Colin: The Accidental YouTuber
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I call upon your undivided attention! Our latest episode took us into the world of courtrooms, butter vs. mayo debates, and the unexpected rise to YouTube stardom. Our guest, Colin— who’s definitely not Cromwell (just ask the Irish Demon)—graced us with tales from his channel that has managed to capture the peculiar charm of Lady Justice in action. Colin’s journey to YouTube fame is the digital equivalent of tripping over a gold nugget. His YouTube saga began with a name mix-up that would put a Shakespearean comedy to shame.
Indeed, names are hard, which is why Colin was anointed Colin “Definitely Not Cromwell” by a fellow YouTuber who couldn’t quite get his last name right. Embracing the nickname, Colin has solidified his place as the go-to guy for court watchers with an affinity for *not* being 17th-century English rulers. Perhaps the most amusingly curious aspect of Colin’s channel is his love for grilled cheese… and the war that ensued. You see, a casual comment about the acceptable condiments for grilling a cheese sandwich spiraled into a culinary standoff that made the Montague-Capulet feud look like a mild disagreement over which Netflix show to binge. It turns out his court-loving community is just as passionate about sandwich construction as they are about legal construction. But let’s cut to the chase.
Colin spends his days indulging in 8 to 12-hour courtroom binges that would give even the most seasoned law student heart palpitations. Finding the juiciest cases is his superpower, and he crafts them into digestible video content that even a YouTube algorithm would pat on the back. His secret recipe? Colin goes after the underdog courts, the ones that don’t have the audio quality of a potato and judges with less personality than a manila folder. And he’s all for chatting over the videos, turning transformative content into a court-side conversation with your favorite law nerd (who’s clearly not a fan of slapping mayo on his grilled cheese—team butter all the way). Amongst his tales of audio misadventures and his stern stance on dairy-based spreadable items, Colin, a programmer-turned-court-commentator, never expected his channel to be where it is today.
He started unassumingly, sending his clips to others until one fateful day when he decided to gamble and go public. Like a proper courtroom drama, the plot twist worked in his favor, proving that sometimes the best strategy is to let the chips fall where the internet mights. His personal life isn’t off-limits either. Colin wears his heart on his sleeve, sharing candid snippets about his daughters, his girlfriend (who’s very much real and Canadian), and his previous life sautéing in the restaurant world. And when it comes to cases that tug at his heartstrings, it’s clear even the most seasoned of court channel creators isn’t immune to the emotional rollercoasters behind the gavel.
Colin’s message to budding YouTubers is clear: chart your own path, keep it authentic, and perhaps avoid the courtroom drama of whether mayo belongs on grilled cheese (it doesn’t, according to him). We ended our chat with an open invitation to join his fun-loving, courtroom-analyzing, cheese-grilling community. And if you’re on the fence, remember: subbing to his channel will ensure you’re always up-to-date on whether butter really does beat mayo in the heated debate of grilled cheese jurisprudence. For now, dear readers, court’s adjourned — but we can’t wait to see what Colin serves up next. Will he find a case that will make constitutional connoisseurs flip their wigs? Will judge Oakley ever finish that grilled cheese analogy? Stay tuned and stay buttery, friends.
Jen & Colin (Definitely Not Cromwell)
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TRANSCRIPT for Colin Definitely Not Cromwell, YouTube Creator
Jen Hardy [00:00:02]:
Welcome to part 1 of my interview with Colin. Definitely not Cromwell. He is going to tell us all kinds of great things about court on YouTube and a bunch of things about himself. You’ve probably never heard before. So stick around for part 1. Part of our court series is having my guests today. And I’m so excited. Colin, can you tell a little bit about yourself?
Colin [00:00:25]:
Yeah. Well, so I have a core channel, and my name is Colin, definitely not Cromwell.
Jen Hardy [00:00:30]:
Oh, can you tell a little bit about that? That seems really interesting.
Colin [00:00:34]:
Yeah. So there’s actually a funny story behind it. Before I started the channel, I was on another channel a lot, and his name was Irish Demon. He has he has a channel. He covers a lot of different topics. But before you change your YouTube name, the default setting is your first and last name. That’s what they take if you don’t set it in a nickname. So my first and last name was my YouTube name.
