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#10 - The Second Channel

(Originally posted on Tumblr on December 4th, 2022)


here is a google doc for the lost 2nd channel videos i could salvage! i’ll be discussing some of these in today’s entry.

this google drive folder compiled by my fandom friend and fellow caddicarus veteran karo includes the ASMR video and the only surviving (to my knowledge) archives of the two 2014 streams that were posted to the second channel. it also includes the may 2019 update video and the failed 2020 GITCY stream.

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let’s face it: the withdrawal between caddicarus uploads is REAL. we can only rewatch those banger videos so many times to the point where we can recite them in our sleep, and twitter rants and instagram posts can only do so much to satisfy our hunger.

but of course, we have our greatest option - the stream archive channel! hours upon hours upon hours of streams are saved here, ready for our enjoyment. and don’t even get me started on the “best of” videos!

when you scroll down far enough, you’ll come to find that this channel wasn’t always a stream archive. you’ll find old video archives, an attempted let’s play series, discussion videos, shitposts, mishka spyro YTPMVs, and a 2013 tour of caddy’s room in his parents’ house. and it was gold.

for this entry, we’re going to be discussing the history of this channel and how it got to where it is today!

before 2019, this second channel was known as…

🎵 CAAAA-DYYYY’S CON-UN-DRUMS! 🎵

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first established on august 24th, 2013, with its first upload being on september 11th and its announcement video being uploaded to the main channel on september 13th, caddy’s conundrums was the place for any random video to be uploaded, be it related to video games or not. this was where drum covers called home until 2017, and where drive thru reviews got its start before it was moved to the main channel in 2015.

one thing i always found interesting about this era of the channel was how the graphic design looked arguably better than the main channel’s. the logo actually looked super cool and wasn’t made in cooltext. there was also a thumbnail avatar specifically used for this channel as well!

 

the channel’s content

the channel’s first upload was the classic “a tour of the room”, where caddy gives us a detailed tour of his room in his parents’ house. it’s a wonderful time capsule of retro caddicarus and it’s still up to this day if you would like to give it a watch.

the next upload was the first episode of the series “regarding”. regarding was a show where caddy would discuss anything related to pop culture or video games or youtube changes…

wait a second, this sounds a bit familiar…this show just might as well have been a precursor to the now-unlisted rant series that was posted on the main channel through late 2019! of course, the presentation was not as clickbait-y or angry as the 2019 rant series, but it’s interesting to look at both series and see how the approach to video-making had changed between those eras.

there was also the[NOSTALGIACAD]series - which was an archive of his pre-TCS vids from the main channel. before the banger 2020 caddicarus episode where he reacted to these vids, fans would simply just come across them by scrolling to the bottom of the second channel and seeing for themselves. when i was 12 and about a month in on the beautiful people train, i came across “the cleaning”, and that’s actually where i found out his last name is caddick. it was through a comment on the video but comments on it are now disabled for some weird reason. i think i also memorized the words to “he’s the dog” as well. lmao.

caddy cussbottom was a one-off that was originally going to be a series. it was basically “you know what’s bullshit?” but british. this is where i found out the name of the certified hood classic “combine harvester” song that’s used in a lot of his vids.

there was some funny shitpost-type stuff, like this one where cerys’ snake pixie escaped her terrarium or this one that’s basically a spyro YTPMV with mishka the dog. i’m not gonna go into depth about every single one - because (almost) every single one is still up as i’m typing this!

in early 2015, caddy did a sponsored video for 1up box, which was like a knockoff lootcrate. this was such a cute video, and it was done in a very caddy fashion. although it deeply hurt my soul when caddy didn’t recognize BMO and called him “the 1up box guy”.

the channel also serves as an archive for the failed puppicarus series, which was canceled and uploaded to the second channel a month after its premiere. i’ll go into more depth about that series in a future entry - let’s just say there’s a reason i didn’t talk about it in the entry about 2012-16 side shows.

there’s two more i’ll talk about - first one being this ASMR video from june 2016. this was during the peak of the asagao academy fandom, and this normalboots/hidden block dating sim basically brought a bunch of old and new fans together on tumblr. and it just so happened that most of the normalboots/hidden block guys used tumblr at the time. these fans sent them all kinds of asks…and one meme involving the fans trying to get them to make ASMR videos started up at one point. caddy declared on this post that if he got 5,000 notes, he’d make an ASMR video. and we all impressively got him there. yes, i also did daily reblogs on my old (now-deactivated) account. to people outside of tumblr, this video was out of left field, even for him. but it was the funniest shit ever. and it was privated in 2019. sigh.

there was also a video of bloopers from the tweenies video - and the bloopers consisted entirely of brutalmoose stumbling over his lines for the cameo. it’s iconic. this was also sadly privated in 2019.

