There's almost no substance to DSP as a lolcow at this point. He's like 40, he's calmer, he's married, and while he's very incompetent and inflexible, he rarely treads outside of his comfort zone. Not being willing to set up a free computer was one of those things he did on his own with help of his supporters, no detractors involved.
I truly mean this with absolutely no malice because I'm not trying to pick a fight or gatekeep Phil, but I don't think you get the appeal of him. Which is fine and honestly, probably for the best. There's no denying we're all a little more autistic for following Phil. I don't think Phil has calmed down at all, he's arguably been at his most unhinged in the last year or so, to the point where even people who have regularly followed Phil for years through some pretty angry arcs, like being banned from Twitch, haven't seen Phil so unhinged. I think to an extent he's calmed down over the last few weeks, but that's because he's riding a money high.
People tend to miss a lot of what makes Phil so good as a cow. You mentioned the computer, but missed that it (most likely) wasn't free and something he bought for himself. And the reason he bought it? Because he's so insecure about his Street Fighter 6 rank that he wanted to play it on PC because it doesn't use the same mastery rankings as his console accounts. It let him fight new players again so he could style on them because he can't handle playing against players that have a few games under their belt. There's also some weird stuff with him describing lag or...anti lag or something, which I suppose could be chalked up to Phil just being incompetent, but I feel like there's a difference between Phil fumbling about with a USB stick versus Phil making up excuses.
I don't think him being in his 40's or married really changes much. Honestly, Phil was more normal before he was married because Leanna was less alien than Kat. It's also not anything that's particularly unique to Phil. I mean, a lot of these criticisms could apply to a cow like Brianna Wu. He's in his 40's, married and almost never leaves his Twitter safespace except sometimes to appear on a small podcast that probably has less of an audience than KC. He's arguably calmer since his gamergate days, and a lot of the amusement comes from John being incompetent and inflexible, but nobody would argue that we should stop covering him.
The people who hate Phil definitely have some sort of complex that makes them lash out at everyone who doesn't hate DSP. I also feel they're very autistic and can't let go. Like, they're stuck on him, can't enjoy anyone else, refuse to try, get mad at his supporters because they feel his good income level means there won't be content, which they can't stand because only DSP matters to them.
100% agree and I'll shamelessly plug
https://kiwifarms.st/threads/darksydephil-a-logs-general.17334/ again. Nobody is denying there are people who take Phil way too seriously and needlessly get angry about him. It's just that, we don't think the calls are coming from inside the house. Again, I won't deny there was a point there were a lot more angry posters here, but that was years ago back when Phil was on Twitch. I'd even go so far as to add that those type of people are jealous of Phil. We've had some weird posters who have talked about feeling sad because they don't have a girlfriend and someone like Phil is married, or they work X hours and make half of what Phil does. But they only post once or twice and, after receiving lots of rainbow stickers, tend to never post again and instead go to reddit/discord/youtube. We'll sometimes talk about the more noteworthy ones, but I think a lot of the regulars here largely try to avoid those types of places because it's too angry/autistic. It even gets mentioned in the main thread sometimes when discussing restreams, with a lot of people not liking the options because the YouTube audience in those communities is too miserable to interact with.
Every interaction with DSP people is bad. Users in this board hate this site. They complain that I don't feature things that interest them. When I do feature DSP, they hate the users that visit the board. When PPP tries to ego up Phil for content, they hate him. When I agree to a game with Phil, they lash out at me. If I respond, they start freaking out. I haven't enjoyed this board since neger psykolog.
I can obviously only speak for what gets posted privately, so I'm not sure if people are privately messaging you or something, but I've never seen anyone here really clamoring for something to get featured. I think the possibility of getting featured comes up once in awhile, but it's more of an in passing thing. The last feature especially was rough because of the wording on it. Which I know had nothing to do with you because you didn't feature it, and I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus because it really was just an honest mistake, but I think it came off sounding like "Look at the retards on the DSP board freaking out" so a lot of people took that as open season and came in here treating it like a massive halal thread or something because they misunderstood the "dentractor" part.
I honestly wish more people would stumble onto Phil because it's always nice to have newcomers. There are some people who come in and post something like "I haven't followed Phil for X amount of time, what's he up to" and it's all pretty amicable. Even when people ask what the appeal is in Phil tends to be pretty calm as long as it isn't an obvious troll post like "why do all of you have such massive hateboners for this guy who plays games poorly."
I do agree there's bad blood between you and some of the users, which sucks because there was a time you were casually posting when Phil was doing joystick repairs and it felt like we were all on the same page, but it feels like some people are still bitter about previous interactions and looking to get into a slapfight. I think 90% of the time you get tagged it's someone throwing out bait. And that I have no idea what to do about.
I won't pretend I agree with everything you say about Phil, like I said at the top of this giant wall of text, I think there's a lot you don't really see/get about Phil. And there's honestly a good chance Phil just isn't the type of cow for you. I think we all have our own preferences with lolcows, I never understood the appeal of the Gunt boards and I try to avoid a lot of the Animal Fucker threads because that content isn't entertaining for me. Following Phil is really like having a favorite book/movie/show that you know is absolute garbage and wouldn't willingly admit to enjoying in casual conversatio, but will gladly talk about for hours with fellow fans.
I really have no solution to that particular issue. Making a "don't bother Null" rule just seems like it's asking more people to passive aggressively (or just outright aggressively) tag you in stuff. I guess that's why I decided to write a mini-thesis that hopefully doesn't come off as aggressive, passive or otherwise, to try and explain how we see the board/some of our frustrations with how we're seen. I think it's pretty obvious I don't want the board to close or anything, but if it's genuinely that hated and a constant source of frustration and not something that can be ignored, maybe it's worth considering. I'd ask what could be done to make the boards a better place, but it seems like a moot point because I don't really see any of the issues present, minus the slapfighting with you, and when pressed for examples, it's usually from an outside source like YouTube/Reddit/Twitter/Discord, which we obviously have no control over.
