The Destiny community is full of talented Guardians. The Content Creators are a huge part of the community and they put so much time and effort into contributing something special. DTR (Destiny Tracker) wants to shine a spotlight on some of the content creators in the community to recognize them for all the hard work they do, day in and day out, on stream and in the community. This week our Spotlight goes out to a fire-team of Guardians that have created something truly special for the whole community and beyond to enjoy. Anti-Meta Podcast consisting of theAcademyAward (oscar), TheCanuckShow, NaughtyGrog, and akaGEARDad all began playing Destiny at different times but is nothing short of destiny that these Guardians found each other and created something special together. akaGEARDad began playing Destiny during the Taken King expansion starting as a Hunter class Guardian and was quickly in love with everything about the game, but had this to say, " It took me about 6 months to realize my mistake and switched to a Titan, which has been my main ever since. There has never been a game that has sucked me in and occupied my life like Destiny. It actually saved my life - I was going through some really tough times, and I found Destiny and it gave me an escape, something to obsess about outside of what I was dealing with at the time. It gave me hope". Asking akaGEARDad how his gamer tag came to be and who made his logo he replied, " I have twin daughters, and GE and AR are their initials for their first and middle names. And I'm their dad, so it kinda just created itself. My personal logo was created by jh0ward414. It's funny, all he asked for was colors, which I chose blue and pink because those are each of my daughters' favorites and he did the rest. I was stunned when he first showed it to me because it felt like he had pulled it right out of my head, then made it 100x better. He's an amazing artist, and an equally amazing person". Asking akaGEARDad how he was introduced to the Destiny community he responded saying, " I found the Destiny Reset Podcast and listened to them for months. Their positivity was absolutely infectious, and I wanted to be part of the DRPfam. One day I tweeted them and theAER0KNIGHT actually replied, which no one had ever bothered to do before for me on Twitter. I listened to their entire backlog and realized that there was a really positive community surrounding the game. So I started looking for other Destiny podcasts, and found so many! Plus YouTube channels, Twitch channels, Twitter accounts, Reddit, you name it. I found myself part of this giant amazing community, and it made me really happy. Then I found Dad Tales Podcast. I caught them when they were maybe 8 episodes in, and it instantly felt like home. They seemed like guys I would want to have on my Fireteam. I joined their Discord in December 2016, and they welcomed me right away. Adam, Tim, and Oscar were already in there when I showed up and there were less than 20 of us in that server. It stayed that way for months it seems, and we all became very good friends. That's where the four of us met. Here's a fun fact: the Saint-14 Project Mental Health Awareness Stream we just completed was the FIRST time the four of us have all played Destiny together at the same time. That blew me away when I realized that the other night".
TheAcademyAward began playing Destiny during the Beta, and played D1 almost exclusively til Destiny2 released. He mained a Warlock throughout most of the life span of Destiny 1, (but) " towards the end I switched to Hunter so I could win matches", he added. When asking TheAcademyAward how his gamer tag came to be and where it came from, his reply was short and sweet "The Academy Award was just something I decided to use online, because my name is Oscar and I really like movies ¯_(?)_/¯." Without having a personal logo yet, he can be spotted easily usually using an image of an academy award statue almost everywhere. When I asked when he was introduced to the community and the rest of the podcast, he replied " In the last Iron Banner event before Rise of Iron in Destiny 1, I solo queued against a team of 6, all with the clan tag “Dad Tales Podcast”. They thrashed me in the match after the rest of my team left but I listened to a few episodes, joined up, and met the rest of the crew as they each joined". Telling a little more about himself, TheAcademyAward added, " I’m a junior Engineering Physics student in college, amateur filmmaker, hiker, and professional video editor. I spend my free time playing video games and watching movies of all types. My darkest secret is that I’m still not 100% sure whether or not there’s supposed to be a “The” in front of “Anti-Meta Podcast”".
