DBFH: Celebrating more than 15 years without controversy.

[Sieg Reyu]

So I'll admit, I've been away from here for a while. So I don't know if its been posted anywhere or if its been discussed in the discord, but this year there's been a couple of Content Creator Charity events that have gotten themselves in hot water. Earlier this year, Ian, "Idubbbz" Johma put on his second annual Creator Clash boxing event. And after kicking one of the most anticipated fighters over petty personal reasons, (he trained with someone that Ian doesn't like) they revealed that they spent so much money on the event and accommodations for its VIPs, that they failed to make any money for the actual charities, and had to run a charity fundraising stream to get people to donate so they could make good on what they had promised to the various charities.

Then just a couple of weeks ago, it was revealed that Indieland, a gaming charity fundraiser started by Jirard Khalil, aka The Completionist, had failed to disburse any of the donations they had taken in over the course of 9 nine years. And what makes it even worse is that they have him recorded on call admitting to knowing about the fact that they haven't done anything with the money before this years Indieland, and then at this years Indieland, he once again claimed that the fundraiser was and has supported all these different charities. We still don't know the full story and if the money is still there, some people think fraud, others think gross incompetence. There's a 12 minute video that covers everything you need to know, and Desert Bus For Hope gets a shout out at the end as one of the reputable online charity fundraisers.

https://youtu.be/Rb0dMF1zHyA?si=A-DJenT48tg-J3Z0

So cheers LRR for always being honest, forthright, and trustworthy people. I think the only time you've ever lied to us was the real reason why we saw less and less of Bill over the years. I feel like most other people out there would have used Bill's disease to attract sympathy and attention. But ya'll are different and I truly commend that.

[AdmiralMemo]

And then we found out later from Karl that Open Hand was even WORSE than first reported...

So glad that Desert Bus has come out without any major controversy. (I'm aware of maybe a handful of minor things that happened over the years that were less than good, but they were never things that affected the charity aspect, and they were all things that were quickly and decisively fixed as soon as they were brought up.)

[King Kool]

Here it is. The last huge King Kool rant on the LoadingReadyRun forums. Maybe the last big rant of my life. The last time I wrote a rant this big, it was on what went down on fucking JANUARY 6TH.

Enormous unhinged rant hidden below.

Click to Expand

Just recently, Hbomberguy released a video about plagiarism. I remember watching his video about Andrew Wakefield and the antivax scandal from the turn of the century. Since we were still deep in the pandemic at the time, I let it sit for a while. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to watch something that I thought would be grueling. As it is, Hbomb is an excellent host that takes these things and turns them into a satisfying narrative about what exactly when down. I’m so glad I watched it, and I feel it is the quintessential response video to the antivax movement, covering it from almost every angle. Get the shot, by the way. Or don’t, at this point. I don’t even care. If you think it’ll give your kids autism, go ahead and not get it yourself. The just city will be easier to build in your absence.

I didn’t really want to watch his latest near-four hour video. If I wanted to watch four hours about bad people, I’d get Apple+ and watch that director’s cut of Napoleon. BUT there was a follow-up video from Todd in the Shadows. One of the subjects of the plagiarism scandal has been on his radar for about a year, and is the subject of the majority of the video. Not only are they evidently a plagiarist, they also make stuff up that just isn’t true to make a point. I did eventually mostly-listen to Hbomb’s about some serial plagiarists and one-time plagiarists. If only all accusations were as easy to prove as that, when it’s so damn blatant.

With these two videos, what can we learn about this fella? Evidently, he was a man who wanted to be seen as an intellectual analyst of media, but didn’t feel like putting in the work. They stole, and when they didn’t steal, they just made shit up. They cultivated an illusion of intellectualism without putting in the work.

Weirdly enough, before Hbomb’s video went up, I was going to start this rant talking about two Youtubers I've dropped from my subscription feed in 2023. One was one I found quite recently, maybe a few years ago at most. One was a long, long time subscription of over ten years. I had held on through many, MANY botherations of behavior and opinion.

The first one was a relatively simple and surgical process. The video maker was accused of plagiarism. I unsubscribed without another thought on it or without any further research. It could have been unfair, but it’s my list and that’s all there was to it. If something draws me back, then maybe I’ll give them another chance. Plagiarism is one of those hard outs for me, of course, as it should be for anyone calling themselves an artist. (Hbomb covers this one in the video... I’m not AS unsympathetic as he is, but he’s definitely in the right.)

The second one... the reasons for the separation might seem trivial, but nevertheless. He was releasing classic episodes with some new commentary at the end, so I skipped ahead on one to hear the new commentary because I didn't care that much about the original review. It was some subject that nobody really cares about this late in the game. It wasn’t Think Like A Man, Too, but it coulda been, if you catch my drift.

Evidently, he had anticipated someone would do that, so he said, "If you skipped ahead, uh, don't do that." I forget exactly how he phrased it, but it was not a charitable way. He didn't have an excuse with the clarity of "we need view-minutes to get on top of the algo, please" or "It's better if you see this in context.” No, it was just a snotty remark about not fasting forward through a video that he put what is essentially the smallest amount of work into to call a 'new' video. It reminds me of that Homestar Runner joke about the 35 cent luncch special that was chicken wing bones and ice water. It’s trying to double dip, but also insisting that we eat all the bones. Oh, you’re going to do something incredibly lazy, tell me how to watch AND be a snob about it, when you’re struggling to scrape together any views at all? Well, fuck you, then. Have fun swinging in the breeze alone.

I think when I was originally writing this, I was trying to get my feelings out without naming the accused. Sometimes, it’s about finding universal truths among the cauldron of strong feelings. It shouldn’t matter who it’s happening to, it should only matter what is true and what universal truths we can surmise in this tempest.

Nevertheless, since this thread is all about him, we might as well drop that charade. We’re talking about Jirard Khalil, the Completionist. So we might as well just be specific, at least when the story relates to him.

I could not find the strength to watch the video that I think launched this whole scandal. Maybe some other time, when I live in a fucking cotton-candy candy world of licorice and bubblegum, like the later levels in The Lost Vikings. But not right now. I just don’t have the strength. (I try not to use the term ‘spoons’ flippantly, since I am neither depressed nor suffer chronic fatigue. I’m just old and tired in a more general way, especially with the last seven years behind us.)

Not that long ago, there was a different, now mostly discontinued video game podcast. In its waning episodes, the hosts indulged in some pettiness that they used to try to resist, because the podcast was over, so who gives a shit. It’s the same way that Subway employee covered Morgan’s sandwich with Parmesan because he was quitting. Even I indulged in that when I left my job last year. Today only, you can bring in your fucking McDonalds. (Ironically, if it was Subway, I still would’ve said no. That would have stunk up the place.)

Anyway, they covered their beef with a different Youtuber whom I've been watching for over ten years. I skipped that episode. I didn't have the strength then either to find out why this had gone down. It may be a reasonable complaint, but I just can’t absorb any more negativity about people with whom I have mostly positive interactions. I’ll watch that if I’m feeling strong, or when the world isn’t constantly a nightmare.

I did click one of of Jirard’s videos, probably something unfortunately scheduled to come out right after this apocalyptic revelation. It was a sponsored thing that is now saturated with comments about the crime. One person claimed to be from the accusing video maker’s “army.”

And this is where it all fell into place for me.

---

I remember a long time ago on Twitter, someone didn't like how a (now-long-since canceled for something else) pop culture critic had reacted to something. I legit don’t remember what it was, maybe it was that 2016 Ghostbusters thing. Am I the only person who liked 2016 more than that one they made with Stranger Things? Anyway, that someone instructed their followers to bombard the pop-culture critic with a certain question relating to whatever the perceived shortcoming was on this issue.

I dropped that person from Twitter IMMEDIATELY.

I didn’t say I was doing it, I just did it. I know there are dipshits who think ‘it’s not an airport, you don’t need to announce your departure,’ but I saw people saying that to a Twitter account with a large footprint that just couldn’t take the negativity anymore. It’s probably rude to do it when unfollowing, but what’s wrong with saying goodbye to your followers? And if you say people don’t care when you care enough to comment... good lord, some of these people are shitheads.

Why enlisting your followers to swamp someone can be considered appropriate behavior on Twitter, yet is one of the first rules established on fucking 4CHAN... is a mystery. Maybe social media is all different flavors of terrible.

If I ever wielded any form of social power, I would absolutely NEVER use it this way. Maybe I could be like the squares at Good Mythical Morning and ask people to donate to charity. But as far as bothering people, even if they are guilty as hell and deserve worse... I don't want anyone doing this under my name.

I believe the Penny-Arcade guys had something like this happen accidentally VERY early in their history, when their fans ran off and bothered someone who had evidently wronged them. Tycho said something to the order of, "I am a big boy, I don't need your protection or defense."

