MrHyruleGamer And Summoning Salt

I think this is the first time I've ever done a post about actual individuals from YouTube and it's not something I want to talk about very often but since discovering the two of them fairly recently I've been thinking about some stuff that I want to write about.

Both of these people make content on YouTube related to speed running.  I discovered MrHyruleGamer during my work break with his speed running cringe compilation videos.  In these videos he takes clips of certain speed runners doing stuff that's a little embarrassing and edits them together so that we can all have a good laugh at them.  More recently though he seems to be putting together his thoughts on the speed running community at large which has opened a whole tin of worms but we'll talk about that in just a sec. 

Summoning Salt is a channel that seems to have a whole bunch of Punch Out videos on it but recently he's been putting a series of videos together called "World Record Progression".  In this videos he gives a sort of potted history of a certain games speed run.  They are informative and highly interesting and some of the stories that he tells about the way certain runners were interacting and getting their times down is really mind blowing.

I'll post a link to both of these channels at the end of the post and I think they are both worth taking a look at.

Anyway, I as I mentioned before, MrHyruleGamer put a video together called "The Problems With Speedrunning"  Take a look

Now while I think his attitude is completely fucked it's not like the guy doesn't have any valid points.  The general gist of his video is that speed running has a sort of image problem and the fact that there is so much cringe may turn new people away.  That said, I don't feel like speed running is in any danger of falling off because as long as games exist there will always be people who want to to them quickly but that side hobby within gaming just might not have any mainstream appeal.  My problem with his videos is that while he says all this, he's uploading compilations of all the cringe for people to look at so his whole shtick about wanting these people to do better while simultaneously acting as an archive of embarrassing moments seems a bit off to me.

Summoning Salts videos though are a lot more positive and they provide people with genuinely interesting information that I'm interested in hearing.  He names and shows examples of all these runs and runners so that if you are interested to do some further watching for yourself you can look these people up and get to know them a little better through their content which is a nice touch.  He's focusing on the triumphs of the community and since a lot of his stories include thing such as members trading information and partaking in healthy competition it paints things in a much more positive light.

There's a gaming bar I go to quite often and sometimes I'll get into a conversation with a random about speedrunning and when I tell them these stories of people cutting down times and some of the stuff that these people have done with classic games they seem genuinely surprised or interested in the hobby.  However I can bet you anything you like that if I showed them a compilation of runners acting like idiots on stream they'd probably never want to go near speedrunning ever again.

MrHyruleGamer, while raising some valid points is going about it in the wrong way I feel.  If speedrunners feel like they have an image problem it would be best to just try and forget all the cringe and focus on setting examples to each other on how to be better streamers or entertainers.   Summoning Salt seems to be a chill dude that not only runs games himself but is putting a pretty significant effort to create content that would attract people, which is what I think MrHyrule ultimately wants.

Anyway I feel weird talking about YouTube personalities at such lengths so I'll put the links to their channels and you can form your own opinions.  They both produce pretty entertaining content at the very least so I don't think  you'll be too bored.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpW9UVYM6M3GflB7Jkz1nJQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUbO6rBht0daVIOGML3c8w