Weekend Update (13/8/23)

Hey! Doing another one of these! Hope you're all doing well! Exclamation point! Does anyone ever find themselves overusing exclamation points to emphasize a positive attitude!

It's actually been a pretty productive week -- I decided just after putting out the Barbie video that I wanted to talk about Wonka, and over the last few days it has felt increasingly odd that I haven't talked about this particular ideological children's media in the past (especially seeing as it also has a weird and somewhat controversial Tim Burton adaptation). I guess in some ways it always felt just too obvious to get into, but I feel like in doing so I've still wound up with some new interesting things to say on the topic, plus it's somewhat timely with the new Timmy Chalamet joint getting talked about so maybe that'll make the algorithm happy or something. Overall, this is really the closest I've come in some time to the Old Ways of the channel, with a lot of writing and background research and overthinking this family product -- it has definitely come with a certain level of nostalgia, and some reflection on just how different everything is to when I was first putting those old videos together.

Things really have changed, huh? I'm not sure how many of you have been around since the 2018 days, but it's so strange to think back to a time where this was just some haphazard attempt at a side-gig while I crashed at a friend's condo in Cleveland, a recent immigrant with next-to-no savings or occupational prospects whatsoever. It's surprising to think how Not Miserable I was at the time for what a downer that period of life was, first time living away from home with a lot of surrounding parts of life basically falling apart around me. I was honestly just happy to make my stupid little videos and get my handful of comments -- I'm sure if 2018 Jack saw 2023 Jack constantly getting stressed because he had a video get like 80K views instead of 100K views or something like that, he'd get a good laugh out of it.

In a way things have looped around, I guess. I'm now back in the UK, life around me has generally leveled out, and now I'm up one spouse and one thing-resembling-a-career. I'm still thankful every day for the audience I have and the people willing to lend their support, this has been such a stabilizing force in life that I couldn't have imagined getting through COVID Times without (yes I know we're still kind of in COVID Times, you get what I mean). Not habitually smoking weed anymore has probably helped. I still sometimes think to myself how much easier it would to get engrossed in media or activities if I were stoned, but it's pretty cool getting back to the stage of brain activity where you're actually consciously thinking about what you're doing instead of cheat-coding euphoria. I am still generally pro-substances of any kind for people who want them, but for now I'm happy to take the momentary boredom in exchange for the general mess my mind was before.

This has gotten very tangential, but in any case the filming portion of the Wonka video is already done and now I've just got to finish chopping up clips and adding little notes, so hopefully it'll be out before the end of next week. As always thanks again to all of you who've stuck around, old or new, and I hope you enjoy the next few weeks of glorious, glorious content

xoxoxo

Jack

EDIT: Oh also I forgot to mention - I watched an FD Signifier video that said sometimes switching up titles and thumbnails helps get new audiences to click on your videos, so for anyone who's curious, that's why I've momentarily removed me doing the dreamworks face from some of the recent output. We'll see what happens there, but rest assured the clickbait face will return some day soon.