Final Chaotic Dose: How to Cope with the End of Cow Chop

My favourite gaming Youtube channel Cow Chop posted its last video on Tuesday…

The logo of Cow Chop, a Youtube channel that features gaming playthroughs and comedy skits.

After 19 unique characters, 3 re-locations, and over 400,000,000 views totalled on their 1,459 videos, Youtube channel Cow Chop posted its last video on Tuesday.

It is an extremely bitter end to a project that was built on a collective appreciation for co-operative, role-play gaming and the complementing personalities of James Wilson (a.k.a Uberhaxornova) and Aleks Marchant (a.k.a ImmortalHD).

The final shot from Cow Chop’s teaser video, featuring James Wilson (left) and Aleks Marchant (right) sitting on their infamous cow-patterned couch.

To celebrate and mourn the end of Cow Chop, I chronologically watched their uploads from start to end and linked my favourite videos to remind myself, fellow fans, and readers that don’t even know what Cow Chop is, of the chaotic fix they provided me for the past 3 years.

The Twitch livestream where Aleks (left) and James (right) announced their departure from The Creatures and beginnings with Cow Chop.

Posting their first video in April 2016, Cow Chop was brought to life when Wilson and Marchant took their leave from a prior Youtube gaming group called The Creatures. In a transparent Q&A livestream on Twitch, Wilson described the “creative tug-of-war”, constant shutdowns of their ideas, and increasingly business-like setting at The Creature Hub, causing the duo to seek their own channel.

With Brett Hundley and then-editors Trevor Shmidty, Aron and Joe, the duo announced their formal separation from The Creatures and new partnership with entertainment company Rooster Teeth, joining the Let’s Play family of several American gaming groups.

After the split, they remained in Colorado but moved into their own cul-de-sac house where they filmed and edited their content.

Filling a kiddie pool with sex lubrication from Amazon, Cow Chop members shot the liquid at each other in their backyard… in the middle of the night: (from left to right) Aleks, Joe and Brett.

The ‘House Era’ videos were naturally explicit and out-of-place in the simple, suburban neighbourhood Cow Chop resided in: from waterboarding in their living room as punishment for losing in their Gang Beasts gameplay, to dumping 55 gallons of sex lube into a kiddie pool and playing in it, to covering each other in 100 layers of peanut butter and jelly, to nearly setting a tree on fire by releasing a wish lantern on Christmas, to shooting mysterious liquids into each others’ mouths in card game Watch Ya Mouth, and so on.

A screenshot of a younger James (left) and Aleks (right) from a gaming livestream when they were still members of The Creatures in January 2014.

Marchant and Wilson’s chemistry partly developed from similar role-playing and gaming duo livestreams that they produced for The Creatures. Their playthroughs were constantly accompanied by comedic performances, as shown in their early video game series Shovel Knight, Dark Souls 3, Pokemon Go, Overcooked and Heavy Rain.

A screenshot from Cow Chop series Amazon Prime Time, in which Aleks (left) and James (right) trade products they discovered and ordered on the website.

Series like Wrong Side of Youtube, in which they reacted to random Youtube videos, Amazon Prime Time, where they tested strange Amazon gifts for each other, Foreign Import and Retroactive, where they played multicultural and nostalgic videogames, were debuted at the House.

The milk incident that caused Cow Chop to be evicted from their house.

The Cow Chop crew was eventually evicted due to a viewer snitching to their landlord and citing a video in which Hundley punches a hole through a bathroom door, in flawless Shining fashion. Other destructive activities include a video in which they set fireworks in their basement, and another where they filled the house’s bathtub with milk and cereal, thus leaking into their walls (I can’t make this up). They used their inevitable eviction to unfold their plans of relocating to Los Angeles.

In this awkward transition, they resorted to filming some content in Wilson’s home and played Toilet Trouble, a hot potato-like game that sprays an unlucky user with a select liquid (in their case, bleach… yes, seriously).

The opening shot of the barn used to film and edit Cow Chop content in early 2017, as they began to move toward L.A.: (from left to right) Trevor, Aleks and James.

After that mini fever dream, the ‘Barn Era’ began; the space was chosen due to being evicted from the Colorado House, to foreshadow traveling to California, and as a comedic correlation to the farm animal portion of the channel’s name.

The Nintendo Switch was released at this time, so their video game content relied heavily on Marchant and Wilson’s co-op gameplay of Snipperclips, 1–2-Switch, and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

With the farmhouse space, the duo regularly tested a variety of drones and vehicles that they bought for each other on the recurring Amazon Prime Time, and made many stormy weather and insulation jokes. Shortly after reaching their 1 year milestone as a channel, Cow Chop finally moved to California.

The first episode of Cow Chop TV, the group’s bi-weekly podcast show that took a different location per video.

Due to their audience completing the Rooster Teeth First sign-up tiers, the group promised several reward videos to be recorded once they reach L.A., primarily the launch of their bi-weekly, multi-location podcast called CCTV.

The ‘Warehouse Era’ was the climax and denouement of Cow Chop; their dream of migrating to Los Angeles in order to increase their opportunities for public shenanigans and collaborations with Rooster Teeth partners like Sugar Pine 7, Funhaus, and Criken, came true.

Security-cam footage of the wrestling ring installed in the Warehouse for Wilson’s WWE 2K18 role-playing gameplay series: (from left to right) Aleks, Anna, Jakob, James and Asher.

