by kelseydeemer
The coronavirus age we live in is many things, but I’ll tell you what it’s not. A rush. Between the days of March and May not a single bloodpounding event occurred. I played a lot of cards with my mom and shared a lot of fart jokes with my young brother which are very sweet and tender and memories I will hold dear for a long time, but there was no positive chaos. I specify positive because it was and still is all chaos, just not the kind that makes me go “woooooo!!”
In my adrenaline depletion I turned to many alternative sources. I found quickly, however, that tweeting excessively, running for a long time, and hitting up my campus crush once every three weeks weren’t hitting the same. Enter stage left, youtube rollercoaster POV videos.
I think rollercoasters are different to you virgin Vermonters. My evidence is that the closest rollercoaster I could find is a ferris wheel in northern New Hampshire. To me, however, a midwest Chad, rollercoasters give me a cache of serotonin that I carefully dip into over the course of many years. And I’m not talking about disneyland or any of that Orlando shit. I’m talking about the rides at the Indiana State Fair, the ones that look like they haven’t been inspected since I was born, the ones that were probably assembled by high schoolers, the ones that hurl you face first into a parking lot and enact your fight or flight reaction mid-ride. Special shoutout to the “flaming hula hoop,” in which the entire ride was simply a constant loop de loop, and the ride I can only describe as an incredibly long stick, with spinning seats at both ends, that shoots its riders into the sky.
Rollercoaster POV videos are tight. They became to me in quarantine like buzzfeed videos in the ninth grade. They’re all more or less the same, but just enticing enough to both watch the entire thing and click on the next recommended video. You always think “what’s gonna happen at the end? Is there gonna be an extra, surprise drop? Will they pull back into the same loading dock? I wanna see :D” and you keep thinking all of that until you’ve watched an hour worth of rollercoaster POV videos.
And don’t get me STARTED on videos about the history of rollercoaster rides. Holy shit. You ever read up on the history of the Jaws ride at universal studios? Or the Son of Beast rollercoaster from Kings Island?? Holy hell. I’ve watched 40 minute videos on so many rides and I’d do it again happily. Getting the dirt on rollercoasters and their mechanical problems and shotty inspections and messy lawsuits was just the kind of drama I needed.
This is a review. Rollercoaster POV videos are a sharp 8.8/10 from me. Hours of entertainment, nearly endless content, a good internet rabbit hole to get your head stuck in. Do yourself a favor and google your childhood state fair or amusement park and see what you can find. Or if you’re from Vermont think about the New Hampshire ferris wheel or something ig.
Categories: kelsey deemer, october 6, 2020, review