The creators of M3gan are totally Portal and Portal 2 fans. I had a feeling when I watched M3gan, but after watching the sequel M3gan 2.0, I’m convinced.
The robot villain-turned-ally M3gan has a distortion in her robot voice that’s very reminiscent of the voice of GlaDOS, the robot villain-turned-ally of the Portal video game series. M3gan’s character arc from M3gan to M3gan 2.0 matches GlaDOS’s from Portal to Portal 2, and M3gan singing pop songs inappropriately matches GlaDOS unexpectedly singing the closing theme to both Portal games.
As for the movie itself, it’s great and about as good as I remember M3gan being. Among other satisfying action, comedy, and storytelling beats M3gan 2.0 features, the villain printer company Xenox having super advanced AI is hilarious.
Occasionally, host Josh Gates portrays himself as a dumb, annoying American in a foreign country. Overall, however, his bits are charming–he once realized he didn’t have physical currency to buy ice cream and helped sell ice cream to make up for it–and he comes across as a genuinely enthusiastic archeologist.
Tracking Tasmania’s Tiger (S4 E9)
Cryptids are animals frequently seen but not yet proven to exist. I knew there was a word that encompassed Big Foot, the Mothman, the Chupacabra, and the like.
Viking Secrets (S5 E1)
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are derived from Odin’s Day (Woden’s Day), Thor’s Day, and Freya’s Day.
The Secret, Cracking the Secret, The Secret Solved (S5 E4, S7 E9, S7 E12)
In these episodes, Josh Gates follows clues to real-world buried treasure as depicted in the The Secret: A Treasure Hunt. This book, published in 1982 by Byron Preiss, contains twelve paintings, each depicting clues corresponding to locations across North America in which Preiss buried a box holding a ceramic key. Each key corresponds to a gemstone that Preiss would award to the finder. Only two keys were found before Preiss died in a car crash in 2005, taking the locations of the remaining keys with him.
Josh Gates follows modern enthusiasts of The Secret, who believe they’ve cracked the clues to the remaining boxes. Adding to the difficulty of following the clues, however, is the changes to the cities and landscapes that have occurred in the nearly 40 years since the book was published. Despite this, Josh and his fellow treasure hunters find a key! The Secret is one of Expedition Unknown‘s more fascinating stories and with an amazing conclusion. More often, Josh finds little to advance the mystery he attempts to solve by the end of an episode.
I wonder if Ernest Cline took inspiration from The Secret when he wrote Ready Player One? The characters’ fascination with the 80’s makes it seem plausible.
The Hunt for the Golden Owl (S6 E9)
In this hunt very similar to The Secret, a book On the Trail of the Golden Owl by Max Valentin provides eleven clues to the location of a golden owl worth half a million dollars and hidden somewhere in France.
Escaping the Rock (S10 E7)
Expedition Unknown made it all the way to episodes that premiered in 2022 without mentioning COVID-19! This episode contained the first obvious signs: Josh making inappropriate video calls to interviewees that he would usually visit in person.
I was on the fence about COVID-19’s affect on Deadliest Catch. On one hand, the show documents one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, so why would the people willing to do it care about a flu virus? On the other hand, the ship captains and some of the crew have extremely unhealthy habits, so I understand their concern. It’s nice that Expedition Unknown let COVID-19 affect the show as little as possible, given how ridiculous that would look juxtaposed with the adventurous and dangerous risks they take on a per episode basis.
Chasing the Mysteries of Moses (S10 E12)
One of the show’s interviewees explains the origins of the modern alphabet: ancient semitic graffiti inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Wanting to write something themselves, the semitic graffiti artists drew a rough depiction of an ox on top of a house. The ox upside down creates the shape of an “A.” The word for ox and house to the semitic people was “alpha” and “bet.” Crazy!