But the little foot soldiers who swamp other people's comments to be dicks or otherwise cause trouble on someone else’s behalf... I really think this is a sign of absolutely no character at all. After all, you should swamp a feed with death threats and such for only really good reasons, like making a Spanish dish improperly, or recasting a voice actor because the screaming gave them voice nodules, or because a character in a movie or game is a lesbian. I feel like I have to explain why not to shake a baby or not put razors in apples. It seems so obvious that there really cannot be a good reason to do any of this.

I remember that former video game podcasting duo had picked on some large targets, and then when that Diablo Immortal debacle went down... they broke rank and thought that most of the reaction to this development were overblown and called the reaction from consumers lame crybabies, or something akin to that.

This led to weeks, maybe it was months, of every video they posted having a negative thumbs-up to thumbs-down ratio. I remember seeing when the attention of the rats finally broke and the like-to-dislike ratio normalized to something more ordinary. Youtube has since taken away the Dislike button, which is a problem way larger than this. Defanging misguided movements like this is not worth the earnest consumer power that is lost without the dislike button.

We have a real-life example of this: what if Steam video game reviews weren't allowed to have negative reviews? What if the only way we could see if a game was good was the volume of 'good' reviews? Of course, review-bombing is a problem, as people who have never played a game make their stupid stupid opinions by adding their voice to the stacks of other enraged uninformed weirdos. Rather than telling everyone that they can't make a negative review, they have a way for consumers to ignore anomalous review activity, when Overwatch or whatever makes everyone mad by changing one of Tracer's poses or whatever has their bonnet filled with bees. This is the way to do it. Allow this folderol to be seen in proper context... so it can be ignored.

(I really thought this could be something that we all agreed on. There was a video game Youtuber who complained at this alleged disempowerment of the consumer, allowing other consumers to choose to turn off the garbage reviews by nitwits who did not play it. I very swiftly dropped them from my life and thoughts and I am no less for it. You probably have not heard of them. I’m trying not to bring up anyone but Jirard, since there is simply no point avoiding discussing him in this thread.)

As it is, the point is made. A bunch of losers would vote-bomb their videos repeatedly, for weeks, because they disagreed with the audience about Diablo Immortal, a game that hadn’t yet been released and they did not play and were not obligated to play. Yes, it’s a mobile game that is now as deeply recognized as being grind-saturated pay-to-win BS as we are sure that the moon is not actually made of cheese. And yes, Blizzard sucks and we know that, too. But that doesn’t make them wrong for being skeptical about the reaction. Their childish actions basically helped prove their point, that the crybabies were not to be taken seriously.

At some point in the aftershocks of this original scandal, but before that Hbomb vid dropped, I was in the food court of my local mall. I watched a young man accidentally drop his drink cup. It had only ice left inside, no fluid. The lid came loose and the ice cubes scattered on the floor. The young man started to pick up the ice, but he left four cubes behind as his father evidently had a new solution: a wet floor sign that he hopefully didn't remove from some other puddle from some other spilled drink.

I worked somewhere with some peculiarly designed tile that got very slippery if any waster or ice hit it (or butter, but that would probably make any tile slick). I took a huge slip and fall, legs in the air, right on my ass in front of the sink. I was like seventeen, I popped up and I was fine. I trained myself to take care of this any time I noticed it. It is deeply ingrained in me to clean water off the floor to stop someone slipping and really hurting themselves... but especially ice. Ice is a self-refilling puddle, as dangerous on a tile floor as a land mine.

So I cleaned it up. I left behind my laptop for a second and picked the ice up and brought it to a trash can. I left the wet floor sign behind. The men were confused, but I think they might have thought I was going to shove it in their face. But that's not what I felt compelled to do. I wanted to make sure nobody slipped, not that two people cleaned up after themselves to my satisfaction.

Maybe it's time to just admit to myself that I am likely obsessive-compulsive. I did a report on it in 12th grade and even then, I could see myself in some aspects of it. Then again, self-diagnosis is prone to err, but that doesn’t stop it from being more popular on the Internet than Belle Delphine.

But there's a certain point where... so what? If there is a problem that can be rectified, and I can do it, I'd like to live in a world where everyone would do this, so maybe I don't slip on the floor and go ass-up like a cartoon character.

I had another example of this recently. I saw a woman getting on a bus, but I happened to be sitting at just the right angle to see her drop something. After she got on, I went out the front of the bus and found what she dropped: one of her gloves. She would have never find that thing again if I hadn’t intervened. I got a weird look from the bus driver, who thankfully didn’t charge me for a second ride, not that it really works like that on the modern bus system.

The look the bus driver gave me had me thinking: would the average person just let someone lose their fucking glove? At least those two other people would just leave some ice on the ground for someone to flutter through the air and shatter their hip, not just dropping their food court tendies.

Sure, when it comes down to things that could actually hurt someone, like interfering in a fight or administering untrained medical help... hesitating or not getting involved is completely reasonable. But something like this, where there seems to be no downside? Why not? Haven’t you ever lost something and thought, “I hope someone gets this back to me?” Have you ever slipped on a wet floor and thought, “Why didn’t anyone clean this crap up?” Is the world not better when we at least TRY to have each other’s backs?

So this obsession with order or correcting discord in the world may explain why I am so distressed when even normal interpersonal stuff gets in the way of Youtube teams. It can change in intensity, depending on the person and the circumstance. I remember when the Zaibatsu famously broke up because two of the members were having interpersonal strife. Nothing else to explain, they just didn’t like each other. Even that caused me distress, and I never watched them! But even groups I've only just gotten to watch, or ones I never watched, it can sauce me that dissonance when I hear about it. I want things to work out. A sense that it won’t... sucks.

I got a ride from a friend’s mother about a month ago. It saved me about three hours of train rides, and she was going somewhere nearby anyway. But she put on some form of right-wing program on Sirius. I tried to tolerate this, until they pulled out the old chestnut “he got 11 million more votes this time.” That’s election denial shit, and that is way over the line. Go ahead and make fun of Biden all you want. I don’t take it personally because I’m not a weirdo, but I can’t just sit there and listen to this. I had to put on my headphones and listen to music the rest of the way home.

Is this not considered some kind of foul? This person knows I lean mostly liberal, so why do this? Why broadcast something that you had to know would make me uncomfortable? Just to prove the power they had over me?

What if I was driving a car with someone and I started playing wacko porn on the radio? That would be considered a dick move, right? But I would never do this because I see no reasons to broadcast the fantasies that comfort me to other people. Whatever it is, whether you cling to the illusions that Trump is not as unpopular as damp socks and broccoli ice cream, or you think you’d stand like a mighty oak in the case of a home intruder, or you make comments about the relative attractiveness of a younger woman when you’re in your sixties and married, as if it matters AT ALL... why do you have to make it my problem? My illusions of wealthy large-breasted catgirl professional Goldeneye players who hire me as their professional brushies butler and controller mechanic... I don’t need to make that anyone else’s business.

Keep your fantasy of competent liberals making abortions mandatory if it lights a fire in your belly. Don’t make it my problem. Next time, I will just take the train, even if it takes all day. Graham and Beej made it look fun.

But isn’t that the absolute essence of fascism? Shedding your decency and trying to force the world into a shape, to be a tiny part in a changing the world into being more the way that resembles you, the ultimate form of narcissism. That’s the reason why shitheads flock behind Trump, because they believe he has the power to make this real. Stronger narcissists swamp the weaker ones, which is why Trump holds these wretches in thrall yet looks like a whipped puppy when faced with other world leaders... because he knows they are stronger than him and shatter his illusion of omnipotence. He writes moon-eyed love letters to them, but all he wants to do is have them vanish and restore his illusions.

This is what I am driving at. There’s a famous game dev I met at PAX. I won’t name them. It was in the shadow of one of those bigoted spree shootings we have more often in America than seasons of Survivor. The latest one was one that targeted a demographic that they represented. I felt compelled to make sure they felt welcome at PAX and told them, “there are two kinds of people. Those that want to hurt others, and those that don’t. That’s really what’s important, not the other stuff.”

To me, this idea of a commenter ‘army’ is dystopian and servile and foul, but so is a lot of other stuff on the Internet that we tolerate. But most of all, it strikes me as jaw-droppingly pathetic. To become just one glaring eye and screaming mouth to give someone a bad day, or to threaten someone’s livelihood, or even hurt someone physically... because SOMEONE TOLD YOU SOMETHING. Who are those deeply credulous people, apparently built like a car without a brake?

I’ve met Jirard four times, three times at PAX East. I challenged him to make an episode on Blast Corps. (That hasn’t come about yet. no big deal) I was probably the first person to tell him congratulations for re-completing the first 120 games that he had to remove from his channel because of the breakdown of the relationship with his original partner Greg. (If this current scandal has anything to do with this, I’d be shocked that Greg didn’t blab this out earlier. If it’s as bad as some think it is, why did Greg just let it happen? Anyway, I didn’t even watch much in the Greg era, I joined in after he left.)

