[Music] welcome to ear biscuits I’m Rhett and I’m link it’s time for another conversation with an interesting person from the internet this week that person is Brooke Dodger Leigh Lawson arguably the most well known girl gamer on you – yes we have a fascinating conversation covering her small-town roots in her sword collection the challenges of being a female in the male-dominated world of gaming and what’s caused her to cry and two of her vlogs here’s a head it has something to do with a recent bombshell she dropped relating to her love life now I got to admit I’m a little intimidated in talking to Dodger because I’m a little intimidated and talking to anyone already happened you’re still intimidated yeah we know that we’re talking we just tease the things that we’re talking about yeah I’m saying but know that I’m saying that the process of talking to someone who is a game where intimate is an intimidating thing because it’s such a big part of the YouTube culture now you know everybody’s got a gaming channel everybody cares about games and we’re not everybody we don’t and that’s your point we’re kind of disconnected we kind of feel like old farts well when it comes to this or just out of the know but I will say that you know I also like to have a certain sense of pride of being one of those guys that you know when the original NES came out like I was a child who experienced that as a child at Christmas I specifically remember it was probably Christmas 1986 a maven 87 I don’t it was the year that it was out in the US and that people were getting up for that first Christmas so I guess 86 and you know I got at the same time my stepfather at the time Jimmy was just as excited as I was everybody that’s a weird thing because my parents weren’t even the kind of parents who were into that kind of thing that they would get you the thing yeah I never it was the kid that got the thing that everybody was getting but that year for whatever reason they’re like well I guess we got to get this thing because everybody’s getting this thing and so there it was you know when I woke up and I remember you know it came with Mario Brothers and then duck hunt did you get the power pad you got the power pad no I did not get the power bed I didn’t either and I didn’t really care but I just remember specifically Super Mario Brothers man I I played that with my we played that all day and then my parents came up and they said you’ve got to go to bed and I remember thinking that no you don’t understand mom my life has just changed like the fam not ever gonna sleep in here that this exists that’s something that is so unbelievably I mean did you have an Atari I had an Atari I mean it wasn’t like yeah yeah but it was enough there was no comparison yeah that’s true there was no comparison and then I would you know I would go over to your house and you’re like I got this gold one called Legend of Zelda I mean is gold one I I you know take it or leave it so what the main character is my name I have never played it never and that’s sad and I’m ashamed of that you should be I said and you should be ashamed last night Lincoln put it on his DS like the old-school version we got it for like five bucks so I think I’m me play Zelda for the first time it’s like that viral video from a few months back where Mike Tyson played Mike Tyson’s punch-out for the first time in the ESPN Lobby it’s a little different because that game was kind of built around him actually oh that’s not actually me I mean people ask me when they meet me Oh your name’s linka yeah I was like they name the game after me they believe me or sometimes I say the opposite which can’t be true because I’m too old for that right but that keep many people thinking either way it’s not true but I mean you’re gonna I’m gonna go and tell you right now I mean as much as I love that game you’re gonna be disappointed I mean you first of all you’ll never play it to the the amount of time the amount of gameplay that goes into any Zelda game it’s not something that you just like my son’s got a yes that’s why I never played it in the first place because I couldn’t beat Mario Brothers I just didn’t have the commitment or the the where to stick with something that didn’t need commitment you needed Chad Landrum that was your problem yeah I didn’t Landrum had a subscription to Nintendo Power and he was the key if you wanted to beat something first of all I mean Mario you couldn’t beat Mario Brothers now there’s a problem it’s just a personal problem I mean you know your wife can be Super Mario Brothers in like seven minutes I’ve seen her do it and and I’m I’m married to her so why do I need to do it she completes me right it’s romantic but when it comes to something as complex as you know the first Zelda and then you know the subsequent games I can’t handle that you you had to have a Nintendo Power or – Chad Landrum now contra I would go to you it’s funny I would go I had a Nintendo but I would go to your house and play none – no yeah what contra was great that was revolutionary for me because then I could like ride the coattails of someone simultaneously okay you get in front with that spread gun and I’ll just kind of hang back and take the credit you know that’s a good game well I can never beat contra we never be contra though that’s difficult I made it not even with 34 men 30 no we each had 30 oh well it didn’t happen and yeah yeah but I didn’t get into a lot of other games I mean I got the Genesis when that came out but I still I just I was such a shall I only waiting in the shallow end of video gaming you were afraid to go all and you were afraid to commit it’s amazing at how how pervasive it is now the culture and I mean not only obviously to YouTube I mean you look at the top videos and it’s just there it’s pervasive there’s no other way to say it that they are everywhere and it’s an entire business that’s just it’s mind-boggling well and I’ve gone you know I spent the first couple years that we were on YouTube with this mentality that when I saw something working I was either jealous of it or just frustrated that it was working and I didn’t understand why it was working now my life has become one you know one realization after another like oh this is what’s working now I’m not going to question it people like watching people play video games okay maybe I don’t I understand that people do I understand that a lot of people