I went on an accidental deep-dive tonight, and ended up finding
this old /v/ thread about Vinesauce from about 2014. It had some pretty interesting commentary in it, and a LOT of info that's otherwise lost to time, but something that's also relevant to a discussion we had not that long ago was
this collection of screenshots featuring furries in Chatango (linked instead of pasted cause it's a fucking huge image).
It definitely goes to show two things: One, that we were correct in saying that furries have always been a sizable chunk of the Vinesauce community, and two, that the Vinesauce fanbase has always been pretty divided. Someone created this specifically to show to Vinny in order to convince him to do something about the growing number of furries, but the (supposed) creator of the image responded in the thread saying that Vinny wanted no part of moderating the community, and that while both he and the other streamers agreed that it was a bit annoying, they didn't really have any reason to kick them out of what was essentially always their community. That's pretty in line with how I remember Vinny handling moderation, and I believe there was a post from his old Blogger (?) account linked earlier in the thread that said as much. I wonder now if he made that post in response to this complaint?
There's also
this fascinating pastebin about an oft-forgotten community member, Tame - if you saw Joel's VERY old drawing from when he was still exh0rder, you might remember him being featured in it. It basically outlines all the reasons why Tame was removed as a streamer and as a community member, namely that he lied over and over again about all sorts of things and that even the other streamers couldn't stand him. When I read it, it reminded me of one of the first comments I made in this thread:
If my Vinesauce timeline is right, he [Joel] did briefly jump ship around 2014-2015. I could be full of shit - although I've been watching them both since 2011, I stopped from around 2014-2016, so I'm fuzzy on that era - and I don't know why or for how long, but it's interesting to note.
I now realize that, while I was wrong about who the person in question was (although there's no confirmation that Joel didn't make a similar threat), I was right about the time and about the threat having been made in the first place. There's no way to confirm the details in the bin, of course, but it seems pretty in line with my (admittedly very fuzzy) memories of early Vinesauce drama, and regardless, is pretty damn fun to read. There's a lot more interesting stuff in the thread, apart from the usual /v/ nonsense, but this is long enough so I'll let y'all pick through it for yourselves.
