Jim Sterling / James "Stephanie" Sterling / James Stanton/Sexton & in memoriam TotalBiscuit (John Bain) - One Gaming Lolcow Thread

[Tanner Glass]

Its not just a heart attack he's at risk of, he supposedly does wrestling training a few days a week but what he does in them is largely a mystery and if he isn't doing basic exercises to increase his level of fitness then soon enough his back isn't going to be the only thing he has problems with.

He does not do wrestling training a few days a week.

85% of what exists in most wrestling schools is basic fitness, doubly so early on as you need to be in the correct shape to perform a large variety of the moves without posing a danger to other people. There are "advanced" schools (usually schools run by retired pro-wrestlers) that focus more on the technical aspects but you aren't going to fool any of those guys with horseshit.

Jim couldn't show up at say Bret Hart's school and say "Yeah I'm totally a woman and am 100% in the correct shape for this".

 

[Funeral for a Furry]

He does not do wrestling training a few days a week.

85% of what exists in most wrestling schools is basic fitness, doubly so early on as you need to be in the correct shape to perform a large variety of the moves without posing a danger to other people. There are "advanced" schools (usually schools run by retired pro-wrestlers) that focus more on the technical aspects but you aren't going to fool any of those guys with horseshit.

Jim couldn't show up at say Bret Hart's school and say "Yeah I'm totally a woman and am 100% in the correct shape for this".

So Jim is still in the North pretending at everything.

 

[Prince Vegeta]

Jim couldn't show up at say Bret Hart's school and say "Yeah I'm totally a woman and am 100% in the correct shape for this".

That's just you being a fatphobic biggot, he is so ready to do that and I really hope he does!

 

[Lightly Buttered Crumpet]

That's just you being a fatphobic biggot, he is so ready to do that and I really hope he does!

I wonder if the Health At Every Size people have convinced him that obesity has no impact on health. These people tend to be anti-capitalists, stating that diet culture and capitalism are evil and working together (ignoring the money raked in by the fast food industry from these fatties).

 

[AngryTreeRat]

Urge to shill for GURPS... rising...

I'd disagree that TTRPGs were seen as a passing fad as such, more as a niche market with limited exploitation possibilities. I really don't think anyone who wasn't already homebrewing a Star Wars ruleset got into tabletops because he saw Darth Vader on a rulebook cover... though with KOTOR's existence, maybe SW is a bad example to use to make this point. Otherwise you've finally put into words what I'd been having a hard time articulating to friends, that D20 systems are the shovelware of the ttrpg hobby. It makes so much sense.

Hate GURPS personally, but I see why some people like it.

And I more mean TTRPGs were seen as a passing fad by licensors during the d20 craze after the TTRPG Renaissance of the '00s, not as a whole. Before and after that period they were seen as a niche market, though I know there is some what of a view of them being a passing fad again currently, and people trying to cash in.

Spoiler: Sperging about GURPS failure and d20 success

GURPS mistake is it's license is kinda shit, you need to do way too much yourself to get a setting going, where as many other games come prepackaged with a setting, as a lot of people don't realize how few people actually homebrew and run their own setting, and to get a GURPS game going you're going to need to pick a subset of the rule set for it to be coherent, and no effort is put into courting third party publishers, it is also just badly marketed. I say all this with the GURPS discworld books on my shelf, mostly because they are one of the more fun things I own. Also looking at the Steve Jackson's games website, it still looks incredibly old and sketchy and that is going to put off a lot of people If you want to try and sell them on GURPS, your website's appearance is part of your marketing.

