Thread: Geeks + Gamers and G4 Drama

Has anyone else heard about this?

I'm not even very much into video games these days, but I sometimes check out the Youtube channel Geeks + Gamers. They have been covering an interesting situation regarding a relaunch of the old G4 video game cable channel, I guess this time on Youtube.

Anyway, apparently in one of the episodes of G4, the woman on the show went into a huge speech where she went off on at least some of their viewers. From what I could tell, it appeared that she thought that she was getting more criticism from viewers because of being a woman, and it also sounded like she thought that the viewers were treating both past and present female hosts improperly. The guys on the show supportively cheered her on.

Here's the thing, and this is a very weird thing about media today: Even if the woman is 100% right that she is being treated unfairly by the viewers, if you want your show to have viewers, then this probably isn't the way that you want to handle it. It was almost like it was becoming the show vs. its viewers. It reminded me of how awards shows would get political and act like they didn't even care if they ran off viewers. Where did this come from, that shows don't think they need to care about if they have viewers? Do they get guaranteed funding, or what?

I think that a more effective way to deal with it would have been to just ignore it, and do their best on the show. And it doesn't hurt to regularly be thankful for the viewers during the show. Even if the show isn't the best, being thankful for fans typically comes across as high-class, and at the very least, people will think of the hosts as nice people.

Even if fans are unfair to someone on the show, I think the above is a better approach. The co-hosts can always be supportive of each other outside of the show itself. How do they even know if that many of the fans are being unfair anyway, percentage-wise? And they risk making it worse by drawing attention to it.

None of this is saying that the fans were in the right. For the sake of argument, I'm giving the woman host the benefit of the doubt on her view of some of the fans. But even so, I think the way to handle it is the way that I suggested above, instead of what was actually done on the show. Just think of Johnny Carson years ago -- if a bunch of fans were mean to him outside of the show, I doubt Carson would have taken time on the Tonight Show to rip on those viewers. I think he would have just done his show, and probably most viewers would have never been aware of any of it.

Anyway, I think it's a bad trend, TV shows yelling at their viewers. I've seen TV shows insult their viewers as a joke -- that can be funny. I've heard of viewer-funded shows occasionally getting upset at the viewers for not donating enough. But the trend of seriously taking issue with the viewers of one's own show, I'm not sure how this leads to a show having viewers to stay in business, or thus where the reasoning comes from to do that.

I can see responding to the hecklers and trolls in the press or in an interview but to waste time doing it over the air is low class. The trolls won and the presenter comes off as whiny. Even worse it takes away from the content that the viewers tuned in for. It is a quick way to send your fans elsewhere.

The old man dyke whining about sexism is hilarious. She's bitching and moaning that people who watch a show for a particular presenter, are all sexist because when she reads the script

I watch(ed) Top Gear, the UK version, with Jeremy, Richard, and James. The American version was populated entirely with morons and watched half an episode and never watched again. I didn't not watch it because I hate Americans, I didn't watch it because I wanted to see particular presenters. Babbling the same nonsense facts about a car is not why I watch(ed) the show. Brake horsepower is only so interesting.

Same with his old man tranny. She thinks people are sexist. Because she couldn't possibly be the problem, which makes sense because old man dykes are incapable of not thinking collectively because they're all intersectional collectivists.

I'm betting a lot of viewers don't want to watch an old man-hating tranny dyke activist hating on them.

And hatred is all these people have.

So I don't watch G4, since I hate activists and other low IQ people.

Originally Posted by WXA

Anyway, apparently in one of the episodes of G4, the woman on the show went into a huge speech where she went off on at least some of their viewers. From what I could tell, it appeared that she thought that she was getting more criticism from viewers because of being a woman, and it also sounded like she thought that the viewers were treating both past and present female hosts improperly. The guys on the show supportively cheered her on.

My interest in gaming has faded a lot, but I have tuned into the G4 relaunch, because I used to watch it 20 years ago (I enjoyed X-Play). A few observations...

1. Adam Sessler is a liberal progressive -- very woke. In the past, he has railed against gamers in his audience, blasting them for being Nazis and whatever else. He created a lot of ill will by doing that, basically wrecked his reputation. He is the senior "talent" on G4, and I suspect his own attitudes have partially set the tone for what you're describing -- a female host whining about sexism. You'll hear him drop occasional wokeisms in his reviews, which are annoying.

2. The new G4 hosts are notable for their "diversity."

3. One of the new female hosts, Frosk, looks progressive, feminist, and/or LGBTQ. I can see the complaint coming from her.

Yeah, I just looked up "G4 hosts" for an image, and I see that she was the one complaining.



She's the one in the middle. She looks fairly subdued there, but if you watch her G4 content, you'll see a more "progressive" or lesbian version on display. I'm not surprised that she is the one complaining.

