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Speaking as someone who is not a content creator by any means, but is an oldest daughter with two younger brothers, Justin's quote breaks my heart. To think that their fame has reached such heights that they can't just be a normal family anymore because their family is now a company and a brand is just so sad to me.
It makes me think of Michael from The Godfather, who stopped caring about the family and tried to be all business and it just left him a lonely bitter old man.
I mean, it's only with respect to the business. I'm sure they play games offline and stuff and it's not an issue in those contexts.
Knowing nothing about these guys or DND really it is sad-kind of makes my desire t be famous when I was younger has dissapated.
He didn't say he wasn't his big brother anymore. He said he couldn't *just* be his brother "and tell him to keep his chin up". They're still brothers. They're also business associates. When people play more than one role in each others' lives, they have to properly play all of those roles. Neglecting to play one of them because it's uncomfortable is just that: neglect. Talking to your adult brother about the adult business you run together does not negate your relationship as brothers - neglecting to do so would make you a bad business associate and also kind of a bad brother. This isn't sad. This is adulthood.
@@Vengedyr Okay capitalist
It's a good thing my best friend Sarah warned me about parasocial relationships.
Why no replys?
@@spiritcat7202yeah
Damn, and I saw this comment at the same time she was talking about the dangers of Parasocial Relationships. Thank God Soctopus is a G like that, that’s just how tight we are!
@@KokuroSameugh ur such a fake friend u can’t even spell socktopus’ name correctly. Unlike me, their REAL best friend
@@GreatBookerWow, I’m so glad my close friend GreatBooker corrected me and me specifically on how to spell Socktopus’ name! Isn’t my best friend awesome :D?
I feel like half the comments are “OMG I love the McElroys, I didn’t know people turned on them! What happened?” And the other half are “lmao I don’t know who these people are, I’m just here to watch the Canadian”
I like people with long brain. I have long amount of disl*kes btw. Why? Maybe people with short brain disl*ke because jealous of my long amount of subscr*bers. Please have long brain, dear 2ol
@@AxxLAfriku oh hey you’re here too
I’m just here to watch the Canadian.
Yeah I’m the latter
basically. I had nothing to watch and then this comes up and I'm very happy
I love the “my very trans co-writer who is trans…” part because it sounds like “The poison for kuzco the poison chosen specially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco’s poison. That poison?” 😂
YOU JUST MADE ME REMEMBER THE BEST MOMENT IN ANY ANIMATED MOVIE
You find it weird how Kuzco was named after the Incan capital? It would be like an English king called Londun
@@hilotakenaka london tipton
@@hilotakenaka hi! originally he was named “Manco Capac” after the first lord of cuzco in the story of the incan empire. they changed it bc manco meant something inappropriate in other countries. tried to make it “cusco” as a direct calling to the incan city (homage to the origin of the movie, which was meant to be based on incan myth and history), then later changed spelling to kuzco!!
@@jo3473 This is awesome! Though idk if I'd want him called Manco Capac anyway, as that was the guy who started the Inca Empire. Not a lot of time for poolside resort living...
I'm mostly used to people turning on e-celebs because they turned out to be secret klansmen, terf Karen's, or rapists. Hearing the McElroys are being mildly iffy businessmen or kind of pretentious is honestly a nice change of pace.
It also has a feeling of, ....oh......thats it
Yeah while I totally understand criticism of certain things, I was left thinking that this is more the result of how you frame yourself. Trying your best to show yourself to be the wholesome, trustworthy, woke and progressive fellas, it means people will be so much more aware when you screw it up. Screw ups that would be criticized but quickly forgotten are much bigger deals. Sure, there are things that are worth critique, but it's all so much bigger and grander than it would have been if they didn't encourage such a parasocial fanbase.
They aren't iffy, she is. They literally called the Sacagawea dollar "savage cents". She sounds like a fan who didn't want to reck them
“Savage cents”, that’s funny. Don’t be an uptight Karin.
@@brandongolden7867 I'm assuming you arent native and havent, for example, been ridiculed for your culture/customs? havent been repeatedly harassed by white cops because you dont have a tribe card? because your grandfather was stolen from his tribe to be raised by christians which was done to breed/train the "savagery" out of native people? and now your tribe doesnt even have a council? Eventually had to move away from your family to get away from racist small town cops and finally try to build a life? do you have to defend companies like amazon because its one of the only places you can get a job without being called a "lazy plains N-slur" to your face at work by people doing half the rate that you are? no BRANDON i dont think its funny. if you have to alienate a group of people for your joke, you arent funny.
"why isnt this character named Taco a Mexican??" *I'm at my fucking limit.*
did she even mention the drama around how his sister was initially named chalupa, lol. (i'm only halfway thru the video)
@@luiysia iirc that was a fan theory they shot down in one of their behind the scenes episodes and it was either a complete coincidence or it wasn't a name they considered past a passing idea.
@@boopsnoot3142 I’m pretty sure it was going to be her name, but then the fandom decided taako and lup were Latino, and Griffin didn’t want a pair of Latino characters literally named “taco and chalupa”
It was more the white person inventing tacos thing.
@@Huntracony white person? isnt taako an elf?
Main take away from this video: I'm glad I've always experienced McElroy Brother content in a vacuum by myself and never got involved in the fandom lol.
fandoms: not even once (i mean kidding, but also fanspaces can get real weird and sometimes it's best to take a look around the room, realize it is a Bad Vibe and take your leave)
Same! I didn’t even know all this was going on because I never engaged in fandom as far the the McElroy’s were concerned. I don’t even follow them in Twitter as I don’t have an account.
This a thousand times.
Same I literally didn't know they were in a controversy and only clicked this video to see what was going on lol
MOOD
If podcasts are like vibing with friends, listening to a video essay is like listening to your adhd friend infodump to you about something they’re hyperfixating on a certain topic and you just listen to them and chill while you do something else
You... you get it
"Dang man, sounds intense. You wanna go get some food?"
I feel called out
This makes me feel bad about my infodumps Like it's something the other person just has to sit through but doesn't care at all
@@steinistein8611 Hey! Fellow ADHDer here! There's nothing wrong with info-dumping when you are down a rabbit-hole haha. It is important for us to remember that we can get swept up in stuff, so we have to build that comfort into your relationships where you get used to checking in if people have time or the spoons for your topic, and by showing people it's ok to shut you down without judgement if they don't. Your fascinated brain absolutely can do what you are worried about, but there are ways to protect against it being a problem for others without giving up the best parts of the wonder hyper fixating can bring :) No need to feel bad, we are all constantly figuring it out 💜
I once attended a TAZ live show where the brothers prefaced right off the bat that they wouldn’t be able to meet and greet after the show because of travel and having very young children. The crowd responded in a loudly disappointed way that made the brothers clearly uncomfortable, to the point that Griffin had to say something in their defense and I felt pretty embarrassed to be lumped in with a crowd that would try to make them feel bad for having families. (I also don’t know how to describe it the crowds response wasn’t just an “aww” but also not a full “boo” though I think I remember a few folks boo-ing)
God forbid these guys wanna be present and genuine fathers, but I get it, nobody in a fandom understands what having one of those is like. (/j. I also do not have a father, so for anyone reading this who wants to screech, go false-woke somewhere else. ♡)
it really freaked me out how people infantilized these guys, they're grown men with families and seeing teenagers call them "uwu cinnamon buns" was super SUPER fuckin weird. It's not like they were put on a pedestal, it's more like young fans... forgot??? that they were adult men and not their pocket pets.
that's just awful, what sucky fans (the ones that acted like that)
If their children are a concern, why did they do a liveshow tour? Don't they at least have a manager? That's something you tell people before a show or have your manager announce before you come out to avoid this. You'd have to be around for awhile to notice this, but they will use anything as an excuse to put forward less effort. They are entitled to it, but over time people care about them less and less. So their lack of effort is coming full circle.
I wouldn't blame them if "we have families" was just a tactful way of saying "we actually just don't want to hang out with you".
i think part of the reason BDG’s “you’re not my friend and you have no say over what i do with my body” got some backlash is because people found him through the mcelroys, and his explicit setting of boundaries was kind of a shock to some fans who were used to griffin your dm and best friend. and i know griffin was being somewhat facetious there, but the impact was still people seeing him and his brothers as friends
wait people actually got upset at BDG for that??? i had no clue wtf
When did he say that?
@@mayac1105 the beginning of season 2 of Unravelled (I think it was the -Mortal Kombat- episode) Edit: I have been informed it's the Dark Souls one
@@gremloid Yeah, people freaked out at him, it was kind of awful.
I'm surprised. I'm a big fan of his and I was more excited that he was setting hard boundaries with his audience.
