Uploaded and Unfiltered: Conversations about Personal Growth, Mindsets, and Advice with BIPOC Creators for Creators

Creating Deep Connections Through Authenticity [Guest: CapnTrippz]

• Jermaine Pulliam • Season 1 • Episode 62

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Ever wondered how a Dungeon Master can turn a one-shot adventure into a long-term campaign that keeps players coming back week after week? Join us as we sit down with CapnTrippz, and reminisce about our shared love for Dungeons & Dragons, fueled by classic games like Baldur's Gate, and celebrate the exceptional storytelling skills of our Dungeon Master, Ronan. 

Our conversation takes a turn as we explore the transformation from working late-night service jobs to embracing the world of content creation. We discuss the importance of creating content that speaks to the heart, focusing on narrative depth rather than superficial gameplay. From revisiting classic Zelda games to discussing current events and college football, Trippz opens up about building a diverse and genuine community that values meaningful engagement.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Uploaded and Unfiltered, the podcast in which I, your host Jermaine, interviews another content creator in regards to their journey thus far. Today I have a special guest. Before I get him on the mic, I'm going to get a little bit of information from him so we can start this conversation correctly. Mic. I'm going to get a little bit of information from him so we can start this conversation correctly.

Speaker 1:

Captain Trips is a writer, slash storyteller with a passion for streaming slash showcasing games with compelling narratives. When he's not gaming, he's building his own worlds or making others comfortable enough to be themselves. In essence, he's being who he needed to see growing up. Hailing from Atlanta, georgia, trips became a student of the world early on. He's being who he needed to see growing up. Hailing from Atlanta, georgia, trips became a student of the world early on. He's an army brat, with stints in Germany, maryland, louisiana, massachusetts and Hawaii. He brings that worldly perspective into everything he does, including his day job as a marketing professional. And with that, I'd like to introduce my guest for the evening, trips. Thank you, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing well, man. It's early afternoon on Friday, junior is what I call it, and, like you said earlier, I'm from Atlanta. So I can't even begin this interview without saying first things first.

Speaker 1:

Rest in peace. British homie Kwan. I got to throw that out there for all his fans and people who knew and loved the guy. Um, but I'm I'm doing well. How about you? Man? I'm doing great. We uh actually had a photographer come through and take pictures of the house, because we're in the middle of trying to move out of florida. It went well, so I can't complain and so like.

Speaker 2:

When the photographer comes through and takes pictures like the house is empty, I'll take y'all pictures down. How does that work?

Speaker 1:

so we we went the route. Uh, we kept it. Looks like the house is lived in, except for like a model house level. Everything is clean, there's no clutter. It's crazy like being in the house right now because I don't want to touch it, but it looks amazing. But yeah, we kept the pictures up and all that stuff yeah, I know me.

Speaker 2:

Just, I take a like a very 30 000 foot view like um you know hearing stuff on npr about people who've sold houses and you know they swapped the the family pictures for a white family pictures and sold for more type deal and like, oh okay, like that. So that's something I kind of keep top of mind anytime I talk to any of my friends who are homeowners, because I'm like yeah, hey we're trying to get you all the money that y'all deserve for that exactly.

Speaker 1:

So I I did think about that. It crossed my mind a bunch of times. I'm gonna wait. We have it at a certain price. If it sells for that, cool. If it's on a market for like longer than we would like, then it's time to put some tactics in right, you got to do what you got to do at the end of the day, exactly exactly all right, you know what.

Speaker 1:

Enough about me. They know about me somewhat. We are here to learn more about you and I am dying to know this because you know what? Before we get started, I'm gonna go ahead and tell the audience. I've been talking about dnd off and on for the last like two, three months trips is one of the homies who is in my dnd group and that shit has been amazing so far. I love, love it.

Speaker 2:

It's really been a creative outlet for me, just to try new things. You know I had a just a general interest in it. You know, I think Baldur's Gate did it for me, to be honest, same. You know, the day that game dropped I went ahead and dropped that money real quick and jumped into it. But outside of that I'm like, ok, well, how does D& dnd work? And it just so happened that at the same time ronan was putting his thing together. I'm like, hmm, you know, I'll rock with ronan on just his content. And I'm like, all right, well, if, if there's gonna be anybody I trust to kind of walk me through even a one shot, because it was a one shot at the time. Um, it's gonna be ronan. And then it turned from a one shot into something we've been doing for months, I want to say almost six months now yeah, six months, like what.

Speaker 2:

Like that way can you sit with me and y'all got me up in the middle of the night on thursday night in this friday morning every week, but I really enjoy it like it's really like when we end the session at 1 30 in the morning I'm usually like pumped for another hour and really have to like hey, bro, you gotta turn everything.

Speaker 1:

It's two o'clock in the morning, relax the way our missions end, like our story has been ending. It's just like all right. Well, what the hell happens after this right? And I can never guess what ronan that man he's. He says he's a rookie at this, but not knowing any better. Like he is really good at crafting a story, giving us stuff to do and like dealing with the bullshit we throw at him right man.

