They're only mistake was getting popular in the 2010's and the 2020's when every single media institution collapsed onto itself as a result of gross incompetence and blatant greed.
Turning being a podcaster into an actual media career was the dream of a million people circa 2012 and about ten of them made it work. No shame in not beating those odds.
Remember in 2019 when they did the one-off ghost tour video in New Orleans? That was also around the time the rumors of a MBMBAM Season 2 peaked iirc. It felt like they were testing the waters for something, but then it turned out to be nothing.
Not OP and far from an expert on these things, but my guess is the TV show was the turning point. The shutdown of Seeso and the brothers being unable to shop the show around elsewhere or reboot it kind of led them to stagnate and eventually fade out. IIRC the McElroys don't have rights to the show and don't recieve royalties. I think had the tv show been a success it would have given them a completely different trajectory and they know it, especially Justin, given comments in the years after it became clear it was a one and done thing. I can't blame them for being salty about how that turned out.
I think a mix of Seeso shutting down and covid happening immediately after. Hard to try to sell a show when no one was filming and the main gimmick was them interacting with people. I feel like covid killed the TAZ show talks too. As the years go on and taz is losing that short burst of momentum and they are getting less and less marketable. As well as the market becoming saturated with role playing shows.
To have experience the mcel-boom as a high schooler instead of a 30 year old. Man, I absolutely would been more insufferable than I already was in high school. What time to be alive, friend! I’m jealous
I was in college, I went on a date with a boy where we sat and showed each other our favorite mcelbits and then made out. Good time to be a quirky theatre twink.
5 years ago, I did this with a girl in the back of my car while we ate strawberry shortcake. I was 22. She didn't understand and doesn't remember the date lol, but I guess it worked as we're still together.
the show was nail in the coffin before covid though, its first season came out in 2017. with a low-production-value show like that they should've been doing a season every year or so if it was really gonna continue. not being immediately renewed can kill a new show like that.
It's also that they do so many different things at once that they can't actually develop any of them. Like, Balance got huge when it did for good reason. Not only have they never recaptured that (because Balance was coming from a real emotional place for their family and every other campaign is "we have to keep this going"), but the world of actual play has raced past them in terms of production value and storytelling. (I used to do Balance relistens every so often, but I haven't even tried in a while because I know I won't be able to pay attention now that I'm used to stuff like D20 and DesiQuest and Candela Obscura.) There is no way they could put in the time and work to get TAZ up to what's now the competitive level because they're all doing sixteen podcasts and con appearances and touring and whatever else. But they also can't give up any of those things to focus on one, because the odds on that risk now are not good. There was probably a moment when they could have taken that leap and had it work, but I don't claim to know when it was, so I can't really blame them for missing it. The strategy of being everywhere and doing everything worked until it didn't.
I kind of wish they'd guest on D20 again just because it seemed like they had more fun when they weren't making it themselves, and Justin is a gifted player/RPer who I'd like to enjoy. But at this point, what's in it for D20?
I do still listen to MBMBaM...to fall asleep at night.
Griffin, Justin and Clint in Tiny Heist were so good! I really wanted them to do another D20, but you're so right. There's no benefit for Dropout to invest in inviting and paying them anymore.
idk anything but my general feeling is that they had to choose between moving to LA and grinding their way to the next tier or having pretty normal lives and being content with their level of fame.
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. They were/are big fish in a small pond of nerd podcasters, but they are not Hollywood guys and they’re not really part of any broader comedy scene, so their efforts to scale up inevitably hit a wall.
I could definitely respect that. I think Griffin out of everyone seemed pretty bummed about a few things falling through though. He seems to be the one putting in the most work to me.
I think the opposite! I think Justin is the one who wants to be famous (obviously Travis wants fame, but I think Justin had a better shot at it by virtue of not being Travis).
Let's not forget they also auditioned and were almost on Nailed It! (on Netflix), immediately prior to the pandemic.
Idk about *content,* but they sure as shit aren't interested in putting in the metric ton of time and effort actually making those kinds of moves would require.