Colin [00:01:00]:
And whenever Irish demon wouldn’t read out one of my comments, he mispronounced my
Jen Hardy [00:01:04]:
last name, and he
Colin [00:01:04]:
or misread it and kept calling me Colin Cromwell. And and it was it was a funny, you know, a funny moment. And he’s like so he just started calling me, calling definitely not Cromwell. So to play into the joke, I changed my nickname to Colin definitely not Cromwell, and it it was only supposed to be temporary. But it stuck, and I just haven’t changed it back. Now that’s what everyone knows me as. It’s been this way for probably close to 2 years now, so I can’t go back now.
Jen Hardy [00:01:35]:
There you go. Yeah. That’s that’s so cool. So going back a couple of years, what made you decide to start watching court? What drew you towards it?
Colin [00:01:44]:
That’s a good question, and I don’t really know. I think it was one of those just mash up videos from, like, court cam where there you know, people are just, you know, being held in contempt for talking back to the judge. You know, one of those 30 minute videos where there’s 4 or 5 clips on it. And I think that’s what got me into it. And then with the YouTube algorithm, I started watching law talk with Mike a lot, and I just fell I fell in love with the watching court, and I’ve always been interested in the law. So, yeah, watching someone react to court, so I started watching court. It kinda just fell into my lap.
Jen Hardy [00:02:22]:
That’s cool. What are your favorite kind of cases?
Colin [00:02:25]:
My favorite kind of cases, I really like when 2 attorneys go when when they battle it out. So when they’re going back and forth, you know, like a legal joust, and, you know, the judge has to calm them down because both of them are passionate for the side they’re arguing. And that this happens more in civil cases than it does criminal cases. Criminal cases, I feel like they’re the prosecutor and the defense are both kind of trying to work the case out together, not as, you know, not in the same side, but as, you know, they both wanna resolve the case. So, you know, they work together generally pretty cleanly. But in when you come to civil matters, that’s when you get one side believes they’re right, the other side believes they’re right. They’re both trying to defend their client to the best of their ability. So you get a lot of yelling back and forth, and those are my favorite cases.
Jen Hardy [00:03:15]:
Yeah. That’s that’s I haven’t seen a whole lot of that, so that sounds really interesting. I’ve seen some on your channel, though. Mhmm.
Colin [00:03:21]:
Because you always point that out, so that’s so cool.
Jen Hardy [00:03:24]:
So you were watching court, and you were watching law talk with Mike and some other things. And then what led you to start your own channel?
Colin [00:03:30]:
Kind of an accident. It’s another accident, kinda like my name. So when I started watching law talk with Mike, which actually led me to start watching Irish team and who I mentioned earlier, I was I started watching court. So I’m watching court. Instead of just waiting all day for them to jump on, I would start watching court. And And when I found a good case, I figured out how to, you know, get that get that content, figured out how to clean it up, but to edit it. And then I would actually upload it to my YouTube page, unlisted. So I wasn’t public.
Colin [00:04:04]:
I wasn’t trying to start a channel then. I just didn’t know another way to send them the clips because, generally, they they can be pretty big. So you can’t email them or you can’t send them over Discord, so you have to find another way to send it to them. Them. So I was uploading on my on my channel, unlisted, then I’d send them the links. When they would use the clip, I would delete them. So the ones that I had on my page were just the ones they haven’t used. Now after a couple months of doing this, I had 25, 30 videos that weren’t used.
Colin [00:04:32]:
Like, these are good. So just one day, randomly, it was actually one one day, June 28th last year, I turned all my videos public. Just you know what? Let’s just see what happens. Just turn them all public. And then within 2 weeks, I had enough subscribers to monetize my channel. And at that point, I was like, I guess this is a thing. I can do this. And I started doing it.
Jen Hardy [00:04:56]:
That is so cool. That because, you know, there’s so many people that aspire to be YouTubers and work so hard to be YouTubers, and then you just did it. So that’s awesome. So how long do you have to watch court every day to get one of your videos?
Colin [00:05:11]:
A long time. I spent a long time watching court. Anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, I will spend watching court. And, let’s say 8 hours. I’ll probably watch court for 8 hours and then spend an hour editing all my clips, going through them, putting a video together. So I I do go live every night, but Saturday nights. And my videos are about an hour long, which generally means they’re anywhere between 3 to 5, you know, court hearings. So, you know, one of those videos generally does take about 8 hours of work to put together.
