E slater

e slater is a United States-registeredhttps://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UChlmOgrxoBbgP7uhWFR9T1g/monthly YouTube channel that is infamous for posting bait-and-switch videos related to the British-American cartoon The Amazing World of Gumball. Their videos' thumbnails, titles and descriptions will typically resemble an official video for something Gumball-related, however the actual video itself (with the exception of "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4" and "who is e slater?") will always turn out to be a low-effort video made for comedic purposes. It is currently unknown who runs the channel, and multiple theories exist as to the owners' true identity; some believe the channel is an official Cartoon Network-authorized production meant as a marketing stunt for a future Gumball announcement, some believe it is a channel not authorized by Cartoon Network but made by one of the Gumball production staff or someone connected to the staff, and some simply believe the channel is not run by anyone working on Gumball or Cartoon Network, and is instead a run by a devoted fan or group of fans.
==Biography==
e slater was created on June 2nd, 2019https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UChlmOgrxoBbgP7uhWFR9T1g, two days after the then-final episode of the series, The Inquisition, was released on VOD - the episode received mixed reviews due to its unexplained cliffhanger ending. The first e slater video was uploaded the very same day as the channel's creation, titled "the amazing world of gumball the movie trailer".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwp-zMglFLg
e slater would continue to upload more Gumball videos infrequently, which would all turn out to be bait-and-switch or meme videos.
==Videos==
===GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4===
On March 27th, 2023, e slater uploaded a new video, titled "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4". The video started out like all of e slater's other videos, being an obvious troll video, but beginning at the 0:20 second mark, the video transitioned into a fully-animated and voiced Gumball animation, with an animation style that perfectly captured the style of the show. The video is about Gumball and Darwin discovering the e slater channel and noticing how absurd the channel's content is, and eventually they realize that they too are part of an e slater video. Immediately afterwards, the video cuts to a title card for The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie. Gumball walks into the title card and denies that such a movie will be created, additionally claiming that the audience should not believe what the voiceover says because "he's British." A portal to the Void, an important location in The Amazing World of Gumball, then opens, taking Gumball with it. A few seconds later, the portal closes, and the voiceover continues as if nothing happened. Right as the voiceover says "Coming soon to Cartoon Networ-", the title card starts glitching, and the video ends.
The video quickly became e slater's most viewed video, with many users praising the overall animation quality. While previously e slater was presumed to be a fan channel by many, the release of this video challenged that theory, with some believing that e slater was actually owned by Cartoon Network or someone working on The Amazing World of Gumball.
===who is e slater?===
On June 2nd, 2024, the 5th anniversary of the channel's creation, e slater would premiere a new video, the first in over a year, titled "who is e slater?" This video is currently the longest video on the channel, with a runtime of 11 minutes and 10 seconds - the average runtime of a real Gumball episode. 
The video begins by showing a television, the same one used in "the amazing world of gumball the movie trailer", quickly displaying scenes from various Gumball episodes, with TV static being present inbetween the scenes. The final scene shown on the TV is the infamous final scene of the show, where a giant portal to the Void opens and begins to destroy the town of Elmore. The next segment of the video is a mini-documentary, which goes over the history of the channel, how it managed to gain a sudden amount of attention upon the release of "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4", and how multiple users began to question the ownership or purpose of the channel. The third and final segment of the video, being the longest one, is a live-action Gumball short film, with live-action actors depicting the cartoon characters as humans.
In the short film, Gumball has been grieving the death of his adopted brother, Darwin, for five years (the same time the channel was created.) Tobias asks Gumball why he's been nothing but depressed ever since his death, and eventually they get into a fight, with an actor presumably playing Carrie having to break it up. As Gumball walks home, he bumps into a wall where he expected to find his neighborhood. The wall turns out to be a giant television screen, which begins to play multiple clips from The Amazing World of Gumball. Darwin's hand then grabs Gumball, throwing Gumball into a scene from his school, where Darwin is present. Gumball is surprised that Darwin is alive, but Darwin tells Gumball that he was gone for only five seconds. Darwin rushes to his classroom to avoid being late, while Gumball stays behind. He notices a blue sticky note on his shoe, which he picks up and reads. The sticky note reads "I can't say goodbye.", which is a line from the song "Goodbye" in the Gumball episode titled "The Uncle." Gumball looks up to find himself in a white void, standing next to a computer and Darwin's fishbowl (with a goldfish in it). The computer also shows a sort of Droste effect, with a repeating image of Gumball standing in the white void with the computer and fishbowl. Gumball presses the button to turn off the computer, which results in the video itself turning off (in a manner similar to the Cartoon Network Studios Europe logo.) 30 seconds of a black screen are present after he turns off the computer before the video finally ends.
