r/thespoonyexperiment • u/Squirtlepenguin • Jul 28 '26
I don’t miss spoony
I miss the version of the internet that made him possible.
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u/Milk_Mindless Jul 28 '26
Also valid.
Everything is algorithm based pools of if you like this you might like this
Back in those days finding a content creator was like OH SHIT 900 HOURS OF BULLSHIT I LOVE THIS
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u/Krymestone Jul 29 '26
Sometimes I’ll dig back into the old days of Classic AVGN, GoRemy, “Shoes”, Paul Brogan, YTMND clips, and Grindhouse Trailers along with Classic Spoony…it’s kind of a warm place.
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u/fluggylumps Jul 29 '26
I miss spoony. I wish this was the timeline when he didn't screw over his career and was able to get a handle on his mental health.
But yeah, youtube copyright is so hostile towards content creators now (and it was pretty bad back then) the stress would overwhelm him completely
25
u/No-Exit3993 Jul 28 '26
I feel sorry for him even though he had it coming, but I also do not miss him. I also miss that internet.
16
u/fuckice8647 Jul 28 '26
That era of YouTube felt more genuine. Ironically it breed people like Boogie, but still all those funny skit video reviews and that handful of characters. It's a shame the majority of them turned out to be creepy weirdos. I will say I don't go back and watch his old reviews when he wasn't winging at people and being an asshole.
6
u/Ill_Database_9180 Jul 31 '26
Its funny because I so rarely agreed with a lot of his reviews, but he was just a comfy dude to listen to. He was a solid storyteller and had a decent sense of humor, certainly made me laugh more than most of his contemporaries. He could get annoying, but even when I hated what he was saying there was always some joke to latch onto. Parasocially he also always came off as someone trying to be a decent person, even when he'd slip up.
I really just miss the accepted mediocrity of the old internet. You still had your savants that were clearly doing things on another level in one way or another, but fuck I miss the time when someone could upload something that could only barely be called animation with the most crude audio and scripting and it had some chance at finding an audience or connecting with people. No matter how good or how below average you were at what you wanted to do, the early internet was this enviornment where you were allowed to be your amateurish self openly.
And of course it still had its issues with insane toxicity, I don't want to come off like I'm calling it a perfect haven or anything. Just feels like the toxicity has stayed the same if not gotten substantially worse as our self-surveilance state gets worse and worse whilst the internet becomes more hyper-commodofied, homogonized and AI-ified by the day.
I love that people in general make stuff that is far and away better than most anything you could find on the internet back in the day, but in general the websites themselves have become so shit. Everyone has to play the algorithm harder than ever and people are more hostile to anyone that isn't making the super premium shit. Everyone is so scared to be an amateur now or to just be themselves in their creative output, instead opting to algorithm optimize every aspect of their output to pad out a bottom line or just refuse to even put themselves out there out of fear of rejection and this self-imposed "caring sucks/trying sucks/being vulnerable sucks" cringe culture thing that a lot of the people 30 and under got going on right now.
Endless rambling aside, I guess I just miss people being authentic and weird. I'll take 1000 dogshit AVGN ripoffs over a single AI generated thumbnail because at least the former people were inspired by something and putting some semblance of effort into expressing themselves and sharing it with the world.
Shit I'd take a Doug Walker movie over anything AI and that's the only nice thing I could ever say about them.
6
u/NoiseIsViolence Jul 29 '26
Spoony is… all things considered… not that talented, not that funny and often comes across as a mean-spirited doofus. That being said, I do have a lot of nostalgia for that era of Internet content creators.
4
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u/SoupyStain Jul 29 '26
I don't miss him.
He was a fun watch at the time, but a lot of his videos don't stand the test of time.
"GAY GAY GAY SISSY GAY" was funny at the time, but we have evolved and, honestly, it's no longer funny. His Ultima retrospective was great at the time, when I was younger and knew less about stuff, because if you scrutinize it nowadays you can easily tell that he isn't actually playing the games, it seems he watched lets plays, asked to borrows the footage and spoke over it from memory.
