Creativity. CREATIVITY! What *is* Creativity??

 

Internet Historian in his video "architecture."

Internet Historian is a YouTuber who creates videos that cover a wide array of topics and styles. From dramatized, yet very accurately detailed and well-informed, reenactments of real world events such as the Costa Concordia disaster (pictured below), to comedically edited and entertaining conversations with friends about mundane topics such as food (also pictured below), Internet Historian's (or IH as he is often shortened to) creativity seems to have no bounds and he consistently finds new ideas that never fail to entertain.

Thumbnail for his main channel video "The Cost of Concordia"

Thumbnail for his second channel video "food."

IH started his channel off with videos covering internet specific topics such as greentexts and tumblr/4chan nonsense. Though, the thing that set him apart from other channels was his iconic voice and detailed editing, always finding and including extensive videos or images of whatever topic the video was on, creating a documentary-like style of video for extremely absurd and mundane topics that normally would never receive anything like a documentary. This was how he made his start, but as time went on he steadily developed his unique and highly polished yet simple editing style of overlaying stock images and videos on to each other to create a more personified feeling and sense of life to his content. A style that added even more depth and entertainment to his videos.

Screenshot of his second channel video "fashion."

While he rarely, if ever, posts personal videos detailing his creative process, there was a segment in a Q&A video in which he details why his videos take so long to produce and how they're made (here is a timestamped link to said part of the video, I highly recommend watching it as it does a good job giving an idea of both who IH is, what he does, and how impressive his team's and his editing is). This only details his process for videos on his main channel however. In actuality, he has a wide array of channels each with their own function and style, but for the sake of focus I will mainly exemplify  his creative process for videos on his main channel. 

Screenshot of his main channel page

He (and presumably his friends/team) starts by using divergent thinking to find a topic for a video to focus on. For his main channel it can be about anything, so long as it's interesting (his shtick of only internet history topics is more or less abandoned). Though, to me, it seems his videos are centered on topics that: are or were talked about a lot but not in detail (e.g., Kony 2012, Y2K, Balloon Boy, Fyre Festival, and the Costa Concordia); memes (e.g., Brad's wife, friendship ended with Mudasir, planking); or things that are not very well known by the general public at all (e.g., failed marketing attempts by big businesses, the details of No Man's Sky's failed launch, various niche interest conventions). Then, once a topic is chosen, they converge and incubate their thoughts into a video and either structure it with an underlying theme or segment it into subsections. An example of a video where it was structured with an overall theme would be his video on the Costa Concordia. In this video, he told the story in a Titanic like fashion, opening with someone about to regale the viewer with a retelling of their story and transitioning into a dramatization of the events that make the viewer feel like they were there. An example of a video that just segments details into sections would be his video on failed marketing schemes, in which he details several different attempts from corporations to reach audiences via the internet. Exactly how they decide on this themes/styles is not explicitly known, but he's said that they experiment with ideas and if they don't work they put them on the backburner or scrap it. Most importantly, throughout this entire process they make sure to do their research, finding articles and cross examining information to determine what was true and what isn't. Their research is so extensive that they sometimes have to include corrective annotations over footage of news reports/articles that reported false or misleading information. And it is especially this level of care that makes his videos stand out.

Screenshot of his video "The Swedish Job | Sundance Rejects" with a citation pasted at the bottom

IH is a beloved creator and one who never disappoints. He seems to be intrinsically driven by the joy of editing but he also has clear extrinsic motivations to make quality videos for his audience. I always look forward to new videos on any and every channel of his because I know I'll be entertained. Almost every video has seemingly endless rewatch value due to how much detail is put into them. I love every taking every opportunity I get to show friends and family his videos because out of all the topic's he's covered there seems to be something for everyone. I only found out about him a few years ago but his channel started five years ago (though there's a nostalgic air to his videos that makes it feel as if he's been on YouTube since the start). While I don't expect anyone to start watching his videos after reading this blog, I hope that more people can recognize his name and the effort he puts into his content.