Doug Walker's fatal flaw as a content creator is how easily he gives up on an idea that isn't universally adored

People give Linkara shit because he gets peeved when people bring up Lightbringer, but Doug Walker has demonstrated over the years that he's a colossal People Pleaser. If Doug really was the type who takes criticism well, he would have looked at the comments on his worst received videos and at least tried to improve the next time he tried that idea. Instead, he takes projects and experimental ideas to the back of the barn and pretends he's in on the joke by taking the piss out of them.

A good example is Melvin, Brother Of The Joker. The joke is that he plays the Joker's nerdy brother who constantly gets interrupted by his mother. I remember this being kind of meh, but from what I understand, people hated this video. Immediately, Doug started treating Melvin like a mistake and killed him at the end of a charity stream once he reached the financial goal. Sure, the premise served more as a one-off sketch, but if Doug had just written this off as a dud and moved on, people probably would have forgotten about Melvin immediately like Emo Jones.

The next example is his attempt at a Let's Play of Bart's Nightmare. You see, Doug had just come back from a convention and was jetlagged, but he needed content out that week. So, he thought doing a Let's Play in-character of a bad Simpsons game would be an easy hit... The problem was that most of the video was him screaming obscenities like the Angry German Kid. While Melvin was a bad comedy sketch, it was easily ignorable. This, however, was an episode of the Nostalgia Critic, and people HATED it when it came out and was the subject of a Retsupurae video (in one of the rare occasions where they punched up). So, the very next Nostalgia Critic video, he did damage control by opening with him being sent to prison for the video and he never made a Let's Play again. LPs in-character probably could have worked if he played games he actually enjoyed, or if he just simply didn't scream like a chimp that got smacked in the nuts the whole video.

Probably the most infamous example was Demo Reel. In 2012, Walker decided to retire the Nostalgia Critic with To Boldly Flee as a grand finale. He began a new series, which he claimed was a passion project that he's wanted to do for years and even bought a building to be used as a studio for it. Demo Reel came out, and... It certainly was a web series, alright. The premise is about a former child star starting his own film studio and remaking popular films. The plot is really just an excuse to spoof movies with bad costumes like a Seltzer and Friedberg movie. The plot could have worked if the movie studio made original films or went for a meta semi-autobiographical approach. Then the series suddenly takes a self-indulgently dark turn by having a plot point that parallels the suicide of Elizabeth Hartman. This was a jarring decision for a series whose first episode had Batman dress up as Mario. There's Cerebus Syndrome, and there's pulling a Loss. After Demo Reel started, views for TGWTG started to dwindle. Despite this supposedly being Doug's Passion Project, instead of actually fixing what people hated about Demo Reel, he cancelled it after one season and brought back The Nostalgia Critic in desperation.