In hiring several new members like Lindsay Washburn and Jakob, and with the even larger warehouse space, the group managed to install 3 new backdrop sets, arrange a mini waterpark, 12-foot trampoline, mechanical bull, 16-foot Christmas tree, built a hot tub and spa in the bathroom, filled the lobby with a foam cannon, and my personal favourite, assembled a wrestling ring for their annual Cow Chop employee WWE tournament.

The first episode of Cow Chop’s Food Lab and Test Kitchen, which pits two terrible cooks against each other: (from left to right) James, Brett and Aleks.

New, recurring series were introduced, such as Photoshop Battles, in which two members artistically face off according to a theme, Guinness World Records, where members attempt to potentially beat legitimate records (they never do), and Food Lab and Test Kitchen, featuring two contestants who poorly cook a themed meal for a unique judge.

Co-op gameplays of A Way Out, Cuphead, Sea of Thieves, Human: Fall Flat, and Unravel 2 consistently featured Marchant and Wilson’s hilarious lack of synergy.

A screenshot from Cow Chop’s role-playing series Spyfall, in which the group must single out a liar: (from left to right) Asher, Joe, James, Trevor, Anna and Aleks.

The Cow Chop crew increased their spontaneity in role-playing board game content, acting as a colourful range of characters in Spyfall, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, 2 Rooms and a Boom, Mafia, Salem 1692, Right or Racist, and more.

A screenshot of the accidental fire that Aleks began in an Amazon Prime Time episode. Cow Chop members had trouble containing it, leaving 1/3 of the couch burnt.

Their homage to Sean Evan’s ‘Hot Ones’ in their annual (and horrific) Spice Gauntlet, the pretend gambling ring where they bet on Amiibos in Super Smash Bros., the improvised series aptly called Whoa! That’s a Let’s Play featuring Shmidty and Marchant playing Shadow of the Colossus in a moving RV, and Marchant setting the Cow Chop couch on fire were only a small portion of the many haphazard moments and projects I could highlight in their first year at the Warehouse.

A screenshot of James’ departure video that laid out the reasons that led up to him leaving Cow Chop.

The channel began to spiral when Wilson had a workplace injury in January 2019 and Marchant announced Wilson’s withdrawal from the group on the Cow Chop Youtube channel. I remember skipping my lecture class to watch Wilson’s personal video about his reasons as to leaving Cow Chop and sweating my eyes out in the university library’s quiet zone.

Alec Paul, an intern turned production assistant, began performing in a majority of videos with Marchant after Wilson dropped out; however, Paul quit in October 2019.

The thumbnails of the last (THE FINAL INTERVIEW) and first (THE SUCCESS STORY) videos of Cow Chop, which are both parodies of being interviewed as a successful business.

The remainder content was carried out because of Marchant’s drive to complete his Cow Chop duties and their incomplete Rooster Teeth partnership, sponsorship deals and pending warehouse lease, all of which ended on Tuesday. Symbolically, their final video paralleled their first: parodies of Forbes and Time interviewing Cow Chop as a professional business.

The Jackass-esque channel‘s unique playthroughs, public mischief and pranks full of viewer-discretion language and danger provided the right amount of chaos for a subscriber, like myself, to laugh at and experience vicariously. Marchant and Wilson’s banter and poor teamwork, accompanied with goofy employees, face edits, video game glitches, and dangerous elements resulted in a non-stop stream of comical insanity. The gang and their cow-skin couch (which was absolutely replaced several times) endured too many video games playthroughs, comedy skits, livestreams, seasonal specials, and multiple medical and fire-related incidents before retiring.

A group photo of early members of Cow Chop: (from left to right) Anna, Trevor, Aleks, Aron, Dexter Manning (a visitor at the time), Asher, Joe and James. The edit of Aleks being the only member in colour implies the fact that he is the only person in the photo that still worked for Cow Chop.

With the unforeseen circumstances that caused the withdrawal of multiple members over 3 years of daily content, particularly the drastic move from Colorado to California, Wilson’s departure, and Youtube’s ‘Adpocalypse’ changes in monetization, the channel evolved in its cast, humour, and video ideas over their crazy run.

A photo of the final members of Cow Chop: (from top left to right) Adri, Tony, Garrett, Jakob, (from bottom left to right) Brett, John and Aleks.

Skimming Cow Chop’s ‘All Uploads’ playlist and listing my favourite parts wasn’t the most pleasant trip down memory lane. But, after scrolling through explicitly honest tweets of gratitude and support with the hashtag #ThankYouCowChop on Tuesday, and speaking from a fanbase that carried over from Wilson and Marchant’s years with The Creatures, I felt like sharing my gratefulness too. For a couple of gamers that just wanted to post videos on the Internet to make people laugh, including 11-year old me in elementary school and 20-year old me in university, they definitely made their branded mark with Cow Chop. I can name exactly 3 people in real life that know of Cow Chop (one being my high school ex, which doesn’t count), so watching Marchant and Wilson’s content has been a personal hobby of mine since 2011, and I don’t feel like stopping here.

A screenshot of the consistent branding animation at the end of every Cow Chop video, featuring the group’s cow and knife logo.

If this article made you a fan of Cow Chop, you literally have 3 years of Youtube content to catch up on. Otherwise, support the guys as they post on their personal channels and jumpstart their new ventures: Wilson posts videos and streams on Youtube and Twitch, alike to Marchant’s Youtube and Twitch (though he will be taking a break at the start of 2020), Hundley’s Muscle Club (coming soon, so see updates on his Twitter), and Alec, Jakob and Garrett’s similar project Offcanny, all of which are discussed in the final CCTV.

Thanks, Cow Chop. 🐮🔪