News to me: - that the internet has "turned" against the McElroys - that there was a peak of mcelroy and we are past it
im sitting here like huh????
Yeah, no kidding. course, I just got into 'em (through Monster Factory and my wife making me listen to the Mango Cult bit) 2 years ago or so. Bit late to the party but better late than never. Not a huge D&D person, so haven't checked out TAZ. What she describes sounds more like the fanbase morphing along with the general decline of society as a whole. How is that on the bros?
I am someone who has only involuntarily experienced Peak-TAZ second-hand via Tumblr posts (before blacklisting it), this is news to me too.
Okay i just had an audible sigh of relief
i love the mcelroys 🥺🥺🥺
Imagine saving up money at your dead end minimum wage job to go see your favorite podcasters live and the show is full of other fans trying to show they are the main character
Imagine it? I’ve lived it!
I can think of it similar to my wife and I getting to see some of our favorite voice actors…and 90% of the questions are “How can I become a V.A.?” or “I have some demos you can check out”
Imagine saving up money at your dead end minimum wage job to go see your favorite podcasters live
"Everybody who's dead shut up!" - me, when I drunkenly stumble into the cemetery at 3am
HAAAAAHAHAHA most underrated comment
POV: Your wine aunt has to babysit you for the day and she rants to you the entire time.
Nonono, Sarah is the coffee aunt, Lindsay is the wine aunt.
POV: your coffee aunt is probably younger than you are
@@Ultimus31 Natalie is your hard liquor aunt
Did any of you get the message about parasocial relationships with content creators?
@@jonathanlgill 100% agree
I feel like every discussion of parasocial relationships needs to be accompanied by the clip of BDG saying "I'm not your friend and you have no say over what I do with my body"
bdg saying that was the first step in a very tough but beneficial journey i took in distancing myself from content creators and developing more healthy (for myself) parasocial relationships. i think about that moment ALL the time
"I, uh... I don't love my fans. I have to be... I don't. You don't want that. You don't want that desperate, sort of cloying thing from an entertainer. "My fans, oh, they stick with me through everything, through thick and thin." Do not stick with me through thick. If I stop entertaining you, throw me to the curb. You wouldn't stick with your mechanic if he stopped fixing your car. I'm in a service industry. I'm just overpaid, okay? I feel a lot of artists, pop artists especially, sort of infringe upon responsibilities that just aren't theirs, in terms of their audience, maintaining their audience at an emotional level. Some of you might be sad, and going through things. I feel for that, life is tough. I'm not gonna fix that with a song." - Bo Burnham
Honestly BDG doing that was one of the bravest and most intelligent things I've ever seen a KZhead creator make.
Where did brian david gilbert said that?
@@strangeclaims in his unraveled dark souls video about 20 seconds in
48:06 okay but the bisexual character falling for the first female person she meets has me feeling _very_ represented
Same, tbh
it's almost like characters and their sexualities can cover a wide range of behaviors that hit familiar to some people but not others!
@@professorhazardgooooo figure😅
"It must be nice to be on a podcast where it isn't obvious who the least popular host is" - Travis McElroy, Death Blart 2021
Oh god that’s rough. I do feel bad for Travis, that kinda shit can really mess you up and I’ve only ever dealt with it in like…small friend groups
I can’t imagine what that feels like. I wish people would understand that the person you are talking about is a real person
I guess middle child syndrome still exists to that extent. Shame, I actually kinda prefer Trav to the other two most the time.
@@SnowyJop you shouldnt feel bad for him. he sucks
Thats so rough and relatable. 😭 When I first started listening to MBMBAM, I found him a little annoying, but he quickly became my favorite. Now, midweek when I don’t have a new podcast to listen to involving him, I find myself specifically wanting to hear Travis. ❤️
The sheer whiplash from "let's talk about the McElroy brand" cutting to "'Among Us' is a game--" broke my neck.
Literally I'd never heard the Among Us thing before so I was so confused for a moment haha
it was a bit suspicous, like [i am not actually going to make this joke]
We live in hell and the devil is sus
Was this a dead body or an emergency meeting?
amogus
me: i know almost nothing about these men let’s see what she has to say Sarah: Lin Manuel Miranda snuck two McElroyisms into Hamilton She Strikes Me Right Between My Ribs
I have never watched an episode of this podcast and have little to no idea who these people are or what they do but Sarah really pulled me in with that one what a wild ride
see, this is in contrast to my "i love these men and have consumed hundreds of hours of their content, and literally know nothing about this... I also saw BDG in the comments-love him too. I'm fucking terrified of what's to come in this video
+
Same, even the "Oh they're the dudes behind Polygon" blind-sided me.
+
As a Mexican I can confirm, most Mexicans dont give a fuck if a character named taco is Mexican or not. Sidenote: Tacos were not a Mexican invention, its one of those foods múltiple cultures figure out on their own.
What makes it better is that they never made Taco Mexican, the fans did. Then got mad at the McElroys for their own projected racism. Fandoms are something else
Same, as a Mexican I would find it more offensive that people wanted Taco to be Mexican if anything. Like why should Taco be Mexican? Because his name is Taco? THAT'S racist.
@@johngun7418 my comment was redundant, 26CLT and john gun said it better
@@Rynewulf What's more stupid about that is Justin literally said in the introduction episode that Taako was white. He did it in a joke, granted, but the point still stands.
tacos, much like dumplings and empanadas, are a product of convergent evolution
As a regular listener of a lot of McElroy content, I think something that a lot of people often forget is that humans aren’t inherently good or inherently bad. And I feel that the fan base always tries to hold the brothers to this unreachable level of goodness when at the end of the day, they’re just people. Like, being disappointed that the first TAZ comic didn’t have enough representation, but then when they tried to add under-represented characters, people still found problems with all of them, it seems. I just imagine it’s exhausting to try to jump through all these hoops to please people.
hehe "hoops". like Hoops. haha. heeehehehehe. idk why I'm cracking myself up over this (i agree with everything you're saying. but my brain is very focused on this thing)
It’s actually insane how picky the fan base was. The first time I checked their Twitters all I saw was them apologizing for every innocent sentence they’d ever said because it enraged someone.
@@dennis_duran I remember when I first started listening to TAZ I went onto their social media once and there was an apology for like...naming a character "Taako" (which sounds like "taco") and then not making that character canonically Mexican because people had complained about not having the "taco" character be Mexican.......like HUH????! Edit: Oh I'm an idiot. Apparently that's been addressed already. But I remember very vividly at the time thinking "I really like these guys' content! But these 'apologies' etc. make me think I should NOT engage with their fans, because they sound crazy, and I hope the creators don't lean too much into these weirdos' opinions!" And apparently, according to Sarah and a bunch of these comments, this thought was a good one. Neat.
@@dennis_duran honestly I think that is why people just need to stop apologizing. It's never enough, anyway. If people get mad because of "under representation" or something, they're not gonna drop it because you apologized. In fact, a lot of times all it does is bring more heat onto the topic. And then it sets the precedent that you bow to these people, so more and more are going to come after you for equally stupid shit so that they can be acknowledged. At this point, creators need to just stop apologizing for shit like that, it's stupid anyway.
Honestly, I'm not that sympathetic to them when it comes to this. They were the ones who built and encouraged that type of fanbase in the first place.
Admittedly, I began watching this video in bad faith. I'm a massive fan of the McElroys who can say honestly that their content, as well as the sense of community that comes with it, has pushed me through some of the darkest times in my life, and I was worried you would attack this interest fundamentally. Thus, I was caught a bit off-guard when you recognized and addressed this concern. I appreciate well-structured criticism of the works we love, and I'm glad I was able to sit through this and understand the perspectives you gave in this video despite my biases going in. TAZ Balance was my gateway drug into the McElboy canon, and until now, I've been rather reluctant to reflect on its many flaws, representationally or otherwise. Even the works we love are not devoid of flaws, and what they can accomplish for us is separate from their intent(s) as content. This isn't some dramatic "thank you for helping me see the light" post, just a legitimate response to your essay as way of thanks for tweaking the way I appreciate content going forward. Once again, my personal consequence was not your intent, but appreciated nonetheless. Also any future readers please rate below how pretentious this looks, deuces ✌
This is always a super great thing to hear! I'm both glad you still get a lot of enjoyment out of their content (honestly, so do I- and I *am* actually excited to pick up on the next TAZ season once gameplay starts) and that you were able to enjoy the video. Thanks so much :)
Idk about pretentious - maybe a little? Mostly you just seem a little awkward, but like you had an unexpected positive experience that changed who you are just a little bit, and wanted to say thank you. We dont always get to thank the people who affect us, so may as well when you feel good about what you've gotten to think about and know where those ideas were introduced, even if they're not utterly life changing.