Jen Hardy [00:05:43]:
Wow. And how long is the video once you edit it?
Colin [00:05:48]:
45 to 50 minutes. So I try to I try to keep it right between an hour and hour and 10 minutes. So that way, I’m about I’m about 15, 20% talking. So I try to keep as close to the guidelines of the YouTube terms of service, because I can’t just I can’t just pay you know, cut and paste core videos up because I am getting them from another YouTube channel. Even though they’re court channels and they don’t own the rights to the court content even though they have a YouTube channel, but it doesn’t work that way with YouTube. They still see it as that channel’s, you know, material or their video. So you you still have to make it transformative when you put it up. So there are multiple ways to do that, but, you know, I choose to to talk over mine.
Colin [00:06:32]:
And yeah. So to keep it at about 15 to 20% of me and then play the rest of the video. So that that’s how I fall into the the realm of a reaction channel.
Jen Hardy [00:06:42]:
Very cool. Yeah. And I I like your channel specifically because the way you it’s very calm. Mhmm. You know? And I mean, you have passion about it, but it’s not loud and jarring and, you don’t call people names. It’s just this nice calm educational court thing. So it’s really cool. So you’ve got this community, it started within a few weeks of releasing your videos.
Jen Hardy [00:07:04]:
How do you keep up with your busy community?
Colin [00:07:08]:
I’ve got an amazing team of mods. So I I listen to the mods and pay attention to what they’re saying. And, you know, they they kind of take care of everything for me when it comes to the rest of the community. So I’m a I don’t know how I don’t know what a good analogy would be, but they’re like my generals, I guess. And so I’m not listening or I am I’m still listening to the troops, but they’re the troops will go to the generals and the generals will come to me. So and I still try to interact with everyone as much as possible. But the more the more sub the more subs I gain, the harder that is to do. And I don’t like people not to feel heard.
Colin [00:07:49]:
So one of the big things that I have my mods do is make sure that anytime someone comes in and you say hi to them, You know if someone says something like Oh, I had a bad day today like ask like just you know, try to be there for him like I don’t you know if I have 4 mods on on a on a video, I don’t need all 4 people jumping all over them. But, you know, just just try to, you know, be relatable, make people feel welcome.
Jen Hardy [00:08:11]:
So how do you get the mods? Do they volunteer, or how does that work?
Colin [00:08:17]:
Most of my mods are people that have just been there since the start. So I’ve, you know and they come, they’re always there, and I’ve asked them, like, do you wanna be a mod? And so there is. We actually just finished, writing out a a guideline for our mods. So there’s actually I don’t wanna call it, you know you know, rules, but it’s just, you know, a guideline. So this is, you know, this is what I expect from our mods, and this is what I don’t mind people doing, this is what I I care about. So now, you know, it took a while, but we got trying to get everyone on the same page. Yeah. When one mod says, oh, that comment was bad, and then the other mod says, no.
Colin [00:08:55]:
It wasn’t. It’s like, ah, let’s just go on the same page.
Jen Hardy [00:08:57]:
I like that. Now your girlfriend’s in there as a moderator. Right?
Colin [00:09:02]:
She she is she’s a I mean, she’s essentially a partner of of the channel. She she doesn’t she does just about everything behind the scenes. I will do the core content. Now she taught me how to make the thumbnails, and you can you could tell if you go back in my channel, you’ll see thumbnails that are a lot more creative because she she’s a very artsy person, so she’s was really good at doing that really quickly. And my thumbnails just worked. But she kinda taught me, and I’m getting better as I go as as I go. But mine are pretty plain, but she would she did a thumbnails. She does she made the intro video, my outro video.
Colin [00:09:38]:
I mean, she kinda takes care of all the, I don’t know, the the admin stuff behind the scenes. So all I have to do is focus on getting the content, editing the videos, and making sure I’m ready to go.
Jen Hardy [00:09:53]:
Very cool. Alright. And speaking of your girlfriend, can you talk a little bit about your personal life? I know you don’t do that a whole lot. But if your subscribers are listening and they just wanna know a little bit behind the scenes, what can you share?
