Inspirations

Johnny · July 19, 2021

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We all have our inspirations. The ideas and works don’t just appear out of thin air, not to mention that most of them are heavily based on existing ones. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing - this is how art works. These are the artworks. And we all are forever grateful to people who helped to shape our brain in these quirky unexplainable ways.

And so, I present to you “The Stuff That Inspires Me (Sometimes)” YouTube Edition. No books or movies here, just your average people spouting nonsense on the internet. They can be very inspiring because they feel close, they feel more relatable and more “real”. You know, like a neighbor who drills something in their apartment every day at 10pm. It’s scary to imagine how many holes that apartment has now. But I’m not going to focus on negatives because this is not that kind of a post. Note: the order is not a ranking, it’s just the order in which they came to my mind.

exurb1a is a channel where a certain man looks at the world and thinks “wow, we really have no idea what we’re doing”. He’s kind of a philosopher, but not really. Kind of a thinker, but not too hard. You’ll mostly see some scary, depressing, and inspirational stuff - sometimes all in a single package! Also, the man’s been writing books, some of which are fun, and he’s a damn good writer - every video is like a gift to the humanity. Ok, I guess that’s a bit too much praise, but this blog wouldn’t exist without the appropriate “push” that I received from watching exurb1a’s stuff.

Notable videos for introduction are:

  • “And Nothing Can Ever Ruin This” - very romantic, unapologetically real.
  • “27” - everyone likes stories about sentient AI, and this one is probably one of the funniest.
  • “Making Stuff” - a must watch for every creative person out there. A reminder that even though it’s never as easy as it looks, it’s still worth it.

Lindsay Ellis. You might not be big into movies, but outside of movie analysis she also has trope-specific analysis and cultural analysis - and all of them are fairly interesting. And, of course, writing shenanigans! If you’ve already watched a couple of her videos before, you can probably now connect the dots in your head and notice that her writing style kinda rubbed off on me. Except I don’t drink that much. Now that I think about it, maybe I should? Maybe that’s the secret ingredient for such high quality essays?

Notable videos that might satisfy your curiosity are:

bill wurtz. Also known as Bill Wurtz. His name is probably Bill Wurtz and he makes stuff for YouTube that’s kinda fun to listen to and it gets popular sometimes. You might’ve seen his “history of japan” and “history of the entire world, i guess” because they went viral, but those 2 don’t really represent what he does. But also I make it sound like it’s easy to explain why some people (me included) like his content. We just do. It’s fun. And meaningful. No, trust me, it is. You probably won’t get it, or maybe you will. Or maybe you only won’t get it at first, and then you will. Or maybe you will only get it sometimes. Doesn’t matter.

Notab… You know what, no, just watch literally anything. Pick a random one and begin. That’s the best way to go about it.

I could throw a bunch of additional mentions to some other people on YouTube, but most of them are video essay channels, so either you are already into that kind of thing - in which case you already know about them - or you don’t, which means you won’t be interested anyway.

Of course, outside of YouTube, I have a fair share of other wonderful creators who had an influence on me in the past, but that’s a separate discussion, which will probably come up when I get to talk about the topics that might be related to those creators in some way. This is where you say “And when exactly is that? It’s not like you write posts here every day.” Well, to be “inspired”, it’s not enough to just watch/listen to inspirational people. There is something else, something deep inside you - that hidden “switch” that starts the engine, and gets the creativity machine to accelerate, beginning its trip into the land of imagination. And that place is not exactly full of rainbows - it’s so easy to get stuck or get lost or just run out of fuel. I have many ideas, and many things that I want to say - I’ve taken those trips fairly often - but I don’t usually come back with something that’s completely finished. In fact, that never happens. At best, you’ll get a draft. And then you have to work with it, build something on it, polish it. And only after that you can show it to the world.

Getting an inspiration is fun, but making an actual thing out of it usually isn’t. But hey, if you’re reading this, it means I successfully went through the entire cycle again. So I can probably do that a few more times. At least I hope so.