Youtube/Internet Washouts -

[Blueberry]

After posting in the Linkara thread I started to think about the overall general perception of "celebrity" Youtube/Internet entertainers. If you go back to about 2008 to 2011 you may remember the good times. AVGN was funny, TWGTG was entertaining, Spoony had produced consistent content without having a mental breakdown, Angry Joe did not have a personal vendetta against Nintendo, and nobody knew that Linkara liked dickgirls. Even our own pet DarksydePhil was a far more tolerable and respectable person.

So what is going on? It seems like now more and more of these guys are getting greedy, lazy, less creative, and rely on ad revenue far more than what a functional adult should. Has the bubble burst? Or am I the only who seems to see a pattern when it comes to Youtube/Internetz superstardom?

 

[Frank Rizzo]

After posting in the Linkara thread I started to think about the overall general perception of "celebrity" Youtube/Internet entertainers. If you go back to about 2008 to 2011 you may remember the good times. AVGN was funny, TWGTG was entertaining, Spoony had produced consistent content without having a mental breakdown, Angry Joe did not have a personal vendetta against Nintendo, and nobody knew that Linkara liked dickgirls. Even our own pet DarksydePhil was a far more tolerable and respectable person.

So what is going on? It seems like now more and more of these guys are getting greedy, lazy, less creative, and rely on ad revenue far more than what a functional adult should. Has the bubble burst? Or am I the only who seems to see a pattern when it comes to Youtube/Internetz superstardom?

Would The Annoying Orange count?

I'll say this about him, the dude took a one joke character and briefly turned it into a cash cow (a show on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, merchandise, etc), but from what I saw of his later videos, he seemed to trade in that bit of fame for lazier scripts and reused jokes.

 

[Blueberry]

I guess it really is just based upon personal perspective but I feel that it is a lot of Youtubers have significantly decreased in creativity and have lost a steep amount of respect. AVGN for example sort of dicked around for the past 2 and a half years working on what was probably the most lackluster films of all time...on his own fans dime. Linkara went from a fairly well liked comic reviewer to lecturing his fans about adblock and now he is basically e-begging his fans for patreon bucks. One final example is Spoony, he went from a really sharp witted funny personality, to a TGWTG featured player, to having a very embarassing meltdown, and now he is really just a broken shell of his former self.

It seems to me that it goes moderate success ---> huge ego explosion --->irrational/entitled behavior--->self invoked embarassment--->feeble attempt at final cash grab

 

[c-no]

So what is going on? It seems like now more and more of these guys are getting greedy, lazy, less creative, and rely on ad revenue far more than what a functional adult should. Has the bubble burst? Or am I the only who seems to see a pattern when it comes to Youtube/Internetz superstardom?

The e-fame and internet money would no doubt go to their heads. When looking at how Doug left his old job to make his critic schtick full-time, he would no doubt put a lot of stock in ad revenue and views. These guys are nothing more than average joes that got lucky in making videos where they review a movie or play a game, dropping their own brand of humor in order to rake in views that leads to e-money. Once they got a taste of the money and fame, they could put stock into the internet stardom thing and get money from it. The critic bubble may as well of burst since now, Let's Players get more fame. PewDiePie gets more e-money than

I guess it really is just based upon personal perspective but I feel that it is a lot of Youtubers have significantly decreased in creativity and have lost a steep amount of respect. AVGN for example sort of dicked around for the past 2 and a half years working on what was probably the most lackluster films of all time...on his own fans dime. Linkara went from a fairly well liked comic reviewer to lecturing his fans about adblock and now he is basically e-begging his fans for patreon bucks. One final example is Spoony, he went from a really sharp witted funny personality, to a TGWTG featured player, to having a very embarassing meltdown, and now he is really just a broken shell of his former self.

It seems to me that it goes moderate success ---> huge ego explosion --->irrational/entitled behavior--->self invoked embarassment--->feeble attempt at final cash grab

Well, once they go on with their character, they'd have to find new ideas to keep their audience, try something new such as plotlines during reviews which can be more akin to jumping the shark. the moderate success to feeble final cash grab can be a good summary of how things can go for these guys. Eventually, they fall and have to try and rely on the likes of Patreon.

 

[Lalala]

This was discussed slightly by Arin and Ross in their animation special thing and again by Markiplier while he was drunk, the market has changed so much and YouTube has amplified that. The change in algorithm from view count to minutes viewed has caused the rise in let's players since its relatively easy, long content that means videos are watched for longer and more money/promotion rolls in. Couple that with that whole fiasco of companies false flagging videos and the fact that TGWTG switched to Blip, a sinking ship compared to YouTube thesedays, the people who became popular during the critic boom probably wouldn't meet the same success today when up against the LPers. And I think deep down they know their gravy train is coming to an end, it's made a lot of them desperate and turned them into assholes essentially, they're clutching at what they can while they can since a lot of them left their jobs to make videos full time.
I think thats what's given some LPers an edge too, they've seen first hand the rise and the beginnings of the fall of the critics, they know what to avoid and it seems to be keeping them humble (or in Game Grumps case coming up with more projects as a back up plan). The critics went in blind and didn't know how to prepare to do other things, it's forced them to scramble to get views back up when they don't know why they went down to begin with.
Hope that made sense, I haven't slept in 26 hours

Edit: dangit, ninja'd by C-No

 

[Blueberry]

I think inevitably most of these guys will disappear. The question is, which ones will fade away into obscurity with dignity, and which ones will go out in a blaze of lolcow glory? I feel that the two frontrunners will be Linkara and DarksydePhil, since they have made it apparent that they NEED views and have essentially used their lack of planning as some sort of guilt trip to their fans. Angry Joe might be a idiot in the end, but I also feel like he most likely will be able to find work.