The Hunt for Petra’s Lost Tombs, Petra’s Secret’s Revealed (S14 E1-2)
Another of Expedition Unknown‘s more interesting stories, this pair of episodes explores ancient Nabataean ruins, much of them carved in stone. The Nabataeans knew how to control water in the desert, their ancient settlements featuring stone and ceramic plumbing and water ways. They also had the technology to carve grand buildings out of solid stone cliff faces. Despite their achievements, we know almost nothing about them, including the purpose of their most impressive buildings. They existed within a few centuries of 0 AD.
The Man-Eating Lions of Kenya (S15 E2)
I thought there was nothing to learn about two lions, called the Ghost and the Darkness by those tormented by them, that killed as many as 130 people over 100 years ago and that Josh Gates had no business investigating whatever he was investigating, but this episode was surprisingly interesting. Josh and the investigators he accompanied analyzed the skulls and DNA of the lions and discovered they were brothers with genetic tooth problems. Jammed into a hole in one of the lion’s teeth was also hundreds of hairs, revealing what the lion ate and how its diet changed over time. Humans proved easy prey and soft food for lions with sore teeth.
Vanderbilt’s Lost Steamship (S16 E6)
Josh and the investigators actually found the ship wreck! Usually, Josh finds a different ship or a different airplane crash. Or it starts raining, and the crew’s plans are ruined forever.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery contains its share of ruthless mockery of Catholicism but also a refreshingly optimistic view of it. The murder victim of this who-done-it, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, runs his church like a cult and shamelessly confesses his numerous sexual sins to his new assistant pastor, the protagonist Jud. Meanwhile, Jud is a devoted servant of God who genuinely wants to realign the Monsignor’s flock. He begins to doubt his abilities and mission, however, when no one seems interested in his teachings and he finds himself the primary suspect in Jefferson’s murder.
These two views create entertaining contrasting imagery. In one moment, Jud and detective Benoit Blanc are breaking into the dead Monsignor’s office and smashing a tiny Jesus statue with a statue of Jesus’ head in their search to treasure. In the next, Jud is selflessly listening to a woman talking through her unrelated personal problems and doubts. Jud’s brief foray into treasure hunting becomes background noise when he remembers what’s really important to him. While most of the film and its murder centers around the hunt for a lost treasure, in the end, Jud returns the treasure to God’s possession where it belongs.
The balance of mockery and praise of Catholicism is nice… and pretty funny.
Breaking Bad is one of the most well-constructed TV series I’ve ever seen. It follows Walter White on his rise from over-qualified high school chemistry teacher to methamphetamine drug lord. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend getting on Netflix and watching it before proceeding.
The series features many well-developed characters, but Skyler, Walter’s wife, in particular caught my interest. A fellow Breaking Bad fan, and the person who introduced me to the series almost a decade after its final episode aired, however, told me this was an odd choice. The wife of the shady protagonist in crime dramas like Breaking Bad (e.g. The Sopranos) tends to receive a lot of hate from viewers. They’re either submissive to whatever their criminal significant other wants them to do, making them seem weak or unrealistic to the audience, or they are antagonistic, making it natural for the audience to dislike them for getting in the “hero’s” way.
As Walter White’s wife, Skyler is no exception to the rule of being a commonly disliked character. She begins the series oblivious to Walter’s criminal activities. After she discovers them, she transitions between reluctantly or unwillingly supporting them, trying to separate herself and/or her kids from them, and finding herself hopelessly ensnared by them. Walter reasons that his actions are for the good of his family. He wants to provide them with wealth and safety for after he dies prematurely from terminal lung cancer. Skyler similarly reasons that her actions are for the good of her family. She hides Walter’s criminal activities partly to protect her son, who would be devastated to discover the father he admires is a criminal, and partly to protect her brother-in-law DEA agent Hank Shrader, who would be devastated to discover a criminal mastermind in his midst.
While Walter is willing to sell drugs and commit murder to provide for his family, Skyler is willing to go to equal extremes to protect them. She concocts a clever explanation for Walter’s wealth for her sister and brother-in-law. With her former career in accounting, she insists on overseeing Walter’s money-laundering operation to ensure no one discovers it. She pays most of Walter’s accumulated fortune to her former employer when she discovers he is at risk of being investigated for tax evasion. Fearing her household and money laundering business will also fall under this investigation, Skyler insists he use the money she forces on him to pay his bills and shutter his business, even sending goons to scare him into doing so. Unfortunately, she does this at a time when Walter needs his accumulated wealth most, unwittingly creating a seemingly insurmountable obstacle for him.
