I don't like Jim Sterling because his videos are *incredibly* negative, but I've never seen him as problematic personally. More like that annoying friend who always finds things to whine about.
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Let's Have A Conversation About YouTubers (A Megathread)
- Thread starter ASaiyan
- Start date
I don't like Jim Sterling because his videos are *incredibly* negative, but I've never seen him as problematic personally. More like that annoying friend who always finds things to whine about.
Using Twitter follows is meaningless, because you have no knowledge of WHY person x is following person y without asking them. Just to give an obvious example, millions of people follow Trump on Twitter and aren't fans of the president. You might follow someone to keep up with what they are doing, or because they are a source information about a topic, neither of which means you condone their behavior or implies any sort of support for their views or cause.
People follow others on Twitter because they are relevant in some way. It's not like a Patreon or Twitch sub where you are directly supporting the person with money, its a digital equivalent of keeping an eye on someone.
The issue is that some people put creators on a pedestal, then they get surprised they find one aspect of them they don't like. I think it would help in the long term that your favorite youtuber should not be held at a higher standard and instead be treated as just a regular person. Like I have issue with people saying that a specific creator is "clean" but in no way I'm advocating for dumb alt right garbage, just hoping people don't paint them as this righteous creator when they barely know them.
User Warned: thread whining
So glad the ability to ignore threads exists, i really hate these kind of threads on gaming forums.
Have a fun discussion together.
Have a fun discussion together.
I certainly hope so, but he avoids anything political or even "political", so it's hard to say.
I'm just side eyeing him, is all. Because "it's just an opinion" is also used by shitty people to try and shut down debate on their hateful views.
What specifically about this thread do you hate? What is wrong with wanting to discuss problematic behavior?
Um, what exactly is wrong with this thread? The OP is more thoughtful than most.
OP
OP
Eh, it's just a grumpy thread-whiner. Best pay them no mind.
Please don't tell me John Wolfe is a problematic dude. He's not right? He's one of the very rare let's players that I enjoy watching, simply because he doesn't overreact at all and he seems like a cool dude overall.
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Depends on what metric we're using. Do you consider associating with highly problematic people to be problematic? I'm seeing A LOT of shitty people in his Twitter follows, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
I almost never use Twitter, but... sigh....... alright, throw it at me. Can you give me examples of the shitty peeps in his Twitter follows? Sorry for the trouble.
Toby Turner, Jontron, Pewdiepie, YMS, IHE, Collosaliscrazy are the main ones (maybe Bunty too depending on who you ask). Then there's the less awful, but still problematic in their own ways and likely wouldn't be well liked among progressives on Era like Sky Williams, Jacksfilms, Philip Defranco, H3H3, Idubbz, Maxmoefoe, Lirik, Dr Disrespect, Ninja, Etika, The Right Opinion (and from what I've seen in some political threads here, Bernie Sanders, lol). Pretty much a whos who of mid/high-tier Youtube right there with a bit of Twitch thrown in. Could be more problematic ones in there, not like I know everyone on the site.
But again, as has been said Twitter follows aren't necessarily endorsement of a person or their views.
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I hope you can come up with some receipts and not just tinfoil hats.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Has he ever been involved in something bad, to your knowledge? I only relatively recently found him, to be honest, so I am not familiar with his history.
I was only tangentially aware of him before your post. Don't know a thing about him beyond a quick check of his Twitter.
if yahtzee is the big concern you have, then we have nothing to worry about. he associates with good people more often than an old work relationship he had in the escapist days.
also, not a fan of antagonizing people over twitter followers.
If we are holding him to that standard then so too would be AJ, ProJared and The Completionist are all affiliated heavily with the Co-Optional Podcast. Purely as an aside, how heavily did either Dodger's or Jessie's views coincide or diverge with TBs over certain subjects (asking purely as I never really indulged the podcast, and neither even touch any stance or bias in their own content).
Good thread, ASaiyan. I don't really follow most of these people, but given how large and how young their audience can be, it's certainly a thing to keep watch of. It's easy for new media folks to forget their little bedroom operation has exploded into an empire, and that they suddenly have a platform for all their potentially shitty jokes or hot takes. Whether they want it or not, many are thrust into role model or parasocial support positions. I'm pleased to see Arin Hanson take this seriously, and try to be responsible. When you're growing up in toxic communities, it can be hard to put your thoughts and actions into perspective. Unlearning that behaviour doesn't happen overnight, and we don't have to clean any slates, but we should allow people to grow if they're willing. Jim Sterling is another online persona who had a questionable online presence in the past, but was able to move beyond it and doesn't make excuses for his old self.
I'm not sure about all this twitter follower business though. Unless you have a small, curated list, it's super easy to keep track of who you even follow or why.
I'm not sure about all this twitter follower business though. Unless you have a small, curated list, it's super easy to keep track of who you even follow or why.
Excellent thread OP.
There has been some discussion about Jim Sterling, while I appreciate he isn't straight forward "problematic" i.e. he isn't a racist, sexist etc, I still find his work to add to the negative culture that surrounds gaming.
Often times he has valid issues to talk about but his entire shtick is "this industry is rotten" and he pushes hard on that.
