July Update: I Keep Being In California

Hey team! Greeting from the Berkeley Public Library.

The State of Things

Let's start with the accomplishments!

I released two videos this month: Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? #3 right before heading to VidCon, and [deleted scenes] right before heading to the East Bay. I've spent a lot of this month in California, but, thankfully, it is not currently on fire. (In fact, it's cooler than Boston, which is currently having it's third heatwave of the summer.)

Two videos in the same month means one of the four videos I owe you is taken care of! Three to go!

Also, as of today, I've finished David Neiwert's Alt-America, which is instrumental for the next episode of The Alt-Right Playbook. I livetweeted it as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch, and the thread is compiled via the Thread Reader App here. I also updated the Research Masterpost.

My hope for next month is to put out the next Alt-Right Playbook, but we'll see how feasible that is. For the first time, I may be doing a bit of original research for this one, and doing that right may slow things down. If it takes too long I may sneak out the first episode or two of Protagony while I work on TARP. We'll see how things shake out. I'm kicking myself because I left some of my notes back in Boston, which limits how much prep I can do from California, but I'm working in other areas!

VidCon Postmortem

VidCon was a blast! I dappered up. I got to meet internet friends in person: Magdalen Rose, Dan Olson, Hbomb, Maggie Mae Fish, Sarah Z, Kat Blaque, and also Kat Lo. And I got to see some of my in-person friends again, like Lindsay Ellis, Contrapoints, and Mike Rugnetta. I also made a few new friends and met with a handful of fans who recognized me. Received a bunch of business cards during a networking event, too. I haven't been that extroverted in a while, and it turns out I can pull it off sometimes, so long as I sleep a few hundred hours when I get back home.

One of the weirder moments is I was at a grill the day before at a fellow YouTuber's house (?!) and Hank Green was there (?!?!!) and when I got introduced as the guy who does Alt-Right Playbook he said "oh, I'm a huge fan" (?!?!?!!?!?!??!?!!??!?!??!?!). SO THAT'S A THING THAT HAPPENED.

But beyond the social component, VidCon is a strange animal. It's one part fans meeting their celebrities, one part YouTubers trading information, and one part big corporations giving number-crunchy talks about search engine optimization and such, and each of these wildly different experiences is gated off by price. Being on the creator track, I couldn't go to any of the industry track stuff, which was in a completely different building, and apparently came with a bunch of free food. Industry track folks are actively encouraged not to leave that section of the convention center, because many of them are Big Name YouTubers who will get swamped with fans if they go into the main hall. Means smaller YouTubers like me have a hard time socializing with our peers if we're not shelling out for the more expensive tickets, since they keep heading off behind the velvet rope. I don't begrudge anyone for this, I see the problems it's meant to solve and I don't feel entitled to anyone's time, but it's an awkward class reminder.

Still, very glad I went, and, if the money's there, I might spring for Industry Track next year.

Things I've Enjoyed This Month

I've continued reading novels this month, finishing off Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (very nice), banging out Lightless by C.A. Higgins (strong start, saggy middle, weak finish), and savoring The City & The City by China Miéville (excellent). I've just started Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, but I'm too early in it to judge its quality.

On the red-eye back from Anaheim, I finally played What Remains of Edith Finch, which is both wonderful and almost exactly one full Switch charge long. Gonna pull the same thing on the red-eye back from San Francisco with Wandersong, which I've played just a little of and already adore.

I haven't been to many movies save Midsommar, which was... intense. I finally watched Evangelion all the way through, having only caught a few episodes back in the day on KQED (let me tell you, catching only a few scattered episodes and then suddenly tuning in for the finale is a weird experience). Haven't soldiered through End of Eva yet, but I guess I will soon. I guess I saw the new Spider-Man, but that was mostly the usual "can't decide what to see for date night so I guess it's a Marvel movie" thing. I'm kinda over the MCU.

I think that's everything! I'm gonna go get some rice balls.

-I