The point I guess is that while it's unfortunate to have stupidly squandered promotional opportunities, there is a bad smell attaching itself to pretty much everyone that is one or two levels higher than CG and playing at politics and culture with a conservative or right-wing bent. That smell appears to be emanating from socio-political enterprising females and dudes simping for said females. Relative obscurity may be a blessing. I don't know what the details are like behind the scenes at FNT or G+G but holy shit do they work really hard to involve dubious females in a lot of edgy shit. I feel sorry for Eric because while I do think his entire existence is absurd, he is accomplishing a lot in his chosen endeavors and he really does seem to work hard to avoid dumb shit that could blow up in his face. He's friendly with all of these people including Sydney herself and it would be a shame if he had to go to court or whatever to testify.
An excellent post.
Rippa's video is unsurprisingly long and rambling, but it
does offer the unique perspective of someone involved in Glenn Beck's The Blaze media empire without being wholly owned by them. It's an interesting watch. July dances around the idea, but fundamentally what is happening is an open conflict between the self-employed lolcows of Internet Famous and the professionally curated and propped up "authentic" parasocial e-celebs propped up Con Inc/Big Con. The Ben Shapiros and Glenn Becks who have seen the money involved and decided to cultivate e-celebs of their own by offering Faustian bargains to fame-hungry people in exchange for their professional resources, including access to high profile guests, studios, SEO optimization, legal/flagging protection, bots/astroturfing services, actual publicity, etc. All the original culture war barnacles can do is sit and watch while grifters-come-lately like Bleu cut in line to the big time platforms while they remain forever ineligible because of their public appearances at Charlottesville,
readily available compilations of their careers as online misfits the mainstream could use to discredit their hosts and overall crippling autism. Forever consigned to their pee-smelling basements. And they know it. Eric July might have been mentored by Preston Poulter for a while and subscribes to an ideology which advocates for making children's rights a transactional commodity, but apparently Glenn Beck can take a look at him and say "
at least he isn't one of these other freaks".
It's tempting to feel sorry for their lot, until one remembers that they gatekeep their own community just as rigidly and just as nepotistically as those who gatekeep them. Who can forget when Nerdrotic stripped Smiller of his janny wrench for posting IGG links to Lonestar without his permission? "Sorry blacklisted father-of-five trying to feed his family,
you gotta do it for free" says the cultural commando all in against cancel culture. Nowadays though Smiller happily scrapes the shit off the meth dealer's boot if it means not having to crawl back to the Human Sunbeam, and recommends everyone in listening distance do the same. Their complaint boils down to it being not fair that other, competent and professional people are calling the shots on who gets to be a big-time eceleb maker and not them. My heart bleeds.
The point is, independent culture war clickbait creators are right to feel threatened by this development. Their competition has resources they cannot match and, once muscled out of their home turf, they will be yoked to similar contracts that turn over their entire online e-celeb persona into the property of The Blaze/Daily Wire etc. It's a serious problem. But it's not the viewers' problem. Why should I or anyone else care about the personal problems of Joe Q Youtuber? There's no shortage of people out there willing to blubber in front of a camera about how "their channel is being attacked" and how X is woke now. I got problems of my own and it's not like they care. Some optics management is required to convince the sheep that this is
their problem as well. Thankfully, finding a blatant bullshit peddler in the right-wing youtube scene is the easiest thing imaginable and the only reason it doesn't happen more is because of the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction. Rippa gripes about the "digging" to find Elisa Bleu's grift, but I say "dusting off" might be the more appropriate term here.
Tell me if you've heard something like this before. Big Con are the lords and ladies of the right-wing youtube world, a group of outsider professionals that have usurped the anti-SJW superchat miking grift from the autogenous mom and pop outrage merchant retard grifters like Quartering and Brittany Venti, and seek to subjugate them to the role of lowly peasants of the kingdom, if you will. No longer. No longer.
"HAIL! HAIL MY WOOKIES, DROIDS AND EWOKS! HAIL TO THE MOTHAFUCKIN CHAT! THIS ELISA BLEU IS THE HEATHER ANTOS OF ANTI-SJW YOUTUBE! FUCK TIM POOLRUCCI! DOWN WITH BIG DYNAMITE! PEASANT UPRISING!"
Anna's comment section being the gathering place for conservative luminaries like Mark Dice
That Anna Mello of all people took upon herself the mantle of sweet Roro Love, and actually succeeded on a larger scale where Ro failed, is a sign that God truly has a sense of humor and the full completion of her three-year character arc. Unlike others, Tim Pool quickly caved to
the mob once he saw his subcount drop, and we will see how this goes for him (his detractors still hate him and his followers now see him as willing to bend the knee to his detractors). July (accurately imo) notes that his good pal Sydney Watson's lawsuit against the Blaze for reading superchats is just as woke feminist and full of shit as anything Eliza Bleu ever said, and yet the crowd is curiously silent on this matter. Instead Quartering is trying to angle for a show with the now-freelance Sydney Watson. The inference left hanging is that the difference is one stance hurts Big Con outfits like Timcast and The Blaze and the other indirectly helps them by attacking someone attacking them. He noticed, and with his mumbling about how these guys are "getting in their own way", it's left hanging that Big Con has also noticed and will be acting accordingly. How is
Crash the System doing these days, incidentally? YoungRippa wistfully muses on why can't this energy be turned against the hated leftist enemy, not fully grasping who the much more real and immediate enemy of his peers really is.
The other thing of note on July's stream is that, because of all of Elijah Schaffer's backstage hijinks, he has violated The Contract and so Schaffer's channel, social media profile and "You Are Here" program with its subscribers
have been turned over to The Blaze's newest signatory, Alex Stein. Going from Elijah Schaffer to Alex Stein to avoid disaster is like jumping from a frying pan into the fire. Stein's one defining characteristic has been his desperate willingness to do
anything to achieve fame, driven by a mortal terror as obvious as the ever-present pained eyes and rictus grin written on his face wherever he goes. It does not paint a picture of reliability or mental stability. That Beck thinks personally undersigning Stein and everything Stein does as a Blaze employee is going to end well makes me question how well thought out the weepy Cash4Gold Mormon's latest scheme and scam of signing on of very online far right e-personalities is. Then again, given how far Stein was willing to go for his meteoric rise in a couple of years, perhaps he'll prove just as willing to do whatever it takes to retain his position. If so, that will serve his new masters well.
Stein has used his access to "his" channel so far to reward his friends. Here he has Venti live to discuss the incredibly important historical event that was her three-week ban from twitter (what else?). His choice of spaceship-themed blue studio lighting really removing Venti's heavy makeup and accentuating her disfiguring facial sores and "Pigpen from Peanuts"-esque skintone. Well done. However it can't be assumed that The Blaze will allow Stein to run his program like a crappier version of the new Oz Show forever and intervention will be insisted on. This relates to Comicsgate because unless Stein runs a solo program, there is the matter of who will be his supporting ensemble on his giftwrapped channel with 135K subs. And the person at the front of that list is Cecil.
