An Open Letter to The Game Grumps, Past and Present

After hearing Dan’s story on his depression in a recent episode, I figured that I’d write to you guys and echo the sentiments of many: You help me feel a lot better when my day is in perpetual crap mode, which seems unfortunately frequent due to a malevolent and crushing social miasma that is currently inescapable.

With the whole depression and ADD thing, I’ve been professionally diagnosed with both, used to be on meds for the latter but I asked to be taken off of them since it was causing some weird dissonance. I knew I wasn’t acting naturally, that I knew I was being a much different person, and that feeling just made me feel worse.

Perhaps that meant the medication was working? Who knows. But now, I self-manage by doing as much as I possibly can, to try and entertain anyone that’s willing to look, listen, experience whatever it is I do in life. In any case, long story short, the discussion really struck home. I’m sure you’ve been getting tons of messages about this, but that’s not the only discussion in the episode that applied to me.

This letter is also a thank you note for helping me get comfortable with calling myself what I am. If you guys hadn’t discussed that part about being proud of being an artist, I’d still be that guy that staunchly calls what he does in his free time “just a bunch of dumb crap I’ve made”. All the webcomics I’ve made over the years, the comedic rewrites of hentai doujinshi, the podcast, the music I write, perform, record and master, the screenplay I’ve been working on for a while, the silly little weather show I record with my buddy at work that, for some reason, I’ve decided to upload to YouTube, even the novel I’m currently writing a first draft of. Not taking the pride in the work I’ve done, preferring to be called a content producer rather than an artist, assuming there are negative connotations in that word simply because I’m an amateur at all of these things that I’m doing.

Well, that ends today. I’m declaring it to you fine folks: Arin, Jon, Dan, Suzy, Ross, Barry, and everyone else that decides to read this; I’m an artist, goddammit.

I’m an artist and I’m proud of it.

So, thank you, all of you, from the bottom of my heart. This channel, Game Grumps, means a lot to me, and it has since day one.

-Mike