Speaker 2:

I gotta tip my hat to that man just because his patience, he's not like vindictive with anything that we try to do, because I know we try to skirt the systems at times, but he's like no, you can't do that. You know, or you know other deals which is like, okay, you're dead and right.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately that happened to one of my, one of my characters, which I'm still mad at y'all about. Yeah, you know what I I am too. I'm glad we don't talk about it much during the story, but I'm still like, god damn, we kind of really fucked that up oh, y'all know how pissed I was that night.

Speaker 2:

I like I didn't say nothing else for like two hours almost and the entire night. I'm like man. Yeah, I didn't even want to be like my secondary character. Shout out to barackas I, I like him now yeah, barackas is dope man. But okay, laotian, laotian, come on, that's my dog so I'm gonna have him in the cut. I'm gonna save him for another campaign, because I definitely gotta bring him back out here sometime man.

Speaker 1:

Alright, I'm not gonna. I'm gonna cut this right here because I don't want to. We could be talking about D&D all day. I will have a D&. I want to have you and Ronan. I want to have our crew on, because I have some questions and introspective about our first stint at this. So, ok, soon to come We'll do All right. So now we're here. How did you get started? What is Tripp's origin story? When it comes to content creation, I work in marketing.

Speaker 2:

So I want to say, around the time I even knew that streaming was a thing. I was pretty much spending all day in front of a computer making phone calls all day. So they would give us grace and we would be allowed to surf the Internet. I may have developed ADHD at the time just because I'm talking on the phone and looking at reading several different things at the same time.

Speaker 2:

But I found out about Twitch and I'm like, hmm, this is an interesting idea. Now, at the time I really wasn't equipped to really give it a real go. I think I've tried to extreme from my Xbox a couple times and you really don't know how to engage with people because it's not like the console apps give you all the tools that you need to really be successful. So at the time I told one of my closest friends he had just gotten back to the States and he was in college finishing up his degree. I was like, hey, man, this is Twitch thing, you should see what's up. I actually told, like two of my closest friends from childhood and like OK we're.

Speaker 2:

We all grew up gamers, but like y'all are gamers for real, I kind of just be playing games.

Speaker 1:

I don't play big games, but I play games, but y'all should do it for real.

Speaker 2:

One of big games, but I play games, but y'all should do it for real. One of them just kind of shrugged me off, like I got kids and all this other stuff, I can't do it, and my other partner's like I'll give it a shot. That guy, his name is drunken buddha, he's a twitch partner, um, one of my closest friends from high school, and he, yeah, he went and made a name for himself. You know, all up in, uh, the time square and everything.

Speaker 2:

I love it I love it um and just seeing him kind of grow and do his thing.

Speaker 2:

It's like, hmm, okay, and it's not one of those things like, if he can do it, I can do it, but like no my brother is really actually doing it, having fun with it, and even if what mine looks like it does not look like what his looks like, I think I'll have fun with two years to kind of warm up to it. I really just got kind of immersed into twitch communities. So buddhas, um, lila bobina, um, and chasing looks, I will say those are the three communities that I kind of like gravitated toward before I even started streaming and then once I moved into my spot, I had like a. I lived with a roommate for a little while. I didn't really want to do it then because he really wasn't respectful of time and space, so so once I moved into my own space I really kind of just delve deep into. You know what it takes to do this. I was streaming off a laptop. Buddha sent me like an old tower of his, so I got started with like one screen, my Xbox and a laptop.

Speaker 2:

And I really just started kind of going balls to the wall about hey, again, I like stories, so I'm gonna focus on games with like really interesting stories or you know, single player games, where it might not be like apex legends all the time, but it'll be something that I would be interested in and hopefully, through my I would say passion for it, other people will kind of fall in from there and that's how it's gone. It wasn't really the easiest way to grow on Switch, because you know you want to grow on Switch, you want those eyeballs, you want to get on the Apex Legends and the Overwatches.

Speaker 2:

You want to be sweaty and I do enjoy those games, but I don't know, maybe ever since I was younger, whenever I'm playing a game and I start to like, oh, I'm messing up, I used to blame it on my sister.

Speaker 1:

I'm like you're sitting here watching me and you're making me lose.

Speaker 2:

So she would always say oh, you keep me out of the room Like yeah, but it's performance anxiety. I got a little bit of performance anxiety, so there's been times where we played those games and I've been having fun until people start getting a little sweaty, and I'm having fun until people start getting a little sweaty and I'm just like, hey, I'll turn this game off right now, exactly exactly.

Speaker 2:

You need to chill out a little bit. So I'll touch the multiplayer games every once in a while if the homies want to do something, but usually I'm playing some kind of single player story mode game, or maybe I've even dabbled in mmos a little bit, just to kind of okay throw it up, throw it for a loop and have some fun with my friends.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, yo, that's man. It's crazy how small this world is. I don't know Buddha like that, but I've seen his content. He's one of the first streamers I saw doing shit on the front page. It was black and I was like, oh, we are here, all right.