"It is both possible - and even nessescary - to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects." - Anita Sarkeesian
You weren't pretentious. You are just trying to put into words your feelings in a constructive way as a statement of how the video impacted you and why you appreciated the positive criticism. Or maybe I am also pretentious. Either way works.
Well given constructive type critique is a form of affection imho. So being able to see something (or someones) flaws and not deny or obfuscate them just shows a more true love to me. I think you just figured that out and it's awesome to see in the wild.
i’ve been a huge fan of the mcelroys for years, but the fandom has always made me SO uncomfortable with the whole “sweet soft boys” thing. it feels super weird to infantilize grown men like that. it also just feels way too over-familiar of a way to speak about someone you don’t know, and almost creepy.
i thought the soft boy thing was ironic, "gremlins" would be a more appropriate fan label
@@iheartjackieyes That's always a more appropriate name for fan groups.
As someone who likes Kpop but refuses to engage in the fan(stan?)doms, it is horribly familiar...
There's a loooot of projecting in fandom to fulfill some want or need. If you feel like you need a precious smol baybee who you would die to protect, so-and-so becomes the precious smol baybee.
Tbh as someone only vaguely aware of the McElroys before now I always got bad toxic positivity vibes from what little I’d seen of them (or their fanbase at least). Alarm bells we’re going off for me when Sarah talked about the no bummers rule
So, the real funny thing to me about the Taako-is-a-racist-name thing is that Taco is actually a legit, fairly common boys' name in the Netherlands. (I had a teacher named Taco.) If only the boys had known this, they could've just claimed that Taako is Dutch, lmao. I know this probably wouldn't actually have helped, but I would've loved it anyway.
Sssh, all words are English on the Internet.
It is? I’ve never heard it and I’m from the Netherlands.
@@mevrouwasshat4041 Me neither, who pulled that out of their ass.
@@mevrouwasshat4041 it's a regional dialect.
I feel silly about it but when I heard about TAZ first, I genuinely thought it was Tako like the word for octopus in Japanese, or takoyaki
as a guy in a wheelchair, whenever i meet someone i flash a quirky side smile, press my pointer fingers together, tilt my head and ask “y-y-y-y-your prob-b-b-b-b-b-b-bably w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-wondering about the wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wheelchair, huh?” my eyes then proceed to roll back in my head as i recite the wikipedia entry about my genetic condition and it’s history in the classic british man text to speech voice for the next hour and a half.
ooh, CIDP sufferer here! Came to tell ya how relatable this comment is 😅 especially the part where your eyes roll back as you describe your malady for an uncomfortable amount of time!😂
Is it weird that I find "making an ass of yourself sometimes" and "problematic attempts at including minorities" to be refreshingly mundane reasons for fans to turn on creators? Have I set the bar too low because of how many celebrities turned out to be child groomers or espoused actual Nazi ideology? Not to say that the other stuff doesn't deserve criticism and improvement, because they very much do, but there's a level of moral decay I've come to expect from celebrities that just hasn't been reached here, and I'm oddly relieved?
This is an excellent way of putting it.
You know what, that’s a really optimistic spin on this all. I was mostly just darkly reflecting on the way people will-despite their claims to the contrary-do their level best to protect random cishet white men on the internet for NO reason, which I am about sick of. But you’re right! They got justified criticism that was widely acknowledged by people within and outside the fanbase. Certainly a step forward.
Says a lot more about the people griping than the people being griped about. As in: please, stop being fans, I never, ever want to meet you in real life.
same? I always heard of them but never knew much about them, so when i saw this video and its title i was waiting for a big fan grooming scandal or something
This is a really good comment and definitely puts this entire thing into perspective
Wait, people were arguing that because a character was named Taco they HAD to be Mexican? Really? Did they not see how that would be even MORE racist?
Reeks of whitesplaining
It's like when people complained that a dark skinned character in my hero academia should be voiced by a black actress. She was. And when they found out, they told her she should sound "more black".
@@user-vl8ws4wd7o Reeks of being dumb.
@@swguygardner huge yikes
Taako, it was in a fantasy world where the Taco was named after him. So if he -invented- the Taco, you would have a white -man- elf -inventing- discovering the Taco. Partially Redacted because I barely remember the actual reason, but people below have already corrected me, so read their explanations
As of 2023 I believe the McElroy brothers are more healthy people with a more healthy fandom.
Agreed. Them being less attractive to the remaining "fans" who were interested in the occasional shittiness from their earlier days isn't a bad thing.
As someone who binge listened to all of TAZ in 2021 without really looking up fandom content for a more genuine listening experience, the start of the bingus sequence made me think I'd slipped into an alternate reality for a couple of minutes
Girl same, I have listened to all of TAZ but never really look up fan content and I was like wtf have I lost my mind I don't remember Bingus who is Bingus??
"I'm not gonna name them because they aren't paying me" is how we should all treat brands imo
Justin specifically said that about food delivery services while in the middle of a Munch Squad where he read a Pepsi press release in its entirety. Seemed kind of ironic
Shame but don't name. I can see it.
@Dani Masterson Absolutely, but if you've got a platform with a lot of viewership you've also got to consider whether your efforts to specifically shame a particular brand just amount to free advertising. Plenty of attempted boycotts and the like for all sorts of issues completely backfire. The most obvious example that springs to mind is PETA (of course) giving families in Flint conditional clean water.
Gimme that coin or get no mention at all, food box service and/or mattress retailer!
@@SarahZ how about the electric toothbrush company? XD
"People auditioning to be the 4th McElroy Brother" is way too generous. Questions during live shows felt like kindergarteners who don't know how to ask questions and instead want to overshare at the expense of the audience.
"Hi, this is my chance to be famous, so I'm going to drop all my social media deets first so agents can find me when all this is done."
Ughghgh yesssss. The back half of all the live shows is almost unlistenable
WHAT. Can I please have examples of this
PLEASE MAKE A COMPILATION VIDEO OF THIS I LOVE CONVENTION CRINGE VIDEOS
@@toppersundquist that doesn’t happen, the audience is banned from self-promotion at the risk of being heckled and getting edited out of the show. Tell me you don’t listen without TELLING me
A long time ago I had a realisation that I pretty much never want to go to a live recording of any podcast I listen to, not because I don't want to see my favourite creators live, but because I actually don't want to be around that many of their fans. This realisation came after listening to a MBMBaM episode.
There’s lots of good ones to go to where the fans are okay!
Yeah... the only ones I ever really want to go to live performances of are fiction podcasts, because those fandoms tend to be a lot more chill
@@yourlocaltheatrekid900do you have any fiction podcast recs?
@@watermelonlolipop oooh yes. The Magnus Archives is my personal favorite. I’ll put a list of some of my favs, but I recommend looking up content warnings for them - The Magnus Archives - Malevolent - The Penumbra Podcast (Juno Steel arc) - Fawkes and Stallion - Wolf 359
Fandoms take unwarranted ownership of the content they consume. That's why you get people angry at the comic artist of the TAZ show to the point they sent the poor girl death threats. If anything I think the brothers have sometimes been too apologetic for things they really don't need to feel guilty about.
God, learning about the Bingus phenomenon, I'm suddenly hoping Sarah dusts off her Tumblr historian credentials and covers the Goncharov phenomenon someday.
I love that movie!
Now we have The Borzoi phenomenon
@@aliceviens7 didntIdoitforyou
I have no clue who/what that is but I'm certainly intrigued
Sweet mother of unicorns, it even has a full on google card, with release date, poster, actors, everything. Damn, I love the internet XD
to anyone who's capital-w Worried they're gonna find out something they dont like in this video: its mostly an overview about how the fandom of the mcelroys has shrunk significantly due to - them setting themselves up to have a fandom turn on them due to the parasocial nature of alot of their content (not necessarily bad in itself) - serious flaws in taz graduation (which, even as ppl who liked parts of grad, i agree its still bad) from both a "bad storytelling" perspective & a "harmful tropes" perspective - other stuff some of them (mostly travis) have done on social media, which is kinda Yikes but not like "this person is actively evil" (travis being paternalistic on a livestream & performatively doing the "no homo but this man is attractive" on twitter (but then admitting he was doing it to get attention & apologizing for it & saying he'll change his behavior)) if you just listen to the mcelroys casually & arent someone who views them as The Best Thing or engages with The Fandom™, you'll probably come away feeling basically the same, just more aware of the negative aspects of stuff they've made. its levelheaded criticism. (also, maybe you will decide you dont want to give any attention to them. thats fine too. the point is its not an unambiguously awful jk rowling type situation) i guess if you are extremely invested in the mcelroys being Good Good Boys who've Done Nothing Wrong you may dislike it or feel upset, but if thats the case, i would encourage you to rethink how you conceptualize media made by internet content creators who arent your friends.
Oh thank you for this, the only content from them I've consumed was TAZ Balance and some of their bits here and there, but Balance is still one of my favorite pieces of media so i was really concerned to see this video. I'm glad it's not a JK Rowling situation
@@theartofnina Same here
Thanks for the thoughtful breakdown!
This is so, so valuable. Two hours is a long time to wait to know if you’ve been giving your time and attention to someone who’s Fucking Evil or just flawed like everyone else. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I wanted to make sure they weren't secretly horrible people, but I was not ready to commit 2 hrs of my life to watching this video.
so was anyone gonna tell me the mcelroys knew lin-manuel miranda and that he put references to their speech into hamilton or was i supposed to learn that in the sarah zed feature film myself
They did collabs multiple times together lol
FR
WHAT
They have had him on as a guest and they do mention it fairly frequently, especially during the Hamilton years! Didn't know about the lyrics though
When Murder on the Rockport Limited released and they did a live reading Lin Manuel Miranda voiced Angus
I feel like all the campaigns after the first forgot a fundamental thing all dnd nerds know: If your campaign starts as Lord of the Rings, it quickly devolves into Monty Python, or else everyone gets bored. But when you start out at Monty Python? Those are the campaigns that end up getting the heartfelt speeches and the character deaths that make the whole table cry.
Oh yeah. And the same goes for characters btw! Make a straight laced lawful good gruff guy with a tragic backstory? Gonna be a part of eeeeevery joke in the campaign. Make a literal clown that juggles knifes with the returning enchantment as a weapon? He's gonna make players cry irl. EVERY TIME. Latest campaign of PF2E I had was a great example. One of the characters was based on Godrick the Motherloving Grafted (from Elden Ring) and played up to maximum memeing. Screaming about his ancestors witnessing him, being completely demented, egotistical, a barbarian (obvs), etc. Halfway through the campaign every other player and me just wanted to give that poor, broken man a hug... Another far more loosely based on Melina, was an ashes oracle, played up as a complete piromaniac whose every other sentence was a pun and who insisted on screaming "god is great" whenever she intentionally triggeted her curse. (Note: PF2E's oracles have curses where if they do certain powerful acts the game balances by triggering it. The Ashes Oracles' makes both herself and everything/one around her take a LOT of added damage from fire spells.) (Note 2: "Ackbar" means "Great" in arabic... YEAH) Sure enough first time she went and did a suicide bomb knowing her character would die I had to give everyone a 10 minute break 'cause I was literally crying. There ain't nothing more tragic than a meme PC. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Sarah Z: The first episode is two hours long and is dedicated mostly to introducing the characters. Me, a DM and a player: What? Why's that so bad? Sarah Z: Not the player characters. Travis' non-playable characters. Me: Oh. Oh. Oh no.
Lmao Vex?
@@wyrmwood9457 Yes?
@@VexWerewolf I like your lancer memes, just funny seeing you on a mostly unrelated part of the internet
Cool pfp
Me: NO! NOT THE DMPCS!
You know that tumblr post of that photo that says "I don't know who the McElroy are and at this point I'm too afraid to ask" and the OP rb with the comment "I've been informed this is in fact one of them"? That's literally all I know about them
wait thats one of the mcelroy brothers??
@@toothfairy10133 The original quote is a Parks and Rec reference, but there’s a picture of one of them holding a paper that says the quote
@@toothfairy10133 The meme with the guy holding up the piece of paper with that written on it is Griffin McElroy
Same
Idk anything about them and I can’t stop thinking of that post that thought mbmbam stood for man booty man butt ass man
The McElroys are really funny but seeing people try to replicate the “good good boy” speech they do is so unbearably cringey
?
@@SmilingJack100 I believe the OP is referring to the speech patterns and McElroy-isms that Sarah addresses around the eight minute mark.
Yes I liken it to the uwu speak or baby talk that people do… so hard to listen to. You can TELL when someone thinks the mcelroys r funny and want to make jokes like them and it almost always falls flat
I can't stand their speech patterns- it's why I've never finished a whole episode. I have zero interest in hearing grown men do baby-talk to each other.
Ah, that's like... 90% of the internet now
im just imagining being a grown adult and being lectured to about what bad people do and how we all need to have fun
Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky Imagine all the people Livin' for today Ah Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too Imagine all the people Livin' life in peace You You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will live as one
Imagine being told to shut up by someone talking like a baby, and then getting lectured on how we need to be nice to each other. Travis is very lucky he was playing with nice people.
It sounds like there are much higher expectations of the McElroys than there ought to be. It’s been wise of them to not get wrapped up in defending themselves. Too often we see someone experiencing backlash, dig in their heels and try to fight and justify their viewpoint leading to just giving up on even the appearance of being good.
They've said it so many times, too. And not in like the dismissive "I'm Trying to cover my ass" kind of way but in the "hey we're aware of the space we occupy" kind of way. So often they say "Hey we're just three white dudes we could be wrong about things and if we are! Whoops! Sorry!" And it sucks that that's not enough for some people.
I once watched Griffin give a talk at some university about his podcasting career, trying to be as insightful and uplifting as possible, and once the Q&A section rolled around half the people bombarded him with completely unrelated questions about his favorite pokemon or whatever. This one person straight up said they didn't have a question and then tried to force "fuck, marry, kill" with his family's taz balance characters on him... absolutely unhinged
That one is almost surreal, he was just talking earnestly about stuff like creator burnout and the death of his mother but instead Q+A is a bunch of jokers trying to be funniest in the room
Wtf
This is horrible but he clearly bred this fanbase and deserves what he gets
@@DendyJungle Aw man, don't say that stuff. Internet stardom is still kind of relatively new and not understood, I can't blame the guy for amassing a fanbase like that just bc he was doing what he thought was best.
@@DendyJungle hey maybe saying that someone being asked their favorite pokemon after they just finished giving a talk involving topics like their mothers death "deserved" to be asked that simply due to their brand of comedy is uh. shitty perhaps!
Sarah: the mcelroy brothers are- Me: not experts and their advice should never be followed
I'm really surprised I haven't seen more of this in the comments. Lol
Travis insists he’s a sex-pert, but if there’s a degree on his wall I haven’t seen it
Also this show is not for babies, which I say only so you babies out there will know how cool you are for listening
what's up, cool babies
...honestly if this had become a fan community motto like "no bummers" did, this would probably have avoided some of the drama
I played D&D with a group of people I met through a friend. Start playing and one player has a character named taako and wanted to invent tacos. I remember thinking, well that's odd and feels forced. Now I finally understand, so much of what he did makes sense now.
i’m kinda invested what did he do-
@@whatscookingoodlookin1copy and pasted the TAZ character Taako, pretending its their own character, is my guess....
As someone who doesn't use Tumblr and someone who found MBMBAM through KZhead, i didnt know people cared this hard.
Right???? Insane
Idk. Video essay KZheadrs have a thing about making big deals out of nothing for views. It's pretty annoying.
@@hectorcarmona9583 very true, after seeing some of her other videos, I agree with you
I've watched a decent amount of MBMBAM and this just feels like a 2 hour essay about something a fraction of the audience ever even thinks about.
ah yes another sarah z video where she talks about something i don’t know and don’t care about for 2 hours and i listen intently the entire time
very accurate
Same
lol i feel the same everytime
Ok, but like same.
I knew of the one guy as the woman from Sawbones’ husband but I wasn’t aware they had such a cult following and I still don’t get it lol
I guess this shows the difference between 'casual fan' and 'member of the fanbase' - as a member of the former, I wasn't aware of any of this!
Try being a podcast journalist! It's wild what things are considered a big deal or have huge fanbases if you aren't actively seeking out things in said fanbase. If one doesn't hang out on TikTok and pay attention to podcast charts it'd be easy to assume The Magnus Archives is just some random audio drama with a huge backlog, or that TAZ is a meh D&D podcast with a big network propping up its download numbers.
As someone who is a very big fan of mbmbam but isn’t involved with the fan community at all I am so confused? What happened?
@@averyjeanne I've got an explainer video by Sarah Z you might be interested in! You're on the page for it right now, actually.
