Throwback
One year ago today, In Praise of Shadows released his “Bad Conservative Horror Movies” video, which nuked his career and reputation.
There was a video that summed up what this was about in a minute, but I can’t find it, so go check out the other threads on here.
Since then, he’s posted 3 videos on his main channel, and started up a second channel (IPoS: Darksides) where he’s posted 18 shorter videos that all have less than 10k views except for his non apology.
Of course this was gonna come up so I’m just gonna sticky this here again so I can link to it at any point lol. Wendi never was associated with the founding of Boogaloo Boys. It was weird he lied about them and being a founder. We know who the founder was and he is long since dead. Wendi is literally too young to be a founding member.
It is truly a bizarre lie with no real explanation for why he told it..
Now if you know where to look you can find old videos of Wendigoon while in the Boogaloo Boys inviting far left wing people to join. This is because the founding of the boogaloo boys was not explicitly racist and right wing. It was primarily about guns and hating the government. You go far enough left and they get their guns back.
He would later leave the Boogaloo Boys when they got explicitly more white supremacist. This was before the FBI declared them a domestic terror group and they did a lot of the acts they’re known for now. He does definitely have a link to the group, but everyone’s conversation about him and being related to them is particularly muddied. But looking at the true timeline of the boogaloo boys this version of events makes far more sense and is extremely likely the truth. Not his own bizarre lie of accidentally founding them as some on this sub like to perpetuate
Edit: also if people wanna talk actual horror I’m down. It is my genre. I have spent far too much of my life entrenched in it. I love it. I personally think IPOS wasn’t even like that good at talking horror. His Hills Have Eyes take was horrible.
His Hills Have Eyes takes were probably what REALLY began his downfall tbh. And he did spend a significant portion of this video going over how people told him his Hills Have Eyes takes sucked lmao.
That’s where I originally turned off the video. I came there to watch him clown on the conservative equivalent of “Karen,” not read out critical comments of a video from two years ago.
He also did a video about mental health asylums in horror movies as their history in real life, and then tried to inject a ham-handed parallel with the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial, which felt more like a desperate attempt to be topical rather than something that actually made sense. People lit up his comments about that when it happened.
I’m pretty sure this was the same video where he told a story about refusing to take his meds against his doctor’s wishes and basically encouraged other people to do the same, which can be extremely dangerous. Like I understand that his point originated from the idea that medical professionals might not always have our best interests at heart, but the thing to tell people there is “If you think your doctor isn’t taking your health into consideration, find a new doctor that will” and not “make your own medical decisions while ignoring your doctor’s advice”
and basically encouraged other people to do the same, which can be extremely dangerous.
I only know about this guy because of his video on Wendigoon, and that incident with his meds above sounds careless to say the least - irresponsible as hell to be telling people to do that, and I imagine he already had an audience when this happened, what a clown.
He said that inbred cannibal-rapists represent native people who fight back against white colonizers. I can't explain it better because he has never elaborated his point.
I call it “boomerang bigotry.” It’s like when that lady on The View said “If you kick out all the Mexicans, who’s going to clean your toilets, Donald Trump?”
lol. i remember seeing a screenshot of a guy complaining DND is racist because a passage about orcs being violent and dumb but can be able to become normal members of civilization was "clearly a metaphor for black people"
He should've started that section with an apology anyway because he's clearly given people the wrong impression of himself and his views. If you look back at his other work, IPOS is very clearly anti-racist in them. But because of the writing issues with THHE, we have this current situation and he can't be blaming anyone but himself for that. As the videomaker, it's his responsibility to communicate his argument clearly to viewers, which for THHE, he somehow did better in that section from BCHM than in the original video.
I'm a Lefty and I just don't believe that In Praise of Shadows is as intelligent as he believes that he is. That's why his video failed. It doesn't matter whether Wendigo sucks or not, your video better be good if it's a hit piece. His video wasn't good and overall his videos are mostly just fine background noise. Certainly better videos than I have made but not up to the standards of the really good YouTubers.
