Yes, I’m talking about Spoony.

I’ve recently watched Demolition Man with my fiancé, and I finally twisted his arm enough to show him one of Spoony’s old videos, a review of the 3DO movie video game tie-in of the aforementioned film.

Lately, I’ve thought a lot about Spoony’s old videos; oddly enough, it happened after I watch Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

Spoony aka The Spoony One aka Noah Antwiler was a content creator who was quite popular during the advent of “angry Internet gaming” that propagated on Youtube around the mid-to-late 2000s.

Back in the day, you had James Rolfe (aka the Angry Video Game Nerd), and a myriad of copycats that were humorous enough to capitalize on the trend (Irate Gamer, PlayitBogart, Leisure Suit Gaming/Silent Rob, Eric Turner/Terrible NES Games, Urinating Tree, thee3nd, and Armake21, to name a few).

And then there was Spoony.

While the other content creators followed a standard formula of dressing down awful retro video games, Spoony’s video stood out from the pack in few ways.

For one, he would often tackle FMV games, a subgenre of particularly terrible gaming that not many people remembered fondly or remembered at all, as they were usually relegated to either the PC or some other ill-fated, overpriced console of the 90s (ie. Sega CD).

Also: Spoony took a lot of his inspiration from Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and brandished that inspiration proudly in his style of humour and with his homemade mascot robot Burton, which was modeled off the character Gypsy.

At his peak, Spoony was unrivaled. The humor was hard-hitting and self-deprecating. It was gold. Glorious, irreverent gold.

Some of his highlights include Final Fantasy 8, Microcosm and Phantasmagoria 2, the only time I’ve ever sat through an entire Let’s Play of a game.

The Inevitable Question…WHAT HAPPENED?

There are numerous videos that chronicle the downfall of Spoony, so I’ll give a brief synopsis: after joining with Channel Awesome in the early 2010s, his content and output never truly recovered, and after being unceremoniously ousted after an infamous tweet to one of his female coworkers, Noah just seemed to meander willingly into obscurity.

(UPDATE 2022-05-21: At the time of writing, I had erroneously misgendered Jacob Chapman, formerly known as JesuOtaku, as a female. This was an egregious mistake and I sincerely apologize for any offense I may have caused.)

A lot of the individuals I mentioned above disappeared into obscurity, either because Youtube no longer favoured this type of abrasive, copyright-laden content, or because the creators themselves had moved on and pivoted into other things.

The exception, of course, being the original, James Rolfe, who has since released a feature-length movie and has built a brand called Cinemassacre which is able to exist independent of the angry gamer identity which made him famous. Married and with two kids, it’s safe to say Rolfe made the most successful transition from internet personality to well-adjusted adult.

But Back to Spoony. What on Earth Happened?

Spoony was also slated to make a movie, after his fans helped him reach a goal on patreon. Some say the pressure to deliver on the promise is what led to his demise.

Others say the fame of his halcyon days went to his head and he became unwilling and unable to take any sort of constructive criticism.

Others attribute it to mental health issues.

Present-day Spoony is a sad reminder of what could have been. A shell of a man, a drained husk of a titan who based his Internet persona on nostalgia, on the trappings of childhood, and is now ironically unable to pass the threshold into adulthood.

Lonely. Miserable.

— Noah Antwiler (@TheSpoonyOne) May 23, 2021

Look — like with Etika, I can’t pretend to say I know the man.

But of all the angry gamers and their ilk, I was truly hoping for great things for Noah Antwiler.

Say what you will about his more recent offerings, back in the day, dude could write an impeccable script. He had wit. He was funny.

If anything is to blame for the current state of Spoony, it’s himself.

His time on Youtube may be over, but if he wants to succeed outside the platform, he has to want it for himself.

No one can “fix” Spoony — not his fans, not his girlfriends, not his family, not even medication.

Noah Antwiler is the captain of his own destiny, always has been and always will.

The Million Dollar Question— How Does This Relate to Writing?

So here comes my clumsy attempt to relate this all back to the purpose of my site, sylviesoul.com.

I believe many of us who are writers will never reach meteoric success, will never grace the New York Times bestseller list.

A lot of you out there have an idea for a novel or a script in your head, but you haven’t written it yet.

You think it’s too dumb, too hard, that no one will like it, that no one will like YOU once you put yourself out there.

I’m here to tell you point blank: STOP IT.

Stop putting yourself down. Stop doubting yourself and just do the work.

No one can stop you, but also no one can make you start.

If you have a strong enough desire to get a project off the ground, you’ll do it.

I have a long road ahead with the writing of my novel. There are times where I feel inadequate and afraid that I’m fooling myself and that it will never happen.

But then I remind myself that if I don’t do the work. If I don’t commit the time and energy to write just a little bit every day, my dream won’t become a reality.

When it comes to your dreams, there are no shortcuts.

• There’s no winning lottery ticket.
• There’s no life-changing writing competition.
• There’s no Christian Grey to bankroll your ambitions.

It’s YOU. YOU have to want it badly enough to make it happen.

I think I correlated Spoony and the whole #SnyderCut saga in my head because the latter is a similar tale of wasted potential.

Warner Bros. delivered a sub-par product in 2017, but Zack Snyder knew the movie was capable of so much more. He lobbied for his version, and the world finally got to see that vision realized in 2021.

So there’s still hope yet for Spoony aka The Spoony One aka Noah Antwiler. Even if his next goal in life or dreams has nothing to do with filmmaking or Youtube or fans, he is the master of his own domain on how he can get there.

Do you agree? What are your thoughts on Spoony? Are you even into the bizarre subgenre of angry video game reviewing? Do you have a dream project in your head that you haven’t yet started? Leave your comments below!