I can't imagine! I spend a lot of time on tiktok (unfortunately) and my only real exposure to this fandom is through my friends who are a part of it and as such the algorithm sends more fan content my way. I guess I was just spared the controversy because my peers seem to be genuinely invested in and enterntained by their content so I just assumed all was well... never a safe assumption on the internet I guess
Right lol? Had no idea there was any controversy happening. Sometimes, being old and out of touch spares me some big headaches. 😂
Yknow when I first watched this video I was like “man thank god I don’t have any super deep parasocial feelings for the content creators I watch that’d be weird” and then the Gus Johnson thing happened and it felt like my whole world view was shattered. Like I felt really genuinely hurt and angry and betrayed and just so sad for Sabrina…so now I’m back to this video to remind myself why getting way too attached to content creators is bad actually
Wait there's a gus johnson thing??
@@user-qp1ow8qg3d Several years ago, his ex-girlfriend Sabrina was dying of an ectopic pregnancy and he... didn't treat her great during that. She made a video about it that you can watch if you want more details. Some people have held out hope that he's changed and this was past behavior, but he mostly just ignored the controversy and tried to move on in a very tone-deaf way, and didn't treat her great fairly recently when she was recovering from surgery, so it seems like he hasn't changed much since those days.
@@fermiLiquidDrinker asbestie?
I feel like that's different because it was one thing when Gus Johnson a man who built his brand on sort of positive masculinity is revealed to have horrendously mistreated his girlfriend, basically revealing that he was the antithesis of what he probably presented himself to be vs when a public figure is just Less than perfect. With Gus it was more hurtful because you felt like he'd sold you a lie
I agree that it’s important to demand accountability from people for abusive behaviour. I don’t think this requires feeling the personal sense of betrayal that can go along with the type of parasocial relationships we all have with at least a few of our favourite creators. I think that’s what the commenter was highlighting. You might choose to unsubscribe to Gus’s channel after learning about his behaviour. Some people might, after unsubscribing, not give it another thought. Others might, after unsubscribing, still find themselves thinking a lot about the whole situation. The parasocial part comes from the related emotions and feelings related to two people (Gus and Sabrina) that (almost all of) their audience don’t know personally but nevertheless feel some sort of personal connection with them.
Taking a look back at this video again 2 years later it just seems even weirder than it did at the time that this is video is billed as a "Rise and Fall" story. I genuinely think some of the funniest episodes of MBMBAM ever have come out in the last year. Their youtube channel has posted lots of really hilarious videos recently. I've been thinking that Travis, especially, has been on a roll comedy wise lately. I haven't been listening to TAZ but that's just because my podcast listening habits have changed not because I've heard it's been bad. They're family brand really seems to be thriving right now. I, personally, just fully ignore the online fandom and just enjoy their shows. I recommend it.
fungalore granted my wishes :’)
Yeah i appreciate this vid in general and in content but the title is clickbait unfortunately
TAZ vs Dracula is very worth it
This is it. The moment I finally find out how many McElroys there are. Update: I'm still not sure.
A much as Tobys
It didn’t help when Sarah referred to them as “2 straight white guys” followed by two separate asterisks saying it could also be 3 or 4 depending on who counts.
About half as many as there are Tom Bodetts.
I'm in the same boat as you lol.
3 brothers plus a dad on the tabletop podcast. The brothers mix and match to make different content with each other + their wives. Hope this helps
I think the complaint about shifting from a fantasy setting to a scifi setting in the flashback arc is unhinged considering the story had huge scifi fantasy stuff since the end of the very first arc, where they fly up to a moon base???
I cant imagine how depressing it must've been for Travis to see Bingus become so organically popular out of pure spite from the fans
I envy the people who are here to learn about something they don’t care about because I feel like I’m about to have a comfort blanket set on fire OTL
I feel the same way, I’m not gonna be able to watch the rest of it until after work so I hope I’ll be ok
Yeah I feel you....
I feel understood!
Yes. Deeply this.
This describes the feeling super well.
I promise you, if they had made Taako a Mexican it would've been ACTUALLY offensive.
Fr, like that story, regardless of context was so weird. Yes we should have diversity in media, but an adaptation of a podcast about cishet white guys having their player characters reflect those traits until stated otherwise (Taako being gay, Aubrey being bi/Latina) doesn't seem like it should be seen as problematic, just indicative of the storyteller's POV and limits.
I rather like the idea of taako being an elf, and inventing the taco, just like how the Roman's invented the hamburger before anybody else, guess what the concept of a "taco" exists in many iterations. I'm mexican btw.
As a Mexican, I wouldn't really care either way, we have bigger shit to worry about, but the white people saying that he HAS to be Mexican get on my nerves.
No joke, my (white) cousin dated a Mexican guy for several years who called himself "Taco". He would just laugh off attempts at trying to ascertain his real name, and it wasn't a language barrier or anything, because the guy spoke English better than my American ass.
@@passionpeachy1370 as a fellow Mexican I agree. These people ain't perfect sure. But taako is the least of our problems. What with 3 usa presidents in a row putting mexican and Hispanic kids in cages and forcibly sterilizing hispanic women like its nothing
I’ve listened to them occasionally and had no idea there was actually a “fandom”. Makes me sad that people can’t just create anymore without becoming an “empire” or “brand”
I think it's always been like that
what do you mean? if you can like something, multiple people can like something. if multiple people like something, they can talk to each other. that's what a fandom is. a fandom doesn't control whether a creation gets monetized and becomes a "brand". that's completely controlled by the creator
I'm not gonna watch this because it will make me tremendously sad for the McElroys because I've seen what their fandom does. I left a McElroy group after one of their Monster Factory episodes was released to the group erupting in discourse about how it was 'encouraging the death of a disabled baby' [this was about a video game character the brothers made, look up their Crusader Kings video, it's amazing] and I was just like . . . This can't be real. Y'all can't actually be mad about this. This can't be the thing that gets your ire. I feel like the Internet put the McElroys - human beings - on a pedestal and then searched for ways to tear them down. But anyway I wanted you to know I'm sorry I can't watch this but I'm glad it exists.
That’s one of the funniest Monster Factory episodes 😭 if it’s terrible then I’m terrible idc
literally without ever engaging in fan spaces i can tell they must get ripped to shreds for the tiniest things by how they talk now compared to when i was listening to them a lot in like 2017-2019. now it feels like they have to qualify and preemptively apologize for every other joke. like i think one of the recent episodes literally has them worrying about whether they can joke about killing hitler because it might be promoting violence... or they constantly remind the audience that they have Good Opinions and not Bad Opinions. granted im sure some of those are real opinions they hold to and want to stand up for. but it feels like they align /too/ well with every single popular opinion that their audience would hold to for it all to be legit. a lot of it feels like theyre begging to be seen as good people. and thats just not fun to listen to.
I'll be honest I do not understand how white, straight (seemingly at least) Gen X men from the South (or at least South adjacent) developed a fandom that's mainly extremely tenderpilled teenagers. It makes no sense to me, truly.
@apathybronson I think the fact that they are very openly leftist folks led them to wide acclaim online which also leaves you open to wide scrutiny. People who are beloved are also torn down -- this isn't just in leftist spaces, it happens everywhere -- but as soon as someone deems you "unproblematic" there is necessarily a backlash to prove that wrong. They're just people and not ideals, so the stage was set.
@apathybronson I'll say as a millenial, hearing someone on a podcast say like, "sexism is bad actually", was at one point a sort of revolutionary thing lol. And they did accept feedback from their audience and learn and grow but they never became perfect -- bc no one is
My take on the centaurs is that it sounds like they took a bunch of tropes that are extremely common in D&D and the fantasy genre as a whole without recognizing that they had roots in indigenous stereotypes. The sad truth is that the summary you gave is extremely familiar to me, and I highly doubt it was a conscious decision to base them on indigenous people. This isn’t to say that the McElroys have no responsibility here. When imitating other stories you need to be aware of stuff like this, and I definitely think they need to apologize. But I think the genre as a whole really needs to reexamine these tropes because it is FAR from unique to TAZ.
This is a super good point too- the TTRPG world in general has its roots in a sort of Eurocentrism, and while both DND and other systems are moving away from it (lots of amazing systems made by people of colour especially seek to challenge those tropes and narratives), they’re still found in all sorts of places in the genre, and can often get picked up on even unintentionally.
I agree. I don't think it was intentional, but the lack of a response was sad. Usually when they make mistakes they'll own up to it, it's part of what people like about them. Justin's Kardala was way worse though, it's pretty crazy to think that made it through a diversity consultant
Wait so are centaurs’ history rooted in racism or did they start off normal but then got associated with racist ideas and strereotypes over time?
@@wolfstar1253 It's not about Centaurs in particular (there is a theory that they were based on horse riding nomad tribes but I think those specific cultures don't really exist anymore) but about the tropes that surround "barbarian tribes" and white savior narratives in general in fantasy stories.
@@eliburry-schnepp6012 That clears it up a lot. Thanks for the insight friend!
