there's been a very violent (but weirdly unnoticed) switch from professional culture = pop culture to amateur culture = pop culture. nobody cares about movies or tv shows, but people do care about let's plays, tiktok skits, vtubers. even things like smiling friends stop early because it's just not worth the hassle.

@lain people like the soul
they did care for smiling friends. I don't think they said "it's not worth the hassle", I got the sense that they didn't have to do all the things creatives had to back in the bad old days, because you can just be a dude online now and make money for being funny

@WandererUber i don't see how that's different. 25 minutes of smiling friends that take months of work get 300k views and a random 'zach on oneyplays' clip gets a few million views, it's clear where you should concentrate your attention on

@lain my point got lost in my babbling. "The things you had to do" = compromise, let some exec meddle with your vision, sell out, etc.

They just said "no more episodes" as soon as they got the sense that they were trying to do this to them. I don't think they would have quit just out of laziness. The reason they have the high views they do is because they consistently put out authentic content. Many have failed this