The internet is filled with things. Here are some of them.
These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you).Or, if you're looking to step back in time, there's also IMG_0001 which operates a similar mission:
Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives.
Here's a sure sign I'm losing the plot: in a world increasingly wracked by hatred and divisiveness and war, I'm busying myself digging through YouTuber drama.
And what juicy drama it is.
While watching a recent hour-long video on the history of the TV show X-Play, I found out that G4 TV returned from the dead briefly in 2021~2022. And among the old hosts, some new ones included Jirard Khalil, aka The Completionist. I happened to have met Khalil years ago when staffing the fandom convention circuit, when "The Completionist" was Jirard but also this guy Greg Wilmot. And when several years later The Completionist returned as a guest but sans-Greg, naturally I wanted to know what happened. Except I dared not ask Jirard himself, and nobody else on Guest Relation convention staff would (or maybe could) tell me.
So now here we are, over a decade later and being reminded about The Completionist, I think to myself 'surely someone in that interval must have investigated this drama'.
Well. They have, just not how I expected. The original falling out is now documented suchly: Greg and Jirard in 2015 had a pretty severe if hazy difference of opinion, one which included Greg two years later going so far as asking all 120 of his episodes be removed from YouTube. Jirard complied, putting in what must have tons of work when re-completing all the games that previously featured Greg. And that's where things remained.
Until last year. Enter another video game YouTuber named Karl Jobst. Jobst is (in)famous for accusing video game celebrity Billy Mitchell of cheating at his Donkey Kong high score by using a modified arcade cabinet. Mitchell has since successfully sued Jobst for slander and bankrupted him. But Jobst also made a second investigation: Jirard Khalil's charity, Open Hand Foundation. Open Hand, through a fundraiser called IndieLand, raised over $600k for dementia research. In a 2023 video (with drama still ongoing) Jobst accused Jirard of never donating a single cent. And Jirard, unlike Billy Mitchell, admitted guilt, was fired from most of his engagements, took a long hiatus from YouTube, and is now subject to a criminal embezzlement investigation.
And in the fallout of all that, Greg reactivates his old reddit account to post a message explaining that all this is why him and Jirard had the falling out way back when.
Well... damn. That's not what I expected when I began this journey.