So, Joseph and Tim have both left THAC.
Joseph and Tim have apparently both left THAC (TVTropes Page), for obscure, hush-hush, "not amicable," none-of-anyone-else's-damn-business-but-their-own-I-guess-at-least-until-they-inevitably-start-airing-dirty-laundry-at-some-point-in-the-future reasons.
(EDIT 2) And it looks like they finally decided to air their dirty laundry. So, yeah, I'm pretty much completely done with THAC and its members and former members now, and, truthfully, I already have been ever since they split up. Basically, this is ScrewAttack all over again, for me, and I am simply washing my hands of the whole thing. Marble Hornets was good, and THAC was good while it lasted, until the breakup happened, so there is still that, I guess. Maybe if they somehow managed to work out their differences, put all the ugliness behind them, and got back together again, then maybe I'd start paying attention again, but as of right now, since that seems like it is highly unlikely to ever happen, I'm pretty sure I'm out for good. (/EDIT 2)
For those who don't know, these guys are the ones who made Marble Hornets (TVTropes Page) and its spin-off series, Clear Lakes 44. Troy and relative newcomer Noah are still with THAC (EDIT 2) and now Noah is gone, too, as a result of the above mentioned airing of dirty laundry, and THAC effectively no longer exists (/EDIT 2), for what it's worth, but given that literally half of the group/company (Joseph and Tim) just up and left, for shady reasons, and one of the two remaining guys is "the new guy," I'm kind of doubtful of the future of THAC, despite the reassurances of Troy and Noah that everything's still smooth sailing (EDIT 2) which, of course, turned out to not be the case (/EDIT 2).
So... now, the crux of this post and the question for me, personally, is as follows:
Do I continue to follow the separate paths that these guys may take in the future with the creative, public aspect of their lives, the same as I still do with Channel Awesome[1] and Spoony, even after Channel Awesome and Spoony had their own less-than-amicable falling out?
Or... do I drop the whole lot of them, the same way that I dropped anything and everything to do with Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom[2], starting from the moment that the latter left/was unceremoniously dumped from ScrewAttack[3] for what were most definitely "not amicable" reasons? (EDIT) Oh, and see also: GameGrumps and BalloonShop. These were two groups that I didn't really know much about mostly until after I'd found out that the original groups had already broken up for whatever reasons, and as such, I didn't ever really get into following them. For GameGrumps, I don't really think Egoraptor has been all that funny after he apparently stopped making animations, and I never really followed JonTron to begin with. Though what I saw of GameGrumps while the two were still together was fairly okay (sort of a poor man's version of Two Best Friends Play), GameGrumps in its current incarnation (at least the very tiny amount of it that I was able to stomach) makes me want to hit myself in the head with a claw hammer only slightly less than PewDiePie does. For BalloonShop, at least, I've watched several of their videos, even so, because some of them are pretty damn funny, but still... I don't really follow them otherwise, unless I'm linked to them from elsewhere. So, I guess my natural inclination seems to be to simply not bother with groups like any of these, after they've had fallings outs among their members, with only a very few rare exceptions. (/EDIT)
Hmm... we'll just have to see how it goes, I guess. Only time will tell. (EDIT 2) Well, we saw how that turned out, so fuck everything, I guess. (/EDIT 2)
[1] - Or Doug and Rob Walker, at the very least, since I don't follow anyone else from that site anymore[4] (even Linkara, who I used to follow almost as closely as I follow Doug/Rob), unless they happen to show up in a crossover with Doug. And I most certainly no longer follow any of the other guys (besides Spoony[5]) who have left/been fired from Channel Awesome for various reasons.
[2] - Seriously, I hardly paid any attention to Handsome Tom even while he was with That Guy With The Glasses/Channel Awesome (to bring things full circle), aside from whatever small role he might have played in the various TGWTG/CA anniversary videos.
