That's only the case for a certain sector of the market, though! Plenty of Youtubers make quality productions - people like Lindybeige, Steph Margeth, LGR, or Rich Evans, for example. For every Markiplier and Pewdiepie, there is at least one Teal Swan or Scott Manley for you to check out instead.

Granted, banal Youtubers tend to get the most views, and therefore the most Google NWO money, but that's not really the sign of a shit economy - that's just the sign of a normal economy that's open and accessible to everyone, rather than one which is region-locked to a specific demographic.

Even Redletter Media is hitting a publish or perish state where they are now doing Not Half In The Bag reviews of older movies. I like these reviews, but it is a sign that quantity is exceeding quality in video monetizing. Some YouTubbers release three videos a day, and it is a ton of work to make any kind of video, super time consuming.

It's looking sweatshoppy.

^I just hope that the first one to go postal from the stress and get mowed down by cops is that SoFlo guy.

To be fair, their two re:View reviews have been more entertaining and genuine than the vast majority of their Half In The Bag reviews, thus far.

Actually having some enthusiasm and energy when you're talking about something, rather than it seeming like a truly hellish torture session, goes a long way to making it enjoyable to watch.

...at least for me.

I'd watch Scruffy and The Man read the phone book, and I'm always glad to have more. I just hope it's a sign of love and prosperity, and not a sign of the times.

Not long ago, I read something by a youtuber who said that after a recent change in the you tube algorithm, his income had abruptly declined 75 per cent. The roughly homemade but original videos that used to define YouTube are being pushed aside in favor of homogenized commercial product from networks, and now mostly shitty "premium" content from you tube's new pay channel, which aims at a youth demographic so relentlessly it feels like 1980s MTV.

TV is old. What's new is one person with a camera talking to one person with a computer. As rough as the homemade contact can be, its always going to be what makes you tube special, even if its going to be harder to make a living that way.

I give to the Red Letter Media Patreon, plus Classic Game Room and a couple other ones. It's been fascinating following Classic Game Room over the years, since it's been a front row seat watching Youtube turn into a job for somebody. That guy turned his hobby into a business, one apparently big enough that he could afford to rent out a studio and hire other people, and then the ad revenue completely crashed last year and he had to get rid of his studio as quick as possible and turn to Patreon. He used to do a ton of reviews of Skylanders and Ben 10 crap around 2010, 2011. Those videos have huge view counts. Millions of 10-year olds watched them, and the ad revenue from them supported his reviews of obscure Atari and Sega games. Ad revenue still doesn't discriminate against the age of the viewer, but there's too much content on Youtube now for a scheme like that to work anymore. Plus I think they might not be paying the "content creators" that much anymore.

I'm not a huge fan of the AVGN videos, this one in particular is boring. He's been doing them for over a decade and the humor and insight hasn't gotten much better. But I have a lot of sympathy for the amount of edited content they have to create for their channel to keep it afloat.

agreed.

i'll give 5 for TMNT 3 itself, the excitement i first felt when i saw those siouletted [sic] bulbous features encased in samurai helmets in a framed poster hanging outside the movie theater...the fact that they are finally bringing the technodrome, dimension x, baxter stockman, krang and nimrod into the picture but are still apparently unable to get away from the fart humor is an initial bummer but also gives me hope that in 10 or 15 years we will get the gritty, hard r TMNT reboots humanity has been waiting for.

the movie was good in theaters, as a kid. it was the first time i picked up on the concept of world building as i'm pretty sure the kid they are interacting with in feudal japan is a young Shredder

Even as a kid, I knew III was shit. I immediately regretted it.

what the fucking shitballs

what a piece of baleen whale ass

I would rather verb a noun than watch this excrement

Hyperion series was good, but his Ilium/Olympos books are pretty cringeworthy. "Sonie", "buckyglas", etc. The best part was Orphu and Mahnmut talking shakespeare/proust.

i liked the fact that the moravecs were inspired by MST3K

Do you like AVGN? I like AVGN. I liked him more a decade ago, when this type of format was new and he struck me as the sort of high-functioning "cool nerd" I could aspire to be, but he's got a certain charm to him still. I think it's his masterful command of adjectives; there are a ton of angry-sweary nerd critics out there now, but none can cuss with half as much creativity as Rolfe.

You seem to be asking me, but I just said I like him.. If he didn't have anything interesting to say about movies, the humor would fail, but the jokes are mostly about how this dude is nutty about movies, and since he clearly IS nutty about movies, the truth makes obvious schtick like cutting the videocassette in half with a samurai sword work.

Watching this movie, it's easy to believe that in the case of this guy, his refusal to review the new Ghostbusters movie isn't sexism, it's just this weird millennial nostalgia thing. A guy who gets this worked up over Ninja Turtles, even as a joke, is going to really overreact to that first Ghostbuster trailer, which, it should have been obvious, was deliberately not giving anything away, and to get upset about the fact that the new movie had the same title as the old movie. Which was was disrespectful to the first movie, or something. God bless him, he's nuttier than squirrel shit.

I'm getting ready to make my own video review of the original 1984 ghostbusters movie, in which i explain why it's the most overrated movie I know, why I don't like Harold Ramis, and why i think a female cast could be a huge improvement.

he's a real shitload of fuck

I know you said you liked him! It was less a question, and more an interjection, born out of shock. Like when you badmouthed Anita the other day; it's strange seeing this side of you.

And yes, you're right, AVGN has more to him than jokes and edginess. He puts a fair amount of thought into his analyses, and he's got a pleasant degree of self-awareness that's lacking in many other professional nostalgia critics. I like to think of him as a transitional element, between the high-brow artistry of Seanbaby and the lowbrow dreck of Pewdiepie.

*****

^