That's not to say she's wrong. Maybe the comments were harsh and sexist. That wouldn't surprise me, either. Gamers can be shitheads, and a lot of guys in the G4 audience are embarrassingly enamored with the female hosts -- Morgan Webb and Olivia Nunn in the past. Both of those ladies appealed to the horny teens/20s male gamer demographic. The slathering, drooling attention they got was very similar to what you see with popular Instagram or Only Fans models today.

From reading just the headline, I think the G4 gamers were complaining that she's not as attractive ("bangable") as Morgan Webb or Olivia Nunn. Which is absolutely true. That's the sexism she's complaining about. Fair enough. I'm sure it sucks to be on the receiving end of those comments. But fact is, she's not one-tenth as attractive as previous female hosts (except to male feminists and lesbians). And this is the dopey/horny G4 crowd, so they'll continue to point that out.

Olivia Munn was really cool, she had a cheerful and relaxed demeanour which got viewers to tune-in. Froskurinn is very much the opposite.

I don't know who made this video, however its a brilliant, humorous poke at what could happen when the host screams 'if you don't like it, don't watch it!" - viewers turn off and go on to do other things:

https://twitter.com/loftipixels/stat...75267994095623

Originally Posted by Eddie Haskell

3. One of the new female hosts, Frosk, looks progressive, feminist, and/or LGBTQ. I can see the complaint coming from her.

Yeah, I just looked up "G4 hosts" for an image, and I see that she was the one complaining.


She's the one in the middle. She looks fairly subdued there, but if you watch her G4 content, you'll see a more "progressive" or lesbian version on display. I'm not surprised that she is the one complaining.

Yeah, well, not surprising. She's got a neck tat and a bigger dick that cuck mouth next to her.

I've watched a few videos about the "controversy" now, so I'm better informed, not just speculating.

Frost made these mistakes, imo:

1. She got trolled by some Youtube comments. The vast, vast majority of comments about her are positive (or were, anyway, before this). So she got hung up on a small percentage of negative comments. Why? Well, partly because she's a thin-skinned feminist (is there any other kind?).

2. She reacted emotionally, on air, to those comments. That was dumb. You don't feed the trolls. When you react, they win. Reacting emotionally makes you look weak. It lets the trolls know they got to you. She thinks she's punishing them, but she's reinforcing them.

3. She stared into the camera and lectured the audience -- that is, the entire G4 viewership, 99.9% of whom had not made the comment. She didn't say, "Look, I know this is just a small, tiny fraction of people, and most people have been tremendously supportive, and I'm really grateful." No, she just scolded the audience for their sexism. That's really stupid. Why are you blasting your audience for the actions of a tiny minority?

4. People don't want politics injected into their gaming. They want to hear about games and have fun. That was the spirit of the old G4. This was socio-political whining. It felt like "call out" culture. It felt like a twitter exchange. There was nothing fun or game-related about it.


They've lost a few thousand subscribers over it, which isn't a big deal for a channel with 500k subs, but it doesn't help. With all their employees and overhead, they need to be concerned with expanding their audience, not running it off with political lectures.

Oh, and while watching the vids about the controversy, I was exposed to Sessler's disgusting texts about Republicans. He said, among other things, that Republicans are Nazis and they drink piss. He also said -- and get this -- that he hoped that members of his own family who were Republicans would die. Imagine wishing death to members of your family, just because they don't vote the way you want them to. Fucking sick.

Originally Posted by Eddie Haskell

I've watched a few videos about the "controversy" now, so I'm better informed, not just speculating.

I've thought about the whole G4 Network thing some more, too.

To be honest with you, I think the whole thing isn't so much some massive failure as another sign of the times in which everyone lives these days.

Geeks and Gamers is playing it up (in my opinion) as if it's some huge mistake. But now I think that maybe G4 is just fine with being the gamer network FOR DEMOCRATS (or those who aren't offended by pro-Democrat opinions, anyway).

And really, Geeks and Gamers itself comes across to me as a pro-conservative gamer channel.

I'm really only into a narrow set of categories of video games, so I don't know why I found this story so interesting, but I did.

I bet that an average person would be surprised to find the gaming world split by politics, but someone once told me a bit about something called GamerGate. I'm not an expert on that story at all, but it kind of sounds to me like that may have injected some serious political split into the gaming world.

Also, is what we see with G4 that much different from what Hollywood has been doing, from public celebrity opinions to late-night talk shows. Geeks and Gamers seems to be acting like G4 made this huge mistake that will turn away its audience, but that hasn't worried Hollywood at all. These days, it's like people would rather air their opinions, even if they lose viewers. It's strange from a business sense, but it is what it is.