So much of the discourse on games is so heated that it is in no way surprising that we find so many people willing to stand up for people throwing out racist language.
I'm obviously not blaming him directly for the prevelance of negativity in gamin but I think there is a widely held view that many youtubers focus on outrage and hyperbole for the clicks and I think it is important to recognise the harm it does.
There has been some discussion about Jim Sterling, while I appreciate he isn't straight forward "problematic" i.e. he isn't a racist, sexist etc, I still find his work to add to the negative culture that surrounds gaming.
Often times he has valid issues to talk about but his entire shtick is "this industry is rotten" and he pushes hard on that.
So much of the discourse on games is so heated that it is in no way surprising that we find so many people willing to stand up for people throwing out racist language.
I'm obviously not blaming him directly for the prevelance of negativity in gamin but I think there is a widely held view that many youtubers focus on outrage and hyperbole for the clicks and I think it is important to recognise the harm it does.
But Jontron apologized multiple times for the things he said. On Twitter he's pretty left leaning and he even made fun of himself in the latest flex tape video. When does someone can be forgiven? Or should someone kill himself if he's says stuff that's dumb. He's younger than i am and I used to say dumb stuff from time to time I later regretted.
The Completionist is still friends with Jontron and he is one of the nicest people on YouTube. I doubt Jontron is a bad guy in real life.
I don't like the One strike and you are out mentality. People make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.
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Its great that Arin replied to you! Dan and Arin are two of the better youtubers out there in terms of progressiveness(despite Arin overstepping his bounds here and there).
I do dislike this guilt by association though.
I do dislike this guilt by association though.
A lot of the reason that this stuff is difficult is because someone can be really nice to you in real life, but also think that foreigners have no place in America. The latter is a lot more damaging over, but also a lot more abstract, so it can be hard to distance yourself from someone who has been good to you over it.
I don't condone that (and I am a hypocrite), but I get it.
Why is AJ bejng mentioned? Jesse Cox? Dodger? Are people just assuming, or do you have any evidence?
These posts will turn it into a witch hunt thread.
Do you have a link where he apologized. I've never heard of him having apologized for his white supremisist and xenophobic comments.
What has he done to make things right? Because what he said wasn't just dumb, it was bigoted and dangerous from someone with that much influence in this space.
"I said some dumb stuff" and "I should have researched more" without actually outright condemning the white supremacist talking points that were used is not enough, no.
I agree that this sometimes veers unconfortably close to a witch hunt, and in particular the "blacklist this guy because he follows this guy who follows this guy" might be pushing it. Even if knowing that AJ follows JonTron feels kind of bad.
That said, I only asked about Angry Joe because he's one of the few Youtubers I know and quite like, and he's also pretty prominent, so I was surprised not to see him in the list of "recommended" Youtubers. Which I guess kind of doubles as me "recommending" him? but I'm wary to recommend anyone at all because, again, I'm highly unknowledgeable about Youtubers and I've only watched a handful of videos, even his.
Jon has never apologized for his racist remarks AFAIK. His actual apology IIRC was more like "I'm sorry I didn't explain myself very well" which isn't really an apology at all. I haven't watched him since then though so please correct me if I'm wrong.
As you can see in the recent posts the list mentality and using Twitter followers to gatekeep that list is going to derail this thread like I said. People are going to keep coming to the thread with overall pretty positive creators who will be two degrees of association away from a bad guy. My point wasn't that you should take off Arlo, it was that this is not a productive way to do this. I think we should look at what the person says and what they stand for instead of Twitter followers or whatever.
As a guy who plays video games who has a gf who doesn't - my gf has found every video they've put out hilarious and spot on. It may be a "trope" but it's still a thing that exists.
Like, I know gaming culture is taking a lot of strides to be more inclusive, fair, and respectful to women who also enjoy the medium. But there are, in fact, women who don't play video games who date guys that do. And those women may find these 8 minute videos funny because it reflects their experience. I don't think this makes the channel odd or problematic.
My thoughts exactly. A person can follow someone on Twitter for any number of reasons. And they can feel like they are friends with someone for any number of reasons as well. I'm a staunch liberal and have plenty of friends and casual acquaintances that voted for Trump. Just because I associate with them and consider some of them friends, it doesn't mean that I agree with or endorse everything that they personally support. If people were expected to cast out every person in their life that wasn't up to their progressive standards, we'd all have a lot less friends.
Seeing how this thread's developing I'm starting to agree more with this. The overall goal in wanting to promote positive Youtubers is sound but the thread's not only coming off as a purity test but as a super-strict super-binary one at that.
He's pretty bad. He has said many racist things and is generally shitty to his own fans (whatever he has left anyway)
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That's a lot of loaded statements to make without proof (well other than the subscription one).
Also I don't know how to feel about some youtubers in general. People change. Jim Sterling was once a full-blown sexist and part of the crowd that would form gamergators later on, now he is fine. Angry Joe was also a pretty sexist edgelord in his early videos, but now has shaped up. Jontron and Piewdiepie are pretty much inexcusable in my eyes (and it hurts because jontron used to be my favourite youtuber from 2012 to 2017), but a lot of the milder offensive views / behaviors, if they've been dropped or renounced, don't need to haunt youtubers forever. It's not a zero-one thing in the sense that someone is a piece of shit or they're not.