The next member of Anti-Meta Podcast, NaughtyGrog, started playing Destiny exactly on December 11, 2014. " We had a discussion in discord one day and I went back and looked at my achievements to get the exact date. I am a Titan, it’s funny because several people I’ve met wearing one destiny shirt or another have told me “Of course you’re a Titan, makes perfect sense” which I take as a high compliment". I noticed his unique game tag and wondered how it came to be, he explained, " This is kind of a long story but long ago in a galaxy far far away a dear friend of mines' dad drew a comic strip of two cavemen walking on all fours looking at another caveman walking upright. The one looks to another and says 'OOOOH look what grog do'. Anyway not long after a friend was moving and at some point I got angry told a friend to get out of the way and proceeded to lift a washing machine up a flight of steps by myself. To which my friend said 'ooooh look what grog do' and it stuck from there on out. Well fast forward several years and that same friend had a GF who was very into vintage porn/playboys so in an effort to share her finds with us she set us all up Naughty accounts on Gmail so that our regular accounts didn’t get us in trouble, thus was born NaughtyGrog". I also asked how he came into the community and involved with being on the podcast he responded " I hated Destiny at first. I had no friends to play with and had decided to return it because I wasn’t playing it all. I found out that a friend was playing on a regular basis with some other guys and not long after the addiction took full hold. On a long trip home one afternoon I looked up Destiny podcasts and Dad Tales seemed to be a good fit for me. I nearly wrecked the car driving home I was laughing so much and that’s where I met these mad men and many others that I’m proud to call my friends. We all were buddies for quite some time till and one afternoon I got a wall of text from Jay that they’d decided to do a podcast of their own. They said it would be video games and movies. To which I responded with a resounding 'No Thanks' I don’t watch movies and all I play is Destiny so I’m not messing with it. Well I listened to the show to support them and on a whim one afternoon I agreed to be a guest host and the guys were kind enough to allow me to hang around a bit longer". The last member of Anti-Meta Podcast, TheCanuckShow, whom like so many others began playing Destiny during the Beta of the game. He Added, "I started playing Destiny during the beta, and I have mained a hunter for the most part but at late stages of the game I have been maining all three. I stopped playing right before The Dark Below dropped and didn’t pick it back up until House of Wolves. After HoW I played pretty much 5 days a week until right before Destiny 2 Dropped. After The Taken King dropped I got pretty involved with trying to help people get collectibles and run them through night falls. I really didn’t start raiding until just after Rise of Iron came out. Prior to that I had never run Vault of Glass or Crota’s End. I did LFG once for Kings Fall". TheCanuckShow has a passion for the Destiny series and community as well as an incredibly upbeat attitude and fun loving personality that everyone that gets a chance to interact with him enjoys. When asked where his gamer tag TheCanuckShow came to be and who made his amazing log, he replied, " My gamer tag isn’t much of a fun story. My original tag back 11 or 12 years ago was Show420 lmao, I started playing a lot of COD4 with some guys from England, Scotland and the States and they were all calling me Canuck or Show, so I just married the 2 and it became TheCanuckShow. I have had the absolute pleasure of having JH0ward414 design and hook me up with my logo, that mans' art is bloody fantastic". Also, when asked how he became involved with the community and how he met the rest of the team, he responded, "I got involved in the Destiny community pretty late in the game. Just before Rise of Iron came out I started looking for podcasts and found Dad Tales Podcast, started listening to their back log and found that they were very much from the same walks of life I was. I reached out to them to join their discord in October of 2016 took about a month to actually start chatting but just after that NaughtyGrog joined and shortly after that GearDad joined. AcademyAward was already part of the group and he welcomed us with open arms. He was actually one of the first guys I had played with from the group and ran me through VOG Crota and Skolas Prison of Elders for the first time. Naughty and I hit it off straight away as we bonded over an entire night of grinding for the Outbreak Prime".
