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Angry Video Game Nerd

Kart94

Banned
I have a question for fans of Rolfe:

How's his reputation feeling these days? I'm still a fan of his output and consider him to be a decent guy, but I wonder what the world thinks of him about a year after his Ghostbusters 2016 segment.

I personally saw zero issue with what he said. He was frank about not wanting to encourage remake culture and that he'd vote with his wallet, but there was a major witch hunt that ensued against James after that video went live.

Do you think the odd stigma some had about him has subsided since?

No one except those who couldn't be bothered to check if what the Mainstream media said was true cares. I think almost time i saw an article, whatever comments seemed to be overwhelmingly defending James.
 

grim-tales

Member
I didn't know Bootsy had his own channel on Youtube, I can't find it?
There are still older Bootsy Beats videos on the Cinemassacre channel.
 

shanafan

Member
I know everyone can have their own preferences, but I feel that James needs to get over his nostalgia. The fact that he doesn't have any movie that came out in the past 15 years on a top 50 list is a little silly. The way we saw movies as a kid is different than the way we see movies now as adults. But as adults, we have a different sense of appreciation for films that goes beyond the speculation seeing a dinosaur for the first time in a movie. It's appreciating character development, conflict, etc and there had to be a movie in the past 15 years that would reflect that for James.

But, his shtick is that he wants to take you back to the past, so I guess it makes sense he likes everything old but nothing new.
 

jett

D-Member
I know everyone can have their own preferences, but I feel that James needs to get over his nostalgia. The fact that he doesn't have any movie that came out in the past 15 years on a top 50 list is a little silly. The way we saw movies as a kid is different than the way we see movies now as adults. But as adults, we have a different sense of appreciation for films that goes beyond the speculation seeing a dinosaur for the first time in a movie. It's appreciating character development, conflict, etc and there had to be a movie in the past 15 years that would reflect that for James.

But, his shtick is that he wants to take you back to the past, so I guess it makes sense he likes everything old but nothing new.

James is a weird individual. He has made a living out of playing video games, but is seemingly completely out of touch with the industry. He's an apparent movie buff, but doesn't "love" anything made in the 21st century. He's like a crochety old man that only fondly remembers his experiences of yesteryear, but he's way too young for that.

He has always had kooky movie tastes though.
 

maharg

idspispopd
He basically didn't like that it wasn't literally *exactly* like something made in the 80s. It wasn't made on 80s-style film stock, it had modern storytelling elements, etc.
 

shanafan

Member
This is pretty funny.. seems like Mike has disabled the likes/dislikes bar for his latest Mike and Ryan video (Star Trek PC).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYUqNUdIgGQ

I think it's pretty weak for them turn off the likes/dislikes bar for the video. If they want to shit on a game, then allow people to return the favor to the video - whether they like it or not. Turning off that bar just shows a weakness, and putting his tail behind his legs because he don't want to deal with criticism.
 

shanafan

Member
For those that care about controversies..

I casually checked the Cinemassacre Reddit tonight, and apparently Mike was drunk this past weekend and posted a picture of something that fans have joked about for awhile now. Take a wild guess what it was.. Trying to read through the posts, but seems like it was quite an interesting weekend.
 
For those that care about controversies..

I casually checked the Cinemassacre Reddit tonight, and apparently Mike was drunk this past weekend and posted a picture of something that fans have joked about for awhile now. Take a wild guess what it was.. Trying to read through the posts, but seems like it was quite an interesting weekend.

He seriously posted his dick? My god. Why.
 
He seriously posted his dick? My god. Why.

So, I'm not that great at reading Reddit, but after briefly poking around not the site I guess what happened was he made a thread and posted a photo of his penis next to a tape measure to "settle it once and for all" since I guess his penis is a bit of a recurring joke? When I followed him on Twitter a long time ago, he would occasionally mentioned he had a big penis, and then would delete the tweets. It was strange. But, yeah, he purposefully made a thread about his penis and posted a photo of it and chatted with users about it for a while before deleting everything and deleted a bunch of their mods so it's just himself and someone else patrolling the site or something?

