Apologies for the long wall of text ahead.
A lot of people on the rantgrumps sub have been blaming their new “manager” for their incessant merch shilling as of late. You can definitely see that as their views decline their merch shilling gets much more apparent. This latest collection of dirty pair knockoff shit is all over my Instagram feed, as well as Suzy’s trash quality scam jewelry and clothing (those pierced hats she sells just have a print on them and I can guarantee they’re sourced from dhgate or something similar for pennies on the dollar.) I haven’t purchased any of their merch but I can almost guarantee that they print on the lowest quality Gildan blanks as well, because they’re the cheapest to buy for people just starting out.
I’ve been watching the grumps since the Jontron era, and can honestly say from the bottom of my heart that I loved them for a long time, but this past year especially you can see just how much shit has changed. They rarely ever finish a play through anymore, even if the audience has been requesting it, because they lament over the fact that they get less views the longer a series goes on. While that might be true, when things start going awry like that the first place you should be looking to is yourself, not blaming the bullshit YouTube algorithm on everything. I can’t even stand to watch grumps anymore because they get absolutely nothing accomplished, and if they start a play through that I actually like (the new leisure suit Larry game comes to mind...) I know they won’t finish it.
At this point I honestly prefer to go back and watch their older episodes over again instead of watching their new trash. The 10 minute power hours are alright, but only because of the supporting cast (mostly Ross and super mega). I’m sure that so many other people agree because you can SEE the disparity in views between their old videos and the trash they put out now. Honestly, I even like Danny. The playthroughs that he does with Ross are some of my favorite on the channel. Arin and his drive to be a “business” is plummeting the channel straight into the ground. From hiring a management team to making the studio a corporate workspace, he’s strangling the creativity out of the grumps.
Also, saw somebody in the thread ask opinions of supermega earlier. I actually REALLY like them. They remind me so much of earlier grumps content but 100x better because there’s no Arin-like screaming mongrel. They’re just edgy enough to push the envelope, their editing is great, and they actually put time and effort into their content when they can. I hope they can get out of the grump circle soon, as it is I think they’re most likely only staying for the money they get from editing grump videos, but if their channel takes off I would hate to see it get strangled into what game grumps has become.