Girlfriend Reviews

Submission 7,878

About

Girlfriend Reviews is a YouTube run by a couple named Matt and Shelby in which Shelby reviews video games from the perspective of someone who lives with another who plays video games. Since the pair launched the series in late 2018, the series has grown popular, gaining hundreds of thousands of subscribers and received awards nominations.

History

On November 19th, 2018, the pair released their first video, titled "Should Your Boyfriend Play Red Dead Redemption 2," gaining over 1.8 million views in over a year (shown below). The video introduced several features of the channel, including the Distracted Boyfriend thumbnail that would become a channel signature and the idea that the videos were not necessarily reviews of the games being covered, but reviews of what it's like to live with someone playing the game.

In later videos, the pair said the idea came from when Matt got Breath of the Wild and became totally engrossed in the experience. Matt had experience as a video editor and writer, and Shelby had experience as an actress, helping the project come together.^[1]

Between the end of 2018 and through 2019, the channel grew rapidly, and as of January 28th, 2020, has over 748,000 subscribers.^[2] The pair was nominated for a Streamy Award in 2019 for Gaming content on YouTube.^[3] It was at the Streamy Awards^[4] that the pair did a face reveal (shown below).

The pair's content has been praised in outlets including USGamer^[5] and Dexerto.^[6] As of January 28th, their most popular videos are the aforementioned Red Dead Redemption 2 video, as well as videos on Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 (shown below).

Online Presence

In addition to their YouTube presence, the pair has 41,000 followers on Twitter^[7] and a subreddit^[8] that has gained over 7,000 members since its creation on December 2nd, 2018. The channel has over 1,000 likes on Facebook.^[9]