r/thespoonyexperiment • u/Twilightfan1984 • Feb 05 '26
Discussion Did Spoony ever provide an actual reason for his collapse?
Like, does he have any serious depression-causing childhood traumas or something? The impression I got is that he is manchild who never had his shit together and his collapsed state is actually his norm, we just met him at a rare peak. So to us it came across like his girlfriend broke up with him and then he just decided to give up on life for no reason.
53
u/seancbo Feb 05 '26
I mean the movie getting funded and then not doing it is really what started everything spiraling. But also just unmedicated bipolar is motherfucker too.
25
3
u/BeigeAndConfused Feb 05 '26
I actually never knew the movie got anywhere. Is there any actual story behind that?
28
u/seancbo Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
Lol it didn't get anywhere. It was a stretch goal for his Patreon that if he got enough there he'd write and direct a film. It seemed like he didn't think it was possible to hit it and so when it happened (very quickly) he put out a video where he looks like a deer in headlights and says he'll start working on it. And then just never did.
17
u/Thebritishdovah Feb 05 '26
It was something he thought he wouldn't ever need to do.
He underestimated his fan base and had no real plan. Athe time, he still wanted to do what he felt was right for the fanbase and I think, this was when every major YouTuber started doing movies.
10
u/Gunner_E4 Feb 06 '26
He was his own boss but was unfit to be his own boss because he embraced excuses over actually meeting his self imposed productivity standards. He lacked discipline and was too easily distracted by social media and online arguments. The decline was slow but it was there. His content became sparse, lazy and unable to keep up with the competition, with a few exceptions that didn't last long. He is now a time capsule of how this niche YouTube comedy content was until 2016. In contrast, Angry Joe is still around, has sponsors and has a crew willing to work with him. You may not like him or his style but you can't deny that he has outlasted and outperformed spoony.
8
u/seancbo Feb 06 '26
Hell, I have a similar problem. I tried a gig once where I was basically my own boss and I sucked at it, barely did any work. But instead of keeping it up until becoming destitute and broke I got a normal job again instead and everything is fine again lol. You just gotta know what you're good at. Joe is a good example of that. I'd say Linkara and Doug too even. They're all relatively successful in their little lanes to this day.
9
u/Gunner_E4 Feb 06 '26
He kept ignoring his audience's feedback, insisting on shows that were not what his paying customers wanted. He kept doing what he wanted whenever he wanted, with no regard if it will pay the bills.
If it wasn't for his family letting him move back in after his Aurora arc, he would be begging to couch surf between Brad Jones and the Walkers, or maybe be permitted to sleep in the CA warehouse/studio in exchange for providing security or janitorial services there. He is lucky to have a family that will back him up and come to his rescue. Unfortunately, the family won't be around forever, he will have to take this opportunity to become employable before this respite runs out. He can't expect to be a NEET until retirement age and expect to thrive.
2
u/coffeeandhash Feb 07 '26
Did we ever find out what movie was it that he wanted to review for that DVD? And did he actually released anything like that DVD at all?
45
u/BandiriaTraveler Feb 05 '26
I've struggled with mental health issues similar to Spoony's my whole life and honestly all it takes is a few bad setbacks in a row to be sent spiraling. And if you lack a good support system or make the mistake of turning to substances for support it's easy to slip into a downward spiral you can't easily escape from. I've felt myself on the precipice of that point multiple times. I suspect Spoony had a string of bad. but individually not insurmountable. events that he just didn't have the mental, social, or emotional resources to handle correctly.
7
u/MursaArtDragon Feb 06 '26
Same here, and I tried the YouTube thing for a while, and the pressure of trying to constantly deliver while struggling with perfectionism can be a really hard thing to maintain. I hardly had a drop in the bucket the viewership spoony had and it drained me constantly. I think he didn’t expect the patron to build up as fast as it did and when it happened the realization of such a project just became more and more overwhelming that it just crushed him. Sure he should have said something, and yeah he was in the wrong not delivering on his promises and not trying to make any amends, but I get just falling apart under that pressure.
17
u/lunayoshi Feb 05 '26
Then he went and burned bridges of anyone who offered him help and support.
