Select a region
A Jersey YouTuber, who has amassed nearly 400,000 followers on his retro tech channel, is urging islanders to get into the spirit of repairing and repurposing old items, rather than throwing them away.
Elliot Coll, aka The Retro Future, has spent the last four years educating viewers on fixing and customising old tech, shedding light on forgotten games consoles, hardware, and vintage electronics.
The 22 year-old retro handyman, and recent ambassador for the 'Climate Conversation', spoke to Express about why he was pushing for people to be more aware of the benefits of repurposing old items, rather than simply buying new...
“I think there’s a lot of fun and enjoyment to be had out of these old things that people just seem to see as useless old junk,” Elliot said.
View this post on Instagram
It's a passion whose roots lie in his childhood, with Elliot recalling playing on his GameBoy among his "fondest memories". As he got older, that rapidly grew.
“When I got my first job, I went back and bought some of the old stuff again... and my fascination for retro tech just went all over the place; vintage camera equipment, vintage music equipment, vintage motorcycles and push bikes and cars."
This then led him to set up the channel ’The Retro Future’ in October 2016, starting off with him recording his efforts on his phone with a makeshift cardboard box to keep the camera propped up.
Pictured: Elliot with his YouTube award for over 100,000 subscribers.
Although the channel had grown in popularity by 2018, Elliot was still only making “a few hundred quid a month” out of it - nice pocket money, but not enough to live on, meaning he continued working full-time.
But, in an unusual twist of fate, in the same month he lost his job, his videos started gaining momentum, and he soon found himself earning the same amount of money from them he would have been earning in his job.
392,000 subscribers later, and Elliot is still making his living full-time from the channel.
View this post on Instagram
Among his videos are stories about various obscure consoles and devices from tech history, and explainers about how he restored vintage electronics.
He has also made custom GameBoys for some of the biggest YouTubers on the site, including Memeulous and MrBeast - experiences he called “surreal."
“It’s such a wholesome thing, to see MrBeast - the guy whose entire brand is about spending spending hundreds of thousands of dollars - getting excited about a GameBoy," he said.
“For me, you just realise they’re real people, and nostalgia is something we all relate to and know of."
Video: Elliot creates custom Game Boys for prominent YouTuber, MrBeast.
But even with the reputation Elliot has built for his skills, it’s still about the tech at heart.
More than anything, he thinks being a YouTuber is “about being yourself and having a good time doing it” - and the videos he enjoys most are still when he gets to sit down and review some obscure, “wacky” console he has found.
Encouraging others to get involved in the world of repairs and customising, he explained: “We live in a really great time for doing this kind of stuff.
“...You can go on Amazon, you can go on eBay and buy a little kit that will show you how to wire in and solder a battery to an LED to a switch, and then all of a sudden you see this thing that was nothing become something.”
View this post on Instagram
He encouraged people to start off with small-scale projects, buying fire alarms and other small electronics from 99p stores rather than pressuring themselves with something expensive to repair.
“It’s not just about diving into your £1,000 television,” he said, “it’s about working up to it and enjoying the process, and you’re not going to enjoy it if there’s something on the line.
"It’s a lot more enjoyable and rewarding when you’re working on something cheap.”
Elliot's mission to educate about the joys and benefits of repairing and repurposing are particularly timely, given Jersey's commitment to become carbon neutral in the coming years.
Recently, he became an ambassador for the Jersey 'Climate Conversation' and is urging anyone interested in picking up more sustainable habits to look at the website.
“I think it’s really important that we preserve the island...
"I think the conversations that we need to have are quite off-putting and people don’t want to have them, but if we keep on sweeping them under the rug, one day there will be a generation that won’t know the Jersey that we know now."
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.