YMMV / SoundSmith

• Broken Base: Fans are split on whether or not "War Paint Stereotypes" is a hilarious lampooning of the Stereotypes series which mocks everything wrong with it and questions why it ever got popular in the first place, or if Ethan is overly hyperfocused on all the cringeworthy things he wished he could have never done or done better to the point of ignoring the qualities the series has which caused his channel to blow up, making it feel more like an uncomfortably mean-spirited I Hate Past Me rant than a genuinely lighthearted ribbing of his previous work.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: XenoGene managing to Double Donk four people at once^note which would technically make this feat an Octuple Donk, in a Doublecross match, as captured in The Legendary Quadruple Doink.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Lazy Purple, in part due to their close real-life friendship, and the fact that the two of them often like to cameo in each other's videos.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • SoundSmith was an outspoken fan of Sketchek, a Pyro-main YouTuber who was presumed dead of a terminal illness, and dearly missed him. When word first came out of his return, he was openly excited... up until the confession that Sketchek had lied about being sick completely. Disappointed and insulted due to his own experience with friends and family that have been seriously ill, he no longer watches or supports Sketchek's content at all.
  • Bearded Expense's interactions with Soundsmith and co. quickly became uncomfortable after it came to light that he was a serial abuser who frequently manipulated those around him, including Soundsmith, into doing what he wanted and would even threaten to commit suicide if he wasn't getting his way, with Ethan himself having to talk him out of overdosing on medication at one point.
• Memetic Badass: From "One Mann's Trash - Mann's Guide Bonus Clips 2", we have "bat": a Scout running around wielding nothing but a stock bat, charging headfirst into battle and saying nothing but " . " in chat. Sound and friends quickly declare him both terrifying and a legend.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Part of the reason why SoundSmith became so disillusioned with the Stereotype series is due to the large number of fans who failed to understand it was satire, and thus began perpetuating and shaming other players for embodying the stereotypes outside of his videos. Not even an unlisted PSA video helped curb this, which is partly the reason why Ethan ended the series in 2019.
  • Due to his playstyle consisting of attempting to pull off random and insane shit with nothing but luck to support him, many fans were under the impression that SoundSmith is a supporter of random crits in TF2, due to them being perceived as a luck-based element in the game. That being said, Ethan has made it clear in several videos that he hates random crits, believing them to be a cheap and unfun mechanic against other players for no reason.
• Nightmare Fuel: The background music for the Darwin Danger's Shield stereotype is genuinely unsettling.
  • The "Clubsy Conspiracy" skit in Engineer Misc Stereotypes has a bit of a creepy tone, though the immediate Alex Jones parody nullifies it rather quickly. But with the follow-up skits in later episodes, specifically the end of ''Sniper Misc Stereotypes'' it gets downright disturbing as sound and video distortions kick into high gear.
  • The unlisted video "." is a minimalist dark ambient "song" with no imagery aside from an equalizer bar and (when it was first posted) an unintelligible description. Astute viewers discovered it's actually the intro music to his Stereotypes videos but slowed down, and deciphered the description as part of the Stereotype series' Alternate Reality Game.
• The Woobie: Occasionally SoundSmith's self-deprecating humor comes off as this. Calling himself an idiot who isn't that good at the game is one thing (as others may beg to differ), but the way he talks about suffering from depressive feelings (like thinking all his friends who cameo are more funny than him) and the frustrations his reputation causes from folks like demanding Stereotype fanboys really makes you feel for him.
  • To say nothing of the implications of the "Clubsy Conspiracy" subplot of the Stereotypes series: Hijacked and brainwashed by the cute pet cosmetics to keep promoting them and influence the TF2 marketplace, slowly breaking his sanity and leaving him to put out hidden cries for help in his videos in his few moments of clarity..