Everything Wrong With The Animation Community Critics

*discordantly* Block, Report, and Tell an Adult. If you’re like me, it’s fun to analyze and critique things. In fact, my love of criticism is only rivaled by my love of extremely long video essays. So when I see the final run time of this video, I will lick the screen. And maybe you’re not okay with that, but I feel no shame. Timestamps below. When you’re so critical, sometimes people don’t understand you. They think you’re negative or trying to ruin things. Especially if you’re a youtuber, but I like youtubers that do this. Which is why when I discovered the YouTube animated storytime community, I immediately discovered the community underneath these people: the channels that criticize them. And I discovered these channels were getting a rough deal from fans of the storytime channels, and I felt bad for them because I can identify with this. They don’t deserve to get comments telling them to kill themselves from angry fans for criticizing their favorite youtuber. That being said, enjoy this criticism of criticism, where I use the storytime community critics to analyze the art of criticism that ignores the priorities of its subject, doesn’t respect boundaries with accessible youtubers, and its distorted view on self-improvement and feelings. I have this little baby theory that there are at least two types of criticism. What if constructive criticism that is impactful on who it’s meant to criticize looks very different from criticism made to express oneself and entertain others? What if I suggested to you that perhaps entertainment criticism is not good at teaching the artist who is its subject, and both types of criticism hold each other back by pretending they’re compatible; but we ignore it! We say it’s a personality defect of the criticized if they don’t learn anything and get upset. We never consider if it’s a failing of the critic if the subject runs away, or if they hit a wall of cognitive dissonance. And this might be because them getting upset is only more entertainment to throw into the next video. I’ve been watching a lot of these videos, takin’ notes, and what I see is a bunch of people trying to have fun by insulting other people. Okay, just another day on the internet. But, using the fact that they’re making criticism as a shield to justify bein’ big meanies, sometimes to actual prepubescent children. And they have this almost pseudo-religious obsession with having these accessible youtubers validate all or most criticism given to them. That will have to be broken down later. But this pattern is pretty applicable to a lot of different communities online. It goes like this: Insult someone through criticism. {clip from Turkey Tom} “In short, they are pussies. And I don’t want to resort to ad hominem attacks in this video. You know, I’m trying to be nice, and I wanna be constructive with my critique. “But it is just the perfect word to describe these people and their mentality.” Try to humiliate them for getting upset. Act like they don’t have the right to be upset. They’re bad, spoiled crybabies for being upset. Maybe use this sound effect: {clip from Turkey Tom} “. . .entire community of whiny, obnoxious, petulant. . .” [baby crying in background] Act like they’re the real bully if they criticize you, dismiss you, insult you back, or block you. Insist they owe you more attention and validation for your video if they ever want redemption for their sins against criticism. Condemn them to an eternity of mediocrity if they won’t listen to you. Take credit for their future improvements to justify your behavior during the critique since it all worked out in the end. {clip from Turkey Tom} “Honestly, none of these people will publicly say that I’m right; and most, if they so choose, will take my suggestions and implement them into their videos, just saying, ‘I felt like changing it up.’ “And with that, deep down, I have a feeling that they know that I’m right.” And finally, a more advanced, optional step. Just in case the genre you’re criticizing falls out of fashion, position yourself as an unheard truth-teller who could have saved the community if only your words were heeded. It could be so easily hand-waved how cruel so many of these videos are to their subjects or friends of their subjects; cruelty the community seems numb or oblivious to. It can be sneaky or completely overt. Now meanness, insults, mockery, blood, are important rhetorical tools. I think they can be vital, and I don’t think we all need to be holding hands and singing songs all the time. But, I’m questioning “Are you using your rhetorical tools correctly?” when you’re pulling out the big guns because damnit, why won’t you listen to me when I tell you to color your backgrounds? {clip from Over the Garden Wall} “*menacing, rough voice* I’m trying to help you!” I find it weird that the storytime critics rarely talk in a language that acknowledges that, for the bigger channels, this is their job. And if you can’t offer advice that’s more geared towards getting more views, making work that resonates with the audience, fostering a devoted audience (preferably a non-toxic one), and doing all of that fast without getting wrecked by the algorithm, their advice is not super relevant to them. If it interferes with any of those things, it’s counterproductive. If they can’t convince them that they want their advice and that their advice is going to help them, they’re bad salesmen. If their insult-riddled advice deeply upsets the subject to the point where they work slower or quit, they failed. They would likely argue that this is not their problem, but it would be if their goal was their goal. And I cannot stress enough the dedication to what they describe as “constructive criticism” that must be heard by the subject. {clip from Turkey Tom} “But I think just the fact that she put the word ‘criticism’ in quotations says it all. Her inability to accept criticism, or at least acknowledge it, is blatant. And honestly, it disgusts me that someone would think this way.” {clip from The Right Opinion} “But they can’t outrun criticism, they can’t outrun the algorithm, and they sure as hell can’t outrun me.” {clip from Foster} “And Spechie, if you see this video, please watch the whole thing. I want to talk to you in a personal manner regarding your actions.” {clip from Turkey Tom} “And while writing the script for this video, I thought ‘Hey, what if I did a little investigation to see if my claims bear true when confronting Spechie in person?’” This is what separates them from most youtubers who review books, movies, anime, or video games. I’m sure these critics would love to have their criticism validated, but they don’t demand it. They presumably make their stuff for themselves and their audience. If there were two knights in a dungeon, and their objective was to get to the end of a hallway, when one of the knights steps on a stone that glows and launches an arrow from the wall that goes straight into the eye of the first knight, the second knight knows not to step on that stone. But these guys don’t take a different approach. They do the exact same thing, but this time harder and including more examples of the community wanting nothing to do with them. Basically stomping and stomping on the stone harder, and it’s either going to break or, more likely, they’re just gonna die again. I don’t think this bothers the critics because the reviews are made for the simple pleasure of pointing out any perceivable flaws and inconsistencies. Kind of like a slower, more personable CinemaSins. Once again, not objectively bad, but different from the stated goal. There is also the matter that many of the videos use a large percentage of their run times focusing on the youtubers being bad people outside of their videos. Except their definition of a bad person is someone who won’t watch their videos, is tagging their more popular friends to get more views (which is against the youtube rules), block them on Twitter, either preemptively when they heard about them through the grapevine, or after the critic called them fat. In a movie review if you stopped to talk about how the director was a bad person, it would be like, “this director did unspeakable things to his adopted daughter,” and then an ensuing discussion about separating the art from the artist or not letting the pathologically abusive run around to vacuum up more victims and money. In a YouTube storytime review, the criticism is, “This guy downloaded our videos and shared it in his group chat with his friends, so we lost a little bit of views. And then he insulted us. “But here, he talks about how the animation community is filled with nice people, and if I take that hyper literally, it means none of them should ever be mean.” These things they bring up are usually mean or dismissive of them; typically dismissive. {clip from Tabbes} “. . .are. Whose approval is necessary? Daft? The Virgin Mary? So-called experts, with them and their subjective commentary.” But they are at the same level, if not far tamer, than stuff that shows up in their own public Twitter feeds. Because they hold these people to such a higher standard than they hold themselves and their friends, it always comes off like they think they’re at Disney World, and they wanna talk to the manager because Peter Pan was acting out of character. Like, “No. This is a person.” I’m sure many of them are putting in an effort to stay PG because they know a lot of their fans are young, but they didn’t really sign a contract. You know, when I think of the Content Cop video on Leafy, I think about the fact that at no point during that video did iDubbbz ever pretend the video shouldn’t hurt Leafy’s feelings. He decided Leafy was bad enough and cool enough that he deserved to be cyberbullied like those he cyberbullied, and then he proceeded. The heat [like] making these statements about what they think and what they feel. “Do you think you’re above criticism?” “Do you think you’re perfect?” “You’re complacent because you got your audience already.” They characterize Spechie, TimTom, Tabbes, and Jaiden as egomaniacs. Multiple critics