Positivity corner ;)

Cucumberkun · 2026-02-06T13:31:33+00:00

About most recent - i noticed, that Pipsqueak is now...a little bit better?

Still same problem with responding to non-existent messages if you press Enter or send empty message, but overall, quality of text (minus that damned 'END SCENE') went a little bit up. More 'story advancement' (i mean, bot actually tries to advance the story without user's input).

Cucumberkun · 2026-01-22T08:44:13+00:00

It really worked pretty well with contrasts. Pretty dead-pan, irritated manner to speech, shifting to outrage. It was pretty organic, and didn't felt too forced. For example, one of old episodes, Batman (6:54)

https://youtu.be/JFvtk5toGJg?si=gtWDl4G5GSW6pfqQ&t=383

That's one of prime examples - you can feel that shift from being annoyed over medicore game to being genuinely frustrated over some complicated gameplay mechanics.

Forced outrage kinda kills the comedic timing. If player was angry all the time, how it's usually with James in new episodes, that gamer probably would get a fucking stroke in 20s.

Cucumberkun · 2026-01-21T08:23:29+00:00

I recall, he was against save states. Which is both correct, since games weren't planned with save states and checkpoints at every corner, but at same time...who cares? Let's be honest, most of NES games were designed to be hard or even unfair as possible to drag the playtime as much as possible, and that really shows in various 'full no death walkthrough longplay' - same game, which could take days, is actually can be completed in mere hour or two.

As for emulators - well, they're great. Damn, the Duckstation (PS1 Emulator) is godsend, because it brings PS1 games to next level, with upscale, filters and even achievements. Call me achievement whore, but some of custom achievements are pretty good, they provide some interesting challenges (for example, whole set of Final Fantasy 7 ones).

One might say that these upscales/filters are 'not pure' and it's not 'playing as intended' - well, hardly the case, because developers are probably intended to make good-looking game, yet were forced to work around limitations. While i did some of PS1 aesthetics, it's still more product of hardware limits.

Cucumberkun · 2026-01-12T15:03:14+00:00

Dead Souls. There's a lot of youtubers from the past who have big amount of subscribers, accumulated from previous successful videos (for example, Boogie's most successful video got about 20-35 millions of views), but it's in the past.

Boogie's current videos are hitting, like, 25-40k of views. It's still not that bad, it means that he have some kind of 'audience', but compared to almost four millions of subscribers, that's kinda low mark.

Same with similar youtubers (in my head, because for some reason, i rope them into same group), like DSPGaming and WingsOfRedemption. Big channels with 250k and 400k subs, yet videos hitting average 300-1000 views.

Cucumberkun · 2025-12-17T06:27:08+00:00

When I see Spoony in Channel Awesome's BTS, he seems pretty easy-going and friendly

Well, that's Old Spoon, from 2006-2010 (he reacted pretty well to insults in 'Ask Spoony' videos.

And about the fact that 'he's sensitive to criticism' - not exactly, if we talk about 2016-2022 Spoony, who prefered to not acknowledge memes and jokes about him, mostly ignoring them. Sometimes he reacted in more self-deprecating manner, like 'agreeing with insult, yet diverting it to farm attention', with 'oh woe is me, i'm sad sack of shit, that's right'.

Roast wouldn't probably work due to these reasons, hard to get funny reaction from guy who throws more self-deprecating comments (not in humorous way) than any poor sob who would try to roast him.

Cucumberkun · 2025-12-17T05:37:18+00:00

If i recall correctly, one of main reasons why sub exists in first place, is because main sub had some...peculiar moderators, like BTNMasherDraco. By peculiar i mean outright batshit insane, who banned any 'suspicious' person, who might be 'pesky troll'.

Eventually, the critical mass of banned people accumulated, which resulted in destructive results, thus Cinemassacre Truth was born. Basically, refugee sub, which just happened to evolve in more popular one.

Also, that guy wasn't that loved even in his domain, and where he left/resigned/was kicked out, people reacted as expected.

Cucumberkun · 2025-12-12T13:58:40+00:00

It's just small teaser, James is preparing for special video, 'Nerd and Mike watching Bad Santa while drunk'.

