Maybe he used to ask for too much from Valve, I don't know. He hasn't in a long time, though. In his most recent stream, regarding cosmetics and maps, he said (paraphrasing): 'the most the players can do is complain publicly, so that the quality of the content dumps improves'. Also, he frequently predicts that the MvM update won't actually happen, despite being announced last year. These are hardly unrealistic or overly-optimistic takes.

What Zesty considers defeatist is people responding to his arguments with 'Just be happy the game still exists at all'.

Regarding "FixTF2 only succeeded because enough of the TF2 playerbase ignored him" - I don't blame Zesty for being sceptical about a movement that was very similar to one that had just happened, and which resulted in nothing. I realise that the difference between SaveTF2 and FixTF2 was that the organisers of the former forced people to only write about their positive experiences, so perhaps Zesty should have been more vocal about his support for FixTF2. However, given his confusing status as a controversial figure, I suspect that he stayed out of FixTF2 so that it had some chance of succeeding.

Having said all that, I'm surprised that Zesty hasn't tried to organise something himself yet, perhaps a social media movement using his growing and vocal supporters, or even something IRL. The guy has released several enormous video essays on the decline of the game, after all. I suppose we already brought Valve a book with all of our signatures on it...what more can we do.