Paintball Influencers

[Alexndl]

Appart from kevin qmto, BW superman, bacci paintball and ChuckLove I dont really watch paintball video on a regular basis

[Riot]

Has ChuckLove made me famous yet?

[superman]

I appreciate it man.

[Jordan]

What's ChuckLove's YouTube?

[Alexndl]

Jordan here is a video on his chanel you might like

https://youtu.be/Dl4-wd6EGSI

[Jordan]

Love it! 🙂

[DocsMachine]

That gun is also absurdly tall.

I love it.

Doc.

[bellicose]

Just needs a drop.

[Grendel]

Influencers as in Social Media defined, who cares.

Real paintball influencers are people who really brought innovation to the sport in some way (historically) like Jack Wood, Simon Stevens, Tom Kaye, Bud Orr, Jim Lively, Ollie Lang, Dave Youngblood, Glenn Palmer, Wayne Dollack ...etc. Current influencers Jack Wood, Simon Stevens, really don't know beyond these two right now because I spend more time playing then worrying about "growing the sport" or "caring about social media fame". The sport overall seems fairly stagnate right now with little evolution in technology, game mechanics or venues. Not many players or innovators are standing out to me right now.

[Siress]

What innovation did Jim Lively bring to the sport? Genuinely curious as I met the guy and don't recall this bit of trivia.

[Grendel]

JIm really was the first to put together on a national level paintball tournaments with standardization of rules across many tournaments across North America "the Masters" . Basically the predecessor of the various tournament organizations of 2K through now. There is a chance we are also speaking of two different Jim Livelys paintball had one and music had another.

[cockerpunk]

we tried to influence the path of paintball culture. it was deliberate. a push for real facts and figures to guide things rather than marketing hype and companies products.

all it did was build us an enemy list. everyone has a holy grail, no matter how much they don't think they do, everyone does ... and you will find it if you test everything. i know, i repeatedly found mine. the threats of lawsuits, insane rantings of well established personalities, there are still people in paintball who hate us.

it was a wild time. but TBH, the paintball well is not that deep scientifically speaking. and i reached a point with it where i was like "do we keep going and look at these increasingly meaningless things?" and i was a child of the internet, and knew that the death of a good content creator was when they stopped having something meaningful to say and keep going anyway. we didn't really have anything meaningful to say anymore.

WDP Angel LED Trouble Shooting Manual: Gun is inaccurate: buy better paint

[zinger565]

Totally fair. I find it funny that despite your (and other's) work, people still refute certain things. It is a little sad that your original datasheets are no longer around on GoogleDocs.

[cockerpunk]

everyone has a holy thing that shouldn't be questioned. everyone.

probably has something to do with men rationalizing emotions. men in particular have issues with just saying "hey i like this" and instead rationalize there preferences into "hey i like this, therefore it is the best" and then they can short circuit their emotion into "i have this because its the best"

[Myrkul]

To this day I'll still occasionally revisit your old gun tours on Youtube. Its always nice nostalgia, and it's unquestionably influenced my collection quite a bit.

[chrislognshot]

was not for cater and dave youngblood with not have dye boomstick. was not for grams and grizzly would not have paintball tank and mods to use instead of 12grams. was not for rose who married carter would not have some paintball vest to hold gear.

[Pyrate Jim]

I played paintball for years before I had internet, decades before I heard the term "social influencer".
So, if my paintball experience pre-dates the term of "influencer" ~ Who influenced me?

I will tell you; it was not some big, famous name. As a noob, I didn't know those names. They wouldn't have meant anything.
It was the local players who got me hooked. Just guys playing outlaw flag games in the woods.
That friendship, that camaraderie between players is what still keeps me going some 30+ years later.


