Back in 2017, Matthew Patrick invited me to write for a YouTube channel he ran called The Game Theorists, and I’ve been a scriptwriter ever since. I usually describe that job as “writing about educational topics through a pop culture lens.” A few personal portfolio highlights from my time working there:

The Film Theorists

• Marvel’s Ant Man and the square-cube law. I often describe the Theorist ethos of “tricking people into learning something interesting about the world.” Lots of people like to click on videos about Marvel superheroes, and that provides a great opportunity to give them a basic lesson on physics.
• Ready Player One’s dystopian housing (and the impracticality thereof). This video features two of my other areas of interest: picking apart the impractical worldbuilding of science fiction settings, and structural engineering. It’s also not-so-secretly a video about how building (non-dystopian) housing can actually be a lot cheaper than most people realize.
• Wall-E’s garbage-filled dystopia is total garbage. Another episode about “debunking dystopia.” If you want to feel optimistic about humanity’s future vis-a-vis waste and landfills, give this one a watch!
• A 2020 collaboration with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who shares a passion for explaining science topics to a lay audience. This was fun to work on, and also led to a noticeable bump in traffic for Neil’s Star Talk channel.
• Can you sue a superhero? A look at how the history of America’s qualified immunity laws would affect the canon of universes like Pixar’s The Incredibles.

The Game Theorists

• How epigenetics explains Pokemon evolution. This is one of the other videos I often point people toward when trying to explain the kind of educational content that I write as part of the Theorist team.
• This episode about the feasibility of using fried chicken as a computer heatsink won a Streamy Award in December 2021.

The Style Theorists

• Copyright law and fashion: how does SHEIN get away with copying independent fashion designers? Occasionally, I’ll wade into forum discussions where I disclaim that “I am not a lawyer,” adding “but I do have a job where I sometimes write about legal topics for a lay audience.” (Case in point.)

The Food Theorists

• Do carrots actually improve your eyesight? One of my favorite parts of working on Food Theory is getting to teach viewers about science or history, and it’s always fun when I get to do both in the same episode.
• What’s the legal definition of a sandwich? Tax law sure can get weird and wacky sometimes. Did you know that there’s a Colorado tax board that includes “chicken wings” in their legal definition of a sandwich?

Media Audits 

Across all of the Theorist channels, one genre of video I often find myself writing is a “media audit,” where we look at mainstream reporting and uncover places where “the news” might have gotten the story wrong, often discovering some interesting facts along the way.  A few examples:

• Are people actually cooking “Nyquil chicken?”
• Did Coca-Cola actually release an intentionally bad soft drink to sabotage Crystal Pepsi?
• Is the US Government actually storing 1.4 billion pounds of cheese underground?
• Is Subway’s tuna actually something other than tuna?
• Are kids actually eating Tide Pods?

In total, I’ve written hundreds of videos across all Theorist channels. (For some more highlights that aren’t listed above, this playlist contains more of my favorites.)

In addition to working as a video scriptwriter for Theorist, I also spent half a year working as a Creative Director for Food Theory, which mostly involved things like providing notes on Frame.io, working with video editors and thumbnail artists, and working with advertisers to craft branded content, with this video collaboration with Google being the one I’m most proud of.

Contact me:

Spending over half a decade writing videos that have collectively garnered around half a billion views has, by some definitions, made me a bit of an expert on a highly specific part of online video content. If this is a topic that you’re interested in discussing with me (either in a personal or professional capacity), feel free to reach out! My DMs are open on Twitter/X, but that site has become increasingly unreliable when it comes to actually notifying me that I’ve received an unsolicited DM, so probably the best way to get in touch is to email me (kuiperdesu at the google mail domain).