===SOUND playlist===
About an hour or so before "who is e slater?" was uploaded, a playlist titled "SOUND" was created on the e slater channel, containing six unlisted e slater videos.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4n7hJXFT5c8SXPfqMYyxp69mw9Vxav- Five of the videos in the playlist consist of the soundtrack for "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4" and "who is e slater?". The fourth video in the playlist, "03 A DIFFERENT LIFE", is a 30-second video of several freeze-frames from multiple Gumball episodes played in rapid succession.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSGJOOD-E6k The video's accompanying audio, when run through a spectrogram, contains a picture of Gumball standing in the starry background used for the title cards in most episodes of Gumball.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tie9UZwmG50
===June 24th, 2024 Q&A Community post===
On June 24th, 2024, the 5-year anniversary of the airdate of Gumball's last episode, e slater uploaded a new community post hosting a Q&A. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlmOgrxoBbgP7uhWFR9T1g/community?lb=Ugkxk6fjL9WOifyhTB7TLttWH9qKv1Ejg83y Several questions were answered by e slater, however e slater's responses were quite vague. For example, one user asked e slater who he was, and e slater responded with "i am e slater".
At roughly 6:00 PM EST, e slater posted a pinned comment saying "thank you so much for your wonderful comments and questions. i'll be waking up soon. this post will remain for 1 hour. let's keep talking until then." About an hour later, the community post was deleted, ending the Q&A.
==Identity==
Upon the release of "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4", the true ownership of the channel was called into question.
===Theory that the channel is official===
Many users believed that the e slater channel was actually an official Cartoon Network channel used as a marketing stunt to drive up hype for a future Gumball announcement. Some of the evidence supporting this theory was:
*The channel's name, "e slater", can be re-arranged to spell "realest".
*The channel was established relatively soon after the show ended - e slater was created on June 2nd, 2019, and The Amazing World of Gumball ended on May 31st, 2019.
*The animation style for "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4" was very accurate to the animation style of the show, far beyond the expected quality of a fan animation.
*When someone on the /r/gumball subreddit posted e slater's logo for the Gumball movie, Ben Bocquelet, the creator of the series, responded to the post saying that the logo was "pretty close" to the official movie's logo.https://old.reddit.com/r/gumball/comments/eanl5n/the_amazing_world_of_gumball_the_movie_logo_made/fav3dg8/
*During the Q&A on June 24th, 2024, e slater shared an image with the text “Q&A” on a starfield background. This image is incredibly similar to an image displayed on a screen during a Q&A at the 2024 Annecy Animation Festival (the same panel where the seventh season of Gumball was officially announced).
===Theory that the channel is unofficial===
Several other users believed the channel was not an official Cartoon Network production, and instead belonged to a devoted Gumball fan or group of fans. Some of the evidence supporting this theory was:
*The voice actors for Gumball and Darwin in "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4" did not resemble the voices of Gumball and Darwin in the show. The voice acting was likely done by a soundalike, or artificial intelligence.
**It is entirely possible that the channel is an official production, but soundalikes or artificial intelligence were utilized anyway. This might have been done, for example, as a cost-cutting measure or because the standard voice actors weren't available to record the dialogue.
*When Gumball and Darwin view e slater's videos in "GUMBALL MOVIE 2023.mp4", Darwin notices the video titled "The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie! | Official Clip | Disney+" and exclaims "Disney+?! That doesn't even make any sense!" The verbal mention of Disney+, as well as the usage of the Disney+ logo in a video and thumbnail, seems unlikely for a show owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a competing company of The Walt Disney Company.
**Ironically, The Amazing World of Gumball actually became available for streaming on Disney+ after this video's release.This was because Gumball is available to stream on Hulu, and Disney+ introduced the ability for its users to watch Hulu content on Disney+ beginning in 2024 (assuming they have an active subscription for both sites.)
*In e slater's video titled "Season 7 Announcement | Gumball | Cartoon Network UK", a desktop taskbar can be seen which contains Internet Explorer searches towards inappropriate content.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXurDUhFkis References to said inappropriate content are incredibly unlikely to be present on a channel that would hypothetically belong to Cartoon Network, since Cartoon Network is a TV channel targeted towards children aged 6 to 12.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Network#:~:text=Cartoon%20Network%20primarily%20targets%20children,adults%20aged%2018%20to%2034.
Despite people's theories, the owner of the channel, and any knowledge of whether the channel is an official Gumball channel or a devoted fan, are currently unknown. The only known external contact method outside of the channel is a business email address listed on e slater's channel page.
==References==
Category:Animation YouTubers
Category:Meme YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2019
Category:American YouTubers