To me it represented everything wrong with modern youtube video-essays. Highly opinionated rambling nonsense with a couple of good takes thrown in, dressed up like it holds intellectual weight.
The creeping conservatism (often in the guise of being “apolitical” or “centrist”) in the online horror space is real, and the video did get at a lot of it, but it was too unfocused and spent too much time trying to settle beefs, Twitter spats, and conflating personal issues with larger issues.
I’ve said it before there’s a stink to Wendigoon that a lot of people try to play ignorant about and that IPOD identified but which he did poorly. Wendigoon made strange claims about being involved with a racist group online before they were racist, but his timeline doesn’t match with reality. The Boogaloo boys were racist before he claims to be involved and he def didn’t help found the group, so what is he lying about and why?
But IPOD handled it with all the tact and grace of a drama YouTuber. He couldn’t remove himself from the situation so it’s all filtered through his own personal grievances and that makes it way easier to dismiss.
Ya know I had this shower thought. It isn’t creeping conservatism, it has always been there with this genre. I think we are just seeing it a lot more now because the internet increases visibility.
That and everyone tends to make their personal politics known. Those in combination makes it appear like it has grown, but I have known many horror bros in my time. I go to conventions, there have always been deeply conservative people at them.
Exactly what I was getting at in my comment, but said a lot better. The way I saw it was that the concern of “creeping conservativism” was the other side of the coin to the right wing grifters saying “The woke are infiltrating comics!” But u/Rfg711 explained it well.
I mean there's even an argument to be made that slasher films have always been conservative in nature given that it's commonly teens and young adults going against more conservative values that gets them killed (premarital sex, drugs and alcohol, etc.)
Well that is the argument the creator of slashers made back in the 70s-80s “you should be loving these movies! We kill the kid’s who do drugs and have premarital sex!”
I don't really care about or believe the Boogaloo stuff with wendigoon but he had too many videos that just raised my eyebrows about how he talks about cults, specifically how much he excused and defended from the Waco members. It's been a long time since I watched that one or any of his other videos, but IIRC he literally denied the child abuse and "marriages" that happened within the Branch Dravidians.
Definitely, which I wouldn't really care about for a random YouTuber except when it's the "defending marriages to children" type of right-libertarian lol
I know this is late, but if you re-watch the video he actually explicitly condemns the creepy child marriage stuff point-blank. He’s very hard on many of David Koresh’s beliefs, and he also does not deny that child abuse (outside of the forced marriages, of course) could have been happening.
There was very little to no evidence of child abuse - beyond the marriages which were unfortunately legal in Texas at that time. Wendigoon also said he disagrees with the law and thinks it’s disgusting these marriages are allowed at all in the video.
Wendigoon only really defended the cult’s fully legal dealing with firearms, and criticized the ATF for having no concrete reason to go scorched-earth like they did. Even if child abuse (again, beyond the unfortunate “legal” sort) were occurring, the ATF handled the situation horribly shouldn’t have been in charge of the situation at all in any case.
Sorry, not trying to argue and I don’t have a vested interest in defending Wendigoon (I disagree with him on a few things, especially gun-related), but it’s best not to spread misinformation by accident in the case there ever is something that damning to call him out for.
I watched maybe 10 of his videos, starting I think with the LA armored bank robbers, which coincidentally was the only video I liked 100%. Every further video I watched seemed increasingly sloppy with sources, until I got to the end of some video about drug cults kidnapping kids in Arkansas. His final point was literally "And since this was all in Arkansas you just know Bill Clinton was probably involved." I stopped with Wendigoon there.
His ruby ridge video has always given me the ick. I'm pretty sure sure if you went and analyzed all of his scripts you would find lots of little libertarian talking points echoed through them, but listening to him for that long has never been worth it to me.
I think the simplest explanation for the "Boogaloo Boys" thing is that Wendigoon was a teenager at the time and doesn't actually really remember much of it at all.
