User:Eyerollingstone/Brian David Gilbert

Brian David Gilbert is an American video producer for the video game website Polygon.

Gilbert was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland and attended Johns Hopkins University, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and cognitive science. He has since moved to New York City.

He has been described as "the best person on the Internet" by Buzzfeed.

Work for Polygon

In September 2017, Gilbert applied for a position as a video producer at the gaming website Polygon. Upon being hired, he published the video cover letter that had been required in the application on his personal YouTube channel in December 2019.

Unraveled

Gilbert hosts the series Unraveled on the Polygon YouTube channel. The videos see Gilbert explaining the lore of video games such as The Legend of Zelda, Skyrim or the Kingdom Hearts series.

On 30 March 2019, Gilbert hosted the panel "Unraveled LIVE: Performing the Perfect PokéRap" at PAX East 2019. It was posted to the Polygon YouTube channel a week later. In this panel, Gilbert sets out to improve the original Pokérap and expand it to include the names of all Pokémon. The track had been featured in the opening of the Pokémon anime and was released on the album "Pokémon 2.B.A. Master in 1999. It lists the 150 original Pokémon and is described by Gilbert as "a mid-2000s suburban mother's conception of rap" and "a bad grocery list of Pokémon". Of its rhyme scheme he says:

"But, the rhyme scheme, terrible, terrible. Not only is there a line that rhymes Horsea with Weepinbell, a slant rhyme so terrible even Emily Dickinson would vomit [laughter from the audience] - there are English majors in this group, hell yeah! But even if you ignore the rhyme scheme, you can't ignore the flow. It's what we in the industry call 'educational rap flow', and that's defined as a rap wherein you could include an anti-drug line and it wouldn't sound out of place."

He proceeds to detail the process of writing the rap: "So I made a spreadsheet, because that's what I do these days, I make a lot of spreadsheets. I took all 812 names, I split them up by rhyming phoneme, I split them up by metrical foot." He singles out the dactyl foot in particular, which he says will help achieve a triplet flow.

Gilbert explains that he intends to make the updated Pokérap a Gesamtkunstwerk, which would neccesitate

Gill and Gilbert

Brian David Gilbert and fellow Polygon video producer Patrick Gill have hosted the weekly live stream "Gill and Gilbert" since February 2018, with its second season ending in August 2018.

External links

• Profile on the Polygon website https://www.polygon.com/users/Brian%20Gilbert/
• Personal YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCakAg8hC_RFJm4RI3DlD7SA