this has led to constant moralistic, church-lady handwringing about his behavior, when it really hasn't changed much in the years since I started watching him.

This is essentially the TL;DR lynchpin of the whole Nick Rekieta drama:

His critics feel that both Nick & his content has changed for the worse while Rekieta himself and some of his fans claim he hasn't and was always this way.

His spurned former fans feel he is a hypocrite for LARPing as a traddad Christian lawyer with a loving wife and 5 kids, hustling as a YTuber, drinking casually and making ridiculous law content fun.

They argue

• Nick started drinking too much,
• it was revealed he is a trust fund brat pretending to be middle class,
• he started banning longtime fans with legitimate criticism, reneging on his free speech principles
• he was revealed to resent his wife and family for getting in the way of his hedonistic desires, seething that he has to spend Christmases and long weekends with them rather than debauchery abroad
• he defamed another lolcow and lies about the defamatory things he said on air, instead pursuing a ridiculous lolsuit instead of eating crow
• he claims he hates all things law related and always has, despite this what made his YT career
• he seems to have completely abandoned his Christian faith
• he continually makes promises to his audience (custom 5k subscribers gift, 24 hr streams, long-form interview series, his own comic book, auctioning knives to raise funds for Vic, YT How-To bootcamp) that he never makes any steps to fulfill
• he exhibits tons of narcissistic behavior where he gaslights constantly and can never admit fault or apologize

Some say he's changed. Others say he hasn't. Still more say he was always like this and the Christian traddad thing was always a thin mask.