Duine on Nostr: DBZ Abridged is interesting since it's a great example of the rise and fall of ...

DBZ Abridged is interesting since it's a great example of the rise and fall of "content creation." Aside from that it's actually a pretty good parody of DBZ that goes from one-off jokes and cultural references but becomes an alternate retelling of the series making amusing universe in-jokes and taking itself more seriously.

However it was one of the first to go through the typical "content creation" phases that affect every single "content creator":

Phase One
>some fairly creative people with a passion to make something create funny jokes, mostly to amuse themselves and share it with their friends
>quality is fairly low but has heart in it so it's still amusing to watch and inherently funny/interesting
>after a few of these and some luck the creators realize that it's actually getting popular and for whatever reason they continue with it
<DBZ Abridged reached this point after the first ten videos or so

Phase Two
>more effort is spent on every video which slows down average rate of production
>quality usually goes up and reaches a happy medium typical of high-quality amateur or enthusiast production and editing
>memes and in-jokes unique to the creator or the series or whatever usually crop up around this time
<DBZ Abridged reached this towards the end of the Saiyan arc
>rot begins to set in when the creators begin to take money - this was hard back before stuff like patreon or monetization
>if this doesn't happen then the creator usually stagnates in viewer count since the algorithms stop bumping up unmonetized content and sometimes the creator burns out since there's no monetary incentive

Phase Three
>more and more effort is spent on every video and rate of release slows down to a trickle
>for some reason the creator(s) usually branch out and begin creating side-series, sometimes unrelated, sometimes related to the main series
>even though people usually don't watch the side-content
<DBZ Abridged reached this around the middle of the Namek arc
>if there's more than one person working on the videos then drama sets in - people leave, fuck each other, fuck someone else, are outed as weirdos or groomers, or generally become self-centered
>if this is allowed to grow unchecked then the once-just-for-fun series becomes an actual business made for money rather than for fun
<DBZ Abridged reached this around the end of the Namek/start of the Android arc

Phase Four
>the fanbase begins to take a life of its own and usually descends into the horrific forum/discord incest and cliquery where they take too much of the creator(s)' time
>single-person creators usually move on to Twitch since it's easier, pays better, and they now have enough of a prior fanbase to seamlessly transition to it, abandoning their prior work for the most part
>if the twitch cancer doesn't set in then the videos move on to "my $1200/month patreon donor told me to do this video I didn't want to do and I'm not really interested in but it pays the bills" (LGR is here)
>videos take longer and longer to make even if they are marginally higher quality, too much time is spent managing more and more people or doing things that aren't the main series
<DBZ Abridged reached this in the middle of the Cell arc (for real, half the runtime of the entire series is just the Cell arc because the videos got too fucking long)

Phase Five
>One of four things generally happens:
>1 - If based on another work, legal issues or the business imploding stops the series at some point (DBZ Abridged stopped here, 40k TTS stopped here)
>2 - The business stagnates once the main series ends/runs out of steam because now there's no passion and too many people (mainstream streamers/tech channels are here, old-school examples are stuff like AVGN/TGWTG)
>3 - The main guy behind the series abandons ship to Twitch since it pays better and censors marginally less and is generally easier. Plus they get to shitpost with their gigantic cancerous discord now.
>4 - Everything just... ends. This is very rare but is limited to people who realize they lost the passion or are simply done with things due to personal issues like having families now or wanting another job or whatever. Very rare that this happens but not unheard of.

Increasingly there's also two wild cards that can happen any time during Phase Three or onwards:
>the creator(s) realize that things are getting out of hand and just go back to basics, getting away from their insular discords and not being beholden to patreon donors (Ssethtzeentach seems to have done this)
>the group offends the wrong group of people and gets cancelled from the internet

It's all so tiresome. :tiresome2: