I've also learned a lot of people who listen to him don't play games to begin with and are usually just larping. It is what it is.
I am not a fan of him and don't like the culture war stuff, but I've seen the odd video from him in the past. He does have good criticism of films/games, where he highlights how badly written many of them are or how character motivations don't make sense.
He has a huge fan base on YouTube. You don't get that by being dull or not having any valid criticisms. You are way off base.
> Being a fan of him is a litmus test for tribalism.
The irony here is that when you make statements like this, you are engaging in tribalism.
Critical Drinker has 2.4 million subscribers on YouTube. I frequently am surprised by the sorts of people that will watch some YouTuber. There is a show (unrelated) I watch where I would expect the audience to be male-dominated, and many of the callers and super-chat donations are from women. I was quite surprised.
I would imagine he has a more diverse audience than you would expect.
> I've also learned a lot of people who listen to him don't play games to begin with and are usually just larping. It is what it is.
A lot of people like watching people shit on popular media. Cinemasins was doing the exact same thing a decade ago. I remember them ripping on the dumb stuff that didn't make sense in the original Avengers movie and all the goofs that you are unlikely to notice in the cinema.
People "hate watch" a lot of shows. My sister and I used to hate watch CSI Miami when we were in our teens/early 20s, and that was in the mid-2000s.
That is a very tired thing to say, but it's understandable if you haven't seen a lot of his work. You don't need to look that hard to see how untrue this is. Take a brief glance at his twitter or his communities and you'll see how much of a "character" it is. They barely even talk about media anymore. They post the same gender war slop shit that bots are posting all over Reddit right now. Critical Drinker takes a bit of a "boiling the frog" approach to his content and his true character isn't obvious on a few listens.
> I am not a fan of him and don't like the culture war stuff
You are likely underestimating how much he does it now. It's night and day different from his earlier work. He was a ghost writer for James Patterson. He knows how to follow the money. He's essentially a parody of himself now.
> and he has much valid criticism of films/games where he highlights how badly written many of them are
I don't think such a vague and easy to defend criticism is worth handwaving the substance of the channel. People have been pointing and laughing at video game writing for 30 years. That's an uncontroversial vague post. And that is the best you're going to get from him, because he rarely talks about games or films in a specific way, he usually just copy pastes the same beat for beat plot complaints that better critics have, and putting an anti woke slant on it. Sometimes he reviews shit he hasn't even seen or played because he wants to get in on the discussion.
> He has a huge fan base on YouTube. You don't get that by being dull or not having any valid criticisms. You are way off base
Huh? Sure you do, if it has morphed from entertainment to outrage bait. That is dull, and profitable in the algorithm age. Are you under the impression cynical, lazy pop posting cannot survive on Youtube?
> I would imagine he has a more diverse audience than you would expect
I don't recall saying his audience wasn't diverse, I said his fans often don't play video games. So it's annoying to see people that don't play video games weigh in on the problems with the industry. It's nakedly obvious to the people that have grown up loving games when they are talking to a person who has just engaged with outrage content over the medium and not actually held a controller.
> A lot of people like watching people shit on popular media. Cinemasins was doing the exact same thing a decade ago
Ooph. That's exactly my point, though. Cinemasins is the kind of low brow film criticism that people who enjoy film will despise. It's pop entertainment, which is harmless, but there are 1,000 more interesting channels that can talk about film and are still entertaining. So when someone comes into a film space and you can tell they are just regurgitating Cinemasins videos, it's annoying.
The difference is Critical Drinker has leaned heavily into the culture war stuff and has convinced a legion of fans that the reason everything is bad is down to a bunch of easily violated wokeness rules. I don't necessarily like the movies he dislikes, but the conclusions he comes to and the audience he caters to moronically shove the same 4 woke buttons into any media discussion, ad infinitum. It's extremely reactionary content. Every woman lead is a diversity hire, but every male lead in a bad movie is just an "unfortunate miss." Everything "woke" is going to fail, except whoops, for all of those things that were wildly successful. It's just a channel that actively diverts discussion away from actual criticism, and makes it about algorithmically pleasing political content.