do so I’m probably even in the minority in it so I’m not gonna sit around and make fun of it I’m gonna embrace it as this is the reality now the most popular youtuber out there is a let’s play gamer PewDiePie he’s not on the show but the female gamer arguably is and like I said we had a fascinating conversation with her even though we might have been in the dark she was very gracious with us and I think whether you’re into gaming or not I think there’s lots to learn here and I think you will enjoy it the Adagio is a rising star and this massive growing community of video game vloggers and gamers she’s the face of makers new gaming channel Polaris and I always want to say Polaris but it’s Polaris at Polaris is like an ATV company right I don’t know yes and also she maintains her own two channels press heart to continue on which she dishes out weekly industry updates and dexterity bonus which features daily personal content she’s also one of our favorite guests from the mythical show you may remember her from the most complicated board game ever she milked herself yes she did and here we go you said Oregon so that’s how is that where you were born that’s home yeah I lived there my whole life before I moved here now is there a trail that ends there oh what’s the deal there is a trail there’s actually a huge I really want to have a house and don’t don’t if you if you go to Oregon if you go to the the Clackamas County Oregon City area there’s there’s a city called Oregon City I’m not just saying cities of Oregon but there’s a huge wagon where the trail quote ended end quote so there’s a big there’s a big maybe BIG’s the wrong word there’s a museum there next to the wagon and they teach you how to make butter really all the yeah all the kids wind up having a field trip there now do you play Oregon Trail with a special sense of pride we did play that game a lot yeah in which version are we talking about here because we and you know world we played the the Apple yeah the green hue during text on you know on the 87 version I actually can’t remember what the version was that we played when I was a kid but I know that I never made it ever I never once made it all the way to the dysentery yeah I’m just know that there wasn’t end I thought that the game was just being on a trail just living yeah I think that’s what everyone said frontier life who was doing it that was the rationale yeah there is no destination right let’s just not let’s not die while 40 in this river simple as that let’s take it one River how many more days can you live this time so what is what we’re in Oregon well you did you grow up where where um I grew up in a little town called Molalla it’s very small Malala Malala it’s named after a Native American tribe of which there are none left I believe there was one woman who is left in town and I think I think she’s gone now but it’s a very small town very very small and I lived there my whole life until college and then I went to another very tiny town called Monmouth and lived there for all of college and then in Oregon yeah and then I was offered a job in LA so what’s cool is only one small Western Oregon University it is one of two colleges in Oregon that have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater and that’s what I wanted so okay I went to the one that was a little less hectic because Southern Oregon University is where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is so it’s like crazy all the time so I went to Western Oregon and said and it’s only an hour away from where I lived and how big was it mo was the student Western Oregon do ya Western Oregon was 5000 oh okay I think okay it was pretty small mm-hmm so so what was the growing up situation you to be talking both parents yeah knocks both both parents and ox there’s no box but we did have we had chickens we had a bunch of horses we had bunnies there were pigs before I came into the picture we got two sheep that were awful while I was a kid and we wound up giving them to somebody else but I also have two siblings what makes an a sheep awful they okay so sheep may not know this some sheep were very sweet some sheep are just so honoré they’ll do whatever they want hmm so we had these sheep that broke down our fences constantly and they would just escape and then they’d come back and they’d ruin the fields they’d get all over the place so we had a really hard time controlling them unfortunately got a control sheep out of control sheep horses like can break down fences but their their bodies are shaped a bit differently so it’s like harder for them to I don’t know bust down a fence a bus yeah because with the Sheep like they’re just like this compact muscle body and they just like Ram themselves into it and then they’re gone I thought that was wool that’s muscle that’s not all muscle there’s no wool they’re thin layer of wool it’s like evidence thick so this is like a bonafide farm situation yeah I grew up on a farm so are there were there crops grown or was it just like oh we love animals and we have a lot of land situation we grew grass hay and oats a couple of years but it was mostly grass hay so and then you would sell that to people who wanted to feed their fill-in-the-blanks the intention was to sell it but we didn’t have the necessary equipment to be able to bail it so we had a neighbor who had a ton of cows and we had our horses and so he would come bail it and then we would split it okay so we actually didn’t sell it we just grew it for lols and for animals what was this I mean this your source of sustenance I mean was your mom or dad doing something else at the time or they didn’t eat it well I know I mean we ate the grass a-and and the horses now my mom worked full-time my entire life and my dad maintained the fireman raise the kids so so what did your mom do my mom was Human Resources at a grocery store called Fred Meijer well it was a department store actually so she did that employee discount oh yeah oh man we would go there all the time and be like so it’s not food it’s colors it’s a department store so there’s there’s lots of food there there’s lots of clothes there but we didn’t have one close enough to us where we could get perishables so normally when we would go all the way there it would be to get clothes and stuff so growing up on a farm you know I have to assume that’s something like my brother stuck his hand in a horse’s mouth