Brandon Gladney

Gladney was born on November 16, 1989 in Calhoun, a city in Gordon County, Georgia, United States, to a tree-serviceman father and a stay-at-home mother. He had a lonely childhood. His father was always busy with his work and his mother was often in her own room, watching TV. He was particularly close to his younger brother with whom he used to play video games. His parents used to fight constantly and in the subsequent years, the situation only deteriorated. They divorced and his mother left. His father raised Gladney and his brother by himself.

He did not have many friends in school. At first, it was because of his shyness but later other children started to think that he was “really weird”. They mocked him constantly, rendering him depressed and lonely. It was during this period, according to Gladney, that he started isolating himself from others. He started to grow apart from his brother as well. Brandon’s younger brother had a completely different experience at school. He was popular and had friends and girlfriends.

His mother’s departure from his life served as a wake-up call for Gladney. He was tired of being lonely and depressed. After creating an account on Myspace, he found a girl who used to go to the same school as him. He asked her out on a date and to his surprise, she agreed. A year later, they got married. In his ‘Draw My Life’ video, Gladney remarked that he was happier than he had ever been in his life in the immediate months after their marriage. However, she soon became more demanding and threatened that she would leave him if he did not do what she told him to. He desperately did not want to be alone again so he did all the cooking and cleaning as per her wishes. Despite being deeply unhappy, he was trying to save his marriage. However, she ultimately did leave and had a child with another man.

Brandon Gladney married young. The marriage was an unhappy one and his wife left him for another man. His life plunged into a downward spiral after his wife left. He isolated himself from the real world and spent time playing World of Warcraft. He then discovered Let’s Play videos on YouTube. Realising that this was something he could do himself, he set up a YouTube channel and started making his own Let’s Play content.

Gladney made Let’s Play videos on several video games, including Pokemon, Kingdom’s Hearts, and The Legend of Zelda. The channel not only allocated him a place where he could talk about anything he wanted, it also helped him to go back and relive the memories of playing all these games with his younger brother.

However, Let’s Play videos started to lose popularity with time and Gladney was forced to find himself his first job. He started working at a local Shell Gas Station. He was miserable there, later dubbing it “Hell Station”. He eventually quit after being repeatedly abused by his supervisor for his long hair and moustache.

Not long after that, on November 10, 2012, he set up his new YouTube channel, ABrandonToThePast, where he began to cover a wide range of topics that he found nostalgic, from old Disney films to cartoons to Nintendo. On April 8, 2013, he posted a video titled ‘Top 10 Scariest/Creepiest Things In Pokemon’. It went viral, accumulating over a million views within a few weeks.

Following the success of the Pokemon video, Gladney decided to make content solely on Pokemon. His channel now features Top 5 lists, 50 Things lists, theories, questionnaires, and life stories.