And then someone posted chat logs talking about how they should ban all discussion of Bootsy and claim that Mike was hacked or something. And then someone else said he got into alt right stuff and that's about all I can attempt to piece together. But I don't know. There's links to different subreddits and cross talk and deletions that make everything really hard to follow.

Edit: I also have no idea what the timeframe is because some stuff says a year ago, some stuff says this weekend, and it's all very confusing. Maybe just the chat logs got out recently? Again, no clue.
 
Looked into the situation and yeah, what you wrote seems about it. The dick pic happened last year and the current drama is over the modmail leaks that caused Mike to ban 9 mods on the subreddit, a bunch of users, and delete a ton of threads/posts.

Mike apparently aggressively censors stuff when something embarrassing comes up and offers little feedback to anyone about it.

With this and the drunk stream removal amongst other traits Mike exhibits (the dark rings around his eyes, he 'always' has a beverage nearby, his sometimes really erratic behavior on screen), I'm starting to think he may be an actual alcoholic, either in denial or really struggling.
 

GAMEPROFF

Banned
James should fire him.
But sadly, Mike seems to be the IT guy and I have a feeling that James cant even find the upload button without him.
 

shanafan

Member
I think Mike is probably the main editor for Cinemassacre, and can do the bulk of the work since James has other responsibilities. I believe Ryan handles the website duties.

And, thanks for clarifying the situation. There are quite a few non-official Cinemassacre subreddits, and thanks for scoping them for more details.

I wonder what the background story on the Inspector Gadget video was?
 

Lothar

Banned
He seriously posted his dick? My god. Why.

If it's as big as they say, and I guess it must be or else he wouldn't have posted it, I'd be posting it too. :)

Mike apparently aggressively censors stuff when something embarrassing comes up and offers little feedback to anyone about it.

I don't have any issue with this. I don't see why he should be forced to endure people talking about embarrassing videos that he deleted on his official forum.

The complaining on the non-official reddits sounds about the same as it does when people are talking about censorship and bans here.

I mean look at this post from Reddit.
"What is this the Mike safe space? He fucked up, the mods were all gonna lie about it too, but now that it's out he doesn't want anyone to hurt his lil feeling? Grow up man, you do something stupid like post your dick online and this is what happens. Take some responsibility and man up, respond to a few insults and laugh it off like the joke it is."
 
If it's as big as they say, and I guess it must be or else he wouldn't have posted it, I'd be posting it too. :)

Part of the drama is that the picture he posted (yes, I saw it), he posted it next to a ruler but at a distance so perspective makes it look 10", but in reality it's closer to average. This matters because supposedly the thread he posted it in wasn't deleted until someone called him out on it.

I don't have any issue with this. I don't see why he should be forced to endure people talking about embarrassing videos that he deleted on his official forum.

The complaining on the non-official reddits sounds about the same as it does when people are talking about censorship and bans here.

I mean look at this post from Reddit.
"What is this the Mike safe space? He fucked up, the mods were all gonna lie about it too, but now that it's out he doesn't want anyone to hurt his lil feeling? Grow up man, you do something stupid like post your dick online and this is what happens. Take some responsibility and man up, respond to a few insults and laugh it off like the joke it is."

Mike obviously has a lot of pride, or at least shame. I mostly agree with you here, but apparently a lot of this comes from Mike having full control of the subreddit without any communication with the moderators and they got tired of having to always pick up the pieces with no support. It's not really right that they air all this dirty laundry, but it's hard to argue that Mike wasn't sort of asking for trouble (something that ironically the modmails try to warn multiple times). Same thing with the embarrassing videos. The more he fights it, the more it's in the public mindshare.

Just sort of out of touch, like usual.
 

shanafan

Member
Mike posted an explanation -

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCinemassacre/comments/6e5hmg/shedding_some_light/

Recently some people have been wondering my feelings on the Minecraft video and other things so I thought I should say something. I am guesing part of people's frustrations comes from a lack of answers. And I can understand that. So I'll do what I can to clear up some things.

