 Hey folks, it's Nathaniel Rumpelchance here. I have a couple videos I'm recording today. One of them is just a normal news slash discussion video. Pretty typical fare. There'll be a little bit of stuff about Nintendo Switch 2. Just, it's not really new information. It's more so discussing something that keeps getting shared around. And there'll be another quote, the more quotes from Shintaro Farakawa about Nintendo's mentality and their future of the company. And that's cool. It's gonna be a pretty good video. And normally I would just make that video and move on. But I gotta talk to you guys a little bit. Maybe this is a video where I clear my conscience a little bit, or at least just get some things off my chest that I really wanna get off. And videos like this can often, you know, in hindsight be mistakes. But I've always been open and transparent with my community. And I'm not perfect as a content creator. I'm not a perfect human being. I make mistakes and all walks of life from being a parent to being a boyfriend to, you know, to, I don't know, paying bills and just being a friend sometimes. Like, you know, we're human. And I preface all that because the things that we're talking about today are stuff you might not be aware of. Or if you are aware of it, maybe it's easier to, I don't know, just have me sort of explain things. And one thing that I wanna make clear here is some of the stuff I regret, but I'm not really here to make apologies or try to make amends because people who don't like me and the people who I may have wronged or I've done some things against, this isn't meant to try to make them think better of me. This is more to keep myself accountable by having this video public to the mistakes I have made. So what mistakes are we talking about? Well, a few things just to generally throw out there. I am a gamer. I get really excited about video games. And there are unique moments throughout my entire career of covering stuff on the internet from the Zelda Informer days through today. We'll just stick to that. We won't go to my, when I was literally a kid, 12, 13, 14. We'll stick to my adult where I was running Zelda Informer and then ran this channel where I have become privy to bits and pieces of information. The general public wasn't aware of. First there was like the story stuff with Skyward Sword back in the day on Zelda Informer. And while I wasn't the one that had the direct knowledge of that, it was one of my associates that was at E3 representing that became aware of some of those details. And yeah, we did, we felt was a fair job reporting on that stuff. And I don't really have a whole lot of regret there because I was just the person editing together that article. I wasn't the one with the knowledge that heard it from the Nintendo employee. But there have been times where I've been privy to some information that I haven't always done the best job at keeping certain things to myself. And no, as far as I'm aware, nobody who's ever told me a damn thing has ever gotten in trouble. And I have contacted all those people to sort of confirm everything's fine in the past. So everything seems to be fine and nobody's gotten in trouble from anything I've said. So I want to preface that, but sometimes I get a little too excited. There was a live stream last week where I've always viewed my live streams a little bit differently. It's an open conversation with my community. What you guys know, most of my live streams are maybe you don't know, go unlisted after the fact. And the reason they go unlisted after the fact is I don't want to clog up my channel with a bunch of live stream stuff. It's actually pretty common when you're a daily uploader that you don't clog everything up with your live streams. You only let the bigger streams which are generally like directs or big event streams, not just a normal everyday stream. And this was the AMA and during that AMA, I let slip out that I was privy that we were supposed to get some sort of rumors dropped this weekend for the Nintendo Switch 2. And here we are on Sunday and there are no new rumors for Nintendo Switch 2 because the person decided or was told or I don't know. It just came to attention that they weren't going to end up putting those rumors out there. Now, the big thing about this isn't that I don't believe the person is upset at me or anything like that. In fact, there was no indication that that was the case but it was also something that I'm not so sure that I was supposed to say anything about and I certainly didn't make an individual video trying to advertise that I knew this. It was just something that came up during an AMA when Switch 2 topic was coming up with certain questions and I didn't even reveal anything. I didn't reveal what the information's coming from. I didn't say things like what it was going to be but I got excited because I get excited about this kind of stuff just like I did when I was a kid and I would hear rumors about things that are coming up, rumors about Ocarina of Time and stuff like that. I got really excited so I get excited at times and I don't always let myself think through what I'm about to share before I do it and because of that I have occasionally put things out there that maybe should not have been out there in hindsight and that was one such situation where you know, if the rumor dropped it's cool to have a heads up so I can prepare myself and set my weekend schedule to cover it but also really wasn't worth mentioning because it's not something I personally had any control over whether or not it got posted or got put out there. No matter what I may or may not know about said rumor it's just something that for me in hindsight I don't feel really good about that and this goes back to maybe a history of this that I have where I've been privy to certain bits of information that I put out there that maybe I shouldn't have. I'll give another example. Dear and the lead up to tears of the kingdom you guys know how hyped I was about that and at one point I became privy to information while I was at PAX that there was going to be a Zelda event on a certain Tuesday and look, yeah, that Zelda event happened. The information was obviously valid but also I wasn't really explicitly told at the time that I shared it that it was okay to share said information. If nothing else I think it was just a friend trying to give me a heads up to prepare to live stream and prepare for coverage and to make sure that I had time slots set a time for that day to handle things. Also this person knowing that I am a massive Zelda fan well I would like a heads up when there's going to be Zelda stuff coming and well nothing bad happened and we talked it out and everything is okay. It's just another instance where I shared something that well it didn't contain any specific details like zero details on what was actually going to happen and what was going to be in this event. It was still a time that I became privy to information and I didn't go do my best foot forward as a journalist to ensure that whether or not I should even be mentioning that stuff publicly. And again this falls back on me being excited. And one thing I haven't done and maybe this is just a blanket statement on me as a content creator. I'm a gamer first and foremost and I get really excited about things and I forget that I have a responsibility when I am well especially when I have the audience that I do to take a step back when I get privy to information and go through all of the checks, rechecks, triple checks if it's something I'm able to talk about. I'm gonna be honest, as a content creator it's easier for me if I don't know