D20 succeeded because when it came out with 3e, and during those early days Wizards of the Coast went around with the third party publishers and gained their trust and got them to sign on and make supplements for D&D, and then left some very basic variants for people to use, for example, I don't know anyone who actually plays d20 modern. You can play d20 modern, for those that don't know, d20 modern is a rules that released by IIRC Wizards of the Coast for the express purpose of running a TTRPG in a modern setting. No one ever plays d20 modern. What they use the 20 modern to do is they reskin it, expand it and they make Star Trek. The same goes for d20 fantasy which is even more generic D&D. In reality, what these systems are used for is to produce the shovelware of TTRPGs, which was kind of the purpose. Rather than trying to be comprehensive generic systems, for example like GURPS, they are more of a foundation with a limited scope (modern setting or fantasy). The d20 system itself is really only the six ability scores, the fact that you have the save system, basic attack bonus, hit die, the way weapons do different sizes of damage, the way you roll a d20 adding some numbers to it and then comparing it to a difficulty class, and some rules related to movement. Everything else is frills added around the edges by other systems. The OGL encouraged the release of these incredibly basic systems as foundations, since they lacked anything that could be protected by copyright anyways, what it did is it helped the OGL catch on and allowed there to be a baseline for everyone to make their own little thing for that could then be compatible, at least in theory, with other d20 systems.

This incrediblely basic foundation along with the fact that anybody into TTRPGs more than likely got their start through a system that comes with a setting, as even D&D has a baked in set of settings, IIRC 3e was Greyhawk, but my core books are in the basement, and very likely got into it due to D&D, means that they were more likely to pick up another system that came with a setting, especially if it was a familiar setting, than they were ever to grab something like GURPS and try and wrangle that into doing their Star Trek campaign. They were more likely to wrangle the system they already knew to do Star Trek. All the d20 systems were people who had just already wrangled the systems to do Star Trek for them. Substitute Star Trek for your license of choice. Likewise if you started with Star Trek it'd leave you with a d20 foundation making it easier to get into other d20 systems or even D&D proper.

To bring things more on topic, the thing Jim doesn't understand about this whole OGL fiasco, which as I've pointed at and hinted at already, is it isn't really about D&D, because the most common use of the OGL over the past 23 years has nothing to do with D&D,, despite the wealth of third party content released under it, because as much as we have been focusing on d20 systems here, and there are many d20 systems that were not created out of using the rules release under the SRD for D&D, it is the other systems released under the OGL. Several of which are retro-clones, or simply not in anyway connected to D&D or the d20 system, and these are what are really going to be affected, because the D&D guys are already rallying to the loopholes of federal law, and can always make a new system, (Kobold Press Project Black Flag and the Paizo speared ORC license are part of this), but other systems entirely, for example, FATE, GORE, or FUDGE, are at risk of destruction over this because they believed in the principles of open source, and trusted what is ultimately a system agnostic license that they were promised was not going to change or be revoked to not change or be revoked.

Having tolerated Jim's awful voice on this topic. I can tell you that he does not seem even aware of these other systems and how they are affected by this. It feels a lot like when he covers microtransactions. He isn't talking about it because it matters to consumers, He is talking about it because it is a thing that is affecting him and his ability to buy third party content for his own D&D games. I am being quite vocal about this situation despite not being a customer of Wizard of the Coast since the release of Xanathar's Guide to Everything in 2017. And while I do play Pathfinder, both editions, I don't do much buying a third party content unless it is a nepotism buy to help friends I have in the industry or because I really like the thing they are doing, but the principle of the matter still pisses me off. You would expect a consumer advocate to be focusing on the principle of the matter, how far reaching this is, and how morally bankrupt this is. Especially for someone as a politically vocal as Jim. Jim has the exact politics that if his heart was where his mouth is, he should be pointing out how overreaching this is. Pointing out the implications this could have in the future. But Jim only cares about his D&D games with his friends, He doesn't care about this issue on any other grounds.

Even when Jim is topical, he still seems to be behind on the discussion.

Give me my polispergs, puzzles and hats now.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

He does not do wrestling training a few days a week.

85% of what exists in most wrestling schools is basic fitness, doubly so early on as you need to be in the correct shape to perform a large variety of the moves without posing a danger to other people. There are "advanced" schools (usually schools run by retired pro-wrestlers) that focus more on the technical aspects but you aren't going to fool any of those guys with horseshit.

Jim couldn't show up at say Bret Hart's school and say "Yeah I'm totally a woman and am 100% in the correct shape for this".

I don't for once believed that he did actual wrestling training, there are videos however of him at Pursuit Pro Wrestling being trained how to do some moves by someone who presumably knows what they're doing. Though I was wrong about him still doing it, at some point it stopped and I imagine it was about the same time he stopped posting about stuff going on there.