-The Minecraft video - Many years back James and I did a video poking fun at a DVD that was released where Inspector Gadget was the host of a Mario DVD. People seemed to really enjoy the video and think it was funny. So sometime later, I made a video with Gadget. At the time, Minecraft was all you would see on YouTube. I don't know anything about Minecraft myself, and I knew that. So the idea was Gadget would talk about the game. But Gadget of course is dumb himself, so he just said dumb stuff. It was a video made very quickly, and admittedly, it was not very good. Anyway, it was one of a ton of videos I was making at the time, and yeah, that one was a stinker. Can't win em all. Anyway, fans weren't happy with the video and I wasn't happy with the video. So since nobody was happy there, I took it down. Then soon after, people started re-uploading it. I figured it was my video, and I didn't really want it out there. So I took the re-uploads down. I can see now, in retrospect, I shouldn't have and it doesn't matter. Recently some people have gone on to make music-parodies of the video and some of them are actually pretty well done. There is even one where they totally erased Gadget from the video and it's just me. It's a really weird thing to witness. Anyway, maybe that's what it took. A well done parody to make me see I was in the wrong there. So, I'm over it. If people want to rewatch that terrible video or make parodies of it. More power to them. Have fun!

-Bootsy - This is something that really is just between him and I and I don't think it's everyones business frankly. But what I will say is that I don't have a problem with him, I just decided to move on. It was never my intention for us to do lets play videos together until the end of time. At some point shows end. The videos we recorded were fun and we had a good run, but I got tired of it. He's a great gamer and a great musician. I wish him well with that.

-Modmail - Modmail is meant to be kept from public view because we discuss many things behind the scenes that aren't intended for everyone. It came to our attention that a few of the mods here were actually leaking private conversations, so they were removed as mods. Yes we've been trying to strongarm posts with a lot of the trashtalk. Some of the memes about the Minecraft video are funny. But others are made to be harassing. I think we can agree it's in the boards best interest not to post the ”Mike's dong" stuff. Zooming in on bulges or any such extremely off-topic stuff like that :p We're all adults, we can laugh at ourselves, but harassing comments and spam is what the mods have had to delete a lot these past months. I've personally handed out several temp bans and perma bans once people proved they couldn't follow obvious rules. I have sometimes handed out bans prematurely or mistakenly and in those instances, I am sorry. I'm not as well versed in Reddit as others and have made some foolish mistakes. We're going to try to keep the peace here and keep it about Cinemassacre stuff, if a removal reason isn't given, please ask and I will see why it was removed for or discuss with the mod responsible about removing it asap.

Overall, I am just trying to create videos that people can enjoy. All of this stuff is really distracting more than anything while trying to produce content. When people constantly bring up negativity and hijack the conversation to harass, it does a disservice not just to you, but to the community that has to keep hearing about it.

As always, thanks for watching -Mike

Wow, he basically called out that he got tired working with Bootsy.
 

dickroach

Member
What happened with Bootsy?

" This is something that really is just between him and I and I don't think it's everyones business frankly. But what I will say is that I don't have a problem with him, I just decided to move on."

totally reasonable thing to say, but I still think Mike was just mad that Bootsy was better than him at NES games :\
 
Just going to throw this out there, I have always disliked Mike and his attitude.

I love James, he's talented , thoughtful, and has always put a smile on my face. Mike has always dragged him down. He's rude, abrasive, and has terrible ideas about games and the industry. He's like an ugly blemish on the cinemassacre scene. I know they've been friends for a long time but it really sucked when I started seeing Mike pop up more often.

Bootsy seemed like a cool dude though.
 

Savitar

Member
He seriously posted his dick? My god. Why.

The best thing about that?

Someone pointed out he merely held it up to the camera to make it look bigger than it was.

But yeah from all the stuff said above ( read about it all last night myself) and wow the guy is a major asshole, sadly he seems to be pretty ingrained into the site and not sure if James could get rid of him even if shit between them happened.

One person surmised that Bootsy got the can because he was more popular than Mike, who wants to get some of that fame that James has.

I believe it.
 

