They have routinely poked and barbed the normal people who get castigated as Far Right for simply saying "I don't like modern Star Wars anymore" and it's going to cost them a LOT of good will. This is painfully ironic given their whole channel's big break was the Star Wars prequel critiques with Mr. Plinkett. They know, intellectually, that none of the newer Disney or Marvel products are good, but their ideology categorically forbids them from naming Feminism, Liberalism, DEI, or any other sacred cow as the reason that it's so awful.
They will never call out Disney giving former Personal Assistant to Harvey Weinstein Leslye Headland $180 million to make The Acolyte, but they will make an hour long video on it where they waffle about the "response" to the show being 'unfair' or 'intolerant' or 'undeserved.' They will whine and complain that there are starving children in Africa, and attacking a bad Star Wars show is a waste of time and a demonstration of skewed priorities. Yes, they really did this. They are weak men who coasted on the early breaking waves of "things sure are getting bad, aren't they?" but will never have the will or determination to point fingers because it will disrupt their comfortable movie-watching careers. They are a relic of the 2010's when internet videos critiquing media was a new phenomenon and now that things are well past "movies and TV are kinda bad, I wonder why that is" they don't want to take off their blinders and see what's been done, by whom, or why.
Good riddance to them. I dropped them when Mike couldn't help himself making a Donald Trump reference to some man making a cartoonishly evil and racist speech in one of their old-&-bad movie watches.
We could have seen it coming. Mr. Plinkett was a degenerate who kept hookers locked up in the basement and lived off other people’s money. So… obviously he was a Democrat.
Gen x is a deconstructionalist generation. They think they will take down “the man” with sarcasm, cynicism, and apathy. And clearly “the man” is conservative, right wing, republicans. It doesn’t cross their minds that the left has become the establishment.
I dropped them when Mike couldn't help himself making a Donald Trump reference to some man making a cartoonishly evil and racist speech in one of their old-&-bad movie watches.
I only remember two times they referenced a character as Trump.
The first was in a BotW, but it was because the guy literally looked like Trump. I don't remember any kind of speech.
The second involved a speech and it was the bad guy in Wonder Woman 1984. Who clearly was supposed to be Trump by the writers, just like Nick Offerman in Civil War.
TDS hit them hard. I remember they were doing game streaming for a bit and it was funny back before 2016 with Rich and Jack on Previously Recorded. It broke Jack and he's been over at Zero Punctuation (Second Wind) for a while now.
Their lefty opinions are kept on the more subtle side so it doesn't bother me too too much.
The problem is they just have nothing interesting to say. Their Prequel critique was low-hanging fruit, but it was interesting to see enumeration of all the ways it sucked.
I can't think of anything where I've said "huh that's a great point I never thought of that", which is what I want from them. Their takes are pedestrian and I couldn't care less about them laughing at some bad movie on VHS nobody has ever heard of.
edit: actually I can think of exactly one thing, when they called Best of Both Worlds a Riker Episode. The whole thing is Riker's character growth, becoming captain, throwing the book away, and a non-pussy reason for staying #1 in later seasons. This is the kind of thing I wish they did more of.
They quite literally are. They've stopped reviewing blockbusters and their main review show routinely goes over streaming horror shovelware. The burnout isn't hidden at all.
I find it really comforting. It means it's not just me.
Nah, there's no desperation. The three of them make a decent living off of patreon. They're uber-normies. They might suspect something is wrong, but they'll never know what. They're just going to consoom themselves into a child-less retirement.
Hot take: Space Cop wasn't as bad as people meme and if they stuck to honing their craft, they could probably actually make a good movie one day. It WAS bad but I'd take Space Cop over 90% of movies released in the past ten years.
They have been getting a bit more woke lately and it's troubling. They already basically admitted Plinkett reviews were over and done forever and that kind of sealed the deal for me. Their new Acolyte review was horrendous and the EFAP on it is a must-watch.
Red Letter Media reminds me a lot of the old Giant Bomb crew. A bunch of gen X guys who lived the gen x dream: have a cool internet job that doesn’t pay well but it’s fun as hell.
The years rolled on and they aged. They found out that having a low paying party job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
They are almost self aware. They are bored of all of the recent slop, but it's their meal ticket. They can't come out and say how truly garbage it is, or risk losing their subs. They can't quite yet admit to themselves as to why it is garbage. Still probably in the 'They should just hire so and so back.' phase instead of where we are really at: Activists hire activist friends and none of them like the project, it's just a job, and in at least half of the cases it's imperative to fix problematic content and right historical wrongs blah blah.
They probably don't pay attention to day to day news, and if they do it's highly curated so as not to jar any critical thinking loose. Can't have that dissonance tickled. Things can't have been that bad the last 4 years the adults were in charge!