Feel like this hot take about parasocial relationships manifesting not just as perceived personal friends but personal enemies is a rather poignant point... Gonna sit on that one for a while
I don’t know about it though, because a lot of the cancelling behavior people engage in isn’t anything they would ever do to someone in their real life. Like, I don’t think any of the people who called Lindsay Ellis a worthless, disgusting, abhorrent bitch and said that Sarah Z was next would say those kind of things to people they actually know personally. Like sometimes I think the degrees of separation in parasocial “relationships” actually allow people to dehumanize celebrities and influencers and place them on an untouchable pedestal that makes it acceptable to hurl abuse at them because they don’t think they could ever really be affected. Idk I think there’s flaws in the parasocial model, especially when applied to fans/followers turning on or cancelling celebs and influencers.
Internet hate isn't limited to being parasocial, there can definitely be dehumanization and the idea that you wont face repercussions from your hate too. But like, for example, the backlash Contrapoints got from her own viewers for working with a transsexual sex worker (whose name I can't remember)? Seemed mostly to be coming from people who felt like she would 'be safe' and never do anything they disagreed with or have different ideas about a topic. That hate was bolstered by people not feeling like they'd be held accountable (because of both behind a screen and mob mentalities), but a lot of it came from a sense of parasocial betrayal.
@@elspethtirel2461 iirc, that was Buck Angel, a trans man that has a history of anti-NB takes. NB fans of Contrapoints were not really happy that she had him on for a voiceover, at least those that already knew of him and his reputation. That being said, it got a lot of nastiness directed at Natalie that went way beyond criticizing her for having him on.
I'm seeing this happen a lot in Vtuber fandoms, with fans sending Superchats requesting that the talent do stuff like reciprocate romantic feelings or dedicate a song in a karaoke list to the sender's deceased friend. It's important to remember that celebrities aren't your friend: it's fun to follow them and it's cool if they address you specifically, but in the end they're doing a job and they have no obligation to dote on you specifically.
@@earthDF I hate how that kind of backlash turns into a perception of "group X fans" as if all people in group X think the same. A lot of us think the drama was unreasonable - the haters are just the loudest voices that speak over the rest of us.
So I just came across the Taco thing, and man the fanbase is so toxic about that. They never described Taco, but the fans decided someone called Taco MUST be Latino and thus the McElroys are secretly racist the whole time! Even though it was the 'fans' that took it and decided to make someone called Taco latino. Man I swear Twitter and Tumblr fans could murder someone then blame video games for teaching them the concept of violence, it's on that level of intelligence
and then he turned out to be BLUE it kills me every time.
The online space have become so perverse that online people are being condemned for not acting like brands, while brands online are pretending to be people.
I feel like the words of a certain Brian David Gilbert work quite well here: "I am not your friend and you have no say over what I do with my body"
I feel like little nudges like that, just reminding the audience of the nature of the relationship, are probably really healthy to this whole affair. Like a mini reality check.
@@marinemanaphy101 He also seems to enjoy brutal honesty and bluntness, even being mean in his humor, it's like he breaks the fourth wall just to slap you. Edit: just to clarify, BDG is one of my favorite content creators. I especially enjoy the way he likes to shove his middle finger in the face of the people who fuss over his hair by essentially destroying it on video.
That is like the most powerful phrase any youtuber has ever uttered, and I respect him so deeply for saying it.
The fact BDG is so unapologetic with his boundaries as a creator makes me respect him so much.
Where'd Brian say that?
“if you’re a content creator, you’re probably going to do sponsorships for companies you don’t always 100% agree with, and it would be hypocritical for me to condemn them for that.” -missed opportunity to plug raid shadow legends
🤣
"A great way I learned how to properly research potential sponsors before including them in my videos was with a course from today's sponsor, Skillshare!"
Every time I've been enjoying something on my own and then learn about the fandom, I happily go back to enjoying it on my own while ignoring the fandom. Fandoms just get pulled inherently toward toxicity because the most toxic people always pull the hardest.
I make a fan comic for an old cartoon with a dwindling fandom and decades old head-canons that are treated as truth. I don't post anything but the comic on my tumblr, I don't answer asks, don't reblog, and I don't engage with other people. Got an ask in the beginning that was like "I love your version of 'female character in the show' she's such a lesbian." I hadn't made her sexuality clear yet. That's why I don't interact with fandom, they demand things of you as a creator and if you don't kowtow then they get upset or think you're being mean. No thanks. Fandoms for fans can be fun, but fandoms for creators can be like walking on eggshells.
@@appalachiabrauchfrau I don't think even from the perspective of a fan I've ever found that engaging with the fandom enhanced my experience with whatever it was I was watching or listening to. It's only ever been a negative. But that could also just be my personal biases.
In my opinion? none of this is really enough for me to be "turned off" of the mcelroys. These people are human people with human lives who do human things. Their lives are not their careers. I love MBMBAM and TAZ, and have more than once fallen into a parasocial relationship/hyperfization with content creators, so I try my best to moderate myself when it comes to consuming content. I don't participate in the fandom and have only viewed them from an isolated experience. It only saddens me to hear that they have become more of a personality for the internet than they are perceived to be just... regular dudes. Travis is my favorite out of the three, and while I'm not blind to his flaws, I'm not going to harshly analyze or criticize him He's a human dude. Same with the other brothers, and Clint! And if the McElroy's biggest problem is that they stumble with representation, but still make an earnest effort, and the REAL problem is with the fanbase? That's alright by me. If you search for purity, you will be searching forever.
it's their jobs idk they could go into HVAC instead
@James Black "copium" is 2022's "cringe" as in, it's overused and only assholes use it.
Exactly! And literally ANY time they are taught differently they genuinely apologize and fix it in the future. We are all coming into a new age of acceptance and inclusion and we will see some serious fumbles, and that should be expected, corrected, and forgiven as long as it wasn't malicious and it is apologized for and corrected in future content.
This brought up a related point in my mind- Is anyone else frustrated by the people who act like media and representation is the be all and end all of activism? Like I promise you it isn’t. People who make mistakes in representation are not even remotely on the level of the truly horrible people out there who have much more to learn.
Yup. "How dare these people do representation bad? TO HECK WITH THEM" "What about this other group that's actively and loudly campaigning for the extinction of trans people" "Eh. Not worth my time or energy to be angry about."
As an unrepresented minority I so much more appreciate the messy representation than the lack of any. Unless it's painfully offensive and obviously in bad taste, but it rarely is. It's mostly people who have never written about x minority trying to.
YES! THIS!!
Yes. There's no reason to waste your energy demanding perfect representation from non-minority people and then bombarding them with vitriol when they inevitably fail. Even if it's flawed, I can appreciate the effort and forgive when they apologize. There's far too many people with malicious intentions and people who don't care and refuse to apologize or learn from their mistakes.
YEAH SO MUCH. like. its so clear to me these people are terminally online and need to go touch grass and also volunteer at a food bank or start a mutual aid network or donate to a womens shelter in their community or petition for higher minimum wage laws or literally anything in the entire god damn world that addresses real peoples material needs. like yeah representation and media is important but its really really really not the thing you should be spending the majority of your time fixating on like if someone gives you that perfect representation all the worlds problems will be solved
I feel like I am extremely in on the joke with this video. Saz will say "the kind jokes and teasing you really only get from siblings" and I'll go "ah yes, dry fettuccine"
This is one of my favorite moments I still lose it wverytime I listen
the prestige!
@@alexandravelardes7692 my favorite part is when Griffin's bitterness over it spills over into other episodes lol.
@@alexandravelardes7692 The bit that always kills me is when Griffin just hollers, full of absolute brotherly rage, "WAIT, STOP! EVERYONE SHUT UP! DO THEY GIVE YOU RAW FETTUCINE TO CHEW ON AT OLIVE GARDEN?!" and the audience just immediately, in unison, shouting back "NO!!!!"
CHIPSSSSS
To be honest I have never enjoyed socializing with the mcelroy fandom online. they have always been rabid and ready to tear the brothers or other fans apart.
As a McElroy content vacuum consumer, my one foray into the circlejerk TAZ subreddit completely turned me off the fandom. Came looking for art and memes, left with someone who hoped Griffin's wife got canceled because his reaction would be sooooo funny. Wtaf.
Yeah I see a lot of people hope that someone they don't like for almost entirely minor reasons turns out to have done monstrous things so they can feel morally justified in thinking someone is annoying or whatever. Like it's nice to see I'm not the only one who feels that's incredibly ghoulish and just generally excessive, unnecessary, and unpleasant.
i like how sarah was talking about trying not to be too jarring before immediately following up with “among us is a video game-“
See i even read this comment before i got to that point in the video and i still wasn't ready
Who tow?