 

[Funeral for a Furry]

I don't for once believed that he did actual wrestling training, there are videos however of him at Pursuit Pro Wrestling being trained how to do some moves by someone who presumably knows what they're doing. Though I was wrong about him still doing it, at some point it stopped and I imagine it was about the same time he stopped posting about stuff going on there.

To think it came from some stupid play he did at school called Pig Knight.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Exactly. Why do people watch YouTube? For relaxation, information, amusement, excitement, intrigue, etc.
They do not watch YouTube videos for unfunny moaning and being told you're wrong if you don't like what you're watching.

Null made an observation a while back in regards to why people continue to watch Ethan Ralph's streams, where he hypothesized Ralph's fans want to emulate the childhood experience of their dad getting drunk, shouting at the TV and screaming at his wife. I think this was spot on, but try as I might, I can't do the same for Jim.

I don't understand who watches him, and what they get out of it. There are plenty of other places to get the news Jim provides (and you'd actually get it on time elsewhere), plenty of other places to get your confirmation bias stroked ('FUCK UBISOFT/EA/ACTIVISION' channels are not in short supply) and plenty more convincing TroonTubers (Contra, PhilosophyTube, hell even Keffals) to help you cope and sneed that trooning out is a good idea.

Jim also isn't funny any more because he is so clearly genuinely angry about how his career/life have turned out and he looks objectively ridiculous, so you're tuning in to watch a grotesque, extremely miserable man moan about literally the same four topics he's been retreading for years.

So, who is this content for? I really think the majority of that 150k he reliably gets each week might just be hate watchers and us, at this point. I cannot see what else you could possibly get out of Jim's videos any more.

 

[Cap-tan]

Every time I go to archive his twitch shite, it autoplays the latest wank video. Does that count as a view? Or will it only count plays longer than a few seconds?

 

[Moja Zemlja]

Null made an observation a while back in regards to why people continue to watch Ethan Ralph's streams, where he hypothesized Ralph's fans want to emulate the childhood experience of their dad getting drunk, shouting at the TV and screaming at his wife. I think this was spot on, but try as I might, I can't do the same for Jim.

I don't understand who watches him, and what they get out of it. There are plenty of other places to get the news Jim provides (and you'd actually get it on time elsewhere), plenty of other places to get your confirmation bias stroked ('FUCK UBISOFT/EA/ACTIVISION' channels are not in short supply) and plenty more convincing TroonTubers (Contra, PhilosophyTube, hell even Keffals) to help you cope and sneed that trooning out is a good idea.

Jim also isn't funny any more because he is so clearly genuinely angry about how his career/life have turned out and he looks objectively ridiculous, so you're tuning in to watch a grotesque, extremely miserable man moan about literally the same four topics he's been retreading for years.

So, who is this content for? I really think the majority of that 150k he reliably gets each week might just be hate watchers and us, at this point. I cannot see what else you could possibly get out of Jim's videos any more.

The vast majority (like 90%) are going to be old time fans who have the same "fuck corpos" mindset as Jim, the fact that his channel is in a slow decline and not quickly dropping off is likely more due to how YT is consumed and his previous clout than him being enjoyable to watch. People don't often go around YT shopping for better channels to watch and he is still a recognisable name for a lot of people.

 

[Oliver Onions]

The vast majority (like 90%) are going to be old time fans who have the same "fuck corpos" mindset as Jim, the fact that his channel is in a slow decline and not quickly dropping off is likely more due to how YT is consumed and his previous clout than him being enjoyable to watch. People don't often go around YT shopping for better channels to watch and he is still a recognisable name for a lot of people.

But how braindead do his viewers have to be to not notice he's just repeating himself?

I think most of us in the thread agree with a lot of his stances against AAA bullshit, but that's because those stances are so obvious they go without saying; they certainly don't need to be re-stated for fifteen-to-twenty minutes every week. I would rather watch nothing than keep tuning in to be told the exact same opinion I heard last week, and the week before, and the week before that by a man who clearly can't be bothered.

