Popular Youtube video creator Gabriel Traveler recently made a video entitled “Portland, Oregon looks like a zombie apocalypse” Here, he showcased his 27 minute short film to his 587,000 subscribers. For those who don’t have time (or care?) to watch this video, we watched it for you, so here’s a quick summary of events:

The video begins with typical rainy Portland weather and shows ominous street art that reads “It’s Jonestown with a happy ending” before Gabriel gets the train into central Portland. He then shows a number of boarded-up shops, rows of homeless tents and then describes his past experiences in the city, where he claims that the locals generally seemed happier a few years back.

So, despite the dramatic video title and thumbnail, it isn’t really a ‘zombie apocalypse’, however the overall demeanor of the video is quite gloomy – and in fairness, apart from the aforementioned, it’s not exaggeratory or patronizing either.

https://youtu.be/xX20Kx1VkRg

Looking through the comments, most of the viewers seemed to empathize with the theme of the video and agree, with a Youtube account named Ed West writing, “I used to live in Portland in 2010 and 2011. You passed by where I used to work at 6th and Glisan. It was pretty bad then but it looks much, much worse now with the tent city. I also like to travel overseas and have been to 12 countries so far, and I agree that people in the US are by far the most miserable of any country I’ve visited yet. Even people in poor countries like Thailand and Mexico seem a lot happier than people in the US.”

Undoubtedly, times have changed with Portland and it has its fair share of problems, however it will be interesting to see what becomes of the city in the future. With this said, was this video used to generate views, or was it a genuine concern and glimpse into a miserable future?