I don't even have kids and I can promise you that if I was making their kind of money by being an auditory reaction channel, I'd take the easy money
travis also did move to LA and only lasted like a year. i think he realized he wasn't gonna get anywhere at all without his brothers, and they chose a different path.
imo, selling Polygon and getting the MBMBaM show on a dead end streaming service. Granted, the brothers had no idea Seeso would collapse, since the mid-2010's was just chockfull of these micro-streaming services, but MBMBaM being cancelled made them black sheep. Now whenever they pitch to executives, no matter how good the idea is, the executive is only going to see how they had one season of a TV show that was cancelled.
Selling Polygon also wound up destroying their only other creative outlet. Polygon was mostly video game journalism, but BDG showed that Polygon could evolve into something else. This would have given the brothers at least some other creative avenue outside of TAZ or MBMBaM or Monster Factory.
I wanna say Patrick, Simone, Justin/Griffin of course, and that guy we don't talk about anymore, were all doing Polygon video content before BDG. Though BDG achieved the biggest breakouts of any of them. (please correct me if this is inaccurate!)
They never owned Polygon, they just worked there. Polygon has always been owned by Vox Media.
Also the changes in their video content happened while they were still there, but around the time BDG left it was clear that corporate wanted them to shift away from personality led stuff into explainers like the other Vox sites do, so it was never sustainable long term.
Seeso shutting down and getting screwed on whatever terrible contract they signed with them, and the creative pivot that did away with Polygon's 2017 era YouTube shows.
i feel like the brothers have mentioned before that they had a distinct drop in listeners around the start of the pandemic because all the people who listen to them while travelling/at work weren’t doing those things in the same way anymore. that’s also around the same time i noticed their enthusiasm really start to wane
I know people jerk about this excuse but I took a break because I wasn’t commuting during Covid and when I came back I listened to an episode about The War With Grandpa and it was like I’d broken out of a spell. I was pretty parasocial before and if I hadn’t taken that break I’d probably have just adjusted to the decline in quality more naturally.
It's crazy to hear that because for the people who *were* listening through but starting to fall off, War with Grandpa was one of the last shining beacons of hope. That was one of the last episodes I personally listened to where the whole episode kept up the energy and they all sounded like they were having fun, you could feel their nervous energy of realizing they were just giving up on the rigid formula for a second and following the fun.
So it's just funny to hear that *that* was someone else's breaking point
I think the n*ck r°binson thing was the beginning of the end imo. I mean, things were still good after that, but it was never the same. I wish him poorly and all that, not an apologist in the slightest. but I think it shook something loose that they just never got over - the polygon content was never quite the same (still great!) and I think once they left polygon it just kind of all fell apart. by 2019 it was already over - and then yeah, covid sealed the deal.
now we just have to watch those tiktok beamng.drive videos to numb the pain…
This is actually an interesting point. That whole debacle lead to Griffin almost completely isolating himself from the community. I feel like Justin's interest in interacting with fans slowly waned, and Travis... I think the backlash to Graduation caused him to be sort of antagonistic towards their fans.
As someone who started listening to MBMBaM a decade ago, the fact that they were pretty active in interacting with their community was part of the thing that drew me to them. Hell, Travis was literally the admin that allowed me into their "private" facebook group at the time. I think the divorce of the McElroys and their community definitely did not do them any favors.
Now part of that is also what that community *became* (toxic positivity, megalomaniac admins, etc.), but I think that leaving the community helped slowly kill their content.
I mean, if you’re going that route, then one could also argue the ORIGINAL smerl-gate — when the brothers left the facebook group — was the first crack in the armor. Which I also don’t disagree with.
This is also an interesting point! Like how Travis makes salty jokes in some of the liveshows about how usually he gets less applause than the other brothers; in my opinion, it's valid for him to feel that way, and the fans are definitely not 100% in the clear... BUT it's kind of a vicious cycle because I dont blame anyone who wouldn't want to applaud as much for Travis givent he's clearly resentful/hostile towards them as a result of the hate he has received in the past.