and lost a finger like you know right and you grew up in that situation that kind of stuff just occasionally happens because you love to hear about it sure you want to hear one digit we got to know my brother when they first bought the farm was running through the forest because we’re surrounded by woods at my house so he was running through the forest fell and then heard my dad calling for him got up and came out of the forest and my dad looked at his arm and there was just blood everywhere my brother hadn’t noticed he hadn’t even felt it happen but there was a machete in the middle of the woods that he had fallen on of course and now he has a scar from his elbow all the way down to his wrist sliced him it sliced him open and he didn’t realize it and he did not feel it it was very strange so then it was my mom and my dad rushing him to the hospital and my dad holding onto his arm like keeping it together yeah yeah yep you didn’t employ a sheep for that there was no sheep involved no she knew sheep were involved in this story just wrap this thing up in a wool weird stuff in the woods out there though there was also a the remnants of a shack and I used to go out there and play all the time like a lone yeah and I’m pretty sure if my dad knew that I was playing in an old shack he would have been can but I didn’t I mean as kids Ren I would go into the you know there’s assorted pockets of woods around Buies Creek North Carolina and you can manage to find like a like an old shack or something and it was always very spooky and very cool kind of to kind of go into those run-down buildings it was it was a I would go so far as to call it a pastime but I would not have done it alone yeah I would have been – to – who creeped out yeah you got to have a buddy for that situation so I’m good for you I mean you going in those because it has to be creepy well they’re not I mean when I say shack it’s not it wasn’t put together enough to still look like a shack it was busted you know but yeah I you know I was so used to those woods I grew up there like I was born near that farm and was raised on that farm so as I got older I just went further and further into the woods so it didn’t seem as creepy to me I don’t think so a bonafide farm girl type situation yeah with you said you had a brother who siblings a brother and a sister both older both older my sister is 17 years older than me and my brother is 11 years older than me really yeah that’s quite a spread yeah yep so my sister was basically out of the house by the time I was like up and walking around and able to understand what things were mm-hmm and you so you and your brother I imagine were that close if he was that much older – we’re really close now and as kids I loved him so much I wanted to be just like my brother and he was so annoyed by me I would do the most obnoxious sister things like I would sit in front of his room while he was sleeping cuz he would sleep in but everybody else on the farm would wake up at like 6:00 so I would sit outside of his room waiting for him to wake up because I wanted to play supermario or just just hang out with him I want to build a snowman yeah it was basically that have you seen that yeah I have seen that it’s very good pretty good qe so you mentioned Mario Brothers now so growing up on the farm right he obviously were not discouraged from playing video games it wasn’t hey don’t you go outside and pet a sheep you can find a career in this video game thing so get to it young lady no I mean my dad farmville anyone long my dad felt very strongly that everybody should be helping out outside so it was you know it’s fine for you to play games it’s fine for you to be on the computer but you that can’t be all you’re doing you know so I my jobs were weeding and picking up acorns and just the tedious awful jobs every now and then I got to cut wood that was a bit more interesting but no my dad picking up acorns why would one do that because they would get all over our driveway and then when you would drive over them they would just be crushed on the driveway and it just didn’t look good and they’re poisonous and poisonous yeah hey you look at me like I’m crazy acorns are poisonous google that and then tell me that I’m right and then the other thing is is that we’re not gonna Google it don’t worry about you boil if you cook them or boil them they are no longer poisonous and then you can drink a corn tea which I’m drinking right now okay by the way the fact that I’m drinking it so when was the inception of the videogames into your life that you know how do we trace that back to being something that I I assume you would say is a life changing now right yeah I mean games have been my life my whole life I feel like my dad is still obsessed with Tetris to play it all the time like oh and what a gameboy no NES original Nintendo he still has it he has a replacement NES in case the one he’s using breaks he has replacement controllers just a played Tetris to play Tetris the little screen that’s in the garage because my dad’s garage is like where he hangs out when he’s not working outside so the little TV that he has in there the you failed screen burned into it so anytime you look at that TV it looks like the game is on but it’s not it’s burned that heart into the screen well that must mean that he would leave it on that screen mm-hmm yeah because he would taunt himself he would play it all the time and when it when he would die I’d be like all right back to work and he’d get up and go work and it was just sitting there just there yeah you failed you failed you failed you failed you failed Matlock and Perry Mason and and play Tetris in tandem oh yeah of course it hasn’t upgraded though I mean he’s still he’s not he doesn’t want more buttons no absolutely not I mean he he understands this system you know have you ever shown him or tried to get him to play a new system oh yeah I mean he’s played other games with us but but the original Tetris is his well because he keeps going back to it it never gets old now I I think the the sad fact of the matter is just just to be totally honest with you here is that we’re we’re right there with your dad so for the rest of this conversation you’re just gonna have to bear with us you’re you okay so I could just make stuff up our hope is that you will be our Sherpa on this Oregon Trail of gaming but we do have kids now and my kids are introducing