YMMV / Internet Historian

• Broken Base: IH generally portrays trolls and brigades (4chan, etc.) as a bunch of playful rascals just having fun, or as the power of the people getting wins on big politics and corporations. This view tends to divide his viewership; some think that downplays the occasional racism or even crimes involved, while others say those don't matter, or that it isn't an endorsement because it's a comedy show, and his disclaimers at the start of videos universally warn against doing these sorts of things (to say nothing of actively discouraging some of the things they've done, like placing bogus orders for pizza to be delivered to someone else's house as attempted in the final season of "He Will Not Divide Us"). Whenever politics are involved, the trolls are invariably right-wing and the trolled left-wing, which intensifies the debate since it now involves the viewers' real-world political debates.
• Can't Un-Hear It: You might honestly have trouble not hearing Historian's voice whenever you see "Hide-The-Pain Harold" after watching some of his videos.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The mere fact that 4chan decided to send Justin Bieber to North Korea is ridiculously cruel, yet utterly hilarious. Pitbull being sent to the Walmart in Kodiak, Alaska doesn't quite live up to the hype because A) It's a much more mundane place in comparison (other than being the most remote Walmart in the country) and B) Pitbull actually went and made the event a lot of fun for everyone involved, which many see as the one time a company actually defeated the Internet in an exchange like this; but they make up for it by trying to get Taylor Swift to sing to the deaf.
  • Habbo Hotel on the verge of shutting down due to a news story accusing the game of having pedophiles on its servers, causing many of the game's investors to back out? Pretty serious stuff. Coinciding the news story with an uplifting EDM beat drop and following it with a montage of the Pool's Closed brothers Putting the Band Back Together to kick the game while it's down? Hilarious.
  • Historian and Adam from YMS try to find a high quality Black Panther. Adam finds a black panther, just a bit more animated and with a bigger dick.
  • The Jeff the Killer Dramatic Reading has the titular character played by Chills (AKA the Top 15 guy), who doesn't even bother to change his usual monotone nasally voice, turning what would be mediocre gory schlock into comedy gold.
• Friendly Fandoms: Has a very odd one with Asmongold. This is because Internet Historian's various videos sometimes uses Asmongold's videos either as cameos or backdrops. Asmongold doesn't mind and in fact has various reaction videos for IH's works, expressing amusement whenever he sees himself as part of the set.
• Growing the Beard: "The Triggering of Shia" is around where his unique editing style and sense of humor really come through while improving on his delivery.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the end of "The Failure of Fyre Festival", IH jokingly(?) states that there should be at least one failed festival that has a sequel. Billy McFarland was noted to have been released from prison in March 2022 and ended his house arrest later that September. His first major action was to announce a second Fyre Festival with tickets already selling fast, as if no one learned from this fiasco. Given how the first one ended, it will not be surprising if the second one turns out like the first.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Many people were pleasantly surprised by how well Fredrik Knudsen, a commentator who's mostly known for his monotone delivery, pulled off a Sonic impression in the Sonic Highschool episode of Sundance Rejects.
  • Previously, the only voice acting examples fans had of Internet Historian were lighthearted and comedic in nature. Yet, in The Gentleman Pirate, he was able to seriously voice act as the quartermaster (arguably the most serious character in the video).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Following the premieres of two different documentaries about the Fyre Festival, Fyre and Fyre Fraud, many were either reminded of or quick to be directed to IH's own video covering the event, with some citing that it's arguably a much more reliable source of info on the subject than the aforementioned films, especially considering the criticism directed at both (the former being produced by Jerry Media, drawing complaints that the documentary was their attempt to shift blame for the festival entirely on to McFarland, the latter making most of those accusations but then paying McFarland a six-figure sum for an interview in which he said very little that could be trusted).
  • During the video on Black Panther (2018) "Full Movie" scams, IH and Adam of Your Movie Sucks make fun of a poorly-made scam that used the 20th Century Fox logo, despite the film being a Disney-Marvel production. Disney purchased Fox around a year after the video was uploaded.
  • The ending of his video on Fallout 76 got hit with this (with a potential hint of Harsher in Hindsight depending on your sense of schadenfreude), mainly regarding his remark that the game could potentially recover à la No Man's Sky. Based on the many comments after the video came out alone (to say nothing of the rest of the internet), general consensus is that it somehow got even worse in just another five months after the video released, culminating in its widely reviled subscription service on the anniversary of the game's launch, to a point where many are clamoring for IH to make a second video on the game. IH even brought up 76 near the end of his No Man's Sky video, where he pointed to it as an example of a developer taking the greedy approach to "fixing" a game.