Speaker 2:

And what I've enjoyed about his journey is like it went from just games and like the games he likes to play the sweaty games and things like that to oh, I'm gonna cook a whole meal yes, on stream, exactly. If I'm gonna make a sandwich, I'm gonna bake the bread.

Speaker 2:

I'm like whoa come on and seeing one of your friends kind of grow up and grow into their own and learn their own passions and lean into them. I'm just so proud of him, like everything he does, like even this week he's he's in New Orleans for his birthday. I'm like, hey, what did you eat? What are you doing? I'm like living vicariously through him.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love that. Well before we get into your current mindset, I want to know what is the origin story of your name. I need to know.

Speaker 2:

Okay, as you mentioned, I'm a writer and I'm a lover of stories. So there's this well-known author. I think everybody in the world should know him. His name is Stephen King. Okay, yep, he wrote a book a very long time ago called the Stand, and when I was a little little kid, my family bootlegged everything. One of the things that we bootlegged because we traveled a lot, you know, we had a trunk full of tapes. We were like, all right, these are our family, this is our family library of movies and shows.

Speaker 2:

So when I was younger, my parents bootlegged the stand, which was a cbs, like miniseries at the time- um and with ruby d and ozzy davis in it, and like I loved it, and even as a kid I didn't really understand what was going on, but I right, I liked it a lot. So fast forward to. You know, fresh out of undergrad, I'm working service jobs. I was actually working front desk at a Motel 6 overnight, so from like 11 pm to 7 am, and let me tell you people don't be checking in on motels at 4 o'clock in the morning I bet.

Speaker 2:

You have a lot of downtime. You have a lot of time where you might go hours without seeing anybody. So I picked up the Stand, the unabridged version, which is like 1300 pages.

Speaker 1:

Good God.

Speaker 2:

And the actual name of the virus that kills everybody in the world is called Captain Trips.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

I did not know that. So I didn't know that until I read the book, because they didn't really say that in the 90s version of it or whatever. So I'm like, oh, that's interesting, okay. And then, when I was thinking about getting into content creation, this was 2019, by the way. So, yeah, I'm like, all right, I want to make content that's so infectious that it just spreads through the populace and I grow like a virus. So I'm gonna call myself captain, but capping like captain, crunch and trips. Gotta stylize it because, you know, you gotta make it hip-hop exactly.

Speaker 1:

You gotta put that z on there.

Speaker 2:

Oh my god, yo that's dope, so I started like streaming in february 2020 and then a month later, covid happened and I was like oh, maybe I needed to chill a little bit yeah, yeah, and that's your name too.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy, but okay. So how many people have you run across that know that's the name of the virus?

Speaker 2:

I will say in four years I can probably count on one hand how many people who like if I raid somebody or if I'm in somebody's chat, they'll just like, hey, you, that wouldn't be happening to name after the stand right, I'm like you got it, so it's like a little easter egg heck yeah if you know, you know yeah, that's dope.

Speaker 1:

Well, now more people are gonna know, so sorry for that you.

Speaker 2:

No, no worries.

Speaker 1:

All right, while we're here, let's go ahead and jump into current mindset. This is where I ask my guests what is their current mindset in regards to their content they're creating now, and what do you think three to six months looks like for you, for your content?

Speaker 2:

Okay, my current mindset about my content is I'm in a good lane, like I said earlier. You know I when people come to my channel, they're not expecting overwatch, kills or apex play the games. They know they will get a good time with a good story, hopefully. So I'm in a space now where we're? We literally just last night beat the legend of zelora's Mask. That was my first time ever playing that game.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I'm actually going through. This is the fourth out of five Zelda games. I decided I'm going to start from the beginning. I played Skyward Sword, ocarina of Time, we did Link's Awakening, like I said, majora's Mask, and then the last one will be the Wind Waker. I'll play those five games before I'm even allowed to touch Tears of the Kingdom, and this came about last year. I was like because I bought Breath of the Wild way back in 2019, but I just lost interest.

Speaker 2:

It was like, oh, this is way too different from the Zelda that I kind of grew up on. And then around my birthday last year, I was doing a stream of fun and I was playing breath of the wild and it was like voicing my frustration, which I do do at times, and somebody said you know what? You don't even like Zelda. Why are you playing this game? And I took offense to that and so I said you know what, before I allow you to tell me what I like or not, I'm gonna decide that for myself. So I picked five games. If you know, if you're in the zelda, you know the timeline's all screwy and everything. So I picked one game from each timeline, a game from the, a couple games from the beginning, and just like, okay, is this a good group of games? But really my community has kept me honest about hey, you need to play ocarina of time.

Speaker 2:

That's the goat oh no, majora's mask is the best, oh no, wind waker's the best. So I kind of kept all that in mind and so, like I'm playing through the highlights, I'm not very interested in the minus cap or anything, um, but I play games. I want to play, uh, that's it at the end of the day, because when I'm not having fun, my face can't hide the fact that I'm not having fun, and then people will tell me you're not having fun, why am I watching? You hate play this game. Right, and I'll be like you know what? That's fair, um, so all I'm really trying to do with any content I put out, whether it's a video game stream or at the end of the month, I do current events. So, like a news recap the months new stories.

