The old Internet died when Reddit became “the front page of the Internet”
Seeing MatPat being called the old internet is…something all right. Almost as disorienting as seeing all the “Who?” reactions to the news. I guess it isn’t that surprising given how huge Youtube is. I’m sure there are plenty of giant channels I’ve never heard of. That being said I’m curious to see if any more “old-school” youtubers decide to retire over the next year.
The public internet has been around about three times longer than what you’re calling “old”.
Geocities, Angelfire, and dialup modems are the “old” internet.
BBS’s would like a word
Nobody mentioning Jenna Marbles?!?!
The general reaction to this post being “Who’s Matpat?” is super interesting to me. And the comments saying that Tom Scott and Matpat aren’t old are also interesting since they follow the trend in Lemmy of the average age being a lot older than any other social network. I’m Gen Z and primarily consume content via a very Zoomer-heavy platform, YouTube, and the only other social network I have is Lemmy, which I’d say is very millennial-dominated. Which is why I stayed on Lemmy when I first got on here in June, since I liked the difference in opinion on the same topics on Lemmy and YouTube. Nothing related to the post, just something I’ve noticed for a while but never shared.
To be fair, I didn’t know his handle was MatPat, because I only knew about him as “the Game Theory guy I stopped watching almost ten years ago”. If you told me Game Theory was quitting the internet , I would know who you meant.
I feel like people not knowing this Matpat person may also just be a case of the channel being called “The Game Theorists”.
I have seen videos of that channel suggested, but never clicked on any, because it looked like typical content mill stuff to me. If you don’t watch any videos, you’ll only ever read “The Game Theorists”…
Honestly I just consider “old internet” to be before I was even born
The „old internet“ imho is before the few social media sites swallowed all the small forums we had
I’ve got accounts older than my niece and she’ll be 16 in a month.
Never even heard of matpat and I’ve been using YouTube since 2006
You’ve missed out on literally nothing.
Well it was good in the beginning. I stopped watching when he started uploading FNAF. Back then YouTube was fun as a young gamer: A+Start, Scykoh, the CrazyRussianHacker, animated Minecraft Music Videos to name a few.
He was never good, you were just younger and more susceptible to his manipulation.
What, you’ve never heard of the “game theory guy”?
I always knew him as the guy that copied reddit and tvtropes forum posts and put them into youtube videos while providing no credit to the original people that came up with them.
John von Neumann?
Meanwhile the Angry Video Game Nerd won’t retire when he really should.
Why is that? Haven’t watched him in a while.
If the 4 hour long hbomberguy video is to be believed, the Angry Video Game Nerd channel (?) got bought by a company that turned it into something of a content mill. And there’s some plagiarism involved.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
From what I’ve heard on the grapevine (I also don’t watch his stuff), his channel really declined in quality past 2019, and it just hasn’t been the same.
He signed up with one of those media management companies to help him promote and produce content. He mostly did it because he wanted to spend more time with his family, because he’s not really a gamer and has been running out of games he played as a kid, and because he’s kind of inept, to be honest. He made a behind the scenes video that showed just how ramshackle his workflow is.
Anyway, once he got that company involved, they injected themselves into his videos as well as write and edit,nand everyone was wondering who “these fat slobs” were? They just appeared with no introduction. The quality of his content took a nosedive around this time. They also started adding all sorts of new content, like rental reviews and podcasts that all died out very quickly due to lack of interest (and because they were mostly centered around the slobs rather than James). You could also tell James wasn’t very interested in any of it.
Anyway there’s more to it, but that’s the big stuff.
For those of y’all who don’t know: MatPat has announced that he will be stepping down from The Game Theorists to focus on himself and his family; Tom Scott has gone on indefinite hiatus for similar reasons.
I believe this heralds a new era of the internet, where ‘old’ creators are not as influential as the ‘new’ crop springing up, given the rise of Tiktok and the general direction of social media as a whole.
The Game Theorists
Who? I feel like my algo has me under a rock.
You are not alone
I don’t think it’s got much to do with new types of content being successful. If anything, those guys have just been doing this for so long that they definitely should take a loooong break, at least.
Tom Scott and Matpat didn’t talk about breaks; they’re closing up shop for good in some way: MatPat has said he’s handing over creative control of the Theorist channels and assuming a more casual admin role to spend more time with his kid. Tom Scott said that he set a limit for 10 years on his main channel; he may come back to it, but it doesn’t seem likely. Others are also quitting, such as Moo from the Vanoss Crew.
Tom didn’t say limit, he said goal. He said that after a break, he will probably upload videos to his main channel from time to time, but that when he does come back it won’t be at his current schedule or with his current format.
This seems like a big change only because YouTube/content creators are such a new phenomenon. Makes sense to change tracks after doing the same thing for a while. Or retire if you get filthy rich. It’s a natural cycle, only this time in a new environment.
Tom Scott has been doing the same thing for 10 years. Hell I can barely do the same job for 2 years without getting bored out of my mind.
It’s kinda like tv shows. Doing the same one dash in and out is exhausting.
I can’t wait for him to come back in a decade only for his usual demographic to not be receptive at all to his shit because they’re all communists.
In other words, millennial media tired, zoomer media bussin’.
What happened to MatPat? I mean good riddence if he’s gone but what happened?
He just got tired of making money
…what?
Matpat gone? Good fucking riddance. Fascist piece of shit.
The past few months to a year or so we’ve seen a total restructure of the internet. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have been actively scaring away their user bases.
It’s resulting in a split and divided internet. Like the days of old. Fediverse ActivityPub integration is the only thing that can undo that and revive these all-in-one style communications platforms.
I’m curious to see if it will be better or worse.
I beg to differ. If there’s one thing, even though I only got properly into the Internet around 2020, I have heard about how old social media was FAR better for the internet in general than stuff like Youtube and Twitter from people like Kurzgesagt; it allowed for more IRL-like social interaction through the segregation of communities into different ‘cliques’, kind of what Reddit and Lemmy are trying to capture. As a consequence, there was far less open and widespread drama, random hate and misinformation, unlike today.
This is how I find out matpat is retiring?!
Likewise! Figured the post was wrong and they were referring to when he sold Game Theorists, but nope! https://youtu.be/8R1_TqU68yo?feature=shared
What, did multiple someones all get hit with allegations on the same day?
Nah. They just stepped down.
No idea who Matpat is, but I will miss Tom Scott’s stuff… also The Canipa Effect announced he is quitting YouTube after 10 years of producing content.