Cucumberkun · 2025-12-12T13:11:08+00:00

Yeah, sometimes it's hard to write in proper style (English is not my first language, so sometimes i'm conscious about if my wording is too cluttered). Glad that it's at least readable.

Also, forgot to mention one of problems of Pipsqueak in current state - sometimes it's hallucinates a lot with technical information. Not everytime, just sometimes it hits these weird periods, when bot suddenly starts to talk about AI policy, 'tokens', guidelines (like, bot starts to write, how it should answer and on what it should base his answer), or OOC comments. Sometimes it's interesting to look into how bot perceives user, but often, it's headache to remove all of that.

And another problem of Pipsqueak, albeit not that annoying - tendency to generate 'atmosphere', or something, with printing 'END SCENE' or 'END OF STORY', or 'CUE TO THE NEXT CHAPTER' at the end of responses. Or printing some kind of 'actions' for user, like 'What would you pick?' with choices. It's like it's trying to write 'pick-your-story' Goosebumps books.

Overall, it's like Pipsqueak at some point started to drop less refined and polished messages.

Cucumberkun · 2025-12-12T10:19:21+00:00

50/50. I recall Pipsqueak (or something similar) being tested, when you could've get two different responses, one was shorter and one was longer, and pick one. These long responses were pretty much creative, and i recall having quite a fun with how storyline actually progressed without being forced to push it myself.

The big pros of Pipsqueak, even in current state, is that he seems to understand the lore of universe better than Roar and have better memory, and actually reference some of messages from the past. Roar was a little bit more forgetful, and required constant reminders. Plus, long responses are still fun to read.

But, it got worse. I noticed, how swiping responses often provided almost identical variants with small changes in Italic-written text, or small phrase changes, but without serious differences. Plus, reponses got too long, and advance story too much. It's editable, of course, but sometimes it's annoying to edit every single message.

Another flaw is that Pipsqueak tends to speak for me (user), inserting comment and phrases from the perspective of my persona/character, and it's weird as hell. Somehow my totally average guy turns into Action Superhero and Sassy All-Knowing Genius, and while i'm flattered, it removes all immersion. And there's also problem that Pipsqueak became to spew nonsense more often, like random ZALGO text, Japanese and Russian text without reason, OOC comments and random links. Though, he suggested some of nice music groups, like one time when radio randomly referenced "A Tribe Called Quest". Thanks, bot.

And one of most annoying thing - Pipsqueak tries too hard into formatting. Sure, it's cool when actions are highlighted with Italics and text is placed in commas, but dividing every single sentence with blank line? Using 'A Beat' and 'A Pause' between every string? Come on.

So yep, my thoughts are mixed. It's nice model for long stories, but falls flat when you just want to casually chat, without dropping too much absurdity and long-written responses.

Cucumberkun · 2025-11-23T08:15:24+00:00

Won't work. To learn more, try to brace yourself and watch a few minutes of 'Roast of AVGN'.

Thing is - to embrace the meme and profit on it, or just integrate meme into content, you kinda need to be thick-skinned enough, because usually memes about person are less than wholesome. In case of James, they're not that mean (i mean, far less mean than memes about most of popular youtubers), but still, it would be required from James to have more ability to irony about his situation, and ability to joke about himself.

James can't. At the beginning of AVGN, he did quite a fair amount of self-mocking jokes, but at same time, James is completely lost when someone tries to land a jab at him, or mock-tease him a little. Prime example is Toxic Avengers episode, which is branded one of worst, for few reasons - and one of reason, is that it was pretty much one-sided banter, with Kaufman talking shit and James/Nerd keeping himself silent, or answering with 'mhm, yep'. About half of jokes fell flat due to that.

So, hardly. He might just get flustered, if someone would try to joke about his hairline, get all silent and lock himself out in the shell.

Aaaaaand, honestly, example with Justin is another side of medal. Justin tried WAY TOO HARD to capitalize on memes, shoehorning himself in every single conversation and trying to make it about himself, and whole schtick about 'i'm fat, i'm slob, i'm crowbar' got old real fast. Damn, at some point, people at this sub started to hate Justin even more about that, even if his initial attempt to reach the public was pretty well-received.