Speaker 2:

I just started a college football series. Now the college football season is back, so we do that Saturday morning when college game day is on. I want to create content for people who may not super be into games or anime, but like to bridge the gap, to let them know like it's more stuff than just Apex Legends or Overwatch out here for you guys to dive into. And really indie games, uh, horror games, all these different types of games that there are, and there's a little something for everyone. And even if it's not games, let's just chat. I'm 37 years old, so I want to have very adult conversations at times exactly and you can't really do that in everybody's chat.

Speaker 2:

So I just want to provide a space for people who are like me or kind of consider themselves misfits among these communities. Out here might not fit in, might not fit that in there, but here we're always going to make a space for you and I want the content to represent that that is dope.

Speaker 1:

I everything you said. You were like talking to me. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I don't know shit about anime, but I want to watch soon and, honestly, my community has been amazing with that.

Speaker 2:

They'd be like, oh, you need to watch this, you need to watch that.

Speaker 1:

I'll gravitate to my own stuff.

Speaker 2:

Like this year, I watch uh hajime no ipo, which is like the boxing anime. I'm like that had me, had me turned up. And they're like, oh, if you like this, you're gonna love this. So we make recommendations back and forth about anime, movies, music. I was just asking them earlier about this new Do Chai mixtape, I guess, and like, how are y'all liking it? Here's how I feel about it. You know, just providing a space to talk about these things, and you know, if I'm wrong, please inform me, let me know what I need to know so I can kind of go back into it. I'm not above anything and I really want it to be a situation where it's a two-way road. It's not just I'm dictating something to you, but I'm providing a space where, if y'all catch me in a fib or something like that, call me out so I can correct myself, because I don't want to go about being like, oh, king in the castle, king in the castle and just really be like, oh, he's wrong, but we just let him rock because he's him.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. No, that's good to have a community to keep you honest, because we see what happens when they don't.

Speaker 2:

They humble me. I'll be honest with you. I got one member of my community. He was like, hey, bro, you know you're tripping right. I'm like, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1:

You're. You need those people in your life, man, that's good. I love that. Real talk man. All right, dope, all right. Man, thank you for that. Uh, a bit of insight into your community, because I I think one thing we don't do enough is brag about what we do, because we're so used to doing the whole ground. Okay, I'm gonna go stream. It's like all right, did you advertise about it? Yeah, put it on twitter, but for someone to just randomly stop by your community, you probably got like an intro and you give it to them, but to hear, like your spiel, that shit was amazing, like I think I'm gonna. I need to figure out a way to get more people to do that because, like you nailed it, I'm just talking from the heart, like I don't.

Speaker 2:

I really don't even have a spiel. To be honest with you, like when people come to my chat, I don't have like a channel. Well, I have a channel um trailer or whatnot yeah, like it's four years old at this point, so I'm gonna redo it this year. But if I was to give someone the elevator pitch about, like, what I do, I don't have a prepared statement for that because I, to me, I work in marketing, which has ruined me to be to- be honest.

Speaker 1:

I was about to say you probably seen everything then.

Speaker 2:

I'm so cynical about things and why people do certain things, why people say certain things, why people say that that way. Like what is it that you want me to get from this? And at times I kind of am a little tinfoil haddish. I'm a little bit of a conspiracy theorist. I'm like what do you want?

Speaker 1:

What are you here for Exactly? Why are you showing me this right now?

Speaker 2:

I don't want anyone to feel that way about me Gotcha About anything I do. So I kind of go off the cuff with a lot, which sometimes makes me look unprepared at times. But I want them to get that real rap raw because, yes, at the end of the day they're like you know what. It might not be the most buttoned up, but he definitely believes in what he does.

Speaker 1:

Hell yeah, and you can tell that because you're being genuine and I think that's the most important piece.

Speaker 2:

I think that shines through, just like when you talk to people and when you're having conversations with people, it's a really good feeling when you know somebody has your back and when somebody has your best interest in mind versus you have this thing, I want that thing, so I'm talking to you so I can get access to that thing. And I've seen a lot of that in these spaces, where it's like that's kind of weird dog. I don't really like that at all.

Speaker 2:

And I kind of just go in the opposite direction and again, that has maybe shot me in the foot at times, because you know who wouldn't want to collab with like the biggest streamers at times, and you know you're always in their chat, you're always vocal you're always doing these zany things to get attention and like, but that don't come off as like weird to y'all yeah, like wearing somebody else's chat.

Speaker 2:

I ain't trying to get y'all eyes on me. I'm just sitting here, kiki, with my friends and if it gets your eyes cool. But it's not like I'm sitting here with the express intention of look at me.