 

the decline

the channel was most utilized from 2013 to around mid-2015 as an outlet for drum covers, random topic discussions, shitposts, quick game reviews, and a brief stream archive - only 2 streams from 2014 were archived, and they can be found in karo’s folder i linked at the top of the post.

2015 got off to an active start for the channel - we had the 1up box video, a regarding episode about the two spider-man movie actors, the aforementioned spyro YTPMV, and a video where caddy comments on how microsoft screwed up solitaire on windows 8. these videos were all uploaded between february and april, and after that, the channel went radio silent until puppicarus was archived in january 2016. after that, the ASMR video was posted that june, and the brutalmoose outtakes were posted in january 2017…and that was it for caddy’s conundrums. so what happened?

well, to put it shortly, it was time constraints, the migration of drive thru reviews to the main channel in 2015, and the establishment of the caddy show.

now that caddy was producing two videos a week for the main channel in 2015, extensive amounts of time just couldn’t be poured into the second channel anymore. and this would ESPECIALLY become more apparent during the reign of the 3-day-a-week schedule come 2016-18. around this same time, he would stop streaming, and he wouldn’t stream again until after the retool in 2020.

the caddy show came along to the main channel in 2017 and would become a new outlet for…drum covers, random topic discussions, shitposts, and quick game reviews. this was another huge factor in the second channel’s decline - the main channel started doing everything the second channel did. and so, the second channel declined.

…but it obviously wouldn’t be that way forever.

 

the rejuvenation

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around spring 2019, the name of the second channel was mysteriously re-named “caddy plays”. there were initially no announcements or branding changes, just a random name change. we also saw the privating of the 9 drive thru reviews episodes that released on the channel - unfortunately, i could only salvage three of them. the drum covers were also privated for some insane reason.

this would later be officially acknowledged in a main channel update video in may. one of the announcements in that video was the announcement of let’s plays, a first in caddicarus history. in the past, he’d expressed his disinterest in doing let’s plays. but in 2019, he changed his mind, and in june, an n sane trilogy let’s play began, with the videos being edited by cerys. cerys’ contributions helped caddy continue to focus on the main channel while also maintaining the second channel.

this let’s play series didn’t last very long, only lasting from june 26th to september 11th in 2019. during that time, the only game completed was n sane trilogy. we had a one-off cuphead let’s play with tomska, 2 parts of a ride to hell: retribution let’s play, and one part of a blair witch let’s play.

the titles were all-caps yelling - typical of let’s play channels. the thumbnails weren’t too clickbaity…with the obvious exception of the ride to hell videos where the sexy scenes were deliberately used. keep in mind that this was 2019 at-his-last-resort caddicarus, so he was doing all he could to try and stay relevant and bring in enough money to feed his family. i’ll go into more depth about this crazy year in a future entry about what i dub the second intermediate period.

i personally didn’t watch these let’s plays - pretty much because i was absent for them. i’d stopped watching caddicarus a couple months prior to these developments, and while i knew what was going on thanks to karo, i wasn’t actually watching the videos themselves.

but i can give you an interesting fact - the first part of the n sane trilogy let’s play marked the very first use of lumpies and germs, the new fandom name for caddicarus fans after the retirement of beautiful people 10 months prior.

and y'know what? i outta start watching through these let’s plays. it’s more caddicarus content to tide me over until the spyro video. lol.

so after the last let’s play video, the channel was dormant once again until finally, in april 2020, caddy officially returned to streaming. it was a joyous day in the community…ESPECIALLY for veteran folk like me. except i wasn’t there for it…because i’d been gone for a year and onward ripped me a new one a month prior to this return. LMAO.

after this return, the second channel became a stream archive, and it was now seeing regular uploads all the time. by next year we were getting “best of (year)” videos edited by sir toasty. i remember sir toasty being a fan for years and it was so heartwarming seeing him get that chance to work for caddy.

so just like the main channel - the second channel had the best possible outcome after all the adversity. it finally hit the 100k mark in march of this year and is still steadily growing.

while it was never as well known as the main channel, the content of the second channel has still touched the hearts of thousands of caddicarus fans, from generation to generation.

 

so that’s a wrap for this entry. i’ve now covered every show that’s been done across both channels (except for puppicarus, of course). in the next entry, we’ll be exploring caddy’s history with sponsors, and how sponsor segments evolved over the years!