I stopped watching their content because I don't watch new Hollywood shit and I enjoy most watching them discuss movies I've already seen. That's why Re:View is my favorite series.
Youtube has changed so much since they went viral.
Much like James Rolfe/AngryVideoGameNerd they failed miserably when they tried to make a movie vs reviewing and mocking them. This has to hurt your ego when you see yourself as a filmmaker but are pigeonholed as a critiic.
Their cringe slapstick skits haven't aged when on new Youtube and have mostly been dropped. That leaves you with two over-the-hill Wisconsinites sitting in chairs and being disinterested & snarky.
Jack: that shithead stereotype "I was raised by Christians" Reddit stereotype. Grew up rural and conservative then turned into a resentful atheist shitlib. I checked his account and whaddya know: https://nitter.poast.org/Harlack/status/1347976585849294848#m
Mike: apathetic gen-x neolib who clearly "watches the news", not really a progressive.
Jay: seems to be a political cynic based on editing and remarks he's made. I don't really recall him bringing anything up. Nothing political on his Twitter either.
Rich: probably also a neolib like Mike but more TDS. Definitely has flirted with being cancelled with some remarks. I'm surprised "tranny tracker 5000" wasn't edited out of the Prototype BotW screening.
Tim: maybe the least overtly political but is close friends with Jack so... Also one of my favorite on BotW.
They just come across to me as politically out of touch pseudoBoomers. When they mention woke in TV shows or movies they don't defend it but they also clearly don't get what the complaining is. In the Acolyte video Rich just said "I don't care I just want good TV".
That's literally the same attitude my stupid Boomer mother has about politics. She has her fucking retarded takes on abortion because "it affects women" that she gets emotional about, but if you bring up shit that she doesn't perceive as directly affecting her, ie: immigrants, she just waves her hand and says "who cares?"
That being said they clearly are burned out. Half In The Bag used to have a sort of shell story gimmick that they barely reference anymore. BotW comes out slower than ever before. They're putting out content like their movie props, ie: "what we blew your patreon money on". Half in the Bag also is just about weird indie shit now too.
They have routinely poked and barbed the normal people who get castigated as Far Right for simply saying "I don't like modern Star Wars anymore" and it's going to cost them a LOT of good will. This is painfully ironic given their whole channel's big break was the Star Wars prequel critiques with Mr. Plinkett. They know, intellectually, that none of the newer Disney or Marvel products are good, but their ideology categorically forbids them from naming Feminism, Liberalism, DEI, or any other sacred cow as the reason that it's so awful.
They will never call out Disney giving former Personal Assistant to Harvey Weinstein Leslye Headland $180 million to make The Acolyte, but they will make an hour long video on it where they waffle about the "response" to the show being 'unfair' or 'intolerant' or 'undeserved.' They will whine and complain that there are starving children in Africa, and attacking a bad Star Wars show is a waste of time and a demonstration of skewed priorities. Yes, they really did this. They are weak men who coasted on the early breaking waves of "things sure are getting bad, aren't they?" but will never have the will or determination to point fingers because it will disrupt their comfortable movie-watching careers. They are a relic of the 2010's when internet videos critiquing media was a new phenomenon and now that things are well past "movies and TV are kinda bad, I wonder why that is" they don't want to take off their blinders and see what's been done, by whom, or why.
Good riddance to them. I dropped them when Mike couldn't help himself making a Donald Trump reference to some man making a cartoonishly evil and racist speech in one of their old-&-bad movie watches.
We could have seen it coming. Mr. Plinkett was a degenerate who kept hookers locked up in the basement and lived off other people’s money. So… obviously he was a Democrat.
Gen x is a deconstructionalist generation. They think they will take down “the man” with sarcasm, cynicism, and apathy. And clearly “the man” is conservative, right wing, republicans. It doesn’t cross their minds that the left has become the establishment.
I only remember two times they referenced a character as Trump.
The first was in a BotW, but it was because the guy literally looked like Trump. I don't remember any kind of speech.
The second involved a speech and it was the bad guy in Wonder Woman 1984. Who clearly was supposed to be Trump by the writers, just like Nick Offerman in Civil War.
They are liberals, quite probably homos, so they can't help but let their contempt for Christians and working class Whites ooze out.
TDS hit them hard. I remember they were doing game streaming for a bit and it was funny back before 2016 with Rich and Jack on Previously Recorded. It broke Jack and he's been over at Zero Punctuation (Second Wind) for a while now.
Their lefty opinions are kept on the more subtle side so it doesn't bother me too too much.
The problem is they just have nothing interesting to say. Their Prequel critique was low-hanging fruit, but it was interesting to see enumeration of all the ways it sucked.