Admittedly, after watching the series a second time, Skyler is most interesting during this period of reluctant acceptance, which peaks in Season 4. Her prior period of revenge sex with her former boss in order to punish Walt for hiding his criminal activity and post period of deep depression and antagonism after she discovers Walt is not only a drug dealer but a murderer is less interesting. Perhaps this is because in both cases she reaches the contradictory conclusion that she must split her family apart for the good of the family.
Still, she was the character I didn’t know existed and yet needed for inspiration. I’d never watched a crime drama before and was unfamiliar with her archetype. It turns out I’ve been writing a novel with a loose crime drama sub-plot for over a decade, and the “crime boss’s” wife was my weakest character. Unknowingly following the trend of crime dramas, I’d never had a good idea of what to do with her to make her likeable or even interesting. Skyler made me wonder, “How far would this supporting character go to protect her family?” While I can’t say I’ve solved the problem of the “crime boss’s wife” archetype, finding an answer to this question resulted in a much more interesting character.
One of my goto commentators Sydney Watson recently commented on food eating content on YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms. Being a consumer of subcategories of such content, I wanted to share my thoughts.
The majority of Sydney’s commentary focuses on her disgust with mukbangs, a subcategory of eating videos where the host simply eats in front of a camera without a particular goal. I agree. From what I know of mukbangs–which, admittedly, mostly come through Sydney’s video–mukbangs are boring and disgusting. My exposure to mukbangs prior to Sydney’s video was through Nikocado Avocado, who appeared as a guest on another channel I watch and then pulled an extreme weight loss stunt. I watched a couple of his videos after this stunt and, yeah, was mostly bored and disgusted by him and his guest Hungry Fat Chick. If Sydney’s montage of mukbang videos is any indication of what the subgenre is like, I have no interest in it. She somewhat lumps mukbangs into the same category as food challenge videos though, and here is where I have some disagreement.
Despite mukbangs and food challenges appearing to contain the same content, from what I see, they target different audiences and the creators employ different strategies. Some mukbangs focus on the hosts chatting with their audience or among themselves over a table of food that may or may not be entirely consumed. For example, the hosts may sample a fast food menu while hanging out with guests or the audience. These could be considered the wholesome type of mukbangs, bringing lonely people together over food. The more popular mukbangs, however, focus on extreme behaviors: eating large quantities of unhealthy food, lip smacking and chewing ASMR, moaning and excited reactions to the taste of food, eating messy food or eating messily, obese people shamelessly showing off their obesity, etc. These creators perhaps gain attention through shock value, appealing to food fetishes or ASMR niches, or affirming their viewers’ obesity.
In contrast, food challenge videos follow a common saying: “Shut up and eat.” Viewers generally aren’t interested in food reviews, chatting, long introductions, or long outros. Videos are often overlaid with music or narration to drown out the eater’s chewing sounds aside from the eater occasionally sharing satisfying crunches and “Mmm!”‘s. Even then, eaters often apologize for sharing crunching noises or showing off dripping food to the camera. While there are messy competitive eaters out there–and sometimes it’s necessary to meet a time limit–it’s actually not a recommended strategy to eat food messily. This can cause a disgust reaction and curb appetite. Viewers have also been known to criticize eaters for leaving so much as crumbs behind. Additionally, because organs can’t shift as easily when surrounded by fat, overweight eaters don’t have as large a capacity as eaters at a healthy weight. Most popular competitive eaters maintain their physique, creating an overlap between competitive eating and exercise enthusiasts rather than obesity advocates. Eaters often emphasize to their viewers that they maintain a strict exercise routine to maintain their weight but also encourage and model to their viewers not to be afraid of food. Even excessive eating can be worked or dieted off with discipline.
