Tam’s commentary on 60fps is so strange to me. And he does this a lot where he just talks about gamer opinions as if people are just stupid idiotic sheeple.
I dunno? I’m pretty misanthropic most of the time but Tam is just always hating on everything gamers think or want.
For people saying this kind of stuff exists all over YouTube... It's not like game coverage is hard to find across YouTube, Twitch, other sites, etc. Would you really rather the guys just pump out low effort quicklooks of every game coming out every week rather than experimenting with some fun new stuff?
The problem is this particular bit - a parody of film criticism - is not only all over YouTube, but is now baked into the format itself of film criticism. You can't find one of these videos that doesn't already have some self-aware humor. The few jokes in this Reel Layers episode are already the kind of jokes you'd see in a film criticism video as kind of an off-topic gag.
I like the experimentation! But experimentation means that by definition some experiments fail. That's okay! There's plenty of tweaks to be made to this format to make it work better.
This one doesn't work for me. The source material that this is trying to parody (Youtube film criticism like Folding Ideas or Lindsey Ellis) is already self-parodying and contains at least a few nuggets of interesting content. I'm not sure a very straightforward recreation parody really makes sense unless it's more ridiculous than its target.
I think for me to find this funny the thesis statement should be a lot less reasonable (especially if I start to come around by the end) or the actual joke content would have to be amped up quite a lot. I smiled at a few of the jokes - the weight of the metaphor got me.
There's the bones of a good series here. I love parody of art criticism (see Wizard People Dear Reader, or the podcast The Babysitters Club Club). Might tune in again.
swthompson's comments