I can't think of anything where I've said "huh that's a great point I never thought of that", which is what I want from them. Their takes are pedestrian and I couldn't care less about them laughing at some bad movie on VHS nobody has ever heard of.
edit: actually I can think of exactly one thing, when they called Best of Both Worlds a Riker Episode. The whole thing is Riker's character growth, becoming captain, throwing the book away, and a non-pussy reason for staying #1 in later seasons. This is the kind of thing I wish they did more of.
Agree with pretty much everything else you said, but Best of The Worst is literally the most hilarious thing they've ever done besides Plinkett.
They quite literally are. They've stopped reviewing blockbusters and their main review show routinely goes over streaming horror shovelware. The burnout isn't hidden at all.
I find it really comforting. It means it's not just me.
Nah, there's no desperation. The three of them make a decent living off of patreon. They're uber-normies. They might suspect something is wrong, but they'll never know what. They're just going to consoom themselves into a child-less retirement.
Well humor is subjective, but that's a really low bar isn't it?
One might say it's the best of the worst...
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
YEEAAHHH
Their Star Trek content remains A+++.
Hot take: Space Cop wasn't as bad as people meme and if they stuck to honing their craft, they could probably actually make a good movie one day. It WAS bad but I'd take Space Cop over 90% of movies released in the past ten years.
They have been getting a bit more woke lately and it's troubling. They already basically admitted Plinkett reviews were over and done forever and that kind of sealed the deal for me. Their new Acolyte review was horrendous and the EFAP on it is a must-watch.
Rags is fucking horrible, agreed
Red Letter Media reminds me a lot of the old Giant Bomb crew. A bunch of gen X guys who lived the gen x dream: have a cool internet job that doesn’t pay well but it’s fun as hell.
The years rolled on and they aged. They found out that having a low paying party job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
They are almost self aware. They are bored of all of the recent slop, but it's their meal ticket. They can't come out and say how truly garbage it is, or risk losing their subs. They can't quite yet admit to themselves as to why it is garbage. Still probably in the 'They should just hire so and so back.' phase instead of where we are really at: Activists hire activist friends and none of them like the project, it's just a job, and in at least half of the cases it's imperative to fix problematic content and right historical wrongs blah blah.
They probably don't pay attention to day to day news, and if they do it's highly curated so as not to jar any critical thinking loose. Can't have that dissonance tickled. Things can't have been that bad the last 4 years the adults were in charge!
I stopped watching their content because I don't watch new Hollywood shit and I enjoy most watching them discuss movies I've already seen. That's why Re:View is my favorite series.
Youtube has changed so much since they went viral.
Much like James Rolfe/AngryVideoGameNerd they failed miserably when they tried to make a movie vs reviewing and mocking them. This has to hurt your ego when you see yourself as a filmmaker but are pigeonholed as a critiic.
Their cringe slapstick skits haven't aged when on new Youtube and have mostly been dropped. That leaves you with two over-the-hill Wisconsinites sitting in chairs and being disinterested & snarky.
Btw politically here's the vibe I got:
Josh: almost certainly an outright communist. "Cis het he/him" in his profile. See also: https://nitter.poast.org/search?f=tweets&q=From%3Anekocaseonly+trump&since=&until=&near=
Jack: that shithead stereotype "I was raised by Christians" Reddit stereotype. Grew up rural and conservative then turned into a resentful atheist shitlib. I checked his account and whaddya know: https://nitter.poast.org/Harlack/status/1347976585849294848#m
Mike: apathetic gen-x neolib who clearly "watches the news", not really a progressive.
Jay: seems to be a political cynic based on editing and remarks he's made. I don't really recall him bringing anything up. Nothing political on his Twitter either.
Rich: probably also a neolib like Mike but more TDS. Definitely has flirted with being cancelled with some remarks. I'm surprised "tranny tracker 5000" wasn't edited out of the Prototype BotW screening.
Tim: maybe the least overtly political but is close friends with Jack so... Also one of my favorite on BotW.
I still like when they watch a bad movie but the old episodes are far better. As you said, they look tired of doing this for almost 2 decades.
They just come across to me as politically out of touch pseudoBoomers. When they mention woke in TV shows or movies they don't defend it but they also clearly don't get what the complaining is. In the Acolyte video Rich just said "I don't care I just want good TV".
That's literally the same attitude my stupid Boomer mother has about politics. She has her fucking retarded takes on abortion because "it affects women" that she gets emotional about, but if you bring up shit that she doesn't perceive as directly affecting her, ie: immigrants, she just waves her hand and says "who cares?"
That being said they clearly are burned out. Half In The Bag used to have a sort of shell story gimmick that they barely reference anymore. BotW comes out slower than ever before. They're putting out content like their movie props, ie: "what we blew your patreon money on". Half in the Bag also is just about weird indie shit now too.