Yeah, this CEO looks more like an idiot the more I think about what he's saying. It's only natural there would be fewer people making parodies. The only reason there was so many at first was because it was a hot new trend.
Eventually, those with the passion and talent for it would continue doing so, while the rest would fade, either due to lack of talent, or just not having a drive for it. Also, it's only normal for standards to evolve over time.
Plus he doesn't really seem to consider other possible factors, like changes in the economy leaving people with less money and time to do such, or that Youtube isn't exactly a good platform for these things. I recall SAO Abridged having a lot of issues with copyright claims taking down their videos.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet Unless I grew it. In that case, throw it in the trash.I mean, I did read the article and I think it's an interesting perspective worth considering, and I certainly wouldn't call Ben an idiot, even if I haven't always agreed with positions he's taken. I suppose I'm just not entirely sure what exactly he thinks TFS should have been doing, although perhaps he did clarify that and I just missed it or don't remember it.
Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Feb 9th 2020 at 2:40:25 PM
Oh God! Natural light!Ben is also one of the elder members that have gone through the team; I mean, born in 1982, he is barely a milennial, he was 24 when Youtube was founded, and he will be turning 40 in 2 years. His views being different from those of a generally younger audience is something to be expected.
Then again, Little Kuriboh is only a year younger. Still, nowadays the main audience of Youtube hadn't even been born when the platform was started. Things have changed, the old days are gone, and we can't help but long for something that resembles them. I know I do, and I'm "only" 28.
I can kinda see it. You raise the quality so high that it becomes harder and harder for you to onboard others because they don't meet the high bar you've steadily set for yourself, or accept contribution from your community. So you become more and more insular and what happens when the stagnating pool of contributors you have burns up or dies out?
The point isn't that it got too good, it's that the production values outstripped their ability to deliver in a timely manner without any particular return on investment for that tradeoff.
It already looked and sounded as good as it needed to by early Namek, and at that point they were still able to release content at a good clip. Everything above and beyond that was ludicrously past the point of diminishing returns.
So they weren't inclusive enough to please the participatory community, and they didn't release content fast enough to please the consumer audience.
The participatory community quietly moved on to other things, because that's what active participants do: they don't wait for permission, they just do what they find rewarding.
Which left them with only an increasingly frustrated and hostile audience of consumers.
No wonder they burnt out. They were working harder and harder to do less and less of worth for a less and less grateful audience.
Edited by HighCrate on Feb 9th 2020 at 1:07:45 AM
tl;dr: "Team Four Star was a mistake because we made professional-grade products. We should never have pushed DBZA to the levels of quality achieved by later seasons, because producing high-end quality entertainment sacrificed the 'chilled-out amateurs kicking it in mom's basement' environment I have retroactively begun to long for."
That's, uh. It's a hot take, that's for sure. Y'know, I've always wondered why Ben left TFS all of a sudden. Now I know.
Also, Ben seems to be under the impression that people don't like DBZA. I have absolutely no idea where he got that idea.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 9th 2020 at 4:30:25 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
I don't think anything in that article implied that...
At worst he said that people got more entitled or impatient because of slow output.
Edited by randomness4 on Feb 9th 2020 at 3:31:45 AM
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.There's nothing interesting or thought-provoking about it. Ben resents his role in Team Four Star because he's retroactively decided that he wants to have been doing something more interactive. He literally condemns the act of producing good content.
It doesn’t.
We’re in a golden age of media. For the price of an Internet connection and a subscription to any of a half-dozen streaming services, I have access to more high-quality media than I could consume if I spent the rest of my life doing nothing else.
I have a lot of respect for the work Ben has provided over the years.
But this, right here? This is stupid. It's the kind of statement to which the only reasonable response is, "Well, if that's really how you feel, I suppose we really are better off with you going your separate way."
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 9th 2020 at 4:37:53 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I mean, I don’t exactly agree with him either, but I feel like you could stand to include a bit more nuance in your analysis.
Oh God! Natural light!No, it's about how he thinks that TFS got too big and had too much effort put into it to sustain itself and its community. Keeping it only at the same level of production value as the early Namek Arc would have been better because it was getting too big for anyone to keep up and collaborate, like what Abridging used to be about. It's not that he retroactively decided he wanted it to be something else, it's that it was that something else, and in their desire for "professionalism", they turned into something different, something they and their community weren't prepared to handle.
And he's wrong.
TFS doesn't owe anybody an apology for actually managing to hone the craft and turn it into a popular and effective product. What TFS did was succeed in the endeavor that everyone in the Abridging community was trying to do. They made the biggest and most successful Abridged series of all time, so much so that even the father of Abridging, LittleKuriboh, hopped onboard.
TFS became a sensation because they were producing work that people enjoyed watching. The idea that they should have stopped trying to grow as creators and sandbagged their efforts for the sake of keeping the playing field level is ludicrous.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.What about for the sake of releasing content on something approaching a regular basis, or being able to meet even the most generous self-imposed deadline?
You know what might be able to do that? A large community working together, instead of a handful of dudes in over their heads.
They stumbled on a formula that let them create nearly professional-quality work... until it bottlenecked and came creaking to a standstill.
Edited by HighCrate on Feb 9th 2020 at 4:16:53 AM
Hmm. That seems to assume abridging as a community would have been sustainable in the first place. Without insulating themselves, I doubt TFS would have survived YouTube and Toei actively trying to crush them and their efforts. Most abridged didnt stop for lack of passion or talent. They were destroyed by a system that actively works against them or simply real-life overtaking what people were doing as a hobby.
Which is they level he seems to be aspiring toward. That of a hobbyist rather than a professional. For better or worse.
Edited by Zeromaeus on Feb 9th 2020 at 8:07:24 AM
Channel Awesome already tried that. It wasn't as awesome as it sounds. People kind of suck.
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!It IS kind of the elephant in the room that everything the article describes was happening against a backdrop of You Tube itself becoming less of a grassroots, participatory platform. Ten years ago, "the algorithm" hadn't achieved its quasi-religious hold over content creators; it was a lot easier to just kind of fool around, see what worked, and organically discover like-minded creators to collaborate with. Nowadays, it seems a lot more corporatized.
I've always suspected that the threat of formal legal reprisals by Toei was somewhat overblown, though. How many times has Team Four Star had videos or even the whole channel get taken down only to go right back up at this point? If Toei were going to sue, they would have done it by now. Instead, they've demonstrated time and time again that they're willing to rattle their saber, but not actually go to war. And while You Tube is bound by the DMCA to honor takedown notices until the proper counter-claims are filed, at the end of the day they've always come down on TFS' side and restored the videos / channel.
Edited by HighCrate on Feb 9th 2020 at 5:50:54 AM

Yeah, but, this is not the mid 00's anymore, and they have had a decade to practice. Things have changed.