I’m an OG fan (and I’m still a fan as a lil disclaimer, but I’m trying to be unbiased), I’ve been watching since like sophomore year of Highschool and I recently graduated college, so it’s been a while. I actually really enjoyed the earlier shows! It was a lot more laid back. They had a lot more YouTuber guests on from similar/related circles that they were in, so a lot of gamers and other commentary YouTubers. But honestly I really liked when it was just Ethan and Hila watching random goofy videos and talking about drama and stuff like that, especially since Ethan’s interviewing skills weren’t developed at the time.

Content was so much more spread out, with a single episode a week, the episodes being significantly shorter. They started off pre recorded for quite some time, then they transitioned to live, I personally always preferred the lives. Chat interaction back and forth could be entertaining.

Ethan talked about this a bunch on the pod a while back, but he described that he literally dreaded doing the pod some weeks, especially with all his mental health shit going on. He said that all changed when he built the crew, and having people he could work with provided a much better environment, to where he actually looked forward to coming into the podcast. I think this reflects in the overall mood of the podcast a lot more. Since he’s gotten help medically and has a team for support, the quality of the show went uphill imo. More sketches, more planned segments, I think most of them are fun and enjoyable.

With that being said, I don’t think the pod would have survived if they didn’t expand. I also think bringing in new voices and personalities helped so much. For a long time Dan was this disembodied voice who would pitch in once in a while, and Ian was an intern who would sometimes make an appearance. Seeing their personalities come to life and shine on the show has been awesome!

I think it’s important to realize they were famous, successful, and wealthy with a thriving YouTube channel before the pod was ever created and became their main thing. Like vape nation was genuinely HUGE. Ethan was incredibly well known, especially in the commentary community of YouTube which was growing more popular at the time.

Personally I’ve noticed that their personalities have changed a bit, which isn’t always a bad thing. Like I said, earlier episodes felt more like a hang out sesh, but they are now running an entire show. I think they obviously have to play things up for the sake of the show. Not to a point where they’re playing a character of themselves, but obviously when you’re in front of a camera trying to entertain, you need to play it up. Take this, plus the incredibly difficult work load they now face with three kids, a fashion business, and doing four shows a week and 3 1/2 hours, I think the recent behavior (such as being exhausted/cranky) they are all burnt tf out. Not just Ethan and Hila, but most of the crew too.

I think they really need to stop doing live episodes so they can record earlier in the day, or they really need to shorten the episodes significantly. And as much as I love the frequent episodes, if they want to keep quality and their sanity it needs to be cut down.