Colin [00:10:06]:
Sure. I have 2 daughters, 2 beautiful daughters that, unfortunately, my ex wife and I didn’t work out, so we’re divorced. I don’t see them every day, but I do talk to them almost every day. And yeah. And then I have a girlfriend. She she’s Canadian. She lives in Canada. So I’m actually one of those nerds that I actually have a real girlfriend that lives in Canada.
Colin [00:10:29]:
I don’t just say that. And, yeah, besides that, I live in Ohio. I I’m a programmer by trade. That’s that’s what, you know, started me in the the tech the tech field. I worked at a restaurant for about 20 years, so I’m I’m a trained chef. Don’t have a culinary degree, so maybe trained chef isn’t the right thing, but I’ve worked every position in, in a restaurant except for head chef. So I’ve been sous chef, manager, line line cook, prep cook, dishwasher. I’ve been to everything in a restaurant, server, bartender.
Colin [00:11:12]:
So you can That’s my life in a nutshell.
Jen Hardy [00:11:15]:
That’s really cool. A few about last month, I think, you had some of your audience. There was a battle about some kind of food and if one thing was acceptable or not. What was that?
Colin [00:11:27]:
Grilled cheese battle. It was and it it spiraled quickly. And this is funny. And it started as a joke. There was a court video where judge Oakley out of Michigan was trying to talk some sense into a sovereign citizen, and the sovereign citizen just wasn’t listening. So judge Oakley started off by started a sentence or an analogy by saying, have you ever deconstructed a grilled cheese? And the sovereign citizen interrupted him and talked over him, and we never heard the rest of that analogy. And I was like, I I wanna hear I wanna know what the rest of that analogy is because, you know, it was probably gonna be something that made sense, but I wanna know what it is. So so I said to the to the community, like, does anyone know the rest of this? Did he make this up on the fly? Is this something that anyone knows? So we’re all guessing what it is.
Colin [00:12:15]:
No one know it. And then all of a sudden, you know, just came up where, well, at least, you know, I think I might have said it. It’s like, as as long as he doesn’t put mayo on his grilled cheese and he uses butter, I don’t care how it deconstructs it. And that start started a war where, like, no, mayo is the best on a grilled cheese. And I’m like, butter’s the best. Mayo’s okay if you don’t have butter, but it’s not the best. And so it just it split the provided the community, and we actually we actually thought about it. We still thought about it.
Colin [00:12:43]:
And but I actually it led me to one of my member streams. I’ve made my favorite grilled cheese with butter, of course. But, yeah, it it’s it’s spiraled out of control very quickly. It’s starting to calm down a little bit, but it it comes up. If you bring up grilled cheese, if you’re in the chat, they it’ll come up. Mayo, mayo, butter, butter.
Jen Hardy [00:13:04]:
That’s so funny. Okay. So, along with so judge Oakley, I don’t know a whole lot about judge Oakley. It makes me wanna reach out to him, though, or him, her. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Jen Hardy [00:13:15]:
Yeah. And ask him about this analogy because, you know, because after judge Boyd, you know, I interviewed judge Boyd and she’s got some really interesting analogies. So yeah. But I don’t know that one. Who is your favorite judge? Do you have a favorite?
Colin [00:13:30]:
As long as they’re not watching. I I I’ve become friends with judge Slavin. So judge Slavin came on my channel for an interview, and, actually, technically, I went to his courthouse for an interview. I I zoomed in, and he was on the bench wearing his robe where I interviewed him. He had some time in the middle of the day, and he’s been back on my channel a few times since. Came up on live, and we record we, react to court together, and it’s fun. So because he I’ve become actual friends with him outside of, you know, YouTube and, you know, his job being a judge, I I will say I will say judge Slabin, but judge King was awesome to interview. Judge King was a lot of fun to interview.
Colin [00:14:14]:
Completely different. Nah. I’m not gonna say completely different from Judge Slavin, but it’s interesting the different personalities judges have. Now if before I met judge Slaver and judge King, I probably would have said either judge Middleton or judge Simpson Just because they have a lot of personality. Judge Middleton would I don’t know. I just wanna go to a barbecue with judge Middleton. I could hang out all day with him and just listen to, you know, stories, you know, about him talking about, oh, see that neighbor right there? The person that used to live there is this person, then their daughter is this person who actually moved to this house. And he he knows every single person that that lives in Saint Joe County and their parents and their grandparents.
