Y'all Remember Sugar Pine 7?

Photo Credit to The Sugar Pine 7 YouTube Chanel

I kept wondering where I was going to start this journey of mine, I’d had the idea of putting together a blog for a while, a place to express certain thoughts I have rattling around in my (mostly empty) skull, but nothing I ever came up with felt… significant enough to begin this new venture. I never felt like what I had to say mattered, and in truth, I still don’t and I don’t think what I write will ever be helpful, or important in the lives of other people. At the end of this all, I don’t think this is going to make a difference or change anything about how anyone is feeling, I’m not a voice to rally behind, and I’m not aggressive enough to be a voice to rally against, I’m just another few pages of writing to amass at the bottom of the endless pools of internet scripture, selfishly putting my content out into the world to make myself feel better.

I feel like I lost a friend today, even though the thing I speak of was neither a person nor was it even remotely close to being a friend of mine. Youtube celebrity is strange like that, people put a persona up on the other end of a camera that people relate to so heavily they attach themselves personally to it, you become a part of a community, you consider yourself to be “friends” with those creators despite never having spoken personally to them in your life. In some cases, those periods of internet fandom culminate in true and long-lasting partnerships, but for the majority of the people like me, we voyeuristically watch as these “friends” perform for us and somehow convince ourselves that we have gleaned an insider perspective on them to the extent of a close acquaintance. It’s not bad, although when taken to extremes it becomes frightening and dangerous, it offers people a measure of respite from lives that aren’t always as idealistic as the ones we see from the dark of our bedrooms at 3 am on the screen of our phone. I lost a friend today. A Youtube channel that I had shared the journey of for years, people I had watched goof around and act a fool on the other side of the camera.

The idea of being sad over the cancellation of a thing I love has never really occurred to me before. Maybe there are a few days of indignation at the lack of resolution, but having gone to school and done research into the film and television industry, I never mourned the loss of a show I liked or wailed at the unjust cancellation of a movie at the last minute. At the end of the day, I am personally not owed anything, and I do not pretend that the hole left by one form of media cannot be filled by another. Knowing all this, the feeling I have at the end of this Youtube channel, Sugar Pine 7, is foreign to me, and it took me a little bit of time to figure out why I’m as invested in this as I am.

Sure I watched this channel since day 1, sure I’ve been involved in this entire story from start to finish as the boys slowly but surely overcame all the obstacles in their path. As they built careers out of the thing they loved, as they came out year after year with funny, unique and entertaining content. As they slowly lost their motivation, as they started to make videos out of necessity rather than interest, as they lost the fire that fueled them through the original run of their first season. At the end of the day though, it’s just a fun show I watched online right? Just a couple of friends hanging out again, right? Yeah. Basically

I started writing a novel this year. I know from this eloquent prose you see here it’s hard to imagine anything I make being marketable in any way but I’m giving in a shot. I’m writing custom content for Tabletop Roleplaying games (sexy, I know), I went to film school for a year, re-learned a language, met some of my closest friends, found a job I truly like to work. I did a lot this past year, and if I trace the lines back to where the current version of myself took root, it hearkens back to that odd, despondent spring I first saw these guys on Sugar Pine 7 and their strange and mesmerizing content. A few years ago I was ready to die, having grown up with that tendency towards suicide, it’s kept it’s cold, damp grip around my neck since I was in middle school. It just seemed like my life would never amount to anything, and I was so exhausted from trying. Of making the effort to get out of bed, of making the effort to talk to people, to take control of my life, of just existing in general. I was ready to shrug my shoulders and take a dive, just out of sheer lack of any other emotion in my life. I’m not giving SP7 all the credit for pulling me out of that dark place, I worked my ass off and overcame a lot to get where I am now, but those first videos and the entirety of Alternative Lifestyle season 1 started a ball rolling that dramatically changed my life, and most likely extended it by decades.

It took a bit of thought to come to understand why I mourn the loss of Sugar Pine 7 so much. Part of it is the tragic irony of it’s ending is so reflective to it’s beginning, part of it is hearing about Steven Suptic (the original creator) describe his emotional and psychological state, being able to sympathize with an undue amount with some of what he describes. Part of it is losing something I genuinely looked forward to showing up in my feed, but at the end of the day, it’s the same feeling people have when they realize tragedy befell someone they owe something to, the knowledge that the aid they gave me will never be able to be repaid. Or maybe all that I just said is bullshit, I have no idea. I adored their content, and a part of me knew this would end, I had just hoped I would be able to contribute to it concretely before it did.

That’s basically what this whole thing is, it’s my selfish insert into the SP7 story. The too little too late coming in just to make myself feel better about my inability to get myself going in time to do something that would have mattered to someone other than myself. When I finish my novel this year, it’s going to be dedicated to these boys, which was something I had planned to do already but the current circumstances add more weight to that act. My novel is just one piece of the multi-faceted legacy left behind by just a group of guys who wanted to do what they love because that’s what pulled me out of my shell that spring, that’s what got me going in the first place. Watching a couple of dudes going out and doing what they love, working their ass off to make their inner desires a concrete truth. My novel is the continuation of that spirit.

I’m gonna miss these guys. I know they’ll be able to bounce back, or at the very least I sincerely hope they can. Steve, Cib, James, Famous Actor James Allen McCune, Mimi, Autumn, Vicky, Bruce, Parker, Jeremy, that one guy I can’t remember the name of… It might not mean a lot to you all, and this sure as hell is more writing than you really need to waste your time reading, but if you end up all the way here at the end of this heap of trash let me thank you, from the bottom of my heart, because your impact on my life is astounding. It set me in motion to become whoever I will become, and everything I ever do will be traced back to that cold spring where I was accidentally saved by a bunch of idiots and the ending of SourceFed. I love you all and thank you.

Let’s get peas, yeah?