Unsolved Mysteries Update: Steve Sutton
A couple years ago I wrote an update about YouTube superstar Steve Sutton, who had captured my fancy like nothing else. I won't deny that that update wasn't my best work. For starters, it was the result of watching over 50 video blogs by Steve Sutton in a very short timeframe. It was a grueling ordeal that sucked the life out of me and made me long for Death to knock on my door and whisk me away to whatever cruel afterlife awaits Internet writers. I spent somewhere around three hours watching this man live his life, and that was no easy task.
Steve Sutton, for those not familiar with him, is a 40-something Internet user who lives in Georgia, in a trailer, with his mother, on his brother's property. Steve is a self-proclaimed asexual virgin who enjoys animation, sci-fi, boiled peanuts, TV dinners, and tea. Steve dislikes virtually everything else. If I'm not mistaken, Steve left his brother's property only twice in the Year of our Lord, Twenty Oh Six.
Now you might imagine that such a specimen no doubt lives a dynamic life of action, adventure, and intrigue. However, such is not the case. Most of the Steve Sutton Experience is spent in the same bedroom, messing around with a computer or watching TV. I am not exaggerating when I say prison inmates generally enjoy more freedom than Steve Sutton. Still, Steve makes for one very interesting character and is willing to take on some pretty ambitious projects in the confines of his room. One of his more grand contributions to the Human Experience is Portal, a self-made science fiction series in which he plays all the roles. He even whipped up his own green screen for rudimentary special effects.
Steve was upset about my original update and asked me to take it down. I chose not to, because I felt Steve was a National Treasure worthy of greater exposure. Since that time I have kept up with every single Steve Sutton video ever posted. For those of you not masochistic enough to watch all of the 500+ videos Steve has contributed to YouTube, I'm going to do a brief rundown of the highlights. Hopefully you'll be caught up on all relevant Steve developments.
I warn you upfront this update isn't all that funny. Rather, it's an annotated journey into the hyper-documented life of an extremely strange man.
BLOGDATE: July 17, 2006
In perhaps the definitive Steve blog, our protagonist shares the ideal method for eating boiled peanuts. This was actually the first video by Steve I ever saw, and the one that got me hooked. Steve's quirky nature makes him seem like a supporting character from Twin Peaks, but he's as real as the streets. After talking about boiled peanuts in his trademark monotone, Steve discusses the physics of his South Park screensaver.
Steve celebrates his 100th blog with a lethargic narration of his morning. Things take a turn for the dramatic when a wormhole opens in his bedroom. After a tense Mexican standoff, the wormhole vomits up a note written by Steve one year in the future warning him not to eat some bad pork chops. It takes special talent to turn something as astonishing as a wormhole opening up in a bedroom into a mundane event.
In this thrilling update, Steve Sutton announces his intention to move a piece of furniture. To give you a better idea of what he has in store, he supplies a 3d animation depicting the planned move. Let me reiterate: Steve made a 3d animation showing you how he was going to move a cabinet from one wall of his trailer to another. A couple blogs later he reveals they didn't bother doing it. I'm quite certain the 3d animation took far more time to make and render than moving the cabinet would have.
In one of his most shocking blog's ever, Steve appears looking somewhat confident and energetic. This new and mysterious Steve reveals that he has been playing a character all this time, and that he's really a successful human being with a wife and child. Of course it's all an act, and Steve reverts back to his normal, unenthusiastic self. What's sad is that Steve can actually pass himself off as a somewhat normal person with a personality if he tries.
Steve posts a classic homemade video he made around 1994. Younger Steve didn't have YouTube, but he did have a Star Trek uniform, a camcorder, and a lot of free time on his hands. He also posted "The Inner Mind," made in 1993. It's quite stunning and gives us another glimpse of the younger, more ambitious Steve, who lived on his own in an apartment.
Steve posts his 1989 epic, "Ode to Curiosity," which celebrates mankind's love of science and discovery with a camcorder and stuff he recorded off of TV. What was 1989 Steve like? Well, he had a mustache and quite a bit of hair. He was also just as strange. There's something uniquely tragic and beautiful about a man who never leaves the house making a video celebrating humanity's thirst for discovery and understanding of the unknown.
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