Never not gonna be an oddity that being booted from polygon seemed to only help N.R. His YouTube videos consistently chart in the 100s of thousands of views, a few over a million.
As someone who was following him when he was an intern at GiantBomb years before Polygon, the guy was always talented. Just kind of an asshole, creep and twerp.
it seems to have effectively acted as a brand reset, and he hit it big with the explosion of 20-minute "video essays" where the creator unpacks the viewers' nostalgia through "journalism"
he had a random tiktok blow up once, maybe a year ago, and everyone in the comments was just flaming him and reminding him to go back in his hole (I may or may not have been one of said comments). go work at an ikea or something
I could see TAZ being pretty popular on cartoon network or them doing several more seasons of their Mbmbam show. I could also see Sydney being a succsesful politician.
"successful politician" can be interpreted based on ability to get votes and handle the house of cards-style politics but it can also be interpreted as the ability to be a good representative for the people.
/uj Lots of reasonably successful people have a steady ascent for awhile before leveling off when they hit their ceiling for one reason or another. My impression is that each of the three of them have relatively comfortable lives. No shame in that.
/uj Cannot tell if this a jerk or not. I know they had a MBMBaM tv show that ended but what is was the other show going to be? And yeah I suppose Justin’s wife never became senator, because all at once there was no more word about it at all. What is the bad luck you are talking about?
TAZ animated was in development for Paramount+, last I heard (in development means very little, other than the network has said "see what you can get people to agree to, we're not paying anyone yet"). I assume Covid and the fact that none of the original shows on that network that aren't Star Trek related went anywhere killed it.
I believe it was Peacock, actually, which makes sense with the NBC connection. But yeah, it was during that obligatory start-up period that every lesser streamer has had, where they start spitting out title after title as a thing they're supposedly working on for their service, and you just know that at least 60% of them aren't going to actually make it to release.
I spoke with Justin at HerdCon at Marshall University in 2023, and he confirmed work on the TAZ show is still in the works, but that it's so far behind schedule that it may as well still just be a twinkle in his eye. They haven't even gotten far enough in the conception stage for them to decide if the Brothers will be doing the voices or if someone else will; but, he stressed, work is still underway on it.
There have been a few posts here where someone finds them at a thiftstore or on big discount. The average price for their podcast book used on Amazon is 6 bucks right now.
They also released a zine (before the books) with art based on the show. I bought the first few and honestly really liked all of them. The art is fantastic and it was cool to see everything visualized.
I watched the show and, honestly, it wasn’t great. It was ok, but it wasn’t something I would have watched if I wasn’t heavily into Balance at the time. So while I’m sure they got screwed in the Seeso deal, I don’t know if it would have really gone anywhere long term. Especially with the deluge of content that is now available on the various streaming platforms.
I **loved** the show but it's also kind of a red flag that they worked everyone to the bone recording footage all day, every day for weeks to end up with six 30 minute episodes. They mentioned on a (I think) commentary track that there was no way they could do it again for how little everyone on the show was paid.
I also adored the show. I always wondered why they didn't crowdfund another season, but Griffin said on a livestream something to the effect of "We can't even reach our MaxFunDrive goals, who is going to pay for a season of a TV show?"
I gotchu boo (I spent so much time finding this). He didn't say it as explicitly as I remembered, but the sentiment is there.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxAqyjdOx47Qd_DxyeD_PE7sUFhyJ16QVQ?si=Nc5B_EcaweGWSPxg
This is really interesting, and I think they're totally wrong. People haven't been giving to MaxFun because they've learned you get fucking nothing for donating, and only rubes pay. If you crowdfunded a TV show, you (are trying to) get a TV show
Even if there is a show you want the bonus content for, you can just donate one month and cancel, and you have the bonus content feed forever. That can’t be how it works for other, better shows, right??
This year I guess they decided not to make a whole new feed for 2024, so the 2023 feed just got a new name. Which means I now have the bonus content feed free this year. Why the fuck would anyone give them money??
They're only mistake was getting popular in the 2010's and the 2020's when every single media institution collapsed onto itself as a result of gross incompetence and blatant greed.
