I'm not sure if anyone's pointed this out, but it seems the reason Vinny and his friends are doing crossovers with other youtubers like Sheetz/Criken/Jerma is because they're all part of some creator network called
Screenwave Media.
Not only that, but is appears Screenwave Media is a sponsor for the
Too Many Games convention, which Vinny attends every year.
And suddenly, everything makes sense. I always thought it was strange that Vinny seemed to have stopped going to Comic Con in lieu of Too Many Games, when the latter definitely looks much less professional, and, in all honesty, kind of cringey. I assumed it was because he was sick of the big crowds at CC and that TMG was paying him to make guest appearances, where CC definitely wasn't - but now I understand why he keeps going. No wonder he always looks like he's in pain at TMG. I wouldn't call him a sell out, but he's definitely sacrificing some things to work under their name.
I respect Vinny a lot because he seems fairly humble about the money he makes, but at the same time, he's not humble-bragging. Back in the boomer days, asking about someone's salary was a somewhat provocative and intrusive. Today, it's very challenging to pussyfoot around topics with your audience for so long. I suppose the distance he imposes does have consequences for people being unable to connect with him, or seeing him as disingenuous.
His attachment to his privacy and managing to maintain it for a decade is pretty admirable, but like you said, it also puts him at a disadvantage in the face of other content creators, whose personal lives and private info
are their brand. Vinny as he is can be pretty marketable - just a sadboy who likes video games and making weird noises - but he's never going to be able to connect with his audience in the way that someone like Markiplier can, due to his unwillingness to share anything really personal.
That's not a bad thing at all in his current standing, since he still has a pretty dedicated fanbase, but I do wonder what would happen to him in a situation where he was outed publicly as having done something morally questionable. The smart thing that content creators like Pewdiepie do is, essentially, tricking their fans into believing they're friends by sharing so much personal information, and thereby building a bond with them. Those parasocial relationships are really powerful things, and so when shit hits the fans (see what I did there?), they sort of act as an unofficial
and unpaid PR team, quieting down anyone who brings their bad actions to light and defending the creator staunchly, even if he definitely did it. I chose Pewdiepie as an example because of how many times I've seen this happen with him, most recently being when he said the n-word live on a stream and his fans insisted that it didn't actually happen even though there was video evidence of it.
Circling this back to Vinny, the question becomes - if Vinny was outed as doing something morally questionable, or even explicitly wrong (we can go with one of the classics - stealing money from charity, sexually harassing teenage fans, or saying something racist. Take your pick!), would his fans defend him as rabidly as the fans of other content creators, even in spite of the lack of a connection? Or would they completely abandon him in favor of the facts, because Vinny's refusal to make use of parasocial relationships with them means that they won't be swayed by emotion and how much they like him, and only look at the evidence? It's an interesting question to me.
