It's interesting to think that 2013 will one day be but a decade ago. Things that were new to us, will hold as much nostalgic value as more conventional mediums. It got me thinking about the YouTubers I used to follow, in 2013/2014... and how a stark majority of them turned to shit. Angry Video Game Nerd? On the borderline. Nostalgia Critic? Need I say more? Sonic93? Stopped watching her before she came out with those videos. Bobsheaux? Is someone ever gonna question the ethics behind charging money for most reviews? Taco Man? More of the same, but his humor is somehow more cringeworthy than Oney's.
There was one exception to the rule and one I actually anticipated more above the other. The first YouTube Poop I saw... was some CatDog poop I saw by accident when I assumed you could find full episodes on YouTube. The second... was also something fairly random. Even before them I remember stumbling across some old Simpsons YouTube Poop. But it was the third, by MoBrosStudios.
What stood out to me the most about MoBros, aside from my first exposure to high end editing in YouTube Poops, is that he had an established personality. While most Poopers tend to let their work speak for itself, at least earlier on, I had a good sense of who MoBros was. Other poopers had also tried this, like NPCarlson and Trudermark, who wanted to express his personality toward some adolescents.
Have his poops stood the test of time? No shit they did. While AwfulFawful/Scat Rat had overshadowed MoBros, he stood out for a different reason, plots. He had crafted his own narratives for his poops, produced his own animation (or edited it well enough to make it look that way), and Skellington's Revenge is an example of how well he does it.
He has talent, but how well has he affected the public conscious?
Drawback
I maintain MoBros is talented, but there are some issues that can go beyond his YouTube Poops. Though one thing for that, I imagine he borrowed a lot of points from Stuart K. Riley's own listicle, he just framed it differently to avoid more detailed comparisons.
Things to look out for are the same examples used when dissuading poopers from using their own voice; I mean then again it's so uncommon and that's the most notable example. There're also points like dissuading usage of Spadinner/dinner spaghetti, but one thing I gotta give MoBros credit for is that he used a better term for it, but wait didn't Stuart use that term at one point before?
Also feel like Stuart made a better point on using long titles than MoBros, and also, both made the argument that too much unedited footage was the worst offense. Also don't use Windows Movie Maker's rainbow effect, both made that clear.
I won't call him a plagiarist, but it's obvious where his inspiration lies.
Also, a quick opinion on his Creepypasta readings, looking back on them, others did it better. Something about Mutahar and Yuri's level of not giving a damn better suits how expendable many of these pastas are. The worst thing you can do with Creepypasta readings is be relatively serious about it, it's a bad reflection of your character. Good pastas of the past either aged poorly or people read between the lines.
Selling Out
Some may recognize MoBros for his Anim8ball series. Can you guess what it entails? I've noticed a little trend with many content creators. At one point, they relegate themselves to doing reviews almost all of the time. Just Stop did this, and I feel he's becoming as corporate as he implies Santa Inc to be. I Hate Everything is all about movies these days, just don't expect insight on new movies, just the same tired examples over and over again.
This became at least 80% of MoBros' brand, with the other being any time he puts toward YouTube Poops. I'm not saying he sold out as bad as the other two, but it's something to keep in mind for later on.
MoBros is perhaps best known for making three reviews related to SpongeBob SquarePants. Three... particularly scathing reviews. Now yes, he did address these and apologize for them, but I'm not gonna hound him over something in the past as if it occurred in the present, otherwise I'd be DaftPina. I want to make it clear I'm going into his legacy.
MoBros didn't necessarily like the newer seasons of SpongeBob, well new for the time. Back then, I actually shared the sentiment. Something about them struck a nerve with me, and part of what got me into MoBros. in the first place was a sense of validation that I wasn't the only one who hated the episodes.
I question if he was the first, but MoBros' videos certainly helped make cartoon reviews more popular, if not eschewing a new wave of it, and therein lies the problem. With popularity comes influence, and just to make this clear, MoBros employed the angry reviewer schtick, one of the more contagious personalities.
Why were there so many Angry Video Game Nerd wannabes? I mean he was getting pretty popular at that point, but there it is, popularity. The format is so general yet so specific, people sought to mimick what they saw in order to get some equal cred. Hell, Irate Gamer became an early YouTube partner until people whined enough to get that revoked.
Nostalgia Critic was also popular enough, and we still haven't healed much from his heyday, with so many no name reviewers following his framework near verbatim. But between Bobsheaux and Irate Gamer, the latter does not have a Patreon account, nor does he shill for Express VPN, come to think of it in spite of getting some stuff wrong he got further than the Angry Video Game Nerd in many games he played. Even if he used Game Genie I at least know IG actually played the games, and the AVGN had used Game Genie too.
I'm starting to think the AVGN always sucked.
Where was I? Oh yeah, third generation influence. One of the more infamous points of influence for MoBros was TheMysteriousMrEnter. It's been a while since I brought him up, well on this site, to account for when I used a clip from one of his videos to compare to another reviewer, but for the sake of backing my points, I gotta bring him up.
The similarities between Enter's old SpongeBob videos and MoBros' SpongeBob videos tend to be undeniable. It wasn't uncommon for feelings against the episodes to be genuine, whether it was built on agitation for content deemed passable, or overselling for comedy or to build on how it made others successful.
Anyone who's serious about content creation tends to follow trends that would get them attention in the quickest way. No shit. Take that, apply it toward something that you're either passionate about or is easy to make content around and you got yourself a basis for your soon to be vilified channel.
Enter's old content wasn't very good, that's undeniable, though his initial batch of critics were far more insufferable, just get a load of the quackpot that wrote his ED article (and ducks are a part of his brand, that's why I used such a crappy derogatory term). But my point is that MoBros certainly had a profound impact on Enter's earlier reviews, along with Nostalgia Critic.
MoBros had actually done callouts on writers in his videos, well brief mentions anyhow, like with Aaron Springer. Does that excuse anything? Not particularly, but this establishes the influence. If anything, for what Enter did, either he tried to add to what made MoBros famous, or just did it because anger was in at the time, people just overanalyzed because they wanted to establish justification for bandwagoning.
At the end of the day, it's down to influence. If what I said can be considered true, MoBros essentially doomed a reviewer to ridicule through influence. No other reviewer quite hit as hard as him before Enter, so it checks out. It doesn't help that time after, MoBros cited Enter as an example of what not to do with reviewing, ignoring any potential irony.
Final Thoughts
So, am I gonna bring someone down because they indirectly ruined someone else? I essentially just did. But the point is, while MoBros cannot be attributed to popularizing the animation community, he indirectly inspired the worst of it. I bring it up because I feel he hasn't properly addressed it, just apologizing for his own old content.
No one, no matter how big and respected, should be above criticism, and I feel that MoBros has much to answer for. It's not so much for what happened now, but what may occur somewhere down the road.
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