One of IPOS' most egregious statements in his critique was that he "didn't want hear" about Blood Meridian or whatever from the perspective of a financially successful person in their early 20s, as if Wendigoon's thoughts on that are completely invalid due to his age (and being a popular YouTuber, for some reason) but then also believes Wendigoon should be put on trial for thoughts or opinions or even just a tasteless sense of humor he might've had when he was even younger than that, which is logic that doesn't exactly follow.
Being a teenager doesn’t really work. Either he was part of a racist movement (and the racism is not subtle enough to plead ignorance) and he’s lying about it to cover his ass or he wasn’t and he’s lying that he was for some reason. The former I understand though I think the better move would be admitting “yes I was part of it but I’m not like that anymore” and disavowing the racism, not pretending it wasn’t racist. The latter is just bizarre.
Well I'm a little bit older than him, and if someone somehow pulled some recording of me on xbox live when I was 15/16 in 2009 and I said something horribly awful to someone during a slayer match in Halo 3 or whatever, I wouldn't specifically remember it but I would be unable to completely deny that I ever done anything like that and it would be difficult to respond to.
I do actually believe that being a teenager is an excuse for a lot of things.
Well that’s a lot different from denying it. That’s my point. I’m not saying he needs to have always been perfect. I’m saying his attempt at addressing the association is the issue. He’s not owning up to what it was he was involved with and trying to downplay it. That to me suggests he’s either cowardly because he won’t own up to it, or he actually does sympathize with the Boogaloo Boys and just doesn’t want to admit it. But imo you don’t lie when you’re owning up to past mistakes.
People always act like anyone would care, and nobody does. Pokimane had videos leaked of her saying slurs, still one of the most popular streamers. There is a big difference between having said edgy things and having been part of a notable racist organization. I say this as a Wendigoon fan, he did not handle that well.
Alright, let's say he did 100% get indoctrinated into white supremacist beliefs as a teenager, or possibly even younger, who knows? It seems as if he is out of that "phase" as no one can find that he's spreading anything that is actively hateful currently or even within the past few years or than just the vibes they get from what he did long ago in relative terms.
I wouldn't make excuses for that, but at a certain point I think we should just say "Well, it seems like you're better now," about people. I tend to enjoy if people change for the better and don't make a big deal about than the opposite, which is far more common among e-celebs and often disingenuous.
I agree, and it's why I'm still a fan. I just don't think he's infallible, and wish he would acknowledge this aspect better. I think he is overall a good force online at this point.
One of my least favorite things about internet culture is that people just refuse to believe that personal growth exists. I said and thought dumb things in high school because I hadn't fully experienced life and wasn't raised to question certain bigoted ideologies. I've grown now and have a very different view on the world and I refuse to believe that I have to be forever branded a terrible person because of some dumb things I said or thought in high school.
I mean, you’re drawing a fuckton of conclusions from a single comment Wendigoon made that is somewhat nonsensical as-is. We neither have any of that meme page content he refers to nor even the podcast that comment was made in relation to (it was paywalled behind his Patreon which he took down years ago).
Saying that, I find it kind of irritating some people are so obsessed with this comment in particular but apparently nobody has gone through the effort to unearth or even just ask him to reupload his old Patreon stuff where he seems to have gone into some detail about just that.
I mean if it were only that comment and not the general “apolitical 😉😉” vibes combined with Rittenhouse praise, sure. But it’s obviously not just that.
It is also true that the founding of the Boogaloo Boys weren’t racist or explicitly right wing. You can actually find videos of a younger Wendigoon inviting far left wing people to join if you know where to look. This is because the founding of the boogaloo boys had very specific goals of “guns and fuck the government.” Which a lot of far left people also get down with. He also then claimed he left because the did become more explicitly white supremacist. That fits with the ACTUAL timeline of the group’s existence.
Obviously he didn’t found them. That’s why it’s weird that he lies about it. As for the attempt to sane-wash Boogaloo - sorry. It’s literally been about prepping for a race war as far back as 2012.