me back into the world of gaming so it’s it’s interesting how that that’s happening cuz I kind of missed the window with the the 16 button controllers that was just a too much right I feel like there was a big period of time where a lot of really good games came out that I did not play at all like kind of when I when I was in high school mostly when I was in high school I just never really played any new games at all and so now sometimes when I’m when I’m working with colleagues or just talking with friends and they’re like oh man that game right such a good game I can’t contribute at all I don’t so what was happening in your life in that like growing up what are pivotal moments from the picking up acorns through the high school years I think high school is when I started to feel like I shouldn’t ask my parents for things like I should get a job and start trying to pay for things myself but I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities so I didn’t really have time to have a job but because of that I still if there was something if there was a game that came out that I was interested in playing I just wouldn’t ask for it so once I got into college and I was making like a little bit of extra money I started playing more games again okay so so what was life like in that in that time period for you in high school yeah like lots of theater heck you know girl yeah that’s that’s what I studied in college too right so I was doing a lot of plays I was on dance team doing dance team I tried to do a play dance team and the tennis team all at the same time that does not work out drop tennis real quick but the plays were always really fun that’s usually not a combination that you see though you don’t normally know someone who’s on the tennis team and the dance team and in theater at the same time typically there are some for better for worse there are some cliques right in high school you know yeah our school is actually really good about that um the kids that I would say were the popular kids we’re all for the most part really nice there wasn’t a lot of bullying that happened in my school and even the kids that that got kind of teased had a lot of friends had a lot of good positivity and I don’t know if that’s because I went to a smaller high school as well but we didn’t we didn’t really have a whole lot of problems with cliques so I think people felt more like they were able to try things I guess so as a theater kid yes were you thinking this is it I mean obviously to the point where you wanted to go study in college where you what was the aspiration there what did you want to do ultimately um I liked doing all of it which wound up being a problem because like I said I went to Western Oregon for their Bachelor of Fine Arts program and that be tickly means you choose one thing that you want to do and you study it real hard like all of your classes have to do with it mm-hm so I decided well go for for The Bachelor of Fine Arts and acting and I did and I got in there were only two of us that got in and I was really excited I was so jazzed but every term I wanted to be designing costumes and I wanted to be helping with building sets and I wanted to be doing other things that were adjacent to acting but weren’t acting in the shows and I was basically sat down by my adviser and he said you need to decide whether or not this is what you want to do if this is the program for you and if it’s not then just drop it I mean you can you can still be in our department but I don’t think that this program is good for you so I wound up dropping it and then I got to design an act and it was great what kind of what kind of plays were you involved in what kind of roles did you play what did you gravitate towards um I played a lot of nervous people I played a lot of really crazy people do you volunteer for that or they spotted something in you I was definitely never the the standard female lead or like the sweet ingenue I was always a little strange all of my characters were always strange but it was it was really fun because then you got to kind of pinpoint something to to bring out of that character you know you got to be a little bit larger than life and I always really enjoyed that so I think that was there something does it say something about you that you gravitated towards those roles I think so I didn’t do very well with roles this is gonna sound awful I didn’t do very well with roles that were supposed to be very honest like roles where you needed to put a lot of genuine emotion into it I guess like that was always very hard for me it was very hard for me to be in the moment when it was a very real feeling but if I was somebody who was kind of outside of the norm it was a little bit easier for me to justify what that feeling would be don’t like any sense does it that was such a strange way to explain that but kind of take an angle like okay in this instance I’m I’m gonna be the lying evil person or the weird crazy person versus the person who’s about to break down and cry like it’s yeah it’s the difference between being the completely normal girl who’s upset about something versus the straight-up crazy villain maybe character actor yeah I think that those are more engaging they’re just more fun and it’s easier to connect with them for me for some reason okay did you intend to go on and do something with theatre after college yet an actor yeah I mean if like YouTube is literally the reason I’m in LA so if if YouTube hadn’t happened I was fully prepared to be making coffee most of the time and in turning out whatever theater would take me until they would actually hire me that was like the big plan or theater we’re in Oregon in Oregon yeah you can I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have had the money to go anywhere else so you kind of you felt like okay just because of finances I’m gonna be staying around here and I’m gonna attach myself to some some theater company type situation yeah yeah I had I had interned a little bit during college at different theaters in Portland and so I thought well I can keep doing that sort of a thing have a job on the side and hopefully eventually endear myself enough to and one of these companies that they they take me on and actually pay me and then move from there but the other option was to go to grad school and learn how to make armor that was like my big thing that I wanted to do okay armor