Today is going to be a little bit different of a post. I’m celebrating an arguably famous creator/writer/artist and this is going to be the first in a series called People Who Inspire Me. Pretty simple concept, right?
I do not own any of these videos and they are embedded directly from YouTube. I recommend going directly to the YouTube channel and watching the video with ads to support this awesome creator, consider each embedded video a link. I do not get money from any ads played in the embedded videos.
Julie Nolke
You may have heard of her. You may not have. Her first appearance was on a show called Workin’ Moms and a though her IMDB is short, she has no shortage of material.
You can check out her Patreon, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
She’s a comedic genius that focuses her superpower on empathetic storytelling.
My sister, Becky, first exposed me to her with this video:
Her comedy sketches around the 2020 Pandemic are some of the purest, most honest humor I have seen in a long time. At first, my impression of her style of humor was along the lines of a phrase I grew up with:
If I weren’t laughing, I’d be crying
Then I realized that’s 2020 and how my dumb ass self decided that the motto for this year was going to be “Hindsight is 2020” when we were all making up funny mottos. (Another person we knew said, “In 2020 We Take Shots Of Water!” As we can see, sobriety has not been working out for many people.)
In her [currently] 3 part series on 2020, there are 2 more videos, but she has added other 2020 themed videos that cannot be missed.
First, here’s Part 2 of the series:
After this video, these gorgeous pieces became a reality. Such as “Quarantine Panic Attack” where she uses her series “Mirror Mirror” to feature more revealing discussions with herself.
The artistic exploration used in some of these videos to explore the expression of comedy with empathy for human experience makes me smile.
One of my favorite videos about 2020 has been the collaboration between her and Anna Akana to create “Pandora’s Box Opened In 2020” – specifically around how messed up it is to put all the bad stuff in existence into a tiny box and give it to someone with the instruction not to open it when you really intended the whole time to have someone open it and simply displace the blame. Shame Zeus. For Shame.
Her other videos on the global pandemic and 2020 have been equally insightful works of pure art. Approaching touchy subjects such as social distancing and the shaming behaviors people exhibited at fulfilling the human need of contact and physical closeness. Pun intended.
Another brilliant video in her series on 2020 includes “First Date Post Pandemic” where she fantasizes about what going on a date after the pandemic would be like.
One of the other 2020 videos themed spot on is the “Casual Chit-Chat Attempt…” video featuring how Small Talk has devolved over this year into practically non-existent and redefined
small talk.
She even makes fun of herself in returning to the “Mirror, Mirror” series with a conversation about her sudden YouTube popularity. The video “I went viral” is an artistic approach at explaining comedic/artistic insanity.
But what about the shirt in that video? Well, it turns out she did a Q&A while taking advantage of Canada’s recreational marijuana laws. One of the things I appreciate about this entire video is the level of preparation that goes into it. She is not a stoner and she has boundaries around her consumption and she’s having fun with it. Similar to how people need to see healthy use of a substance (use of alcohol in moderation as an example) to know what that looks like, she does a great job at showing what NORML defines as healthy use, plus gives us a really entertaining show at the same time.
I would’t mind having this kind of friend at a party.
While there are still more videos not mentioned here on the topic of how 2020 impacts North America, she keeps it real every time. She keeps her viewers laughing and she’s trying not to let it all go to her head faster than that one time she was on the Disney channel.
Then, 4 days ago, she dropped this beautiful masterpiece of a Part 3:
Her last 2 “Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self” videos (parts 2 & 3) have spent quite a bit of time focusing on the protests in the United States (as well as across the world), spurred by the death of George Floyd. The aftermath and the continued self education she works into these videos I find fascinating as she presents reflections of what she has learned.
Julie Nolke takes the time to address some very serious topics (with some Kubrick-esque comic relief). This falls in line with her style pre-pandemic as well as can be seen in her January 2020 video “Confronting Fear.”
Hopefully I succeeded in introducing you to an internet comedian that you can connect with during this year and all of its hard times. I look forward to talking about some of my other favorite YouTube channels and their creators.
Again, if you like what you see, you can support her by checking out her work and or following her on Patreon, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Thank you so much for reading this today! If you enjoyed this brief write up about Julie Nolke’s YouTube channel and her work during 2020, please take a moment to Like, Comment, and/or Share. That will help me gauge the posts my readers enjoy. As always, thank you for reading – without you these words would be meaningless little bits and bytes.