In 2020, this was in the long shadow of a different controversy from a friend and collaborator (and someone who was at a PPR, I’ll give that hint...), a thick controversy that led people to calling Jirard’s grandmother or something? I don’t remember exactly what the fuck went down. In 2020, there was a panel with him and some other Youtubers about the travails of being on Youtube, how they work eighty hour weeks, six or seven days every week, for not all that much dough. Jirard’s perspective was based on being swept into his his friend’s troubles, “a situation I had nothing to do with,” he stressed.

Let’s use a different example that nobody’s going to care that I use: Jontron. Jontron shot his mouth off a few times and found himself at the locus of the Internet’s hate boot. There was one where he used that “R” word in a tweet. You know the one, that word fucking EVERYONE used to say, INCLUDING LoadingReadyRun. He commiserated on the Co-optional Podcast that he would just get a normal job if the Internet got too hot. This didn’t stop him from using it in a different video, but he was drunk, I guess. I don’t know.

Around the same era, they talk about the Mountain Dew sponsored Game Jam that broke down because Jontron refused to go on camera and talk smack about a game developer and give them that saucy reality content that is apparently so appetizing to so many. That developer... was Zoe Quinn. And BOTH of these were before the coalescence of that most infamous game hate mob: Gamergate. The first was August? 2013, the other was 2012?

All this makes me surprised when he shot his mouth off about those right-wing Bell Curve nonsense he got into in like 2017 or whenever that was. He really hasn’t said shit since then, maybe he just learned to keep a lid on it. I could provide some evidence that even his Flex-Tape videos are right-wing propaganda, if Red Green also counts as that. Doing things and fixing things by yourself, that apex of masculine expression... the Flex-Tape Guy even appears in his sequel video, because he smelled 50 million views, I guess, and that gets him out the door! Is that guy a MyPillow Mike in the making? How many CEOs are even not jerks, other than Steve Dengler?

Futhermore, there’s one of those Co-Optional podcasts where he talks about the then-current original Wreck-It Ralph, where he goes along with people liking it before he says, “Eh, I hate that movie. I just didn’t want to get into it.” AND there’s a Game Grumps, I think it’s the Glover episode, where he says something akin to: Whenever I see a Twitlonger, I’m like... or you could make a blogpost, or separate tweets.” Remember how bad Twitter functionality used to be, when other people invented stuff to make it work? Anyway, that apology about the R-word thing was on Twitlonger...

Maybe you think I’m crazy for even knowing this, or trying to force this into a shape that resembled a point, like a bunch of pop-tarts pressed into a cupcake tin. Why do I watch this or try to remember this? Because MAYBE someone with their head screwed on straight needs to remember some of this shit, because we need to also keep stuff in context.

All this would demonstrate my conclusion that MAYBE Jontron does not hold his convictions that strongly. He just says whatever he hears or thinks. Lots of people are like that, and they usually don’t change the world or have millions of Youtube followers. That’s one of those, “how the fuck do we fix this” problems for the Internet age. If he was just someone who wanted fame for whatever reason or ANY reason, he could have pivoted into right-wing nonsense, and maybe he could have eaten Ben Shapiro’s lunch. Instead, he just makes his dumb-ass videos. He doesn’t even talk about video games anymore! He’s a pesudo-H3H3, which is no surprise since Hila was a producer on that show for a while.

This is a personal reason, but I don’t understand why someone would WANT to be a creative on Youtube UNLESS some part of the process was completely necessary for their life. Writing is my passion. Making Youtube videos to talk about movies isn’t a passion, but the writing of them is a component of it. It’s just easier to get people to watch something than read it sometime. The idea of these people plagiarizing their stuff to be big on Youtube... even if they made a fortune, how could that be worth it emotionally?

I only bring this up because there is a tangible difference between a Jontron who makes videos because he wants to make videos, and one who is making them like a content farm to make money or otherwise appear to be something he isn’t, like the lazy plagiarists and content farms covered in Hbomb’s videos. In that way, there is a tangible difference between a Jontron that believed that stuff in the pit of his soul, and one who just got influenced by some other right-wing cockring and repeated it because he just hadn’t thought it through very hard, or hadn’t been corrected. Man Carrying Thing just made a video about an fictional innocuous historical Youtube channel taking a HARD swerve against smooth jazz Waluigis, and I asked if it was better or worse if they did it because that was what they believed... or if it was a deliberate marketing move. I think it’s better if we’re all honest, but I could see an argument either way.

I’ve stuck with some Youtubers that maybe I shouldn’t have. The only one I’ve watched longer than LoadingReadyRun who updates with any regularity is Thunderf00t, another controversial figure who thankfully didn’t go down that road of COMPLETE right-wing nutjob like his ex-friend Sargon. (I do NOT watch and have never watched Sargon. I didn’t know he was British until that lawsuit came around.) Thunderf00t separated from the ‘skeptics movement’ a while back after they made fun of some woman who was killed. The video for that is galling. Then there was Brexit, which he was opposed to and thought was stupid, and now Thunderf00t just dunks on Elon a lot, which we can all agree... is always fun. No way to punch down on the richest man in the world as he just keeps marching down his endless conga line of rakes.

Should I watch any of these idiots? Maybe not. I should read a fucking book. But nobody can make you emotionally separate from someone else, whoever it is. When some other Youtubers get in trouble, your emotional reaction matters much more than people talking about the event. Once someone is trying to convince you that someone else is bad or not worthy of your precious eyeball's attention, I instinctively put up my guard. For people easily persuaded by someone else’s words... is this how you feel about your friends in real life? Would you want your friends to so easily associate you with something negative, to be so deeply credulous by something that someone tells you?

There’s been this fascinating hypothesis on narcissism. Evidently, the weakness of narcissists are people that they can’t manipulate and those who do not have secret agendas. The hypothesis is that narcissists weakness... are autistic people. The subtle machinations and manipulations of the truly narcissistic go right over the heads of autistic people, and the autistic persons evidently won’t spare someone’s feelings and can really cut through the narcissist’s armor. It’s like the fictional zones for a pretend game by children, the ‘goo’ or other safe zone that you can touch to not be ‘out’ in tag. They just don’t recognize it.

It does not take a narcissist to commit a crime. I only assign that for the moment because I think it’s useful for how I’ve come to think of this. The last big thing Jirard did was try to finance a full download of the entire 3DS E-shop. He credited the financing of this to some brand deals he took for other videos. Some people seem to think that is partially where the stolen money went.

This part doesn’t make sense to me. Now, we all do illogical things sometimes. Some of us do them all of the time. But the question I pose is: would a person stealing for his own greed take this money and use it to attempt to preserve game history? Possibly, if he was worried about a “legacy...” a word he has used a few times for himself. But this doesn’t gel with my interactions with him, or my current understanding of his character.

In 20202, After that panel about the troubles of Youtubing, I spoke to him (and the man behind Arlo, who was also at the panel). That was where I told Jirard, to his face, after he endured the pointless abuse at his friend’s other scandal... that he had a heart of gold.

And he gave me such a grateful smile.

I hate to think this wasn’t real... but I could see someone like Jirard getting sweet-talked into something by a real villain, naively trusting that the money was getting where it was meant to go. Tragically, getting duped DOES sadly line up with my understanding of his character.

If that was all fake, or this is from a conflicted man, someone who could not resist the siren call of that deadly sin... then I will have to reconcile that when we know for sure. I have already shed my tears and gnashed my teeth and shaped this pain into something that I can at least fit inside my heart so I can get on with my day. If I am wrong, I will rip it open and do it again until it fits with the truth as well. That is fine. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again.

I don’t know what else can soothe my pain except time. I could run into these threads and start clicking the downvote button on every comment like some sort of very well-adjusted person... but what good would that even do? I don’t know what went down, and maybe I’ll be defending a very bad person. The only thing I can realistically do there, that I know won’t hurt anyone without cause... is nothing.

But what I will never do is run into someone’s comment section and say, “I know what you did” UNLESS I SAW THAT SHIT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES. I probably wouldn’t do it even if I was a first-hand witness, because that just strikes me as classless. “I know what you did...” isn’t that what Hannibal Burress’ gym teacher character said to Peter Parker for that faked video of him killing Mysterio in the third Spider-Man movie (no, not that one, the good one)? He was wrong, AND an asshole. Sure, he was deceived and also a victim in his own right, but some people evidently have no problem going to bother someone and make nasty comments because SOME OTHER VIDEO said something? hat gives you license to treat someone like that?! Why don’t you just unsubscribe like a normal passive-aggressive person?