yeah now so that’s that seems now when you say that all of us in us okay that seems expected like that’s a decidedly geeky right so was where you uh would you label yourself as a geek at that point or I mean when you’re into armor if I’m okay one of my career goals is I might go into making armor yeah it was because I mean yeah I’ve always I’ve always been interested in an armor and like LARPing like I loved making fake swords and stuff and beating up my friends so you barked yeah Oh full-on in high school but oh okay well hold on we got to talk about sorry okay because I mean this is something that we have definitely referenced many a time and a few different videos in the comedy context but I don’t think I’ve ever tunity for LARPing in Oregon know what open space why that’s why yeah there you know people got fields you’re able to if you all if you’ve got the round balers okay so here’s what you got to do you got to find somebody who’s using round bales instead of square bales and then you can turn those into targets and you can have archery oh wow and you did this uh no we wanted to many people do you need to LARP and then how did you organize that you don’t need that many people at all it’s I mean yeah he’s live in by infinity you just create an adventure for yourself you know it’s just like some people play D&D by themselves and you think how do they do that they don’t even have a dungeon master but you can do it but like with with kind of the LARPing that happened with us it was basically a group of friends just a bunch of us we all thought that it sounded like a lot of fun to just you know take a day and I’ll make our swords and then you know dress up in whatever we had and then go out into the backyard at one of our houses and just you know attack each other like that’s literally as far as it went it wasn’t super organized it wasn’t like a group person wasn’t like I hit you with my sword you’re out oh it was it was it was that one out glorified tag yeah basic tag with fake swords it was great no no judgement I don’t exactly mean I the origins of LARPing or because when we talking about when when you were when were you in high school I graduated 2005 so I started doing this 2003 so this is I mean I guess there’s there’s been somewhat of a LARPing ro revolution right this seems like this is probably right in the throes of that or maybe the beginnings of that right this is kind of thing you’re like did you hear about what those people are doing they’re they’re LARPing and we can also do that maybe I don’t feel like I knew of anybody else who was doing that we were just all kind of bored there wasn’t really anything to do a LARPing no that’s kind of what I was getting at was this is the kind of thing that the right group of people it could just spawn right you know and it’ll RP didn’t know ended it we were the first in your minds yeah I mean it just sounded like fun so we just did it yeah so by the time you’re thinking about graduate school it’s like on steroids you’re like I can make actual armor there are people who do this yeah cuz at that point I had spent my entire senior year focusing a lot on costume crafts and props so I had made like puppets and dead bodies and all sorts of weird stuff and when I was looking into grad schools one of the coolest ones had this huge program where they were like we’ll teach you how to make legit armor swords anything like that and I wanted to go there so bad do you own a sword now I own have you realized this dream this is actually really funny I just took a picture because I have all of my swords on my kitchen floor right now just like sitting there because I don’t have any I’ve been going through all my stuff and I don’t know where to put my swords so they’ve just been in my kitchen I have okay stuff with him one heck of a peanut butter and jelly so you know yeah I have Zelda Master Sword I have my APA from when I was in college and took a stage fighting I have a katana I have like an old style wooden sword that someone sent me and well while you’re thinking about that have you been to sword in stone here in Burbank no oh she hasn’t been I mean this is he’s a forger of swords this is the guy he hasn’t he has a web series where he he forges he’s a blacksmith and he forges the recreations it’s that sort of famous weapons from different movies and shows and stuff but he’s also he goes way back he made Conan’s sword old Conan he pin it’s in the shop and he’s got all kinds of stuff like that and it’s right here in Burbank we shot some scenes for a video but uh as I was in there I definitely had this sensation that like I think this is awesome but should be it would really really appreciate this more you should go there you have to go yeah yeah to go that sounds awesome but we digress okay so you decided right well and what happened at that point when you were looking at graduate school and theater around Oregon like why did I do YouTube yeah how did that well YouTube happened because I had a couple of friends who were doing YouTube one of them was being very successful at it and I was bored out of my mind husky Starcraft okay so I was taking my very last class to get my degree it was math his summer I had a part-time job at Huff farm and I just had a lot of free time and I didn’t know what to do with it and it was suggested to me that I try making a YouTube channel and so I was looking to see what other ladies were doing in the gaming world on YouTube and not many people really had like consistent shows or were doing much of anything so I decided to try doing just a news show and doing it every other day and in what year was this graduate 2010 okay so this is sort of before let’s play just took over but it was it was before let’s play really took over yeah but but it was catching it was catching it yeah and so what was big gameplay in general so like not necessarily Let’s Plays or walkthroughs or playthroughs of an entire game but watching people play a game oh let’s see we were kind of we thought it was the same thing yeah yeah I mean just basically someone playing a video gaming and talking over the top of it well I mean what the code is at this point is not just let’s play what’s the proper terminology let’s play let’s play is is a series in which you play an entire game okay whereas just gameplay would be just a scene or a part of a game doesn’t necessarily have to be the entire game but in