Speaker 1:

Look at me yep, exactly, you can tell who those people are, especially as you've been doing it as long as we've been doing it like you can tell when they come through. You're like oh, I see why you're here, I see what this person's doing. This is a perfect segue into lessons learned, and I didn't realize this until I started making this podcast. But there are things that I've learned because I started making content, and so I'm going to ask you that question what lessons have you learned from making content that you have utilized in your life?

Speaker 2:

be genuine. That's number one. Uh like, like I said earlier, when I'm not having fun with the game, even when I try to push through, my face is like I. I have resting bitch face, to be honest with you and it's like I don't even catch it myself and someone be like you're not having fun, like he's like oh, oh my bad.

Speaker 1:

You know it's just this section, it's not the game as a whole.

Speaker 2:

somebody was literally just telling me this on monday as we were playing majora's mass like if you don't like the game, why are you playing it? I'm like it's not the game I don't like, it's this specific element of the game, and you know you can look at life at that in that regard. Um, some people may be like, oh well, everything sucks. You know I'm having a bad time or a bad go on it and it's like, nah, I won't say everything sucks, it's this specific thing. Like in my life personally, I got laid off in February, so it's been seven months of me like looking for a job that was on par with kind of what I was doing to advance my career and I could sit here all day, every day, like everything sucks, but it's not everything, it's this specific part of my day, but it's allowed me to have a lot of leeway with what I do do during the day.

Speaker 2:

so if I want to sleep in a little bit and go to the gym for four hours I can do that, I just have to take that time away from something else you know. So I'm trying to be a good steward of my time. Another lesson is time management. You know I'm a video game streamer. It would be awesome to sit down and play video games all day, every day, and I would say even in this period where I've been unemployed, I've played at least as little video games as possible.

Speaker 1:

Really, I mean, that's good.

Speaker 2:

Like damn dog. You haven't touched the game at all.

Speaker 1:

Like in a week, are you okay?

Speaker 2:

And it's like, yeah, I just want to, I just want to put my time and attention toward this other thing. So I try to balance like my physical, my spiritual and my mental. So I go to the gym about three to five times a week.

Speaker 2:

I'm trying to get these guns together. I do meditation when I'm in the sauna to kind of get my mind right, and then outside of that, I just try to link in with my friends, my loved ones. I've got friends that have had children or are having children and I just pour my love and my energy into them because even when I'm not feeling well, if I can love on someone, or put that battery in someone's back.

Speaker 2:

That's going to make me feel better as a result of that it's easy to kind of get down on yourself at times. But you know, even when I was working and I was in therapy, you know my therapist would be telling me like hey, bro, just take it easy with yourself a little bit.

Speaker 2:

I have a lot of expectations of, or you're supposed to be doing that, you're supposed to be doing this, and if I'm a little bit more patient with myself, I'm like you know what that didn't work out. It's okay, we're going to try later. I end up being a lot more patient with other people, but it's a process and there's going to be times where you're a little bit more hard on yourself about oh, I created this reel and it didn't pop like I wanted it to. It's cool. What can we learn from it? What worked, what didn't work? What did you like about it? I started doing a lot of video editing this year again a lot of time on my hands, so building up the youtube channel, doing vlogs, which I don't really see a lot of men doing vlogs like that, just thinking that okay, continue you know it's like okay, well, even if this don't hit, I would love for somebody to be like.

Speaker 2:

You know what trips was like talking about this in the vlog, and you know have a little bit more patience with them, with themselves exactly.

Speaker 2:

And I'll just be honest, at certain times I just feel like and I don't mean be, I'm not a bible thumper, but I'm spiritual so I feel like god has put me in certain positions at times to be there for someone. There's been times where I've been working in charlotte, you know, I used to work for a company that had events during the CIAA tournament, gotcha and I remember one day I was walking from my hotel to an event and was just feeling good about myself and this you know young cat was like hey, I'm like damn, I'm too young to be getting called unk right now.

Speaker 1:

But that's fine.

Speaker 2:

Like hey, I just want to ask. You seem like you got it all together. I'm like brother, I do not let me tell you. But you know, let me be an example for you, because I don't have it all together and yet something called you to me, right, and I'm not in a space where I'm like I ain't got time to talk to you. Oh no, I'm not interested. I live in atlanta. People come to you every day wanting something or other, but, right, at certain times you're just like you know what, I have time, and then you're looking for some perspective or advice.

Speaker 2:

I'm supposed to be here to help you through whatever it is you're thinking right now. And if I could be used in that way, let me do it. I can't walk away from that and then be like, oh, I'm this, I'm that. When it was an opportunity for me to lend someone my time, lend somebody my perspective, I wasn't able to do that. So, keeping an open mind about those things and it's a two way road, because at certain times you got to stop and listen to someone else who may or may not have the same perspective as you, and then try to realize, ok, well, you know what I could take this as advice.

Speaker 2:

I could understand where you're coming from and just use that as part of my growth man.