“We know what you did,” indeed. That word ‘know’ is doing a LOT of lifting. This is why we should leave all this stuff to real life justice, pitiable as that may be. There is nothing we can do as a mob that accomplishes anything except getting Rat Sonic removed from the Sonic movie. We need to break that crankshaft that connects the act of being a douchebag on the internet with social change. If you can do this in a way that is polite and respectful... maybe still don’t do that, because I saw some of that addressed at Holly Conrad and I don’t think she deserved any of that, fuck I’m just letting ALL the cats out of all the bags, aren’t I?

I resolved a long time ago to never use the Internet to give someone a bad day (outside of things like sharing bad news). But I also resolved to stop following someone only based on what THEY say, not what others say about them. There can be exceptions for this. Eventually, I can bring myself in line with the truth if I find it compelling or reasonable.

(This is rather embarrassing, but I think I technically still follow Vic Mignogna on Twitter because I was following that rule and I was off Twitter for most of the last five years. I could fix that, but I have Twitter redirected to LoadingReadyRun so I stay off it. I could EASILY correct that and unfollow him based on the years of legal nonsense he has run himself into, trying to escape his reputation. There are still evidently cons that will feature him, so... at least someone loves him. It doesn’t have to be me. You know that part of Hey Baby by No Doubt where she sings “With the stranger in my face who says he knows my mom/and went to my high school...” I involuntarily picture him as the creepazoid now. But we are way off-topic now. If I somehow go back to Twitter before it burns down, I’ll remove him.)

If it’s an accusation of plagiarism that is cut-and-dry, with scripts overlaid like an overhead projector... that’s easier than the Easy button from an office supply store. But anyone trying to make it about the drama and whatever... I’d just rather not hear that from anyone who wants to fuel that sort of stuff. It’s like finding out they’re the Toxic Avenger, gathering strength from something that would kill me.

And yeah, with some of those examples, including the one that Jirard was swept up in before... MAYBE that one wasn’t quite what it seemed. That’s not even the only example of dubious accusations IN THE COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE WHO FUCKING KNOW JONTRON. Maybe someone who THINKS he knows something is awful dangerous if they’re not careful. This is why, even with the absolute preponderance of evidence he is wielding, Hbomb always tells people NOT TO FUCKING BOTHER PEOPLE. Even if someone deserves it, why don’t we just NOT act like a bunch of feral cats? Even people who used to rip on Trump right to his Twitter, I was always like, “Why do that? It’s not punching DOWN, but wouldn’t the world be better if we didn’t act like this? Is the Golden Rule just a suggestion? Is something so simple and elegant that illiterate desert goat herders and sun worshippers figured it out about the time Erastothenes figured out the rough size of the round earth?”

It could even be that this is how some people express their obsessive nature, by taking the imaginary sword and doing keyboard warrior shit. You feel you need to do SOMETHING because it will feel SO GOOD to feed that gray wolf. Trying to put things right by acting bad. Or you simply have to express these negative feelings and smear them around so you don’t have to hold them inside anymore. If there is a flicker of darkness or unhappiness in your heart, you are going to Make It Someone Else’s Problem. What WAS Gamergate except a crowd of shitheads going after people for bad reasons? Does it magically become good if their reasons were good? I say it’s bad either way, but it’s definitely still worse if your reasons also suck.

We would all do better if we just slowed down and thought, “hey, even if what I’m feeling is true and reasonable, why lash out? Why don’t I just sit on this for a bit, rather than use my phone as a firearm and snap of something hurtful at the moment I am certain to feel the angriest and the nastiest?” Does that feel good to you? To treat others this way? What does this solve? Who does this help?

---

As I try to wrap up this nonsense, Jirard has posted a response.

I have not watched it. This is just poking the bandaged wound with a chopstick. At this tender time, if he said ONE thing wrong, THAT could bring it all down for me. He has handled situations like this with grace before. But I am not ready.

That’s the thesis. What you say about someone else says more about you than about the person you’re saying it about.

And don’t be a dick on the Internet. Remember Wil Wheaton.

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” - Samuel Johnson

(Today is also the day that the anniversary LRRCast posts episode six, which covers the production of Strip Search. Since Sieg is the one who posted this, I should state that I am not interested in re-legislating my disapproval of Strip Search.

The conflict in my heart over Jirard is that the accusation stands in contrast with my understanding of his character. That is where the dissonance comes from. There is no “did they?” question with Strip Search. They did. If Jirard’s latest video was “yeah, I did it, and so what?” There would be no dissonance. I would just wonder if he was replaced with a pod person.

Strip Search was always a question of why someone would do this, why would someone join the editing Dark Side. I also struggle with why someone would do a lot of other things, like have children or believe in God or buy a Macintosh that wasn’t a laptop if you didn’t work in media. But it was ten years ago, and maybe the people who were exploited have moved on, or maybe they haven’t. Where is the winner? Where are the losers? Where is ANYTHING that they have made? It matters not. There are never any winners in reality programming, only losers. All we can do is move on.

I really hope that this anniversary is the last time anyone talks about Strip Search. If people really want to defend the art form that has given us the last eight years of American misery and may still drag this immensely important cultural experiment right down the plug in a wave of selfishness and fascism... I just don’t understand it.)

[Sieg Reyu]

Here it is. The last huge King Kool rant on the LoadingReadyRun forums. Maybe the last big rant of my life. The last time I wrote a rant this big, it was on what went down on fucking JANUARY 6TH.

Enormous unhinged rant hidden below.

Click to Expand

Just recently, Hbomberguy released a video about plagiarism. I remember watching his video about Andrew Wakefield and the antivax scandal from the turn of the century. Since we were still deep in the pandemic at the time, I let it sit for a while. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to watch something that I thought would be grueling. As it is, Hbomb is an excellent host that takes these things and turns them into a satisfying narrative about what exactly when down. I’m so glad I watched it, and I feel it is the quintessential response video to the antivax movement, covering it from almost every angle. Get the shot, by the way. Or don’t, at this point. I don’t even care. If you think it’ll give your kids autism, go ahead and not get it yourself. The just city will be easier to build in your absence.

I didn’t really want to watch his latest near-four hour video. If I wanted to watch four hours about bad people, I’d get Apple+ and watch that director’s cut of Napoleon. BUT there was a follow-up video from Todd in the Shadows. One of the subjects of the plagiarism scandal has been on his radar for about a year, and is the subject of the majority of the video. Not only are they evidently a plagiarist, they also make stuff up that just isn’t true to make a point. I did eventually mostly-listen to Hbomb’s about some serial plagiarists and one-time plagiarists. If only all accusations were as easy to prove as that, when it’s so damn blatant.

With these two videos, what can we learn about this fella? Evidently, he was a man who wanted to be seen as an intellectual analyst of media, but didn’t feel like putting in the work. They stole, and when they didn’t steal, they just made shit up. They cultivated an illusion of intellectualism without putting in the work.

Weirdly enough, before Hbomb’s video went up, I was going to start this rant talking about two Youtubers I've dropped from my subscription feed in 2023. One was one I found quite recently, maybe a few years ago at most. One was a long, long time subscription of over ten years. I had held on through many, MANY botherations of behavior and opinion.

The first one was a relatively simple and surgical process. The video maker was accused of plagiarism. I unsubscribed without another thought on it or without any further research. It could have been unfair, but it’s my list and that’s all there was to it. If something draws me back, then maybe I’ll give them another chance. Plagiarism is one of those hard outs for me, of course, as it should be for anyone calling themselves an artist. (Hbomb covers this one in the video... I’m not AS unsympathetic as he is, but he’s definitely in the right.)

The second one... the reasons for the separation might seem trivial, but nevertheless. He was releasing classic episodes with some new commentary at the end, so I skipped ahead on one to hear the new commentary because I didn't care that much about the original review. It was some subject that nobody really cares about this late in the game. It wasn’t Think Like A Man, Too, but it coulda been, if you catch my drift.

Evidently, he had anticipated someone would do that, so he said, "If you skipped ahead, uh, don't do that." I forget exactly how he phrased it, but it was not a charitable way. He didn't have an excuse with the clarity of "we need view-minutes to get on top of the algo, please" or "It's better if you see this in context.” No, it was just a snotty remark about not fasting forward through a video that he put what is essentially the smallest amount of work into to call a 'new' video. It reminds me of that Homestar Runner joke about the 35 cent luncch special that was chicken wing bones and ice water. It’s trying to double dip, but also insisting that we eat all the bones. Oh, you’re going to do something incredibly lazy, tell me how to watch AND be a snob about it, when you’re struggling to scrape together any views at all? Well, fuck you, then. Have fun swinging in the breeze alone.

I think when I was originally writing this, I was trying to get my feelings out without naming the accused. Sometimes, it’s about finding universal truths among the cauldron of strong feelings. It shouldn’t matter who it’s happening to, it should only matter what is true and what universal truths we can surmise in this tempest.

Nevertheless, since this thread is all about him, we might as well drop that charade. We’re talking about Jirard Khalil, the Completionist. So we might as well just be specific, at least when the story relates to him.