Sydney does briefly mention that she recognizes a difference between mukbangs and food challenges but goes on to complain that food challenges are still a waste of food. Even if someone successfully eats an impressive amount of food, no one needs to eat that much. This neglects that eaters who maintain their weight often eat less than they normally would in the days, weeks, and even months following challenges, ultimately canceling out the excess. These eaters also often enjoy exercise, sports, or weightlifting and need to consume more than the average 2,000 calories per day to maintain their performance anyway. I suppose you could consider their lifestyle or hobbies a waste, but its certainly healthier than the obese mukbangers Sydney criticizes for eating an excessive amount of food to feed their obesity.
Overall, I agree with Sydney’s assessment of mukbangs though with one other caveat…
Erik the Electric‘s significant other Kristie Barker technically makes mukbangs, and they’re great. She used to make fun shorts where, for example, she bought all the Crumbl Cookie flavors for the week or an assortment of candy from foreign countries, took a bite or two of each, and rated them. Her long form content usually features her and Erik sampling a variety of food and hanging out together in a fun place, Disney most often. Her mukbangs embody the feeling of hanging out and having fun. Kristie is a personal trainer and former bikini competitor. She’s highly disciplined with her normal, daily food consumption as demonstrated in her videos on the subject, but for viewers wanting to attain similar goals or physique as her, she advocates for also making healthy use of cheat days or cheat meals and practicing indulging in favorite foods with restraint. She’s often seen taking only a bite or two of tasty food or taking viewers along for her indulgent cheat days to demonstrate these ideals herself. Her bird-like eating in most videos might be considered a waste, but Erik is also often shown devouring the rest.
The majority of the conflict in home renovation shows comes from the homeowners balancing their wants, their budget, and practicality. When it comes to specials where the home-building or home-renovating celebrity is building or renovating of their own place, however, there’s no longer any mention of budget. Wants are only occasionally balanced with practicality.
Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House is no exception wherein Chip and Joanna Gaines buy and renovate a house in the Colorado mountains to be closer to skiing in the winter with their five kids. The retreat features three buildings to renovate: the main house and two guest suites. The main obstacle I recall involved Chip and Joanna’s desire for a massive, two-story, wood-burning fireplace, a want that would typically be completely unattainable on an average budget. The catch? On the ground floor, the best spot for the fireplace was to the right of the best spot on the second floor. In the end, they still built the massive, two-story fireplace. They just also built another massive, one-story fireplace next to it and nixed a French door.
Another interesting choice they made was to convert a large walk-in closet to a bunkbed room for 3-4 of their kids rather than designating separate spaces for them. It was a neat room despite it defying the common homeowner desire to give each kid their own space, but I suppose this is more of a vacation home than a permanent residence.
It looks like a cool place overall… but let’s never speak of how much any of this costs.
I remember thinking when I watched Season 4 of Stranger Things in 2022, “Oof. They should have stopped there.” If they had increased the pace a little and been more definitive with the ending, they could have done it, and it would have felt complete. Instead, an interdimensional rift split open Hawkins to create a cliff hanger to a final season that somehow the creators were going to fill with stuff, despite the series feeling like it should have ended.
When Season 5 finally came out, I started by rewatching all previous seasons, as I did whenever a new season was released. I started late though and then ended up spoiling myself by watching a couple of my go-to commentators complain about how bad Season 5, and one episode in particular, was before I had even started watching the season. Still, when Red Letter Media and Sydney Watson had the same reaction for the exact opposite reasons (RLM leaned toward the season being pointless, action-packed nonsense while Sydney Watson leaned toward the season being pointless, mundane nonsense), there was still some hope to form my own opinion.