Colin [00:14:56]:
And then judge Simpson just he’s his personality is is vast. He’ll go from, you know, being angry because you lied to him or you’re talking back to him and, you know, or you’re I mean, even if you violate a court order, he doesn’t immediately get angry with you. It’s when you lie and you don’t accept responsibilities when he gets angry. But then on the flip side, if you do everything he wants, he’ll laugh with you and joke with you and just and he goes back and forth. Like, he’ll be happy, laughing, one case, the next case, he’ll be upset, and he’ll be laughing again. I I don’t know how he does it, but he would be a lot of fun to, to hang out with as well. So, yeah, that was a long way of answering your question. So I just named 4 judges.
Jen Hardy [00:15:39]:
That’s okay. Yeah. Well, you know, and you can’t really, yeah, you can’t really say one when you’re talking to all of them. So, as you’re listening to all of these court cases, are there any of them that have really stuck out in your mind that you that you are your most memorable?
Colin [00:15:56]:
Man, the most memorable case. So if someone says, like, what is your, you know, favorite case you’ve ever watched? It would be the case in front of judge Middleton. Kind of one of the cases that got the whole law tube community blown up. There was a defendant who was charged with I think it was some kind of, DV domestic violence, but he had a protection order against him by his girlfriend. And he zoomed in to court from her house while she was on court as well. And they figured it out real quick, and they actually called and got him arrested while he was there. And that that is the case that that went viral, and everyone knew who judge Middleton was from that case. And people that’s I think that’s the case that got everyone, like, oh, court is online? Like, we can go watch court.
Colin [00:16:57]:
Because that was about 3 years ago now. And that’s about when all the court channels started. The big ones that started right there that are, you know, the really big ones now, that that’s about when they started.
Jen Hardy [00:17:08]:
Interesting. Yeah. There was a girl I watched get arrested. I don’t she was yeah. It was a whole long story. But,
Colin [00:17:15]:
Is that the one in Judge Webster? The there’s not very many people like it Yes. What I said.
Jen Hardy [00:17:19]:
And she was she was, like, the drug girl, and she was hanging out at somebody’s house. And they’re like, oh, well, where is that? Where is that? The next thing you know, the sheriff’s there, and and you’re thinking, okay. You’re telling I don’t know. It’s clear that you’re about to get arrested, but whatever.
Colin [00:17:32]:
So she told judge Webster she was in Alaska when she was in Colorado. It’s like, what are you doing? If you’re not in Kansas, so it doesn’t matter where you say you are. You’re supposed to be there in person. You’re not.
Jen Hardy [00:17:43]:
Right.
Colin [00:17:43]:
So just I mean, just be honest. And, yeah, they’re gonna talk. The plea the police station’s like, hey. This is where she’s at. Can you go arrest her when you hear? Yeah. Absolutely.
Jen Hardy [00:17:52]:
And there she was. Yeah. And and the lies oh, it’s so interesting because you watching. I guess when you’re doing it, maybe it makes sense to you. But but watching I was just watching somebody yesterday. They changed their story 3 times. The judge is like, look. You know? The whole alcohol thing and, you know, the hair products.
Jen Hardy [00:18:09]:
I don’t know. Anyway, so speaking of memorable, are there any cases that affect you emotionally? Do you ever do you ever, at the end of watching 8 Hours of Court, kinda does it ever affect you that way?
Colin [00:18:21]:
Yes. And so just to kind of preempt that question. I don’t watch a lot of the tough cases because you know, especially being a dad, I don’t like anything against children. So, So, generally, whenever I hear any any you know, the victims are under 18. I’m like, nope. Not gonna do it. Generally, don’t watch them unless it’s a maybe a high profile case or I’ve been following the defendant for a while, and I didn’t really understand too too much of what was going on. I’ll finish following the case.
Colin [00:18:51]:
The ones that impact me the most are generally the ones that have to do with, say, the elderly. Like, for example, I just played 1 see, today’s Saturday. I was it yesterday? Was it yesterday or Thursday? There was, an elderly guy in jail for traffic tickets. He had he had a dozen traffic tickets, and he owed the court. It was, like, $2,000. So and he didn’t pay anything for years, and he gets arrested. And he was just the sweetest old guy and, you know, like, just he was extremely polite, and he’s like, no. These aren’t my tickets.