I could not find the strength to watch the video that I think launched this whole scandal. Maybe some other time, when I live in a fucking cotton-candy candy world of licorice and bubblegum, like the later levels in The Lost Vikings. But not right now. I just don’t have the strength. (I try not to use the term ‘spoons’ flippantly, since I am neither depressed nor suffer chronic fatigue. I’m just old and tired in a more general way, especially with the last seven years behind us.)

Not that long ago, there was a different, now mostly discontinued video game podcast. In its waning episodes, the hosts indulged in some pettiness that they used to try to resist, because the podcast was over, so who gives a shit. It’s the same way that Subway employee covered Morgan’s sandwich with Parmesan because he was quitting. Even I indulged in that when I left my job last year. Today only, you can bring in your fucking McDonalds. (Ironically, if it was Subway, I still would’ve said no. That would have stunk up the place.)

Anyway, they covered their beef with a different Youtuber whom I've been watching for over ten years. I skipped that episode. I didn't have the strength then either to find out why this had gone down. It may be a reasonable complaint, but I just can’t absorb any more negativity about people with whom I have mostly positive interactions. I’ll watch that if I’m feeling strong, or when the world isn’t constantly a nightmare.

I did click one of of Jirard’s videos, probably something unfortunately scheduled to come out right after this apocalyptic revelation. It was a sponsored thing that is now saturated with comments about the crime. One person claimed to be from the accusing video maker’s “army.”

And this is where it all fell into place for me.

---

I remember a long time ago on Twitter, someone didn't like how a (now-long-since canceled for something else) pop culture critic had reacted to something. I legit don’t remember what it was, maybe it was that 2016 Ghostbusters thing. Am I the only person who liked 2016 more than that one they made with Stranger Things? Anyway, that someone instructed their followers to bombard the pop-culture critic with a certain question relating to whatever the perceived shortcoming was on this issue.

I dropped that person from Twitter IMMEDIATELY.

I didn’t say I was doing it, I just did it. I know there are dipshits who think ‘it’s not an airport, you don’t need to announce your departure,’ but I saw people saying that to a Twitter account with a large footprint that just couldn’t take the negativity anymore. It’s probably rude to do it when unfollowing, but what’s wrong with saying goodbye to your followers? And if you say people don’t care when you care enough to comment... good lord, some of these people are shitheads.

Why enlisting your followers to swamp someone can be considered appropriate behavior on Twitter, yet is one of the first rules established on fucking 4CHAN... is a mystery. Maybe social media is all different flavors of terrible.

If I ever wielded any form of social power, I would absolutely NEVER use it this way. Maybe I could be like the squares at Good Mythical Morning and ask people to donate to charity. But as far as bothering people, even if they are guilty as hell and deserve worse... I don't want anyone doing this under my name.

I believe the Penny-Arcade guys had something like this happen accidentally VERY early in their history, when their fans ran off and bothered someone who had evidently wronged them. Tycho said something to the order of, "I am a big boy, I don't need your protection or defense."

But the little foot soldiers who swamp other people's comments to be dicks or otherwise cause trouble on someone else’s behalf... I really think this is a sign of absolutely no character at all. After all, you should swamp a feed with death threats and such for only really good reasons, like making a Spanish dish improperly, or recasting a voice actor because the screaming gave them voice nodules, or because a character in a movie or game is a lesbian. I feel like I have to explain why not to shake a baby or not put razors in apples. It seems so obvious that there really cannot be a good reason to do any of this.

I remember that former video game podcasting duo had picked on some large targets, and then when that Diablo Immortal debacle went down... they broke rank and thought that most of the reaction to this development were overblown and called the reaction from consumers lame crybabies, or something akin to that.

This led to weeks, maybe it was months, of every video they posted having a negative thumbs-up to thumbs-down ratio. I remember seeing when the attention of the rats finally broke and the like-to-dislike ratio normalized to something more ordinary. Youtube has since taken away the Dislike button, which is a problem way larger than this. Defanging misguided movements like this is not worth the earnest consumer power that is lost without the dislike button.

We have a real-life example of this: what if Steam video game reviews weren't allowed to have negative reviews? What if the only way we could see if a game was good was the volume of 'good' reviews? Of course, review-bombing is a problem, as people who have never played a game make their stupid stupid opinions by adding their voice to the stacks of other enraged uninformed weirdos. Rather than telling everyone that they can't make a negative review, they have a way for consumers to ignore anomalous review activity, when Overwatch or whatever makes everyone mad by changing one of Tracer's poses or whatever has their bonnet filled with bees. This is the way to do it. Allow this folderol to be seen in proper context... so it can be ignored.

(I really thought this could be something that we all agreed on. There was a video game Youtuber who complained at this alleged disempowerment of the consumer, allowing other consumers to choose to turn off the garbage reviews by nitwits who did not play it. I very swiftly dropped them from my life and thoughts and I am no less for it. You probably have not heard of them. I’m trying not to bring up anyone but Jirard, since there is simply no point avoiding discussing him in this thread.)

As it is, the point is made. A bunch of losers would vote-bomb their videos repeatedly, for weeks, because they disagreed with the audience about Diablo Immortal, a game that hadn’t yet been released and they did not play and were not obligated to play. Yes, it’s a mobile game that is now as deeply recognized as being grind-saturated pay-to-win BS as we are sure that the moon is not actually made of cheese. And yes, Blizzard sucks and we know that, too. But that doesn’t make them wrong for being skeptical about the reaction. Their childish actions basically helped prove their point, that the crybabies were not to be taken seriously.

At some point in the aftershocks of this original scandal, but before that Hbomb vid dropped, I was in the food court of my local mall. I watched a young man accidentally drop his drink cup. It had only ice left inside, no fluid. The lid came loose and the ice cubes scattered on the floor. The young man started to pick up the ice, but he left four cubes behind as his father evidently had a new solution: a wet floor sign that he hopefully didn't remove from some other puddle from some other spilled drink.

I worked somewhere with some peculiarly designed tile that got very slippery if any waster or ice hit it (or butter, but that would probably make any tile slick). I took a huge slip and fall, legs in the air, right on my ass in front of the sink. I was like seventeen, I popped up and I was fine. I trained myself to take care of this any time I noticed it. It is deeply ingrained in me to clean water off the floor to stop someone slipping and really hurting themselves... but especially ice. Ice is a self-refilling puddle, as dangerous on a tile floor as a land mine.

So I cleaned it up. I left behind my laptop for a second and picked the ice up and brought it to a trash can. I left the wet floor sign behind. The men were confused, but I think they might have thought I was going to shove it in their face. But that's not what I felt compelled to do. I wanted to make sure nobody slipped, not that two people cleaned up after themselves to my satisfaction.

Maybe it's time to just admit to myself that I am likely obsessive-compulsive. I did a report on it in 12th grade and even then, I could see myself in some aspects of it. Then again, self-diagnosis is prone to err, but that doesn’t stop it from being more popular on the Internet than Belle Delphine.

But there's a certain point where... so what? If there is a problem that can be rectified, and I can do it, I'd like to live in a world where everyone would do this, so maybe I don't slip on the floor and go ass-up like a cartoon character.

I had another example of this recently. I saw a woman getting on a bus, but I happened to be sitting at just the right angle to see her drop something. After she got on, I went out the front of the bus and found what she dropped: one of her gloves. She would have never find that thing again if I hadn’t intervened. I got a weird look from the bus driver, who thankfully didn’t charge me for a second ride, not that it really works like that on the modern bus system.

The look the bus driver gave me had me thinking: would the average person just let someone lose their fucking glove? At least those two other people would just leave some ice on the ground for someone to flutter through the air and shatter their hip, not just dropping their food court tendies.

Sure, when it comes down to things that could actually hurt someone, like interfering in a fight or administering untrained medical help... hesitating or not getting involved is completely reasonable. But something like this, where there seems to be no downside? Why not? Haven’t you ever lost something and thought, “I hope someone gets this back to me?” Have you ever slipped on a wet floor and thought, “Why didn’t anyone clean this crap up?” Is the world not better when we at least TRY to have each other’s backs?

So this obsession with order or correcting discord in the world may explain why I am so distressed when even normal interpersonal stuff gets in the way of Youtube teams. It can change in intensity, depending on the person and the circumstance. I remember when the Zaibatsu famously broke up because two of the members were having interpersonal strife. Nothing else to explain, they just didn’t like each other. Even that caused me distress, and I never watched them! But even groups I've only just gotten to watch, or ones I never watched, it can sauce me that dissonance when I hear about it. I want things to work out. A sense that it won’t... sucks.

I got a ride from a friend’s mother about a month ago. It saved me about three hours of train rides, and she was going somewhere nearby anyway. But she put on some form of right-wing program on Sirius. I tried to tolerate this, until they pulled out the old chestnut “he got 11 million more votes this time.” That’s election denial shit, and that is way over the line. Go ahead and make fun of Biden all you want. I don’t take it personally because I’m not a weirdo, but I can’t just sit there and listen to this. I had to put on my headphones and listen to music the rest of the way home.