Then again, plenty of has-been musicians are still able to tour on the back of the one song that made them famous 40 years ago, so maybe I'm giving too much credit to the human race.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

But how braindead do his viewers have to be to not notice he's just repeating himself?

I think most of us in the thread agree with a lot of his stances against AAA bullshit, but that's because those stances are so obvious they go without saying; they certainly don't need to be re-stated for fifteen-to-twenty minutes every week. I would rather watch nothing than keep tuning in to be told the exact same opinion I heard last week, and the week before, and the week before that by a man who clearly can't be bothered.

Then again, plenty of has-been musicians are still able to tour on the back of the one song that made them famous 40 years ago, so maybe I'm giving too much credit to the human race.

I think this is where his weekly format actually benefits him in this regard, he repeats himself constantly but its not like he's doing it everyday so for the average viewer they wouldn't get nearly as bored with it. Obviously people cotton on to it eventually but its not like you're getting bombarded with his crap so it takes longer for people to realise.

 

[HRT Heisenberg]

But how braindead do his viewers have to be to not notice he's just repeating himself?

I think most of us in the thread agree with a lot of his stances against AAA bullshit, but that's because those stances are so obvious they go without saying; they certainly don't need to be re-stated for fifteen-to-twenty minutes every week. I would rather watch nothing than keep tuning in to be told the exact same opinion I heard last week, and the week before, and the week before that by a man who clearly can't be bothered.

Then again, plenty of has-been musicians are still able to tour on the back of the one song that made them famous 40 years ago, so maybe I'm giving too much credit to the human race.

I genuinely think it's a case that his audience is either braindead or not really thinking too much about his content when watching. Considering that regular TV broadcasting hosts a lot of stuff that's objectively terrible but is very popular because some people watch it as comfort viewing or white noise, I don't think a large group of people genuinely engaging with Jim's content in a similar way is too out of the question.

On that topic it had been a long time since I checked to see what Jim's fanbase is like so I checked the top 20 comments for the last two videos (being this and this for posterity's sake) and categorized them as a way to autistically profile his viewers for fun. I looked at reddit and twitter but his engagement is quite low so I'll leave that out for the most part. A quick summary for what I found:

Spoiler: Some sperging on Jim's commenters

Youtube comments
"Square Enix Can't Stop Being Terrible" and "When Wizards Of The Coast Tried to Be A D&D Landlord"
19 - Talking capitalism bad
8 - Praising Jim/Vampire Survivors
5 - directly D&D related
3 - "thank god for JSS for covering this!"
2 - consoomer
1 - Weird personal story
1 - "chokeslam!!!"
1 - "pony thing is scary"

Reddit and Twitter
Reddit was basically 90% capitalism bad, 10% validation, Twitter is just on topic for the relevant tweets unless it's validation or something else.

Considering that the Youtube comments were in tune to almost everything Jim says and were upvoted quite a bit I think I have changed my opinion a little bit on Jim's followers. I honestly believe that for whatever reason at least a majority of some kind watch his content because they think it's topical or by the virtue of Jim covering a topic helps the story be well known (Jim does sometimes gives the impression to his audience that almost nobody but him covered these stories). I think all of the troon shit, the clownish makeup the horrifying wrestling and narcissism these people are tolerating because they think it's a wrongthink to question trans identity, and unsubscribers are in part people fed up enough to finally break the cognitive dissonance. Of course I did also see actual lost and confused souls who are saying Jim's confidence encouraged their transition or whatever which is a disturbing thought.

As a side thing I did find a pretty interesting comment on Twitter in my search, in this [A] tweet a commenter zoomed in on Jim's face like this and it looks like something someone would definitely post on here.

 

[Tanner Glass]

So, who is this content for? I really think the majority of that 150k he reliably gets each week might just be hate watchers and us, at this point. I cannot see what else you could possibly get out of Jim's videos any more.

There are people who just watch a youtuber habitually - even if the content has drastically changed. There will be a lot of "inertia" for someone that was previously successful as fans hold out that the "next" video will be a return to form.

It takes a long time for a content creator to actually lose an audience (barring they don't do some single gigantic offputting thing) and a lot of YT content is "timeless" - aka you can still go and watch the old stuff.

