Negative. YBZ has espoused this idea before - that after being a soldier in combat or whatever he has trouble identifying civilians as friends because it seems too shallow compared to his soldier friendships.
Of course this is mostly a cope. YBZ has plenty of opportunities to make friends online and offline - he's just too autistic and scared of people do it.
It's also a self criticism he isn't aware he's making of himself. There are people, Frog being one example, who would be his friend, and tried to do everything they could to ensure his success in his endeavors while basically getting nothing back from YBZ at all. It's YBZ constantly turning his back on Frog, not communicating with Frog, and seemingly doing his best to separate from anything Frog does that makes it impossible for them to be friends. YBZ makes friendship impossible because he doesn't understand how to be anyone's friend who isn't shooting an m4 beside him.
From Frog's perspective he knows YBZ is basically a barely functioning contrarian autist who wandered into comic books and with a bunch of accidental audience building and the circumstances of the mainstream backlash to his videos, massively succeeded. He knows YBZ is going to do unexplainable silly shit constantly, because YBZ is not actually capable of being Frog's friend. He doesn't have the emotional capacity to do it even if he wanted. YBZ admits this often like the above quote. EVS would have carry his unconscious body out of a burning building or something to earn YBZ's unattainable friendship.
The question is how many times YBZ is going to shit on Frog before Frog learns the lessons he got from smiller, dirtworm, etc that no matter how much you want to help a guy if they don't want your help, there's nothing you can do and maybe its time to move on and let him sabotage himself instead of constantly falling on your own face to save someone who is trying as hard as they can to fuck their life over.
How many times will Frog stick his hand in the fire and get burned by autists who got what they wanted out of him and aren't mentally capable of friendship.
on this last stream YBZ was texting/emailing with Frog and asked him to do something (what isn't clear) and Frog asked him to come on for 15 minutes, to which YBZ replied that 'this isn't quid pro quo'. Of course its fucking not - if it was YBZ wouldn't have the audacity to ask Frog to do anything for him, since he's not doing anything for frog except fucking the dog.
CG didn't leave YBZ - YBZ left CG, so he could go work a 9-5 and ride a disgusting subway. Let the man take the retirement he so craves. He's an old dude trying to get back into tech - he's going nowhere.
True.
But I'll also argue that when you are
@FROG and your "friends" like Gail, Doug, Mike, Gary, Zack, WC etc turn against you, you are probably the problem, not them.
What EVS does is he creates a court of sycophants and acts like the king of the castle and probably gets on the nerves of anyone who is somewhat equal to him and this is something that annoys me (and probably a lot of his a-logs). You are either a Toad McFarlane's toady or you are his enemy when all else is said and done. In the interim phase
@FROG is just trying to win you over.
The 15 minutes thing is a great example:
YBZ has said, repeatedly, he does not like livestreams. Often in stream-of-conscious videos or his community page subtweets. It may even be that he is afraid he will say something that he should not about a certain lawsuit because he is a scatterbrain.
I can imagine EVS heckling him to go on his show constantly and this driving a wedge between them.
We are witnessing two immature men having an inevitable fallout. But this is internet friendships for you.
As for YBZ, he gives me the impression that he has the mentality of doing his tour and moving on all through his life (including his children FFS).
He lived his GI JOE fantasy, he lived his comic artist fantasy, now he is probably trying to live his Cosmopolitan man of culture fantasy. Maybe doing so will kick his "Theosophy" book ideas away
Comics had been the one constant thing in his life but he was saying early on: "I'll probably do this for five years" and "by 2022 comics culture war would be over" and turns out he was right about it.
It seems obvious Zack has some pretty serious mental issues. He's willing to literally sacrifice his life for his real friends in combat but following through with the Waid lawsuit after that guy ruined his life was just a bridge too far? Too stressful for him?
Has anyone done a deep dive on his real military history? After the "high-level IT certifications" BS and general shadiness in the overall space I don't trust anyone or anything in CG any more.
We don't know about the lolsuit probably because he is obliged not to talk about it (and, wierdly, does a great job at it despite being Zack.
But he has said again and again that a war is not about constantly fighting but focusing on specific targets.
I do believe that him dropping the lawsuit was part of this, it had achieved its target or was not going anywhere else. It did a lot to detter broke SJWs for a couple critical years.
I am really curious to see what will come out if the NDA has an expiry date.