Is this not considered some kind of foul? This person knows I lean mostly liberal, so why do this? Why broadcast something that you had to know would make me uncomfortable? Just to prove the power they had over me?

What if I was driving a car with someone and I started playing wacko porn on the radio? That would be considered a dick move, right? But I would never do this because I see no reasons to broadcast the fantasies that comfort me to other people. Whatever it is, whether you cling to the illusions that Trump is not as unpopular as damp socks and broccoli ice cream, or you think you’d stand like a mighty oak in the case of a home intruder, or you make comments about the relative attractiveness of a younger woman when you’re in your sixties and married, as if it matters AT ALL... why do you have to make it my problem? My illusions of wealthy large-breasted catgirl professional Goldeneye players who hire me as their professional brushies butler and controller mechanic... I don’t need to make that anyone else’s business.

Keep your fantasy of competent liberals making abortions mandatory if it lights a fire in your belly. Don’t make it my problem. Next time, I will just take the train, even if it takes all day. Graham and Beej made it look fun.

But isn’t that the absolute essence of fascism? Shedding your decency and trying to force the world into a shape, to be a tiny part in a changing the world into being more the way that resembles you, the ultimate form of narcissism. That’s the reason why shitheads flock behind Trump, because they believe he has the power to make this real. Stronger narcissists swamp the weaker ones, which is why Trump holds these wretches in thrall yet looks like a whipped puppy when faced with other world leaders... because he knows they are stronger than him and shatter his illusion of omnipotence. He writes moon-eyed love letters to them, but all he wants to do is have them vanish and restore his illusions.

This is what I am driving at. There’s a famous game dev I met at PAX. I won’t name them. It was in the shadow of one of those bigoted spree shootings we have more often in America than seasons of Survivor. The latest one was one that targeted a demographic that they represented. I felt compelled to make sure they felt welcome at PAX and told them, “there are two kinds of people. Those that want to hurt others, and those that don’t. That’s really what’s important, not the other stuff.”

To me, this idea of a commenter ‘army’ is dystopian and servile and foul, but so is a lot of other stuff on the Internet that we tolerate. But most of all, it strikes me as jaw-droppingly pathetic. To become just one glaring eye and screaming mouth to give someone a bad day, or to threaten someone’s livelihood, or even hurt someone physically... because SOMEONE TOLD YOU SOMETHING. Who are those deeply credulous people, apparently built like a car without a brake?

I’ve met Jirard four times, three times at PAX East. I challenged him to make an episode on Blast Corps. (That hasn’t come about yet. no big deal) I was probably the first person to tell him congratulations for re-completing the first 120 games that he had to remove from his channel because of the breakdown of the relationship with his original partner Greg. (If this current scandal has anything to do with this, I’d be shocked that Greg didn’t blab this out earlier. If it’s as bad as some think it is, why did Greg just let it happen? Anyway, I didn’t even watch much in the Greg era, I joined in after he left.)

In 2020, this was in the long shadow of a different controversy from a friend and collaborator (and someone who was at a PPR, I’ll give that hint...), a thick controversy that led people to calling Jirard’s grandmother or something? I don’t remember exactly what the fuck went down. In 2020, there was a panel with him and some other Youtubers about the travails of being on Youtube, how they work eighty hour weeks, six or seven days every week, for not all that much dough. Jirard’s perspective was based on being swept into his his friend’s troubles, “a situation I had nothing to do with,” he stressed.

Let’s use a different example that nobody’s going to care that I use: Jontron. Jontron shot his mouth off a few times and found himself at the locus of the Internet’s hate boot. There was one where he used that “R” word in a tweet. You know the one, that word fucking EVERYONE used to say, INCLUDING LoadingReadyRun. He commiserated on the Co-optional Podcast that he would just get a normal job if the Internet got too hot. This didn’t stop him from using it in a different video, but he was drunk, I guess. I don’t know.

Around the same era, they talk about the Mountain Dew sponsored Game Jam that broke down because Jontron refused to go on camera and talk smack about a game developer and give them that saucy reality content that is apparently so appetizing to so many. That developer... was Zoe Quinn. And BOTH of these were before the coalescence of that most infamous game hate mob: Gamergate. The first was August? 2013, the other was 2012?

All this makes me surprised when he shot his mouth off about those right-wing Bell Curve nonsense he got into in like 2017 or whenever that was. He really hasn’t said shit since then, maybe he just learned to keep a lid on it. I could provide some evidence that even his Flex-Tape videos are right-wing propaganda, if Red Green also counts as that. Doing things and fixing things by yourself, that apex of masculine expression... the Flex-Tape Guy even appears in his sequel video, because he smelled 50 million views, I guess, and that gets him out the door! Is that guy a MyPillow Mike in the making? How many CEOs are even not jerks, other than Steve Dengler?

Futhermore, there’s one of those Co-Optional podcasts where he talks about the then-current original Wreck-It Ralph, where he goes along with people liking it before he says, “Eh, I hate that movie. I just didn’t want to get into it.” AND there’s a Game Grumps, I think it’s the Glover episode, where he says something akin to: Whenever I see a Twitlonger, I’m like... or you could make a blogpost, or separate tweets.” Remember how bad Twitter functionality used to be, when other people invented stuff to make it work? Anyway, that apology about the R-word thing was on Twitlonger...

Maybe you think I’m crazy for even knowing this, or trying to force this into a shape that resembled a point, like a bunch of pop-tarts pressed into a cupcake tin. Why do I watch this or try to remember this? Because MAYBE someone with their head screwed on straight needs to remember some of this shit, because we need to also keep stuff in context.

All this would demonstrate my conclusion that MAYBE Jontron does not hold his convictions that strongly. He just says whatever he hears or thinks. Lots of people are like that, and they usually don’t change the world or have millions of Youtube followers. That’s one of those, “how the fuck do we fix this” problems for the Internet age. If he was just someone who wanted fame for whatever reason or ANY reason, he could have pivoted into right-wing nonsense, and maybe he could have eaten Ben Shapiro’s lunch. Instead, he just makes his dumb-ass videos. He doesn’t even talk about video games anymore! He’s a pesudo-H3H3, which is no surprise since Hila was a producer on that show for a while.

This is a personal reason, but I don’t understand why someone would WANT to be a creative on Youtube UNLESS some part of the process was completely necessary for their life. Writing is my passion. Making Youtube videos to talk about movies isn’t a passion, but the writing of them is a component of it. It’s just easier to get people to watch something than read it sometime. The idea of these people plagiarizing their stuff to be big on Youtube... even if they made a fortune, how could that be worth it emotionally?

I only bring this up because there is a tangible difference between a Jontron who makes videos because he wants to make videos, and one who is making them like a content farm to make money or otherwise appear to be something he isn’t, like the lazy plagiarists and content farms covered in Hbomb’s videos. In that way, there is a tangible difference between a Jontron that believed that stuff in the pit of his soul, and one who just got influenced by some other right-wing cockring and repeated it because he just hadn’t thought it through very hard, or hadn’t been corrected. Man Carrying Thing just made a video about an fictional innocuous historical Youtube channel taking a HARD swerve against smooth jazz Waluigis, and I asked if it was better or worse if they did it because that was what they believed... or if it was a deliberate marketing move. I think it’s better if we’re all honest, but I could see an argument either way.

I’ve stuck with some Youtubers that maybe I shouldn’t have. The only one I’ve watched longer than LoadingReadyRun who updates with any regularity is Thunderf00t, another controversial figure who thankfully didn’t go down that road of COMPLETE right-wing nutjob like his ex-friend Sargon. (I do NOT watch and have never watched Sargon. I didn’t know he was British until that lawsuit came around.) Thunderf00t separated from the ‘skeptics movement’ a while back after they made fun of some woman who was killed. The video for that is galling. Then there was Brexit, which he was opposed to and thought was stupid, and now Thunderf00t just dunks on Elon a lot, which we can all agree... is always fun. No way to punch down on the richest man in the world as he just keeps marching down his endless conga line of rakes.

Should I watch any of these idiots? Maybe not. I should read a fucking book. But nobody can make you emotionally separate from someone else, whoever it is. When some other Youtubers get in trouble, your emotional reaction matters much more than people talking about the event. Once someone is trying to convince you that someone else is bad or not worthy of your precious eyeball's attention, I instinctively put up my guard. For people easily persuaded by someone else’s words... is this how you feel about your friends in real life? Would you want your friends to so easily associate you with something negative, to be so deeply credulous by something that someone tells you?

