MovieBob leaving The Escapist

[Spankable]

I love bob's video's & podcasts. I found him years ago with the gameoverthinker, i only found the escapist when he moved here. There is now little here to interest me.

I've added Zero punctuation's YouTube channel to my account & unsubscribed to the escapist.

So long & thanks for all the fish.

 

[silver wolf009]

Maybe we should look into getting the Micheals back for another show now?

What ever happened to those two anyway?

 

[Vault101]

Id rather him just learn a few lessons and become a well adjusted member of society.

you make him sound like someone who got locked up for breaking into peoples houses and eating their pets

[quote/]I won't be keeping track of him from this moment forward, but I hope he does well. And I hope he finds more beautiful things in life then uploading videos.[/quote]
that's a bit condescending isn't it? it was his [I/]job[/I]...just as much as its Jim's [I/]job[/I] to stand in front of a podium and caress a 3ft dildo while talking at the camera, he just does it independently now

temptation to watch can often come from a hope that he might turn it around in terms of his extremist rhetoric. ...

...extremist?...really?

 

[Fox12]

Id rather him just learn a few lessons and become a well adjusted member of society.

you make him sound like someone who got locked up for breaking into peoples houses and eating their pets

[quote/]I won't be keeping track of him from this moment forward, but I hope he does well. And I hope he finds more beautiful things in life then uploading videos.

that's a bit condescending isn't it? it was his [I/]job[/I]...just as much as its Jim's [I/]job[/I] to stand in front of a podium and caress a 3ft dildo while talking at the camera, he just does it independently now [/quote]

He went on his twitter and called people subhuman, and blabbered about how the end justify the means, and how there are no bad tactics, just bad targets. That's a pretty deranged world view, and I think he needs to adjust his attitude.

I don't think it's condescending at all. He went in front of the green screen he put in his house in order to tell us that he needs to keep making videos. It's clearly very important to him, and it's his job. And that's fine. But I would tell anyone who was too involved in their job to find other things to find value in as well, because that's healthy. His passion in life could be selling drills at home depot for all I care, I just think it's unhealthy to completely define yourself by your work. But I'm just going by the tone on his Patreon.

 

[Silverspetz]

And he is already freelancing for Badass Digest with articles. Haters, go home, cause Bob's not going anywhere.

Didn't you just say he went to Badass Digest?

Didn't you see my edit? Nice try though.

What did I just try? I don't know what 'scotching' means.

Trolling, you don't need to know that word to figure out the meaning from the context. Though to be fair, I may have misspelled it.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

...extremist?...really?

extremist
-noun
a person who favours or resorts to immoderate, uncompromising, or fanatical methods or behaviour, esp in being politically radical

adjective
of, relating to, or characterized by immoderate or excessive actions, opinions, etc

I have never known Bob to be a moderate. His opinions always tended to be black or white. He loves to label people and put them in boxes, uncompromising. I mean extremist in the literal sense and not the news media beheading, suicide bombing way. He spoke with the arrogant certainty of someone who sees the world the way he sees it and cannot perceive it another way.

Extremists are people who denigrate and dehumanize people who do not share their beliefs.

 

[llubtoille]

I came to the escapist after seeing a zero punctuation, and started watching his movie reviews and found them useful, but stopped about a year ago when he started bringing a agendas and personal opinions not relevant to the movies themselves.

 

[Fireaxe]

Frankly, Bob's content got vastly worse in the past 6 months -- when he did comic and show history that was vastly more interesting than the social justice crusades.

 

[Tojumaru]

Good riddance. He started off good and I liked his early reviews. However his bias towards Nintendo and Marvel got annoying, his hatred of anything outside his glorious liberal left(I am a leftist myself, but I do not judge a film based on that), his arrogance(i know stuff and I am right, if you disagree you are a bully), his tendency to use horrendously forced strawmen, his nostalgia for everything '80s, constant hipocrisy(Aneeta ftw, oooooh look at how good this starlet looks in tight leather outfits in this film), his Mass Effect videos(hey, I never played the games nor will I ever do.... here's my opinion on them), his hatred of FPS games as a whole... it's like almost too much to count. I think he was terrible honestly, especially in his latter days so I am actually glad he is leaving.