When I had the chance, I would travel and meet those folks whose names were in the magazines (They weren't coming to see me, that's for sure.)
Names like Bud Orr, Jim Ioulo, Jerry Braun, Glenn Palmer, Dan Colby, Bob Gurnsey, Rob "Tiger" Rubin, Fred Moulton (Sgt Splatter), James "Mad-dog" Morgan, Tom Kaye, Bill & Adam Gardner...
The list of names of people I've met over the last 3-4 decades could go on, and yes, I was influenced by many of them. Basically, in awe of them as pioneers of the game.
Once I got over the whole hero worship thing, I realized I was more influenced by the players around me than the pictures on the cover of a magazine.

It was and still is YOU guys. All of you & me out on the field. The fun we have out there, on the field, is what influences me.
Not being "influenced" sitting in a chair watching a video screen is what maintains my own drive to continue getting out there and attempting to influence others
(in my own small way).

[Brokeass_baller]

This is the best answer.

[Brokeass_baller]

I'm a millennial, an early millennial born in the 80's, but a millennial nonetheless; and I have no real idea what "influencer" even means. I love YouTube, and I'm on Reddit and Facebook, but I don't have a TikTok, or Twitter, or anything else.

So, I guess the guys that influenced me were Tom Kaye (I was an early Automag cultist, not even gonna lie), Rob "Tyger" Rubin (though he's lept off a psychotic cliff these days, his early WebDog videos were very important to my development as a player), the boys at WDP (because who wasn't envious of the almighty Angel?). And more recently, Hidden Hedgehog and NightmarePB (they're literally the only reason I ever gave magfed a chance, and it's wonderful), PBRML, and the boys at Nova/War Machine (I've never been so excited over a modern mech release).

[glaman5266]

'86er here. I hate the term influencer. I mean, the point is to directly influence me? Nah, screw that. I'll do the research myself & not be a sheep. I've done work for a proshop before & know what the score is, lol. There's a couple channels on Youtube I watch on occasion (PBRML, Punishers Paintball) but I watch them mainly for basic info on new products.

[martix_agent]

I think being an "influencer" means you get attention of people, and then can sell them things that a company pays you to sell. It's marketing yourself in order to sell goods.
There's no issue with that, but it's so easy today to make this happen that anyone thinks they can do it. well, that and they seem to market towards children or young adults... kinda seems like a shady way to do business.


Mostly what we're discussing here in this thread are actual creators. They're selling things for their own business, not for a 3rd party.

[jokers]

So I modified the original post to include some of the MCB members that post here regularly that have a youtube channel that way we could find them easy and hopefully help to grow them a little.
I am posting here the youtube channels that I have seen posted here as well as a couple that i watch if i missed some let me know, and i will add them. I did not include lonewolf or ans since they are mainly selling things. If someone i listed here is a MCB member and i messed up and need to move them to the original post I will do that.

DocFire Paintball
WillBallForSoup
ZDSPB
Punishers Paintball
Nova Paintball
PBRML

[Pyrate Jim]

I don't have a channel, but I have been on youtube;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYjC5VqHfM8

[cfos00]

I don't do youtube stuff, but do write ups. Ravi Chopra was someone I looked up to growing up, and is now a friend, and I'v done write ups/interview/recaps/reviews based on long form writing. It's my own style, but I try to be honest and look at the substance, and not selling points that we're handed. Anyway, www.hp-wt.com for anyone interested. Should have more coming in reviews of Simon's insert system, the Spire 5, and a couple of other things soon.

[jokers]

cfos00 I went ahead and added a section at the top for webpages and added yours and ones that I know of.

[DocsMachine]

The mention of magazine covers struck a minor chord for me. Being in Alaska, and backwater Alaska at that, I was of course nowhere near the cutting edge of paintball. And in those dim, dark, pre-internet days, the only resource I had was the magazines.

I was lucky in that, for that brief, shining moment, there were several active magazines, and the local newsstands actually carried them. APG, of course, Paintball Games International, Paintball Sports International, even Paintball Player's Bible, which eventually morphed into Paintball 2Xtremes. With work and luck, I was also able to get some Paintcheck magazines, that short lived RAGazine, SPLAT magazine, a brief subscription ot Paintball News etc.

So yeah, you can very much say the magazines were a heavy early influence on me.