[3] - As an aside, I'm just glad that James Rolfe had already mostly outgrown ScrewAttack by the point at which I started completely and utterly ignoring ScrewAttack, or else I'd probably never have become as big a follower of him and his works as I have. If ScrewAttack had still been the only way to see AVGN videos at that point, I likely would have dropped him along with all the rest, sadly. And if, let's say, James and Mike Matei were to ever have a similar falling out as those above, heavens forbid, then I'd be faced with this same dilemma all over again.[6]
[4] - As another aside, I pretty much consider Angry Joe as a separate entity entirely from Channel Awesome, even if he is actually a contributor there. Or, rather, I don't indirectly follow him via Channel Awesome (when I follow him at all, which honestly isn't all that much or often, even if I am subscribed to his Youtube channel).
[5] - It's actually something of a miracle that I still follow Spoony himself, for that matter (especially after this shit[7]). If Counter Monkey didn't exist, I probably wouldn't, to be honest, since pretty much all of his content lately consists of either Counter Monkey or wrestling vlog rants (and I do watch those, too [at least the ones for the WWE, anyway, since I give even less of a shit about NXT or TNA than I do about the WWE, even if NXT is supposedly better than WWE proper] but I certainly wouldn't stick around if the wrestling stuff was the only thing he was still putting out).
[6] - And if, doubly forbid, Matt, Pat, Woolie, and/or Liam of Super Best Friends Play ever had such a falling out of their own... Jiminy Cricket, I don't want to even consider the possibility...
[7] - Of course, given that blip.tv no longer exists and I don't care all that much about hunting up a mirror for his rant video, assuming there is one out there to find at all, it's somewhat difficult to show what it was, exactly, that Spoony said that pissed me off so much at the time, but suffice it to say that Spoony was indeed utterly full of shit when it came to Metroid: Other M.[9]
[8] - Yeah, this is one of those posts where I got into a lot semi-aimless, mostly off-topic rambling via footnotes, where the footnotes ended up taking more space than the actual post itself. Certainly not the first such post, and very likely won't be the last. >_>; Truly, I feel sorry for anyone who might read posts like this and feel compelled to follow every footnote as they come to them, rather than reading everything in order and then the footnotes later. Starting to feel a tiny bit like House of Leaves up in here, almost. >_>;;
[9] - Oh shit, went too far down.[8]
(EDIT 2) And it looks like they finally decided to air their dirty laundry. So, yeah, I'm pretty much completely done with THAC and its members and former members now, and, truthfully, I already have been ever since they split up. Basically, this is ScrewAttack all over again, for me, and I am simply washing my hands of the whole thing. Marble Hornets was good, and THAC was good while it lasted, until the breakup happened, so there is still that, I guess. Maybe if they somehow managed to work out their differences, put all the ugliness behind them, and got back together again, then maybe I'd start paying attention again, but as of right now, since that seems like it is highly unlikely to ever happen, I'm pretty sure I'm out for good. (/EDIT 2)
For those who don't know, these guys are the ones who made Marble Hornets (TVTropes Page) and its spin-off series, Clear Lakes 44. Troy and relative newcomer Noah are still with THAC (EDIT 2) and now Noah is gone, too, as a result of the above mentioned airing of dirty laundry, and THAC effectively no longer exists (/EDIT 2), for what it's worth, but given that literally half of the group/company (Joseph and Tim) just up and left, for shady reasons, and one of the two remaining guys is "the new guy," I'm kind of doubtful of the future of THAC, despite the reassurances of Troy and Noah that everything's still smooth sailing (EDIT 2) which, of course, turned out to not be the case (/EDIT 2).
So... now, the crux of this post and the question for me, personally, is as follows:
Do I continue to follow the separate paths that these guys may take in the future with the creative, public aspect of their lives, the same as I still do with Channel Awesome[1] and Spoony, even after Channel Awesome and Spoony had their own less-than-amicable falling out?