  • In "The Fall of 76", the year that IH claims that the early release was make way for a complete product via patching, depicting it in the year 2023. 2023 is generally considered as the year Fallout 76 is no longer a machine-bricking mess.
  • In the sponsorship segment for "The Fall of 76", he jokes that he wasted his money stockpiling toilet paper, only to leave it out in the rain and for crows to get it. Then comes the COVID-19 Pandemic, in which toilet paper shortages were notoriously caused by panic-buying in its early stages. This was one of the first topics he covered regarding the pandemic in "Tales from TheVarus™," which debuted close to a year after the Fallout 76 video.
  • In "The Curse of the Olympic Flame," a video chronicling the various setbacks and misfortunes suffered by the Olympic torch relay, Historian suggests that the then-upcoming Tokyo 2020 Summer Games won't fare much better given the track record. As fate would have it, the 2020 Olympics ended up being postponed to 2021 due to the above-mentioned pandemic.
  • In "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky," when discussing the mistakes Hello Games made in hyping the game before release, one of the major mistakes he discusses is that the game was being given the royal treatment typically reserved for triple-A media sensations with development teams consisting of hundreds of people, including a sixty-dollar price tag and a Collector's Edition, despite it being an indie game made by half a dozen people. To illustrate the point that this caused people's expectations to align themselves with other sixty-dollar triple-A titles, he shows screenshots of several other games that received (or, at the time the video released in January 2020, would receive) collector's editions - the first one being Cyberpunk 2077, which released at the end of that year and quickly became infamous for coming out in a similar sorry state to No Man's Sky, without nearly as much excuse for it.
  • His use of Watch_Dogs footage and images to represent the 4chan users trying to sneak onto the roof of the FACT Museum in Liverpool and take down Shia's "He Will Not Divide Us" flag in "Liverpool's Closed" seems oddly prescient considering the third game is set in London.
• Ho Yay: Shadow Man pretends to be NordVPN Man's girlfriend to make everyone at the club jealous and is very nonchalant about dressing in drag. Even when NordVPN Man slaps his ass he doesn't say anything or even flinch.
• Iron Woobie: Dear God, Hello Games. To say that the road to No Man's Sky was not an easy one would be an Understatement. But even then, they refused to let all the negative experiences get to them and, thankfully, they managed to fix the game to critical acclaim and redemption.
• Most Wonderful Sound: His voice is a pleasure to listen to. The random noises he tends to use are also oddly satisfying. Helps that he's mentioned working as a professional editor and audio mixing before.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The aftermath of the Bikelock Guy's attack is shown in full, meaning we see Sean's head being bopped by the bike lock, blood pouring down his face, and a closeup picture of his wound stitched back together.
  • A lot of the actions the out-of-control attendees did at the Rainfurrest convention's hotel, ranging from the following: destroying infrastructure by negligence or by deliberately breaking things like the plumbing or smoke alarms, (allegedly) drilling a glory hole in the bathroom stalls, attendees going without pants and only wearing adult diapers in public spaces of the hotel, chucking used adult diapers on cars or littering them around the area, and pooping in the hotel's pool.
  • A lot of the injuries brought about by Planking will make you cringe and squirm.
  • Several of the stories posted to the #McDStories, such as people reporting rats in the bun bags (which the Historian confirmed was not only real but had video evidence) and a (hopefully) fake story involving a colostomy bag that IH flat out refuses to read aloud.
• Squick: The Rainfurrest video is not pleasant for those with weak stomachs, as Internet Historian inevitably has to describe just what some of the con's attendees did to get Rainfurrest barred from every hotel chain in the state of Washington in the area between Seattle and Bellingham.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Due to the fact NordVPN Man is a recolour of Shadow Man (who, in turn, is just an executioner Halloween costume), he ends up resembling a member of a certain clan. Lampshaded in the lyrics from the ad in "mythology.":
  Not in the clan
  It's just a hood
• The Woobie:
  • Shadow Man. His wife Shadow Woman dies in a plane crash while playing Raid: Shadow Legends, and he's so affected by her death that he dances with her corpse at her funeral. This makes him a single father to his kids who he genuinely loves, and if The Right Opinion's videos are considered canon, he dies in a dungeon along with the rest of the YouTubers The Right Opinion kidnapped, leaving Shadow Man's children as orphans. Hell, we aren't even sure if The Right Opinion will give Shadow Man a proper burial, considering how he neglected the rest of his prisoners. Poor Shadow Man.
  • Floyd Collins. Trapped in a 9 inch or 23 cm cave in total darkness for 15 days before dying while enduring botched rescue attempts. After his death, he had his body used as a display for tourists in the very same cave he died in before being buried again properly over 60 years later.

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