There’s been this fascinating hypothesis on narcissism. Evidently, the weakness of narcissists are people that they can’t manipulate and those who do not have secret agendas. The hypothesis is that narcissists weakness... are autistic people. The subtle machinations and manipulations of the truly narcissistic go right over the heads of autistic people, and the autistic persons evidently won’t spare someone’s feelings and can really cut through the narcissist’s armor. It’s like the fictional zones for a pretend game by children, the ‘goo’ or other safe zone that you can touch to not be ‘out’ in tag. They just don’t recognize it.

It does not take a narcissist to commit a crime. I only assign that for the moment because I think it’s useful for how I’ve come to think of this. The last big thing Jirard did was try to finance a full download of the entire 3DS E-shop. He credited the financing of this to some brand deals he took for other videos. Some people seem to think that is partially where the stolen money went.

This part doesn’t make sense to me. Now, we all do illogical things sometimes. Some of us do them all of the time. But the question I pose is: would a person stealing for his own greed take this money and use it to attempt to preserve game history? Possibly, if he was worried about a “legacy...” a word he has used a few times for himself. But this doesn’t gel with my interactions with him, or my current understanding of his character.

In 20202, After that panel about the troubles of Youtubing, I spoke to him (and the man behind Arlo, who was also at the panel). That was where I told Jirard, to his face, after he endured the pointless abuse at his friend’s other scandal... that he had a heart of gold.

And he gave me such a grateful smile.

I hate to think this wasn’t real... but I could see someone like Jirard getting sweet-talked into something by a real villain, naively trusting that the money was getting where it was meant to go. Tragically, getting duped DOES sadly line up with my understanding of his character.

If that was all fake, or this is from a conflicted man, someone who could not resist the siren call of that deadly sin... then I will have to reconcile that when we know for sure. I have already shed my tears and gnashed my teeth and shaped this pain into something that I can at least fit inside my heart so I can get on with my day. If I am wrong, I will rip it open and do it again until it fits with the truth as well. That is fine. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again.

I don’t know what else can soothe my pain except time. I could run into these threads and start clicking the downvote button on every comment like some sort of very well-adjusted person... but what good would that even do? I don’t know what went down, and maybe I’ll be defending a very bad person. The only thing I can realistically do there, that I know won’t hurt anyone without cause... is nothing.

But what I will never do is run into someone’s comment section and say, “I know what you did” UNLESS I SAW THAT SHIT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES. I probably wouldn’t do it even if I was a first-hand witness, because that just strikes me as classless. “I know what you did...” isn’t that what Hannibal Burress’ gym teacher character said to Peter Parker for that faked video of him killing Mysterio in the third Spider-Man movie (no, not that one, the good one)? He was wrong, AND an asshole. Sure, he was deceived and also a victim in his own right, but some people evidently have no problem going to bother someone and make nasty comments because SOME OTHER VIDEO said something? hat gives you license to treat someone like that?! Why don’t you just unsubscribe like a normal passive-aggressive person?

“We know what you did,” indeed. That word ‘know’ is doing a LOT of lifting. This is why we should leave all this stuff to real life justice, pitiable as that may be. There is nothing we can do as a mob that accomplishes anything except getting Rat Sonic removed from the Sonic movie. We need to break that crankshaft that connects the act of being a douchebag on the internet with social change. If you can do this in a way that is polite and respectful... maybe still don’t do that, because I saw some of that addressed at Holly Conrad and I don’t think she deserved any of that, fuck I’m just letting ALL the cats out of all the bags, aren’t I?

I resolved a long time ago to never use the Internet to give someone a bad day (outside of things like sharing bad news). But I also resolved to stop following someone only based on what THEY say, not what others say about them. There can be exceptions for this. Eventually, I can bring myself in line with the truth if I find it compelling or reasonable.

(This is rather embarrassing, but I think I technically still follow Vic Mignogna on Twitter because I was following that rule and I was off Twitter for most of the last five years. I could fix that, but I have Twitter redirected to LoadingReadyRun so I stay off it. I could EASILY correct that and unfollow him based on the years of legal nonsense he has run himself into, trying to escape his reputation. There are still evidently cons that will feature him, so... at least someone loves him. It doesn’t have to be me. You know that part of Hey Baby by No Doubt where she sings “With the stranger in my face who says he knows my mom/and went to my high school...” I involuntarily picture him as the creepazoid now. But we are way off-topic now. If I somehow go back to Twitter before it burns down, I’ll remove him.)

If it’s an accusation of plagiarism that is cut-and-dry, with scripts overlaid like an overhead projector... that’s easier than the Easy button from an office supply store. But anyone trying to make it about the drama and whatever... I’d just rather not hear that from anyone who wants to fuel that sort of stuff. It’s like finding out they’re the Toxic Avenger, gathering strength from something that would kill me.

And yeah, with some of those examples, including the one that Jirard was swept up in before... MAYBE that one wasn’t quite what it seemed. That’s not even the only example of dubious accusations IN THE COMMUNITY OF PEOPLE WHO FUCKING KNOW JONTRON. Maybe someone who THINKS he knows something is awful dangerous if they’re not careful. This is why, even with the absolute preponderance of evidence he is wielding, Hbomb always tells people NOT TO FUCKING BOTHER PEOPLE. Even if someone deserves it, why don’t we just NOT act like a bunch of feral cats? Even people who used to rip on Trump right to his Twitter, I was always like, “Why do that? It’s not punching DOWN, but wouldn’t the world be better if we didn’t act like this? Is the Golden Rule just a suggestion? Is something so simple and elegant that illiterate desert goat herders and sun worshippers figured it out about the time Erastothenes figured out the rough size of the round earth?”

It could even be that this is how some people express their obsessive nature, by taking the imaginary sword and doing keyboard warrior shit. You feel you need to do SOMETHING because it will feel SO GOOD to feed that gray wolf. Trying to put things right by acting bad. Or you simply have to express these negative feelings and smear them around so you don’t have to hold them inside anymore. If there is a flicker of darkness or unhappiness in your heart, you are going to Make It Someone Else’s Problem. What WAS Gamergate except a crowd of shitheads going after people for bad reasons? Does it magically become good if their reasons were good? I say it’s bad either way, but it’s definitely still worse if your reasons also suck.

We would all do better if we just slowed down and thought, “hey, even if what I’m feeling is true and reasonable, why lash out? Why don’t I just sit on this for a bit, rather than use my phone as a firearm and snap of something hurtful at the moment I am certain to feel the angriest and the nastiest?” Does that feel good to you? To treat others this way? What does this solve? Who does this help?

---

As I try to wrap up this nonsense, Jirard has posted a response.

I have not watched it. This is just poking the bandaged wound with a chopstick. At this tender time, if he said ONE thing wrong, THAT could bring it all down for me. He has handled situations like this with grace before. But I am not ready.

That’s the thesis. What you say about someone else says more about you than about the person you’re saying it about.

And don’t be a dick on the Internet. Remember Wil Wheaton.

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” - Samuel Johnson

(Today is also the day that the anniversary LRRCast posts episode six, which covers the production of Strip Search. Since Sieg is the one who posted this, I should state that I am not interested in re-legislating my disapproval of Strip Search.

The conflict in my heart over Jirard is that the accusation stands in contrast with my understanding of his character. That is where the dissonance comes from. There is no “did they?” question with Strip Search. They did. If Jirard’s latest video was “yeah, I did it, and so what?” There would be no dissonance. I would just wonder if he was replaced with a pod person.

Strip Search was always a question of why someone would do this, why would someone join the editing Dark Side. I also struggle with why someone would do a lot of other things, like have children or believe in God or buy a Macintosh that wasn’t a laptop if you didn’t work in media. But it was ten years ago, and maybe the people who were exploited have moved on, or maybe they haven’t. Where is the winner? Where are the losers? Where is ANYTHING that they have made? It matters not. There are never any winners in reality programming, only losers. All we can do is move on.

I really hope that this anniversary is the last time anyone talks about Strip Search. If people really want to defend the art form that has given us the last eight years of American misery and may still drag this immensely important cultural experiment right down the plug in a wave of selfishness and fascism... I just don’t understand it.)

Jesus H. Bomberguy, that is a lot of text. I don't know if I can respond to all of that, so let me stick to the relevant points. Its funny that you bring up Greg. Because I know Greg. And I don't mean like, I shook his hand at a convention, I mean, I have been in his house, met his wife and kids, and have his personal cell phone number. And somewhere on one of Greg's old phones he has a video of me singing Its the End of The World As We Know It at karaoke, me noticing that hes recording me and then getting embarrassed and flustered and I mess up the lyrics. So back in 2014, The Completionist was expanding their brand, and they started doing all these different spinoff shows. One of those expansions included a World of Warcraft guild, with the intention of streaming the raids on twitch. I was unemployed at the time, so long story short I became a guild officer and put in charge of the guild twitter account. The guild was ran by Greg because he was the one who actually played WoW, and so I wound up talking to him quite a bit. The breakup happened, I believe, in early 2015. He never gave us the full details as he was under NDAs and the threat of lawsuit, but there were a lot of things that I have been able to surmise.