And the main driver there, were the custom guns. Those were the ones that really cranked my handle- but, none of the magazines ever did actual articles on customs. All you'd get were a posed cover photo, and occasionally a shot or two from a tourney or big game inside. (In black-and-white of course.)

When I got online, back in the day when the entirety of the world's supply of online paintball was WARPIG and maybe a couple of Geocities pages, some of the earliest custom markers I saw were Brad Nestle's work under Olympic. The 'Cocker formerly known as Prince, a couple others he called (or somebody called) Spaceguns... Those, too, were a heavy influence.

Doc.

[ford]

This post takes me back... Our resident air smith extraordinaire (Bill Macke) totally had a Geocities site hosting his work =P

[binson]

Diomedes = DarwinZDF42

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbWGq3Sp99Ren0mmcB0kVOw

[jokers]

I have updated the original post with this information thank you

[MrBarraclough]

There are a couple of paintball YouTubers who I think offer worthwhile content and haven't been mentioned so far.

Greg Montalvo, formerly of the ML Kings and now with the Latin Saints, has How to Play Paintball. True to its name, the channel has a large library of tutorials, drills, workout routines, etc. in addition to the usual event video blogs and such. His content is focused entirely on speedball, but a fair portion of what he teaches has application in the woods as well. Greg's day job is as a middle school science teacher, so he has pretty good communication skills. He's also pretty modest and likeable. He wears his religion on his sleeve a tiny bit, but not overly so. Usually I would find that a little off putting, but I appreciate that I can watch his channel on the living room TV without worrying he might say something I'd rather not have my 4 year old repeat. Paintball would benefit from having more genuinely nice, kind personalities in the spotlight and less macho nonsense.

Steven von Peterson's SVP Paintball does some great deep dives into speedball strategy and technique, and his field layout analysis videos are fascinating. I don't even play airball, but often enjoy watching him break down a layout. It has helped me make more sense of what I'm seeing when watching the NXL online and play better on the odd occasion that I play something like hyperball. Dude obviously has a very high paintball IQ and is very engaged with his audience.

[zinger565]

I unknowingly got to meet Greg when he was practicing the World Cup layout with Ruthless Factory. Nice guy, good player, had a great time taking pictures on the field while he was there. Shame the team he was with was thrown together at the last moment and didn't put on a great showing.

Steven is awesome. Super friendly, very knowledgeable, and his Discord community is an excellent group of people. He had a genuine love of the sport and isn't afraid to give his opinion. I like the way he approaches the divisional conversation.

[MrBarraclough]

Just realized that after playing two events with the Latin Satins he played World Cup with a divisional team. Wonder what the story was there. I got the impression that he was brought onto the Saints as a kind of on-field coach/trainer to help the existing players develop. He announced back in the spring when he was still with the Kings that this was going to be his last competitive season. After years of grinding and struggling to establish the Kings as a serious pro team, I hated to see him end his career outside of the pro field at cup.

[Meleager7]

I like this guy's channel PewPewMike . I can't remember how I found it, maybe it just showed up in my feed.

Either he has a massive old school collection, or he is a paintball tech that posts vids when cool stuff is in his shop

His vids are short and sweet

https://www.youtube.com/@PewPewMike

is he on MCB?

[Meleager7]

Found this while doing the research. Pretty cool to find these relics.

Popular Paintball Channels.xlsx

Password is the name of the God of Old School paintball, and all things brass. Velcor


I've never heard of ~75% of these channels.

edit: Top 10 for those that don't bother viewing or contributing

How accurate are those Revenue stats ?

Does my fellow Canadian Nightmare really not need a day job!??

[Siress]

No clue. I posted the source in the document. Pass is "Velcor"

[Meleager7]

Here is my Definitely-Not-A-Paintball-Influencer cheesy little paintball channel

https://www.youtube.com/@meleagerproductions9082

I've been using it mostly to share some footage of recent Ontario, Canada MCB meetups ,and to also do some marker demos of stuff I was selling...

I have lots more footage, if I can get around to building or buying a better computer