I hope he returns back to what he was doing 5 years ago. And discontinue his Game Overthinker series, because that is terrible. And leave his bias at the doorstep because he has been hating on films and games from the get-go. Though, he has been spiraling down for such a long time that I think letting him go is actually a good idea. Good riddance.

 

[Demagogue]

-snip-

Glad to hear you guys have have a plan, although it isn't that surprising either, you don't last a decade without making and adjusting plans to the current environment. I know this year has been hard on you guys so far, and I look forward to the new work you bring in!

 

[Ralancian]

Ugh 628 posts will anyone care what I have to say? Probably not but feel like I want to give my two cents worth.

I've hated the entire #gamergate saga some people are doing some very abhorrent things but other aren't listening to any legitimate arguments because of it. I'm pretty apathetic to it all the only bit that angers me most is describing myself as a geek and gamer outside of community was finally becoming acceptable and bunch off people have ruined that. All collections of people have their idiots and it's our job to call them out on it. Bob however was pretty terrible at doing that and rather than targeting the individuals because it's hard the internet due to anonymity and called everyone subhuman rather than the small collection of them that actually exist within the community. I've only met a few people whom I describe as 'giving geeks a bad name' the vast majority are fine people whom I enjoy spending time with.

My issue with Bob is his online persona via Escape to the Movies and The Big Picture slowly declined in a putrid mess. He's always been opinionated guy but that's fine both show's were about expressing his opinion one about movies and the other about whatever he feels like. I use to be interested on his opinion on movies (please note I'm not calling out for bias or not being objective as both of those come into opinion pieces and are part of it). Here are the few of the things that annoyed me,

About once a year a film would really disappoint Bob which is fair enough in the review of that film (Transformers, Green Lantern, ASM, Man of Steel to name a few). I didn't mind the review of that film being negative after all it's his opinion but it's harping on about it virtually every review afterwards really grated. I know he hated that film lets stop talking about it and talk about this film instead.

Token Revisionism of the past, at one stage The Dark Knight was one of the best comic films made in his opinion. Overtime he has been highly critical of the Nolan Batman franchise due to the dark depressing Batman. Fair enough I say we are all allowed to change our opinions but he'd never really explained why he had such radical change of heart over this.

Not reviewing the damn film/forming opinions before they are out, the later is really prominent now he doesn't take each film on it's own merit. He hated ASM2 before it came out, The Dark Knight Rises before it came out, he thought Avengers would be brilliant before it came out. However it's the earlier one that got me first to start questioning watch his 'review' of The King's Speech, I don't have problem with the fact he didn't like the film I have problem with the fact that disliked the film why it got made (to win oscars). Yes and most films are also made to make money. That doesn't matter when reviewing a film it's a question of the film itself fair enough if you didn't like why it was made but what about the finished article.

Placing opinion about a film from a culture he doesn't come from.....too many times he's told me a British person what we think about stuff he's usually wrong.


As noted above I'm not bothered by Bob's political views he's terrible at expressing them in a cohesive manner without coming off as imbecilic. However the quality of the content he was producing became steadily worse to the point reading his reviews were better than watching them.

I don't really have a complaint about The Big Picture he said from the start it was about expressing himself on anything he wanted and it was exactly that. Sometimes I agreed (Sucker Punch) some I disagreed (punching up & down) some I didn't give two hoots about (Schlocktober). Overall though it was mostly harmless and sometimes insightful (TV, Comics is WIERD).

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Also unlike Jim, Bob is keeping his options open. He hasn't gone full independent and we don't know what his full plans for the future are

I watched his Patreon video. I don't think he knows either.

Captcha:

 

[Lono Shrugged]

snip.

Good points well made. It harks back to my post about him not liking movies. I think my disdain for him really started to manifest when he started flip-flopping his opinions on movies. I often said that I sometimes don't see eye to eye with people like Jim or Yahtzee. But I always respect their opinions because it comes from an honest place and is not filtered to provoke a reaction or ride a wave of popular opinion. Or as Bob so very often likes to say "I told you so/ I was right" Which he did in his very last article.