Colin [00:19:29]:
My I I got my leg amputated. I don’t drive my truck. My brother does. So I gotta figure this out, but it is my responsibility. I’ll take care of this. Can you please just let me out of jail? I know there’s a lot of money, and I will and I will figure out how to pay this. I promise. And the and the judge was like, no.
Colin [00:19:45]:
I’m gonna let you out, but you owe a lot of money. And he’s just like, god bless you. God bless you. And he was just so humble and so sweet that that my entire chat’s like, can we figure out a way to donate money to this guy? It’s like, he had us all just like, I’m not crying. You are. No? Then we we all felt really bad for him.
Jen Hardy [00:20:03]:
It’s
Colin [00:20:03]:
like he was just the sweetest guy, and he was in jail for traffic tickets. He was he was probably, like, 70, 75. Just he shouldn’t amputate his leg. He shouldn’t be in jail. Like, I understand he’s a worn out. He wants to quote a lot of money. And but it’s just it’s an unfortunate situation, and I I really hope that he, you know, gets whatever help he needs to get his fines taken care of.
Jen Hardy [00:20:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s a few
Colin [00:20:28]:
of them that are like that. Yeah. To kinda touch you.
Jen Hardy [00:20:33]:
So you mentioned earlier about a sovereign citizen. Mhmm. I know this is a trick question. Can you explain, explain like I’m 5. Like, explain, like, you know, like, in a basic way, not in a whatever. What a sovereign citizen is?
Colin [00:20:49]:
Now I need to actually do a little research myself and figure out and practice a way to respond to this. I get asked this a lot, and I don’t know. I don’t have the best answer. So I I try to summarize the best I can. Okay. Now a sovereign citizen is somebody who interprets the constitution or your state’s laws or they actually supreme court of the United States. They’ll take laws from the supreme court of the United States and, you know, from a 100 years ago and take them out of context, read maybe the first line of it, and say this is law. The supreme card said it, so this must be true even though they don’t even understand the law.
Colin [00:21:32]:
And states have amended their constitutions to say that that that law doesn’t really apply. This is what applies, for example. Now I I feel like that was a complex answer. So driver’s license is a big issue with sovereign citizens. Because in the US constitution, it says something along the lines, I’m not quoting it, that you didn’t you you don’t need a driver’s license to drive to travel. Travel is important because it doesn’t say drive. It says you don’t need a license to travel unless you’re traveling for commercial purposes or for commerce. So they think that, oh, I’m allowed to I’m allowed to drive my car wherever I want to because I’m traveling.
Colin [00:22:14]:
I’m not driving. I’m traveling, and I’m not working. I’m not making any money, so I’m allowed to do this. Even though their state constitution says you need a license to drive on public roads in the state of Michigan. So, no, that doesn’t work. But they see it as, well, if you follow the constitution, you’re you’re you swore an oath to to uphold the US constitution, and it says this. Like, yeah. You know, that that but it doesn’t say that.
Colin [00:22:39]:
You’re taking a law that’s a 100 years old that has been amended, and there are now statutes that say differently. So the statutes will trump that. So you’re not right, but they think they are. They will they’ll go to court and they’ll argue that they don’t need a a license. And then it generally ends in up in them going to jail because they won’t plead to it. They’ll be like, oh, I’m a I’ll be a I’ll, you know, I’ll be a martyr for this cause. This is right. You’re wrong.
Colin [00:23:07]:
I’m gonna sue everybody. They they file a lot of lawsuits as well.
Jen Hardy [00:23:11]:
Yeah. Lots and lots of paperwork in the court system.
Colin [00:23:15]:
Lots of Government. Handwritten handwritten motions.
Jen Hardy [00:23:19]:
That’s so interesting. Yeah. It’s it’s I would yeah. I wanna I wanna do some research on that because it it seems really interesting. But alright. So your your channel took off pretty fast.
Colin [00:23:29]:
It did.
Jen Hardy [00:23:30]:
And yeah. And so you’re doing that full time right now?
Colin [00:23:33]:
Right now I am. Yes.
