Recently, out of curiosity, I checked his channel in order to see if anything of any notoriety has happened.
To my disappointment, not much seems to have happened. Other than, apparently, him losing a quite significant portion of his subscribers over the last year or so. He used to have over 500 thousand subscribers about a year ago, and now he has less than 400 thousand.
That's quite a significant drop, especially considering that youtubers rarely lose a significant portion of their subscriber count no matter how their channel may (or may not) change. This is because most people never unsubscribe from the dozens and dozens, sometimes hundreds, of channels they are subscribed to, even if they effectively stop watching the videos. Many YouTube channels that have fallen from grace and which view counts have plummeted like a lead balloon may still hold about the same amount of subscribers they did in their peak, because people very rarely unsubscribe even when they get bored of the videos and just don't watch them anymore.
Thus, if a YouTube channel loses a very significant amount of subscribers (and over 100 thousand is a very significant amount), it's usually a sign that the youtuber is doing something extraordinarily bad to piss off so many people. To cause them to not just stop watching but go ahead and unsubscribe, in such massive amounts. This is quite rare, and usually a sign of the subscribers actually becoming genuinely angry or antipathic towards the youtuber or the channel. The channel has not merely become boring (or stopped uploading videos), it's actually pissing off people to the point of them leaving in droves.
The most damning thing about this hemorrhaging of large amounts of subscribers is that Lucas himself seems to be sarcastic about it. From one of his latest videos it seems that he's kind of taking pride in the fact that his subscriber count is dropping. While he didn't say it directly in the video (at least not the part I watched), I got the slight impression that he has got this arrogant attitude of "if you don't like what I'm saying then I don't even want you as my subscriber; good riddance!" (an attitude very typical of far-leftist social justice warriors).
As mentioned, since quite long his videos have consisted mostly of erratic rambling from which it's very hard to distill his actual points and views that he's trying to make (he seems to be quite a master of a style of speaking that sounds like he's speaking very clearly and making a clear point, but which in actuality when you try to actually understand what he's trying to say it's very difficult), but from what I gathered, I believe I have got an inkling of how his political stance has changed:
It seems to me, or at least this is what I understand, that he has become some kind of "conservative BLM activist". He seems to still be a conservative and a patriot, and a defender of the Constitution and the American values, but he seems to be of the opinion that the American conservatives consist of mostly what he calls "white conservatives", and that the vast, vast majority of "black conservatives" are not driving the interests of black people, and that they are merely parroting what the "white conservatives" want to hear, rather than what would actually be beneficial to black people.
In other words, it seems to me that he has become some kind of proponent of a different branch of American conservatism that's still highly critical of the far left, but also highly critical of the traditional ("white") conservatism. He seems to have become a lot more sympathetic to the "BLM" movement and significantly more critical of the police, wanting police reform.
That in itself would be mighty fine by me. He probably has very good and valid points and opinions, and many of the things that he believes in I would probably agree with. Not only is he 100% entitled to his new political opinions, many of those opinions might even be things I could agree with.
His major problem, however, is his changed attitude. He seems to have become keen on making enemies of everybody. During the last year or so he has become very confrontational and sarcastic of the traditional American ("white") conservatives, often parodying them, satirizing them, and mocking them. To his credit, he seems to still criticize, parody, satirize and mock the far left too.
But it appears that he has willingly put himself in a no-man's-land position where he's making enemies of everybody. He doesn't seem to have gotten (or understood) the memo that mockery never persuaded anybody. If he wants American conservatism to change, mocking them is not the way to do it. He's only being provocative and confrontational for the sake of being provocative and confrontational, rather than constructive.
And this is, I believe, one of the main reasons why his subscriber count has dropped so dramatically: He's deliberately and willing driving his own conservative subscribers away, with a "good riddance!" attitude.
Of course it doesn't exactly help that he has pretty much stopped making high-quality scripted videos where he expresses himself clearly and succinctly, and the vast majority of his videos are nothing but hours-long ass-boring podcasts and let's play videos.
It's weird. I used to really like his videos and then noticed that he seemed to randomly have black identitarian views. Sometimes he would talk about how the police had a good shoot and sometimes he seemed to imply that the suspect was shot for being black. Over time he went more and more over to the black identitarian side of things and I stopped watching.
ReplyDeleteYeah. I haven't watched his videos in a long time either, but from the little I did (before I wrote this blog post), it seemed to me like he had become this strange "conservative BLM" activist of sorts. As in, he hasn't become a full-on far-leftist, but he seems to think that the conservatives are wrong as well, that they are doing conservatism "wrong". (He especially seems to think like this of most black conservatives, as if they are just placating to the "white" conservatives rather than driving their own rights.)
DeleteThat in itself is not what I really have a problem with. If he has criticism of current American conservatism that's his prerogative (I have my criticism of them as well, so it's not like you have to be 100% one side or the other). My main problem with him is is attitude. He seems to have this really detrimental "SJW-like" attitude of "if you disagree with me then I don't even want you to be subscribed to me nor watch my videos; good riddance!" He seems to revel in the fact that he's bleeding subscribers (or at least he did when I last checked, I don't know if he has changed his attitude later.)
It's been so long since I've seen an "ohhhh my gooooodness" segment that I actually forgot that was what he was good at. Thank you for reminding what it was about this man I used to have an admiration for, alongside solidifying why it is that admiration no longer exists.
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