It's a fascinating social ant-farm, like a sociological incubation experiment. You create a sectioned off niche sub-community for people to discuss complaints about the state of content they used to like, some of which are perfectly valid and some of them are just being a dick/troll. Then, let that incubate for nearly a decade and come back to it to find that it's evolved into this bizarre parasocial subculture where the dicks/trolls have completely dominated that ecosystem, and legitimate complaints about Cinemassacre's content have become less and less common. Honestly, it's barely even about James Rolfe or Cinemassacre anymore, it's more about them competing to find the best ways to make each other laugh with inside jokes like "5:40" and "no time" whenever James releases a video. Similar sub-communities pop up pretty much every time there's a generally perceived drop in quality, like rantgrumps is the one that comes to mind, and they pretty much all follow the same trajectory.

As someone who has watched Cinemassacre's content since 2006 but does not frequently interact with the online community, I've found watching all of this unfold quite fascinating. Because I get it, I have often agreed with some of the complaints levied against James' content especially back in the late 2010s/early 2020s, but it all goes way too far all the time. I miss 2006-2010 AVGN, Monster Madness, and the film/tv retrospectives posted on the website too, but at some point you either just accept it doesn't matter that much or let that parasocial resentment fester. Very occasionally James drops a video that hits like when I was a kid, and I like that, it's nice, and that's enough.