Pooh’s Adventure in Rotting House

I doubt most people have heard of this bizarre internet phenomenon known as Pooh’s Adventure; quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised, since it’s a somewhat niche trend. For those who don’t know, Pooh’s Adventure is a genre of images and videos that inserts a lot of fictional characters into famous movies, usually starring the titular Pooh Bear and his friends. Most of the creators behind these lacked any kind of editing experience, opting to either mute scenes of characters talking or recording themselves to add in dialogue. The low budget vibe of the videos helped them become a source of cringe material for outsiders. However, the subpar editing wasn’t the only thing that dampened the reputation of this phenomenon; I should know, I was in the Pooh’s Adventure community as a kid. 
I didn’t make any videos myself at first, I was just an active viewer; that sorta lead me to seeing all kinds of drama unfold within the community. Besides the obvious grifters calling out creators for being cringe in their eyes, many community members even had feuds between each other. Most of the feuds either had to do with talking about sensitive subjects like 9/11 or making crossover stories out of mature-rated properties. The feud I want to bring up today relates to the second instance, as it just so happened to a friend of mine. The following description is a catalogue of events that happened to another Pooh’s Adventure video maker going by the username “Alex the Alien,” or Alex for short.
Alex wasn’t someone who was deep into the Pooh’s Adventure community, rather always doing his own thing with the formula set up by other creators. Many of the movies he’d insert characters into were, as mentioned before, mature in rating; even at 11, R-rated movies were some of his favorites thanks to his dad liking those kinds of films. He actually brought up in an AMA that he got all his horror movies from his dad passing his old DVDs onto him. Back then, I was a big fan of Alex’s videos, both because of the sources he used and his somewhat different approach to the formula. Funnily enough, it helped us bond and become friends over our shared liking for horror. However, other community members didn’t really feel the same about his channel as I did. 
Alex’s videos became a point of contention to other members due to the sources not being “family friendly” to them. Some of his most reviled videos at the time were movies that contained a lot of practical gore like Alien or The Thing. The unwarranted backlash he’d face would culminate in one of his most unintentionally disturbing videos he’s ever made, one that the Pooh’s Adventure fandom would collectively attempt (and fail) to forget. 
Back in early 2015, Alex would upload a rather peculiar video to his channel, titled “Pooh’s Adventure in Rotting House”; not “in a rotting house,” “in Rotting House.” The video implied the existence of a movie with that title, though nobody heard of it before that point, nobody except for Alex. He mentioned that the footage, in his words, “may be a bit weird for everyone watching”; knowing what the video contained now, you could tell his wording reeked of innocence. Not once does he mention what the movie actually is, only mentioning that it’s yet another DVD from his dad. I’m going to be walking on eggshells describing the events of the video, so just know for now that things will get a little ugly from here. 
The video started with Christopher Robin introducing both the movie and the characters that will be appearing throughout the video. The series chosen were what you can expect from a Pooh’s Adventure video: Winnie the Pooh, Animaniacs, Spongebob, My Little Pony, Thomas, Godzilla, etc. There was even stolen footage of other creators recording themselves appearing, too. After a 2 minute long character introduction, Rotting House’s scenes began playing. It started with camcord footage inside a small, suburban house, focusing on an empty living room. Characters would interject every now and then, asking where all the people were. After seconds of characters talking, a middle-aged couple walks into the scene, wearing strange, grimey-looking leather outfits and masks. Both of them were heavily breathing as if they got back from exercising, right before the husband limps up to the camera and talks to it.
“My wife and I are gonna go house huntin’… you wanna come along?”
More characters comment on their question; some of them were happy to see the titular Rotting House, while others were dismissive of seeing something boring like that. The video cuts back to the movie, showing the couple walking outside in their backyard. They were now visibly sweating in their outfits, causing some characters to worry about their health. The two spouses end up arriving at the titular Rotting House: a dilapidated, rusty shack. What proceeded it was a montage of characters looking surprised by it, celebrating that they found the titular house. I distinctly remember Edward from Thomas the Tank Engine asking if the shack really qualified as a house given its size, with some of his train friends answering that it’s similar enough to their station to be one. As the couple enters it, the husband makes a rather… offputing comment on it.
“This lil abode used to be used for repairs. But now?… It’s used for fun. Tell me, you like fun, don’t ya, Lorain?”
The wife, seemingly Lorain, nods her head and replies.
“Of course I do, darlin’. Tell you what… why don’t we share some fun together, eh?”
The husband puts on a wide, joyous grin on his face. Once again, the characters would interject, saying they’d be excited for a bit of fun, right before noticing both the husband and wife began unzipping their outfits. I’m going to be somewhat blunt about what happens next: they start well… going at it. 
Because of Alex’s lack of knowledge on what YouTube allowed, he left all of it uncensored. A montage of the characters’ frightened reactions started playing: cartoon animals and humans; talking trains; kaiju; superheroes and villains; even other Pooh’s Adventure creators watched in horror as two people “wrestled” as some of them put it. Their dialogue seemed to imply they’ve never seen people do it before. The video would constantly cut from the montage back to the film in an attempt at cartoony shock. I remember seeing this whole scene and reeled back in disgust seeing Alex show that. Nothing much special in the film happened after that, just two adults continuously having fun and fictional characters being traumatized. After the film was over, the video ended with footage from Doug Walker’s review on The Neverending Story III, specifically the scene of Nostalgia Critic destroying the DVD with Pooh’s face shoddily edited over Doug’s. Additionally, the Neverending Story III disc was replaced with a photo of a blank DVD case with “ROTTING HOUSE” marked all over it. 
As you could possibly tell, no one could’ve expected a Pooh’s Adventure youtuber to post literal porn onto the site, especially to one that strictly prohibits stuff like that. The backlash he usually recieved went from cautious reminders that the fandom is filled with kids to vitriolic hatred for what he puts out. It even led to several community members to theorize that Alex was actually a pedophile cashing in on a trend to show disturbing stuff to a young audience. He attempted to fan the flames by responding that he was only a kid that didn’t know, but that only made people trust him less. Not even an hour after the video was released, it was taken down. Alex had barely uploaded after that incident. Even for a kid, he knew it wasn’t possible push back the harassment any further. Eventually, a couple months later, he deleted his channel entirely. 
As I mentioned before, I was there to watch the Rotting House video, and I was just as disturbed as everyone else. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what to think; I knew my friend had better, more innocent intentions with it, but it still felt ballsy to see him put that out. I tried to come in contact with him through his video comments, but everyone caught on to what we were doing. Everyone started to harass me, too, eventually causing me to give up entirely. And just like that, I cut ties with him since I had no means of talking to him anymore. I nearly forgot about him as I started actually uploading to my own channel, moving on from Pooh’s Adventure to not be chastised for being around him any longer. 
It’s been nearly a decade since I watched Alex’s last video. Thinking about it always leaves me in a bit of a crossroad; a part of me keeps wanting to scold him and his parents for posting suggestive material to YouTube out of nowhere, but the more I gave it thought, the more I questioned why they’d let him have that. It’s not like he ever suddenly returned to the internet years later; he just knew to move on. I’m not going to try searching him out if he has, though. As for the video, I’ve seen eyewitnesses bring up descriptions of it in the comments of cringe compilations. Since no one made an attempt to archive it, it lives on as a fading rumor used to damage the reputation of Pooh’s Adventure. By this point, I wouldn’t care about if the trend is cringe or not, I just know it got an old friend of mine a bigger reality check than he could take.
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:YouTube
Category:Weird