There are other video hosting sites, but as of right now Youtube is the main one, so if there’s another video hosting site it could easily apply as well. So this would be the thread to talk about youtube LP developments in general, whether it’s a policy they’re doing, someone who you like and want to recommend to everyone else, or someone who you question or doubt, provided it’s in a constructive way and not just flaming someone just because you don’t like them.
I’ll admit I started this with Pewdiepie’s recent developments,
Since this could have an effect on how youtube and sponsors will deal with popular Youtubers, as there have been issues before where those at the top got exemptions, but I’d love to hear people talk about positive stuff from youtubers not on this site. There’s a lot of great content out there to just focus on the negative.
I don’t pay tons of attention to Pewdiepie, but there are bits and pieces of things that come from friends or Twitter that really make it sound like he’s getting sick of his job. He’s put out several rant videos in the last few months that generally just seem to moan about how he doesn’t want the responsibility of fame because what he wants to do isn’t what is necessarily good for his channel
With the ultimate form of this statement apparently being that “Tuber Simulator” that came out on mobile a while ago. Apparently he helped fund it, and from what I’ve heard, when you’re first starting out getting popular, it’s fun because you basically have the freedom to do whatever you want, but as you rise in the ranks eventually the types of videos you want to do aren’t what’s popular and you get locked in to an endless battle of chasing trends that might not even interest you
In that light, it really looks like this anti-semitic stuff is just him ceasing to give a shit. He’s obviously super burnt out and seems to be getting a little loose.
I’m sure his inbox is still overflowing with other Youtube MCNs willing to sign him in spite of this.
Pewdiepie could’ve retired several years ago and been set for the rest of his life, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s officially entered “fuck it, I dare you to fire me” mode. You’d think he could find a less fucked up way of rebelling, though.
It does make me wonder what’ll happen in the power vacuum if Pewdiepie does quit, though. Who’s next-in-line for the popular throne? Markiplier?
Just so this post isn’t all about possible white supremacists, here’s two of my favorite Youtubers:
HarshlyCritical is the GOOD version of your standard horror game Youtuber. He has a facecam, but he doesn’t mug excessively, and he doesn’t fake being scared. What you see is his honest reaction, and he does a good job of picking out a game’s strengths and weaknesses. He also has a special talent for finding the absolute worst horror games on Steam and Gamejolt.
MrKravin is one of HarshlyCritical’s friends and honestly the above description applies to him as well. Horror games. No bullshit. Also gaymers represent.
The only Youtube LP people I follow are Super Best Friends. While they often are very loud, bordering on obnoxious, they generally come across as genuine and they play games they actually care about. Sometimes those games happen to be the flavour of the month but the fact that, opposed to a lot of youtube people, they actually finish a vast majority of the games they start LPing speaks for them on that front.
I mostly prefer the playthroughs where they have a blind player, informed companion thing going on.
Anyway, the real reason I watch them is because they enjoy Lucha Underground.
Yeah, Best Friends with their “experienced player guiding a blind player” stuff is usually the best. Matt and Pat playing survival horror games is also basically what the whole channel was founded upon and it definitely feels like where they are the most comfortable. There’s a certain energy to the Best Friends, but it’s never more perfectly tuned than when they are playing a Resident Evil or a Silent Hill. You can tell both Matt and Pat are most in their element then, which is usually why they space that stuff out as far as humanly possible (and actually seem to save it specifically for moments where something else on their channel is under-performing).
If I had to shout out one LPer that isn’t just straight up registered for this forum, I guess I’d say Brickroad. All told, Brickroad’s stuff is probably pretty standard, but he was the first or second LPer I subscribed to on Youtube for his Super Metroid 143% Speed LP, though I guess he’s mostly famous for his Shantae LP, which was for a time featured on Wayforward’s website (and is apparently referenced in Shantae 2). If you don’t count Shantae, most of his LPs never seem to top more than a thousand views per video, and he still doesn’t have more than a couple thousand subscribers even though he’s been doing this for as long as I’ve known about Let’s Play. In spite of being the very definition of flying under the radar, he still makes enough money on Patreon to do Let’s Play full time. If nothing else, he’s incredibly consistent in his output and mostly pretty chill.
If I had to point out two other LPs of Brickroad’s I really enjoyed, it was when he played the Super Mario Bros X level packs Super RMN Bros. and Super Talking Time Bros. Super Mario Bros. X was basically Mario Maker before Mario Maker existed, and RMN Bros was a community level pack that Brickroad became highly frustrated and bitter with, so his own community (the Talking Time forums) answered back with the aptly-named Super Talking Time Bros., which is probably the biggest, most feature-rich Mario fangame I’ve ever seen (16+ fully-featured worlds, if you combine Super TT Bros. 1 and 2 together).
Anyway, Brickroad starts talking about games he’s tried to design and offers up his own critiques on each of the levels he plays, which as a budding indie developer I found super interesting at the time. As he plays TT Bros. he also starts going in to behind-the-scenes stuff about his friends and the levels they designed.
Yeah, this part confuses me, too. It seems pretty recently I was reading articles about how he was stepping up, taking responsibility for his influence, really such a nice guy, etc.