The first episode is a bizarre mix of 80s nostalgia and stopping Vecna. Despite the rift splitting Hawkins and its military occupation, the characters pretend to have a normal year in high school. Somehow, I made a connection to the final Harry Potter book. Unlike episode one of Stranger Things 5, which attempts to be another year in high school in the 80s and also defeating Vecna, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn’t about another magical year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and also defeating Voldemort. Too much had changed by the end of the previous book. Too much has also changed by the end of Stranger Things 4. Stranger Things 5 does quickly abandon the pretense of normalcy, but that means it also abandons what made the show charming: 80s nostalgia combined with a science fiction, fantasy adventure. Season 5 can’t have such charm because the right-side up is so devoid of 80s normalcy. Nobody is nostalgic about military occupation or making plans to infiltrate the upside down in a bunker. In contrast, Harry Potter never loses its charm despite the drastic change of pace in the final book because its charm is magic in general, not tied so strictly to Hogwarts.
Will’s sudden super power to defeat Vecna kind of works and kind of doesn’t. Unlike One, El, or any of the children raised in isolation in Hawkins Lab, Will didn’t have to do anything to attain or unlock his powers. He didn’t even have to come out as gay. So, his abilities appear to manifest from nowhere and also belittle El’s experiences. It also kind of works. Vecna made his first official appearance in Season 4, and Will was nowhere near Vecna or his minions for the entire season. His abilities could have always been dormant, and Will has had a fair amount of suffering. For how much Will suffers from his experiences in the upside down in the first two seasons in particular, he never has a moment of power over the monsters that tormented him. From this perspective, it feels fitting for him to develop super powers. This could have been done more cleverly though rather than simply turning him into a second El or One. For example, he could have been given a second opportunity to spy on Vecna or the Mindflayer except this time, he’s the one in control and feeding crucial information to El and the others.
All I can think when I see El in that wetsuit with the triangle cut out of the neck is, “What a stupid costume.”
Nancy has killed monsters before, but she’s also perfectly fine with killing people? When did this happen?
The final episode reminded me of Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, the final book in the four-part Inheritance series. I know this show is supposed to invoke 80s nostalgia, but for some reason, my thoughts kept going to books that I read in the mid-2000s. Anyway, Inheritance had something like 120 pages of pure epilogue. In a similar vein, almost half of the two-hour finale of Stranger Things is epilogue. After Vecna and the Mindflayer appeared defeated, I was shocked that there was still an hour of the episode remaining. I remained shocked when El said goodbye to Mike and disappeared, and there was still 50 minutes left.
While getting to those last fifty minutes was as full of filler as I feared it would be four years ago, however, it felt fitting for all the characters and brought back the 80s charm that made the series great. I’ve never seen the end of Game of Thrones, but I doubt this was comparable or worse, especially (tying this back to books) when the book series Game of Thrones is based on will never have an ending at all.
I’ve been watching competitive eating on YouTube since early 2024. I was in the midst of a keto diet phase (it was a mistake; I don’t recommend it), and I think the YouTube algorithm sensed I was hungry. Initially, I was disgusted by watching Erik the Electric eat meals featured on My 600-Pound Life x2 four times in a day but continued watching his videos anyway. These days I mostly just think it’s impressive. I don’t watch all the competitive eaters, I may not even watch the best ones, but below is my ranked list of eaters that I watch regularly or have otherwise made an impression.
1. Erik the Electric
The YouTuber who introduced me to competitive eating has to go at the top of the list for multiple reasons. Erik’s videos are unique among all competitive eaters that I watch. Unlike other eaters listed here, Erik rarely does restaurant challenges. Instead, he sets challenges for himself. For the past three years, he’s based these challenges around a theme or a story. In his most recent video as of this writing, for example, he trained an AI, presumably on his previous challenges, to create a 14-day-long challenge for him to follow to prove he was still the “World’s Hungriest Man” as his tagline proclaims. His previous format, which he used when he posted challenges weekly, usually included eating a ridiculous amount of calories while showcasing new foods, entire menus, and seasonal specials at fast food restaurants and grocery stores.
