Art is a powerful thing. It presents itself in different forms. Most commonly you’d think of a drawing on a canvas but it can also be auditory, a musical composition. It can be a visual thing, say a movie or even a well-edited long-form videos on YouTube. Nowadays, I’d even argue videogames as a medium of art is proving itself to be one of the most powerful form of artistic expression. It incorporates every other artform you can think of, taking from character/environment design, sound design, storytelling, and so much more to deliver you the most immersive experience possible.

There are certain things in life that changes your perception of the world, your view or taste in something; like a fond childhood memory, say your dad introducing you to a new hobby that becomes the bedrock of who you want to become when you grow up. There’s a certain memory of mine that I still remember vividly, it’s one where I decided to click on a music video from a YouTube channel I used to follow. The music video in question was released on May 7, 2017 which was when I watched the video, I was 12 then. I didn’t like the song, anyone in my place would’ve exited out of the video.

But something made me stay, I don’t know why or what. I opened the comment section, and there was this one comment that got me really curious. It was a guy asking about an earworm that was stuck in his head, a song that had a female vocal saying “individual” over and over again. I checked his replies hoping someone might’ve found the song he was looking for, a song even I was eager to listen to after reading his comment but no one had replied yet. I checked in on his comment the next day but nothing. After a few days, someone managed to answer with a song name but it sadly wasn’t the one he was looking for. He replied that he had somehow managed to find it, I was excited!

Ryan Nolan will never know how much his comment impacted an internet stranger’s life. I never knew him, he will never know me and yet somehow there’s a strange connection through a single piece of music that unites the both of us.

The song was Drifting Away by Antent. Mystery solved! All that was left for me to do was give the song a listen. I quickly searched for the song on YouTube and I couldn’t believe my ears. In my short 12 years of living, I had never listened to something like that before. I never knew songs could sound like this. Like everyone else, I listened to whatever my parents listened to or what was on the TV but this was special. Every other song I had listened up to that point paled in comparison. Every chord, every synth, every drum pattern, every vocal chop went so incredibly well together.

I cannot be forgetting about the artwork in the video that immediately caught my eye before giving the song a listen. It was a fanart of 2B, the main character from the videogame Nier: Automata. I didn’t really have a proper PC then so I couldn’t play the game. In essence it’s a game about androids (robots) 10,000 years into the future who fight against machines made by alien-beings. Their creators (us, the humans) had abandoned Earth for the Moon, leaving only the androids behind. 2B was also an android, made in the likeness of a real human being with the capacity to feel emotions. As someone that’s into philosophy and ethics the game quickly piqued my interest. I watched play-throughs and video essays about the game on YouTube, reading articles on the same. The game was also the reason how I got into cosplays in the first place.

To summarize, my small decision of choosing to watch the music video, opening the comment section, seeing someone looking for a song and finding it, listening to it, changed my taste in music and the reason I came to know about Cosplays. 8 years later, Drifting Away is still my favorite song of all time and Nier: Automata is still my favorite game of all time, which is ironic because I’ve never actually played it but the sheer impact it had on my life pushes it to be number one.

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