FILM REVIEW: How a YouTube empire began in a cabin in the midlands

Reporter Adrian Cusack reviews 'How Did We Get Here?' the new Jacksepticeye documentary film which was released recently on Apple TV and iTunes:

Almost a decade ago, in a remote cabin in Ballycumber, Sean McLoughlin created a YouTube account and began uploading videos. He had just been going through what he describes as the most difficult years of his life.

"Nothing in my life will ever get as dark as that time," he says. "That was extreme isolation, extreme loneliness."

On his YouTube channel, under the nickname Jacksepticeye, Sean filmed himself playing, commenting upon, and reacting to video games.

"Back then I was very heavily dependent on that (YouTube) audience to get me through my days, because they were the only people I had to talk to. I had no job. I didn't drive, so even if I had a job I couldn't get to it.

"There was no possibility of gaining new friends. Everyone in Ballycumber is slightly older than me, so there was nobody to hang around with."

What couldn't have been predicted during those early days is that Sean's YouTube videos would become massively successful across the globe.

More than 28 million people have now subscribed to his channel, which has helped make the 32-year-old very wealthy. A recent Irish Times interview introduced him as "Jacksepticeye, the millionaire YouTuber from Offaly."

Now based in England, he is adored by legions of young fans across the US and Europe. Shane Lowry is his only rival for the title of Offaly's most famous person, and yet the demographics and global spread of his fan base mean he could probably walk down the street in several Irish towns without being recognised.

The story of how the charismatic Cloghan native ascended to online superstardom is explored in his new authorised documentary, How Did We Get Here?

The 80-minute film was released internationally on February 28, as a ticketed livestreaming event on the Moment House platform. It has since been made available through Apple TV and iTunes, making the top 10 in the iTunes streaming chart in mid-March.

How Did We Get Here? revolves around a comedy-style stage show of the same name which Sean undertook at 30 venues across the US and Europe in 2017 and 2018.

On-stage footage of him telling jokes and stories in concert halls is interspersed with reflections on his upbringing as he revisits old haunts in Cloghan, Ballycumber, and Athlone, where he attended college and lived for a number of years while his YouTube channel was exploding in popularity.

He grew up as the youngest of a family of five, with two older brothers and two older sisters. "Talking in my family was like an Olympic sport - and I was going for gold!" he says.

His mother Florrie, brothers Malcolm and Simon, and sister Susan, are all interviewed in the film, and family struggles over the years are touched upon. Sean says both of his brothers overcame serious difficulties with alcohol.

Simon explains that his younger brother was determined to follow a different path. "Sean saw a lot of what I went through, and bad stuff that I've done. He never went down the same road I did. He always had a strong head on his shoulders," says Simon.

The film shows Sean telling stories on stage about serving as an altar boy in Cloghan, and about a New Year's ritual in which turf was burned on pitchforks during a parade through the village. "I used to think this was normal," he says.

He is filmed going back to the house where he grew up in Cloghan, now the local veterinary clinic, and then to the cabin in Ballycumber where his family moved when he was 18.

He studied music production in college, but left the course early, and speaks movingly about feeling unsure of his purpose in life.

"Mental health was never talked about in Ireland when I was growing up. It's getting a lot better, but back then it was really hard to talk to anybody about it," he recalls.

When he was at his lowest ebb, YouTube gave him a sense of direction. "Essentially it was a release because he would have gone crazy," says his brother, Malcolm. "I think he forgot about the outside world. He was so immersed in this thing, it was like this little secret that he could come home to."

The YouTube success changed Sean's life completely "because I literally had nothing, and then this thing comes along that makes me actually want to work and makes me happy and passionate about something."

In 2014, when he had attracted 60,000 subscribers to his channel, he moved from Ballycumber to an apartment in Athlone.

There he worked relentlessly on his videos - posting two every single day - and by 2017 his subscriber count had reached "mid-teen millions."

Standing outside his former apartment beside the River Shannon in Athlone, he says it was a place where he "would work all day every day on YouTube, never ever take any breaks and never go outside, only to get groceries."

Malcolm says Sean was "working 15 hours a day" at the time, "and even when I wanted to see him, at home, I had to make an appointment."

Directed by Tucker Prescott, the film is engaging and beautifully shot. While Sean comes across as having genuine and endearing affection for his fans, not every scene in the documentary works.

One of the stories from his stage show lampoons former RTE reporter Ciaran Mullooly for organising an interview with him and then failing to show up at the arranged time because he was reporting on flooding that was occurring in Athlone.

Sean pokes fun at the reporter's accent, saying Mullooly had praised him in advance of the interview but "then ditched me to do a story about the f***ing rain."

The tale is told with an air of self-importance which comes across as quite jarring, and is uncharacteristic of the down-to-earth individual elsewhere in the film.

The wealth and fame his YouTube success has earned is only vaguely alluded to, though a story is included about the moment some young fans recognised him in public for the first time while he was shopping at Tesco in Athlone.

It's clear Sean is a talented communicator whose videos resonate with young people seeking connection and community online, but it would have been interesting if the film had taken a more detailed look at what it was that made the Jacksepticeye videos capture the imagination of so many.

As for what lies ahead, Sean says part of it involves continuing to figure out who he is as an individual. "I'm excited to do that rolling into my early 30s," he says.