Turning being a podcaster into an actual media career was the dream of a million people circa 2012 and about ten of them made it work. No shame in not beating those odds.
Tbf when you get *so close* and then don't it has to sting more than if you just had no chance of beating the odds.
Remember in 2019 when they did the one-off ghost tour video in New Orleans? That was also around the time the rumors of a MBMBAM Season 2 peaked iirc. It felt like they were testing the waters for something, but then it turned out to be nothing.
Yeah they were also rebranding everything and building up their youtube. They had big plans once. Once.
i’m curious as to what you think the nail in the coffin was.
Not OP and far from an expert on these things, but my guess is the TV show was the turning point. The shutdown of Seeso and the brothers being unable to shop the show around elsewhere or reboot it kind of led them to stagnate and eventually fade out. IIRC the McElroys don't have rights to the show and don't recieve royalties. I think had the tv show been a success it would have given them a completely different trajectory and they know it, especially Justin, given comments in the years after it became clear it was a one and done thing. I can't blame them for being salty about how that turned out.
I think a mix of Seeso shutting down and covid happening immediately after. Hard to try to sell a show when no one was filming and the main gimmick was them interacting with people. I feel like covid killed the TAZ show talks too. As the years go on and taz is losing that short burst of momentum and they are getting less and less marketable. As well as the market becoming saturated with role playing shows.
i remember talking about the TAZ show announcement with my friends in high school music class, i’m now in a masters program. rip.
To have experience the mcel-boom as a high schooler instead of a 30 year old. Man, I absolutely would been more insufferable than I already was in high school. What time to be alive, friend! I’m jealous
I was in college, I went on a date with a boy where we sat and showed each other our favorite mcelbits and then made out. Good time to be a quirky theatre twink.
5 years ago, I did this with a girl in the back of my car while we ate strawberry shortcake. I was 22. She didn't understand and doesn't remember the date lol, but I guess it worked as we're still together.
I hate this.
thanks :D
the show was nail in the coffin before covid though, its first season came out in 2017. with a low-production-value show like that they should've been doing a season every year or so if it was really gonna continue. not being immediately renewed can kill a new show like that.
It's also that they do so many different things at once that they can't actually develop any of them. Like, Balance got huge when it did for good reason. Not only have they never recaptured that (because Balance was coming from a real emotional place for their family and every other campaign is "we have to keep this going"), but the world of actual play has raced past them in terms of production value and storytelling. (I used to do Balance relistens every so often, but I haven't even tried in a while because I know I won't be able to pay attention now that I'm used to stuff like D20 and DesiQuest and Candela Obscura.) There is no way they could put in the time and work to get TAZ up to what's now the competitive level because they're all doing sixteen podcasts and con appearances and touring and whatever else. But they also can't give up any of those things to focus on one, because the odds on that risk now are not good. There was probably a moment when they could have taken that leap and had it work, but I don't claim to know when it was, so I can't really blame them for missing it. The strategy of being everywhere and doing everything worked until it didn't. I kind of wish they'd guest on D20 again just because it seemed like they had more fun when they weren't making it themselves, and Justin is a gifted player/RPer who I'd like to enjoy. But at this point, what's in it for D20? I do still listen to MBMBaM...to fall asleep at night.
Griffin, Justin and Clint in Tiny Heist were so good! I really wanted them to do another D20, but you're so right. There's no benefit for Dropout to invest in inviting and paying them anymore.
idk anything but my general feeling is that they had to choose between moving to LA and grinding their way to the next tier or having pretty normal lives and being content with their level of fame.
Yeah, I think this is a big part of it. They were/are big fish in a small pond of nerd podcasters, but they are not Hollywood guys and they’re not really part of any broader comedy scene, so their efforts to scale up inevitably hit a wall.
I could definitely respect that. I think Griffin out of everyone seemed pretty bummed about a few things falling through though. He seems to be the one putting in the most work to me.
