I’ve spent the past several weekends swearing I would make time to watch Obsession, but that day has yet to come. I’ve read the rave reviews, seen the YouTube essays in passing, and heard about its many box office records. All of that is cool and all, but I keep kicking the can further down the road.
You know what would have resolved this earlier, though? Someone stopping to tell me that Obsession’s Inde Navarrette was a painfully likeable Twitch goblin before all the fame. Actually, someone finally did—shout out to PC Gamer’s Tim Clark for that—but a VOD of her rampaging through The Last of Us gave me the push I needed.
It’s true, before she was the star of a box office horror hit, Navarrette was streaming her Call of Duty killstreaks unbothered in a Toad hat with the type of chill and unclenched jaw I aspire to have. In an interview with GQ, the Obsession star explained she started the hobby like a lot of us, influenced by an older sibling or relative. In the case of Navarrette, it was her older brother and mom:
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“We started on the PS2, and we would play Shrek games in Big Head mode with my mom,” said Navarrette. “And then I would branch off by myself to play campaign games. Me and Amani [her brother] would play Call of Duty. He was really into Halo. Then we got into Red Dead and like, Fallout, like all of these games. I just would play or watch my older brother.”
The Shrek deep cut is what really got me. They don’t make low-budget games based on children’s movies like they used to, but if she’s talking about Shrek: Super Party, that’s good taste. Don’t go look it up. Just trust me.
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Navarrette’s Twitch streaming era started during the height of COVID lockdowns, and she told GQ she was inspired by other YouTube stars like Markiplier. She started by building her own PC, and streaming just seemed like the natural progression of two major parts of her life, working on set and playing games: “If I’m not working on a show and I love playing videogames by myself and I love playing with friends, then why not stream? It became a lot of fun.”
Look, I’m usually of the mind that you look goofy pulling a “they’re just like me for real” with celebrities, but she stopped to ogle Joel from The Last of Us after the man had just totaled his car. So I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me when I look at her and whisper, “she’s just like me for real.”
Also, the top comment on the YouTube archive calls out her “Activate Windows” desktop warning, and I will neither confirm nor deny if I’ve ever seen such a warning in my life. I’ll just say I think it makes her funny and cool. Let’s leave it at that.