Speaker 1:

Hell yeah, yo, oh yo, oh. My god, you are speaking a lot of things. I actually just put up a video today, uh, and I started a new youtube channel, radiant reflection, talking about just that mindset like you are at where you are in your stage of life, but there are people under you who are looking at you and saying, no, that man got it all, he got it all together and that's your chance to be like all right, here's some advice. This is why I look like I have it together. This is what my mindset is, and we're good to go. If you had to give a piece of advice for somebody who either started creating content or is thinking about creating content, what would that advice be?

Speaker 2:

Every avalanche began from a small snowflake, like there was snow on the mountain, yes, but it didn't just out of nowhere. Ok, we're going to all roll in one way. A snowflake hit somewhere, it knocked a leaf off, which went into more snow, and as that rolled, it went into more snow and as that rolled, it picked up more snow and more snow. It's more snow. You got to think about your content like that, with everything that you put out, everything is not going to hit, but there are going to be things that hit. Some things, you'll know, oh for sure this is going to kill them. And some things you're like oh, I didn't expect anybody would look at that more than one second. But cool, when you find those things, take note. I ain't saying you got to make a video series out of you reacting to the cut or anything like that, but if people like it, that may be something you want to keep in your back pocket. For, yes, when you're not feeling inspired, when you know I just finished a game, like I said just last night, I'm not gonna roll straight into another game I'm like, let it breathe a little bit. We're going to sit and chill, we're going to debrief a little bit, and this will give me the opportunity to try something new that I maybe not have done before, and it'll be the random stuff that you may not even really think about That'll draw more eyes to you and more people to you think about. That'll draw more eyes to you and more people to you. Another thing about it is as more people come to you these are all different people with all their different motives, desires, wants you know. Be open to people who don't have the same life experience as you to be a part of your circle. Not, it doesn't have to be your inner circle.

Speaker 2:

I ain't saying make best friends out of everybody that you meet, but you, yeah, no, it's just interesting having this space on the internet and then I'll go into real life and be like damn, y'all really be talking crazy about people that you don't know exactly what they have going on. And I'm not saying I'm better than y'all, I just be like, yeah, dog, I got some gay homies. So I kind of feel like I don't really be tripping about the stuff that y'all be tripping about, because I understand that that's not a hit toward me. But also I had a gay roommate freshman year, so my perspective and experience is different from a lot of other people.

Speaker 2:

I want to be as welcoming as possible, but one thing I would always advise anyone is like when people get over familiar, yes, you want to try to knit that in the bud, but it doesn't have to be like this big thing. You know, you want to make sure that your boundaries are respected and you have to have boundaries as a creator, because people are going to call on you in all kind of different ways and types and times and at times, in my experience, people get a little bit.

Speaker 2:

They get real comfortable, real fast which I guess means something about the community that I'm building. People get comfortable there, but like hey, baby, you've been here two, two times. Let's not get too comfortable with the jokes yes, exactly, it's not gonna hit like somebody who's been here from the beginning or somebody who's made a habit out of coming and contributing to this space. You know my family used to call me Bram Bram. If somebody I don't know is like Bram Bram. I will look at you crazy.

Speaker 2:

Like you can't call me that yeah exactly, but it's not my, it's not my job to chomp somebody off or tell somebody off about that. I just have to figure out a way of communicating that, affirming those boundaries, without it coming off like me being like oh, you snapped at that person, which I've done in the past and it's not fun. Um, it's not, it's not. You know, whatever. I was getting out of it from the moment, whether it be like, oh, I was just a little bit impatient or thrown off by this person saying this thing. Usually, if I breathe and kind of keep it moving, I'm usually like all right, bro, you got it and keep it moving. But for whatever reason, when it just stick, I like you know what, I can't let you get away with it. I end up driving the whole car off a cliff and they'd be like oh. So you talked to random people who come to you in your chat like this, like yeah, dog, because you don't know me like that, these people know me, you don't know me like that gone.

Speaker 2:

So I mean you know you'll lose out on growing a community. You know that way. But again right, very important to have your boundaries. You don't want people randomly feeling like they could get too comfortable with you, or you know some people teeter on the level of disrespect at times and I really don't tolerate. I don't tolerate disrespect or fools, and that's hard in the, in the, in the, the, the creative business, because, boy, it's a lot, of, a lot of that I don't understand like what mentality, because I I'm 41, going on 42.

Speaker 1:

I grew up with the internet. I don't know at what point it turned into like ultra toxic. I need to be an asshole negative dude right now. Like what?

Speaker 2:

you know, I always think back to you, remember tom green oh yeah, oh my god, yeah, unfortunately you're the only person who I've asked that question in like a year who remembered tom green and everybody's like. I don't remember mike bro. It was an actual thing that this guy was like played a jester on television when we were younger, but even him, like, if you think about it, we ain't seeing tom green in like 20 years though yeah, exactly what happened.