 

[Oliver Onions]

There are people who just watch a youtuber habitually - even if the content has drastically changed. There will be a lot of "inertia" for someone that was previously successful as fans hold out that the "next" video will be a return to form.

You'd think as a frequenter of the Spoony thread I should be well aware of this, since his stalker never shuts the fuck up about watching his content despite the fact he hasn't farted out an actual video in...holy shit, he hasn't uploaded in six years?!

 

[Prince Vegeta]

You'd think as a frequenter of the Spoony thread I should be well aware of this, since his stalker never shuts the fuck up about watching his content despite the fact he hasn't farted out an actual video in...holy shit, he hasn't uploaded in six years?!

... I'm so old.

For what it's worth (n=1), I know a guy that still listens to Jim. He's a relative normie, so it's Jim and Zero Punctuation for him because he was in the escapist forums in college like 18 years ago and he genuinely gets his 'gaming' news from them (or me when we talk). He puts Jim on his speakers in his study and doesn't watch the video. He thinks Jim is 'a bit whingey but he's got some points'. Maybe there's more of my mate's type in that audience?

 

[AngryTreeRat]

There are people who just watch a youtuber habitually - even if the content has drastically changed. There will be a lot of "inertia" for someone that was previously successful as fans hold out that the "next" video will be a return to form.

It takes a long time for a content creator to actually lose an audience (barring they don't do some single gigantic offputting thing) and a lot of YT content is "timeless" - aka you can still go and watch the old stuff.

I found there's three types of way to consume YouTube content people fall into, and I'll cover them in reverse relevancy:

First is whatever the algorithm/friends show them, with no real sense of even the faintest idea of channel loyalty, they just watch whatever they are shown, and don't really have anyone they subscribe to to follow.

Second as channels upload, typically people I see who use this method rather than the most relevant when I will get to next, is these are people who, like myself these days, tend to watch YouTubers who do not have an upload schedule, or they have a monthly upload, or biweekly schedule. This tends to mean they are watching a large variety of long-form content across a rather large variety of channels, because if they did not have a very large variety of channels to watch, they would rapidly run out of content. These are the people who predominantly watch video essays, filling gaps with podcasts, and who are fairly familiar with names like mandalore gaming, patrician TV, ymfah, max0r, razbuten, Curious Archive, Raycevick, tehsnakerer, ssethzeentach, or WhiteLight, to try to restrict myself to the gaming related portion of such viewing. These people likely are so have a small number of channels that do have fairly regular upload schedules that upload shorter videos, typically maybe once or twice a week such as Jim. The video gets uploaded and it gets watched as they scan down their daily subscriber feed. Due to the nature of how these people watch things, They are incredibly likely to become dead subs on a dead channel, or if for some reason YouTube stops informing people of a particular channels videos, They won't notice that the channel is still getting uploads and just become dead subs.

The last group is the one. I think the most people here can understand. These are purely habitual watchers, the type of person who knows who uploads on what day of the week, who watches the new video on that day of each week, even if it happens to be daily, and who essentially have a watch schedule for the week. These people use YouTube truly as a replacement to traditional television, but with a slightly more flexibles schedule. Every Monday they watch ed the new video from Jim along with all of their other usual Monday uploaders, as well as the people who they don't have time to watch because they upload too late on Sunday or they are too busy on Sunday. On Tuesday they have a Tuesday watch list, the same happens on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Every week they watch their regular individuals. If they have anyone that is bi-weekly they know which week is their weekend, which week is not, If they have somebody who releases monthly, they know who releases on which week of the month. These are the people that likely do not watch anyone that does not release regular weekly content. They likely also complain the most about long form content, citing a lack of time to watch it because they have other things they need to watch. These people tend not to remove people they have been watching for years. It is all about that routine habit of watching. The unchanged routine. They will likely be watching people such as Critikal, zero punctuation, Jesse Cox actually has a regular news show nowadays, and ummm I'll be honest I don't watch people with same schedules often that are relevant here.

