On the Terror of Becoming Doug Walker

By Matt Wolfbridge

In October 2023 I dressed up as the Nostalgia Critic for a Halloween party in New York City. This was after the tie-and-t-shirt-clad character played by Doug Walker enjoyed a surge in (ironic?) popularity. Dan Olson, host of the YouTube channel Folding Ideas, had roasted Walker in a video two years prior, not to mention the trend of YouTubers dunking on Doug for his disastrous 2019 review of The Wall.

I genuinely thought people would be stopping me every few minutes on the way there, and that the costume would easily be the talk of the crowded, sweltering Brooklyn apartment full of tabletop game designers and theater people.

They'd say "Hey, Nostalgia Critic!" or "I remember it so you don't have to!" and maybe even, "A BAT CREDIT CARD!?!?"

But no.

Nobody stopped me on the street. At the party, the other guests regarded me with wary disinterest. They asked, "Who are you supposed to be?" And when I told them, they shrugged. "Nostalgia Critic? Never heard of him." Or, generously, "Oh I think I remember that guy."

I returned home deflated, disappointed, and sweaty. The whole episode put the idea in my head that the world needed at least two Doug Walker essays explaining his significance. These essays would eventually exist in Typebar Magazine Issue 1.

The two pieces do an excellent job covering why Doug matters: Doug Walker's earlier body of work–particularly the three Channel Awesome anniversary films–epitomize a critical hingepoint in internet video history. Doug's early work is a glance at a primordial pond's unique ecosystem just before a tidal wave wipes it out for the rest of time.

There we go! I don't need to think about Doug Walker ever again because the essays summarized my thoughts. Problem solved, right?

For some reason, wrong!

I have an academic interest in the history of internet culture, particularly as it relates to both shortform nonfiction essays and video. For that reason, I will always find fascination with Doug, a living anachronism still doing 2009 in 2026 and a figure a certain type of "internet person" is so familiar with it seems profane to refer to him by his surname rather than his first name.

However, there's an emotional component as well. Yes there is, ahem, nostalgia. Doug reminds me of a more optimistic time with a more open future (crazy to think of the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown as an optimistic time, but compare that to the pandemic, Joe Biden's Weimar America and the escalating terrors of Trump 2.0 while the ruling class incinerates the planet and shrugs at the loss of "intellectual dexterity" at the hands AI).

But there is also something else I had to confront: fear. Artistic fear in particular. I am afraid of becoming a Doug Walker figure.

My History with Doug

I discovered The Nostalgia Critic in February 2008, not long after the series debuted a year prior. I'd been watching The Angry Video Game Nerd, played by James Rolfe, for practically his whole public existence by that point. A relative who'd seen a few of the Nerd's videos told me there was a guy online who did the same thing but for old movies instead of old games. His name? The Nostalgia Critic.