I Don't Know James Rolfe

This is a video about becoming middle aged.

My favorite part so far is definitely dan having to state the "controversial" opinion that a man loving his wife and kids and caring about them more than his YouTube channel is a normal rational human behavior.

video game nerd trolls struggling to understand the basic concept that a man can be in love with his wife and have a happy family seems to be something that comes up a lot

The assertion some people make that James does not love his wife and children more than anything is absurd, it's blatantly obvious to anyone with an ounce of empathy or social awareness

I hate Wavelength. All it does is make you want to confess to your wife's murder

I really love that conclusion, honestly. To spend hours upon hours painfully dissecting why it is that you feel so critical of someone only to finally come to the conclusion that you just hate that they remind you of your own insecurities is honestly one of the more real human experiences out there.

"maybe if i built it myself i would understand." oh THAT'S what the woodworking tweet was about.

This video is more of a burn on the cinemassacretruth subreddit than it is on james himself, and im all for it. The fact that an entire community collectively came against a guy for putting his family first is just insane to think about.

"Do you think a depressed person could make this?" *pans to reveal 1/12 scale diorama of James Rolfe's nerd room

Clickbait title: The Angry Angry Video Game Nerd Nerd

As somebody who was never into AVGN, I had no idea why the algorithm suggested this video to me. After finishing the video, I understand that it was likely because of the agitated arthouse atmosphere. Everything I know about James Rolfe, I learned from "I Don't Know James Rolfe."

I have never seen criticism this harsh feel so deeply respectful.

"Remember that guy who used to make videos about editing and storytelling?" "Yeah, I think so. He made a bunch of videos about financial scams, right? What's he up to now?" "....He just keeps drilling holes in wood and bolting camera heads to them...."

"That gets frustrating really fast, and when you get frustrated you get impulsive, and those impulses lead to half measure solutions, and those half measure solutions accumulate into a whole network of bespoke inefficiencies that you just live with because the process of unravelling them feels just so... big." This hit pretty hard.

You thought we wouldn't notice, but the intro is being recorded on the shotgun mic just barely out of frame, despite Dan holding a mic the entire time. Just like James' studio tour.

AVGN will be forever embedded in my mind as the person who helped me learn English. Listening to him when he was ranting and starting to understand his words, and slowly starting to hear and comprehend fluent English speech was an experience, and I'm certain I would have delayed my own development, if I accidentally didn't stumble into his Simon's Quest video way back then.

"im a filmmaker! a filmmaker!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a popular youtuber

Little-known American indie band Metalica playing for a crowd of 1.6 million people in Soviet Russia

"Let he who is without cringe throw the first stone." Amen.

When I heard the bit about complaining about technical exercises and having to take formal drawing and color theory classes, I realized exactly the kind of student James Rolfe was. I very recently graduated with a bachelor of arts in music and I ran into many people who complained about having to learn music theory and history, or slacked off private lessons. Hell I even took a color theory class as an elective my last semester and saw the same thing. It’s people who go to college to get better at one specific way of making art, and don’t really find other ideas or learning things technically very valuable. Lots of these people do eventually find something to take from these theory classes, and I don’t think young college students who are barely adults on their own for the first time are terrible people for being a little self centered. But it’s… telling when someone still seems to have that mindset 20 years later.