I stopped watching her after someone criticized her for going in on Anita Sarkeesian. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but she was very open about how "she isn't about that life." She and her bf make entertaining content but I won't be following her for this reason.
JonTron left leaning? What am I reading? No he's not.
I had a similar reaction to this video. I forget the exact quote, but he also said something along the lines of "Everyone is entitled to their opinions, which is a stance I've kept for the last few years." Which raises my eyebrow even higher.
I also remembered another time when I opened YouTube, and saw one of the "People who watch __________ also watched ___________" and it was Arlo viewers also watching some questionable content. I wish I could remember exactly. Not to say that he should be held accountable for other content his fans view, but it was definitely something I noticed.
I really love Arlo. I think that channel has grown into something fantastic over the last few years. I'm a huge fan of the Muppets, so liking Arlo was easy.
Lindsay and people like her are measurably talented who sadly exist in a sea of no talent lazy AF hacks, hacks who have no problem playing to the lowest common denominator because they see the lifestyles reaching the top can get a person so decide to game the system and pander in order to achieve that. I for one can't wait for the YouTube bubble to completely pop like the internet bubble did in 95-00 and the truly talented professionals are the ones left with a living and the bottom feeders fade away into obscurity. The fact that many of these fuckwits can make such an easy living producing hateful, shitty garbage is mind-boggling. I again don't direct this at truly hard working and talented professionals on the platform but for every one of those, I see 100 wannabe idiots.
Now I'm not going to argue what they did is wrong but I feel like naming them like this instead of just their name feels a bit childish and undermines your argument.
However, the concern is real. These people are basically icons and so an example of kids, along the way of sports starts and stuff. There's a good amount of them who know their actions and don't care because they feel like people like you are overreacting or "just as bad" and there's many more who haven't heard about it, just like separating the art from the artist and choosing the art.
JonTron's controversies were only spotlighted for a brief while post(?) Trump election, and I heard more about it on /v/ than anywhere else, with PewDiePie having more spotlight on his but he survived even if he got dropped by his MCN, and all people really heard is that he said the N-word once so they basically thought "big deal".
Unrelated but it's also notable about Dunkey's false reviews, (him picking the wrong choice in Octopath even though the game showed that he already found the weaknees reminds me of Anita's Sarkeesian's video of killing non-targets in Hitman and saying the game rewards you for it).
I feel you're being too paranoid. That sort of sentiment on entertainment is found everywhere on the political spectrum.
The recommendations shit happens with video game content in general. It's a problem with the video game fandom, particularly those who like to watch people talk at a screen for 20 minutes.
I guess the recommendations got removed because people have issues with the YTers in question? Anyway, this is what I was watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJE3IDB2N1k
OP
OP
The "alternatives" list was well-intentioned, but ultimately proved less helpful than it was harmful. It sidetracked the thread into a discussion of the individuals listed, and what does or does not define a "good person", rather than what does or does not define a bad behavior, and what we should do about those more generally. In light of these facts, multiple posters made suggestions to the effect that the conversation might be better off without it entirely. I agreed.
The thing about Jontron is regardless of how inadequate his "apology" video was, the vast majority of the internet has forgiven or flat out forgotten about the controversy. People that once called him out on it like PBG have recently rekindled their relationship, some people like Shane of Did You Know Gaming forgave him a month later when they went on a trip to Japan together, Studio Yotta who has worked with Cartoon Network before and are basically an unofficial studio of them now (they did OK K.O! and several Game Grumps related projects as well) made Jontron's new intro, and even Phil Swift has appeared on a recent video. In the public eye, Jon is much less the "weird white nationalist guy" and more the "funny Flex Tape meme guy". People have short memories, or less generously they don't care.
The same can kind of be said about Pewdiepie, but with him it's more like controversy just brushes off him as he's too big to fail at this point. Again, friggin Elon Musk was on a recent video with him alongside Justin Roiland.
You mean the guy that both-sided Gamergate and retains a solid friendship with one of the guys that realized Tim Schafer's name was an anagram for Mr. Shitface and used that to harass him (that guy now works at Destructoid btw)? By the standards of this thread, I think it's something worth pointing out.
I mean yeah, the thread is holding those people to that same standard after seeing the OP's post in the Sexualization thread.
The same can kind of be said about Pewdiepie, but with him it's more like controversy just brushes off him as he's too big to fail at this point. Again, friggin Elon Musk was on a recent video with him alongside Justin Roiland.
You mean the guy that both-sided Gamergate and retains a solid friendship with one of the guys that realized Tim Schafer's name was an anagram for Mr. Shitface and used that to harass him (that guy now works at Destructoid btw)? By the standards of this thread, I think it's something worth pointing out.
I mean yeah, the thread is holding those people to that same standard after seeing the OP's post in the Sexualization thread.
Welcome to Youtube recommendations. It's all downhill from there.
Literally every video game Youtuber with a decent audience is going to have terrible people watching their content.