So. The Game Grumps then.
I...just stopped myself from giving the link to the video in question...because that'd only encourage them. Here's the lowdown:
GG decided to start another series, not content with the other...17 they've got running I think? I've lost count of how many they've started and not completed yet. Anyhow, their newest venture goes into the X360/PS3 game, Naughty Bear.
Let me straight up: Naughty Bear is a pretty bad game. It has lousy controls, a horrendous learning curve, and at the end of it all, just isn't a whole lot of fun past an hour or so. To date, I don't think I've seen a completed LP of it on the Toobs yet and I'm not sure I even care to.
That being said, I do know one thing: I watched my mate start the game up and get out of the starting area around the title character's house within a minute, guided by the handy in-game popups and menus. To do this, NB only has to pick up the present on the ground and go destroy it, something best accomplished by throwing it into the very out-of-place roaring fire right outside your cabin. Do that, the game gives you the points to advance and start the first level proper.
The Goomps, on the other hand, decided that it'd be a delightful decision to instead waste ten minutes of life from everyone watching doing exactly nothing but fucking around and being boring. Even when they set themselves to getting out, they couldn't get to the fire and couldn't put two and two together, even with the game practically spoonfeeding them the answer. PRESS X TO DESTROY PRESENT was on the screen...but instead, JonTron and Ego decided to beatbox, yo! Because sheeeeeit.
What gets me about all of this is simple: Egoraptor on another video commented that he appreciated why games have starting levels; they're there to get you used to how the game works, how to control it. And yet, with JonTron providing a loud-mouthed distraction, he couldn't. He couldn't stop for a second and tell himself to focus and go Point A to Point B (A = Present destroy, B = Fire right in front of me).
As well, the Gumps were also vocal in admitting that this was a terrible video. I know I tend to talk about Retsupurae a lot, but they have a lot of valid points and are very clearly right about one thing: no one is ever going to force you to upload a video, especially if you think it's terrible. At the end of the day, if you upload something trashy just for uploads and for views/ad-revenue, everyone will cotton onto that pretty damned quickly.
Right now, the view counter is broken, but the video has nearly equal amounts of likes AND dislikes. The horrible drama in the comment section between the diehard Geemps fans and the people who use their brain for more than a counterweight between their ears was vitriolic to say the absolute least.
And even Retsupurae got in on this. A twitter post from their associated account said "@GameGrumps Please don't make any more awful videos. Our inbox is elfin' flooded." People were begging RP to put the stick to the Gimps, either out of a sick schaddenfreude-fueled desire to see someone be made fun of or, hopefully like me, wanting RP to raise valid points that MAYBE will get the Gamps to start looking just the slightest bit more critically at themselves and what they do.
Maybe Ego will realize just how much he lets JonTron screech to have attention. Maybe JonTron will realize that his own account has basically been dead since the Gurmps started up and he's only living on Ego's shadow. Maybe...but I doubt it.
The crushing thing to know is that likely, nothing will change. They will continue to make videos showcasing their lackluster talent/preparation/practice at games and their propensity to swear as if it counts for content. If I could tell them something, it'd be that the last time people screeched like them over a video game, the Nostalgia Critic had to publicly apologize to his entire fanbase for the horrible thing he had made in the pursuit of that which makes him and the Gawmps famous:
Spectacle.
Not showmanship. Not skill. Not even savvy. Pure unabashed Lookit-Me-Ma spectacle.
Is it funny? Yes.
In small doses anyhow. But after a while, it all blurs together and becomes the same damned thing over and over again. Jon will shriek and bitch, Ego will try to maintain and end up just being an ass, and they'll suck at whatever they are currently doing, even with the game doing its level best to help them out.
To wit: The Gwomps have been working on a Sonic 2006 playthrough. The fact that this game is still largely pointless to LP due to its buggyness and is, seven years later, highly irrelevant to play with a large number of other people having played and completed it aside...(whew, that was a long intro), they stink at it. Yes, I know that game is unintentionally impossible. Yes I know the bugs can break it easily. Yes I know that another LPer, pokecapn and his friends, did the game far better and quicker and in a much more entertaining fashion. Yes I am aware that it took Gyomphs about three times longer to finish Sonic's story than the pokecapn crew.
Yes, I am aware that they are making money hand-over-fist for pushing out shit content. And yes, I know I am very jealous of that fact. That I work a 40-hour work week to make the ends meet...and they're pulling in more for less.
So in essence, this shouldn't be hard for them if they're so well off from revenue. You make a terrible vid. You watch it. You realize it's bad. And you re-record to get better footage and actual competency in your gags and your play. And people respect you for it.
Or the Gramps can just...keep doing this. Keep being exactly the same. Keep being stale over and over and over again. And I can keep watching from the sidelines as more people relish their poor talents for gaming and humor and give me any number of "I just don't get their humors". Because I do get it...and I can see it having the possibility of not ending well if it continues.
It's the same cycle of vicious RAEG and ANGRE and I'S SO MAAAD that just...just needs to stop. You don't need that. We don't need that. All of us alive and yet to be alive really just...don't need that.
Anyhow, the point of all this is that we have the potential to be more. And yet, we choose less. We have the possibility to do great things...and we settle consistently for 'good enough.' The Game Grumps are not high comedy. They are simply good enough because that's easier. I don't have to get ANYTHING about their humor to understand that. And to see them lazy their way through videos and to have people love their content, people who I even know personally...
I wish I could do something and yet I know I can't. So I have to sit back and watch and see it happen. See good minds brought low for a cheap laugh.
Cheap. Laughs.
Dramatic and futile as I may be, overly-analytical as I may be, and wholly incorrect and out-of-line as I may be, I know at least that I only want better for the world, for our collective future. And this little small part I see on a regular basis pains me...because it's so very easy to not do something like that.
And yet we do it anyways.