Lothar

Banned
But yeah from all the stuff said above ( read about it all last night myself) and wow the guy is a major asshole

Based on what? Nothing above says he's an asshole. It says he's dealing with massive assholes. I can't believe he bothered to explain himself to people who complain that he won't let them talk about his dick constantly. He's nicer than I am.
 
A lot of people have hated Mike over the years. They saw him as a friend coasting on someone else's popularity, despite not knowing how much work Mike was putting in behind the scenes the entire time. Honestly, one of the real big things that bothered me in the movie was that James' friend behind the scenes wasn't Mike but someone else. Then, there were the skits that some people hated and others found amusing. Just polarizing stuff. So, Mike went away and stopped appearing in AVGN episodes and started doing other stuff. Then, with James doing very little (and varying quality) AVGN episodes, they started doing the Monday show, and other shows, and the problem became again that Mike was too much in front of the camera.

That's even before you get to Mike hanging out and bringing on to the shows MRA and GamerGate assholes, posting his penis to a board where minors may or may not post or read, and being very vindictive to anyone he didn't like on said board (or perhaps in life considering the delisting of Bootsy videos). So, the Mike stuff goes back a while even if you don't count his actions of the last two years or so.

Honestly, it's a mess and has been for a little bit now. I still subscribed to this thread to know when new videos are posted, but I don't watch stuff like I used to primarily because of Mike and his company. Add to that the infrequency and varying quality in AVGN in recent time and the community is set to be a powder keg that apparently went off in the last week. Hell, look back at the Ghostbuster controversy, the stupid "I refuse" video that, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt" James stumbled into, and how a lot of the community became angry and toxic and defensive.

It's a mess, and considering this is just some silly internet show, it's very easy and practical to just throw your hands up and say "not for me anymore". But, I know some people have a really hard time letting things go when things go south, and that's why Moriarty has a sadly successful Patreon campaign.
 
I've never really liked Mike. He's just too much. The avgn episodes that have him in are really the only ones I never rewatch. I dunno, I respect how much he does for cinnemassacre but I still find zero enjoyment watching him. The only time I've liked him was in the Urkel episode of board James.
 
I've never really liked Mike. He's just too much. The avgn episodes that have him in are really the only ones I never rewatch. I dunno, I respect how much he does for cinnemassacre but I still find zero enjoyment watching him. The only time I've liked him was in the Urkel episode of board James.

Mike is okay when it's mostly James writing him like in the board james episodes or when he played bugs fucking bunny. Mike as mike is a prick
 

Lothar

Banned
Poor Mike must just have one of those faces that people don't like. Because all the complaints about him are either he's on screen too much, baseless assumptions about his relationship with Bootsy, or that he doesn't let people troll Reddit.
 

GAMEPROFF

Banned
Poor Mike must just have one of those faces that people don't like. Because all the complaints about him are either he's on screen too much, baseless assumptions about his relationship with Bootsy, or that he doesn't let people troll Reddit.
Or that he posts his dick
 

dickroach

Member
I will take one Bootsy video over a hundred Mike videos.

same. but the channel is 90% Mike videos now. i unsubbed a little bit ago, after I clicked on a James & Mike video and Ryan was there as well.
Bootsy shoulda started his own channel. he'd have 100k subs easily
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
The Bootsy thing was just weird because of how it all ended. But you get the impression that James is mostly just making videos on his own so everything else, including managing the channel, is up to Mike.
 

Bebop

Member
I much prefer the Mike & Bootsy videos than the ones with Ryan.
Anyway I think Bootsy is pretty busy with song making now.
 
I just don't concern myself with all this behind-the-scenes nonsense. I watch the videos I want to watch, skip the ones I don't, and what Mike does on the site or reddit or whatever is inconsequential to that. I don't pay attention to it and I don't give a shit. It certainly wouldn't affect my enjoyment of James' videos or cause me to unsubscribe or whatever.

I'm the same way when it comes to any art, really. If a particular singer, film producer, game dev, etc. is an asshole in RL, that has no bearing on whether I can enjoy what they produce. I frankly don't care what they are like or what their opinions are, as long as I enjoy their song/movie/game.
 
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