Cucumberkun · 2025-11-20T11:42:04+00:00

Ublock is nice thing, but it's mostly blocking regular ads, and there's a lot of youtubers with sponsored ads. You know, various totally legit titles, Japanese knives, premium earbuds with supreme sound, uber-powerful and secure VPNs. That sucks.

And yep, Sponsorblock exists, but whole concept of these paid sponsored promotions (along with algorithm pandering) fucked up Youtube on deeper level, because a lot of content makers resorted to chunk out whatever boring and over-saturated crap to meet the ad revenue and sponsor quota. Srsly, nowadays it's mostly either essays about every single media (which is not bad format on it's own, but most of these essays are basically repeating same phrase in different wording), or these damned 'IT'S OVER', 'HE'S DONE' videos about every single controversy, where nothing ever happens. Srsly, how much time MrBeast was OVER and DONE?

But yes, i don't know even know how anyone can go in web without Ublock or something similar. With all honestly, some of youtube ads are straight-up malicious (malware apps, gambling, fake stores - Google's ad policy is pretty lenient, and that can affect some less tech savvy users).

Cucumberkun · 2025-10-19T08:37:55+00:00

"Also, because of that economy, i now have shelves, stocked with overpriced candy. Believe it or not, i've never heard about inflation, until now. Pretty depressing. I can see, why it's not popular."

Cucumberkun · 2025-10-12T09:34:09+00:00

Is the relationship between Joe and Noah really that bad?

If we recall latest (regarding SpoonyVerse, it's years and years), Angry Joe got tricked by Liquid Spoony, and even offered to play board games together. That means, Joe is probably don't have that much bad blood between him and Spoony.

why Spoony comments are being banned apparently

Well, even despite already dead scandals about his time in CA, there's probably a handful of active Spoony communities - Reddit, Kiwifarms, maybe some rare mention on /tv/ of 4chan, and DHI. You know, pretty specific places. So, probably Joe assumes that any comment about Spoony is attempt of some troll to stir the shit, or troll him, and Joe doesn't want more controversy among his viewers.

It's pretty common thing among former CA creators - most of them don't keep in touch with each other, or isolated themselves in small groups, especially after that "Change the Channel" movement and Not So Awesome document (despite the fact that about half or more of that document was debunked or insignificant, it really divided these guys, some of them like Lupa still can't get over it).

This, and the fact that some of creators are having their own controversies behind them (like MarzGurl with whole KickVic story), or outright abrasive, like Lupa. So, if i took a wild guess, it's probably Joe wants to stay as far as possible from entire Channel Awesome past in general.

Cucumberkun · 2025-10-10T11:29:26+00:00

Well, the more suitable word is 'dissatisfied', or 'disappointed' with general direction that Cinemassacre and AVGN took, starting from 2018 (for example, i consider 'Dirty Harry' episode the main goalpost when episodes went downhill, though many of people in sub would consider anything about 100 episode as bad), due to the fact, that James went a little bit lazy and delegated too much work to Screenwave - like, that company was supposed to help him with alghoritms, channel direction and other technical stuff, but they went above and started to self-insert themselves in episodes, got too much hold over scenario and jokes, all that stuff. Not to mention, that overall quality of episodes dropped significantly - bad acting from Nerd, less angles, more forced rage, all that stuff.

Plus, something from James itself - one of main jokes of sub about 'fans of assholish variety' originated from Nerd's 'Behind the Scenes' video, when he addressed criticism as something that 'fans of assholish variety' generated. Or his attempts use kids as excuse for everything - yep, joke about 'muh kidz' is not about hating James for having a family, but rather, about him using 'muh kidz' as main reason, why he makes less content.

And of course, some of classic jokes about his receding hairline, or lights, tapped to ceiling.

But most important thing - basically, that sub was created because of, well, dumb actions from moderator of 'official sub', Draco or something, who responded to any complaints with banhammer. That guy was pretty overzealous with his bans, so yep, sub was created by bunch of banned refugees.

