Nostalgia Chick - The (First) Video Essayist: Channel Awesome Retrospective
Posted Jun 16, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC
2212
I just looked in the comment section and wow i haven't seen so many incels shitting on her in one place for a very long time
14
Yeah, people will still find ways to shit on her for the smallest things, such as having bad takes more than a decade ago. The ones about the Big Lipped Alligator Moment in particular are bothersome because there's no proof that she's the one who came up with the idea and not Doug.
5
I really liked learning about her Nostalgia Chick days, since I found her much later in her career, but this guy is giving me "analysis=bad" vibes. How dare someone look at something through a feminist lens. How very dare. It reminds me of sitting at the dinner table with my brother, who couldn't stand when I wanted to analyze a Doctor Who Christmas special.
8
I must admit. I couldn’t get through the video. He wasn’t giving me interesting information about her time at channel awesome or how she built up her following and career. It was I think she was shit but she had followers for some reason… just my opinion… blah
3
Yeah, it was kinda annoying that he decided that her Nostalgia Chick videos must have been her real opinions in real life.
Like. A lot of the stuff he was annoyed about really just seemed to be exaggerations of viewpoints Lindsay might have had at the time.
Like how she kept covering bad Don Bluth stuff. I just kinda saw those as an inverse of Doug since he really liked Don Bluth (Like really liked Bluth). And hoenstly? Was what she was saying even wrong? We really only remember a few of Bluth's movies (the really good ones). And sure, his company's good movies truly are excellent, but why is it so offensive to this guy that Lindsay pokes fun of the bad ones? Why are her jokes suddenly deadly serious and indicative of her personal beliefs as a (gasp) feminist?
And then there was the scene where Lindsay chloroforms Doug and the guy making the video groans and it seems like we as an audience are supposed to infer that Lindsay (or whoever wrote that particular scene) thinks assaulting men is fine but women are off limits. But the same thing happens to Lindsay? Why doesn't that get a groan too? Are we supposed to be upset because assault is being played for laughs or because a man was assaulted?
And then he started talking about how Lindsay's catchphrase was confrontational? He plays it off as a joke, but I'm not quite sure what the punchline is? "I remember it because the dudes don't" isn't judging you, my guy. It was the cultural perception at the time that boys didn't watch 'girl shows' or play with 'girl things'. That's literally why Lindsay was brought on. If you're not offended by a woman merely opening her mouth, it's clear the dudes don't remember 'it' because they didn't watch/play with 'it' as a child. It's not... y'know. Nostalgic to them. The only punchline I can glean is that it's supposed to make the guy making the video look stupid, but I don't really think that was the intent.
Also, "I'm the Nostalgia Chick and I traded my soul for a vagina and a man I don't know" (51:09 in the vid) is funny as hell. That single-handedly justifies the first Little Mermaid video. Even if someone else came up with it.
I was waiting for him to talk about the pretty liberal use of the R-slur or other problematic parts of this era of videos that could (and should) cause some amount of shame for the creators of these videos, but I kinda get the feeling the guy making this video doesn't really care about slurs. This is, of course, my own perception, but for someone who can't seem to forgive a bad Little Mermaid take, it's a little telling that he doesn't even censor the literal slurs in these videos.
2
Well, it was fun looking back at some of NC’s old videos, the youtuber who did this retrospective cannot resist going on tangents mansplaining Lindsay’s opinions/critiques lol. Like there is some acknowledgement that this was the style of video content back then, but it mostly feels like an excuse to shit on her very old opinions. Not that there isn’t stuff to criticize about her old content.
Mostly, it feels really disingenous to bring up her old criticisms of The Little Mermaid, etc WITHOUT talking about how drastically her opinions has changed. He only sort of vaguely mentions it. Feels like he’s arguing with a strawman of a long gone era of content creator.
I also question this guy’s ability to analyise when he seems to think “objective” analysis is possible.
I’ve actually seen some of Dylan the Knight Owl’s videos before, specifically the Creepypasta iceberg one. He starts out the iceberg kind of explaining the origins of each creepypasta before it devolves in him just reading almost every shorter story aloud verbatim like he’s one of those narration channels.
7
Every time he used the word objective I was "you keep using that word" meme
2
Dylan has the same sleazy anti-charisma as men in the BDSM scene trying to build up a reputation as a dom by just being shitty and patronizing to women and pretending that's sexy of him.
1
The video is, for the most part, fine. It's a good summary of her early work, it's thorough, it's open and up-front about the author not really liking her content. The video is not spectacular and I doubt I'll watch more by the author, but it's fine. It serves its purpose.
But oh boy, is it a bad take to equate conspiracy theories about "groomers" to Lindsay having a strong opinion on the portrayal of romance and body types of Disney princesses. It's the most thoughtless "Enlightened Centrist" take I've seen in a while.
Let's ignore that Lindsay's argument doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is a wider culture that includes reductive gender roles AND standards of beauty. It's fine to disagree as to the role children's media plays in it. That's fine. I'd like to see an actual argument against it, but whatever. The guy obviously holds broadly progressive and feminist issues in something of a disdain, which again - fine.
But "I think media influence the way children think about their role in society and their own bodies" is frickin' NOT the same as a homo- and transphobic conspiracy theory that there is a shadowy cabal trying to groom children. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick is this a bad take.
That's like taking someone saying "I think the tendency for media to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and thereby giving billionaires outsized influence on the public opinion is bad" was directly compared to antisemitic conspiracies about "Jews ruling the world". No, those are not comparable. One is an interpretation of verifiable facts that one may disagree with. The other is a made up, hateful, and arguably more than a little deranged take used as a post-hoc justification of an existing bias.
But like I said, other than that bit of awfulness (more thoughless than malicious anyway, so eh), the video is serviceable. If unimpressive.
I'm glad you said this cause as an LGBT person I'm so fucking over this "groomer" conspiracy shit, especially when heterosexual Christians are actively and openly grooming and molesting kids constantly
Haven’t watched the video but do they talk about Lindsay Ellis’ much more recent videos on this topic? I think Woke Disney is the one I’m thinking of … she’s said some interesting stuff that’s somewhat nuanced here.
Obvi the comparison in and of itself is silly but also I think her views can be mischaracterized
Nah, the video is specifically about her Channel Awesome days and it mentions that it will/may go into her later Youtube career in another video, at some point.
Goootcha
I agree with this point