Your belief that Jirard is the hapless face in all of this isn't without merit. However, the person who put him in this situation is either his father or more likely his brother. The Open Hand Foundation that is at the center of all this is a private foundation started by Jirard's family, the Khalil's. Even when Greg was friends with Jirard, he didn't trust the Khalil family. From his description of them, they seem like the Bluth family, if you're familiar with Arrested Development. And Jirard is like a mix of GOB's need for attention mixed with Busters softness and mommy issues. And Jacque is like Micheal's competence mixed with GOB's moral compass. Or evil Robert Khoo would be a more apt comparison. He came on as the COO of ThatOneVideoGamer with the intent of running the channel like a business instead of two friends with a camera. Now if you're familiar with the Screw Attack breakup, you might have a better understanding of what happened. but basically Handsome Tom and Stuttering Craig started it together, but Stuttering Craig was the one with his name on all the paperwork and the one with access to all the accounts. At some point there was a dispute about business between the two of them, and Craig basically said "There's the door." And Tom had no real way of defending or protecting himself against it.

I know Greg doesn't like Jacque, and I believe the feeling was mutual. My guess is that as Jacque was legitimizing everything, the questions of who owned how much of the ThatOneVideoGamer brand came up. and I'm assuming Greg saw himself as a cohost, and Jacque was wanting to make him a supporting role, offering him only a minor stake in the company. When Greg refused to accept, they axed him. However the part that really rubbed people the wrong way is how Jirard tried to spin the situation. A lot has been deleted, hidden in the locked Completionist subreddit, or lost to time. But in the initial announcement, Jirard made it seem like it was this warm happy thing, like Greg had decided to move on to bigger and better things, and then when Greg tweeted that that wasn't really how it was, Jirard started playing victim. And so its been really ironic watching a lot of this play out. A lot of the tactics he used to stay in peoples good graces during that are now blowing up in has face during this. It almost feels...karmic.

You pondered why people would believe in God. I do. I don't believe in the fairy tale omnipotent sky wizard that a lot of people think of when you think of a God. But I believe there is someone or something out there. And I believe prayer is a way to interface with it. Prayer has given me a lot of things. I honestly hadn't thought about Greg or talked to him in a while. But earlier this year, one of the other guild officers who happens to live nearby was making plans to go out and see him and wanted to know if I wanted to go with. Unfortunately vet bills ate up my savings and I couldn't go, but thinking about Greg got me thinking about Jirard, and with the Smosh reunion that happened earlier this year, I found myself praying that Jirard would either apologize to Greg, or something would happen to him that would make people see him for who he truly is. And lo and behold, less than 6 months later and his youtube channel is a smoking crater.

I really didn't want to bring Strip Search in to this. But since you did, I just can't help but find it a little amusing that your whole tirade against Strip Search was that it was a reality show and all reality shows are bad because they use editing and trickery to create a forced narrative and create a false view of reality. But at the same time you thought a Youtube persona was wholly genuine and real. You thought Jirard has a heart of gold because that is what he wants you to think. He is constantly trying to portray himself in the most sympathetic light, to pray on his audience's emotions. Hes constantly playing up how hard and difficult his job is, but he does it for you, dear viewer. So please don't forget to donate and subscribe.

[King Kool]

I don't think I felt that way about Jirard because of the videos, any more than I do with LRR. The LRR guys and gals and such are all very genuine and got into this because they love making videos, but meeting them was part of what solidified all that for me. (I actually don't know what small controversies Memo was talking about, and considering I'm the wiki guy, it couldn't have been THAT important.)

With respect... I'm not a total fool. It's not JUST what someone says or puts in a video. That's just the impression I got from IRL stuff that helped cement what might end up being the wrong impression. I know it's easier to be fooled than to be convinced that I was fooled. I'm mostly just waiting for this whole thing to shake out and see what is likely true. I just don't really want to be IN the rock tumbler as its moving. I am simply too soft. (I do think it's too soon to call his channel 'over.' Worse people have gotten away with worse, and I never call it before the bell is rung. Chris-Chan was in jail, and apparently all that was dropped! Who saw that coming? We will see when we see...)

We all think we're the good guys in our own story. And if he's lying or misrepresenting things, then that's bad. But allowing a television show to take your experience it and chop it up into something that didn't happen, or to put you in stressful situations to have people react to your stresses or breakdowns, or to promise you something that could help your career and have it all torn away dramatically, all engineered by someone else... that is wrong. The fact that the narrative around Jirard is changing while the narrative around Strip Search will probably never be changed and will be the primary thing that at least half the artists will ever be known for ever... that is a crime. It's almost like reality programming is a little imp that stands between the person and the watcher, twisting everything around to make the sensational stuff so the product isn't boring. Sure, the person could be a lying jerk, but reality programming is just further distortion and manipulation.

Isn't that the rub? I can, of course, be convinced that Jirard is a bastard, given enough evidence or my judgment on his behavior. But what could I do to convince you that YOU were duped by anything presented in Strip Search that wasn't what it appeared? Where is the re-legislation of that? How can I convince you that the ride itself was wrong, no matter who got out first or who fell off? Who has really been fooled here? They JUST covered that oneshot that was greenscreened in the 20th anniversary. (Even I won't hold that against them since it seemed to roughly reflect what really happened. That's just movie magic right there. But that sort of thing can and has been used for ill. Editorial Dark Side, like I said.)

Road Quest isn't like this at all, because it's just a story of a road trip. No prizes, no challenges of any consequence, nothing but the road and each other. I told Graham to his face that I really enjoyed Road Quest because it was genuine. Even the minor bits of phony stuff or the voice over adding context, that didn't bug me that much because it was like the little big of egg to bring the pasta together. I know they cut out the amazing blockbuster reveal that Nintendo is real, but the world just isn't ready for that.

What's happening to Jirard is in OPPOSITION with his attempts to be an entertainer, be it true or not. The strife struck to celluloid in reality programming is in HARMONY with what they are trying to make. They are TRYING to make interpersonal drama because apparently some people have lost enough of their humanity to digest that as entertainment. Grinding people up and breaking them down for this or that IS the product. I personally cannot understand how people can enjoy watching either sort of thing. I just can't watch that kind of negativity, like running a white sock through a grease trap and complaining that it's not clean anymore. If you can't see the difference, I don't know what to tell you. "You don't like reality shows, but you like this guy's videos where he manipulates others emotions..." that is some weak soup.

Here's something I've never talked about on LRR: remember Colin Moriarty? The former friend of a different Greg who went down for a sexist joke on Twitter? The clown who calls himself NoTaxation on Twitter or whatever because reasons? Yeah, I knew him in the GameFAQs days. He was a total asshole and, according to other people who worked at him at IGN, a very bad writer. And yet, I did not enjoy his downfall one bit, because it seemed a BIT over the top for one joke. I wasn't about to speak up in his defense because he was a cock the entire time we knew each other. But almost every crime seems trivial when THE ENTIRE INTERNET is the boot. (if Jirard legit did steal from a charity, that boot might be the right size.)

I think people watch reality shit because they want to watch people for whom there is no chance to accidentally admire. Then they don't find themselves in the pangs of heartache I find myself in now, as I was ten years ago. I have channels that I watch where I know the people are idiots. It is easy to indulge in that, but at least for me, all they're doing is playing games or whatnot. There is no artifice, no construction of the untrue world, and no housewives of some flyover city to endlessly grind and sneer, so we can sigh at our inability to obtain their opulence.

That's why I am so troubled by this. This wasn't some random screeching chef on Hell's Kitchen, this was someone I thought had a heart of gold. You can only feel this way if you care, IF you open up. Someone who would be entertained by eleven people losing and one person winning something that just isn't worth it in the end, all while living in a little bottle to be shaken up by the producers... what kind of heart even is that to be open at all?

PS: If you legit DO know Greg, I really have to say that him asking them to take down all his videos was SUCH a bad move. It immediately put the sympathy back on Jirard's side and ripped open a long-closed wound. It was the worst possible idea, and I earnestly don't know what he was thinking or how he didn't anticipate his response.

PPS: I don't really feel like continuing to argue about Jirard, because time will surely tell. Like I said, I will rend my heart in shape with what is real when I have to, when everything is out in the open. And I am REALLY not interested in continuing to argue about Strip Search because that's just old and I wouldn't have even brought it up if you hadn't in the 20 years thread, and even LRR only gave it a passing mention. It is an aberration within LRR's content that they have left in the rear-view of better content, even better reality-style content. If you like Strip Search, I don't care. Continue to like it somewhere where I ain't. I won't convince you that Jirard is decent (not that I even tried very hard), and you won't convince me that Strip Search was decent.

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." --Matthew 6:5-6