The Internet has been his safe space/asspat reserve going back to his FGC days because he's got a colossal ego but is too awkward and inept in-person to get asspats for being great. Taking away YT doesn't take away his ego or need for asspats, so he'd probably have done the exact same thing on another website. None of this solves the issue of him being inept and lazy, which means he'd still need some kind of pay-to-flex way to get people to like him. It might not have been gacha but it would have still had to be something that let him flex with a high enough ceiling that most people would not be on his level.
In short: It's a safe bet he would have found some money sink for similar reasons but that's all I feel confident saying.
Valid point about his need to flex. I wish we knew more about his teen years, it would make it easier to tell just how much being in the public eye like this while sucking so much at everything has contributed to how obnoxious that need is.
Phil has also had credit card problems going back to the early 2000s-he took out advances against cards (in his telling at least) to pay for flights to FGC tournies and did not pay them off in full until around 2012. The spending habits that got him into this mess absolutely predate his e-begging or time on YT. But now that you have me thinking about it I'm curious what would have happened if he hadn't been shitcanned from the helicopter plant-I could see it going either way, being surrounded by normies might have taught him to tone things down a little but being surrounded by people who hated his guts might have pushed him to want even more e-validation.
Thing is, his spending habits probably aren't linked to his mobile gaming, at least not in the "it's just more of the same problem" sense, because he's bad with money no matter what he's spending it on or what the motivation is for doing it, which leads me to think that his stupidity is far more to blame for the lack of financial responsibility in his life. Like, he spends too much on things he needs, pays people to do stuff because he's too lazy, and generally just wastes money that he could have held onto by NOT being lazy and dumb. Also, he doesn't like to pay off his debts, which clearly because he's an asshole, not because Champions needs that money more.
For someone who loves getting money so much, he sure takes its presence in his life for granted, because he does not know or appreciate its value in the least.
Well when he had friends his flex was his statue collection amongst other things, now that he's completely cut himself off from human interaction that isn't an obligatory mention he had to resort to his only real hobby of mobile gaming.
That's probably why it's dead to him now. It was never a passion of his, just a means to an end, the end being the feeling of being cool. Tha'ts what I'm so curious about, would he be this bad about it if he had, at the very least, learned his lesson from the FGC, gone home, and played games the way Phil plays games, but for an audience of none? I would think not, because Phil obviously gets worse when he's having to hear that he's wrong about the game dropping his inputs and shit, but who knows.
Interesting question -- my guess is no. If he had gone into, I dunno, lathe operations or something, he'd probably be much better off psychologically. "Worst gaming channel on YouTube" has to come with a cost. "Worst lathe operator" probably wouldn't.
Well, not psychological costs, no. But he would certainly get injured a lot. lol
