By: William Glover
Independence High School – Charlotte, N.C.
Criticism. This is the foundation of our everyday lives. We critique every little thing in our daily lives, be it the food we eat, the movies we watch, or the inevitably aggravating traffic on the way home. Whilst some are called pessimists for excessive hatred and criticism, one man seeks to put his words out. Meet Alex Bolton, or, as he’s known on YouTube, ‘IHateEverything’. He currently has a massive 441k subscriptions, and is quickly on the rise on YouTube. On the 29th of June, 2015, I decided to ask for an interview, considering he was one of my favorite YouTubers.
The following is an interview taken from the Facebook messaging service:
WG (me): Who/what inspired you to create ‘IHE’?
‘IHateEverything’: Well, I’d always been into making dumb YouTube videos, but with little to no success. Until one day I decided to sit down, and do some random drawing. Without even thinking about it, I doodled the original ‘IHE Angry Face’. Which made me think, has anyone made a channel that’s exclusively designed around something like ‘I HATE EVERYTHING’ or even ‘I LOVE EVERYTHING’. I did some searching, expecting to find that it already existed in some capacity. But to my amazement, it didn’t. Me and my friends sometimes joke and say ‘you’ve discovered the last original idea on YouTube!’.
WG: Wow! Talk about an awesome origin. What is, in your opinion, the most tolerable fan base in pop culture these days?
‘IHateEverything’: It depends, of course there are tolerable people in any fanbase, because it’s only a vocal minority that mold the perception of a fanbase. But if I had to say, I like how passionate the Star Wars fanbase is, it’s quite something for a group of people to stay obsessed with something for so long (Especially when half the films are completely awful in my opinion!).
Now I’ll just sit back and wait for someone to send me a picture of Jar Jar going at it with Yoda or something, there’s always someone who does it…
But to tell the truth, I don’t really know that much about any particular fanbase because I purposefully try to avoid them. A lot of them just make me cringe.
WG: Heh. To expand on the Star Wars thing, at least in one of the video games (Force Unleashed), they had the good decency to put Jar Jar in carbonite. As an easter egg, but still pretty funny nonetheless.
‘IHateEverything’: I don’t even think Jar Jar is the worst thing about the prequels, he sucks, yeah, but there is so much worse in those movies.
WG: Agreed.
‘IHateEverything’: But you’ve activated my Star Wars ranting now, not really relevant!
WG: What can we expect in future episodes of IHE?
‘IHateEverything’: I still have some of the ‘big hitter’ subjects to tackle, things like tumblr or religion. But I really need to research properly to guarantee a fair reflection of what they are, without coming across like some kind of screaming child.
I’m always trying to learn new editing techniques, writing styles, coming up with new series to keep things diverse, and so on. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, it’s how this whole YouTube thing rounds out as you grow. Lets just say some of the ideas in my head are pretty exciting, it’s just a matter of actually DOING it.
WG: How long (on average) does it take to create an episode of IHE?
‘IHateEverything’: I think some people who want a video every day don’t know how long it actually takes. There are multiple steps, that I spread over the course of multiple days to lighten the load. First I have to come up with an idea, then write a script, record the script, then finally edit it together and upload it. Obviously that’s a simplified version of the whole process, but that’s basically what it comes down to. It usually takes me 3 or 4 days to get a typical episode ready for viewing.
WG: Alright. Final question. If IHE were to end, how would you do it?
‘IHateEverything’: If I had to end it now, I’d probably title a video called ‘I’VE HATED EVERYTHING’, and explain that I’ve already done every subject known to man that interests me. Then I’d probably animate my poorly drawn character being brutally murdered in some way while sad music plays. I’m not sure why, but that’s the first thing that popped into my head!
WG: That does admittedly sound like a sound conclusion. Thanks for your time.
*
Since this interview, ‘IHateEverything’ has grown in popularity, but has attained his enemies. Derek Savage of the cult film ‘Cool Cat Saves The Kids’ decided to take his review down, claiming it violated copyright…. except it didn’t. His review was in line with fair use, and thus, ‘IHateEverything’’s brought back. In January of 2016, his channel was briefly taken down, much to the surprise of several famous YouTubers, like JonTron and the Armoured Skeptic, coming to his side. His new video has 400k views, and can be seen below.
‘IHateEverything’ channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial
‘IHateEverything’ new video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9yOxat74Wg
the declaration 