These incredible community members all came into the Destiny community at different times but destiny had plans for them and the Anti-Meta Podcast was created. The podcast is a fusion of video game and movie talk each week bringing weekly entertainment to everyone with each episode being better than the last. I asked all of the hosts how AMP (Anti Meta Podcast) come to be, akaGEARDad replied, " AMP was a very interesting process. I have always wanted to create content - I'm a creative person, but I'm more talented in my head than I am in real life. Dad Tales Podcast was a huge inspiration to do AMP. Since I'm old enough to be his dad, Oscar and I had this idea for a podcast called Guardian Generations, where we take stuff from my generation and his and compare them and give our opinions on them, etc. jcjesse from DTP and FluffyFingersMD from Potato Thumbs Podcast were instrumental in helping me get all the technical stuff squared away with the podcast. Then right before we were ready to launch, we approached Tim and Adam and they both jumped on board, and the rest is history". Having such a close bond with one another the hosts of AMP, DTP, and Potato Thumbs Podcast support one another, having a rooted relationship in the community showing that Guardians truly help and support each other and that real friendships were made as with so many others. Since the AMP crew is very close, I asked who on the show is the true comedian, akaGEARDad explained " We all have a pretty healthy sense of humor, and one thing we all have in common is no one gets offended. By anything. That’s both a plus and a minus. It’s a plus because we laugh a lot, but it can be a minus because I don’t think everyone understands that about us, and the things we say on the show can sometimes come across as an attack on people’s opinions, and it’s really not that at all. That’s just how we talk to one another and often times during the show we forget we’re even recording and what you hear is literally just the four of us enjoying one another’s company. As for who the joker is, that’s difficult to pin down. Tim is incredibly funny and he makes me literally laugh out loud constantly. Oscar’s humor is very dry and you’ll miss things if you’re not paying attention. He really likes to instigate things - he and Adam remind me of siblings where the younger one is always prodding at the older one trying to get a reaction. Adam is very sarcastic, and if you don’t know him it can be a little startling, but he’s my closest friend on the show - not that I’m not close to Tim and Oscar - so I understand that about him and he amuses me to no end. I have a very sick sense of humor and I can laugh at very horrific things. I think it’s a unique mix that can surprise new listeners, but we’re always just having fun. As Oscar says, “It always comes from a place of love".” After which TheAcademyAward responded, "It’s hard to pin down a single joker, because our senses of humor as a show is more than the sum of its parts. At least for myself, I think I come up with better jokes when I’m on the show, because I can play off of my co-hosts as much as they can play off of me. At the same time, I tend to just make the jokes that would make me laugh, and sometimes other people seem to like them, so I must be doing something right". The amount of genuine humor and entertaining conversations this fun loving team makes every episode a must listen. Their brotherly interactions and each having their own unique perspectives draw you in.
One of the segments of the podcast is the movie of the week, where the hosts invite the listeners to watch a selected movie for the next week's episode. Bringing the interaction between show and listener to a new level and carrying the entertainment further with involving the listeners with the show. When I asked the AMP team who's idea was it to create the movie of the week segment and how they create new segments and decide which to go with, TheCanuckShow responded " The movie segment was Jays from the get go, we didn’t want to have segments in the show, we wanted to be set apart as so many shows already do such a great job with their segments. We just want to let it flow and what ever happens happens". With that being said, akaGEARDad replied, " The movie talk was the basis of our original idea for Guardian Generations. We didn’t want to just be another Destiny podcast. We knew we needed something else to stand out. It has actually helped us a lot as we are transitioning away from being solely a Destiny-focused show to one that encompasses more overall gaming, along with the movie talk. Destiny will always be home, but it’s nice to walk through the rest of the neighborhood. I hope that analogy makes sense. As for our segments, we actually make it a point to not have any, as you can tell by our nonexistent transitions during the show. We want it to just be a spontaneous conversation that goes from one topic to the next. The pieces that are currently in place all kind of just happened on their own. We start by talking about our week, which transitions into gaming talk, and the segment where we answer listener questions really just created itself. The only thing we make a point of doing is having a set start to the movie talk, but even that will go off in various tangents. As for upcoming segments - you’ll find them once we do. It’s all very organic. But we do plan to have more guests, so that’s very exciting for us". With the movie of the week segment, I could not help myself but ask what each of their favorite movies were; TheCanuckShow replied with a short and sweet answer, " My favorite movie of all time is Apollo 13". TheAcademyAwards responded, " If you asked me again tomorrow, my answer would probably change, but most days my answer is There Will Be