have compared the storytime community to the Sanford Cult from Hot Fuzz. The people they describe in their videos sound dangerous and horrible, but so often it seems like all would be forgiven if they just embraced them and validated their criticism. Why would you be standing outside of the door of this egomaniac’s house going, “[scrape, scrape, scrape,] Let me in buddy.” Yes, if you run through their Twitter for long enough, you can accumulate a handful of examples of them being dismissive of certain critics or certain types of criticism. From there, you can twist their words to mean that they rail against the very concept of being criticized. Once the critics arrive here, they begin conjecture that the storytime youtubers think they’re gods who can do no wrong, that they believe themselves to be the infallible heroes of their own story, or that they’ve grown spoiled and lazy from having a big fan base. And they don’t even notice how far a jump that is from Spechie offhandedly saying in a Discord server on the subject of her puppet, “Well if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” They circle the quote. They interpret it as literally and as uncharitably as possible and they refuse to think laterally. And when you present this case, you don’t present the history of like, Turkey Tom or DaftPina’s social media presence. Because then you would have to acknowledge that this is a dialogue, and the very real well-poisoning that they have done to their relationships with the storytime channels. Many of the critics seem angry that real life is not The Sims where your relationships are in a vacuum. Uh, yeah, people stop liking you when you treat their friends like trash because you think they’re untalented and they need to be punished for all the success they’ve so wrongfully accumulated so far. [static] {clip from Turkey Tom} “And after receiving criticism from Daft, Tabbes blocked him on Twitter. Not for harassment, but on the sole basis that he was being critical in his video. “And, she tried to justify that people should ignore his criticism in her Nice Tract, saying that his videos are {clip from Tabbes} “‘them and their subjective commentary.’” Hey, out of curiosity, do you guys want to see six more seconds of context to Tabbes’ rap? I didn’t even question it at first. I assumed she was casting Daft as a mindless hater. But as I edited this video, I realized Turkey Tom, The Right Opinion, and who knows how many others all cut the clip in the exact same way and I got suspicious. {clip from Tabbes} “And I know it, believe me. Been compared to those above par. You’re not alone on this, understand? The pressure’s just bizarre. “Whose approval is necessary? Daft? The Virgin Mary? So called experts, with them and their subjective commentary.” Yeah, now it’s a line about how the critics are causing them anxiety, and that’s because they are aware of them. Tabbes is saying you don’t need their approval to do what you want to do. [start of Crawling by Linkin Park playing in background] A mentality you think The Right Opinion in particular would have more respect for, considering his Twitter profile literally says, [beginning of Crawling by Linkin Park playing in background] “I Don’t Need Your Approval”. [~craaawllliing~] This makes even more sense when you consider Tabbes is friends with ChillyPanda. Three months before this video was made, DaftPina said this to her friend in his review of her channel (which is probably why he got singled out), {clip from DaftPina} “So inside and out of her videos her art is terrible, and if I was 22 like her, I think I’d just stop drawing and try a new hobby.” Animation critics tend to slam newbie artists who get into making storytime videos. They see them as soulless, money-grubbing trend-jumpers, instead of someone who saw people doing something and wanted to do it too because it looked fun. If you watch a lot of these videos, you’ll start to notice this weird perspective. {clip from Foster} “She’s bad in so many ways. I can really just say, Spechie, that you really kind of don’t deserve that what you’ve been given. *deeper, slower* What you’ve been given.” {clip from LS Mark} “I mean, what’s the point in trying if a video about how you once worked at a fast-food restaurant can get millions of views?” They act like anyone that makes storytime videos will just be a smash hit automatically, which is odd because it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny at all. Yes, a boy in middle school found an audience, but they’re not taking a fair sample. They’re not calculating the channels that are just sitting at 19 subscribers, until they make fun of them for being clones who are bad at drawing or use them as an example for why youtubers with better animation skills are getting overlooked. [static] So the most common criticism storytime critics get is that animation is hard, and they’re not being realistic. Whenever they address this in their videos, they kind of walk past the two stronger arguments at the core of “animation is hard”. Many of them will jump into showing you animation techniques to demonstrate skill and look more knowledgeable. My all-time favorite moment of this is when LS Mark changes youtuber LukeOrSomething’s video to demonstrate that if he takes more time to add smear frames, he can spend more time on his videos (and not much else). It’s not noticeable enough to be satisfying. It’s too slow to be invisible. It’s not even enough animation that Luke would stop getting called a fake animator. Luke’s wha-pish are like the words “said” in a book: they’re invisible. They are serviceable for the purposes of his storytime YouTube videos. This isn’t actually a criticism of what Luke’s made on its own terms. You see, in this video and those like it, youtubers like Luke are being used as a prop for a YouTube semantic battle over the words “animation” and “animatic”. These words have taken on different meanings to this community years ago. This is a vital key to understanding why a startling bulk of these videos on this community are irrelevant or waste a lot of their runtime: because they’re about a semantic battle. Go over what you think animation is. [overlapped clips from Turkey Tom and DaftPina] State what the definition of an animatic is. [overlapped clips from LS Mark, DaftPina, and Turkey Tom] Go over why they don’t fit the definition you gave. [overlapped clips from LS Mark, DaftPina, and Turkey Tom] {Clip from DaftPina} “When they aren’t, just means that “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I feel like I should point out that Turkey Tom doesn’t agree with the others on this, and I don’t wanna convince you guys that these guys are a monolith. They do however repeat a lot of the same points very often. Sometimes it feels like actual plagiarism. Not in a “I wanna trick my audience into thinking I came up with this” kind of way, but more so that they have this pathological need to combine everyone’s points to prove to you that TimTom is just the worst. Still, it’s pretty funny when a community so angry about another community’s originality makes extremely same-y videos. They all go over the same drama, the same art mistakes, the same instances of blasphemy against criticism. It just goes Spechie tweet, TimTom tweet, ChillyPanda’s video, Tabbes’s rap; over and over like clockwork, never really giving you the time between these events for scope. Or like I showed you with Tabbes’ rap: removing context from their actions, trying to make it look like totally out of proportion insubordination against criticism itself that just sprang forth after these innocent, fair critics told them to be more careful with their linework. Turkey Tom got exposed for misrepresenting why he was blocked and booted from a Discord server, but he’s not the only one lying by omission. It’s genuinely hard to tell who’s withholding information and who just didn’t research hard enough. So these animation critiques are not only impractical like everyone says; they actively talk past the people they’re aimed at. And it doesn’t really help when they go, “Look! I can make one scene look slightly better. So take the time to do what I tell you to do so you can be slightly closer to my definition of what you should be. “And you can trust my taste because, well, y-you know me. I’m a person who operates in a completely different genre; a person who tells your friends to quit their ambitions; “a person who doesn’t understand you and will quickly try to mischaracterize the things you do to my audience; a person with such a deluded view on your situation, that I might sincerely suggest that you, “a hobbyist who might be a minor, should hire staff to animate your YouTube videos.” {clip from LS Mark} “And if you don’t know how to animate you could always just “pay people to do it for you.” “I am the perfect person for this job because I might not like or watch storytime videos, and I don’t see the appeal.” {clip from LS Mark} “I’m subscribed to tons of these people. “So, okay I’m subscribed to five of them. And only like three at the most ‘cause I felt obligated to.” “So all of my criticisms are essentially me trying to drag you into a different genre that I respect more. And that’s why we need to go to war for the soul of the word ‘animation’.” I think we all understand that effort does not always equal success, especially if you’re pouring your sweet effort into the wrong orifice. You’d think they’d start connecting the dots when they point out that there’s better animated channels with fewer subscribers, or that the YouTube algorithm murdered the original animation community. Even more damning is when they throw shade at the big man upstairs, TheOdd1sOut, for his animation. If you’re working by yourself, and you have no personal interest in learning animation, as most of them don’t seem to (and sometimes show lukewarm interest when the critics threaten to give them a noogie and shove them in a locker), then don’t learn animation. Do something else. But there is this stubborn unwillingness to accept that when it comes to these YouTube videos, it might not matter if the bicycle wheels turn or if the