I'm glad this is more of a rundown of the McElroys generally that takes the good and the bad without performatively pretending they're suddenly terrible now or secretly always were. The biggest drama at play is "their new D&D show was bad" and "Travis is kinda cringe and obnoxious". It's refreshing to see a massive essay like this *not* in response to some horrendous new info that came to light.
Oh phew. I was worried something had happened or been discovered with them that meant they shouldn’t be supported and i was just about to catch up on Sawbones...
I mean, let’s not brush over the fact that their new d&d show wasn’t just bad- it actively used anti-indigenous tropes that they never apologized for or addressed.
@@mregg-gy7jg Definitely fair. I more meant this isn't one of those "famous person turns out to be a groomer" things.
Yeah, I was really worried that it came out that one of them was a groomer or abuser, and while the DND criticisms are extremely valid (I have trouble with focusing for a long time on audio, so I never got into TAZ myself) I’m really glad it wasn’t something like that.
Thank you for saving me two hours.
What's strange is that Amnesty is easily my favorite thing that the McElroy family has ever done. Maybe it just really spoke to my vibe.
I LOVE Amnesty. First one I listed too.
Powered by the Apocalypse games are also just better for podcasting than DnD imo
Yeah It’s so genuinely good.
I've never seen a community/audience that is less fun than that of the McElroys. Eventually, they were tiptoeing around everybody, because their "problematic behaviors" were being pointed out at every turn, regardless of intent or if anybody was actually offended. As their brand became more and more focused on being nice guys, they had less and less freedom to experiment with anything comedy-wise, lest they offend somebody by making a joke that Centaurs might find it off-putting to see people on horses. A hell of their own making, and very unfortunate.
Nowhere was this more evident than the Facebook group. Good Lord, the Facebook group. It got so thoroughly co-opted by inclusivity gatekeepers that they essentially had to deny the existence of the brothers before 2012. What a miserable place that was. I left after the 100th incredibly pretentious "Umm, what episode of MBMBaM should I start at to avoid their more questionable material?", and didn't look back. Closed circuit to those people: the brothers were never bad people. But they ARE regular people. Not paragons.
This is why I listen to Chapo Trap House
Yup. To me as an outsider it seems like a bunch of privileged, virtue-signaling straight white guys attracted a monotone audience of privileged, virtue-signaling fans.
I'm far left and very pro inclusivity as well but most of what was said here I agree is just so stupid, terminally online bullshit. Joking that you shouldn't ride horses near centaurs because they might find it offensive is funny and if you think that's racist go fucking touch grass Jesus Christ
i had similar reactions to fellow maxfun podcast the Flophouse. like for a couple of years they just constantly apologized for everything they said and beg people not to listen to older ones. so i went back to binge old episodes and likes... it's just standard 2010s stuff i'm trans and obese and it's like i'm fine y'all you're fine i know you're not chuds
my favorite thing about this comment section is everyone spelling taako’s name wrong
Every time I see him called “Taco” I lose a year off my life lmao
I didn't even consume their media but even I knew it was Taako due to cultural osmosis.
ok listen I'm half Mexican and I've not experienced any McElroy content ever but I am SO GLAD they didn't make Taco Mexican and I cannot believe people found it PROBLEMATIC that they didn't make Taco Mexican oh my goodness
It's not even Taco, but 'Taako', because Justin wanted to come up with a stupid jokey 'fantasy' name back when there was no real character concepts and it was all a bit of a fuck around. It's utterly meaningless. It's only later on they started riffing on how Taako was destined to invent the taco. I knew the fandom would be Those Types which is why I've always just avoided it and enjoyed the content in isolation.
Yeah, dude. I'm Mexican as well and I got the fucking sweats when Sarah said fans actually wanted Taako to be Mexican, omg
It's weird that people were looking at the graphic novel and going, "but there's no diversity?" to the cis white men that make up the entirety of the cast. The fact that those same exact people were also expecting a stereotype of a Mexican elf...
@@AndromedaD it's not so weird if you realize the common factor is whiteness, lol
I’m not Mexican but I am Hispanic and I heaved a sigh of relief that they made him blue and not Mexican like oh my god close call
the among us clip makes me physically cringe. I think most people have at some point or another been Travis in some situation but oh my god watching the recording makes me cringe. If one of the many times that I have made a fool of myself was captured on video, I would probably never leave the house again.
Idk if this woman is filming from her home or not but if I had a window like that I’d spend all day standing there looking outside
If they wanted to destroy capitalism, helping the training bears unionize probably would have gone better than a heist
I was SO STOKED when the Thundermen LLC took it upon themselves to literally 'destroy the system from the inside', and then it went... absolutely nowhere. And took forever to do it. :(
OK, well that gives me an idea for my next D&D campaign
fucking love the incredible tradition of cropping Nick Robinson out of the clip of Griffin eating the banana every time
Who? /s
@@ethandubois7536 he was a member of Polygon who did some really bad stuff regarding sexual harassment of female coworkers
@@integra8472 “/s” implys sarcasm, the above comment was a joke.
@@abigaileldritch Either way, the explanation was helpful for me 😂
@@integra8472 fuck I follow him on KZhead because I genuinely love some of his videos and had no idea wtf Reading his name here was like ?!? That Nick Robinson?!?
As someone who does not know these people and finds this video a fascinating history of something I had no clue existed, I felt that cringe for that baby bit and among us monologue _in my bones_ Every so often I almost just get taken right out by severe second hand embarrassment. Oh Travis, Travis my dude Oye
I had to skip it,,,,I just couldn't
emily writing the tokenizing section was genius and hilarious, as a very trans indeed trans person who is trans as well i was very confused until it was revealed emily wrote it, i could feel sarah sweating through the screen. god bless, beautiful.
"Feels like a radio play written by Travis , in which the rest of the family are actors without the script." Oof that one got me. Honestly the hardest part of dming for me is not doing this thing.
Yeah, I did the same thing in my first few sessions as well. It was not great.
Obviously we can't say Balance didn't have issues, but they were organic and true to who the brothers were at the time. Travis was so busy trying to "do" something with his story that wasn't really his to do and was so heavy handed and forced that you could *feel* the family get bored- and the listener really wasn't far behind. I stopped listening really early into Graduation.
interestingly enough, i remember people saying that griffin was railroading to much when he was dming balance. I stopped listening for a while because i was still invested in those characters and couldn't really get into the newer archs. I tried listening to graduation but fell off pretty quickly because i thought just prefered griffin as a dm, I didn't realize how much travis took over until now.
@@piperrasmussen I agree Griffin railroaded, especially when there was expected to be a dramatic ending, but he also was performing versus being performative which I think is a huge part of what made Graduation problematic.
@@piperrasmussen I think a lot of my mistakes (and maybe travis'?) Is that I tried to recreate the cinematic feel of the last few balance arcs. They were such a highlight to the story that I attempted to make the whole story like that, and it bogged it down. I only bring this up because I think griffin brought up how he did a similar thing with amnesty and ended up regretting it in a TTAZZ
“bingus isn’t real, and never was” surprised me so much lol
"Audible gasp" Blasphemy. Lol
They're real to me!
Meee
why does this have 611 likes 😭 thanks guys
Man I love this channel. "hey what's going on with a fandom I've never heard about for a podcast I didn't know existed? Dunno, better check it out, this could be big"
I love the idea that Taako being white is racist because Mexicans have to invent tacos, but also all the main characters being portrayed with darker skin is racist because it’s blackface. If there’s anything that perfectly sums up the McElroy fandom, it’s that.
This reminds me a LOT of Critical Role, where they're still trying to portray themselves as just a group of friends playing D&D (which they are), but they're also now a business. People were PISSED when they partnered with Amazon for their animated show, acting like they'd been betrayed by their best friends. But it's a business, and they have to make decisions like a business. Definitely a prime example of para-social relationships.
The critical role fanbase weirds me out. It's a lovely and thoughtful podcast and the fanbase is really surprisingly toxic.
I was apart of the OG fan base, since I watched the first episode live on twitch. But now I don't even try to get live show tickets because I hate being around the majority of the fan base. It's sad.
@@nowhereweareagain Yeah, I had to stop interacting with the fandom because it was toxic to the point of causing me to have mental health relapses. They always talk about having the most supportive fandom, but it's definitely not.
@@ashleydavis2534 I binged then watched live from episode 30. I never did any live events but you honestly couldn't pay me to go to one at this point. They have the worst fans for being such a great show.