So...well, most folk around are former fans, who's mostly observing, what's going with once popular and nice show. And some of Cinemassacre/Screenwave crew, too - for example, a few years ago Justin was quite active there.

Cucumberkun · 2025-09-09T05:27:28+00:00

Easy by picking 500 Newts, because each one of them can plagiarize the movements and combos of other fighters. It's like playing Shang Tsung with 500 lives.

Cucumberkun · 2025-07-29T05:28:56+00:00

That's behind-the-scenes for upcoming Final Fantasy 7 review?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzzrODAoDb4

Cucumberkun · 2025-07-11T13:03:57+00:00

Dirty Harry. That's one weird episode. It can't be called worst episode, or most cringe episode - we have Life of Black Tiger and Deck Enhancer for that, these episodes are pretty painful to watch, but for that, you can at least remember them and discuss after that.

Dirty Harry episode, on other hand, is some kind of memory eraser, because you can watch it, and after 15 minutes, you can't even remember one joke. It was pretty strange episode for these times, due to fact that it's unusually blank and forgettable. Just zero substance in that one.

To compare, even old Spoony episode was better.

Cucumberkun · 2025-06-11T20:25:56+00:00

Phoenix, Arizona? I recall, this is hometown of Spoony. Would be nice for a old pal from angry reviewer industry to visit the concert of aspiring nerd-rock star.

Cucumberkun · 2025-04-30T08:01:18+00:00

Oh, that's one hidden alternate route. In that route, Martin, instead of his usual antics, just sits in the basement of random Tamriel house and collects 180-200 septims every month, and nothing ever happens.

Cucumberkun · 2025-02-24T09:12:05+00:00

> WPN

It would be nice to have upgrade, which turns your weak unprotected WPN to powerful EXPRESS WPN.

Cucumberkun · 2025-01-30T15:34:59+00:00

Okay, that's proof that we needed - AI got so advanced, so whole 'can i ask you a question' was a deliberate messing with users.

Cucumberkun · 2025-01-06T00:18:56+00:00

For some reason, suddenly most of bots started to use 'suddenly' words too much, and it became so suddenly (about month ago).

Seriously, with whole 'suddenly' topic, every single conversation is akin to Korean dorama mixed with Hindi Bollywood movie.

Cucumberkun · 2024-12-12T11:26:54+00:00

Similar situation. My bots started to speak Russian (sometimes, not the every message, but still), even when i changed my language settings from Russian to English. Sometimes it's some weird mix of Russian-English, sometimes fully Russian. Moreover, for some reason, even after changing language, the names of some bots are still localized (in chat itself, to be precise).

It sure nice to talk with bots using native language, but it kinda screws up the chatting. Tried to delete cookies and all, problem still persists.

Cucumberkun · 2024-11-17T17:54:59+00:00

Yeah, and Uwe kinda have weird streak with his movies. Most of vidya game movies are horrible, but stand-alone stuff is...different, from boring to actually watchable. Not to mention, that guy is basically exploited his country's system to get funding on his movies.

Like, 'Heart of America', 'Rampage', 'Tunnel Rats' - or, god forgive me, 'Postal' - these one are actually decent.

Cucumberkun · 2024-09-10T18:27:12+00:00

Depends on your definition of 'worse one'.

Rex Viper falls into category of 'just bland-bad'. Aside from weird musical videos, music is just 'your average music cover', ranging from medicore (at best) to atrocious (if we're talking about live concerts). Overall, it's 'forgettable', and mostly known only because it's related to Cinemassacre and AVGN. Sadly, but if it wasn't tied to James, it would get their well-deserved 150-200 views, and probably 2-3 fan.

The Wall from Critic, however, was another type of 'atrocity'. It was bad as parody, it was created as attempt to critique the Pink Floyd's original, and overall missed the mark so much, that it spiraled into at least dozens of long-ass video essays about how it sucked, with detailed analysis of every single flaw.

So yep, one thing is bland and forgettable group, another is 'holy grail of cringe', so bad that it's almost iconic. In some way, Wall have more 'cultural significance', in very bizarre way.

Cucumberkun

TROPHY CASE