Meet the Adorable Couple Making Girlfriend Reviews, YouTube’s Latest Hit Gaming Channel

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As someone who finds most YouTubers obnoxious, Girlfriend Reviews has been pointedly refreshing in its approach, making enjoying games feel warmly accessible to everyone-even to those without the intimidating gaming literacy needed to wield a controller

About a month ago I was recommended a Girlfriend Reviews video through Twitter. The name of the channel made me apprehensive; I imagined the worst stereotypes of the expectations of women and games bubbling up. But when I dove into the channel’s first video on Red Dead Redemption 2, I was hooked on its insightful wit. “This isn’t a review of Red Dead Redemption 2. This is a review of the experience of living with someone who plays Red Dead Redemption 2.”

Each Girlfriend Reviews video is well-edited and punchy, usually resting between four and eight minutes, matching acute observations with a consistently sharp sense of humor. Matt, the boyfriend, edits and pens the rough script. Shelby, the girlfriend reviewing, provides the narration for the videos and improvises jokes on top of everything. Unlike the sea of dudes who yell a lot for no reason as they review games on YouTube, Girlfriend Reviews parts the polluted ocean.

As for Matt and Shelby themselves, they’re as normal of a couple as can be. They’re so struck by the sudden influx of internet fame that they’re still on the fence about revealing their full names-they’re even hesitant to reveal their day jobs as to not inspire creepy netizens to track them down. Their inclination to secrecy has even led to bonkers conspiracy theories, like how a corporation is running the channel and not a real life couple with an admiration for video games.

“It definitely stung a little bit at first and was kind of scary because people were trying to figure out who we were, and people were actually messaging us and stuff. But now that we’ve started streaming and have gotten a little more intimate with our audience, the truth is out there that we’re just two genuine people, making videos in our apartment. Now any of those conspiracy theories or skepticism we just take as a compliment,” Matt tells me over the phone, joined alongside Shelby. “But we’ve said from the beginning that, you know, if we were Disney or some big corporation behind this, we just don’t see why they would like two Spider-Mans spanking each other in the beginning of a video,” they both laugh, “so we just let people believe what they want to believe.”

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The idea for Girlfriend Reviews got started about a year before the channel launched, when Matt was playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Since the couple lived together, Shelby would deal with the signature map sound-you’re probably imagining it this very moment-chiming “a hundred times every 30 minutes.” The annoyance sparked an idea: a YouTube channel where someone reviewed a game, but wasn’t playing the game themselves; they were just experiencing it vicariously with whoever they lived with. A review based on only couch spectating, if you will.

In the opening for the video, narrator Shelby quips what will soon become the standard for all the weekly videos that would follow

The couple already had the skills needed for making such a channel. Matt has been working for the past decade editing and writing for other YouTubers, and has a degree in creative writing. Meanwhile the voice of the channel, Shelby, has a background in performance arts, namely in singing and acting. “It’s just serendipitous that we met and we can combine our talents to create a silly channel,” Matt says, noting they’ve been together for three years now.