Alex Donovan, 2015
CommanderZander, also known as Mizzoulord 13, is a YouTuber whose entire existence is based around That Guy With The Glasses / Channel Awesome and The Nostalgia Critic. His powerword is "Alex Donovan", something that took me all of ten seconds to find since his Twitter avatar (above) is a picture of him holding a notebook with his fucking name written on it. I don't know how old he is, but judging by the "English 1520" written on his notebook he was a college freshman in 2015, meaning that he is probably about 20 years old today.
Like any good sperg who lusts after Channel Awesome, he shamelessly knocks off their video formats and floods YouTube with his own TOTALLY ORIGINAL takes on nostalgic media. Donovan is a particular favorite of mine because he puts the absolute minimal amount of effort possible into his videos, which you will soon see. While browsing this thread keep this in mind: this guy is convinced he deserves a featured place on the Channel Awesome website. In a painful twist of irony, Channel Awesome appears as a "Related Channel" on his YouTube account.
By the way, he's a student at the University of Missouri, aka "Mizzou".
"I remember it so The Nostalgia Critic doesn't have to!"
The above video was posted on 7 May 2014 and serves as Donovan's audition to be a part of TGWTG. This entire video is so poorly put together that you would almost think it were an act; he's dressed like an idiot wearing a sports jersey at least two sizes too big, he's filming vertically, his on-screen persona is abysmal, and rather than splice in clips of the movie he's "reviewing" he just points his fucking phone at his tablet. This goes on for eleven minutes. I do not anticipate you to watch all (or any) of it.
To the surprise of no one, this didn't land Donovan a gig. In the months following it, Donovan created his first persona, "The Commander Zander", and made his catchphrase a direct copy of Nostalgia Critic's, replacing "you" with "The Nostalgia Critic". One of Donovan's first videos as Zander is a "review" of his original Channel Awesome audition. If you thought the original video was bad, wait until you get a load of this shit. At least he seems to be somewhat aware of his incompetence, because around 2:20 in the video he realizes in hindsight that he should've used the camera on the back of his phone to record and not the front-facing one... because the back one is of a higher quality. This was his takeaway, his learning experience. Use the back camera.
You can't make this up, people.
Redefining the Word "Review"
Before you go any further I want you to jump around in the video above, or watch the whole thing if you have that much time to kill. Understand that this is a college-aged person screaming bottom shelf "jokes" at a show whose intended audience is barely old enough to walk. At 14:05 in the video he literally states "as a child I enjoyed it, as an adult it's easy to ridicule" and if you pay attention you can actually hear the irony of the moment whizz right over Donovan's head.
Donovan doesn't "review" a goddamned thing. At all. He just plays a video on his phone or tablet or whatever and just yells out what amount to non sequiturs but to him are 24k comedy gold.
The best part about this guy is that his content is literally a blackout bingo on the autism card. Take a look:
- Arthur
- Barney & Friends
- Caillou
- Danny Phantom
- Dragon Tales
- Franklin
- Gullah Gullah Island
- Jay Jay the Jet Plane
- Little Bear
- Shrek
- Teletubbies
- Theodore Tugboat
- Thomas the Tank Engine
He's also got this series called "Hobo Reviews" which from what I've gathered is a direct copy of Channel Awesome's "Bum Reviews"? Put these two videos side by side and let me know if you can tell them apart. I can't. I only see :autism:.
Ask That Mizzou Playboy With The Glasses
"Have you noticed there are a bunch of vaginas in the world? I do a lot of them, all the time."
- Alex Donovan, 11/9/2014
Donovan's got this other series called "Ask That Missou Playboy With The Glasses", which if you're playing along at home is a knock-off of Channel Awesome's "Ask That Guy With The Glasses". Prior to uploading his first episode of this show Donovan posted an announcement video to his channel soliciting for questions. None were left. Regardless, I assume he just wrote a bunch of questions and answers himself because the first episode went up two days later. In the description of the video he requests for questions to be left in the comments, and as you might imagine none are left. He still goes on to produce more episodes anyways.
On the 5th installment of this show some questions were left by a "Bryce Schmidt", a sockpuppet account of Donovan's created likely to give the illusion that people give a shit about the show. Bryce's only interactions on YouTube are with Donovan's videos, which is how I know it's an alt. Bryce also has a Twitter. Donovan had to make nearly two dozen videos before he got a single comment even remotely close to someone leaving him a question in the comments.
He starts to freak out at the beginning of the 25th episode demanding that Channel Awesome use him to replace "That Guy With The Glasses", and he reveals that it was a bunch of his friends writing questions for him this whole time, because he namedrops all of them. He goes off on a tangent about Donald Trump in episode #49 and has an argument with Scooby Doo through a door, which is just him doing an autistic voice when the camera is pointed away.
Donovan has maybe 2 fans that left him comments on videos, and only 1 person has ever sent him anything on Twitter. The less we say about that guy, the better. As of this posting, there are a staggering seventy videos in the "Ask That Missou Playboy With The Glasses", many of them with views in the single digits.
Notice Me, Senpai!
This is basically all Donovan does on Channel Awesome. He's only left a couple dozen comments that I can find, most of which are just him fellating Doug Winger or whatever his name is. In some of them though, like the one above in response to the infamous "Where's The Fair Use?" video, he reaches out and asks Doug to subscribe to him on YouTube. I'm pretty sure he hasn't.
He doesn't seem to be too well liked by the Channel Awesome community, though:
Anyways I don't know where I was going with this thread so I'll just end it here and let you all pick through his extensive catalog of trash. I don't really have a vested interest in this guy or some sort of moral compass like I did with Aaron McCluske which is why I'm okay with posting this. My favorite character in Donovan's videos is the empty box of Sun Chips.
I also left a comment on his most recent "Mizzou Playboy" video asking him his thoughts on Deagle Nation so I guess we'll see how that goes when episode 71 comes out.
Additional unsorted content:
- Donovan shows up to a Halloween party as his character. Nobody takes him seriously.
- A "review" of MST3K where he watches 1 episode and thinks he "gets it".
- BURGER KING GRILLED CHILI DOG, BAYBEEEEE
- Alex Donovan's personal Twitter. (Just boring sports sperging.)
- The CommanderZander Twitter account.
- The Twitter account of "That Mizzou Playboy With The Glasses".
- His forums account on Channel Awesome. (No posts, but recently active.)
