Louis had a podcast for two episodes in 2008 and 2009. Well, actually it was one episode and a short teaser for a second episode that was never published. He was one of many people at the time that thought he could host a tech podcast with no apparent qualifications other than wanting to do it. Still, he comes off as almost functional.
In fact, it's remarkable how one can chart his sad regression by looking through
the archives of his old Twitter account. Back in
2008 he came across as an unremarkable mid-20s geek, chatting about mp3 players and college, with even
a kind word for George W. Bush. Sadly, trouble looms even at this early date, as
his dad loses his job and he has to bell-ring for the Salvation Army full time (do they get paid?). Still, he very much seems to be living life in tune with his Twitter bio: "
Just a guy who plays games and has fun with life."
2009 rolls around, and he's busy
planning the second, ultimately stillborn episode of his podcast, and discussing MP3 players and college sports. He also
talks about how he's not allowed to have beer or tobacco because he's a Salvationist, and declares that "
female professors should not teach classes that are 99% female students; and vice versa. Holy biases batman!" And speaking of Batman, we get the first glimpse of his DC Comics obsession as he enthuses that "I loved Commissioner Gordon..he was my favorite non-superhero!" Apart from the religious stuff and retrospectively ironic sexism, we're still not seeing anything out of the ordinary for a socially awkward male geek at the tail of the Aughties. I might have said some of these things myself at the time, who knows.
By November he's
tangling with a romance novelist about Obamacare, for some reason. Okay, that's weird, but such things do happen on Twitter from time to time, and it was certainly a pertinent issue at the time. He is complaining about being unable to afford health care. 2010 is largely uninteresting from the few available captures. Notably, as of yet he "
doesnt care about iphone 4 and the 'ios'". Louis is now in college hoping to make something of himself. We get a
previously undiscovered profile pic. We also see the first hint of the furry obsession that would come to define his life, as he raves about the artwork of someone called
Immamookin, who draws
shit like this.
No more captures until the last month of 2012. Mostly
politics and football, but now he's describing himself as "
Gay male. Furry. Brony." He appears to claim that he couldn't go to college because it was too expensive, but we have multiple pieces of evidence that he attended Seton Hall (and in any event, why not just mortgage your life away to the student loan lenders, like the rest of us?). By
Halloween 2013 he is using a My Little Pony profile pic and wishing everyone a blessed Samhain.
By February 2014
things are really coming off the rails. There's reason for optimism right off the top, as the MLP profile pic has been replaced with
a photograph of Louis in yet another Pittsburgh Steelers shirt, but that's as normal as it gets. He chimps out at UPS for not updating the tracking on a package he's expecting, and yells that Leo Laporte of
TWiT.tv "do[es] NOT 'own' NSFW. it is too generic a term for you to own. your nymphomistress or your attorney would know that." His bio now describes him as "
#Pagan and quite spiritual. #MaletoFemaleTransgender, identifies as female." He has just under 38,000 tweets at this point.
By August he has rage-quit his account and it has been
taken over by a Russian bot. When we next encounter Louis 4 or 5 years later he has become the pathetic, whiny, depressive scammer we all know today.
In short, this is one of the saddest examples of a person willfully retreating from adulthood that I've ever seen. I'd feel sorry for him if he didn't keep proving over and over that he richly deserves his fate.