Internet Historian and JonTron have launched Consolation Guys, a weekly gaming channel built from the old Expleened/Storymode account. Their opening batch includes a space adventure that gets spectacularly distracted by outie belly buttons. Yes, this is excellent news.
The unfamiliar name could easily slip past you. Consolation Guys sounds vaguely like two blokes sent round after your insurance claim gets rejected. Click through, however, and there they are: two familiar voices making each other laugh while a perfectly serviceable video game struggles to get a word in.
Iām very glad this one landed on my radar. There is something immensely comforting about finding Internet Historian and JonTron together, discovering that their shared brain cell still works, and watching it immediately devote itself to the structural properties of a navel.
Their 34-minute, 46-second opening episode is called Outer Worlds | The Belly Button Episode. An admirably honest title. Obsidian built an entire science-fiction universe and these two found a small protrusion on the human stomach more compelling.
This is exactly the kind of return I wanted: familiar chemistry, beautifully daft tangents and the feeling that somebody has left a microphone running between two friends who should probably be supervised.
Consolation Guys has found the outie worlds
It starts before the adventure has properly begun. Jon has bought another edition of a game he already owns. While sorting that out, the conversation wanders from outer worlds to inner worlds to innies and outies. From there, the belly button effectively becomes the third host.
An outie is considered as a video-game bossās vulnerable spot. Its susceptibility to frostbite gets an outing. Much later, the same unfortunate bit of anatomy becomes a possible solution to a hole in an aircraft. A joke that should have lasted ten seconds somehow develops its own emergency services department.
The pleasure is in how readily they encourage each other. One offers a ridiculous premise; the other immediately starts examining the practicalities. Nobody has the decency to stop. Thank goodness.
Even a brief complaint about the gameās clouds becomes an opportunity to tease Jon about how long he takes to release a video. They know. The upload jokes have made it inside the building.
That is the classic IH-and-JonTron feeling: dry needling, sudden absurdity and two people audibly delighted by something that absolutely does not deserve this much thought. The Outer Worlds keeps trying to introduce quests and moral decisions. Bless it for making an effort.
Weekly uploads? Have they discovered Earth time?
Internet Historian and JonTron have always seemed to share a time zone. Unfortunately, it appears to be on a planet where āsee you soonā requires several generations of astronomers to verify.
The actual channel pages are less dramatic: IHās latest main-channel video, Ever Given, Ever Taken Away, is labelled a year old. Jonās previous main-channel upload, Animorphs: The TV Show, carries the same label. Still, hearing these two promise weekly videos makes you instinctively check which planetās weeks they mean.
There is a reassuring explanation. In the official rebrand announcement, IH says they have already produced a yearās worth of material. The plan is one new video featuring both creators each week, usually playing a game. He describes the release strategy as ālike a bullion cube in a bathtubā.
Three public episodes arrived together: The Outer Worlds, Spore and Avatar | The Least Airbender. Channel members can access additional episodes early. JonTron is therefore a regular co-host in the announced format. We can stop hopefully peering at the guest chair.
Expleened also continues, with new instalments moving to Incognito. Older uploads remain accessible on the existing channel for now, though some may be unlisted and found through playlists. IH eventually intends to move that archive to Live Laugh Love. The aim is three active channels: main, Incognito and Consolation Guys.
A year of prepared episodes is a sensible answer to an extremely funny scheduling problem. They have essentially left provisions for the villagers before returning to the mountains.
JonTronās Bicentennial Man comeback already has an audience
Meanwhile, Jon has also returned to his own channel with Bicentennial Man: The Robot Movie We Tried to Forget, a 28-minute, 21-second video about the Robin Williams film.
When checked on 1 October, YouTube showed more than 1.6 million views and an upload age of roughly 17 hours. That is a substantial welcome back. Apparently quite a few people kept their seats.
Choosing Bicentennial Man for the comeback is also a gift to anyone writing upload-schedule jokes. Jon, sweetheart, the title was not supposed to be the production timetable.
The encouraging thing is that viewers now have two places to find him. His main channel has a fresh release, while the new partnership offers a planned weekly dose of his back-and-forth with IH. The weekly commitment belongs to Consolation Guys; no equivalent main-channel timetable was announced in the rebrand post.
We recently untangled PewDiePieās goodbye to family vlogs, another reminder that following long-running creators sometimes means learning where their next chapter lives. Here, the address to remember is Consolation Guys, still using the @IHstorymode handle.
So consider this a friendly nudge for anyone who would have scrolled straight past the new name. There is a wonderfully silly little reunion happening in there, and it comes with the improbable promise of punctuality.
Two favourite internet hermits have emerged together, apparently with a yearās supply of nonsense. Iām delighted. May their calendars stay aligned, their tangents remain terrible, and every outie watching keep a respectful distance from exposed metal in winter.
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