I feel like it's been each month now of this crap. I take a break from uploading my own edits and actually check out what you guys are making. Each and every time that I do this I see the long text post detailing how the communtiy went after another person on the r/ because they felt that the content went too far and or "how would Jerma feel if he saw this".
The latest one this relates to is the "Jerma Potion" post. The post in question is actually just images of basically garbage put into a stew alongside pictures of Jerma. That post was reported more than four damn times. Either one person or four seperate people were deeply offened by a person making actual garbage which had pictures of jerma put into it.
The text post is actually full of others talking about how different this communtiy is now since they originally joined. I can attest to this. I can say based off of observation of the last 6 years that the community has absolutely chnaged.
I want to begin the following with letting you know that I'm bi and actually currently questioning my own gender. I tell you this so that you understand that I mean nothing negative unless I explicitly explain something as negative.
The communtiy has slowly became gay-er and much younger. This sounds bad without an explanation. What I mean is that more and more people seem to think that they should be defending Jerma at all costs.
To defend means going out of their way to insult people that make edits that don't directly align with what the other person belives best represents Jerma and his character. They may send PMs telling thwm to kill themselves or mass reprot the content. Both are in the extremes but I haven't seen anything other than these results.
When you mix in the age demographic from the years 14 - 17 you get people whos brains aren't fully developed. You get actual kids who might attach themselves to a person they likely will never meet or talk to (I actually am one of those people. Sad part is that I'm 19 and understand that I'm parasocial). I'm talking about parasocial behavior. People that do anything they can to act like they know or are in connections with the creator themself.
I can tell you that there are differing degrees of this type of behavior. I myself am parasocial when it comes to Jerma. I've been in the community since 2017. I've attached my entire self and person to Jerma as a person and creator. The extent of which I am parasocial is that I don't know what I'll do with myself when Jerma actually does slow things down on all fronts. It's sad but I actually have nothing else in my life apart from Jerma.
The other degree of this behavior that I have observed is just flat out toxicity. Things like what I mentioned above near the beginning. Mass reporting edits and insulting the creator directly. I commonly see these phrases passed around in threads. "What would Jerma think if he saw this." "You shouldn't be making this. Jerma wouldn't like seeing this." I've been sent this and so have others.
The posts in question are almost always jokes that poke fun at Jerma as a person. As of recent I've seen two jokes that the community used to laugh at somehow turn into things that are now offensive.
Short Joke: Did you know? From 2016 to 2018 (and actually still going) the communtiy poked fun at jermas height. People would make short jokes in chat for Jerma to read out loud kinda like a prank. Jerma at one point did an extended joke on stream. The joke is that he was refuting the claims of him being short and that he was going to prove it on stream.
Jerma presents a slide show of poorly edited images where his face is cut out and put onto taller people. During the slide show a different set of poorly edited images appear. These images are again his face cut out but instead of taller people it's very short people. These people are near the height of which the communtiy jokes he actually is. He becomes confused and irritated that his actual photos and height are being shown to thousands of people live on Twitch.
This actually showed that he never took any actual offense to this joke. In fact he made a portion of a stream just to poke fun at himself.
Now to explain how the community handles this joke currently. For the last two years I have seen great and funny image edits of the short joke that somehow seem to always include one to two people saying things like "Stop making fun of Jerma." and "Jerma doesn't even like these jokes.". Either these people want to start a drama filled thread or they are extremely new to all of the jokes. I can tell you though that I see this backlash each time I check out what you guys are making.
Jerma made an actual part of a stream centered around this damn joke! How are you a fan if you don't know about this!?
Serial Killer Jokes: Did you know? Let me start with saying that I never found this joke that funny. What I did notice over time is that the community began to dislike this joke out of nowhere. The Jerma Is A Psycho joke has been around for a very long time. It started as chat reacting to Jerma doing or saying something manic or psychotic. It really blew up from what I can tell in 2020 due to a deepfake video posted by Modus Pwnens titled Etalyx and Jerma move to the Suburbs. (
https://youtu.be/iIXhsn-VZqk?si=7FDJqhjh2NBmbJ-c )
This video alongside Jerma and Vinny - American Psycho Deepfake by rigatoni on YouTube (
https://youtu.be/J_Wld19HMUk?si=eCzihaOXPRFAWSSo ) helped this joke pop off. The downfall of the this joke may have started due to the Pre-Dollhouse Q&A stream. This stream consisted of Jerma answering questions in regards to the upcoming Dollhouse event stream.
Jerma is sat in front of a plain grey backdrop with a microphone placed in front of him. Some time after that stream a fan took an edited image of that stream where someone on the r/ replaced the "O" in SOX with an "E" and added the caption "Incredible AI deepfake technology compiles every serial killer into one man."
This meme blows up to such a degree that even a group of popular radio DJs talk about live. For the people that hadn't heard of jerma before they took the post as something creepy and surreal. Overall people poke fun at the way that Jerma looks.
Once again Jerma takes this very well. He actually listens to the radio DJs on stream and laughs at the situation.
The Jerma communtiy as a whole hang onto this meme for several years. It's just the same joke without any chnages.
Once more out of nowhere the Jerma community starts to in mass dislike the meme. Whenever a person posts a detailed written story or a highly edited image of Jerma in relation to something psychotic users flock to say "That's a really mean thing to say." and "You shouldn't be trying to spread misinformation.". It's as if they forgot that they were the ones who made the meme what it is.
I'll end by saying this. Jerma is now 38 years old. There are still a large amount of people that try to defend a person that has gone on record saying "Make me your punching bag. I can handle it."
It has been years of people trying to defend a person that doesn't want to be defended.
"Make me your punching bag. I can handle it." -Jerma985