@@evrenpilgrim8392 I watched the last few episodes live with chat off because people were actively rooting for a Tpk.I don’t know how common toxic voices are in terms of number of people, but they are certainly some of the loudest people in the fandom. It’s bummer but the content is still good without that fan interaction, so at least there’s that.
Canadian: "I should still define this.. " Me: "It's parasocial relationships isn't it" Canadian: "Parasocial relationshps" Me: Bingo!
Why is everyone calling her Canadian instead of Sarah please I'm so confused
more like bingus am i right
@@meg7020 cuz she's canadian lol
Bingus*
@@surgecentral05 ik but I've never seen ppl use nationality as a nickname for a youtuber , I thought I missed a joke or smt
I've never played DnD. I've never heard of the McElroy brothers. And yet I watched a 2-hour video about a spinoff podcast from another podcast about something I don't know. This is because of the satisfying parasocial relationship with my good friend Sarah Z.
It never ceases to amaze me how chronically online, fandom rabid and inflammatory people can be. I only really loosely knew of these guys from seeing them around, but now I'm just bummed for them. Lol.
In my opinion, labelling ANYONE a “woke” icon or something is not right. No one can have all experiences and knowledge to be aware of every single issue and culture. Let alone labelling some straight cis white guys as these is is just unfair. But I think the fact that they managed to improve themselves and be better about general issues is amazing
Yeah that was the trouble I was having when I dipped my toe in online McElroy Brothers spaces years ago, where it started with the "good boy" assumption so it became about how they were automatically good and so their actions were good rather than their actions could be judged for what they were without making it about the inherent goodness or badness of anyone. It was just so hostile to any dissent.
@@riverofmolecules the internet does seem to just classify people into "good" and "bad" categories and when someone conciedered "good" does a "bad" thing (I'm talking about more minor mishaps, some caused by ignorance and ones generally responded by the creators) people either refuse to see it or are shattered. I guess the parasocial relationship aspect of it where you don't really know the people does contribute to it.
Putting people on pedestals never does anyone any good. We're all fucking stupid and we all make irrational, thoughtless, even horrible mistakes even with the best of intentions, and put anyone in any sort of position where any sort of mistake only leads to them being labelled as horrible is cruel. Similarly, idolizing them so they can no longer so any wrong in your eyes is equally foolish. Being able to acknowledge that your heroes are fallible is a sign of strength.
Yeah it's neither good for the fans nor the creators themselves. Look what happened to Jenna Marbles. She wasn't cancelled by the fans, she just couldn't handle the assumptions anymore that she is perfect and "unproblematic".
But also be mindful some shows/podcasts have a specific "style" that may or may not represent the actual political/social views of the creators. Lots of shows do that, Cum Town is the big one, they probably aren't as horrible as they sound on the podcast, it's edgy "bro" humor, that's the demographic. That being said, it can be reflective but people get WAAAAY too worked up over COMEDY podcasts or shows.
i was wondering why “brothers who played dnd for an audience” sounded so familiar even though i don’t know these guys but i just realized... i own their book. i purchased the graphic novel version of “the adventure zone” completely unaware of its origin
Did you like it?
@@Melanie-yep it was pretty good as far as i remember, ironically the art was my favorite part even tho it was the only part not present in the podcast lmao. the dialogue makes a lot more sense in context as family joking around now tho
And you were immediately spoiled fully for it in this vid lmao
This is how I got into their podcasts! I liked the graphic novels but I think the podcasts are a lot better
@@caviicape I will say, the first book had to do a lot of retcon and rearranging dialogue-wise to get rid of extraneous stuff, try to tighten up the pacing, change some stuff copyrighted by wizards of the coast, keep the tone my consistent with later parts of the podcast, and get rid of some stuff that no longer made sense with the later world-building. Not to forget that tone doesn't translate well into text and (as Sarah Z said) a decent part of the McElroys' humor comes from their very distinctive speaking style. All-in-all, I found that this made a lot of the dialogue feel very awkward and stilted, and it really just loses a lot of its humor and and charm in being translated to the page. So yeah, the art is way better in the dialogue in the graphic novel (but also the podcast itself is v good)
The Adventure Zone Balance Arc is some of the best storytelling I have ever taken in. It’s hysterically funny, poetically played, and deeply meaningful. We got into MBMBAM December 2018 on a road trip to Disney and it changed our lives. We eventually got into D&D (my husband is on his way to DM as I type this) because of the McElroy’s and have enjoyed countless laughs. My motto is “support good people doing good things” and the amount of money this family has raised for charity and the time they put in truly makes a difference. All that being said… we’ve been to two live shows and the fan base has been 50/50. We’ve met some super great people but the amount of entitled weirdos who almost demand their differences in life become the McElroy’s whole reason for existing is so bananas. I love that you have found a community that is accepting of you as not all who are “different” have that but you have to let them be who they are and not hold this family up to wild standards. You can almost tell now they’re afraid to say anything. I think we can all agree not a single person in this family is malicious, they want to make people laugh and enjoy life and they’re ultra talented in that regard. I feel for them that their fan base has them hostage.
after watching the the full video a lot of this seems like terminally online folks needing hobbies. My biggest "problem" with the Mcelroys is that they feel too safe any more. And this really turned into more of the rise and fall of the TAZ fandom.
Something being labeled as the "Among us incident" is something i did NOT expect in this video, but is welcome nevertheless
My jaw fucking dropped at that whole section, I just kept yelling "SHUT UP" at the screen louder with every word he said. I can't possibly imagine how awful it must have felt to be in the moment for the other players on the stream. It looked hard to even just watch.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
@@NoraQRosa I had to skip it, it was too awful ;;
@@amocola2793 saaaaame
@@NoraQRosa when i first heard about the Incident i couldn’t even watch the video of it i just read a transcript in the comments. i turned the volume pretty much all the way down when it came on in this video too lol. i cannot imagine being one of the other people in that stream, or even being travis like i would’ve left the internet completely
Wait a sec- I wasn't aware they HAD turned on the McElroy brothers
My thoughts precisely 😂
Same here
i dont listen to the podcast much but did sometimes view clips, was entirely unaware of this
Yah when I saw this I freaked out- like, am I supposed to not like them??
@@Mylo8328 What a strange reaction. You can like them or not. Some people don't, and this KZheadr made a video about it. Make up your own mind
The sawbones popularity outside of the mcelroy fandom isnt surprising. It never did much for me, but I have a bunch of friends who are docs and nurses and they adore it as a fairly inclusive show with actually funny comedy chops, something you dont see a lot of (Theres definately an under served* market there.). *Underserved is one r from undeserved, to be specific I mean "not enough people are doing it".
I literally never heard of McElroy before now, and I had NO idea two of the McElroy brothers founded Polygon, holy crap!
I still can’t get over how their last name is pronounced “mackle-roy” and not “Mc-Kell-Roy”.
It doesn't help that there's a golfer with the same last name who DOES pronounce Mc-Kell-Roy
I COULD'VE SWORN FOR THE FIRST 2 YEARS I ISTENED IT WAS MC-KELL-ROY THEN I LISTENED RECENTLY AND IT IS CONFUSING ME SO MUCH
Same here, I was so convinced it would be pronounced Mac-Ellroy. Kept tripping me up during the whole thing.
It’s pronounced Mac Elroy. Elroy is the family name and mc/ Mac just means of and mc is short for Mac and is always pronounced Mac.
@@areallyboredguy5825 this shit where we just let people write and pronounce their names however they want is hard to deal with. Like it's not a real issue but damn
As a 30 year-old, I about had a heart attack when I realized peak McElroy culture was FIVE YEARS AGO.
same lol
Just wait. Lol.
wow! You'are old!
@@seeeds4702 30 isn't old.
I didn't even start listening to their stuff til about 3 years ago, blissfully unaware
Coming back to this video is like returning home after a long journey. This video introduced me to the McElroys, and The Adventure Zone, which kickstarted my appreciation and love of TTRPGs. The fanart, the dubs, the campaigns, the handbooks, the dice, the literal red robe I have hanging in my office...it all started here. I became friends with my current partner through a Discord server listening party I hosted for TAZ Balance. It all started here. Thank you, Sarah. It's so bizarre to think about, but you changed my life for the nerdier in just a couple hours. If this is the impact you have on people so early into your life, then you're truly going to be amazing. Sorry for the corny joke. I had to.
I mean, it's hardly surprising. If you put every second of your life up for display eventually you're going to slip up and make a mistake, or go crazy trying to fake being perfect. Seriously, can you imagine the stress they must have all been under? They seem like they had so much time and resources to get this right, but I'm willing to bet they spent every second of every day either desperately trying to keep up with content and family responsibilities or feeling burnt out. And everyone knows that's pretty much the worst environment to try to be creative in.