Please try to suppress your groans at a terrible pun, and look back one year with me: it was mid-February of 2009, ItsJustSomeRandomGuy was fresh off of a second successful panel at New York Comic Con 2009, where they premiered Happy Hour #5, and everything was as it always had been. The Joker was defeated, the RandomVerse was restored, the view count went up, and there was much rejoicing. All was well.

But then, about a week later, everything changed. On February 18th, RandomGuy posted an innocent little video that would usher in a whole new era in RandomFandom. After almost two years of non-friendship on YouTube, the occasional silent video announcement, and overall limited fan feedback, ItsJustSomeRandomGuy and Gal were about to make themselves unprecedentedly accessible to their audience. Sure, ItsJustSomeRandomCommentary had given fans a behind-the-scenes look (er, listen) at the videos, and a few lucky RandomFans in New York got to meet RandomGuy in person at the RandomPanels, but blogTV presented a level of interaction never before attained by the average Internet-goer.


That day, hundreds of fans rushed to blogTV, making accounts to prepare for the show the following week on February 24th. Several even stayed in the Randoms' channel to chat with other users who would enter. Beyond their new-found accessibility to RandomGuy and Gal, it was the first time RandomFans found themselves able to chat with each other in real time as well. And that would prove to be crucial in the weeks to come.

Well, as anyone who was there could tell you, the first show itself was less than perfect. While excitement to see a live broadcast of the Randoms for the first time ever maintained a high viewer count throughout the night, audio problems plagued the chat for over four hours, and frustrated watchers left. Besides that, however, the night was full of pure win. As anyone who has seen an ItsJustSomeRandomGuy video would guess, RandomGuy and Gal turned out to be just as geeky as we are, if not more so. Talking about comic books, movies, their videos, and even giving a RandomTour of their living room, it was a total geekfest. And once they found out how to fix the audio problems at the end of the show, they recorded their last 10 minutes, which you can still view below:


A month later, they began broadcasting weekly chats every Tuesday night. (They still haven't started selling T-shirts yet, but we're working on that. =P)

Fast forward to today. The weekly broadcasts are still going on, and still going strong. There have been geekfests galore. Special broadcasts discussing the latest released movies. These broadcasts have become a staple for anyone who claims full RandomFanhood. And thanks to their dedication to their fans--"giving the people what they want" should probably be their slogan for this past year--RandomGuy and Gal have become more than YouTubers to be admired; they've become close friends to anyone who has regularly attended and participated in their live chats. There are few Internet celebrities who provide this kind of intimacy with their followers, and we shouldn't take it for granted.

I was musing with another fan recently about if and when the Randoms were to really blow up into the mainstream and become too busy to broadcast every week. While it would be sad to see the weekly chat go, that is something I really want to happen. It would be selfish and counterintuitive to try and hold the Randoms back if such an opportunity arose. It would be like telling your favorite local band not to sign a big contract with a label, just so that they could continue playing at your restaurant every weekend. But until that happens, I'm determined to watch and enjoy every minute of their broadcasts, and I hope you are, too. Here's to the past year of geeking out and seeing each other in the funny papers, and here's to whatever the future has in store!