One of the funniest things I see is when Critical Drinker fans want us to return to non-woke franchises like...Metal Gear Solid. Maybe the gayest franchise of all time. A game where woke writers weren't trying to humiliate men! Except you're actually disarmed and ass kicked by your surrogate mother like 40 times.
You must have put yourself through some horrible times then, given that you clearly dislike the guy a ton, but have listened to a lot of his content to asses his "true character".
> Sometimes he reviews shit he hasn't even seen or played because he wants to get in on the discussion.
That's a sweet but also very baseless accusation. You should do better research.
> Every woman lead is a diversity hire, but every male lead in a bad movie is just an "unfortunate miss."
I very much doubt he calls every woman lead a diversity hire. I think you are overreacting and putting him in the chuds tribe you are already very opinionated about.
Okay, here he is doing just that. Didn't watch it, tries to weigh in on it for clout. His own comment section is not having it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1ubB8tjL04
> I very much doubt he calls every woman lead a diversity hire
You do not have to read that literally. He wears kiddie gloves for male actors, implying they are not allowed to be good for political reasons, but he takes on a whole different tone for female actors.
I wouldn't watch Series 4 & 5 of The Boys if I had a time machine. So I don't blame him, tbh.
> In his Sydney Sweeney video, which is a pretty bad video in general because it doesn't engage at all with why people might not like her, he has a very long rant (for him) about liberal women and how broken they are. How they've been corrupted by college and they're just secretly jealous of beautiful women. Just empty ranting full of every stereotype he could pull out of a hat. He doesn't respond to the fact that it's a gambling ad at all, which a huge amount of people criticized. He boils everything down to "She's hot and women hate that." He doesn't even think it's worth mentioning what people actually said. He posts a bunch of completely unrelated studies to the point he is making
It is a slop video that they put out to keep the algorithm gods happy at YouTube. I don't expect a Critical Drinker video to be some well-researched social study on political biases in media.
As for the advert itself. A lot of the criticism I heard was because she was basically naked. I didn't even know it was a gambling ad until recently. How much of this is organic is hard to say, as the whole controversy in almost all of her adverts is probably done by either her or whatever company hired her to do the advertising campaign.
The same thing happens every time a Sydney Sweeney ad comes out. She does some provocative or "safe-edgy" stuff, and there is a bunch of controversy drummed up. Everyone the talks about the advert and then she has made another huge sum of money.
> Then he, for whatever reason, attacks the interviewer that asked Sydney about the American Eagle ad? Like, I think anybody can understand this is an interviewer giving a person a chance to react to news.
I've seen the clip. The question was bullshit. Anyone that isn't terminally politics brained recognised the play on words was due to her being attractive. It was that simple. She is probably contractually obliged not to say anything either.
Again, this whole controversy was likely manufactured by American Eagle themselves to have everyone looking at the advert.
Well done. You got played like everyone else did.
> Why is he just seeing a woman and implying she's secretly seething with anger? It's an extremely creepy way to talk about people.
Because the trope is that is what lefty female journalists are in that space.
If you want to be a very popular YouTuber, all you have to do is tell your audience what they want to hear. There is a whole small industry of these people on YouTube/Rumble and Kick. They cover the entertainment news and shit on dumb movies and TV series (which are most of them, tbh), and most of the time people have this stuff on in the background while they are doing their boring office job.
Every YouTuber has "dents", "marks". The former are people that eat up everything they say, and they are normally their whales.
They also have a bunch of orbiters; these are other smaller YouTubers and close associates that will do all their "sweeping" (cleaning up controversies), and others will act as their attack dogs.
This happens in almost every community of creators on YouTube. Getting upset about it is a waste of time.
Sounds like a horrible existence. Might as well listen to a cheese grater.
I can't help but read that in the Critical Drinker's voice.