arm has enough transition frames, because that’s not the appeal of these videos to their audience. Until the youtuber can afford a team of animators comfortably, it’s impractical, and it slows down production time; the production time these people chronically underestimate. If someone tells you it takes them a week and a half to make a video, guess how long it takes? *voice lowers* Now, if you were on better terms with them, maybe you could give them some advice on how to record and edit faster. In fact, in a weird way the channels are punished for having their own priorities and not committing to emulating TheOdd1sOut through and through. Some people argue the critics are hypocrites because most don’t animate or lip-sync their puppets, but this is a good decision. People click on their videos because of the title, the title card, and the subject matter. They are either repelled or enticed by the video’s runtime. These commentary channels don’t need to lip-sync their puppets. Don’t try to convince LS Mark to lip-sync the puppet. It’s not worth his time. The exemplar for success in his genre was Leafy, and Leafy talked over irrelevant game footage which people made fun of him for. But it’s quick, it’s low effort so he can do it fast over and over, and if you’re not tabbing over, it’s kind of relaxing to just like watch the guy jump. Stabby stabby. And Spechie didn’t trick all these people into thinking she has fully animated videos drawn in the flip eBook of the angels. It was never the appeal. As much as you might dislike her, the appeal was her personality, her delivery, and her stories. The first time I watched a Spechie video I wasn’t even lookin’ at the screen; I was playing Slime Rancher. A lot of people watch YouTube this way, and it’s a good idea to keep that in mind when you’re writing a script. Spechie became a big target for the community when she disrespected the Old Gods. And she is frequently criticized for art stagnation in a way that makes it sound like any day now her audience will wake up and realize she rarely animates and abandon her, even though her channel itself is fine. They take these quotes from her Discord and see arrogance. I see it as her identifying that lip-syncing the puppet is not a high priority time-sink right now. Let’s talk puppets. There is a long history of the puppet. The puppet is presenting a friendly face for the channel. It’s a visual aid, and it gives you a sense of who you’re listening to. Spechie’s got a sarcastic girl and a shirt that says “LAME”. I Hate Everything’s grumpy face. Others are essentially gifts. They’re like original characters the youtuber gives their audience, and these tend to turn out a lot of fanart as the puppet becomes sort of like a fictional character their audience can play with. I’m torn on this whole ripoff thing. On one hand it’s true; he is a trendsetter. On the other hand, TheOdd1sOut’s avatar is so simple in design that basically every black and white avatar, whether it came before him or after him, kind of looks like him. This is because he’s just a bunch of basic shapes that form a humanoid. I thought the whole aesthetic behind the design was that is was a cleaned-up version of something a grade schooler would draw in a notebook. These simple avatars with their limited color schemes are easier to animate. They are easier to teach others to draw if you hire animators. Their simplicity is an asset. There is something that just feels clean and professional about these black and white characters to me. But the critics insist that they are a product of laziness. {clip from omigoshitsjames252} “A couple hundred thousand people saw her Patreon and said, ‘I’m not paying for this.’” {clip from DaftPina} “But look at that. She’s getting paid a very low amount of money. This means that her over 200,000 subscribers are like, ‘Yeah, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna pay to see your art.’” Many storytime critics try to make it look like the youtuber’s audience doesn’t value their work by using Patreon as a measuring stick, which is contradicted by the passion of their fans and how protective they are of these creators. I don’t think Patreon money is an objective measure of who makes the most detailed backgrounds or who has the most frames of animation. This is much more easy to observe outside of the storytime community when looking at communities with lower effort formats. Patreon money is probably more of a measure of how many adults are highly emotionally invested in the creator and their work or incentivized to buy tier rewards. And, well, YouTube animators have mostly younger audiences, so they rely on their videos being monetizable. If this is true, then the real answer isn’t more transition frames. It’s how do you get people with access to a debit card to care about the wallet of a person they’ve never met; a question just as relevant to anyone with a Patreon. The storytime critics’ criticism is often called “subjective”. But like, most things in life are subjective and we still have the ability to care about them. People still buy subjective self-help books or pay for the subjective opinions of teachers or professionals to advise them on all kinds of matters. So, why can’t they convince these storytime youtubers that their criticism is meaningful and relevant? They even decided that it’s because they’re egotistical babies who don’t want their pride bruised, but I think it goes back to the whole salesman thing. Why doesn’t Turkey Tom care that some people think ad hominem attacks make his content worse? {clip from Turkey Tom} “‘But Turkey Tom, you can’t do that. Stop being so mean. I thought you wouldn’t make ad hominem attacks.’ Ehhh, I sort of gave up, and I don’t really value that as a criticism.” Why doesn’t DaftPina care that the most frequent criticism he gets is that he talks too slow? I think it’s because it doesn’t fit their vision. It’s criticism that doesn’t take them and what they want into account. DaftPina has done every video in this style of speaking. It would mess up the aesthetic and the continuity of his channel to ask him to stop doing the android thing. By asking him to do this, we would also be asking him to either make his videos shorter or make his scripts longer to compensate. It would change the way he delivers jokes. And, what happens if he’s actually very invested in the idea, and he has plans that we don’t know about? What if having a persona makes him feel better when people hate on him because it’s not his mannerisms they hate, just the persona’s? And how would all of this change our pitch to him? See how very simple criticism can get really complicated really fast? Convincing him to drop the shtick is kind of like asking him to do a trust fall with you. Which brings us to a new question: Um, are we trustworthy? Is our interest in the youtuber’s improvement, success, and happiness authentic? Or are they just content fodder #32? CinemaSins presents “Everything Wrong with Turkey Tom”. [static] And now let’s flip everything back around. The critics don’t take the youtuber’s aesthetic and priorities seriously. They treat their content like it’s a void where they imagine better things to be, and the ceiling of those better things is always a better version of TheOdd1sOut. The powerful consensus that these videos would be better if they weren’t in black and white quickly drifts into “green is not a creative color” territory. But honestly, I think it has more to do with the fact that color and more complex character designs take longer, and the storytime critics consistently insist that anything that takes longer is the correct choice for the youtuber. This is because, as we’ll go in more depth about later, most storytime critics deeply believe the members of the community haven’t earned their success, and that their genre itself is stupid. To cleanse themselves of their sins of gaining major or minor YouTube popularity, they have to turn their simple vlogs into humongous projects. Even if they’re still working alone, and even if it means their audience gets to hear from them less often. And then there’s how they treat children. Oh boy, can’t wait. {clip from LS Mark} “‘He’s only 13. Luke’s still learning.’ I don’t give bonus points to someone for their age. Luke could be 10, Luke could be a hundred; and his flaws would be just as apparent.” They’re pointing out he’s 13 because it’s probably not a good idea to make a 13-year-old the centerpiece of this point. It makes the whole “you guys are actually a bunch of bullies” thing a little too on the nose. {clip from Turkey Tom} “And in a recent Twitter post, TimTom paints DaftPina in a horrible light, claiming that he harasses children, and making himself look like the hero in the situation. “Luckily, that day many children watched ‘Rick and Morty’ and their intelligence shot to the point where they went against TimTom and sided with Daft, as he comments that you shouldn’t call them children because you’re assuming that they’re weak.” You’re not being disrespectful when you treat an 11-year-old different from an older teenager. There’s a transition happening here. It’s not about being weak. They don’t need to be harvested as cringe fuel for the cringe gods. And you are being manipulative when you try to exploit that part of kids that want to be taken seriously by saying, “Oh no kids, I’m the one that actually respects you because I pretend there’s absolutely no difference between us. TimTom says you’re made of glass; he thinks you’re an idiot.” These kids are developing their cognitive abilities. They’re not done yet; they need more time in the microwave. But unfortunately for them, youtubers need content fodder and poorly formed arguments to defeat. So who can we call on? Oh, I know, let’s pick a boy so young, his voice hasn’t cracked yet. {clip from LS Mark} “Seen some pretty bad excuses of people defending their character designs.” {clip from LukeOrSomething} “I’ve been called to Jaiden Animations copycat, but I wear a hoodie. She doesn’t.” [peaceful meditation music] “And release all of the sounds that are trapped in your mind.” [peaceful meditation music] “AHHHH-aaaaaAHH” There’s