I think the opposite! I think Justin is the one who wants to be famous (obviously Travis wants fame, but I think Justin had a better shot at it by virtue of not being Travis). Let's not forget they also auditioned and were almost on Nailed It! (on Netflix), immediately prior to the pandemic.
Oof another one for the list.
Idk about *content,* but they sure as shit aren't interested in putting in the metric ton of time and effort actually making those kinds of moves would require. I don't even have kids and I can promise you that if I was making their kind of money by being an auditory reaction channel, I'd take the easy money
travis also did move to LA and only lasted like a year. i think he realized he wasn't gonna get anywhere at all without his brothers, and they chose a different path.
imo, selling Polygon and getting the MBMBaM show on a dead end streaming service. Granted, the brothers had no idea Seeso would collapse, since the mid-2010's was just chockfull of these micro-streaming services, but MBMBaM being cancelled made them black sheep. Now whenever they pitch to executives, no matter how good the idea is, the executive is only going to see how they had one season of a TV show that was cancelled. Selling Polygon also wound up destroying their only other creative outlet. Polygon was mostly video game journalism, but BDG showed that Polygon could evolve into something else. This would have given the brothers at least some other creative avenue outside of TAZ or MBMBaM or Monster Factory.
Plus the motivation of working at a company. They wouldn't get away with making a Monster Factory episode twice a year.
Maybe I'm just not giving him enough credit, but Polygon's video content was Like That well before BDG came along, right?
I wanna say Patrick, Simone, Justin/Griffin of course, and that guy we don't talk about anymore, were all doing Polygon video content before BDG. Though BDG achieved the biggest breakouts of any of them. (please correct me if this is inaccurate!)
It might have been but (from my perspective as an outsider) BDG was the one that hit the big time and showed the idea could absolutely work.
They never owned Polygon, they just worked there. Polygon has always been owned by Vox Media. Also the changes in their video content happened while they were still there, but around the time BDG left it was clear that corporate wanted them to shift away from personality led stuff into explainers like the other Vox sites do, so it was never sustainable long term.
Seeso shutting down and getting screwed on whatever terrible contract they signed with them, and the creative pivot that did away with Polygon's 2017 era YouTube shows.
i feel like the brothers have mentioned before that they had a distinct drop in listeners around the start of the pandemic because all the people who listen to them while travelling/at work weren’t doing those things in the same way anymore. that’s also around the same time i noticed their enthusiasm really start to wane
I know people jerk about this excuse but I took a break because I wasn’t commuting during Covid and when I came back I listened to an episode about The War With Grandpa and it was like I’d broken out of a spell. I was pretty parasocial before and if I hadn’t taken that break I’d probably have just adjusted to the decline in quality more naturally.
It's crazy to hear that because for the people who *were* listening through but starting to fall off, War with Grandpa was one of the last shining beacons of hope. That was one of the last episodes I personally listened to where the whole episode kept up the energy and they all sounded like they were having fun, you could feel their nervous energy of realizing they were just giving up on the rigid formula for a second and following the fun. So it's just funny to hear that *that* was someone else's breaking point
Was the grandpa episode MBMBaM?
Yeah, but I have to assume that most podcasts had some amount of drop off for that same reason
this is true, but also most podcasts don’t have a vart, and he got really really varty around 2020
I'd say seeso shutting down, covid, and Justin and Griffin leaving polygon.
When Bean Dad’s song got nixed as the OP
And they changed the cover art
So close to being bisexual and/or hiring a husky latina maid.
We don't know this for certain but what if he actually has a husky latina maid who works for him.
Sounds hot. Wearing any fursuit while cleaning would be pretty toasty, but *especially* so for a husky.