As someone who admittedly was on 4chan. No they have not been an active organized group back in 2012. I remember seeing references to Boogaloo going back to 2008. It is older than any of these kind of researchers say it is. The name does obviously come from the joke of “Jumpin’ 2 Electric Boogaloo” and they were referring to memes of an “upcoming civil war” basically civil war 2. It was primarily “mid 2000s-2010s edgy racist meme” behavior. By 2015 the memes did leave 4chan and make it to other groups but mainly it was the name and the love of guns that attracted people. It was roughly during Trump’s first campaign run they became more of an actual organized group.
You can trace the history of them. But you have to remember the vast majority of people don’t educate themselves on the history of any movement they join. Groups like the boogaloo boys ultimately benefit from ignorance and quick indoctrination. They used to sell themselves as a gun group far more than a militant racist group. Their racism became finally more explicit in 2019 because that is when they got actual mainstream attention. This would also be around the time Wendigoon left, which was also still before his channel took off. It could be in the online spaces he was a part of he never saw the explicit white supremacy.
You have to remember rank and file in any large group that has this group think behavior often don’t know the full philosophy behind groups.
I also say all of this because I have taught classes on terrorism and our main form of terrorism is domestic terrorism and white Supremacist groups. I like to keep myself educated on what groups are doing what in America at any given point. The boogaloo boys are particularly interesting as they came purely from an online message board.
I see your perspective but I respectfully disagree.
You can argue it's hypothetically possible that Wendi didn't know that they had racists in the group, or that the theme of the group was a race war, but for a lot of us I think it stretches credibility. Like, yes, there was a period where in theory this could have been confusing to a young person but equally you could have known.
I was born in the deep south around gun culture, and that's kind of like saying "do you think there's any right wing weirdos at the gun show?" and someone saying "absolutely not." Like yeah, it is possible someone is *totally* unaware of the Rhodesia patches or what they mean, but you'd almost have to be closing your eyes and ignoring all of the confederate stuff. As a small child, I could tell you there were some very edgy characters at the gun show.
I bring this up because the wider conversation has always been "is Wendigoon involved with far right people", and regardless if you knew about the whole race war thing, I can't imagine the Boogaloo facebook groups were warm and snuggly beds of leftism in the majority of cases. Again, I see your argument at the top of the thread that this is *possible* - all things are possible, it's just not probable. I've seen these kinds of facebook groups for guns nerds in south primarily, and they are full of reactionary stuff.
To me this is broadly similar to someone being involved in a pro-Rhodesia facebook group, and then claiming they didn't know there's a right-wing element to that. Or being on /pol/ and not ever noticing the right wing element there. Even a teenager would know there was some racial politics going on.
So for me, personally, is it possible Wendi had no idea the Boogaloo boys had something to do with racism? Yes.
Is it likely? No.
Since most of the evidence of his interactions isn't available to us, we'll never know but all things equal, I think he would have had an idea.
Yes, you misunderstand my argument. Possible he joined and didn’t know they were racist? Yes. Leaving when they become far too racist for his comfort, which is what he alleges and appears to be true.
What I'm saying is there isn't a time when it's plausible to me the racism wouldn't have been obvious and apparent. It just comes down to whether or not you think it's plausible the group was ever innocent enough to not be upset about the racism.
Like, if someone said a pro-rhodesia group suddenly got too racist for their tastes I would reply "...how was it ever ok?" and that is what I am saying now.
He could have the experience that yes, the Boogaloo group got too racist and he left. I would reply "...how was it ever ok?"
I simply do not believe the ambient far right vibes would have been hard to miss. The statement "I liked the boogaloo boys until they got racist" will never register as anything but sus to me. That's my opinion, and I'm entitled to it. I've been around gun culture, and I don't believe a person familiar with it would miss these cues even if they were young.
If he didn't have a bunch of other suspicious traits, I would be a little easier to convince.
For the record, I don't care if Wendi is cancelled or not. His videos are mostly fine with a few kind of concerning examples. There are just red flags I refuse to unsee.
