In 1970, Hunter S. Thompson fired a pistol into the desert outside Las Vegas. He was not aiming at a rabbit or a rattlesnake; he was shooting at the corpse of objectivity. With that shot—both literal and literary—Thompson birthed what would become known as Gonzo journalism. He injected himself into the story, abandoned the pretense of neutrality, and traded fact-checking for raw, hallucinogenic truth.
This leads to what media scholar Zeynep Tufekci calls "the performance of crisis." Popular media is now drowning in false urgency. Every movie is "the worst thing ever." Every game is "an unmitigated disaster." Every celebrity slight is "a declaration of war." Download video sex gonzo xxx
The Gonzo turn accelerated in 2014 with the rise of the "video essay" — but not the scholarly kind. The Gonzo video essay (pioneered by creators like HBomberguy, Lindsay Ellis, and later, a thousand imitators) used Thompson’s trick: take a trivial subject (a 90s movie, a forgotten game, a reality TV show) and overlay it with the creator’s manic, personal obsession. The subject is the excuse. The creator’s voice is the point. In 1970, Hunter S
It is loud. It is exhausting. It is frequently juvenile. But it is also, against all odds, the most honest popular media has ever been. The fourth wall is rubble. The narrator is on cocaine. And the audience is in the passenger seat, holding a tape recorder and laughing nervously. Every movie is "the worst thing ever
In 1970, Hunter S. Thompson fired a pistol into the desert outside Las Vegas. He was not aiming at a rabbit or a rattlesnake; he was shooting at the corpse of objectivity. With that shot—both literal and literary—Thompson birthed what would become known as Gonzo journalism. He injected himself into the story, abandoned the pretense of neutrality, and traded fact-checking for raw, hallucinogenic truth.
This leads to what media scholar Zeynep Tufekci calls "the performance of crisis." Popular media is now drowning in false urgency. Every movie is "the worst thing ever." Every game is "an unmitigated disaster." Every celebrity slight is "a declaration of war."
The Gonzo turn accelerated in 2014 with the rise of the "video essay" — but not the scholarly kind. The Gonzo video essay (pioneered by creators like HBomberguy, Lindsay Ellis, and later, a thousand imitators) used Thompson’s trick: take a trivial subject (a 90s movie, a forgotten game, a reality TV show) and overlay it with the creator’s manic, personal obsession. The subject is the excuse. The creator’s voice is the point.
It is loud. It is exhausting. It is frequently juvenile. But it is also, against all odds, the most honest popular media has ever been. The fourth wall is rubble. The narrator is on cocaine. And the audience is in the passenger seat, holding a tape recorder and laughing nervously.