a bad habit in this community of responding to children [while] not even acknowledging that they’re children. Instead they kinda just go on pretending they’re talking to someone their own age who’s just dumb or bad at arguing rather than adjusting to the situation. Even if you don’t agree with me that this is exploiting them, you gotta agree with me that this is lazy. The pattern of belittling them is rampant. They are simultaneously too successful and losers who nobody likes. {clip from LS Mark} “For example, Rebecca degraded her art style in order to fit with the other animators. I mean, how would her professor feel is he saw what she was up to today? He’d take her degree back.” They would probably say, “Wow Rebecca, congratulations on your overwhelming success! I’m so proud of you! Do you like your job?” I’m just calling it now; this semantic argument about the storytime youtubers calling themselves “animators” or “animatic creators” will never die. I think the pedantry is set off by this perceived broken promise and resentment that these people have overthrown the old style of YouTube animators. This isn’t even the storytime community’s fault, but they will pay the consequences. {clip from NeoJesus} “Hey, Jaiden Animations, the 44,000 dollar version of the animation window in Photoshop CS5. “You know, the girl that has more subscribers than David Firth, psychicpebbles, hotdiggedydemon, and RubberNinja and accomplished it all by appealing to the lowest common denominator: awkward teen tumblr force.” NeoJesus treats Jaiden Animations like she’s not entitled to the money she makes. She has to pour it all back into the channel instead of using it for anything she needs or is saving up for. In his video, there is this strong undercurrent that it’s her fault that Max G. became homeless and had to surrender his cats to a shelter. He probably didn’t intend this, but that’s what happens when you bring all of this up during a review of Jaiden’s channel. And while I don’t know these other dudes, I love David Firth, which is why I know this is an unfair comparison. It’s so easy to go, “Oh look, Jaiden’s an animator and David’s an animator. He’s so much better, and he has seniority. He should be more popular than her.”; ignoring, first of all, that Jaiden has a bigger audience potentially than David because children are currently a bigger audience than adults. And David’s animations are spooky, uncomfortable, and alienating. They’re made to be that way. Sure, they’re using the same medium on the same website, but in context the comparison doesn’t make sense. And it’s not the only explanation about why David isn’t more popular. In the past, David has gone literally over a year between uploads, which means he gets less exposure when you consider every video you make is a new path that leads to your channel. Sure, David’s videos will probably always take longer to make than Jaiden’s, but we don’t know how efficient David’s process is since it’s a mystery. What I do know is that YouTube keeps accusing David of stealing his own content. He has lost massive amounts of time and ad revenue because of this, and it has nothing to do with Jaiden. The existence of Jaiden or other storytime youtubers is about as much of a threat to David as videos of kittens. And what I mean by that is, yeah, hypothetically time spent watching videos of kittens is time not spent watching “Salad Fingers”. But we wouldn’t normally consider these two things in direct competition with each other. And we wouldn’t assume because someone is watching a video of kittens that they would be just as happy if not happier watching “Cream” because it took more effort to make. This video is similar to LS Mark’s video on LukeOrSomething. NeoJesus is kinda disappointed Jaiden hasn’t evolved more over the years, but overall she’s just a prop so he can rant about what’s wrong with YouTube and the attention economy. YouTube isn’t the only one passing judgement on who’s worthy and unworthy. You know, I always get the sense that the reason these videos are so hyper focused on art mistakes and animation is because the actual meat and potatoes is boring to them. They’re just not the type of people who would care about a video about school or being an introvert. For example, in this video, Foster theorizes that the reason Spechie isn’t an anatomy expert is because she did not listen to one teacher she had in one class. This was the teacher she talked about in her video “My Art Teacher Hated My Guts”. The entire story of that video is how the teacher didn’t want the class doing traditional art. She wasn’t teaching Spechie traditional art, which was what she wanted to be taught. That’s why Spechie hated her and made the video. In any video, there are bound to be mistakes, but this video has a very telling mistake. This is a scripted video about one person that has a massive hearing comprehension failure about one of their most popular videos that I mean, he’s watched right? He shows footage of it in the video. Let’s meditate for a second on this idea that storytime animators discuss boring, unoriginal things. Doesn’t this become more of a condemnation of how boring everyday life is? {clip from unknown source} “‘Well, there was this one time where I went to school for the first time, and–’ ‘What? You also went to school for the first time?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, you too?’ ‘Heck yeah I did!’ ‘Guys, guys, guess what?’ *everyone* ‘What?’ ‘I also went to school for the first time this one time!’ “[everyone talking at once about how cool this all is]” Watching this clip, I was literally thinking, “Actually, I’d love to hear random youtubers talk about their first day of school. That sounds kind of fun.” I don’t know. *valley girl voice* “I’m a people watcher. I’m an INFJ.” Some people like listening to people tell stories about themselves, knowing they could be exaggerated or untrue (a risk that exists both on and offline). I can’t teach you the value in this; there is no inherent value to it. Once you realize what an outsider the average critic is to the community, the common criticism of their unoriginal personalities takes on a new life. Oh, but I should point out that there’s a weird mischaracterization happening here with a lot of these videos. You see, a while back a meme went through the community where they were all supposed to make a video and answer whether they were an introvert or an extrovert and why. These videos are abused by the critics to make the channels look like they all have the exact same personality. By just downloading a storytime youtuber’s introvert video, you have all of these similar clips of them talking about being introverted. But they don’t give you the context, which is that they’re all answering a question, a question that only has two answers! It shouldn’t be surprising or suspicious that most of them are introverted! {clip from DaftPina} “They are very random and quirky, but at the same time are an introvert and is very anxious. If you guessed, ‘all of them’, then you’d be correct!” {clip from Turkey Tom} “And all these channels seem to have the same awkward ‘look at me, I’m an introvert’ personality on their channels.” Guys, they all have the same hobby you do indoors by yourself. {clip from LS Mark} “It’s conflicting. They gave off the impression that they have a bubbly personality and love to be around others, but at the same time try to convince people that they’re actually very #Awkward and don’t know how.” {clip from Turkey Tom} “And as much as they can claim to be introverted, it seems kind of disingenuous when a lot of them like to yell in their videos and scream about how introverted they are.” Being introverted describes where you get your energy from. It has nothing to do with how friendly or bubbly you are, and it in no way impedes your ability to talk into a microphone. And most people record alone anyway. I mean, these terms are already nebulous. Carl Jung himself said that there are no true introverts and extroverts, and he popularized the concept. It’s just a shorthand for explaining something general about yourself. But, saying these people have a lot in common is sorta true, right? Many of them are superficially the same in the exact same way LS Mark and Turkey Tom are superficially the same. If you spend a lot of time watching their videos, you can see they clearly have different personalities. But they have a lot in common, thus why they wanna make commentary videos. And when they make those videos, they begin to blend together further. Remember when I said I took notes on their videos? That wasn’t a joke. I had to actually sit down and make mini-files on all of them to keep track of who did what and where they actually did diverge from each other in opinion and when they were all doing the same thing. And I had to do that because when I tried to do it from memory, they were all blending together into the same scowling brunette. In Turkey Tom’s own words, talking about himself two months later (I had to go back and record this; I almost fell out of my chair), {clip from Turkey Tom} “If you actually just look a little deeper, they’re clearly very different. And calling any of them copycats of their more popular counterparts is frankly just really dumb I guess.” Okay, we got one acknowledgement. {clip from Turkey Tom} “TimTom is not a clone of TheOdd1sOut.” [celebratory party jingle] But somehow, it’s only their targets who are cult-y and have *in unison with The Right Opinion* “collectivist” mindsets when they want to work together and defend each other and downplay each other’s flaws. It’s only sinister when other people do it. When the critics do it to each other it’s no big deal because well, “I know my peeps are good peeps deep down,” which in this situation isn’t wrong for either side. {clip from The Right Opinion} “However, if they are defending a community, it will eventually be infiltrated by bad actors. They will have a lot harder of a job retaining that audience because when you live as a collective, you die as a collective.” {clip from The Right Opinion} “So recently, in spite of the absence