About

Warhammer 40,000 Video Edits are a form of humorous videos in which characters are transposed via video edition in the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000 to depict corresponding factions that fit their dialogue. The main YouTube channels to use and spread this kind of content are Barry Walts, Edwin Von Carstein and Wood Imp.

Origin and Spread

The first video to follow that format, titled "Every conversation between Eldar & Humans"^[1] (seen below, left), was released by Barry Walts^[2] on June 15th, 2021. It consists of a scene from the Warhammer video game Dawn Of War, with an insertion of the face of Master Oogway superposed to the Eldar's head to recontextualize the Mmm Monkey meme.

Barry Walts' following video "How every 40K race treats the Tau"^[3] (seen below, right) is the first to insert filmed material instead of animated, which is the kind of editing that would be used from then on. The former video was watched more than 277,000 times and gained more than 13,400 likes, while the latter was watched more than 542,000 times and gained more than 20,000 likes in roughly two years.

A tendency that would soon emerge is the frequent appearance of far-right and alt-right figures in those videos. For instance, Barry Walts' two most viewed videos in that format both depict Alex Jones as a Grey Knight, with the first one published on August 1st, 2021, and cumulating over 1.2 million views and 45,800 likes, being titled "Grey Knight explains the dangers of Slaneesh to a Guardsman"^[4] (shown below, left).

Following that trend, another popular video on this channel, which was published on July 17th, 2022, consists of Alex Jones quotes associated with various WH40K factions (video below, right). This led to a running gag among the viewers, several of them commenting that Alex Jones is an accurate representation of a great many, if not all, WH40K characters and races.

Barry Walts would then go on to release many such videos before abandoning his YouTube channel^[5] on February 2023, mentioning a loss of interest on his end as well as financial issues.

Two other YouTube channels that had recently started to publish similarly edited videos promptly emerged in popularity as a result. The first one is Edwin Von Carstein^[6], whose first video^[7] in that format, featuring Jordan Peterson, was released on September 1st, 2022, and cumulated over 134,000 views and 5,600 likes in one year (shown below).

The second of those channels is Wood Imp^[8], with the first video^[9] released on December 28th, 2022, which gained more than 166,000 views and 6,700 likes in one year for featuring Alex Jones talking to another guardsman about him overhearing two Space Wolves (shown below).

External References