"Keeping options open" means praying the phone will ring. Anyone who is considering hiring him is surely reading this thread and twitter is seeing the pretty overwhelming glee at him being gone.

 

[Gorrath]

As for the health of The Escapist, I reserve judgement until they fill the creative void. Just because Bob and Jim had some very interesting content they are hardly the only two men capable of creating good works. I'd love to see a guy with Bob's chops come on board if he comes without Bob's worst faults.

The issue is that a lot of content creators are looking to youtube and paetrons to make money now and sites like The Escapist might have a harder time grabbing the more successful ones. To find someone who isn't making it all on their own, can make high quality content and keep a fast past schedule will be hard.

OT: I'm going to miss Moviebob. I always liked his Big Pictures and I often found his movie reviews to be pretty informative (reviews about The Amazing Spiderman, The Expendables etc usually being the exception). It really hit me today when I realized that there will be no more Big Picture on The Escapist. Things are disappearing so fast and with nothing in sight to replace them it is kinda depressing. The next few months will be interesting to watch.

I certainly don't disagree with you that it's a tough environment but I imagine there are talented people who have not yet hit their stride and just need a structured support system to help them bloom. There are really creative people who flounder without the guidance of an editor to bring out the best in their work. I don't doubt identifying this talent and helping it mature is a tough job and I"m not certain The Escapist is up to the task, but that's why my judgement is reserved. I'll give them a chance before I sound the death knell.

 

[Davroth]

...extremist?...really?

His twitter is full of extremist rhetoric as well. Not sure how you missed it.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

I do think its a bit low that nobody of the staff seemed to care enough to write a figgin Article about his firing.. I mean jim got one, Susan too (if I remeber correctly) but even after this thread is like 19 pages long, teh team seems to take the-sorry-lazy or easy route out and just use this thread.

Thats not a fine thing to do, serious. For me it puts the staff of the escapist in a bad light, because it seem that they do favor certain people and seem to be happy to have other people gone-and for 4 days dont even try to make the effort of doing a goodbye posting or some official statement like "hes gone, he did fine work here, we wish him the best, kthxbye"

so, sorry that i have to be so frank, but thats a low.

I might be wrong, but nothing on the page even TRIES to seem like they care about a bit of basic human decency.
(As i said, for other people we got such postings, but here we know the facts for 4 days-time enough to do a little post, dontchathink?)

 

[McMarbles]

...extremist?...really?

His twitter is full of extremist rhetoric as well. Not sure how you missed it.

Define "extremist". I find that a lot of people who use that word don't know what it means. Like "corruption" and "ethics".

 

[IceForce]

I do think its a bit low that nobody of the staff seemed to care enough to write a figgin Article about his firing.. I mean jim got one, Susan too (if I remeber correctly) but even after this thread is like 19 pages long, teh team seems to take the-sorry-lazy or easy route out and just use this thread.

Thats not a fine thing to do, serious. For me it puts the staff of the escapist in a bad light, because it seem that they do favor certain people and seem to be happy to have other people gone-and for 4 days dont even try to make the effort of doing a goodbye posting or some official statement like "hes gone, he did fine work here, we wish him the best, kthxbye"

I think the main difference with Susan, Jim, etc, is that they all resigned their positions and stood down themselves. They left of their own accord, in other words. So it was prudent for The Escapist to write a 'farewell' article/thread in those cases.

In Bob's case however, as far as we can tell, he didn't leave of his own accord. He was fired.

Hardly seems right for the site management to fire someone, and then do a big write-up on how much they'll be missed.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Define "extremist". I find that a lot of people who use that word don't know what it means. Like "corruption" and "ethics".

I defined it earlier in the thread and it applies.

 

[faeshadow]

There is a huge difference between disagreeing with your audience, and saying that most of your audience are rapists.

As I said, I don't care what anyone says on twitter. It's twitter. Also, I don't believe you for one second.

Disbelieve all you like. Go look at his comments after the airing of that L&O SVU episode.