There's some debate in media analytic circles about the social merits of "hatewatching", which is considered 'subversion of corporate expectations of media consumption'; I suspect any debate will be effectively over once the curriculum takes shit like the Geeks and Gamers or Nerdrotic's "brand" into account. There dissatisfaction and dislike of the existing mainstream fare has not resulted in substantial textual criticism (a most valuable quality to academics), nor transformative or creative works. Instead the act of hatewatching is distilled to it's purest form - hundreds of hours of paypigs lined up to watch an oafish middle aged manchild tell them what they want to hear and let them feel like part of an internet hugbox while they play a brightly colored video game meant for 6-8 year olds. Indeed, FNT/G+G even disproves the hatewatcher's dearly held shared pretensions of having superior taste to what the mainstream doles out. We've seen what their offered alternative to the latest MCU or Lucasfilm product that they lap up instead - performative sperging and gaming livestreams - and it is the lowest effort, lowest value content imaginable. If nothing else, the entire TFM/FNT scene disproves once and for all the assertion that disliking something automatically means you have taste.
Without exaggeration, study on these guys will result in re-evaluation of entire sub-branches of media analytics like "fandom studies"and "fan scholarship" which, once packaged and sold to media corporations, will result in nothing good for either them or their unsuspecting upset nerd "community". Comicsgate, as opposed to extremely scrutinized phenomena like Gamergate, is somewhat blessed in this aspect, as a side effect of the boycott of coverage from all established comics journalism is the almost complete absence of data for these people to work with. As far as I've been able to tell, the only time Comicsgate gained academic notice was
when Marvel's VP of sales put out a statement at a summit in 2017 saying "people had had enough of Marvel's diversity push", something that challenged a widely shared dogmatic belief that fandom is inherently liberal, as well as offending their own cultural marxist sensibilities. After that? Not much.
So far, the only academic work on Comicsgate,
Superhero Culture Wars , was released this January by two assistant English professors. I haven't read it myself, but the reference to comic creator "Michael Bendis" in the description does not lead me to believe that this is a book of serious rigor.
Anyways, in Comicsgate news:
So Leroi was sniping the auction stream and the matter of
Gabriel Eltaeb coming off very much like Doug 2.0 with his rhetoric and self importance came up. I do distinctly recall him trying to shill his book the second he came on Ethans stream the first time and having to be shut down. Even went so far as saying 'i'm comicsgate to the core' in the chat only to have to asked about comicsgate lore soon after. That is just horrible optics.
He is also going full on right-wing retard and that really is burning a lot of people on him. I sperg out on the farms about politics but that shit needs to stay out of business and entertainment. Ethan does his sperging during the election but i never heard him outright say 'fuck democrats.' I get his is a bit fresh about being forced out after
safely collecting a DC paycheck until others had made him a platform but he needs to shut up. See how well courting Ben Shapiro worked out for Mike.
The other issue being late books and 100% agree. Angry Vanessa has heard a rumor Fragga is doing a side book while his book is many months late. I like Fragga but if legit that's a hard nope for any future support. People tend to be very understanding for a long time but once that breaks it's all over. The list of creators i'm willing to back again is shrinking.
Stream in question. I may timestamp at some point but i am lazy and i think i got the gist of the issues i felt were worth sharing.
A few days after
Leroi and The Chat's efap of Frog's underwhelming Autumn 2021 art auction that turned into a vitriolic screed against all the late books he backed,
the entire channel was deleted suddenly and without warning with the above explanation. Leroi laments that he never wanted to reach the staggering heights of fame, success and relevance that he did with his youtube channel. The role of Comicsgate
Vox Populi was not taken, it was thrust upon Leroi; he simply and humbly wanted only to make a show with his friends.
Although Leroi no longer has a channel, Shane Davis makes it clear that there's always a place on his
jock show for Leroi. The
Inglorious Rex author's wife is in the hospital for complications regarding her C-section, leaving the job of Shane-wrangler to fall upon his trusty #2. At 21 minutes into the stream (which until that point was about Shane talking about hitting a deer with his Nissan Cube) the host invites Leroi to elaborate his decision to cancel The Chat. "It stopped being fun" explains Leroi, said fun ending when he started "getting flack" for complaining about all the late books he ordered but did not receive. At
656 subscribers, the channel had grown too big, the burden of responsibility for his platform too heavy for what was supposed to be a humble get together for him and his fellow fans. When you get big like him, a target is painted on your back. Rumors being made up about him trying to become an "influencer", viciously trying to frame things like Leroi's constant namedropping of comicsgate creators he talks to in DMs and private group chats as "clout chasing". A charge that disgusts Leroi. Another complaint now that he's a target is how people are "trying to tie him to groups", an extremely oblique reference to the rumors circulating in various cliques about how curious it is "Leroi" became active once Warcampaign status became stigmatized, speculating that he's a renamed WCer. I for one actually believe Leroi that these innuendoes are unfounded, if only because a Warcampaigner would 100% have known who Lola was as she regularly invited them for cybersex in their discord server, and Leroi had no idea who TUG's wife is.
