Mary’s Favorite Content Creators (2/2)
Hello everyone! Last week, I wrote about my favorite content creators, specifically Let’s Players. I really love watching Let’s Players, but there’s so much more I watch on YouTube than those three channels from last week!
These three content creators are very different in their content, but I enjoy watching them all the same. From cooking to music to video games, these are three more content creators I enjoy!
Sam the Cooking Guy
Sam Zien — or, Sam the Cooking Guy — is a chef whose mission is to make food that’s “big in taste, but small in effort”, in his own words. He quit his job way back in 2001 to be a travel vlogger and decided to go with demystifying food for the normal person (aka non-chef) instead after September 11th. Since he began his career in cooking, he’s won 15 Emmys (for a self-named show that started as a 2 minute segment on the news and was developed into a half-hour program), written multiple cookbooks, opened a restaurant, hosted plenty of podcasts, shows (both online and otherwise), and so much more. This guy is the real deal.
Admittedly, I’ve just found Sam the Cooking Guy, watching his videos for the first time at the tail end of 2019. Matt and I were eating dinner and browsing YouTube when we were recommended his Munchies video (released on 4/20, of course). We were intrigued, so we watched it! We were surprised to find that the stuff he was making was pretty damn easy to make. More notably, we were surprised to find that STCG was just a normal dude. He wasn’t polished or trying to be something special. He was a dude cooking on camera. Honestly, just watch the video below to see what I mean.
I absolutely LOVE STCG’s energy. He reminds me of all of the dads I know, including mine. Something about this guy not taking himself too seriously, talking shit to his son behind the camera, and burning himself constantly really gives me Dad Vibes. It’s fun to watch!
I also really love that he genuinely wants to help people learn how to cook. All of his recipes are simple enough to follow along with, and Matt has made at least one recipe by him. To put that into perspective, Matt usually doesn’t cook at all. The second or third time I went to his place (before we moved in together of course) he tried to make me pancakes and almost burned the house down. If Matt is inspired to cook, I know that whatever STCG’s doing, it’s working.
8-Bit Music Theory
For those who don’t know, I come from a musical background. Both my parents have a deep love for music and have been involved in creating it in some way. My dad, for example, loves to sing and when he was in school, he was in marching band. My mom has been in multiple bands, both as the frontwoman and the guitarist. Naturally, I love music VERY much.
I played viola in school (about 8 years), and taught myself to play bass guitar when I was a teenager. Partly because of laziness and partly because of dyscalculia, I never learned how to read music appropriately. I can barely read alto cleft (the home cleft of the viola), and I have no idea how to comprehend treble and bass cleft. I have always been really good at matching pitch, however, so I would teach myself the music that way.
8-Bit Music Theory takes my love for music and teaches me things that I wouldn’t otherwise find out on my own, seeing as I don’t really make music like I used to. The guy behind it, simply known as 8-Bit, teaches people about different parts of music using beloved video game pieces. He dissects music from all sorts of video games, from Mario to Sonic to Shovel Knight, and so on. From what I can tell, he also transcribes it all so that he can properly show everyone exactly what he’s talking about.
My first introduction to 8-Bit Music Theory was the above video, a retrospective into the Overworld themes in Legend of Zelda. At the time, I was on a LoZ kick, so I was interested to see how he analyzed these songs from my childhood that I loved so much. Instantly I realized that I had no idea what he was talking about. Technically, he was making no sense. I never took music theory, and like I said, I don’t know how to read music, so what he was saying was making no sense.
What made sense to me was the way the layout of the songs made it feel. To 8-Bit, every song is a “mood”, which is 100% how I look at music. I may not know how to read music, but I can understand why the composer structured a song based on the mood of it. In that aspect, 8-Bit made perfect sense.
I’m pretty sure I watched all of his videos in less that a week. The way he describes why a composer decided on this or that key, that beat instead of this one, and so on…It really fills a place in my little music heart that I haven’t been able to fill in a while. If you’re into music theory (or, if you’re like me and just really like the how and why of music), I highly suggest watching a few of his videos. It’s a new way to look at video game music, and a new way to really understand why songs are structured the way they are.
Zeltik
Zeltik is a graphic artist, but what I know him for is his videos on YouTube focusing on the Legend of Zelda lore. If you are unaware, I love the Legend of Zelda series. I’ve played the games (or watched people play the games) since I was a little kid. Behind Harry Potter, the Legend of Zelda is my favorite series ever.
My sister Allison actually introduced me to Zeltik a few years back. His voice is super calming, and she told me she watches his videos in order to fall asleep. While I do admire the ASMR quality of his voice, I couldn’t have him on while I was trying to sleep because I was way too interested in what he had to say about the series I loved so much.
I quickly watched a ton of his videos (to the dismay of Future Mary, as it was WAY past my bedtime). The topics that he chooses to talk about are so vast and so detailed that I’m not surprised that he keeps putting out content this long into the years post-Breath of the Wild. From which Link is the strongest to What Ifs to various Easter Eggs in the various games in the series, Zeltik really covers it all. If you’ve ever had a question about a game in the Legend of Zelda series, chances are Zeltik has made two videos about it.
He also makes videos on Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, miscellaneous reaction videos, and tons of predictions on where the LoZ series is going next. I really enjoy his LoZ content, but his other videos are fun to watch as well just because of how he describes his thoughts and how he does it in the calmest voice I’ve ever heard. He’s plesant to listen to, interesting to watch, and he’s an all-around cool content creator that I would totally suggest if you’re like me and love Legend of Zelda lore.
And there you have it! While I have more favorites, these are the content creators I enjoy on a regular basis. They inspire, they create, and they make me want to keep coming back for more! I hope you guys have liked this two-part list, and hopefully you’ve found some new favorites as well.
Follow me on Twitter for more of my daily musings, as well as updates on blog posts (because if there’s one thing we all know, it’s that I’m consistently inconsistent when it comes to posting in a timely manner)! Thanks for reading everyone, and I’ll see you all next week!