Blood (2007), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s not only excellent, but it was also the movie that made me want to make movies of my own. Look forward to a discussion on an upcoming episode of Anti-Meta Podcast, probably". With the most time to think, akaGEARDad responded, " I’ve maintained for decades that my favorite movie is Braveheart, although I haven’t seen it in a very long time. The movies I pick on my turn for AMP are ones that I hold dear and have watched many times over. So if you listen and pay attention to my picks, you can get an idea for what entertains me. With that said, I’m genuinely enjoying watching the movies that everyone else chooses. AMP has been very eye-opening for me, and I feel like I learn something new every week. I love it". NaughtGrog responded with his favorite episode on the show to date which made everyone laugh, " The episode where we watched “Future War” will always be my favorite. We laughed at that movie till we cried". akaGEARDad added, " So much hilarious stuff happens outside of what you hear on the released episodes. There are so many completely inappropriate and unacceptable conversations that get edited out, that I can’t single out just one. But they’re all saved, so maybe one day we’ll have a Patreon exclusive or something". It is truly an honor to have the opportunity to spotlight these incredible content creators and recognize all the hard work they do every week and to share in the experience of getting a chance to see behind the curtain so to speak and get to know each of them. Our community is truly fortunate to have these gentlemen in our community us as they continue to give back to the community with a weekly podcast that everyone can enjoy as well as their daily interactions with the community on social medias. With being such a young podcast at episode 23 and counting these gentlemen do as much for the community as they can in game and out. The first charity event the AMP team participated in was the Saint-14 Project mental health awareness charity stream, " Saint-14 Project is the first, and hopefully not last, official charity stream that AMP has participated in. It was more of an awareness stream, but we still managed to raised some money which was awesome. We were absolutely thrilled when we were asked to join, as the opportunity to give back to this community is a priority for all four of us. So for anyone out there reading this, give us a holler. Our DM’s are wide open", akaGEARDad added. TheCanuckShow added with sharing the experience they had participating during the Saint-14 Project stream, " I myself have only done the one charity stream the Saint 14 Project and it was amazing, for me the most memorable part about it was looking at chat and hearing people come forward with their mental health struggles. Just knowing that us sharing our stories during the stream allowed folks to open up and come forward". You can catch these guys playing a variety of games through out each week from Destiny 2, Overwatch, PUBG and Division. Lastly, I wanted to ask each what their favorite classic game and or console is, TheCanuckShow responded, " My favorite classic console would have to be Sega Genesis. Man I played sooo much NHLPA 93 and NHL 94 on that thing it was amazing". akaGEARDad said, " The Legend of Zelda on NES is my favorite game of all time. I make it a point to beat that game at least once every 6 months. That’s followed closely by D1 on XB1. I’ve owned nearly every console since the Atari 800 (yes, I’m old), and I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a lot of different games. I’ve played several games that have hit 100 hours of playtime for me, but Destiny is the only one that has hit 1000+. I’m so happy that gaming has become an acceptable mainstream pastime now. I don’t have to hide it anymore!". NaughtyGrog responded next with " The Black Bass on NES and Golden Eye on super Nintendo". Lastly TheAcademyAward replied with his favorite game and console, " I never played any real “classic” games, and I didn’t own a console until an Xbox 360. My favorite game growing up is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for PC, and it was the first game I 100% completed". You can find these wonder gentlemen on their socials at twitter.com/akaGEARDad, twitter.com/TheCanuckShow, twitter.com/NaughtyGrog, twitter.com/academy_oscar, and of course the Anti-Meta Podcast with new episodes each week at antimetapodcast.podbean.com, and at the Anti-Meta Podcast Twitter page at twitter.com/AntiMetaPodcast. Thank you again to the Anti-Meta Podcast team for being this weeks Community Content Creators Spotlight, truly is an honor having these incredible content creators in the community, working hard to bring something meaningful and entertaining to all. We look forward to everything coming in the future from these guys and keep an eye out for them as they continue to show support for everyone in the community and being inspirations to others to have fun with what you love and not to hold yourself back from doing something you love. Til we meet again, Thank you for reading.
Shout-outs: akaGEARDad- " I’d like to shout out my wife Angela, who has been nothing but understanding and accommodating of me being a part of this community, and me pursuing my creative outlets. She is the glue that holds our family together, and I married way out of my league.
NaughtyGrog- "Shout outs to my guys. I so look forward to spending a couple of hours with Jay, Adam and Oscar every week. A BIG Shout out to my bride who encourage this deviant behavior".
TheAcademyAward - " I just want to shoutout my awesome co-hosts, who are the high point of my weekend!".
TheCanuckShow - " thank you for this opportunity"
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