Remember my Quirkymen? Well for some reason, I guess I forgot to include one of the original Quirkymen of YouTube that I've followed through the years in my previous posts because certainly Adam The Woo is one of the first.
I think I started following his vlogs back around 2012 when he had only his main channel on YouTube "adamthewoo" and it probably had all of a couple thousand subs at most. His videos weren't vlogs yet really, they were more of the "urban explorer" (read: B&E abandoned place trespasser with a camera) variety that saw a surge in popularity then. I watched TimTracker back then and other early Disney vloggers and I think he had been featured on one of Tim's vlogs, or, alternately quite likely, I may have found him out independently just based off a search of Disney/theme park videos and one of his behind-the-scenes videos came up. Either way, I liked the raw and totally amateur style of them. They were refreshing from the then growing trend of the early tens decade YouTube theme park vlogger videos which started to get too pro looking, like TimTracker and others eventually got.
Adam eventually branched into the legit vlogging style, especially after his illegal antics of filming on off-limits Disney property got him actually banned from there, supposedly "for life." He started a daily vlog and another channel devoted to it called "The Daily Woo" which eventually as the years went on grew to be his actual main channel.
He filmed literally daily and uploaded daily so he lived up to his word and his content was actually always guaranteed fresh. Was it always interesting? No. You shoot every day, you're not always going to produce stellar content. But it was always honest (if it was fabricated, he kept to his script religiously since I never caught him in any obvious duplicity) and simple (except for his soon-to-be-famous "odd" word choices like "stanchions" for "poles", "piping hot caffeinated beverage" for "coffee" and, of course, "shall you?" rather than "will you?").
Early vlogs, like his urban exploration vids were very rough and virtually unedited, filmed on cheap digital cameras like the then popular with YouTubers Flip cams, but he slowly but surely, as his sub base grew and the YouTube money came trickling in, got better equipment and more incentivized to invest his time into learning how to take better video and edit them. Yet, again in my opinion, he refreshingly never went too "Hollywood" with it.
Although, ironically enough, he did actually "go Hollywood" by making his next transition to an apartment in Hollywood after selling the van he'd lived and traveled the country in. As his channels grew more, he moved into a house with roommates in Orange, California and later an apartment in Celebration, Florida as well. Eventually, as he became quite successful with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and no doubt hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual income he bought his first home in Celebration and had been living in that home for about the past couple years or so I guess, I'm not sure... you see, I hadn't watched him in sometime which is why I only learned of his passing today more than two weeks later. His videos became too repetitive for me I guess. And I've kinda gotten well over the whole theme park fix over the past couple years, especially after last year's Epic Universe experience.
I found out today because a random video of his he'd done a few months ago popped up in my feed. The thumb showed him and Tom Wilson, one of the stars of Back to the Future. I knew that the two of them had struck up a friendship and Tom Wilson seems like one of the most down to earth and funny actors there are, the kind you'd love to hang out with. So with a tinge of envy I fired it up and watched the two shoot jokes and riff off each other with Tom giving Adam shit about having an extensive Back to the Future themed tattoo on his calf featuring Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown but no Biff Tannen. Then I glanced down at comments and noticed someone saying "I can't believe there won't be anymore content like this." and another "RIP Adam The Woo." I nearly did a spit take. How could he be dead? He's too young.
Now the word isn't out at all as to what the cause is but the overwhelming chat on reddit and YouTube seems to be pointing to his fitness and a possible heart issue, maybe exacerbated by a recent return from a long overseas flight from a trip back from Europe. Well, let me tell you, that may be the thoughts of his fanbase, being they're younger and think that a.) being 51 is old and b.) being maybe 220 lbs. is life-threateningly obese but I don't think so. 51 isn't that old and of course I don't know his weight but I'd guess he was around what I stated above and that's not that bad. You know what's more likely, albeit, more scary for young people to fathom?
Either drug overdose or suicide.
In very old vlogs Adam was more revealing about quite a few things about his private life that he started clamming up about as his fame grew. I remember him talking about addiction issues of his youth. I remember him talking about depression. He lived a very solitary and transitory, ephemeral, if you will, life, and I think he was very aware of it. On one of the subreddits that were created to basically trash talk about Adam The Woo over the years, there was a query put out there where someone asked if anyone thought Adam was happy. Here's one of the answers and the thread off of it:
