That's a good question. First of all, it's not "4-Qwee" as one person asked me months ago. It's plain old "4-Q-W-I". With that said, my name is Noah, and I am one of the people behind 4QWI. As it exists now, 4QWI is described as a sports and gaming content collaborative, and I want to unpack that to mark a new chapter in what it is we do here and for posterity. As I sit at my computer working feverishly on our website at 9 PM MDT, I want to collect my thoughts on this thing that has been consuming all of my free time this past week. This'll probably be very cheesy and melodramatic, so a warning on that front.
4QWI originally existed as the 4 Quarters of a Whole Idiot Podcast, which was a football-specific podcast that existed intermittently between 2015 and 2019, alongside some folks who I consider lifelong friends; Austin Khoury, Brett Shevlin and Austin Specht, all of whom have contributed to helping 4QWI become what it is now, either through content, funding, or both. Within the 10 episodes or so of the podcast that we recorded on a rather inconsistent basis, one thing was clear to me: MY GOD was it fun. Some of the hardest laughs and brightest memories of my life came from just a few episodes of a podcast with these boys. Those episodes are scattered through Spotify and YouTube and, in my humble opinion, still hold up today. Creating something with your friends is just so cool.
Fast forward to 2023. Over the years between 2019 and then, there were rumblings amongst us to rekindle the podcast and march forward, but it just never happened. One day, an idea sprung to respawn 4QWI as not just a podcast but as an outlet, a collaborative space in which myself and my friends could make videos, blog, and so forth about what we all mutually love more than most things: sports. With a Facebook group chat and a dream, 4QWI.com was born; funded by myself and my friends (shoutout to Kevin McDermot and Tom Lapointe also) as a "wait and see" sort of project. I took our original logo and branding that I made at barely 17 years old and modernized it, paying homage to the old colors, and off we went. Blogs, a YouTube video and some TikToks resulted very infrequently from January to April 2023 and we went radio silent; partially due to football season ending, and partially due to all of us simply being busy.
As a content creator of over a decade, I find myself at my most happy when I am creating something, whether it be YouTube videos, music, or streaming games on Twitch, I have a tendency to hyperfixate on projects to the point of excess. Here is where I am now. With a week or two into the new NFL season a fire got lit under me to not take what this was, what this could be, for granted. We pooled together money to get a .com going, and we all had this vision to do something cool, so why not take it on for real? We just had to actually fucking do it. I began revamping the website, probing the groupchat for content, and blogs came back. We were back. Shoutout to another dear friend Jay Rooney for helping out with his own articles and helping assist with the some the blogs I've written recently. I wanted to remember that the word "collaborative" was always what 4QWI was expected to be when we relaunched at the beginning of the year.
Speaking with my partner Morgan just a few days ago, she had the aside comment of "if you guys did video game stuff I'd help out" and all of a sudden it made sense. What else do I bond over with all my friends over besides sports? Games. Duh. So the decision was made very recently to make 4QWI a more rounded content hub that focuses on me and my friend's two biggest interests. All of a sudden now, the word collaborative is beginning to really take shape: friends are working together on content, friends are using their own passion and energy to create through a common vessel, and it is turning out to feel like some of the most fulfilling projects I've ever worked on. Shoutout to my good friend Sam Whitaker for kicking off our shift to include gaming content, with an amazing piece regarding remasters versus new IPs in gaming. Check it out.
This is all happening fast as well. Just exactly one week ago, 4QWI lay completely dormant for five months, collecting dust and leaving so much on the table. No more. At this point the mission statement for 4QWI is to continuously allow people to create something with purpose and meaning, and hopefully bring some more collaborators and an audience in along the way. 4QWI now is a project that I am happy to hyperfixate on, knowing there are people in my life whom I cherish who do this with me. The path ahead is pretty unclear other than knowing it stretches out far and wide so long as we let it.
So what can community members expect from us? The limit is only what we make it. On our website, the News/Blogs page will continue to be the home base and lifeblood of 4QWI: long form written content about things that the authors give a shit about. Our current and future contributors will all have a different idea of what they want to write or create to fulfill themselves and that is the beauty of it. Our brand new Discord server will eventually serve as a hub for our community to group up for gaming or watch Monday Night Football together. Our Twitter (X, whatever) will serve as a forum for us to give poorly constructed takes, or live tweet during WWE Raw, gaming news, or give (un)solicited fantasy sports advice. Looking to the future, live watch parties and gaming sessions are sure to come on Twitch some day. Maybe a podcast or two.
Right now, besides continuing to have a generally regular stream of content, the goal is to reach and cultivate an audience to take ownership of this with us. I am not going to pretend that we currently have legions of people engaging in our work and buying the shirts. However, I think there is plenty of innate value in creating for oneself, whether an audience is there or not. But it sure does help. Nobody asked for me to write this blog, but I've found myself over the past week teeming with excitement over having a new project to throw myself into. What is so appealing about this is that it was born as a continuation of an idea that came to be almost a decade ago, and now as a growing group we get the opportunity to do things the way we want to do them. As a person I tend to get ahead of myself and over my head, but as of now, I'm ready to stand beside everyone who has ever and will ever donate their time and energy and hard-earned money to make this possible. We're so young and just finding footing, but I am excited to track our progress, bring in new folks, and be many more than just 4 Quarters of a Whole Idiot.
Creating something with your friends is just so cool.