Like I said, clearly there's a market for it or else MatPat wouldn't have built a veritable empire out of it (good lord, Film Theory alone almost has
100 times the number of subs Bob does, and a single video outpaces his entire channel in views for like, two months; no wonder he's treating their success as his). There truly is a sucker born every minute.
The "explainer" videos really make me laugh, though. Like, do you really need someone to explain the Backrooms to you? "Humans have an aversion to empty, sterile, unknown environments, made worse by the implication that it's infinite." There, I saved you the trouble, you don't need to go any more in-depth than that. But you gotta get to ten minutes for adbux, so let's just fart around sucking our own dicks about how smart we are and how we
truly get it.
If you want further insight into the mindset of "theorists" and their supporters, take a look at the comments for
his video where he complains about being scapegoated for spoiling plots with his videos. All of them that I can see are just dickriding Mat and saying that they like being spoiled because they apparently can't think for themselves. One in particular I disagree with vehemently:
View attachment 3381187
It's kind of a perfect encapsulation of shit. Anime girl profile pic with troon-flag hair color, discussing the opinions of someone who worked on Steven Universe, and basically saying that being given exactly what you think you are going to get is better than being surprised.
This is the general audience.
This is the level of person you have to deal with to reach any level of success. Aim any higher than this dullard's take, and you'll never be more than niche.
Maybe I'm just being really pessimistic here, but as someone who actually enjoys quality fiction that truly surprises me,
damn if this shit doesn't get under my skin. In a world where I've already seen so many movies and TV shows so that I can basically call the plot out ahead of time, being truly surprised is such a rarity and a joy. There is little skill involved in just following basic storytelling conceits and being able to predict where most stories go, and that there are people that really seem to think MatPat is a genius for doing so is just sad.
And on a final, more uplifting note, it's absolutely
hilarious that Bob is so bad at this that he can't even clear that low of a bar and get his basic predictions right most of the time.