Shane rises to his friend's defense by making the truly intellectual argument that if Leroi was truly a "clout chaser", like these unnamed plebs say, why did he erase his channel after forgetting his place and criticizing his betters? Answer Shane that, detractors. Indeed, were Leroi truly about the pursuit of social clout, he would have never erased his channel (after getting pushback from the holders of said clout), framing Leroi's decision to walk away as the "voice of the fans" like the story of the farmer-appointed-dictator Cincinnatus voluntarily relinquishing his office once the crisis passed. Except if nobody asked Cincinnatus to provide this role instead of everyone, and instead of when the crisis passed, Cincinnatus instead stepped down from power the moment he started asking uncomfortable questions about the patricians and they threatened to stop giving him asspats and cummies. But other than that, exactly the same. Leroi says he'll miss hosting closeout streams like he did for Irene Strychalski and Patrick Thomas Parnell, and that he was touched by all the Comicsgate creators who reached out to him and asked if he was okay in DMs. For his part, Shane Davis at one hour twenty minutes makes another reference for the unwelcome "group associations" made by a creator in his DMs, saying that these people should "go jerk off or something" instead of being gossipy bitches online.
So there you have it, it just wasn't fun anymore.
27/11/2021 -
LORD FINATRA - HAIL CHAT?
Leroi's passing was taken hard by
Finatra; the two started channels at the same time, they came up together as comicsgate youtubers. And things are looking bleak for Finatra's channel
(1,130 subscribers) as well. Not because he's a target for being a "voice of the CG fans" like Leroi, but the more prosaic problem of various ukrainian and korean softcore camwhores have come together to mass flag his channel for proflic amounts of content piracy with his streamsniping of women exercising while yelling and getting yelled at by guests on drunken livestreamed benders. Everyone in Comicsgate has their cross to bear. Things look bleak for Finatra and he may not have a channel himself soon. Several times over the next couple of hours he instinctively begins to search for a fatassed korean woman doing squats in yoga pants to fill dead air before realizing he can't and settles on morosely looking at livestreamed bloodsports gone by, the stream taking on the character of a depressing clip show as Finatra nostalgically reflects on some of the Oz Show-style bloodsports he's hosted on his channel (before unlisting them to avoid flagging).
Not wanting to risk a final flag to his channel for copyright violation, Finatra opens the show up to the chat where "Old Dirty Fatty" and Checkpoint show up. Old Dirty Fatty is the shitpost account of a Comicsgate artist who, even as someone who publicly joined Comicsgate, does not want the optics of showing up on shows like Finatra's against them, while Checkpoint is a friend of Finatra's who has an avatar of Lady Liberty in a stockade and ballgag. Their chosen topic: politics. The discussion unfortunately failed to live up to its promise as the two took turns soapboxing what passes for Comicsgate political discourse - vague rants about government shadow cabals and corporations in collaboration to secretly pull the strings on society like something from a dystopic cyberpunk setting. This dialectic where nobody disagrees with one another goes on at excruciating length before being broken up by an impromptu and sudden appearance from
Frog.
Without so much as a "hello", Frog demands to know everything they know about Leroi shutting down his youtube channel. Finatra answers that he did what he always said he would and shut down his channel if he became a star. Frog isn't so sure about that, relating how "I get a message from Leroi saying 'I'm getting all kinds of hate. I'm getting dox threats from creators in this community." After years of similar mailbox-related stunts however, Frog was not as credulous as he once was and asked for receipts of this creator's threats. After all, a creator idiotically going around threatening backer with doxing in DMs for criticism is a huge liability from Frog's perspective and he has every reason to expel anyone engaging in such behavior, if true. When pressed however, Leroi refused to provide receipts, Frog's unstated conclusion being that Leroi is completely full of shit. There were also assurances from Leroi that he has "no intention of going to war" with over late comics, a stance met with confusion from Frog. And that might have been the end of it, except for the unnamed snitch creator also in Frog's DMs messaging him about Leroi being Warcampaign infiltrator - he woudn't put this person above threatening Leroi with doxing for leading a would-be uprising against Comicsgate creators. We also learned who called Leroi an infuencer - Frog relating how he explained to Leroi that "if you're going to go on livestreams, start being a quote-unquote influencer, talking about how you're never going to back people who haven't even launched a project yet, yeah expect some pushback".
At least one of the two people in Frog's DMs are working some kind of gayop, but there's always the possibility of it being both. The waters are murky sometimes when navigating the CG lifeboat; always keep your oar on hand and don't be afraid to swing wildly into the dark. In any case, Frog gave Leroi's alleged dox threat the due consideration, which is to say he used it to juice up a boring Finatra livestream because Fin couldn't fill it up with slavic asses.
The chat comes positively alive with speculation on who this "CG Hitman" could be. Suspicion is immediately directed towards Nasser Rabadi, because Liam has been talking up Nasser being Frog's "enforcer"
for almost a year now. Given the several hours that a Finatra stream can go on for, there was ample time for people to start throwing memes together before the show ended and clown Leroi in real time.
1) Finatra fanart of Mister Dongs eulogizing Leroi 2) "Smug Pug" investigating the murder scene 3) Artistic depiction of the CG Hitman
F
