erttheking said:
I remember in one of the Jimquisition videos, he once saw a poll in the threads that he paid attention to in order to get feedback on how he was doing, and considering the recent uproar around Moviebob's "The Most 50 Boring Opinions in Geek Culture" list, I thought that now would be a good time to take stock on Moviebob and the material he puts out.
It's a rather simple question really, do you like him and his material?
EDIT: Edited the OP to make it more clear.
I've been on these forums for an insane amount of time. To be honest MovieBob hasn't changed all that much, nore have my opinions of him. Simply put, he's an amazing guru of geek culture, with some rather extreme political views that he can't help but also use his productions for. That said I'm not going to scorn all the things he does right, and learning from him, just because we're such political opposites, although I might occasionally write essays in response to what he says (which are promptly ignored).
Simply put with the crap I get for sticking to my political guns on a forum where I'm probably the only one who swings even moderatly right, I'm not going to criticize someone for doing the same thing, even if it's in the opposite direction. Bob is basically so far left at times that he makes even other liberals say "WTF".
Something I will point out though is that Bob is not a reviewer, he's a critic, and has gone out of his way to make that distinction, as has Yahtzee. It's something to keep in mind when watching his stuff, there isn't any real pretension of impartiality here. Truthfully I do kind of wish we had more full time impartial reviewers in gaming, but those that try inevitably wind up becoming critics as well. Being a reviewer and remaining true to it without becoming a critic is rough... but that's irrelevent to Bob because I don't think he ever claimed any kind of impartiality in analysis, but simply to be sharing his opinion via a platform.
I'll also add that I have in the past suggested that The Escapist limit Bob from some of his stunts (this goes back years) they pretty much said 'no'. I've seen similar things like this come and go from others as well, albiet a little less direct than I was. The point is that contreversy and strong reactions is not new to Bob, it's been like this for a long time, and probably won't change.
One final thing I'll throw out there too, is that Bob's way of doing things gets attention, which generates traffic/hits which is at the end of the day what he's trying to do. I doubt a lot of the stuff he does is actually as off the cuff as it appears at times, Bob seems to be aware of the ebb and flow of geek culture to the point where I'd imagine he has a pretty good idea of what kind of reaction he's going to get when he does specific things. I'd guess that when he does things like kind of slams "Bane" in a "best villains of 2012" line up, he knows "Bane" is popular and that people are going to talk about it, I mean heck, it's hard to miss as guys like Jim Sterling on the same site have even done schticks dressing up like the guy for laughs. By getting people to talk about what he did though he's generating attention, traffic in response to his video, and hits. He did it while being on topic, and just carefully insterting an opinion into his video.... and honestly, there is nothing wrong with it, if you enjoy talking about Bane (to agree with Bob, or defend the character in the movie) he just gave you another excuse... big deal. That's just the most recent example of a technique he seems to have been using for years now to great effect, and it works, people tune in, and he's been a cornerstone of The Escapist for pretty much forever, while other features have come and gone.
