About two or three years ago I was thinking about making an episode of Discasting about Chris Bores, also known as Irate Gamer. For anyone who don’t know, Discasting is my own web show that is currently on hiatus. Never the less, I was thinking about doing ”review” of Bores because it could work as an episode of Trash Hour. Eventually I gave up the idea because it's difficult to make interesting video about him. Or at least anything fresh; the net is already full of parodies of him and I don’t want to walk down that path. I did think though that I could write an article or a blog post about him. But I never had a chance, because I didn’t have any blog at the time. Now I do and here I am writing about this particular looser. Which makes me looser too. Otherwise I wouldn’t write about him in the first place. This is your last warning: turn back while you still can! You can do something else and completely forget who Chris Bores and return to the happy world of winners.

Okay, you’re SO BORED (what an astonishingly creative pun!) that you decided to continue reading. If you are just as sad boresvoyer as I am, you can read lots of things from Irate gamer sucks-blog which has more in-depth information about his whereabouts. But I tell you a secret: it’s not entirely true that Bores is ONLY a looser, a piece of shit and/or similarly pejoratively sucky, pitiful person. He’s not because he has inspired thousands of people to read through forums, discussions and his existence is already left mark in the gallery of Internet memes. Bores is often silly, stupid and god damn annoying, but he is not uninspiring. Far from it! He may have some utter un-charisma and godly goofiness, but the guy is also pure gold if you appreciate camp at least a little bit. He has not done everything wrong. In fact, I think he has done everything wrong in the right way which has made him the person gaming geeks whine about. Hell, even I have a lot of important things to do here in Spain while I’m studying a master degree in contemporary art, but instead of those far more important things I write about Chris Bores! His magic affects me over the Atlantic Sea!

The tragedy comes from the fact that he quite obviously isn’t aware of his magic himself, or at least the nature of his magic. Since from the beginning it was apparent how Bores is trying to do EXACTLY the same thing as James Rolfe, aka Angry Video Game Nerd. Sure, there is a lot of different reviewers who have been inspired by AVGN (me too!), but on Bores case it’s not just that. He mimics almost everything that AVGN does, trying to tap from the stream of gamers that adore AVGN. Bores seems to think that you can copy format like AVGN like a recipe. AVGN does that, I do that too! AVGN says ”Shitload of fuck” so I say it too! That must make me as famous as AVGN! However, publicly Bores has denied all the accusations like this and/or removed such comments from his YouTube account. But here’s a twist: he DID admit his ”admiration” to AVGN via personal message on YouTube. Bores didn’t know though, that AVGN’s YouTube account is not managed by James Rolfe himself but his friend Mike. He eventually posted Bores’ message on the forum of ScrewAttack. And here you go, you can read the rest from here.

Bores has inspired some people to do pretty funny parodies of his mannerisms. This is a one good example. It makes fun of Bores’ tendency to have unfunny ”guests” on his reviews, his way to complain things that don’t make much sense (it’s not the same as nitpicking, it’s just plain stupid) and more. However, I personally like the most parody by Linkara, well known comic reviewer of TGWTG. He reviews Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic by stockpiling cliches of Irate Gamer reviews at the same time.

Among this sort of ”entertainment” (and/or torture) my all time favorite is Bores' own ”traveling show”, Chris & Scottie Road Trip. WARNING: what you see you cannot unsee. The very first Chris & Scottie Road Trip episode is here and also embedded below.

You didn’t find the first one funny? Was it REALLY awful? Well it is! But here’s the biggest thing: the first version was something that Bores himself was unsatisfied. Later on he decided to continue the series but do it ”better”. On July 10, 2008 (which happens to be my birthday, what a magnificent present this is!) he put the second one online with following description:

"Back after 3 years with a brand New Episode! The Roadtrip Episodes will be posted every couple of months or so to sort of break the monotony of Game reviewing. So if you enjoy this stuff, more is on the way, if not, then just keep watching the game reviews. Plenty of those coming soon!"

Here is the second one, also embedded below.

A small reminder: this second episode was IMPROVED by Bores. Think about it - IMPROVED! This is why I absolutely love this HORRIBLE PIECE OF SHIT! It clearly demonstrates how Bores don’t see the problem on content: script, acting, jokes and such. He really did improve sound quality and matte effects with green screen, but he didn’t have any clue what was REALLY the problem. That makes him Ed Wood of game reviewers. If Wood would have had Adobe After Effects and all the other modern tools of video production, it wouldn’t save any of his movies from being bad. They would still remain as crappy as hell. 

It’s psychologically very dangerous to spend a lot time with Bores’ work (like you have by reading this post) without finding at least some acceptable reason for it. You can calm your subconscious by finding a lesson, something you can learn from. Here it is: not only Bores think that owning a videocamera, editing software or whatnot makes you really good. Bores is excellent proof that even mastering technical aspects of video production (he can use After Effects, no doubts about that) won’t save you from deep pits of utter, unwanted campiness. This is common problem on all free content of the net. Technology has indeed democratized video production just like it has music production, but you still need some talent, some originality, some ideas and some jokes that actually work. And in a way, Bores fails on those so badly, taking unoriginal goofiness so far that it becomes hilariously entertaining.

Or torture.

P.S. On July 12, 2008 Bores published Chris and Scottie Road Trip EP 2 Bloopers. FUN!