Broke: unsubscribing from Jim because they came out as non binary.
Woke: unsubscribing from Jim because they chose to become an American citizen.
Bespoke: never having subscribed to Jim because they parroted anti-China red scare propaganda during the Blizzard controversy.
That was a big oof but Jim's been consistently going left over the years so I have some hope they'll "wisen up".
Heh, I had a feeling they were one of those people spreading propaganda even though I've never really heard of them. It's just par for the course for the western left. If they aren't already doing it, they'll be pushed into doing it eventually. It's a really easy way to boost viewers too.
Bespoke: never having subscribed to Jim because they parroted anti-China red scare propaganda during the Blizzard controversy.
Me unironically
I never saw it graphed like that before. Did people really not notice Sterling's graph also happens to rise during the last of us outrage cycle, peak during the cyberpunk outrage cycle and then settle back down to 900k when there aren't really any controversial games coming out anymore?
That logic applies to total daily views not total subscribers. People need to actively unsubscribe.
Cyberpunk was late 2020, there’s a small increase but if you can look at this graph and say there’s anything besides their coming out that caused the decline then you’re being intentionally obtuse. They’ve been rather stagnant in terms of growth for a while, but it’s basically in free fall at this point coinciding with them coming out. They put out a solid video explaining the entire situation yesterday too. here
I went to check the dates just to be sure I wasn't missing something. Cyberpunk's release date was late 2020, but the flood of controversy and articles was already in full swing months before the game actually came out which coincided with the graph's rise through September. Which was also when people were constantly putting the content on this site and in every lefty space boosting the alogrithims that recommend lefty gamer outrage to people who normally don't care about this stuff.
I'm just having trouble here with the idea that Sterling was making hugely pro trans, widely seen content at the peak of their popularity to an audience that is basically breadtube gamers, but those people are all actually really transphobic and dumped the channel because of a transition. What the comparison says to me is that since there are very few other types of people in this corner of the internet, a bunch of progressives stopped watching the channel once there was no gamer culture war topic in the headlines anymore. They got bored, they unsubscribed and moved on. It probably didn't happen to Philosophy Tube because video essays are less dependent on the marketing cycles of individual products.
I’m just having trouble here with the idea that Sterling was making hugely pro trans, widely seen content at the peak of their popularity to an audience that is basically breadtube gamers
Jim's never been strictly a" breadtube" personality (their career and initial popularity predating the whole concept by several years) despite being visibly queer and markedly more left-leaning than your average gaming news channel and as such their main audience has never been internet lefties but rather gamers
Jim's had very trans positive views for years and has gotten abuse for it as well. Back when they were doing the steam greenlight and other steam travesties there were a number of horrific games that they covered from the perspective of trans positivity. The Podquisition has Laura Kate Dale on it and she's openly trans. I've followed Jim from The Escapist and my own political journey. If you look at their really early stuff they're calling out stuff more from a consumer protection perspective. Something that while alive, TotalBiscuit did as well. It's just that John had rather crappy views and jumped on the gamergate bandwagon while Jim continued to criticize games with a different perspective. Jim was rather mainstream to a degree within gaming circles and was not particularly too "different" from TB in a lot of gamer's minds, only that sometimes they'd just say some "SJW shit, but otherwise has good consumer protection views."
James Stephanie Sterling has been doing this gig a very long time, I've been following their work since 2009. The ebb and flow of views happens, but subscriber count is quite different, the subs count didn't particularly drop when there were slower news periods, the views might've taken a hit though. There's an argument to be made that the stagnation of the channel came from the change in upload frequency, where once they were uploading almost daily videos on stuff, doing steam garbage and news briefs, the Jimquisition has always been the core where most views happened. It's also not just the subscriber count but also various people spewing vitriol at them for coming out. You're trying to push an additional narrative that tries to handwave away the transphobia inherent in our society by stating that this decline has to be something other than just transphobia when the person who has the most vested interest is saying they know what it is and provides proof of it.
Their* video on Dark Souls being a direct metaphor for Late Stage Capitalism was great, because I had a similar theory and was relieved I wasn't the only one.
Jim Stephanie sterling is a games journalist that’s been making YouTube videos since probably at least 2008-2010, in the last couple months or so they came out as trans and have been hemorrhaging subscribers as a result.
I guess we’re comparing this to Abigail thorn of philosophy tube who is a breadtuber and also came out as trans around the same time.