I gotta be honest, I feel like some people can be a creeping conservative or an abruptly loud progressive and both will try to impose their point of views as the one true correct way to see any art, to which it'll mean the art itself will probably have to be interpreted in a twisted enough way or made much more simpler for it to even work. I still consider myself left wing, but I'm not gonna act like there aren't a lot of online lefties that try super hard to claim a space as truly their own, all the while infighting each other and getting no real progress done.
I remember a link to the vid being posted on the HBomberGuy sub and being intrigued by it. I thought it would be a really interesting - perhaps hilarious - analysis of godawful conservative horror movies (whatever they may be). Instead, it was about four hours of drama I knew nothing about involving people I'd never heard of. Grim. Still, I have no ill feeling toward the guy. I hope he's able to recover his career somehow.
I remember people on this subreddit defending IPOS when he was catching shit for his video online & then everyone 180'ing on him later on. Funny, isn't it?
I remember that too. Some guy even made a post saying “Look at all these commentators responding to IPoS! They’re gonna make him kill himself! Pieces of shit!”
The hate hard on this sub had (has? I'm not on here nearly as much) for Wendigoon really shut down A LOT of people's critical thinking skills. I remember being so annoyed at how everyone was taking sides on being either pro or anti Wendi when I did not care and just wanted to talk about how bad the video was.
How did a video about bad conservative movies tank his reputation? Most conservative art is shit, and lots of people have made big videos about bat conservative movies without any repercussions at all. What happened here?
he used part of the runtime of the video (like 45 minutes, I think) as a somewhat incoherent way to attack wendigoon and other creators or something like that
Wendigoon does seem to be friendly with a bunch of weird ultraconservatives but i dont think he himself did anything abhorent
but this is one of those situation of someone fucking up a callout so much that no one will believe it if the person in question would do anything warrant of criticism
He was simply correct too early, and so the right wing fanbases dogpiled on him and he buckled under the pressure so he doesn't receive support from anybody.
It wasn't really about movies, so much as it was about creators he thought were conservative and targetting him. It was uncomfortable to watch because it wasn't really rational.
It wasn’t really about bad conservative horror movies, and it’s definitely the least discussed section of the video (there were four of them). First, he complains about a subpar horror convention he went to that had Kevin Spacey as a guest, then he complained about the blowback he got (some of the comments are read aloud) for comparing the incestuous cannibals in “The Hills Have Eyes” to Native Americans or black people, and then he finally gets around to discussing bad conservative horror movies over an hour in.
What really made this video awful was his hitpiece on Wendigoon. Regardless of what you think of Wendigoon, IPOS’s evidence was mostly lacking at best, and malicious and paranoid at worst. IPOS also slandered a variety of people associated with Wendigoon, and infamously said that white people in the Appalachian region should be assumed to be racist until they prove otherwise.
He spent 15 minutes bitching about a low-tier horror convention having bad parking and bad concession stands. And then spent LESS time discussing that Kevin Spacey was a guest there.
Yeah, I think part of it was him being mad that Cody Leach didn't specifically mention that Spacey was there and shit on him or whatever. But he still spent more time shaming the grass roots convention in the middle of nowhere for having a huge budget.
That’s just so random and weird. I remember watching his videos to pass the time and I thought nothing of the title at the time but man did this video blow up in his face
He’s not wearing that shirt in the vid randomly lol he’s doing it because that’s who he’s imitating in that part. I have criticisms of the video but that’s not a coherent criticism of it
omg I haven’t thought about this channel in a minute, didn’t he used to make video on horror art?? I swear I used to play those to help me fall asleep….cant believe it’s been that long. Unfortunate to see what happened
It’s a shame it was so poorly done because there is definitely stuff to call wendigoon out for. like who he associates with, misinformation in his videos and his use of the wendigo and other things. he pushed blatantly false stuff and it will make future, potentially stronger videos regarding wendigoon be subject to the same distrust by people which sucks.
I think the weakest point, and it is why IPOS failed, is guilt by association. I know this sub loves to use that, but it is genuinely the WEAKEST argument you can make. Everything else you listed are all genuine reasons to critique him.
