For the longest time, EmpLemon had been my favorite YouTuber. For no matter what content he had chose to make on YouTube it had always been great. As he had started out making simple YouTube Poops, only to eventually become the single biggest YouTube Pooper in the world by 2015. And the old shit he did are still to this day some of my favorite YTP’s, as I am especially fond of that middle era of YTP’s. Where they had come along way from the primitive CD-i edits of the late 2000s and early 2010s, and it isn’t wasn’t as polished as the newgen shit being put out now. And of that era, his content honestly holds up just as, if not better than any pooper of said era. However, after greater mounting backlash against him within the community, he would end up leaving and changing his content into just anything he wanted. From late 2016-2018, his content would be entirely what he wanted to make, no matter how experimental or out-of-place it may have felt. But it always felt interesting because of the man behind it. After this, his content would gradually transition to video essays. And this is where I had found Emp for the first time, the “Never Ever: Spongebob” video. It was amazing, the writing, editing, and simple storytelling of it all was something I had never seen anything like before. And his videos never fit into any one niche. He could talk about anything he wanted to and people would watch not out of what he is talking about, but who is talking about it. It is that kind of thought process that has never made me feel pressured to stay in any one lane here on YouTube. And he alongside Jon Bois, are my main inspirations for my videos being shaped in the format of video essays. And when one truly takes a step back to look at the full picture, Emp has transitioned perfectly from YTPs to commentary to video essays. All the while making some of the best content ever produced in each of those mediums. He is in my opinion, one of the best YouTubers of this generation.