I mean, maybe it is burnout and he’s intentionally scuttling his career, but still, it feels strange.
I would hope that people getting to that level of fame would feel comfortable doing what they want, whether it be good for the channel or not. If you’re not having fun then what’s the point? I’m sure at his level of subscribers, he’d be able to afford losing some if it meant he got to make videos he enjoyed. Then again. I’m not famous.
As for a youtuber I really like. I enjoy Christopher Odd because he really focuses on the game itself. Taking it in for all it’s worth and doesn’t really ham things up. It’s a very genuine take on things and that really pulls me in.
I’d want to agree with this sentiment, but I don’t really think burnout is what’s causing recent issues. Plus when people discuss burnout, it tends to be sympathetic, in the way people are sympathetic towards anyone whose dream job turns into something they hate. I personally feel it has a lot more to do with him hitting a plateau in YouTube fame. The “Delete My Account” stunt he pulled last year was in reaction to him seeing flagging numbers in subscriptions and about how YT analytics are against him because he’s white, from my understanding. Even if he’s calling a popular Indian-Canadian vlogger “cancerous” in jest and joking when he’s basically saying that YouTube as a company wants to hurt his numbers because he’s white, it speaks to an underlying mentality - especially given his history of being Kind Of Really Bad when it comes to not being racist. Maybe a year after this he has stopped caring, but it could also be that he saw a bump from saying he’ll delete his account and figured being outrageous and racist is what will keep his numbers up and the most subscribed producer on YT.
I feel like this most recent incident as well as the “YouTube hates me because I’m white” are both just crude humor/sarcasm. The whole “Delete my channel” thing was already a huge bamboozle and while just the quote “YouTube hates me because I’m White” on it’s own sounds pretty bad, if you watch the rest of the video he’s pretty clearly playing the whole deal up and dramatizing the ordeal for the joke of it all. You could argue there’s potentially malice behind the “Kill the jews” sign thing, but since this is just a one time thing (I hope its a one time thing, at least. I’ve never really closely followed PDP outside of the week after “Adults reacting to PewDiePie” came out way back when) it comes off as a crude joke. That type of humor is incredibly hit or miss with people but unless it’s a repeat offense I think a one-off like this is fine. It’s fully within Disney’s rights to drop him from their network, and the YouTube Show cancellation seems a little over the line(especially given that they were almost completely done shooting episodes for the newest season I think?) it’s still within their right, barring any fucky contract shit. Dark humor is still humor after all. Even if people think it can go over the line, the fact that it reminds us we have a line is at least important enough to justify its existence.
e; PDP has released a statement regarding the whole matter. Seems that the writers behind the WSJ article made a pretty big effort to misrepresent him to cause as much damage as possible. I wonder if there’s grounds for defamation or something, I’m not really sure what the legal basis is for misrepresenting someone and causing them to take monetary damage.
That responce is pretty measured, and if there’s one thing I’ve always liked about Felix it’s that he does actually nut up when he messes up like this and apologize instead of doubleing down on it like JonTron. What worries me is that he still is unwilling to admit that his kind of “boundry pushing” humor does legitimately normalize hate even if he has no malice or it’s taken out of context.
That being said, the wallstreet journal come off way more scummy here, imo. The dude didn’t deserve his show getting cancled over this.
PDP has always seemed like the kind of guy who would do anything, or at least, take any risks necessary to go forward with his videos. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another debate all together. I stand in the pile that there are some things that should not be joked about.
I will agree that it’s good that he apologizes, whether they are real apologies or not is another thing again. It’s a bit of effort that a lot of people nowadays do not make. “I stand by what I say,” is an ideology that really should go away in 2017.
I can’t say I didn’t expect this, but the cavelcade of questionable youtube celebs coming out of the woodwork to defend the sanctity of anti-semetic jokes and to validate the more conspiratorial aspects of his video has been a sight to behold.
Reminds me of gamergate, where you get a bunch of otherwise innocuous people coming out as assholes.
Has he thought of maybe changing his comedy style cause seriously if you’ve got the support from the Daily Stormer maybe you should rethink how your jokes are being received and cut it out.
A lot of YT and streamer personalities don’t really want to deal with the responsibility of having a shitty audience. They make a certain type of content that ends up attracting certain kind of people (who the author themselves might disagree with) and then they aren’t able to manage that audience.
For example, if you’re “The Angry Critic” and you review everything angrily, then you’ll attract people who like that. Then when you slam a game, your viewers will take it a step too far by being “The Angry Viewer” or “The Angries” as their loving nickname is and harass the creators of the game. The Angry Critic was just joking and he doesn’t really hate the creator of the game, but all he does is say “I don’t condone this” and leave it at that. Because why would you take responsibility for the people you brought together?
I could be wrong on this, but I think Retsupurae stopped riffing on other people’s LPs because their audience was harassing said people and they wanted it to stop? That’s the kind of thing you do when you realize your comedy is actually making people act like shit.
Considering that near the end of them doing those riffs, they were censoring the names of their victims for that specific reason, I’d also say that’s why they stopped altogether. Doxers gonna dox, after all.