I recently decided to bing the entire Web Series of Pure Pwnage. Boy oh boy what a mixed bag of emotions it provided.
Pure Pwnage is an internet show that launched in 2004. It started life as a simple humor video the creators posted on a forum for competitive Command and Conquer forums before it was decided they would make it into it’s own show. My (and many, many other’s) first exposure to the show came from randomly coming across this clip of FPS Doug from Episode 5:
I was a very big Counter-Strike 1.5/1.6 player in these days so this video pressed all the right buttons for me. Gaming was still considered a nerdy thing and we (gamers, geeks) didn’t have many heroes to look up to. To see someone that played CS and proudly displayed it like this? Doug instantly became a hero to all of us.
It was a very different world when this show launched. You couldn’t simply go on YouTube/Twitch to find a streamer you enjoyed and join a community where you belonged. It was few and far between that you would luckily discover a forum that you didn’t ghost after 2 weeks. Outside of being on AIM, sitting on the computer could be very isolated experience. The Pure Pwnage community forums opened my eyes to how a community which bonded over a similar interest can really change the internet experience.
The show revolves around a character named Jeremy. In the Pure Pwnage (referred to as PP) world, he is a pro gamer who is at the top of the ladder in Command & Conquer. He has the ‘l33t era’ appropriate gaming handle ‘teh_pwnerer’ (Pronounced: The Owner-er). Most of his time is spent owning noobs in online games. He is so absorbed into the internet ‘1337 or leet’ culture that he is partially disconnected from reality. He can also be cocky due to his inflated pro gamer ego. That said, Jeremy has similarities to Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory in the way that the audience can look past many unlikeable traits. You just can’t help but to love him. The cameraman for the show, Kyle, is Jeremy’s older brother. Jeremy takes any chance he can get to always remind Kyle that he is a ‘n00b’ at games or to ‘suck his ballz lul’. His best friend is FPS Doug. Doug — as his name states — loves FPS games. To quote Doug in the previous clip: “What do you do, when you’re born to play fps? Guess there’s nothing left to do but play fps!” There are a few other characters in the show such as ‘Teh_Masterer’: the ULTIMATE gamer, who trains Jeremy in the art of “Micro” in order to lead a gamer army across the world. You could even purchase dog tags from their website with your online handle and get designated a soldier number for the gamer army. I used to have mine but when we moved in 2010, they were lost forever. It was so god damn ahead of it’s time.
SIDE NOTE: While ‘teh’ and ‘pwn’ originated from typos of ‘the’ and ‘own’, they became how geeks would type online. It was one of the first subcultures of the net. I remember I used to think it was so cool and that you had to be in-the-know to get it. Looking at it with 36 year old eyes, it does invoke a modicum of discomfort which doesn’t quite cross the threshold into cringe territory. I don’t think it ever will. I identified with it so much, and I desperately want to hold onto as many connections I have to that version of me that I can.
This show truly is a gem which turned a few fresh out-of-college kids into some of the first major Internet celebrities. They would host local episode premiers in Toronto where 1000s of people would show. It really was an unbelievable and life changing experience to experience the show in real time. Jeremy, Doug and Kyle didn’t feel like strangers, they felt like distant friends. Going back and watching the show again caused a big internal conflict within me. I fell in love with the characters again. I fell in love with the characters and got tangled in their webs again. Inversely, I felt the same heartbreak I felt in 2008 when Season 1 ends and the credits roll. Let me explain…
All 12 episodes of Season 1 were released across 2 years and 6 months. The season debuted when I was 17 and ended when I was 19. This was due to the fact that it wasn’t a ‘show’ in the traditional sense. When you boil it down, they were just large video files being uploaded to their website ever few months. The show is shot similarly to a Mockumentary so the lines of reality are extremely blurred. The early episodes were shot with such a low budget on a borrowed camcorder. Think about it, there was no TV network promoting it. There was nothing to explain what it was. It was a guy filming his younger brother walking down the suburban/city streets of Toronto while talking bout being a pro gamer. If you happened to discover this on the internet it felt like you were watching someone’s home movies they were editing and posting online. As such, the fans had no idea if their names were their actual names or not. Were they playing characters or just embellished version of themselves? Eventually they added supernatural elements to the show which let you know it was a scripted story, but there was still just enough mystery left for my naive brain to remain lost in.
Seeing their real names during season 1’s credits burst the illusion bubble and caused a major schism within the community. Personally, it really affected me. For so long it felt so real. For so long we would have discussions about this very topic. The actors would go on the forums or MySpace AS their characters. They didn’t have social media for their real selves and this helped push the illusion further. It’s simply unfathomable in today’s day and age. Today, they would be exposed within hours and the illusion wouldn’t stand a chance to survive. News moves and spreads so fast in today’s world that it warped our sense of time in general. Events occur and you know within literal minutes. Imagine close to 3 years of believing something. That’s an ETERNITY in today’s time, especially when you are in those wonder years of mid to late teens. I remember feeling so betrayed. I was a god damn honorable member of the gamer army! I had the dog tags to prove it, dammit! I spent so much time believing and committing myself to these beliefs. While those credits rolled, they all vanished in an instant.
Eventually, rumblings of a season 2 started to appear on the forums. By this time, anyone affected by the schism was able to come to terms with it, and we were ready for more! Season 2 was cut short at 6 episodes due to a few things. The director, Geoff (Kyle in show), left to focus on bringing PP to an actual cable television series. The new character Terrence Brown’s (T-Bag) actor died in a car crash in December of 2008. All of these factors led to production slowing down to a crawl for long enough that everyone kind of just went their own way. We eventually did get the cable TV series. However this was a reboot of the show. It didn’t have all of the cast from the Web Series and just didn’t feel the same. It was good in it’s own right as an attempt at a show, but it lost the magic of the web series. To this day, the Web Series and TV Series are entirely separate canons. Later on in 2016, they released a Pure Pwnage movie that took place in the Web Series universe and slightly wrapped things up. It wasn’t great, but it was wonderful to see my old friends again.
Now it’s 2024. Almost 20 years to the day since the first episode aired on May 11th, 2004. Pure Pwnage has been dormant since the movie 8 years ago. Jarret recently posted the following tweet:
He teased back in 2023 the return of Teh_Pwnerer to the web, but nothing has come of it. The fans are hoping that it will be announced around this May. I can’t even begin to imagine the hype for a conclusion to our beloved web series. I guess we will see soon! Hopefully something does come of it, but I understand if not. They are in the 40s now and it might be hard to play these characters from 20 years ago. Not only that, but the world changed so much since then that a lot of what Jeremy used to say would be attacked today. Lot’s of ‘ghey’ and ‘f@g lol’. One of the best episode openings is a great example:
Being a part of this huge fandom while the show was happening was an experience that helped create a perspective from which I can write all of this here today. It was an indescribably huge part of my life and meant the world to me. It still does and I would love to see this series continue.
Goodness, what I would give to go back and sit on those forums during the day of an episode release…