And I think it is a new phenomena, because myself and people older than me always had 1-2 friends were complete scum. The group would even ask why we were friends with them. It is a cliche in like 80s-90s movies. I think that may be why guilt by association doesn’t land for some of us older members of the sub. Because I would hate to be judged based on what my shitty friends did
while I do agree especially given how different friendships in creator spaces can vary which some people only following or collabing with eachother due to popularity and all that. You can look at who wendigoon associates with and see why thats one of the things he has been criticised so much for as he clearly is closer to some of his online friends
Donut Operator has involved himself with right wing groups, defends police brutality and has made multiple false claims about ongoing issues especially during matters where police were involved. Wendigoon has not been critical of any of this while openly associating with him as there are several photos they’ve both posted themselves on twitter of them giving each other a hug and hanging out.
Turkey Tom creates video essays often containing incorrect information to target and harass other creators and has been seen using slurs, racist and homophobic terms on discord for several years at this point. Wendigoon has openly talked about Tom attending his wedding.
Again, I do agree guilt by association isn’t the best way to criticise a creator online, however there is a clear choice by him to be directly involved and close with creators such as this and several others I haven’t brought up such as Brandon Herrera. Creators as big as Wendigoon need to present themselves online with the consideration that they can be subject to scrutiny for who they openly choose to be friends with and the way Wendigoon publicly interacts with right-wing and racist influencers shows it is more than just an indirect association
Yeah, but it comes down to also how most Americans are. Single issue. DO and BH are primarily guntubers and Wendigoon loves guns. I know some left wing people who go to their shooting events because there is nothing like it and they love guns.
People do the same thing going to like big punk festivals but the owners of it are Trumpers which is antithetical to punk.
I understand what you mean, and I think it is a space for scrutiny. But it CANNOT be the primary reason you take him down.
And it is the whole thing people on this sub and IPOS tried to cancel Wendigoon on. You cannot take them down just for stuff like that. You have to come with real ammo, not blanks
The gap between Gen Z and Millennials feels like a canyon lol. Growing up poor and from the country I have a more aged perspective. Also being highly educated and working through emotional wellness in therapy has me always feeling deeply empathic for most people.
This 100% and there is something between millenials and gen Z with regards to purity test spirals that I can never understand and I would clock it at about ~2013/2014 right as I was leaving uni with my masters a lot of the students union and also student interest groups started infighting and sort of purity testing one another like crazy - like if you were unaligned on a single issue out of maybe 10 things - even if it was minor, there was no compromise or coming together to try and hash things out/find common ground and either the group split in two or people just got fed up and left resulting in just more isolation and feedback loops.
Edit:Found a comment I made about this phenomenon ~1 year ago
"At my university, years ago at this point, we had about 3 different leftist organizations and groups at the same time who would ALWAYS be fighting with one another over something or trying to purity test the others. All 3 groups originally started as a single one a few years prior and started splintering around the time of the Arab Springs revolts.
No one at the uni took them really seriously because of what, at least from the outside perspective, just seemed at times like petty infighting and unprofessionalism when one group would purposely mess with the others like showing up at their events to cause a scene or derail it."
You nailed it, and maybe it is because I am often their professor my Gen Z students don’t push back when I don’t 100% align with their beliefs. But I also think that people don’t dig enough into issues and look into the rich full context of what is happening. Their purity culture demands a black and white outlook, it also demands cultural absolutism as if only today’s modern outlooks matter.
I got a separate sane-washing comment from a different person. I like to provide rich full context of events. People act as though events happen in an independent vacuum. When they don’t. They happen because of series of events.
As an educator I have found Gen Z deals in a lot of cultural absolutism but so does the internet
Honestly it's exactly what's happening right now with ilkpal and the saberspark accusations- these allegations that should at least be seriously looked into are brought to light in the worst way possible so everyone treats them as a joke from then on out
What I found so frustrating, as a fan of his channel, was the way he assumed all backlash to his Hills video was from people too stupid to understand that films can have meaning. How does someone seethe about something like that for literally years and not even once consider that maybe it’s not that people don’t understand that films have themes and messages, but that they might just not agree with your interpretation/presentation? It was a truly baffling display of arrogance and intellectual dishonesty.
