Retsupurae videos are very hit-or-miss to me, and I think the basic concept is what keeps me from consistently enjoying them. The concept being 'Two people who are good at making Let's Play videos watch bad Let's Play videos and scathingly mock them.' There's no way this can be done without coming off as kind of a dick.
I'll admit there are positives; the biting sarcastic humour is second to none, and most of the videos they're ripping apart are just plain indefensible. The problems occur when either of these positive factors are missing - without the humour, the attacks on bad players just come off as mean-spirited, and when the quality of the video is up for debate, they can come across as arrogant and superior.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the Fan Dumb was part of the problem. From trying to get 'bad' Let's Players banned from YouTube, to flooding their channels with negative comments even when asked not to, to blindly repeating 'Slowbeef INVENTED the Let's Play' whenever the quality of a Retsupurae video comes up - the Fan Dumb of something on the internet that exists to criticize other things on the internet is always going to be very vocal and very irritating.
To be fair, I can't exactly say that Retsupurae fans are worse than the stars when Retsupurae videos have more than their fair share of Wall Bangers. Labelling the Nostalgia Critic's entire fanbase as stupid, retarded, and in need of psychological help was pretty bad, and General Ironicus' write-up of 'Why PewDiePie has fans' was the most pretentious and condescending thing I've read in a long time - and that's from someone who doesn't even like PDP - but given the concept of Retsupurae, most of all I'm surprised that I don't find them offensively bad as often as I thought I would.
Their videos can be helpful, even to those they're making fun of, but that's not the aim of Retsupurae, only a side effect. In short, watching Retsupurae might help a new Let's Player avoid some of the mistakes others have made, but it would just as likely persuade them not to make videos at all.
WebVideo Informative but Intimidating
Retsupurae videos are very hit-or-miss to me, and I think the basic concept is what keeps me from consistently enjoying them. The concept being 'Two people who are good at making Let's Play videos watch bad Let's Play videos and scathingly mock them.' There's no way this can be done without coming off as kind of a dick.
I'll admit there are positives; the biting sarcastic humour is second to none, and most of the videos they're ripping apart are just plain indefensible. The problems occur when either of these positive factors are missing - without the humour, the attacks on bad players just come off as mean-spirited, and when the quality of the video is up for debate, they can come across as arrogant and superior.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the Fan Dumb was part of the problem. From trying to get 'bad' Let's Players banned from YouTube, to flooding their channels with negative comments even when asked not to, to blindly repeating 'Slowbeef INVENTED the Let's Play' whenever the quality of a Retsupurae video comes up - the Fan Dumb of something on the internet that exists to criticize other things on the internet is always going to be very vocal and very irritating.
To be fair, I can't exactly say that Retsupurae fans are worse than the stars when Retsupurae videos have more than their fair share of Wall Bangers. Labelling the Nostalgia Critic's entire fanbase as stupid, retarded, and in need of psychological help was pretty bad, and General Ironicus' write-up of 'Why PewDiePie has fans' was the most pretentious and condescending thing I've read in a long time - and that's from someone who doesn't even like PDP - but given the concept of Retsupurae, most of all I'm surprised that I don't find them offensively bad as often as I thought I would.
Their videos can be helpful, even to those they're making fun of, but that's not the aim of Retsupurae, only a side effect. In short, watching Retsupurae might help a new Let's Player avoid some of the mistakes others have made, but it would just as likely persuade them not to make videos at all.