of abhorrent scandals, they still have been receiving a significant amount of criticism. Why is that?” Excellent rhetorical question. The criticism is not coming from just anyone; it’s coming from cynical, critical peeps who take criticism with the utmost seriousness. They typically see very little value in what a lot of the storytime channels make and are rarely entertained by them. {clip from The Right Opinion} “. . .and is admittedly a genre that I don’t have that much interest in.” That clip was taken from The Right Opinion’s video essay on the community. It’s called “The Unseen Side of the Storytime Animators, dash, How it Hurts Their Reputation”, and it’s a big ol’ essay. It’s about a lot of things, but one of the central ideas is that if the animation community wants to think that they’re holier than thou, well they’re gonna get held to holier-than-thou standards. Unfortunately, he forgot to prove thaaaaaaaaaat. He was busy. His video is pretty though. Look at that shade of red. That’s a spicy shade of red. On their morality, I think we can prove that if asked if they think they are overall a good person, they will probably answer “yes”. And your boys have been diggin’ as hard as they can, but this is all they’ve come up with; and so I feel pretty confident in saying they are probably just okay people. People capable of being mean and salty and sarcastic sometimes, but overall not the cathedrals of the ego you make them out to be. The Right Opinion thinks TheOdd1sOut is kind of fake. He also believes that the community overall exaggerates or makes up stories to be more interesting. He believes this will be their undoing when the audience comes to see them as unauthentic. This criticism would make more sense if anything about the situation gave you the impression that these videos were supposed to be these super candid retellings of events. He doesn’t go into detail about what youtubers and what videos he believes to be lies, and what the impact of that is. I think the subject of how people lie, mis-remember, and exaggerate when telling stories is kind of fascinating on its own, but overall I would say, “I don’t really care if the fish was this big when you said it was that big.” I do however care if you lie about having cancer to get money, but that doesn’t seem to be his point. {clip from The Right Opinion} “Once again, you can’t prove it as fake, but it’s understandable to be skeptical of the idea that all of these people “with such a backlog of interesting stories remembered so well in their memory down to specific details have all converged in one community. Hella fucking coincidence.” The Right Opinion’s over here like, “Hmm, so suspicious how James always remembers what everyone said. Oh boy, when people realize this, the illusion will be broken and the fans will revolt!” This ignores, One, not all of James’s videos are even stories; some of them are just him making funny observations set to animations. Actually, every once in a while you’ll see a critic go, “Well, these storytime critics have to run out of stories eventually, huh? What a faulty channel premise.” I swear, they don’t actually watch these channels, because the channels are filled with opinion videos. Also, not everyone’s character is as wholesome and cutesy. Point Two: Make no mistake, this is like shouting “No false gods!” at a mall Santa. DaftPina and LS Mark’s videos, for all their faults, have far more soul than this. These videos, they’re pretty, they’re a hell of a lot better organized than this video; but when you get up close there’s something wrong, and it’s not just with the arguments. This is an interloper trying to suck some blood out of these youtubers, manufacturing the controversy, crafting mountains from mole hills. Pointing out that James is probably not this super whimsical marshmallow man 24/7 is not this master own; it’s not a conspiracy theory. He's sittin’ over here like, “What inner darkness does that duplicitous smile hide?” He’s probably just a dude. Why are they doing this? My theory is they do this because of a very simple mistake: they picked a bad target. But you know, you get a couple thousand words into a script, and you don’t want all that effort to go to waste, and, you know these are big channels; so let’s gussy this up by raising the stakes ourselves. Now, instead of this being about how Spechie blew you off when you told her to change her puppet, now it’s a conspiracy theory about the fate of storytime videos. So what was that thing The Right Opinion said again? {clip from The Right Opinion} “So recently in spite of the absence of abhorrent scandals, they still have been receiving a significant amount of criticism. Why is that?” Their indifference to criticism is exactly the kind of thing that would make someone like him mad. This controversy exists because reaction channels need it to exist. They get to report on how tall the fire gets when they pour fuel on it. They are printing their own money. They’re slime ranchers. {clip from The Right Opinion} “To summarize, when your community becomes accessible to less than talented creators and when an easy formula is in place, then it’s only a matter of time before the negative starts to flow in. “At which point many audiences will look to you to oust those people. However, with the attitudes adopted by the creators, they seem to have a problem with that; at which point the audience will lose that core faith in the creator, and the genre will subsequently perish.” I have this strong feeling I can help fix this situation with poetry. I said that last week when I wanted to get a spider out of my shower, but this, this time I feel like I’m really onto something. Hold on. [shuffling of papers] [shuffling of papers] Okay, here we go, {Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley} “I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone [desert wind and distant instruments] Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, [desert wind and distant instruments] And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read [desert wind and distant instruments] Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; [desert wind and distant instruments] And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; [desert wind and distant instruments] Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay [desert wind and distant instruments] Of [that] colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone [and] level sands stretch far away.’” [desert wind and distant instruments] The thing about insisting that one day the channels will die and the storytime videos will die is that they’re right. I mean, not for the reasons that they think they’re right, but they are kind of right. Nothing has permanence; not YouTube videos, not YouTube, not countries. I think the only thing that has permanence is this mostly full jar of jelly in my fridge. It’s not grape; it’s like Africa or something. You could bulldoze my kitchen and somehow that jar would still be there. Anyway, I just can’t help but laugh at all this fighting. “It’s a trend! It’s a fad! It’s a phase!” Okay? So is everything. So is being alive. I highly doubt they will kill the concept of talking over images you generate yourself, but I’m sure, one day, it will fall out of fashion. That doesn’t mean they’re doomed, and that doesn’t mean they’ll never work again. It definitely doesn’t mean they were better off having never made a video in the first place. I’d say it’s catastrophizing, but it’s not; it’s just another hollow reason to validate them. Because in the future, if the storytime videos die down, they get to make a new video where they go, “Ahahahaha, this is what you get for thinking you’re above criticism.” One of my favorite tweets I’ve seen from this community is omigoshitsjames in response to a video about his video. {clip from Lazlack} “Look at that; this fucking baby has six sets of merch, four of them being the same thing and a flag and a poster that says, ‘I HATE SPECHIE’, and also looks like shit. “But he has the balls to criticize her merch? Like, who the fuck is gonna pay 36 dollars for this?” Maybe when he made t-shirts he learned what I assumed this whole time: that those companies who will print the shirt designs probably don’t give you much wiggle room on cost. Him being angered by criticism against him and his friends is just kind of like; it’s just perfect. [celebratory party jingle] By the way, omigoshitsjames is quite upset that Spechie said that he doxxed her. You could make an argument about hard and soft doxes, but like, he knows exactly what she’s talking about. This isn’t unprecedented. {clip from omigoshitsjames252} “I know where Spechie went to high school.” He figured out where she went to high school and told everyone. He actually posted a picture of her high school in the video and reminded all of us when she was a student there. Yeah, it’s not quite as bad as posting a home address, but those are some pretty significant breadcrumbs you’re just handing everyone in one convenient video. And it was definitely completely unnecessary for the point he was making. Out of context, this can sound super creepy, and it, it kind of is. But since I’m not showing you the full clip for obvious reasons, I just wanna say it didn’t come off as malicious. It just came off more like he wanted sleuthy boy YouTube detective points for figuring it out. These videos can just get so weird sometimes. They want to be heard. They claim it’s constructive criticism. They don’t wanna be treated like mindless haters. But their videos aren’t made to be seen by the people they’re criticizing. I want to show you this animation LS Mark made. I know I shouldn’t take this seriously, but I, I can’t help myself; it’s fascinating. So in the animation the storytime youtubers are all outside of his house. {clip from LS Mark} “‘Heard you were makin’ another storytime video. You got some big nuts for a person who hides behind a cartoon.’ “‘Come on, isn’t it at all possible that I’m just passionate about the subject?’ “‘No!’” [whack] I know it’s a joke, but he’s casted himself as this persecuted critic. He can’t accept that he fired the first shot. He can’t accept that he reloaded the gun and tried again. And I don’t wanna act like LS Mark’s whole life is chasing after these people and trying to get validation for his criticism, but like, he’s spent a lot of time on this. He shows up in the comment section of a lot of criticism videos in the community. Mark is clearly more invested in this conflict. They are not chasing after him. One of the third themes of The Right Opinion’s essay is surrounding the drama of TheOdd1sOut refusing to follow Turkey Tom on Twitter because he is too edgy. Which, if you’re a YouTube channel that specializes in entertainment for children, *sheepishly* uhh yeah, he probably is in his current incarnation. Even if you’re only watching Tom’s videos on storytime youtubers, somehow unrelated people end up getting blasted in the 11th hour of these videos that are supposed to be about Spechie. {clip from Turkey Tom} “kiwicasey, the professional internet cocksucker, will probably unblock me on Twitter for a few minutes to go after me and get angry and get all pissy. “[annoying, feminine voice] ‘I harass haters to give them a taste of their own medicine’. I don’t know what you just said means where you’re from. “I wouldn’t want to be insensitive to region sensitive topics, now would I. But where I’m from that means, ‘I am a massive fucking hypocrite. Look at the disgusting, fellatio-ready piercing in my profile picture.’” Actually whenever this happens it’s always a Spechie video. She just brings out the worst in people apparently. {clip from omigoshitsjames252} “I’m not saying she'’s copying me. I’m not this guy, okay? I’m not a delusional faggot like him, okay?” This video credits seven writers and claims three other people helped him. Did he just put you in the Google Doc? You can tell me. TheOdd1sOut has given Turkey Tom the advice to be careful about what you say online, because it can follow you forever. In his video essay, The Right Opinion argues that this doesn’t matter for Turkey Tom, even though it’s already negatively affecting him. {clip from The Right Opinion} “TheOdd1sOut had actually approached Tom and given him a whole lecture about the situation and how the tweets, these specific tweets, had ruined his reputation and could follow him forever. “*kid's voice, echoes* ‘Forever. Forever. Forever. Forev–’ *cut off by static* “No. That’s what you want it to do. It only vaguely compromised points he made about the Discord server, everything else was presented in videos before anyway. “And yes, as a joke it was poor form, but you’re setting the bar pretty low if you believe those sorts of jokes ruin reputations.” Notice the removal of context: James is talking to Turkey Tom about the tweets, but this isn’t the only bad thing Turkey Tom has ever done. And you wouldn’t know that by watching this video. Tom’s trollish persona has gotten him in trouble over and over again. It’s gotten him blocked by a bunch of people who I think he would probably get along with pretty well. And you might notice that his argument of course ignores personal shame, people not forgiving you, people saying the forgive you but not really forgiving you, people who saw it deciding they won’t forgive you, people writing you off because there’s so many other people to get to know and this is all they know about you, and careers outside of the internet that might fire you for something you tweeted 10 years ago and have already apologized for. But outside of that, he’s kind of right, right? The Right Opinion is kind of right? I mean it took Onision like, what, over half a decade to demolish his channel? And he was like a professional scandal generator. But, this doesn’t cut both ways apparently, because The Right Opinion wants you to believe that the animation community will get sunk for a series of far more spurious reasons. I guess Hell only opens up to swallow whole people who won’t listen to our rant videos. Good news for me, I guess. Anyway, I don’t think it’s immaturity for TheOdd1sOut to unfollow and follow whoever he wants. {clip from The Right Opinion} “Two: he was considering following Tom, but now he can see that Tom is no one that he should be associating with. That damned, disgusting tweet is enough evidence to show that he is, in fact, a cretin.” Just because being followed by him is a thing Tom would want if asked doesn’t mean he has to follow him. If he wants to unfollow people who insult his friends or people who he thinks are too trolly, that’s his prerogative. Not all of us have to live by the ancient proverb, “follows are not endorsements”. This has to be the weirdest thing to moralize to someone about. {clip from The Right Opinion} “They got unfollowed because they put out a mean tweet towards an animator, and then received the follow when they deleted it. “It’s pretty shady leverage being operated, but above all, it’s just rather immature. And immature is something that seems to pop up a lot.” I think immaturity in this situation is being mad when people unfollow you; particularly people you don’t know that well. Immaturity is not accepting that when you make content for adults, in particular pretty inflammatory content, yeah, a child-friendly channel might back away slowly. {clip from NeoJesus} “And now, now let me make this clear, alright? I don’t hate Jaiden Animations.” Despite various levels of loathing, they are all extremely insistent they don’t actually hate any of the storytime channels. {clip from Turkey Tom} “Now look, I don’t hate Spechie. I would say that I don’t like her videos or her personality. . .” {clip from LS Mark} “First, I do not hate storytime animators.” {clip from Just a Robot} “Now, here’s the thing; I don’t hate Spechie.” Yeah, I get it, it’s professional wrestling. I think people would be surprised that you can make a video about someone and not have really strong feelings about them when you’re not writing the script. But why does this show up in so many of the critics’ videos? What’s the point of saying it out loud if the insults keep leaking in? What difference does it make in the world if you secretly don’t hate them in your heart of hearts if your actions and words don’t align with that? It’s almost more polite to wait until you actually hate someone. Then you can like formally declare someone your nemesis with a letter written in your own blood. You know, ‘cause like at least you know where you stand with a blood letter. You can scrapbook a blood letter. You can frame it above a fireplace. It can all be very tasteful. Kismesissitude; their hatred is dependable. It’s like loyalty in reverse. I’d rather that than get blasted into the ground and then have someone look into the smoldering crater with this passive-aggressive, disingenuous, “*valley girl voice* It’s nothing personal, okay? This was the best way to reach you. If the doctors can unliquify your torso, I’d love to see you at the picnic. “No, reallyyyyy! But can you bring potato salad if you come? I hate peeling all those potatoes.” Am I being too all or nothing? I don’t know, it just comes off like a bunch of hot nonsense, like you’re only saying this so nobody thinks you’re mad. {clip from omigoshitsjames252} “It’s why I need your help to help me get into contact with Mandy so I can actually get into an interview with her.” I just have to add this small section. YouTube critics love, love, doing anything akin to investigative journalism. Storytime critics aren’t the only ones guilty of doing this, at all. It is so common. Basically, if they can find someone who is a family member, or a friend, or just someone who went to the same high school as the youtuber, they can turn them into a star witness. Every ounce of skepticism the critic normally has about people just evaporates. This person often gets to be totally anonymous, and to top it off these accusations typically aren’t over anything the youtuber can turn around and sue them for. They’re just these tepid character assassinations over these really petty things, like being a gossip, being socially awkward, or, you know, “*mockingly serious fake male voice* The defendant claims their high school was bad, however my witness says that their high school was, in fact, ‘okay’.” {clip from omigoshitsjames252} “. . .‘cause I actually know people who went to this school, and they told me that this school was actually better than Spechie described it to be.” The critics are pretty sure what they do helps people. {clip from Turkey Tom} “I find it especially interesting how Tabbes doesn’t want to accept Daft’s videos as having any real value, “yet a youtuber whose career she basically made, ChillyPanda, started improving her content after Daft made a video on her.” ChillyPanda’s first big design jump was from March to April of 2017. DaftPina made his video in October of 2017, five months after her big jump. Eight months later in May of 2018, ChillyPanda has her next big style jump. And Turkey Tom isn’t the only person giving DaftPina credit for this. This sets a bad precedent to me that her growth is attributed to him and others. It’s this nice, warm, cozy bed of confirmation bias. They get to criticize ChillyPanda or anyone in an insulting way, and then they get to take credit for their improvements as if it wouldn’t have happened without them. Then you can see a nice, clean, before and after, cause-and-effect, “I rest my case, you need me buddy.” Nevermind pointing out that ChillyPanda is a newbie is not like a shocking revelation she’s unaware of. Honestly, I follow a lot of artists, and there is nothing really remarkable or unremarkable about not improving fast. But why is laziness and ego always the go-to answer? They don’t question that it’s laziness; it’s very lazy. I know plenty of artists who are anything but lazy, but that doesn’t magically mean they can make a picture do what they want it to do, even with a browser full of references and tutorials. What if there actually was something about making storytime vids that got in the way of creators improving? Well, I’m a newbie at drawing, so I figured the best way to confirm this was to try it myself. I noticed a big problem just trying