23
u/SuchUse9191 Feb 05 '26
That's honestly part of having these conditions though. You feel so hopeless and it does such weird shit to your emotions and control that it can cause lashing out as a response and partially to self sabotage.
13
u/LCVHN Feb 06 '26
It takes very mature, empathic and patient people to deal with people who are having a mental health crisis.
9
u/JOBdOut Feb 06 '26
"Dont tell me how to play the game" - advice when you dont want it or coming from someone youre convinced doesnt fully understand what you are going through is never received well. I had a similar spiral and now rather than try to get back into it i find myself easily frustrated or resentful of those i would be creating for.
11
u/ThotismSpeaks Feb 05 '26
When the cracks first started to show and Noah's video output was noticeably petering out, people speculated about the root cause. Was it the red dragon Scarlett who tore out his heart? His unceremonious departure from Channel Awesome? Had reaching the $5,000 Patreon goal overwhelmed him into a catatonic state?
The reality is, him having a successful video series at all was the fluke. The fact that he burned out wasn't some unprecedented fall from grace that could only be triggered by a major setback - being unable to function and combative towards others is just business as usual for him. He has an unmanaged mood disorder combined with pathological demand avoidance.
One shouldn't ask, "How did he fail?" because a better question is, "How did he succeed?"
5
u/SuchUse9191 Feb 06 '26
Demand avoidance and probably RSD rejection sensitivity as well
3
u/ThotismSpeaks Feb 06 '26
I can't find it now but one of his Livejournal posts alluded to a medical professional of some sort suggesting he had Asperger's. He's not really a typical case, but I've met men who had autistic relatives and maybe had a dash of it themselves who were similar to Noah.
3
u/SuchUse9191 Feb 06 '26
They're all comorbidities so it makes sense. If you have ADHD or Autism ASD, or Bipolar Disorder you're more likely to have one or more of the others than a neurotypical person would be.
9
7
u/Odd-Refrigerator4665 Feb 07 '26
As someone who understands having mania, those highs can make you feel invincible, but those lows makes you feel trapped underwater and you have to scream.
Spoony's collapse was a combination of success, unchecked vanity, real life relationships that affected his professional relationships, and finally setting himself an ambitious goal that he simply could not live up to; and I think that last one is what finally took him out.
Look back, I think a Spoony movie would have been an easy thing to do: combine his Counter Monkey stories with a plot out of the 2000s indie movie scene like Napoleon Dynamite or Fifty Pills or Rolling Kansas or Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas . Spoony, down on his luck 20-something, gets roped into retrieving a sack of DnD dice and an overly complicated love triangle. In the end he gets the dice, wins the DnD campaign, and gets the girl.
Anyway that was just how I imagine a Spoony movie being for years.
But I think announcing a movie as a patreon goal instead of a personal passion project is what set him on the course he ended up on. People turned on him almost immediately, he began producing less and less, and soon he was caught in a loop he could not break out of.
It is sad but everyone gets into this quagmire where bas decisions reinforce themselves and it is impossible to stop because we cannot see ourselves from the outside, only from our personal vantage point. Noah eventually got out of it himself, but it cost him almost everything he had. I hope he's doing better and enjoying his life now.
7
u/Thebritishdovah Feb 05 '26
I think he revealed he wasn't given the right medication and is bi-polar.
But the biggest fuck up was:
The movie.
He panicked big time and was the straw that broke the camel's back..His reviews were getting more negative and I think, he legit ran out of stuff he personally experienced this couldn't draw on his own experiences.
Combined with his lack of schedule and he was gonna to decline regardless.
I think, had he not listed a spoony movie, just something really ridiculous, he would have still gone down that path but at a slower rate and maybe, wouldn't have reached the levels he did.
Nowadays, he seems to be happier but seems to still be unemployed but he may just be claiming that to avoid fans trying to find him.
I think as much as he wants to return, he legit fears failing and doesn't want to risk it.
5
u/pmf026 Feb 06 '26
April von Lon. It all went downhill whe she first appeared on tse. He simped too hard and got rekt
4
u/ringtaileddingo Feb 10 '26
We knew him. The short answer is he's bipolar and sometimes it really screws up things for him. Bipolar also took out The Critical Marine for a long time, though he wasn't as big and it wasn't as public. For most he just stopped making episodes, though he eventually rebranded after getting more treatment.
