Interview With Joel Rubin

Joel Rubin – The Internet’s Grandfather

Joel Rubin (the internet’s grandfather) has done many amazing things over the years, such as managing and owning the Machinima YouTube channel (with over 10+ million subscribers), co-creating the Funhaus YouTube channel (with over 1+ million subscribers), writing for Disney, and working on SourceFed.

Joel Benjamin Ruben grew up in Batten Rouge, Louisiana. Growing up, Joel’s family was the only family he knew that owned a computer, and eventually the only family he knew that had internet access at the time. Often, Joel wouldn’t have many, if any video games to play, so it’s interesting he pursued a career in gaming and media production in the future. The only times Joel would find himself playing video games, was if he was at a friend’s house, where he would set up LAN parties using computers that his friend’s family eventually got right before Joel started college. During this time, Joel became avid in video games and gained an interest in the gaming scene. However, during college, Joel decided to take a break from video games due to the extensive time that schooling took up, causing him to lose interest in video games.

After college, Joel moved to L.A. to pursue a career as a production assistant in a variety of “really crappy sitcoms that nobody has ever heard of before”. During this time, he would go into work around 4 PM, stay until 10 or 11 PM after all the scripts were printed out and copied, drive them around L.A. in hopes that a studio would be interested enough to pick-up their shows, then would get home around 2 or 3 in the morning. After slowly making his way up in the PA ranks, Joel was approached by one of his friends who worked at G4 (formerly known as Tech-TV) on their show “X-play” (a video game focused show on cable TV). G4 was a gaming and media focused channel on TV that would often air shows like “X-play” and “Attack of the Show” which were shows that centered around game reviews, cheat codes, gaming news, and comedy sketches. His friend asked Joel to just come in for 1 day and be an elf in a sketch they were doing. During this, Joel was talking to his friend asking about if they needed any freelance writers, to which his friend responded and told him to submit a writing packet, so he did. That January, Joel was contacted by G4 and was hired as a freelance writer. “Whenever they needed me, I would go in. I did some video game reviews, sketches, basically anything they needed.” He went on to describe his interaction with the people on the show, and his way of making it up the ranks, “I just started doing this thing where there were a couple of empty desks, and even when I wasn’t supposed to be there, I would just show up during the day and say, ‘Oh I’m working on my next thing.’ Just to sit down and get to know everyone on the show, besides just my friend.” When a full-time position at G4 was available, he was around – so they hired him as an associate producer.

Between Joel’s freelancing and full-time work, he was a part of G4 for around 5 years until G4 stopped production. “Unfortunately, the show just never got an audience.” He stated. “About 2 weeks before production wrapped, they called 2/3rds of the staff over, and we were all laid off, which was really unfortunate. It put a lot of really creative producers out of a job.” One of the other staff members at G4 that was laid off around the same time as Joel ended up moving over to a job at Machinima. Machinima was another gaming and media focused channel, but focused more on physical gameplay videos and digital comedy sketches, rather than game reviews and live action comedy sketches. The staff member got in touch with Joel, and asked him if he would be interested in helping with their MMO focused channel they were launching. The channel never gained traction, and Machinima had a huge round of layoffs, so Joel took charge of the main Machinima channel, the Machinima ETC channel (now hosted by Ricky Hayberg and Eliot Dewberry), and the Inside Gaming channel (formerly hosted by Bruce Green, Adam Kovic, James Willems, and Joel Rubin). Joel’s work on these channels brought Machinima back to life – creating a different atmosphere for the channels, giving the channels and Machinima much needed viewership.

Due to the revival of Machinima, the company decided to sway in a different creative direction than Joel wanted, so he was approached by RoosterTeeth (a video game/digital media company similar to Machinima) and the main Inside Gaming cast started their own channel called ‘Funhaus’. Funhaus was a gaming channel focused mainly on comedy gameplays; the 3 or 4 main cast members would watch one of them play a video game, and provide commentary in the background. Joel was the co-founder of Funhaus, and stayed on as an editor, cast member, and creative director there for about a year, before leaving to work at SourceFed, who would eventually merge with another company and go out of business. After his short-lived work at SourceFed, Joel went on to doing freelancing work, including writing for a Disney Channel show ‘Parker Plays’. Currently, Joel is doing some more freelancing work, hoping for a 2nd season of the show he wrote for Disney, and is returning to Machinima for two months to work on their 2018 programming.

You wouldn’t expect to hear a 36-year-old call himself a grandfather, but Joel did. In fact, Joel claims to be “essentially the internet’s grandfather” due to his knowledge in many subjects, and the measures he takes to make sure everyone is doing well. The common misconception about millennials is that they are lazy and not as adventurous as the previous generations, but Joel smashes that stereotype into the ground. A 36-year-old “grandfather” doesn’t sound real, but it is all too real for Joel Rubin.