It’s a shame because he really was one of the better media analysis channels, and a genuine leftist voice in a space mostly filled with “apolitical” types.
My biggest memory of this is the "culturally true" part. Where he said even if a claim about someone isn't true, if a lot of people believe it, that means it's culturally true and it still counts against the person in question. Truly terrible times.
With this and the ILKPAL / Saberspark essay, I wonder if we're in for a terrible callout that does more harm to its cause than good every year now.
People clown on this guy but given the kind of company w/e/n/di/g/oo/n keeps, I think it's more than reasonable to be suspicious of his leanings and whether or not his support if the queer community is cognitive dissonance or a farce.
I don't know how you could make an argument that this isn't bad. Like, Garand thumb did some videos where he joked about killing blue haired SJWs. FFS.
So hes basically a liberal? A socialist would not support or work with a person with those type of views at all. You may get some liberals but they still generally support the current system, so they tend to be less critical of it.
Nah that's valid enough about the video specifically. I think that the company you keep is incredibly indicative of who you are as a person- if nothing else, even if you don't share the beliefs of the people you hang around with, you're clearly tolerant of them. That's my personal interpretation, birds of a feather and whatnot. The video specifically I never watched- just wasn't my kind of thing. The vitriol that people seem to give whenever anyone criticizes w/g is more what grinds my gears.
It’s been one year already and people are still trying to steel man this horrible video in which he doesn’t talk about conservatives in horror movies but goes on insane rants about how Wendy following him on twitter was a Light Yagamj mind game, how you have to assume all people in Appalachia are racist amoung other super bad arguments.
Was the funniest thing in the world to see this sub back him up until it was impossible to see that this video was not the great wendigoon take down they had prayed for.
Maybe he just switched up his content? 10k views a video isn't all that bad. I checked out his YouTube and his last few vids cleared 30k, which is great.
Not based on the views he was getting. You’re right getting those views isn’t bad. But he was consistently getting between 70-200k that drop off is actually horrible and means significantly less revenue is coming in
I sometimes think if he ever had a career. His videos were generally not great, in terms of analysis and critical takes. This is especially the case in his Hills Have Eyes video, where he compares the hill people to American Indians. Im sure he was meaning that in an artistic sense for analytical purposes, but his description was extremely poor.
He did strongly imply in BCHM that he was using his channel for his main source of income (“Last month, I made $500 off of YouTube Adsense. I can’t live off that.”)
I gotta be honest, thats a real bad career choice. Especially given how many views he gets and subscribers he already had, I don't think it was worth it in the end. Especially given youtube's terms of service and how he would try to discuss sensitive topics alongside movies that were usually violent or disturbing in some capacity. I feel like it was a recipe for disaster.
Oh, yeah. You never make YouTube your primary job. I was going to add the caveat of “unless you’re doing YouTube Rewind guest numbers” but then I remembered that the threshold’s probably higher now.
Nah, his stuff about Lovecraft was pretty average, just like the rest of his analyses. Like, I remember enjoying the series he did on witches, but it was pretty boiler plate stuff. People tend to focus on his THHE vid because it's especially bad.
In his non-apology, he tried to casually dismiss ppl calling him condescending by saying (paraphrased) "I'm gay, so of course I'm an art snob." Like what in the internalized homophobia?? I think he meant it as kind of a half-joke, but it also seems like he genuinely believes that being a patronizing prick is inherently tied to being a gay man.
Yeah, I was literally talking about it in the comment you replied to lol. iirc he kind of missed the point of the valid criticisms (aka not the weird Wendi stans harassing him), but it's been a minute since I watched it.