form it’s the same thing it’s just a question of is it can complete or not is it going to continue could you watch it from the beginning and could you see the end so it was really I mean so husky Starcraft he was very successful and a friend of yours yeah yeah he and I went to the same high school and yeah and we were we we kind of reconnected in college and we were chatting and I went and looked at his YouTube channel I was like whoa you get a lot of views people love watching this and he was like yeah cuz he basically he would just bring up professional Starcraft matches and he would commentate over them like ESPN style and that’s that’s what he continues to do that’s what a lot of guys do for a lot of eSports right now and it’s big it’s huge but he got in kind of on the ground floor of the newer Starcraft game so he just blew up he was a friendly or some high school towards the end of college you’re talking with him is he the one who’s saying hey you need to get in on this what’s funny is it was actually originally he thought that my brother should have a YouTube channel because my brother is a incredible singer okay edible pianist and so my brother was like no not my brother sorry Mike I’m husky okay I said that you know music is real hot on YouTube he was like if you know Jared wants to try that out he should totally do it and Jared you know made like a couple of videos but he was like that’s whatever and wound up making one myself instead she’s really but I can do it I was like that sounds fun I’m bored oh yeah I’ll try it and you’re like why didn’t you tell me to make a youtube channel why are you talking about my brother nah it’s interesting you said that you looked at kind of the landscape of how many girls were doing it are not doing it that so you tell me that was kind of a part of your initial analysis of an opportunity for you even from the beginning kind of just not I wasn’t going into it thinking this could be a career but I was looking at it from the standpoint of pretty much everybody who had said hey you should think about making a YouTube channel said oh a girl doing video game stuff that would do really well you know just the stereotypical thing mhm and I wanted to see how how girls were doing on YouTube in the gaming world like what were they doing how how is it going about and so what did you find specifically when you look that way I found a lot of inconsistency like a lot of people who would make one video every month or two months and didn’t really have a clear focus on what they were doing so and you couldn’t find any girl that you okay I’m gonna emulate what she’s doing not really I mean I picked I picked and choose some things like I knew I didn’t want to be this is gonna sound awful but I knew I didn’t want to be another girl who was aiming a camera at my boobs didn’t want to do that I knew that I didn’t I think that’s always an accident Oh always always obviously uh you know it’s they were just why I mean why yeah why for you was that important I mean yeah some girls make that choice it’s effective yeah you could have made that choice yeah what what was behind that choice for you um I wanted my videos to be as much about what I was saying as possible and you usually say them from your mouth I say them from my mouth so yeah and I I just like being friends with mostly guys at the time it was interesting discussing it with them because all of them unanimously said oh yeah of course I would watch that but they also all unanimously didn’t respect the person that they were watching hmm and that was not something I wanted at all I wanted to know that if I was going to be making videos especially about news like the gaming industry I wanted to know that that my opinions were going to matter at all if that makes sense yeah so what was the I mean was the first video the first video is so weird to go through boobs right it was just it was just boobs I don’t know what happened no the very first video was was me just like sitting with like this strange camera from like here but like it was just like this weird light higher up yeah just like my face and I talked in a slightly higher pitched voice and I don’t know why that was good it’s it’s very weird to go back because I’m like why was I doing that that sounds so strange but you know it’s your first videos when you’re kind of like nervous and I’m really sure what you’re doing and now I’m so comfortable with the camera it’s just like hey guys I’m farting right now that’s kind of nice that’s happened I missed that one oh yeah I actually like I come from a couple of days ago I made a video and at the end of the video I was like gosh guys this whole this whole time that I’ve been talking to you I felt like there’s a fart brewing I did it hasn’t happened and it was distracting me through the whole video I was like god I just feel like there’s a fart and it’s not happening it was it was very distracting so I figured I’d just like let them know but you get camera didn’t let it go it never never had like a new Foley for that what for put the phone up to the camera mm-hmm okay so sorry what did you say what this was was it news video game news yeah it was I talked about and you named you started you know press hard to continue you you thought through the branding of all this you’re like I’m gonna call it this I’m gonna shoot from a slightly high angle I’m gonna talk a little bit higher pitch in what in and you talk about what I talked about game companies I talked about game releases they talked about really just the same sort of things that people write articles about except I was making a video instead so yeah and and I’ve I’ve switched formats at this point like at that time I was doing three topics every other day so like each video I would cover three different things and now I’ve I’ve switched it so that I do the video once a week and I cover six topics so that I’m able to kind of focus on the things the most important things that happened that week rather than just having weird filler people like oh there’s a katamari body pillow day you should buy so so so what was the transition from deciding to make the first video to being able to move to LA and make a career out of it so I kept making the videos and maker was putting together their gaming vertical and where you were like still kind of in college like last semester yeah I I was just finishing up my class and I was