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Purple FTW

 Andy: A Viking Fan’s Savior


I’ve never been a Halloween fan. It’s an excuse for Americans to stuff their faces more than normal (myself included) and single college girls to dress in the skimpiest of clothes and call it a Halloween costume. This year was no different, but at least I had Andy’s YouTube podcast. 


My bitterness for Halloween was at its peak this year. The fantasy teams that I invested $50 in — a lot of money for a hungry college guy — all lost, some kid threw a pumpkin at my vehicle, and the football team I’ve been following since the age of nine lost in frustrating fashion. I found myself nearly choking on my anger when a YouTube notification from Purple FTW (For the Win) Podcast! popped up. My Halloween was still shitty, but Andy’s seven-minute video about how the Vikings’ talent should equate to more wins made me almost appreciate the fact that Viking fans can relish in pain together. 


One year I got really into the draft. It was right after they traded Stefon Diggs, so the Vikings had two first round draft picks. I was searching all over the internet for more, more, more Vikings content. Finally, I went to YouTube and searched, “Vikings mock draft.” 


One channel popped up multiple times: Purple FTW Podcast. I saw he posted three or four times every day, and he did seven round mock drafts, unedited. I was sold. As a Minnesotan, he relates to Viking fans like myself: he hunts, he makes midwestern dishes (also featured on his channel), he enjoys family time and he gets his soul crushed every Sunday by the Vikings. 


His video styles are fairly simple: He uses excel for his lists; he screen mirrors websites when he does mock drafts; or he just uses a camera to film himself doing a RAW REAL RANT, another popular video type of his in which he rants about how poorly the Vikings did or how Mike Zimmer should be fired. 


Some may say Andy is low quality because he does not really edit nor does very many skits, but he is the star. We Jeromes (what Andy calls his subscribers) enjoy the feeling of getting to know Andy through his videos. Because he is on YouTube, on camera all the time, and does live streams often, we get to know his genuinity and his ability to be a suffering Vikings fan. He has his sayings that some people may get tired of: “your thoughts on our thoughts” and “cap is a myth”, and he uses the same “Office” memes every other video, but we love it.


Being a Vikings fan is misery, but getting those few hours of content from Andy each week makes life easier . Our shared pain makes us feel like we are a part of something—albeit something gut-wrenching. His authenticity makes the soul-crushing games a little less painful each week. 
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