incredibly grateful that
31:33
either people watch them,
31:34
and be that people have been so receptive to times
31:38
that I have tried to move outside
31:40
of like the traditional kind of video essays
31:43
and the traditional topics that you see on film YouTube.
31:46
It's wild that I get to do this for a living,
31:49
that is not lost on me, and it constantly amazes me.
31:54
It's been a pleasure, it's been an honor.
31:56
Thank you.
31:57
[soft music]