I am from the Bay Area and have lived in southern California for the last eight years. Everyone says "channel" like a normal person ("chann-uhl" or "chann-ill"). He does too, he's just saying it quickly.
There is an awful lot of focus on how the staff says things here. Imagine if you could do this with your friends: defer to a group of thousands of others who also know that friend, and deconstruct their cadence, timbre, rhythm, and vocabulary over the course of days, months, years, without their knowledge, consent, or say. Just reduce them to little Lego bits, where each piece is a unit of their language. This one is the way Jeff says "chennel". This one is the way he says "theoretically". This one is the way he says "rotten". This one is the questioning lift he applies at the end of a response. This one is the way he raises his eyebrows. Then, once you have completely exposed all of his speech nuances like an exploded diagram through the assistance of the collective Giant Bomb unconscious, you could watch as he forms a response to the question, "what do you think of the Xbox One television interface?" and, much like Neo in The Matrix, see the beautiful code of the words as they leave his lips in apparent slow motion. "I know now. I can see," you would say in awe, the intricacies of every syllable singing - screaming - to you in vivid colorblind-friendly color and clarity. Calmly, and with utter certainty, you turn your head away from his face. "No? It's pretty rotten," you intone, and, turning back, you gaze upon his mouth as it returns exactly those words. You have done it. You have assimilated with the language centers of the Giant Bomb staff.
But to what end? Your social skills, once liquid and adaptable, have become the calculating machinations of a computer. You are no longer a human, engaging and articulating uniquely depending on the circumstance; you now stand outside the warmth of human interconnectivity, in the cold vacuum removed from that world, looking in and examining the beings who were once your peers as a scientist examines a Petri dish. You find that with the knowledge you sought regarding why Jeff says "channel" the way he does comes loneliness unparalleled. It's alright, though. You have your knowledge. And if you can learn the speech patterns of an individual you observed but never met, imagine what you can learn through first-hand experience? You turn away from your monitor, from Jeff's face as he finishes speaking the words you knew before he knew them himself, and you gaze out your window, to the stars. Yes, the stars...That is where I will go. Stepping up and away from your computer, you walk to your window and open it up. Your self-defenestration sends you skyward, and your robot feet shutter and shift into thrusters, propelling you into the stratosphere. You think about looking down, but don't. There is nothing more for you there. But up there? Worlds of possibilities.
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