Today we’d like to introduce you to WholeWheatPete.
Hi WholeWheatPete, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
The beginning of my channel has very long roots stemming from all the way back in 2018 when I first started Twitch Streaming video games only. I had just gotten off of a horrific knee surgery and as a result, I could not walk or move well since I was on crutches for three months. My lack of mobility and extroverted personality could not take this suffering, so I went and I began streaming online! My channel started off incredibly small with my first 5 streams having 0 viewers every time! The core games I would play are FPS like CS:GO and Rhythm games like osu!, but I would still play a variety of games that I just wanted to play.
Eventually, my channel began seeing some growth and after I finally got off of my injury, I began to IRL stream, which at the time was still not as big of a thing as it is today, but I would get into all sorts of trouble while IRL streaming since my chat would continuously challenge me to do all these crazy things. This leads to me doing ridiculous cosplays in public and Live Action Roleplaying as certain characters.
I eventually began traveling to more conventions, and soon I would see myself cosplaying at Anime Cons as well like Anime Expo, Dragon Con, etc. This led to me cosplaying as Zenitsu one day and since my IRL streaming bag was broken, I ended up filming a youtube video instead. This specific video became popularized, and my Zenitsu cosplay became a meme in the anime community, and the rest is history. Now I mainly focus my efforts on creating fun and inclusive Anime/Cosplay videos on Youtube at either convention or with my friends that I’ve made while cosplaying!
As a result, I am now nearing 1 million subscribers!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have been plenty of struggles along on the way. I had to basically learn and grow without any guidance along the way. There were plenty of times when filming videos where I would lose a lot of footage, or there would be instances where saved work would be accidentally erased. One of the biggest challenges was creator burnout, and I would constantly be thinking I was never doing well enough, but thankfully I had a really great core group of friends who helped me along my path of being a content creator and kept me on a steady course.
Another one of my biggest challenges was getting banned on certain social media platforms! Some of the stunts I would do in videos would get marked as “Dangerous Acts” and I would end up getting too many penalties, so I’ve had brief bans on Twitch, as well as completely losing my old TikTok account that had 1.5 million followers at the time! But I have recovered since then!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
So I specialize in Live Action Roleplay videos, specifically in the Anime and Cosplay community. But what sets me apart in these videos, is my absolute dedication to the characters that I want to portray. Anime is known for making characters appear larger than life, and it’s very difficult to replicate this wildness in the real world. I embody the chaos of the characters, and it has resulted in me doing larger than life stunts as a result. This includes some pretty ridiculous stunts like belly-flopping tables, getting hit by a car, and more!
I’m definitely most proud of my Zenitsu cosplay and how well I can act like him since he is my favorite character to portray, but that’s mainly because it’s more of like me being myself, just a little bit more chaotic.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I definitely learned all the same lessons that most people learned from the crisis, so it’s difficult to pinpoint anything specifically, but I did learn that there are many ways to go out and have fun, even while accommodating all of the social-distancing guidelines and masking. The crisis was honestly a good way to actually discover my passions as well. I would be making a couple of videos for fun here and there, but after Covid I was able to really discover how much I loved making videos and doing cosplay!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholewheatpeet/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WholeWheatPete
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYXhR9t90GMlUxMKnmskTig
- Other: https://discord.com/invite/wwp
Image Credits:
SenpaiSB Photography