to draw the reaction pictures for this video: I don’t have the skill level required to keep my character consistent. To keep it consistent she would have to be extremely simple, so simple that I could duplicate her without a problem. But then I’m not really challenging myself. But if I challenge myself and I can’t duplicate my own art, then it looks off-model. And it becomes distracting, and then the visuals are not complementing my mouth words. Oh, and also I realized using color would add hours of work; like 50 percent of the work was spent coloring and shading. And since I’m a new artist, these drawings aren’t fast. They take a pathetically huge amount of time because I haven’t been drawing long enough to do it efficiently. Then, when I drew a couple of Odd1sOut clones, I felt enraptured by how charming and consistent they looked compared to everything else. Let’s look at this tutorial on learning the order of drawing human figures by Niso? N-Neeso? an artist from Finland (link below). So the artist has laid out some focus points in practicing from highest to lowest importance. See, here we have controlling your tools, shapes, perspective tools, perception (like analyzing your drawing for asymmetrical errors), proportion, body parts, poses, and details (like certain complex parts of the body like ears, eyes, or fingers). Advanced Studies are orientation, body language, body type, and anatomical realism. And then there are application skills like consistency, line quality, efficiency with your time and effort, and exploring your own style. The artist also points out that there are different levels of mastery. Realism studies are probably not gonna be good for your YouTube output, but it is how artists are typically recommended to learn anatomy. So therefore rather than picking on any one person and calling them lazy, I would suggest that, if you’re a new artist and you want to make storytime videos, consider that there are only so many hours in the day and you have to strategize and plan when you can get in meaningful practice and when you can draw for your videos. Maybe there is a place in your next video to put a more complex drawing that challenges you. And that’s just one theory, if we’re accepting the premise that storytime youtubers learn slower than other artists. Also, there is this concept of a skill slope to drawing. Basically, if you’re really new at drawing, you can continually make big leaps in quality very quickly through study. But, the better you get, the less noticeable those improvements are. Intermediate artists often despair because they’re not making the progress they used to. Instead they have to refine themselves, which means tackling their weaknesses over and over. It’s so much more difficult to improve than it once was. So, what does that leave us with going through these videos now? What’s fueling this conflict after we dressed it all down? What do we have left? Storytime animators? Your merch can be really pricey for how simple the designs are. This reference seems more like a straight-up trace. Don’t do that again. And finally, let’s examine the puppets they still use; not the ones they used a year ago, the ones they use now; and point out the art mistakes. This is an empire built on “Ma’am, I must regretfully inform you that you have drawn the fingers wrong.” [playing Hurt by Johnny Cash] “And you could have it all,” [playing Hurt by Johnny Cash] [playing Hurt by Johnny Cash] “My empire of dirt” [playing Hurt by Johnny Cash] [playing Hurt by Johnny Cash] People with normal jobs have human resource departments to go to, but youtubers basically sign a contract that allows them to be sacrificed to the internet gods. And it’s not good enough to assume they probably sneaked a peek at their comments section, googled their own name, or lurked in a forum where people were talking about them. No, they have to have their noses rubbed in every single opinion or criticism about them and what they do. Because, if we don’t do that, then they get spoiled, and then Cat-tsun thinks she can be up on the counters. So it doesn’t really matter if the human brain wasn’t made to know more than a couple hundred people, now it has to endure being yelled at by thousands for the same thing over and over or different contradictory things at the same time. Oh, and do all that while performing absolute grace. Here’s my next baby theory. I think online criticism on accessible youtubers has only four paths it can actually take. Path One: Disagreement The youtuber cannot criticize the critic’s criticism without looking like they’re shutting them down, being ungrateful, stuck-up, or sensitive. If they disagree with them, even a detailed explanation of why they think the critic is wrong will be labeled as making excuses. Some critics say they would accept a detailed explanation if they found it persuasive; I have never found a critic persuaded by a youtuber’s explanation, although I acknowledge it’s probably happened somewhere on the internet. Another complication with this path is interacting with the critic makes more of the youtuber’s audience turn their attention to them. It doesn’t matter if the youtuber pleads with their audience not to be mean to them; the audience will want to express their opinion and protect their favorite youtuber. This will be perceived as bullying and reflect negatively on the youtuber and their subscribers, who will start to be characterized as mindless drones or cultists. Path Two: Ignoring If they don’t write back when they are forwarded videos of criticism, they will slowly gain the reputation of ignoring criticism. They’ll typically get characterized as arrogant, in a bubble, or delusional. A more charitable interpretation is that they’re cold or distant. At the highest level no one ever questions why they never respond to anything; they think they’re too busy or too famous to be bothered. It is always assumed that they aren’t aware of the criticism against them, and that they aren’t aware of their flaws. It is never considered if they’re using self-control to leave critics alone after they read their comments or watch their rant videos. Path Three: Critic Assassination Thankfully rarely engaged, this is when the subject tries to delete the critic’s criticism from the internet on their own home turf by, for example, false flagging them for violating copyright or assembling a lawsuit (typically a very spurious one) against them. Not super relevant to this video though, because if Wolfychu ever tried to false DMCA anyone it would be a species-ending event. The tides would globally lower as millions of unimpressed sweatshirt boys armed with Blue Yeti microphones rose from the ocean and stormed our beaches. Path Four: Acceptance In this way, the storytime rant video is kind of like a trap. No matter how bad faith or irrelevant the criticism was, no matter how many insults were in there, they’re asked to eat the whole sandwich. Another sad part to this is it’s probably more upsetting to youtubers similar in personality to the storytime critics; people who are genuinely unafraid of criticism and eager to receive it. I think taking the creation of criticism seriously is totally understandable, especially if it’s your job or a hobby you enjoy. What’s odd is when you demand everybody else feel the same, and condemn the non-believers to an eternity of mediocrity; insisting that if you or your friends can’t get through to them in a public form, they will never improve without you. I don’t buy into this idea that youtubers aren’t aware of why people are mad at them. Have you met humans? There is not a human on this earth who has the self-discipline to never look at their comments or mentions. The youtuber closes comments, then people go to Twitter to complain and raise hell. They can make the like-to-dislike bar invisible, but they can still see the votes. Got a Reddit? They’re showing up there. Searching your name on Tumblr? Bingo. If you’re working or hobbying online, there is no cloister secluded enough, there is no bubble thick enough. This funeral is over. It’s time to lower the talking point into the ground. They read it or saw it. Or they read it or saw it from somebody else a long time ago. And that’s because none of this criticism is that special or original, including this video. No one’s gonna die because there aren’t enough transition frames. This is just something we’re doing for fun, and that’s okay. They have the right to ignore you, as you have the right to ignore me as I have the right to ignore you. Your crush has seen your text, and they have pressed “mark as unread”. In handman’s review of DaftPina’s channel, he says something that’s interesting to me. {clip from unknown source} “This lack of emotion is what a reviewer like him needs. This is because in every review, whether he personally likes the channel or not, he maintains the same tone. “He doesn’t outwardly express his thoughts through his emotions, just his words. This makes his videos feel a lot less biased. He doesn’t give special treatment; he’s just a reviewer.” Not to say DaftPina is actually the most emotional, biased, pointiest boy (he’s not), but the script delivery is just the book cover. You need to hear past it just like you need to hear past accents or flowery language. Because past that is where the content is. DaftPina’s reviews are more focused than other storytime critics, but his reviews are not less emothional or more rational because he doesn’t yell. The emotional content: mockery masquerading for the creator’s benefit, wrapping insults in legitimate or half-legitimate criticism, fishing to make them uncomfortable, {clip from DaftPina} “‘Have you heard this song by chance? I was thinking about doing a skit in your video regarding it.’ ‘I’d actually prefer that you didn’t make a video about me please.’ “‘That’s a no-can-do, but your review score will not be affected since you won’t be in it.’ Or maybe it will. He won’t know.” acting like they’re bad people for ignoring him or being upset with him, the parasocial anti-fan vibrations, the Let Me In, Buddy-ing; those are all here. You just need to know what you’re looking for. DaftPina recently deleted and apologized for a very mean video called, “How Jaiden Faked Her Face Reveal”. That video was up for a year and was one of the most viewed videos in the genre. It definitely influenced the way people started talking about Jaiden Animations. In terms of cruelty, it was probably one of the worst videos in the community, or at least in the Top 5 somewhere. Which was surprising because he was always one of the calmer ones. Basically Jaiden made a video about her eating disorder, and she made it in a way so that it would be sad because it was a sad story and she wanted the viewers to feel as she felt. DaftPina felt the need to make a dissection of this video, for he believed it was emotionally manipulative and melodramatic. And at the end of the video, he sets up the Let Me In, Buddy. But this time, it was just absurd. It was possibly the single most absurd Let Me In, Buddy I have ever witnessed. {clip from DaftPina} “She might still have any of those disorders that I listed. And I still will encourage her to seek help from a medical professional. But to end on something, I’ll say this: “‘I guarantee Jaiden will see this video and not make a response to it, because I either said things that are very true, or because she doesn’t want to break character for her subscribers and fans. “‘But for the unlikelihood that she chooses to respond, I will consider changing my mind about her face reveal video.’ “That is it for now. Until next time, cheers for watching, and have a good day.” Validate my video; the video where I accuse you of inciting a mob against a man by not naming him, insult you, belittle your achievements, imply you are on the brink of disaster and irrelevance even though you’re fine, and imply you should delete or at least demonetize almost a year’s worth of work if you want to prove your eating disorder is real. But, if you talk to me, I’ll consider changing my mind; me, a stranger you’ve never met. Him deleting that video in a community where people often think deleting videos is trying to hide your past or cowardly was, I think, a significant good, a very good omen for the future. But you can delete a video; you can’t delete a video’s influence. And, if I even have to say this, you can’t delete how it made that person feel or how it makes other people who just watched it feel. And you should always keep this in perspective. This is primarily about whether or not a youtuber respects your criticism when you tell them their backgrounds are lazy. I made this video about the storytime community and their critics, but you can find this behavior all over the place. Many of the critics mentioned here treat non-storytime channels very similarly. And very few of them have done anything to warrant this level of aggression. [static] Apology Pro-tip: try to apologize for everything you did wrong instead of pretending everyone was mad at you for just one simple mistake. Correct misinformation that you spread, whether purposefully or accidentally. If you don’t think you were 100 percent wrong, maybe explain specifically what you do and do not apologize for and why you feel that way. Yes, DaftPina accused Jaiden of having like every mental disorder but the ones she talked about having, and even people on his side wagged their fingers at him. But that wasn’t all he did. He gaslit her (yeah, I’m counting it as actual gaslighting,) about the state of her 2,000,000 subscriber, now 4,000,000 subscriber channel that was seeing nothing but growth. He pretended she was on the edge of disaster and channel collapse. He acted like she was insane for thinking that any of these people subscribed to her channel had any interest in her and her problems or what she looked like. It was all either one way or the other. Either Jaiden was authentically expressing her pain for a real problem she was really dealing with, or Jaiden was doing something she knew would get her channel attention, that people would click on. And he decided they couldn’t both be true at the same time. That’s impossible. It’s impossible for Jaiden to have real problems and be a content creator who knows how to get clicks on YouTube. Only soulless sellouts know how to make things people want to click on, so therefore Jaiden has to be a Machiavellian mastermind manipulator. He @-ed his apology at her on Twitter, and Jaiden tweeted back that she forgave him which I guess is the professional thing to do. But, let’s be real; he still has another video he uploaded June 24th, 2018, making fun of that music video she did with Dave from Boyinaband about her eating disorder that, at its core, is still echoing the exact same message as the first one. It’s just less people have seen it. He apologized a little bit in that video. Wanna see what he apologized for? {clip from The Right Opinion} “However, do I regret making that Jaiden face reveal video? “Well, “partially. And here’s a few reasons why: the video could have been edited down between 20 to 25 minutes, one shot is completely out of focus, I was pretty mean-spirited all the time in the video. “Thanks for helping me co-write it NeoJesus. ‘*NeoJesus speaking* It was your idea to make the video in the first place.’ [clap] Last but not least there were very little jokes. “Sad.” Yep, a shot being out of focus, the video being 31 minutes long instead of 25. You didn’t have enough jokes, that was the problem. He describes his object cruelty as being “mean-spirited”. Mean-spirited! He was just a little mean-spirited. He wasn’t completely blinded by anti-fan rage to the point where he was mad that Jaiden put her YouTube award on a clean carpet to display it for the camera. {clip from DaftPina} “. . .for having a million subs, and she even shows off her YouTube achievements, such as the plaques she has on the ground. “You know, the thing that some people dedicate their lives to get, and she just has them lying on the floor?” Guys, you don’t understand. He’s not yelling. He’s not yelling! Is NeoJesus to blame? I guess when you combine them and put them on a video about Jaiden, they just hit these anti-fan thetan levels we’ve never seen before. I feel pretty confident in saying this is a hollow social media non-apology. I went back and forth on whether or not it was fair to use the face reveal video against him to the point where this part of the video was recorded after most of the editing. I was rewatching “The Empty Review”, and I just decided, “No, it’s, it’s completely fair.” “Support if you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder”. Exact same link as in Jaiden’s Empty video description, but this time it’s first. He’s throwing shade at her here, because she didn’t put the hotline number first in the description. I say this as someone who has both called suicide hotlines and been a suicide hotline operator: I honestly think the way he talks about mental illness is far more damaging than Jaiden not putting the link first. Everyone says they want to destigmatize mental illness, and they will tell people to seek professional help, and that’s good. But, all the time I see people who are suspicious, judgmental, or just revolted by weakness, by neediness, by uncomfortable jokes about your problems, or by attention-seeking behavior. You need to be able to accept that people you find annoying can have real problems. I really hope I helped you see the situation in a different way; even if you don’t like storytime videos, even if you hate Spechie, or Jaiden, or James. I really hope someone who has never seen storytime videos can stumble into this video and learn something about online criticism and the weird stories we tell ourselves about it. I am not a therapist. With my experiences I feel like I can imagine the reaction, but I’m seriously asking. How many therapists, psychiatrists, or counselors of any sort would look at a person saying, “I want to make better videos,” and say, “Well you’re in luck, because people on the internet make videos about you. I think you should watch those videos and take them very seriously.” The storytime youtubers are sentient. They can think about their own work. They can have conversations with people we are not there for. They are capable of creating small groups of artists for critique circles in private if their friends go too soft on them. They can learn things by watching videos that aren’t even about them. Listen, if you make things online, your mental health and self-confidence are so much more precious than this and so much more vital to improving and growing and just having the energy to do things. The average person does not stagnate because of narcissism and their inability to take criticism. They stagnate because of crippling self-doubt; which leads to having no energy to accelerate change, which leads to guilt, which leads to self-hatred and more self-doubt. Wah. [slight giggle] I hope you enjoyed my first YouTube video. [more giggling] See I had to make a video about criticism before I got criticized ‘cause if I do it after, everyone would call me a bitter blueberry. Thank you for watching my feature-length film. Subscribe to my channel if you want to hear more of my voice while cooking spaghetti or playing Slime Rancher.

Channel: Quinn Curio

Views: 1,399,239

Keywords: TheOdd1sOut, Jaiden Animations, tabbes, the animation community, spechie

Id: dduKJPxnAYk

Length: 71min 38sec (4298 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/nmgreddit]

Your last bit about mental health sealed the deal for me. I love the video.

[u/Markay_]

Your voice acting is so smooth, holy shit

[u/[deleted]]

Great video, I hope it gets the views it deserves.

[u/WunderStug]

Such a great video. What I hate about DaftPina is this video: https://youtu.be/sx_ingx1RDg

Jaiden is too pure to deserve that, imo.

[u/Rising-Jay]

Perfect assessment of issues I have with those guys.

[u/[deleted]]

This video was well made and I enjoyed it! However, I didn’t agree with some of the points. I mean no offense, and I am probably biased. Jaiden Animations is my favorite YouTuber, but I have criticisms of her content that some of these critics bring up. I just wanted to express my opinion.