I believe that Jim's remaining viewers are mostly people who belong to that last group. Watching Jim is something that they do every Monday, if they don't get to him on Monday, they'll watch him on Tuesday. He releases a steady ticker of content and therefore he fits within their weekly schedule. He very rarely runs much longer than 15 minutes, and these people tend to just not like changes in their schedule. While, they likely consciously don't realize it, a lot of them probably view not watching Jim and unsubscribing as an inconvenience. If they were to look on the right side of their page, they might get suggested someone who was similar enough to Jim that they could get sucked into replacing him with some other channel, but these are the same type of people who, with different politics and a different access to entertainment, would be watching Dr. Phil every week, as well as Going to church every Sunday, after which they would go for tea or coffee at the local cafe. They likely would have some kind of group activity they do every Saturday, and they would have that old friend from back in the day that they met every Wednesday. You likely have a clear idea of the type of person I'm talking about now. The type of person who lives a monotonous scheduled life.

I truly believe a good chunk of Jim's audience are these people. His engagement statistics are low. Jim does not encourage an open discussion of the topics he is engaging with. He is a preacher, a man who stands upon his box and preaches his word as the only undisputable voice. While he has long since thrown out the Banana Republic Dictator persona, he still has that mentality that he is the only authority. So the only people watching him will be out of habit, to receive affirmation of their beliefs, or to have their opinion dictated to them. And well the world is full of sheep, even more than sheep, the world is full of clockwork.

 

[Lightly Buttered Crumpet]

The vast majority (like 90%) are going to be old time fans who have the same "fuck corpos" mindset as Jim, the fact that his channel is in a slow decline and not quickly dropping off is likely more due to how YT is consumed and his previous clout than him being enjoyable to watch. People don't often go around YT shopping for better channels to watch and he is still a recognisable name for a lot of people.

I guess I left out a group I think exists but that I don't understand. The group that WANTS to be angry and that "enjoys(?)" screaming, crying and hating everything.
The sort of people that hang out in Reddits r/greenandpleasant sub where they only live in the UK to constantly tell people how much they hate it. These sorts of people never want pleasure and get off on anger, frustration and hate. Jim feeds that hatred and these people eat it up.
They don't want pleasure - they get their endorphins off pure anger. I've met a couple of people like this in real life and they are painful to be around and they exist on both the left and the right. The left feeding off the hatred of people like JK Rowling calling out troons and rags like the Daily Mail screaming about gays or immigrants. Both just need to calm the fuck down.

 

[Dr George Whitebread]

I think the sheer gradual nosedive he's taken is still something spectacular. The slow burn of declining subs shows a decline in content because those are still thousands of individuals who stayed with Jim throughout the trooning, throughout the repetition, throughout the coping and the seething, and then decided to unsub because it just got too much. It's glorious. There's guys like James Charles who lost 3 mil almost overnight that managed to recover and then some. Jim's sub loss is equivalent to how much people are willing to stand him as a shit human being.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

... I'm so old.

For what it's worth (n=1), I know a guy that still listens to Jim. He's a relative normie, so it's Jim and Zero Punctuation for him because he was in the escapist forums in college like 18 years ago and he genuinely gets his 'gaming' news from them (or me when we talk). He puts Jim on his speakers in his study and doesn't watch the video. He thinks Jim is 'a bit whingey but he's got some points'. Maybe there's more of my mate's type in that audience?

My friend who still watches Jim says the same thing, thinks the trooning out is a bit weird but likes that Jim doesn't mince words when slagging off the big publishers.

I guess I left out a group I think exists but that I don't understand. The group that WANTS to be angry and that "enjoys(?)" screaming, crying and hating everything.
The sort of people that hang out in Reddits r/greenandpleasant sub where they only live in the UK to constantly tell people how much they hate it. These sorts of people never want pleasure and get off on anger, frustration and hate. Jim feeds that hatred and these people eat it up.
They don't want pleasure - they get their endorphins off pure anger. I've met a couple of people like this in real life and they are painful to be around and they exist on both the left and the right. The left feeding off the hatred of people like JK Rowling calling out troons and rags like the Daily Mail screaming about gays or immigrants. Both just need to calm the fuck down.

Its not that they get endorphins off the anger they just want everyone else to be as miserable as them.