Or... do I drop the whole lot of them, the same way that I dropped anything and everything to do with Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom[2], starting from the moment that the latter left/was unceremoniously dumped from ScrewAttack[3] for what were most definitely "not amicable" reasons? (EDIT) Oh, and see also: GameGrumps and BalloonShop. These were two groups that I didn't really know much about mostly until after I'd found out that the original groups had already broken up for whatever reasons, and as such, I didn't ever really get into following them. For GameGrumps, I don't really think Egoraptor has been all that funny after he apparently stopped making animations, and I never really followed JonTron to begin with. Though what I saw of GameGrumps while the two were still together was fairly okay (sort of a poor man's version of Two Best Friends Play), GameGrumps in its current incarnation (at least the very tiny amount of it that I was able to stomach) makes me want to hit myself in the head with a claw hammer only slightly less than PewDiePie does. For BalloonShop, at least, I've watched several of their videos, even so, because some of them are pretty damn funny, but still... I don't really follow them otherwise, unless I'm linked to them from elsewhere. So, I guess my natural inclination seems to be to simply not bother with groups like any of these, after they've had fallings outs among their members, with only a very few rare exceptions. (/EDIT)
Hmm... we'll just have to see how it goes, I guess. Only time will tell. (EDIT 2) Well, we saw how that turned out, so fuck everything, I guess. (/EDIT 2)
[1] - Or Doug and Rob Walker, at the very least, since I don't follow anyone else from that site anymore[4] (even Linkara, who I used to follow almost as closely as I follow Doug/Rob), unless they happen to show up in a crossover with Doug. And I most certainly no longer follow any of the other guys (besides Spoony[5]) who have left/been fired from Channel Awesome for various reasons.
[2] - Seriously, I hardly paid any attention to Handsome Tom even while he was with That Guy With The Glasses/Channel Awesome (to bring things full circle), aside from whatever small role he might have played in the various TGWTG/CA anniversary videos.
[3] - As an aside, I'm just glad that James Rolfe had already mostly outgrown ScrewAttack by the point at which I started completely and utterly ignoring ScrewAttack, or else I'd probably never have become as big a follower of him and his works as I have. If ScrewAttack had still been the only way to see AVGN videos at that point, I likely would have dropped him along with all the rest, sadly. And if, let's say, James and Mike Matei were to ever have a similar falling out as those above, heavens forbid, then I'd be faced with this same dilemma all over again.[6]
[4] - As another aside, I pretty much consider Angry Joe as a separate entity entirely from Channel Awesome, even if he is actually a contributor there. Or, rather, I don't indirectly follow him via Channel Awesome (when I follow him at all, which honestly isn't all that much or often, even if I am subscribed to his Youtube channel).
[5] - It's actually something of a miracle that I still follow Spoony himself, for that matter (especially after this shit[7]). If Counter Monkey didn't exist, I probably wouldn't, to be honest, since pretty much all of his content lately consists of either Counter Monkey or wrestling vlog rants (and I do watch those, too [at least the ones for the WWE, anyway, since I give even less of a shit about NXT or TNA than I do about the WWE, even if NXT is supposedly better than WWE proper] but I certainly wouldn't stick around if the wrestling stuff was the only thing he was still putting out).
[6] - And if, doubly forbid, Matt, Pat, Woolie, and/or Liam of Super Best Friends Play ever had such a falling out of their own... Jiminy Cricket, I don't want to even consider the possibility...
[7] - Of course, given that blip.tv no longer exists and I don't care all that much about hunting up a mirror for his rant video, assuming there is one out there to find at all, it's somewhat difficult to show what it was, exactly, that Spoony said that pissed me off so much at the time, but suffice it to say that Spoony was indeed utterly full of shit when it came to Metroid: Other M.[9]
[8] - Yeah, this is one of those posts where I got into a lot semi-aimless, mostly off-topic rambling via footnotes, where the footnotes ended up taking more space than the actual post itself. Certainly not the first such post, and very likely won't be the last. >_>; Truly, I feel sorry for anyone who might read posts like this and feel compelled to follow every footnote as they come to them, rather than reading everything in order and then the footnotes later. Starting to feel a tiny bit like House of Leaves up in here, almost. >_>;;
[9] - Oh shit, went too far down.[8]