Speaker 2:

I do it has to get tiring at times to be the butt of the joke. Even if you gain something from it over time, it has to be grading. So, like these young creators here, I don't like look down my nose at them, but at the same time like, hey fam, you jumping into your setup. How is that content? How are you making a fool out of yourself? How is that content? And you got to give people time to grow out of things and grow through things. So like I'm not gonna call any names, but like it's somebody who will jump through their stuff as I know you're talking about you know, hey get some laughs but like

Speaker 2:

when you go and people treat you like a jester, you can't be mad at that because you made yourself that jester exactly. You know when people go through that phase, if it's a phase and it's just like, okay, I'm gonna start to do this to get eyes on me and then I'm gonna give them this other thing, I can respect that you know. I'll say I took my hat to kai because he would be one person that I immediately, when the first time I saw him, like it's not for me, but you know, hey, somebody out there is liking it. But I see over time, as he has gotten comfortable in his space and just honestly took that top spot him do different things and try new things and try to try new hats on to be like, all right, maybe you shouldn't have blue face of his girl come and mess up your whole room, exactly. But if you wouldn't have did that, would Kamala be knocking now, right, I don't know, but I appreciate the growth yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

Uh, I was talking to the homies about him early. When I first saw it I was like oh, that's some little young, young kid stuff. I don't, I'm not even gonna tune in. But then over time, like you can see him trying new stuff and like for me, when he did that, uh decked out his whole room in the uh. But what was it? Elden ring, elden ring. I was like this is genius, like this is some fun shit. As a gamer, I would do this, I'll do this shit now if I had the money.

Speaker 2:

Like smart and what I like about it. So much is like when we were talking earlier about you know everybody's not a gamer, so, like right, a lot of people tune into kai for his antics or the relationships with like the amp members, stuff like that so you got hella hood dudes who were just watching kai like it's ricky lake back in the day you know I'm gonna come home from work.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna turn kai on and it's just gonna be on and we're gonna like what mob out. And now he's playing elden ring and taking it over the top. So now these hood dudes are like, hmm, I would like to try, I would like to see what's going on with that and I can really appreciate that. Yes, Even now like 2K just dropped, so you can expect a lot of people to be making 2K content.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, and that's going to draw people into not only this creator space but, like, all right, what else you got?

Speaker 1:

Yep, exactly, that is dope Damn. I felt like we did words of advice, but trips, I had no idea where this conversation was going to go and I'm going to say this on podcast no-transcript and, like you just said, all of them like God damn.

Speaker 2:

You know what, and like you just said all of them, like god damn you know what, before we end this segment, I'm gonna I'm gonna repair it. Something that, before we got started, before we even like, connected this afternoon to get this started, you just made a video about do it, the things that you have in your mind that you want to do. Oh, I'm gonna do this at some point in time. Oh, that's interesting. Maybe one day I'll do this. Do it because I feel like that's what life is trying to teach me. Now, you know, I'm not only this content, creating stuff. Um, I'm writing a book.

Speaker 1:

I want to write movies? Um, yes, like.

Speaker 2:

When I call myself a storyteller, it's not just in the sense of, you know, I have yarns to spin, definitely, but outside of that I'm a reader. Uh, you know, I wrote my first ever story for a Goosebumps contest back in 95, 96. And I didn't touch that part of me ever again until 2015,. You know, and it was like, well, you know, you have these thoughts and, oh, what if this happened there?

Speaker 2:

Make it happen, write this story. And so over four years I wrote a book. I'm rewriting that book now because I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, but it's fine. Um, and then it's just like once I hit that last period on the last sentence the very first time and I really sat back like damn dog yeah, it might not be out, it might not be in book.

Speaker 2:

You wrote a book, you wrote a book, dog like wow, yeah, and okay, if I can do that, why can't I do this other thing? What? Why can't you go ahead and try? And I feel like when you try things and even if you don't, you're not automatically good at it or if you, even if you fail at things, you trying things just builds up the momentum of if I could do that, then I could do this. Just like I was saying earlier when buddha was popping, I'm like my brother is doing this. Yeah, why why can't I be emboldened to do the things that I want to do exactly? And when you see people live in their dreams don't get fomo, get inspired exactly oh my god, thank you, trips.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate you, man. I feel like this last like three months has been whoever you, god, universe been just putting people in my life like, hey, that thing you think and you haven't like verified. Here's your verification, because for me, my hold back is always not anymore. I've gotten a lot better. Like I've always needed proof or I needed to think that I knew everything before I started something. And testament to this podcast like when I started the first episode I didn't know where I was going with it. I was like I just want to talk to people, hit record, I uploaded it and then I was like, all right, let's see where this goes. And now we're here and I feel like just starting without any like real blueprint or not knowing everything that I know now was beneficial, because now I can be like oh, I'm not scared to start anything. Now I'm about to write a book too. I've been wanting to write a book for like 15 years.

Speaker 2:

It's three words that always come back to me these times where it's like all right. When I was younger, again from Atlanta, I watched Snow on the Bluff Snow on the Bluff. If you don't know what Snow on the Bluff is, it's like one of those. It was like a found footage hood movie Like those.