contacted by maker and they said hey we are going to be doing a launch of you know just like a few gaming channels to start with and we know that you’re small but we feel like you’re getting better with each video you know we’d like to have you involved from the start if you’re interested and I said sure so they launched the vertical and I was part of it and then a couple of months later I was called again and they said we’re actually looking for people who want to do network development for this vertical and if you’re interested there’s a job for you in LA if you want it and so I said okay because in my mind that was like way better than making coffee and trying desperately to get a job in a theater so maybe even making armor or maybe maybe I don’t know making our movie so dope right I don’t know if you can beat that what’s it like being a girl in a guy’s world of gaming I mean I’m hard pressed to find any any girls to compare you to even now right I mean I’m not that familiar with the space but you’re still very unique as a female immersed in the gaming culture in this way there are some of us there are a few of us and I think there are more and more I think there are a lot more women getting involved in the more like journalistic side of it like on various websites that do articles in gaming more and more girls are getting involved in that and well you know you obviously respect your audience and it’s you you expect them to to be intelligent and you because you know that of them so you respect that in them you’re not you’re not buying into the programming down to people so but that being said there’s still a lot of guys are you know still pigs kind of a thing I think of course I would imagine that there’s still it’s hard it’s got to be hard for you at times being being a female in the position you’re in when so much of your audience are these guys who you know with commenting you can say anything they want I mean how do you how difficult does it get and how do you navigate that it doesn’t get difficult I don’t think because in the end we’re all used to getting some brand of negative comments but it’s always the minority and I count really misogynistic comments within negative comments and I think the key is just focusing on the vast majority of your consistent viewers that really love what you do and do respect you you know and so well if I do see somebody who says something totally out of line I can block them for the most part it’s like I I don’t really see them and I know they exist but it doesn’t affect my quality of life or the quality of my content or the quality of my community because I know that for the most part they’re all wonderful intelligent and they like what I’m doing so there takes a lot of strength to be able to do that now another interesting dynamic at what point did and it was this always the case were you kind of a personal vlogger at the same time like people know about your personal life as much as you’re willing to share through your vlogs was that was that a dynamic from the very beginning or was it that kind of become something over time that kind of snuck up on me there was a point where I realized oh man you guys know a lot about my life and in some ways I’m totally fine with that and in other ways I’ve realized that sometimes they’re there there’s a specific type of viewer that gets really upset when they find out that I haven’t told them something hmm you know so that’s been very strange to navigate because on one hand it’s like well I I understand why you’re confused but at the same time I’m entitled to some privacy you know No so when it comes to disclosure via your vlog channel and in connecting with your your your fans your followers you recently dropped like a bombshell and everybody why don’t you tell us about I was so Stout a nervous about making a video saying that I had a boyfriend and and I have never felt like there was so much support in my community until now like so that was the title I have a boyfriend I have a boyfriend with a wide-eyed smiley face yeah and a lot of people thought because like you decided you just I mean it sounds like you’ve been pulling back into privacy but you decided that this is something that you were going on record with you were going to be open yeah and not try but maybe cry in the middle but yeah he I mean he and I talked about it a lot and he first of all tell everybody who your boyfriend is oh my boyfriend is Sam Thorne aka stripping from the yogscast and he’s been wonderful to me he and I have had a yogscast meaning he he is a what does he do he’s a gamer too he’s a gamer too yeah so he’s part of of a British network called the augs cast and they all do let’s play gameplay videos and they do big live streams and around the holidays they do a live stream every single day up until Christmas for charity and it’s good they’re really they’re a really good group of people and I wound up meeting him actually when I when I went to England with Jessie and he was one of those smelly guys who’s no he he and I talked about it a lot and we were feeling feeling good about our relationship and it’s been a few months and so we decided well rather than rather than feeling the stress of of needing to act like we’re not super sir yeah the stress of secrecy that’s a good way to put it we decided that it was a good time to just come out with it and see what happens and so you got out you got a positive response got a very positive response everybody’s very happy no no messages Oh plenty plenty of mean messages doesn’t matter that they don’t they don’t matter no matter guys well I’m ready the tears were tears of joy of happy so I mean it takes a lot of me commas to overcome that so yeah I’m happy for you thank you so you ever cried in a vlog before yeah I full-on cried in a vlog before because uh there was man like at the beginning of the year last year 2000 2013 I had kind of a meltdown and in what way I mean what uh I just had a lot of personal issues going on and just had like this major meltdown and and all of my friends in LA had dropped what they were doing and came over to like be with me after seeing the vlog no no no I had texted like like two of them being like hey and and just like a bunch of people came over to be with me and keep me company and and got really emotional about it and then I I wanted making a video kind of saying you know I’m gonna take a few days