 

[MiloWuCollusion]

I was thinking that many of us saw many e-fame celebrities that we considered 'good' crashing in a blaze of ego and deception but hoped they were smart about it. And this implies that this stuff is not new. Similar stuff has happened in the past in other mediums, specially when are about young unexperienced people that make it big (to later fall hard). Comics during the 90's having millions of sales while people tought that Rob Liefield was a genius, Disco music have a pretty viokent 'death' in a baseball stadium, there was sequel fan fic version of the Quijote where Sancho shitted himself at regular basis before Cervantes decided to do the a real (and melancholic) sequel just because the fan fic author was not only terrible but selling more than he ever did.

In the case of the caustic critic I was thinking that is evolving to something different, but is not incluiding the people that we regularly associete with it. If could write english better I would want to write of something that I realized in the other thread that tought it was terrifing... as the stuff is evolving to some sort of real cultural critic (but without the proffesionalism) as I was thinking that to Nostalgia Critic/Chick/ChannelAwesome to Anita Serkessian there is only one step as snarkiness, lack of fact checking and cult seem not as separeted as once thought.

 

[Bugaboo]

Fred comes to mind, he was a huge thing with the kiddies. Also is Ray William Johnson still relevant? I know that the titular guy left the show a while ago, I don't know what happened since

 

[Lalala]

That's the difference I think, a lot of LPers (especially the huge ones) make no secret of how lucky they feel they are to be in the position they're in. They know the market is easily breakable and they always speak as though, while they love what they're doing and don't want it to end, they know one day it will collapse and they're getting ready for it. Compare that to Linkaras patrreon video where he made jokes about how he hasn't chosen a 'lucrative career path' and how most critics emphasise how fans should support their shows and buy their merchandise...it just feels like they're not gonna fade out with dignity or move on to newer things like I see the LPers doing (hope it's not obvious Im biased towards the LPers lol) but they're gonna go out kicking, screaming and blaming everyone but themselves.
And honestly im probably gonna find it hilarious given some of the assholish things I've heard lately.

 

[Blueberry]

Make no mistake, it is possible for these people to work a full time 40 hour a week job and make the same amount of content. I don't really buy the assertion these people make that they devote all of their time to working on their 'craft'. If anything I believe the youtubez money just enables them to be lazy and dick around 24/7.
I would be more interested in documentary footage of what these people do on a daily basis when they are not making content, opposed to their creations they upload to the internet.

 

[MiloWuCollusion]

That's the difference I think, a lot of LPers (especially the huge ones) make no secret of how lucky they feel they are to be in the position they're in. They know the market is easily breakable and they always speak as though, while they love what they're doing and don't want it to end, they know one day it will collapse and they're getting ready for it. Compare that to Linkaras patrreon video where he made jokes about how he hasn't chosen a 'lucrative career path' and how most critics emphasise how fans should support their shows and buy their merchandise...it just feels like they're not gonna fade out with dignity or move on to newer things like I see the LPers doing (hope it's not obvious Im biased towards the LPers lol) but they're gonna go out kicking, screaming and blaming everyone but themselves.
And honestly im probably gonna find it hilarious given some of the assholish things I've heard lately.

I don't want to break it to you (as I also like many LP channels) but I can totally see some LP going as bad as ChannelAwesome, Arin reminds me when Spoony was about to have his meltdown but was sane enough to produce regular stuff.

 

[AnOminous]

Fred comes to mind, he was a huge thing with the kiddies.

God, Fred was shit.

 

[Lalala]

I don't want to break it to you (as I also like many LP channels) but I can totally see some LP going as bad as ChannelAwesome, Arin reminds me when Spoony was about to have his meltdown but was sane enough to produce regular stuff.

Honestly Arin turning into an asshole doesn't worry me as much as the idea of Danny or Barry doing it, I see what you mean tho honestly I think the guy needs a break, was hoping Starbomb would be enough of a novelty and new thing to keep him sane. But yeah when the bottom drops out of this I can see it hitting him harder than the rest.

Edit to add I am hopeful though that if Arin snaps he'll have better support than Spoony did, I seem to recall that after his meltdown everyone kinda turned on each other and made the situation worse. But the grump team is made of Arins genuine friends and his wife, plus he has friends with the Polaris crew too, so call me optimistic but I'm hoping if he breaks he'll have a better support network than what Spoony had

 

[Blueberry]

I am very curious as to how much money these guys earned, and how much debt they have accumulated since.

 

[Lalala]

I am very curious as to how much money these guys earned, and how much debt they have accumulated since.

Enough debt that apparently a ton of the money raised for the site went into paying for the Walkers debts...tho I still need a source for that one

 

[Kamen Rider Black RX]

Ray William Johnson abandoned his band and eventually handed over =3 to a new host because be was working on a sitcom or something.

Is Shane Dawson still big?

 

[Lalala]

Haven't seen anything from Dawson since that whole crap Taylor swift parody turned into a shitstorm, I assumed he was laying low.

 

[Admiral Piett]

I realize its off topic, but what kind of shitstorm did he find himself in?

 

[Lalala]

I realize its off topic, but what kind of shitstorm did he find himself in?

Well as far as I remember he posted some parody of a Taylor Swift song, her label didn't like it and flagged it as 'copyright' (illegally I must add, parody is under fair use) so there was this explosion on Twitter about it especially since that landed Shane with a strike against his channel, two more of those babies and the thing could have been closed permanently, losing him all his subs and revenue.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

What is your opinion oy Pewdiepie? I think he is fucking annoying in all of his videos. It's just stupid babble. I know that can be funny if its well done but this guy is just obnoxious.