Jen Hardy [00:23:35]:
So if if there’s a YouTuber just starting out, do you have any advice for someone, to help them along?
Colin [00:23:47]:
Yeah. It in the core genre? Absolutely. I could definitely give you advice. Now other you know, if you’re, I don’t know, a gamer, I mean, I I couldn’t I don’t know how I don’t know that world. I know I’m a I’m a huge gamer, but I don’t know the the content creator gamer world. But in the court in the court world, what I tell a couple of my friends that that just started the channel, pick courts that not a lot of other people watch because that’s what’ll get people in. That’s where I started. I was doing courts that not a lot of people watch, and now I just kinda got stuck on the same courts all the time.
Colin [00:24:26]:
But so you want you want courts that not a lot of people use, you know, not a lot of court channels. Therefore, you’re gonna get views because a lot of us cover the same cases. So it kinda creates, oh, I’ve already seen that, so I’m not gonna go to your channel. And when you’re starting, you don’t want that. Once you start building, it becomes a little easier because you’re you’re still gonna get views on your video. But if you’re just starting and you put out a judge Simpson clip that 5 other channels already did, chances are you’re not gonna get a lot of views. So courts that not a lot of people cover, find courts that have a judge with personality and has good audio. Good audio is important because not not a lot of courts have good audio.
Colin [00:25:11]:
Yeah. And then be yourself. I think it helps to to be present in your videos, you know, to talk. I’m not always on video on my videos, but I’m always I I talk in all of them, and I think that’s important. That’s how you grow communities. People get to know you. So to hear you, to see you, you you to see me. I just said I’m not always on video.
Colin [00:25:34]:
But, yeah.
Jen Hardy [00:25:36]:
But to get to know you personally. And I think every court channel, someone like you, right, not from the courts themselves. They obviously have their own personality, but every person who does court has got such a different personality. And so I think being you is definitely, yeah, probably number 1, isn’t it?
Colin [00:25:53]:
So it would get to know you.
Jen Hardy [00:25:54]:
And I know on your channel, a few people say things about you talking. But like you said before, you have to. Right? Or else you’re just copying somebody else’s video. So Yeah.
Colin [00:26:04]:
Now there are multiple ways to make, videos transformative. I choose the route of talking. To me, it’s the easiest. Now I could, you know, put a bunch of text on the video and, you know, cut up the video with, you know, funny animations, and that works too. That I just that’s not really me. That’s not my thing. And it works for other people, and that’s great, but it’s just it’s just not my thing. So I I stick to what I like to do.
Colin [00:26:28]:
And I do catch a little bit of slack for people that don’t like that, but you know what? It’s I I don’t like saying this, but it it’s my channel, and it’s how I like to it’s it’s how it’s how I enjoy doing it. At the end of the day, if I’m not enjoying it and I’m just, you know, copying and pasting and throwing some text overlay over something and I don’t like doing that, I’m not gonna keep doing it. It’s not it’s not me.
Jen Hardy [00:26:50]:
Yeah. And there’s other channels. I mean, that sounds mean. You know? But, you know, there was somebody else I was listening to before I found you, and they changed the way they did things, and it wasn’t my thing. You know? I wouldn’t ask them to change back because they’re happy, but it was it was so and I like that you don’t that yours it’s relatively clean. Like, every once in a while, you know, there’s something, but I think it’s different when you have your own kids because you do something maybe where they could watch it too if they wanted to. And, I find that very nice. So I appreciate that.
Jen Hardy [00:27:21]:
So before we go, is there anything else that you wanted to share or you want people to know?
Colin [00:27:27]:
Come hang out with us. We have a lot of fun. You stopped by today. That was cool. Yeah. Come hang out. You know? Just sit stop and say hi. You might like us.
Colin [00:27:39]:
You might not, and that’s okay too, but changes are you will. Yeah. Yeah. Your community is
Jen Hardy [00:27:43]:
pretty cool. I actually joined it today because You did. I was like, you know what? If I’m gonna be in there, I’m gonna be in there. So, yeah, it’s exciting. Alright. Well, I thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and share a little bit about yourself and court. And, I’m looking forward to sharing this with all the people that don’t know about court as well as your subscribers so they can learn a little bit about you.
Colin [00:28:02]:
Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was fun.