off like sorry about that but I mentioned that all my friends had been so amazing I just started crying it’s like stop but so those were tears of joy – those were also tears of joy I’ve I’ve never cried tears of sadness on my show they’ve always been tears I was private and then publicly it was the the silver lining mm-hmm that’s great and did Sam his name Sam yeah did Sam also does he does he vlog is he has sort of a personal flaw does he strip I don’t there’s a little confusion there so originally his gamertag I love with a stripper that is a song is that a song oh I should make it I should make him a mixtape and it’ll just be that song over and over and over again no a mixtape by definition needs more than one song his initials RS T so as a kid he made a game that was st Ripon whoops I could have ripped yay and yeah turned out that that says stripping right after you write it so okay so but did he also disclose to his fans mmm-hmm that he was dating you are you sure because I couldn’t find it he did he did talk about it in a vlog because I wanted to know if he was crying too I had it no he did not cry he was very whose room manly about it but he knows that I have a closer relationship with my fans so when we were talking about how to go about telling everybody he said well I think that you should make I think that you should make like B video because your community is so close with you so but I have to assume that there is amongst his fans there’s gonna be some jealousy I mean that’s just the way that it works you know it’s gonna be like oh he’s going out with Dodger I’m gonna send him a message you know he’s got a few no but like it’s it’s not it’s not all that concerning I don’t think right youyou’ve obviously developed a way of handling it knowing that it is a reality that you are going when you put yourself out there like that and definitely as a woman putting yourself out there in that atmosphere you’re gonna be a target somewhat mm-hmm but it seems like you just it doesn’t get to you you you’ve made a decision to be like I know this is part of the deal mm but I am going to ignore it because it is the minority that means sometimes it’s always gonna get to you yeah but but that’s what helps me get out of that is remembering that that that is the minority yeah and that the people that that I am speaking to or the ones the the nice wonderful ones you know so but but in regards in regards to like any negativity involving Sam like that’s why we waited so long to mention it in the first place is because there’s there’s that weird almost almost like Star Magazine paparazzi feel to the whole thing where it if we were to talk about it too soon when our relationship wasn’t quite as solidified we would be getting those same messages and you know both be like I don’t I don’t know like is she cheating on me I don’t know like you know like all these weird messages that are meant to mess with your head and so we we decided to wait a little while because that way we would get to know each other better we would get to solidify with a relationship a bit more and you know when any any jealousy or negativity came toward us we’d be able to to deal with it as a unit rather than than feeling kind of unsure of ourselves right but the risk of sounding very cheesy I’m gonna own this one but I draw a correlation between your name Dodger mm-hmm and the fact that you are you found yourself in a position of like Reza being a target so there’s an art to having me either take take the blows or be able to dodge them so it sounds like you’re navigating this zone pretty well The Artful Dodger The Artful Dodger the nickname came from is it huh I wanted to get back to that oh yeah go to college where did Dodger come from I was called that when I was working on Dodger man what’s your first name what you’ve wished what’s the full spiel Brooke Brooke Leigh Brookley Lawson is my full name and when I was working in the scene shop I had a co-worker who called me Dodger after Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist so mostly because somehow I never died in that scene shop like so many people got hurt in there and I I was perfectly fine and I don’t know it’s poetic that it certainly applies to everything we’ve been talking about about YouTube yeah I’m just saying well this has been extremely insightful yes and I’ll be counting sheep tonight thinking about your sheep muscular there’s no way to not be weird about what it is [Music] and there you have it Brook Dodge early Lawson in full ear biscuit mode with Lee Lawson which she said Brooke Lee lost and I thought news anchor this is Brooke Lee lossing lawsuit coming to you live you know it’s a good name I mean Dodger that’s a great name is even better when you know you’re doing the video gig thing it’s a cooler more internetting name but I’m just making the note that if she ever wants to go back into newscaster you know the fallback Brooke Lee Lawson Baker yeah Brooke Lee Lawson our mermaid doesn’t really sound like a I think you would go with Dodger for that I I’d I hope she wouldn’t be offended if I’m totally overwhelmed with the fact she’s so she’s such a sweet person I don’t think she would that’s not I mean that’s a compliment right I hope that she would not be offended with me thinking that she was a sweet person no I don’t know I think she’s not like a sociopath so no I don’t think she would be offended by that very strong person to I think when you say that someone is sweet you don’t you say oh they’re like it’s like saying that they’re just like oh isn’t that a cute person versus but she’s not that I think we very well established that she is has a lot of strength to be in the environs that she is on the Internet and that she can not only survive but can and not only thrive but she can respect her audience and she she believes the best in them and chooses to ignore the negativity that I mean I have to think comes at her more often that Ana just the typical guy who’s doing gaming content early internet yeah there’s a strength there there’s a sweet strength that I admire yeah I think that you know I was definitely not surprised at all to hear that you know traditionally this was a 90/10 breakdown I mean first of all in terms of men to women show YouTube in general is there more guys who watch youtube videos and more guys who are on the internet on a regular basis and you know habitually [Music] [Music]