ChaoticMonki / Cryaotic

About

Cryaotic, or "Cry" for short, is a 25-year-old Let's Player who plays indie, stealth, adventure and horror games, and co-hosts a Saturday livestream named "Late Night with Cry and Russ". He is also known for his "angelic" voice and dramatic reading of creepypastas and fanfiction. His name "Cryaotic" is a combination of his username "ChaoticMonki" and a character on World of Warcraft he made named after a username from Counter-Strike named "Cryosin"^[1]. He is a member of Polaris (formerly called "The Game Station"), like Game Grumps and Markiplier. Most of the music in his videos are from his partners Monstercat Media, Tasty Newtork, and other artists. He has approximately 2.0 million subscribers and more than 406,000 followers on Twitch.

Online History

His channel was made on March 11, 2006^[2], as another outlet after quitting World of Warcraft ^[3]. His first video was "Cry's Theme", uploaded on August 28, 2007. After that, he made some videos^[4] about Moon Guard, a popular server on World of Warcraft.

After a few uploads, he uploaded his first Let's Play video on May 18, 2010. His first full playthrough was the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which began on September 27, 2010 and ended October 10, 2010^[5]. He regularly uploads playthroughs titled as "Cry Plays" on weekdays (and very rarely on Saturdays).

Another Let's Play series Cry made on his channel was "Cry Wastes Time". Instead of being fully commited to finish the game, he would usually fool around and waste time (obviously), with each episode having a different game. He usually makes a "Wastes Time" video as a filler until the next "Cry Plays" part gets uploaded. His first "Wastes Time" video was on June 25, 2012.

Cry has more than 1,500 videos. The longest playlist is his playthrough of various Amnesia Custom Stories^[6] from the Frictional Games forum. His Facebook fanpage^[7] has 30k+ likes, his fan subreddit named r/ChaoticMonki has around 1690 readers and his Twitter account^[8] has 306 thousand followers. Cry's thumbnails usually come from the Tumblr tag "cryaotic art"^[9] and a DeviantArt group CryPlayFan.^[11]

Livestream

Most of the time, Cry announces his livestream via his Twitter^[8] or Tumblr^[26], and sometimes he has unplanned "surprise" streams. Cry is currently the co-host of the Saturday livestream titled "Late Night with Cry and Russ", which starts every Saturday 11 P.M. EST on Cry's Twitch account^[12]. The stream was created by Cryaotic himself and Russ Money, an Amnesia Custom Story Creator and Let's Player that Cry met at the Frictional Games forum^[13]. They made the stream out of sheer boredom and it was the only time they can stream without distractions^[12]. Currently, the stream gets about 18,000 views a week. The stream is hosted by the "Late Night Crew": Cry, Russ Money, Scott Jund, and Snake. Occasionally, there are also frequent guests on the stream. Before the livestream, Cry usually uploads a video named "Livestream Tonight [Date of Stream]" before the stream begins, showing what games will be on the stream.

He also did an 24-hour charity livestream on February 22 for Extra Life^[15], playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. The charity livestream was announced by CinnamonToastKen, and was uploaded on Cry's channel on February 19, 2013. He was able to raise over $21,000 to the "All Children's Hospital". Another 24-hour livestream for the 8-inch "Sup Guy" plushie and two new shirts at the Maker Shop was announced with a stream on his Twitch^[30], which was later uploaded on YouTube. The stream was on July 2nd, 5pm EST until July 3rd, 5pm EST, playing Fallout 3^[30].

Sup Guy

The Sup Guy is Cry's mascot and also depicts Cry himself (or sometimes as a person with brown hair wearing a Sup Guy mask). The Sup Guy's first appearance was in "The Number 2000" on July 17, 2011. It was an animation Cry made in celebration of 2,000 subscribers. The Sup Guy then appeared in the rest of "The Numbers" videos.

Other versions of the Sup Guy were made, which were based on Cry's personality. Notable versions of Cry are Mad!Cry (really violent against enemies, and sort of insane), Virus!Cry (said to be the reason why the game crashes, acts a bit like Mad!Cry), and the recently known Drunk!Cry (whenever he's extremely drunk).

Dramatic Readings

Usually, he's been told by fans that he had a nice voice. Cry's first dramatic reading was "The Family Portrait" uploaded on July 31, 2011, the first video in the "Cry Reads" series. In the video's diescription, someone by the username AeronFTW recommended Cry to do a dramatic reading of a creepypasta^[24]. He also did dramatic readings of fanfictions and other writings, such as an excerpt of "My Immortal" ^[16] and an excerpt of "50 Shades of Gray" ^[17].

Other Works

Some of his other videos are "Cry Abridges", where he usually summarized a game in his point of view and says his opinion on the game afterwards, and "Cry Talks", where he talks about updates in his channel.

Besides his YouTube channel, he also has a deviantART and Newgrounds (under the username "ChaoticMonki"). He has two flash movies on Newgrounds: "Mista Dark" and "The Next Attempt"^[32]. He has 22 Deviations (including a Journal Entry and a Literature Deviation)^[33]. Some of his most famous drawings are "Cat Lover" and "The Stickman" (available on both deviantART and Newgrounds). "The Stickman" resembles Cry's profile picture in all of his accounts.

Reputation

Voice Acting

On his AMA, he said that he wanted to do voice work in games, animation and movies ^[19]. He did voice acting for an episode of "The Holodeck" by Polaris and a short animation by Esquirebob on the comedy channel Nacho Punch. He also uploads some voice acting samples on his SoundCloud^[31].

His first major voice acting role in a video game was on "Popup Dungeon" which was successfully funded on Kickstarter^[20]. His is going to be the voice of "The Wizard" and is also going to be a character in the game. He uploaded some rough samples to his channel along with some footage of the game on May 1, 2014.

Collaborations

One of the most known partners of Cry is Felix Kjellberg, a Let's Player know by the alias Pewdiepie, which began during a fan-feud^[27]. Most of their co-op videos are uploaded on Pewdiepie's channel^[18]. Cry and Pewdiepie have been a popular pair and they even have a shipping name called "PewDieCry". They also read a "PewDieCry" fanfic called "Flowers for My Valentine" which received more than 5,000,000 views.

He also participated in some events in the gaming channel Polaris, such as the Rumble Zone and the Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Hardcore.

Personal Life

One of the greatest mysteries of Cry is his face. Some reasons why he hides his face is because of safety reasons, hating public interactions^[22], and he thinks that video (face cam) with the audio would muddle the experience^[10]. There have been many "leaked" videos or pictures of him but many times cry has stated that none of them are him, he checks all the time and so far there are no pictures of him other then the "Sup Guys". He doesn't share his personal life either, but in some streams and videos, he says he has an older sister, a niece^[27], a younger brother (who appeared in one of his videos)^[34] and he was abandoned by his father. He is dating Cheyenne Avila (@_daaes on twitter)^[23], who appears on his streams and a few of his videos.

Notable Videos

Let's Plays

Dramatic Readings

Search Interest

External References