The appeal and curse of Simple Zack is that when he is right he is right. To me his youtube career is like a broken clock: he is mostly wrong but right twice a day.
We can laugh about "simple Zack" as a meme, but I do believe he is quite intelligent but not properly wired to hit the conclusions most people would. I am not qualified to diagnose Neurodiverse conditions but consulting someone who can would help him a lot in his life. My impression is that he fails to understand the concept of doublespeech and focuses on details that do not matter. Is it ADHD? Is it PTSD? Is it functional autism or Aspergers? I don't know.
I completely agree that Zack is plenty smart enough but seems pathologically unable to reach the correct conclusions, particularly if those conclusions require him to reconsider any preconceived notions he may have. He frequently engages in confirmation bias, coming to a conclusion first and working backwards to justify it and completely ignoring anything that may point to factors he has already concluded are irrelevant or that indicate he might be operating from a false premise.
Nobody likes to admit they were wrong about anything, but Zack takes the cake sometimes. I always go back to his "CROWDFUNDING IS DYING" video as a YBZ masterclass on flawed reasoning mixed with the complete inability to accurately self-reflect. The last time he admitted he was wrong about something was when Gary had to call him out for saying Disney hadn't adapted any Marvel stories from the past 10 years, which was demonstrably false. Even then he made up some weird shit about how he wasn't
really wrong because even if you adapt Captain Marvel and call her Carol Danvers and give her the same costume and powers but change her origin story, it counts as a completely new character.
I think the appeal to Zack was that he spoke freely and honestly, even if he was wrong and retarded half of the time. When he restrains himself, his videos are 100% worthless and boring. He's been biting his tongue for years now about the celebrity gossip grift. Could this be a return to the good old days?
Probably not.
He still has the capacity to make a gem every now and then (like his "Vita Ayala might be legitimately retarded" video) but it's mostly a watered down version of his old shit. He doesn't go off on angry rants anymore, he doesn't hurl insults at idiots or their work, he doesn't really do much of anything that brought him to the table. Even his unironic use of the term "SJW" seems out of date and boomery in 2022.
I honestly can't see him making a return to form going after the FNT, G+G, TUG, or EVS gossip mills. But what do I know? He seems to jump from one thing to the other pretty easily.
I remember at one point I thought Splatto Del Gato had become the better channel because it was just him giving his honest opinions about movies and shit. I stopped watching it a while ago though so I don't know if he still does it or if it went to shit too, but thinking about that makes me think you're correct.
Watching SDG is what made me realize Zack's opinion on art wasn't worth listening to. The guy really only watches action movies (and apparently Sex and the City) and can't even get his squirrel brain to settle down long enough to watch a movie all at once. If it takes you 2 or 3 days to watch a brainless 90 minute bullets-and-karate show in 5 minute increments, why should I care what you think makes a good story?
So when he starts talking about Narwhal being a genius or how comics pros have a duty to spew their bullshit political sperging about current events in their work because "that's the job of an artist", I remember this guy almost exclusively eats fast food, thinks G.I. Joe is the height of narrative fiction, and can't watch a whole movie.
After hearing his plans for his latest abortion of a book, Kelsey Shannon should have said, "Richard, you need to cut this shit out right now and focus on Jawbreakers before you destroy your fucking business!" That's what a real friend would have said. But Kelsey probably said, "OMG Richard, that's such a brilliant idea! So, how much am I getting paid again?"
I imagine Kelsey took him to the fucking cleaners. Zack needed that book finished extremely quickly and Kelsey obliged with 26 pages of slapdash, sketchbook quality art. That's absolutely no rip on Kelsey, he's a quality artist and was given a 26 page project to finish in what must have been 2 or 3 weeks. Kudos to him for getting it done and I'm sure he charged YBZ a premium for finishing it in record time. Zack says he spent $25k on that thing and I bet a hefty percentage was Kelsey's page rate.
And guys who genuinely give him good advice and want to help him and see him succeed like FROG, he spurns and goes in the exact opposite direction. Richard had a successful business model going for awhile and he decided to stop doing what worked. The tale of Richard C Meyer will be a future case study for people in how NOT to conduct business within comics.
My favorite shit is his insistence that livestreaming for campaigns doesn't work when he's the poster boy for how well it can work.
I know EVS keeps going to bat for him saying he owes Zack for his own success, but at this point I think Zack is the one who owes Ethan. Jawbreakers doesn't make $400k without Ethan's show. Once again, Zack not wanting to do something is because it "doesn't work" and not because he's a sped.
