Melancholy Nostalgia
I came across Loading Ready Run in 2006, when someone posted a link to their How to Talk Like a Pirate video. They were creative, original, and most importantly, funny. (I have a thing for Canadian- and British-style comedy.)
I spread the word about them, did a little work on their wiki, participated in the minor community of fandom that formed around them, and generally enjoyed myself cheering on their slow growth of popularity. I even wrote a script, which they seemed to like, but were unlikely to use. I don’t normally engage myself with Internet communities enough to justify putting in effort.
It didn’t last, though. About six months ago, I noticed I was finding their latest work less humorous… then less entertaining. My amusement just sort of petered out into indifference — first I stopped updating the wiki when summing up the latest video became more work than fun, then I found myself no longer waiting with expectation for the next update, then keeping up with the updates became less a form of entertainment than a chore. When I found myself absentmindedly opening up new windows and browsing the Net while watching the latest offering, I decided it was time to leave.
Still, they’ve done some good work, and they may yet do more in the future. Take a look at some of their older stuff:
Here’s one of their recent offerings:
Maybe you’ll see what I mean.
September, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hey Man, James from LoadingReadyRun. Obviously we aren’t in some sort of fairy land where we think everything we do will impress the hell out of everybody. What was it that pushed you away? What variety of our work did you enjoy? Us just playing ourselves? Us playing really random characters? Something else? If you are a fan of us playing ourselves I would like to inform you that you should definitely come back October 20th for our Sixth Season Premier. Gimme an email sometime james@loadingreadyrun.com and let me know. Our biggest problem is we don’t have much solid feed back. We have 10,000 people watch our videos every week but we only have a couple hundred people in our forums.