To be fair, all YouTubers look like that. YT demands funny exaggerated faces. So that’s what they do. So they all the unhinged and clinically insane.
I think it is part of the appeal, part of the whole circus performance that draws a crowd in the first place. If you look like a relatively normal person, speak normally, dress normally, etc. then your chances of sticking an impression dwindle. Sam Hyde kinda, sorta talks about this. He says that things have gotten so crazy that you see many people "I have nothing left to lose" visage and mentality. You look at a guy like Zack and you fundamentally realize that you can't negotiate with him. You cannot reason with him. Like many e-celebs covered here on this website, he is trapped inside a world of his own making.
What's funny to me about any conversation about him is people are continually attracted to his "takes" despite the fact that he really just parrots people who have said things way better than he has and the only reason anyone attributes something said to him is because of his prominence. Otherwise, there is really nothing exceptional about anything he says or does.
Case in point:
There was a time that his Twitch account was briefly suspended in August 2017 for a comment he made about survivors displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Now, what's funny here is he
says this, in particular:
"I got suspended for 'harassment' on Twitch with no clarification as to what I did wrong."
Now, if Zack was in any way an exceptional human being, that's the point upon which he should have pivoted the entire thing. In other words, the ball is in Twitch's court. Say to them something, like,
"I am one of the most popular streamers on your platform.
You owe
me an explanation as to what I did wrong. If you want me to continue using your platform, you need to tell me why you suspended me."
Instead, he "
reached an understanding" with Twitch staff following all these explanation blurbs that he continues to do today whenever he gets in trouble. In other words, Zack is just another internet e-celeb who has been taught that if he is ever in a controversy, he just has write multi-page essays in order to squirm his way out. He insists he did not "apologize" but he doesn't fundamentally seem to realize what an apology is. What he should have said is he literally did not say the words, "I am sorry" yet he still doesn't get how his jumping through Twitch's hoops and trying to justify himself in a case where Twitch didn't even give him the courtesy of an explanation
is his apology. Any self-respecting man would have said,
"Twitch didn't explain to me why I was suspended for a joke I made. Because of this, I am no longer using a platform since their staff are terrible at communication and seem to have no sense of humor."
All this is to say, time and again Zack has showed that his basic desire is to just play ball with whomever and not rock the boat at all. His little "internet tough guy" routine is only extended to his audience, but to anyone with any degree of control over his life and career, he folds. He hoops and hollers like a monkey, true, but he still folds. So, he knows how to rail against the system in a way that is verbally compelling, but that's really as far as he will go. Otherwise, he doesn't make any attempt to change the status quo and he eventually goes along with it himself. Given his money and popularity, I'd say he
could do things to improve the status quo, but instead he just bandwagons these broken "charity" events, goes on podcasts to talk about stupid meaningless shit, or
overcharges people for their Starforge Systems.