Currently, Erik posts videos at a much slower cadence than other competitive eaters. It’s not out of the ordinary for months to pass between videos, but they’re always worth the wait for Erik’s humor, storytelling, and unique video editing style. Erik has a way of making food look delicious or at least making the challenge of eating a large quantity of it exciting (because, really, eating a 1-pound gummy bear in one sitting is disgusting no matter how you frame it). Where other competitive eaters merely tell the viewer how tasty their 10,000 calorie burger is week after week, Erik emphasizes his enthusiastic “Mmm!”s with fist pounds, camera shakes, video and audio effects, and animated fireballs. His challenges and loose storylines have plot twists, obstacles, and rising and falling action, and his onscreen calorie counters, timers, and progress graphics further emphasize the difficulty of his challenges and keep you wondering if he’s finally given himself too great of a challenge.
Erik’s backstory also distinguishes him other eaters. Like most eaters, Erik is an exercise enthusiast, his particular interests being in power lifting, bike riding, and most recently triathlons. He found these passions and competitive eating, however, after years of struggling with anorexia. It was his discovery that he could eat massive quantities of food and still maintain a healthy weight that ultimately gave him a better relationship with food.
I also have to put Erik at the top for the effect he’s had on me, and not only by introducing me to competitive eating. Don’t worry. He hasn’t inspired me to want to eat a sickening amount of food. He did, however, inspire me to try all the food. When I went to restaurants, I used to ask myself, “What’s the ‘safest’ thing on the menu, or what have I tried that I know is ‘safe’?” I often ordered the same foods over and over again. Now when I go to restaurants, I ask myself, “What haven’t I tried before that I’d like to try?” I keep a list of restaurants and menus from around Missoula with notes about what I liked, what I didn’t like, and what I thought about what I’ve tried. I’ve ordered from fast food places and restaurants that I’ve never tried before. I’ve ordered tasty food and desserts that I’d never considered. The inspiration came from simply watching Erik try all manner of tasty-looking foods. I wanted to try them, too. If he could eat a disgusting amount of food and be perfectly fine, why couldn’t I be fine giving a reasonable portion a try? Obviously, I’m not on the keto diet anymore, and I partly thank Erik for that as well.
2. Max vs. Food
I only found Max vs. Food a few months ago through collaborations with Katina Eats Kilos and Randy Santel, but he’s quickly risen to the second spot in my tier list. Max posts bi-weekly videos, featuring mostly restaurant speed and/or capacity challenges and some food-eating competitions and at-home challenges. Max is impressive for both his speed and his capacity. I rarely see him fail a challenge due to running out of time or feeling too sick to continue, and I’ve never seen him eat to the point of getting sick. He almost always breaks previous time records and out-eats the eaters he collaborates with. Alongside his bi-weekly, self-edited videos, he also works a fulltime job and runs several hours a day.
Max is enthusiastic and entertaining. His video format follows Katina Eats Kilos’ style where video of him eating is lightly edited, sped up, and overlayed with music and Max narrating his thoughts throughout the challenge. While videos in this style also include live audio of the eater interacting with the staff and audience, I find the additional narration makes it more interesting by adding observations and doubts that the eater might not admit aloud. Max makes food look good and rarely shows misery during a challenge, even when he says he’s struggling. While some eaters strategize how they approach a challenge, such as eating all the meat first, Max often has more fun with his food, attempting to eat giant burgers whole, making sandwiches from piles of meat and bread, and saving his favorites for last. His significant other Laura often assists, coaches, and supports him from behind the camera, which keeps me rooting for him when times are dire as well.
Being based in the UK, he also eats a lot of tasty-looking English breakfasts.
3. Katina Eats Kilos
Katina found competitive eating through the world of bikini competitions. In these competitions, natural competitors (i.e. non-steroid users) such a Katina ride a fine line between building muscle and remaining lean. After a competition, Katina decided to try competitive eating as a method of building muscle or bulking. She has since become a professional eater, although she maintains a strict regimen of weightlifting and bike riding. Katina isn’t a speed eater, but what interested me in her was her impressive capacity for being my size.
Katina also streams World of Warcraft regularly on Twitch. She brings her well-practiced narration to her weekly (recently turned bimonthly) videos to keep them engaging with her inner thoughts.