With the Internet, we are also seeing a change in how celebrities interact with the public. In the classic TV days, for many people around the USA, unless they went to some special event, they are not interacting much with most of the people they see on TV. And, for all the TV people know, the viewers at home could be making fun of the TV stars in large numbers, and the TV stars might be largely unaware of any of it. For all the TV stars know, everyone dresses up to watch their favorite TV shows from their living room, respectfully keep quiet to pay better attention to the show, and are 100% polite at all times for that special event at their living room.

Now the public can easily air their opinions about celebrities on the Internet, just as the celebrities would air their shows publicly on TV. On top of that, as the entertainment market becomes increasingly fractured and more specialized, we see new types of celebrities, sort of micro-celebrities. They might have a specialized channel on Youtube, or they might be an independent musician, or they might have a sports talk show on the Internet. They aren't big enough to have their own show on regular TV, but they are big enough to be a name in a specialized subject on the Internet. I've noticed that the micro-celebrity types often are much more available to interact with directly, to their fans and the rest of the public. In fact, that seems to be part of the micro-celebrity model -- you don't have cable TV behind you, so you almost want your fans to be a hopefully large group of your friends...well, almost as close as friends anyway. If they get a thousand people that regularly fund their efforts, they hope that the micro-celebrity thing can be their job.

By the way, micro-celebrity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many micro-celebrities are talented people who might never have been given a chance in mainstream media, so they had to make their own success. Some of them are probably way more talented than a lot of mainstream TV talent, and micro-celebrities also typically are more independent, which can increase the quality of their content.

This brings me back to the G4 drama. The micro-celebrity thing is blurring the old lines of politeness, and society has yet to figure out what is normal with respect to that. For example, in the old days, imagine you went to an autograph signing with a major national TV star. If someone decided to get attention by yelling an incredibly rude thing at the TV star in front of everyone, I don't think that would come across very well. But with a micro-celebrity, it's almost like a person at a level just above the fans. And if the fans can argue with each other on discussion groups, are they going to be as polite with a micro-celebrity as people probably used to be toward major national TV stars?

Anyway, those are my further thoughts on the situation.

Yeah, I really like their channels (G&G, RP Outpost, Nerdrotic and the Critical Drinker). They fully RP-ed me regarding the Clown World in entertainment.
Regarding marriage and relationships with women, they are (still) fully BP and I've heard them fulminating against MGTOW once or twice. But they're saying the same thing for the other 99% as we are doing here. I'm not being "oversensitive" about their POV regarding MGTOW. IMO it's fine to disagree. Though sometimes I find their simping towards Gina Carano is getting cringe.

Originally Posted by WXA

I've thought about the whole G4 Network thing some more, too.

To be honest with you, I think the whole thing isn't so much some massive failure as another sign of the times in which everyone lives these days.

Geeks and Gamers is playing it up (in my opinion) as if it's some huge mistake. But now I think that maybe G4 is just fine with being the gamer network FOR DEMOCRATS (or those who aren't offended by pro-Democrat opinions, anyway).

I agree that it's a sign of the times.

I don't see it as a failure, much less a "massive failure." I see it as a mistake.

But even then, whether it's a "mistake" or not depends on your goal. If your goal to make a political statement, to score political points, and to brand yourself as SJW-friendly, then it's not a mistake at all. It's a smart move. However, if your goal is to cultivate the broadest possible audience, then it's a mistake.

I think the "controversy" has been exaggerated in importance, though, like most social media uproars. It's an indication of where G4 is at, rather than some harbinger of doom. 95% of G4's audience probably has no idea this "controversy" ever happened, nor do they care. They'll continue to tune in regardless. It's a tempest in a teapot, in other words.

When they made the Ghostbuster's 2016 all female movie they started with a pre bombardment campaign. "People won't like it because it's female/if they don't like it, they're sexist" etc etc etc This was coming from the stars as well as the male director.

Just like Ghostbuster's, computer games have a majority male audience. If you put your audience offside you're doomed. Same is happening with comic books going Woke. Even the Woke CW network is up for sale now because their Woke TV shows don't rate well.

Know your audience. Don't upset them. Pretty simple. For a female in the Gaming world it would be super easy too. The guys would just go nuts over having a female talk about the games. Simple. Easy. Yet they can't help themselves it seems.

I've been gaming since 2000 and never even heard of G4, I assume normal gamer's spend their time playing games, not watching TV or in this case YT video's that spawn 20-1 hour plus about them, far more entertaining content to be watched, mainstream media completely fails in that regard with being no exception, who in the right mind would be even be surprised by this turn of events.

All I saw was some bitter, man-hating lesbian go ham on the channel's audience for finding Olivia Munn attractive.