Speaker 2:

things don't even seem like they go together, but yeah, they went together very well and it went viral because, like, the beginning of the movie is just like some tourists here in atlanta, across from the georgia dome is the very dangerous neighborhood called the bluff, across from where everybody comes to the city to go to go see a falcons game or the bulldogs. Right across the street is the hood gotcha and they had these tourists out there. They were trying to buy some weed or something like that. Then they got robbed for the camera and then the whole hood movie happened with this dude who has a camera but he ends up saying words that I feel like echo to me and again I pull upon things that I felt like I needed when I was younger. So Curtis Snow said fuck it, we ball. All right, bet. And so it's been plenty of times where, oh, I've never been skiing before I'm on the top of the mountain, fuck it, we ball.

Speaker 2:

The worst thing that's gonna happen is my fall. Hopefully I don't break nothing. But you know, I remember south park, pizza, french fries, pizza, french fries, um. But now that's kind of turned into like do it scared. You're gonna feel scared about things, you're gonna feel trepidation about things, but like you should just do it through that feeling and when you conquer that feeling, it'll just be you did it, yeah. And once you pick up enough reps of you did it, you ain't gonna do it scared, no more. You're gonna do it confidently, you're gonna do it nonchalantly, you're gonna do it with your eyes closed, that's damn, that's what I'm talking about right there.

Speaker 1:

And it's fun when you get to that point where you're just like all right, I, I put something up on tiktok. It's not my usual content, but I heard this song and it made me laugh. And then I told my wife the joke and she laughed. I was like I'm putting it up and she's like all right, and it's up there. And I look every time I pass it. I'm like that's just funny and everybody's like why would you post this?

Speaker 2:

it's not your usual thing, right, yeah, it's not your usual thing. We don't expect this from you. It don't matter, it's something I wanted to do. I like it, it's there, it's out there. Now, what can y'all do now?

Speaker 1:

what is happening? Come delete it. You can't all right trips, let's. Let's tell the people where they can find your content. Where do you want to send the people so they can get some of this in a live form?

Speaker 2:

this is a growing empire empire man. We're on YouTube. You can find me at YouTube slash at Captain Trips C-A-P-N-T-R-I-P-P-Z. I'm on Twitch as Captain Trips. Instagram, captain Trips Twitter because I don't call that shit X Captain Trips. Everywhere you can find me Captain Trips. I'm also like on fable, which is apparently the new goodreads.

Speaker 1:

We're reading books.

Speaker 2:

We're doing book streaks and stuff like that captain trips. So anywhere on the internet you can find the captain trips. I'm there. So I want to say youtube, twitch, twitter, instagram, facebook.

Speaker 1:

We are cheered up hell, yeah, all over the place. And all of those links will be in the description of this podcast and, if you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast Uploaded and unfiltered everywhere. And I'm going to go ahead and talk about my radiant reflection YouTube channel. I am going for a video a week. This week was a little rough but whatever, we're still on track no S radiant reflection and we're just talking about mindset stuff and getting ready to just do stuff, scared and and seeing what the other side looks like, and I promise you is always bliss Like once you do something you're like oh, that was it Cool, let's go on to the next one man, you know, for this year specifically, I said, hey, I want to lean into vlogging.

Speaker 2:

And you know, I was like, all right, I'm gonna do it quarter by quarter. And then I got laid off in the first quarter. So it was like, okay, I'm sad, I'm not going to do a sad vlog, or nothing like that. So the first quarter turned into the first half and then it became this big thing like all right, well, the first half of the year involves, you know, new Year's we did a poetry event on stream.

Speaker 2:

I got laid off. My birthday birthday stream. All these big things happen. I'm like, okay, I made it this big big thing and then I got scared when it came down to okay, are you going to put all this in the law? Are you going to tell people you got laid off? Are you going to let them people know that? And it's like I could keep it to myself. But how do I help somebody grow through things if I don't show them that I went through those things myself. So it takes a little bit of vulnerability to do that.

Speaker 1:

But when you do it just like you said once it's done.

Speaker 2:

That's probably my most viewed video on my YouTube channel right now. I've had people who I went to college with who were like I didn't even know this side of you. I've seen more of you in this than I think I saw sitting next to you in class for four years. I'm like, well, my job is done with that, but we continue on. I'm showing different slices and shades of this thing called life hell yeah, I, oh my god, yo trips.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being a guest on this podcast thank you for having me bro it has been a pleasure everyone listening. Make sure you go check out his content.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to sign off for the evening, cause I damn he has to get ready to shoot some magic missiles tonight and they should hit, they should hit.

Speaker 1:

So we're in good spirits then exactly, we're in those nat 20s all night tonight, I think I feel like we're getting close in the end of our story. Uh, for our characters, so I'm excited to see where it ends up. Yeah, should be a good one y'all, y'all, keep it. I was gonna say gangster.

Speaker 1:

I don't know why don't keep it, gangster unless you are one, keep, definitely keep it, you know exactly because if you are and you stop, you might that might not be good for you you might die. All right, protect your mental, keep creating content and I will talk to you on the next one, peace.