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As someone who spent a good chunk of their childhood and teenage years on Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 through Black Ops, I have fond memories of the early days of YouTube and video game commentaries. BlameTruth, Xcalizorz, and Tejbz were my mainstays, but I enjoyed watching all of them from time to time, even Hutch. There was something so special about listening to a random person, someone who you never would have known existed if not for the internet, discussing whatever came to their mind; rambling about their life, about things they see out in the world, and of course mainly about terrible maps and overtuned weapons. At the end of the day, it was always about the games. No one was trying to sell you a course, buy their merch, or any of that shit. I have fond memories of me and my friends using BlameTruth's class setups, rocking Olympia only after watching Xcal's Brolympia stories, and even developing a Geometry Wars Pacifism addiction when Tejbz got into it for a while. The funny thing was we would encounter others in the lobby doing the exact same things. It was this community built around a shared love for a hobby.

I'm well aware that YouTube is much different now, and I don't really care that it is. I don't mean this as some sort of nostalgia post. Change is both inevitable and mandatory; life couldn't be what it is without it. But recently, I've been seeing this sort of resurgence of old school CoD commentaries in the spotlight. Only it's like looking at Frankenstein's monster. Instead of a distinctly human voice, possessing the numerous inflections lended by emotion, with a slight laugh here and there punctuating specific one-liners, there's this one-note, emotionless AI droning. Money is the only thing being discussed in these videos. About how time is running out, how you need to start hustling and investing, how being an entrepeneur is everything, how I built some six figure business and you can too. Of course there are links to some coaching service, some sort of brand endorsement, and some kind of merch coming out soon so you have to stay tuned.

I guess this is nothing new for today's online landscape. Content creation has been business-centric for a while now, and while it has been all too easy just to not engage with it anymore, someting just rubs me the wrong way about something I used to love being dug up and remade into something so different. I have no desire to go back to that time, but when something has ran its course, as it must do, I wish it would stay gone rather than become something else. Is that feeling also nostalgia?