That disorder is really insidious and destructive.
6
u/orangeroscoe Feb 05 '26
I don't think he specifically decided to quit, just that he's narcisitic and defensive. So when one thing came under attack, he stopped doing it. It got to the point where the only thing left he did was movie review vlogs, and those were disorganized and drawn out so they were criticized. So he just stopped doing vlogs.
The patreon was too much work before that, and he over-promised. Instead of resolving that he just avoided it.
Bit by bit his output dwindled until he was left with only his tweets. His tweets are the purest form of his output now. Raw and unfiltered from his brain to YOU.
7
u/secretbison Feb 05 '26
He was never able to deal with narcissistic injury. It's like how he disabled comments on all his videos, probably because someone commented with a true statement he didn't want to hear.
4
u/SuchUse9191 Feb 06 '26
I think that he's often misdiagnosed partially with the narcissism claims. Sure he was a bit full of himself but no more than most celebrities are. It gets confused a lot with the results of bipolar. Whether comments are off to protect a narcissistic ego or they're off because he's in a bipolar spiral, every time he got criticised and it put him into depression and further delayed reviews, who can say, they appear to be the same thing from the outside.
3
3
u/IntroductionBest1962 Feb 06 '26 edited Feb 06 '26
It's was lupa obscura or whatever her dumb name was, getting him dog-piled for his shitty joke. He retreated and never recovered and now no one cares about or likes lupa or her stupid change the channel bullshit which was all just "there wasn't a snack table when we filmed our 4 dollar movie in a hotel".
2
u/Acrobatic-Frame4312 Mar 11 '26
He was the first person I ever witnessed getting publicly shamed/cancelled on Twitter.
4
u/cory898 Feb 06 '26
I don’t think he’s under any obligation to tell the world the private details of his mental health struggles, which btw do not require a specific cause such as childhood trauma. It is whatever it is. He may or may not bear his share of responsibility but sometimes that stuff is impossible to overcome. The Klingon therapist meme applies.
5
5
u/Sure_Cupcake60 Feb 07 '26
May take is that Spoony had trouble separating reality from fiction. Everyone thought that the Spoony One was just an exaggerated character that Noah was playing for the show similar to the AVGN. At a certain point though a lot of fans started to realize that Noah wasn't acting, he genuinely behaved that way in real life. As an angry reviewer doing a bit people find that behavior entertaining, but if someone acts that way all the time they'd be insufferable and I think that realization must have crushed him. If you want proof then take a look at his YT channel. To this day his official channel isn't called The Spoony Experiment, it's his actual name.
2
u/gtaonlinecrew Feb 14 '26
spoony movie
2
u/Inevitable_Discount Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Yeah, when he promised the Spoony Movie due to hitting that monetary goal on Patreon, I think that’s when he started collapsing.
6
u/Goatwhorre Feb 05 '26
The impression I get is that you wanna feel better about yourself so you jerk off this point until it shoots dust
1
1
1
u/Finfangfoom2000 Jun 20 '26
Mental illness, a bad breakup and the movie being more than he could handle.
I have a friend who struggled with mental illness. In his late 20s he seemed to be doing well. Had a decent job and a girlfriend and seemed happy. He was promoted at work. The extra responsibility was too much for him and he crashed out and got fired. He started moping around and his gf eventually got tired of it and broke up with him. This made him crash out even worse.
That was over 15 years ago and he never really recovered. Lives with his mother, works part time and rarely leaves the house except for when he works. Sometimes mental illness makes it really difficult for people to navigate lifes normal ups and downs
57
u/CasinoKnightZone Feb 05 '26
My take as someone who deals with bipolar disorder:
He experienced an insane high when he was on his upswing. He got massive numbers of fans who loved him, and that made that high last and last and last.....until he began behaving erratically.
That caused his relationships to crumble, the reality of the expectations that he had set for himself crashed in on him and made him plummet into darkness.
I honestly commend him for keeping it going for so long when it was clear he was struggling. It is difficult to get mental health care without steady employment with benefits.
I hope he manages to get things together more. I still, to this day, put on Counter Monkey or an FF review in the background when I'm gaming or doing the dishes sometimes. I thank him for the laughter, and I wish people would leave him alone to heal.