4. Randy Santel
Randy isn’t particularly impressive for his speed or unmaintained physique. Even his capacity is questionable at the frequency with which he struggles through or fails challenges. This may be, however, because he frequently eats one or two challenges a day for weeks at a time while on tour to accumulate videos to post over a much longer timeline while he’s not on tour. He has also beaten over a thousand restaurant challenges across the United States and around the world and owns foodchallenges.com, which maintains a global list of food challenges and tips for how to eat big and maintain physique. I don’t know for sure, but I would guess he’s one of the original professional eaters on YouTube and has inspired many of those that exist today.
Unlike other competitive eaters here, Randy doesn’t edit his own videos, and it shows. His videos are very formulaic, and since he has the beginning and end of the videos to share most of his thoughts, the introductions and closings can be drawn out. Randy is enthusiastic and infinitely supportive, but he usually comes across as showy and obnoxious rather than charming.
I discovered Randy through his fiancé Katina Eats Kilos. When I hear the two of them supporting each other off camera, I suppose I have to support both, although I find Katina more entertaining and impressive. Randy has recently decreased his schedule from bi-weekly to weekly videos in preparation for his marriage to Katina. He plans to retire as a professional eater when his new YouTube channel–featuring his knowledge as a dietician–grows to a sustainable size.
He also managed to find a challenge in Missoula:
5. Matt Stonie
Matt Stonie reminds me of Ryan Higa except instead of making short films with his Asian friends, his Asian friends film him cooking and eating disgusting food. Matt specializes in speed eating but has an impressive capacity as well. I don’t watch many of his videos, but most that I’ve seen feature home challenges he creates for himself, mostly focusing on challenging textures, uniformity, and flavors. As mentioned, Matt’s editing and video style reminds me a lot of Ryan Higa short films and also Erik the Electric videos. He doesn’t, however, make food look good and frequently fails his own challenges.
6. Molly Schuyler
As one of the top professional eaters in the world, Molly Schuyler doesn’t chew. She just swallows.
That said, I don’t go out of my way to watch her videos. Despite her ability to eat a two-foot long cheesesteak and an entire tray of cheese fries in less than three minutes, she’s not very entertaining. Of the few videos I’ve seen, there is somewhat uninformative and meandering introductions, bad audio, and zero narration during the challenges. Unlike most of the eaters I’ve listed here, she’s also not a “clean eater,” frequently turning her food to mush before stuffing it in her mouth.
I do appreciate seeing her on other eaters’ channels though. As long as someone else is handling the entertaining, video editing, and audio, she is very impressive and worth watching.
After several years of not watching Ghost Adventures, I returned for Seasons 26-30. Zak Bagans proceeded to tell me nearly every episode something along the lines of, “This is some of the most profound evidence ever captured.” And I thought to myself, “This is such bullshit.”
I remember the days of Ghost Hunters where nothing would happen for multiple episodes. Orbs were almost immediately disregarded as dust or bugs. Compelling evidence consisted of muffled EVPs. Creepy feelings were debunked as high electromagnetic fields from faulty electrical panels, and investigators were annoyed to discover haunted house gimmicks hadn’t been deactivated in restaurants purporting to be haunted. Shadow figures and poltergeist activity caught on camera was the stuff of season finales.
Now you’re going to claim to me that you captured a loud, disembodied, demonic scream for the SECOND TIME in Ghost Adventures history right after an episode capturing an object moving by itself? Half the time they can’t even get through a pre-investigation interview without supernatural activity interrupting or someone claiming to feel ill or weird.
Then, I thought I saw something move in my periphery in my house and freaked out, so I guess I’m still a believer. XD
On one hand, Zak Bagans feels like a slimy salesmen, and I wouldn’t put it past him to fake evidence. On the other hand, he’s investigated some sketchy places, participated in rituals, and actively invited entities into his life over the years I’ve been watching Ghost Adventures. In that way, I can believe the frequency and intensity of the supernatural activity surrounding him is merely increasing. In the documentary Demon House, Zak was haunted so hard that his eyes permanently crossed. Is that a joke, or is that real? I can’t tell anymore.
Notes:
Season 30 Episode 10
Psychometry – the ability to sense the aura of an object through touch.