things. And I say that because if I don't know things I can't make these mistakes. I can just be like all of you guys and have a lot of fun speculating and conversing and honestly it's one of my favorite things to do as a content creator is speculating and conversing. There is this thought process that when I share little tidbits here and there that I hear that the people think I'm clout chasing and then I'm desperate to be legitimate for some reason and I don't know what I'm trying to be legitimate as I have no interest in being an insider. I have seen all the heat that actual insiders such as Nate the hate have gotten over the years I have zero interest in that level of heat coming my way and I personally don't want to know inside information. I just don't and maybe for those people out there and that know me whether you're a developer or whatever connections you have don't give me inside information, just don't. I don't wanna know it. I obviously approve in that I can't trust myself with how excited I get to not share it with the community. And on top of that, I think it just negatively impacts my mindset. I haven't viewed myself as a journalist in a long time. The last time I did was when I was editor-in-chief. I've actually never viewed my YouTube journey as a journalism journey. And maybe that is my own mistake for not holding myself to the same standards I did when I was editor-in-chief at Zelda Informer but that's because I didn't create this YouTube channel to replace Zelda Informer. This YouTube channel was just supposed to be an outlet for me to continue to create gaming content after my job ended there while I was doing other stuff and working other jobs. And obviously this turned into something quite magnificent with an amazing community but I didn't hold myself to the same standards that I normally did when I was in a different position. So now that my channel is obviously bigger, 130,000 subscribers, sometimes growing, sometimes not. And we probably have many growth periods ahead with Mario Wonder and all the rest that I need to find a way to step back and not share certain things anymore. So most of you probably weren't even aware that I shared any of these things in the first place and that's totally fine. I also just wanna make a general statement just as a content creator, a few things that suck about me as a content creator because most of the time I'm talking about how awesome it is because hey, we're our own boss, we get to set our own schedule, get to make the content we wanna make. It's, I love being a content creator. But there's a lot of things that come along with it that I'm 37 years old, I struggle dealing with. And some of those things are all self-created. As an example, there's a lot of assumptions around intent when content creators talk. If you're done a video, there's gonna be debates about my intent in this video. And what sucks about that is I'm the only person who really knows my own intent. And when other people make incorrect assumptions about that intent and start to act like I'm this super evil person, it's really weird. I'll get into something just very minor. I don't really wanna go into this because we don't dive too much into politics and all that, but at one point in a certain public forum, I was, I saw some people coming down really hard on a certain group of people that go a certain political way. And my parents were sort of being grouped in, I injected myself into the conversation, which I never should have. But because of that, my parents sort of got drug in and they were being called certain terms that I just didn't agree with just because of a certain political leaning they might have. And so I went into my own life experiences and explaining why I just don't agree with this. And through that, I mentioned, unfortunately, that in my area, a lot of people that just don't have a lot of money happen to vote Democrat. And I didn't really mean anything by that. It was just a observation of people I know because I have lived a majority of my life quite poor. So I have a lot of experience in my area, which by the way is a town of 13,000 people. So this isn't even a great segment. It's just personal experience. And that was taken the wrong way. Suddenly terms like welfare queens were turned around. I was called racist, which is really strange because 90, it's like 95% of the 13,000 people here are Caucasian and the people I were talking about doing this were also Caucasian. But that was me not understanding that you know what, my life experiences are in a bubble. And I think all of our life experiences are in some ways in a bubble. It's the bubble of what we've been through. And with me being in such a small bubble, a town of 13,000 people in the middle of Wisconsin, you aren't necessarily aware of what those words that you're talking about and the way that you're phrasing them can mean to people in a greater community. And we're talking cities, of course, and other parts of the United States, other parts of the world that I obviously don't have those experiences with because I've never lived in a city, at least a big city. I technically call my town a city or whatever, but I've never lived in a big city. I have never lived in primarily non-Caucasian communities. Have I been around people of other colors and other backgrounds? Of course. And I've never had a problem. We're all just people. We all just chit-chat. In fact, stuff never even comes up, but then to see that stuff get tossed at me because I look inconsiderate, because I look ignorant in what I was talking about because I can only really base my knowledge on things, what I have direct knowledge of. And I feel like we as content creators and as public-facing people just, I can't say we. I can only talk for myself. I need to do better. And while I've done a pretty good job separating my personal life from all this online stuff, I haven't done always a great job with my online stuff and keeping my mouth shut when I should because I clearly am not as knowledgeable on things as you might think. And I think a lot of us can maybe learn to maybe keep our mouth shut at the time on things that we're not as knowledgeable of. But also I need to be served more humble pie because I don't know everything. And I don't even know everything about Nintendo and I don't know everything about technology. And as much as I've accumulated a lot of knowledge over the years, the way that I come across at times can come off as matter of fact when really it's just in my opinion and my opinion can be wrong. So one thing I wanna promise to you guys is that I am actually aware of these faults and this video is mostly for myself to hold myself accountable to make sure that I start to think more before I put things out there. Start to really consider all the angles of the things I'm saying. A lot of my videos and obviously my live streams are they're off the cuff. They're not really scripted. They're just some notes or some topics. And in that I'm not always thinking forward about every person and how everything can be perceived because I'm a solo content creator. I don't have anyone else checking my work for me. I don't have anyone else looking over my shoulder. It's just me and I'm a flawed human being. So that's really all I got to say. And if there is any apologies to give I do apologize to anyone that I've wronged due to these lapses in judgment I have had over the years. And hopefully I can move forward be more aware of this stuff and just focus on making bigger and better content for all of you. So thank you so much for hearing my little spiel. And you know what? I'll catch you guys in the next video.