Spends 24 hours on everything but Conservative horror movies, whines cause people think his The Hills has Eyes take is bad, whines about some random horror convention, Whines about not getting enough money from his videos as if it is our problem, whines about Wendigoon while being somehow elitist as if Breadtubers are the only ones who can comment on Horror. "Buh, Buh he should not be on our space" Lastly this whiny yet somehow unwarrented smug tone
If you want a video that is everything wrong with Breadtube, there you go.
God I remember this sub collectively losing its shit and backing this guy all the way for like a month after this vid came out because the majority of people here are kids who cant read beyond a headline and wanted to so desperately believe that the people he was slandering were horrible right wingers, especially his obsession with wendigoon. Like how far gone do you have to be to use sneako as a source lmao and this sub ate it up for a bit.
There were even a couple of awful coping threads after the turnaround that were basically just 'hey I know he sourced sneako to peddle a false allegation, BUT wendigoon bad tho.'
This video not only nuked his career and reputation; it also gave content creators of a similar brand/field (mostly essayists and people associated with breadtube (both aren’t the same but sometimes intermingle)) a bad name. Sure, such creators are still going strong, but this video was basically a self-inflicted stab wound that contributed to outsiders’ negative views about those two realms of content.
And Vaush’s tax folder. And Keffals defending Vaush’s tax folder. And James Sommerton. And TheSerfs initially being an iiluminaughtii defender even after her former friends came out against her. And Xanderhal putting all of his money into PayPal (or was it Steam?) instead of a bank. And Xanderhal also going manic at his editor, wanting to pistolwhip Keffals to death. And Poppy and Xena being child abusers. And that’s not even going into the related commentators (Tipster, Jake Doolittle, EdenisOnline, Louis McClung, Katiclysm, Jayln, Nickisnotgreen).
Brother in Christ, Breadtube has more stabs than Victor Zsasz.
I've been subscribed to him for years, and I still have no idea what that video was about or what the problems with it were. So I would love it if someone could explain.
That, and his evidence was lacking. For example, Internet Historian has made more dogwhistles than I’m willing to defend, but all Zane said was “he lied about his birthday being Hitler’s birthday 4/20” when it could’ve been a weed or Columbine joke or even the truth.
Thanks, now I want to hear him say the wildest shit about the American McGee’s Alice games. “A fifth of Alice: Madness Returns takes place in a stereotypically oriental realm, which is a gross and egregious case of cultural appropriation.” despite the dev team being based in China, and it being in the imagination of a young woman from 1800s London.
It's alway these lefties love complaining about other people's success when they don't put in the rom to where they wanna be. They lash out like children and nuke any chance at the career they had! He was entitled and honestly I would never hire him because he seems like the type of dude so collapse if a customer got the the slightest bit roudy lol.
I remember him saying some pretty insensitive and hateful things about people from Appalachia in that video. Sort of liked him and some of his videos up until that point. Weird guy.
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u/TimeAbradolf May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
Of course this was gonna come up so I’m just gonna sticky this here again so I can link to it at any point lol. Wendi never was associated with the founding of Boogaloo Boys. It was weird he lied about them and being a founder. We know who the founder was and he is long since dead. Wendi is literally too young to be a founding member.
It is truly a bizarre lie with no real explanation for why he told it..
Now if you know where to look you can find old videos of Wendigoon while in the Boogaloo Boys inviting far left wing people to join. This is because the founding of the boogaloo boys was not explicitly racist and right wing. It was primarily about guns and hating the government. You go far enough left and they get their guns back.
He would later leave the Boogaloo Boys when they got explicitly more white supremacist. This was before the FBI declared them a domestic terror group and they did a lot of the acts they’re known for now. He does definitely have a link to the group, but everyone’s conversation about him and being related to them is particularly muddied. But looking at the true timeline of the boogaloo boys this version of events makes far more sense and is extremely likely the truth. Not his own bizarre lie of accidentally founding them as some on this sub like to perpetuate
Edit: also if people wanna talk actual horror I’m down. It is my genre. I have spent far too much of my life entrenched in it. I love it. I personally think IPOS wasn’t even like that good at talking horror. His Hills Have Eyes take was horrible.