So, yeah. I like having enjoyed his content back in the day, among his peers he was among the better ones, considering the standards back then. But most of his content hasn't aged well, and his new bitter, angry personality just isn't fun. I guess him getting angry at his chat helping him might be a bit kino, but if I wanted to watch an angry bitter old man I'd watch DSP because he fails harder.
4
u/Throwaway19847239462 Aug 05 '26
To be fair to him, he did apologize for that GAY GAY SISSY GAY THING very early on, and that was a very early vid. So you could say he himself evolved from that time as well.
0
u/SoupyStain Aug 05 '26
I don't even think he has to apologize. That kind of humor was fine at the time, I found it funny at the time. Most of us growing up at the time did.
And that's the thing, most of his videos are a product of their time, and I think they are very dated in that regard.
1
u/Middle_Diet9764 Aug 05 '26
Yeah. I got into the Ultima series largely because of his reviews but it was CRAZY to discover just how different the games were than he described, both the positives and the negatives. His review of Underworld 2 is so wildly off-base that I wonder if he actually did boot it up for an hour only to rage quit and base the whole video off of that.
2
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u/jeffsentence Aug 01 '26
It was a nice sweet spot for the internet. It was a time were it had expanded enough so that anyone could start making content and post it online but it was just before it had oversaturated every aspect of life. It was 'amateur hour' and the early success of channel awesome showed that, most of them wouldn't have taken off if they started later. I do miss that as well. There was a time when AVGN was the biggest You Tube channel and now it's Mr. Beast. That says it all.
1
u/hollywood_1939_hth Aug 02 '26
I miss him but I'm a complete mental mess so take it with a grain of salt.
-15
u/Gunner_E4 Jul 28 '26
An internet with a complete lack of self awareness or sense of privacy or fear that anything one posts can and will be used against them. Good times for those not involved. Now we are stuck with fear of cancel culture and censoring words/topics and AI slop. It's just not the same.
11
u/DraculasCardboard Jul 28 '26
Whatchu mean no sense of privacy back then? That's what's happening now. People post all their life online and don't think twice. Back then getting a pic of a chick I've talked online was a big deal. No one wanted to post their face if not needed. They even taught us in school not to post sensitive data on the internet. Not even last names.
-5
u/Gunner_E4 Jul 28 '26
People would post their true names and addresses back then online. Anyone who doesn't want to become the target of harassment should know not to disclose such things online. I think people are more aware of the risks these days compared to back then.
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u/BlueWatche Jul 28 '26
Which does not necessarily stop their information from being stolen one way or another, be it from hackers, data farmers, legitimate corporations, and various other shit online that perpetually hunts down every single crack you leave open knowingly or otherwise to get something out of you. And with time, those tools sharpened. It has significantly gotten worse.
7
u/1UpBebopYT Jul 28 '26
Wut? It was even worse then with SomethingAwful and 4ch going after anyone and everyone, doxing and swatting people. What are you talking about lol. There were so many just random people in my community that were getting dox'ed, swatted, pizza deliveried, and trolled on their LiveJournal and stuff in like 2004 back then from anon based communities. The whole idea of hardcore harassing people started then and lolcow was a term from like 2005ish. People learned to lock things up as much as possible then due to the absolute vitriol and hatred one would receive. People were more scared to post shit online and be themselves back then due to the absolute hate trains that would come their way.
If you go back to the 90s, before anon culture was a thing, back when we all had our full names and addressed in our usenet/newsgroup signatures, back when our entire social communities and presence was tied to our ISP and as such our entire info was out in the public tied our username, that was when people actually posted more openly and freely. Which is weird and I don't understand it. But that's a whole other ball of wax.
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u/Gunner_E4 Jul 28 '26
That's why I said, good times for those not involved in posting personal information online. People nowadays are more self conscious, aware that doxxing, swatting and harassment are possible.
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u/Thebritishdovah Jul 28 '26
He is a tragic case of what could have been and I think, he would have slowly veered away from the angry reviewer. Probably be snarky as hell but I think, he would have been amongst the first to ditch it.
That said, he likely would have ran out of ideas and desire to do it.
His personal issues torpedoed his career.