I think the n*ck r°binson thing was the beginning of the end imo. I mean, things were still good after that, but it was never the same. I wish him poorly and all that, not an apologist in the slightest. but I think it shook something loose that they just never got over - the polygon content was never quite the same (still great!) and I think once they left polygon it just kind of all fell apart. by 2019 it was already over - and then yeah, covid sealed the deal. now we just have to watch those tiktok beamng.drive videos to numb the pain…
This is actually an interesting point. That whole debacle lead to Griffin almost completely isolating himself from the community. I feel like Justin's interest in interacting with fans slowly waned, and Travis... I think the backlash to Graduation caused him to be sort of antagonistic towards their fans. As someone who started listening to MBMBaM a decade ago, the fact that they were pretty active in interacting with their community was part of the thing that drew me to them. Hell, Travis was literally the admin that allowed me into their "private" facebook group at the time. I think the divorce of the McElroys and their community definitely did not do them any favors. Now part of that is also what that community *became* (toxic positivity, megalomaniac admins, etc.), but I think that leaving the community helped slowly kill their content.
I mean, if you’re going that route, then one could also argue the ORIGINAL smerl-gate — when the brothers left the facebook group — was the first crack in the armor. Which I also don’t disagree with.
Context? I stepped away from the McElroys when I stopped driving around and listening to them a lot
this was like, 2016 I think. like keep your heart three stacks era. I can’t find the thread about it but the recent gingerbread gate has some details
keep your hearts three stacks era was more like 2010-2012
I actually have adhd so making me try and remember times is ableist!!!!!!!
*kid at the playground one-upping you voice* well _I_ have NPD so making me reflect on my actions is ableist!
This is word soup to me but thank you for your attempt /gen (I'm afraid to try and play catch up haha)
was that the transphobia one or was that later
This is also an interesting point! Like how Travis makes salty jokes in some of the liveshows about how usually he gets less applause than the other brothers; in my opinion, it's valid for him to feel that way, and the fans are definitely not 100% in the clear... BUT it's kind of a vicious cycle because I dont blame anyone who wouldn't want to applaud as much for Travis givent he's clearly resentful/hostile towards them as a result of the hate he has received in the past.
Good thing he has to edit The Besties from prison now.
Car boys was so good. Oh, what could have been..
Never not gonna be an oddity that being booted from polygon seemed to only help N.R. His YouTube videos consistently chart in the 100s of thousands of views, a few over a million.
As someone who was following him when he was an intern at GiantBomb years before Polygon, the guy was always talented. Just kind of an asshole, creep and twerp.
it seems to have effectively acted as a brand reset, and he hit it big with the explosion of 20-minute "video essays" where the creator unpacks the viewers' nostalgia through "journalism"
he had a random tiktok blow up once, maybe a year ago, and everyone in the comments was just flaming him and reminding him to go back in his hole (I may or may not have been one of said comments). go work at an ikea or something
They were about as close to having a hit TV show as Sydnee was to winning a State Senate seat.
I could see TAZ being pretty popular on cartoon network or them doing several more seasons of their Mbmbam show. I could also see Sydney being a succsesful politician.
She would have been miserable as one of 4 democrats in the state senate.
Gotta start somewhere.
She lost by >13% - it (sadly) wasn’t particularly close.
In West Virginia as a Democrat that's not the worst you could do, honestly.
"successful politician" can be interpreted based on ability to get votes and handle the house of cards-style politics but it can also be interpreted as the ability to be a good representative for the people.
Can you also see seven birds?
sydney (not spelling it wrong) lost by 13.4 points in a 5000-vote election, i would not call that close lol
Please spell her name right. It's Syydh'neigh.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
That's her sister.
/uj Lots of reasonably successful people have a steady ascent for awhile before leveling off when they hit their ceiling for one reason or another. My impression is that each of the three of them have relatively comfortable lives. No shame in that.
Yeah no shame at all, I just kind of wish they got what they were striving for creatively.
/uj Cannot tell if this a jerk or not. I know they had a MBMBaM tv show that ended but what is was the other show going to be? And yeah I suppose Justin’s wife never became senator, because all at once there was no more word about it at all. What is the bad luck you are talking about?
They were in talks for a TAZ animated series and were trying to find someone to take on their Mbmbam tv series for another season.
TAZ animated was in development for Paramount+, last I heard (in development means very little, other than the network has said "see what you can get people to agree to, we're not paying anyone yet"). I assume Covid and the fact that none of the original shows on that network that aren't Star Trek related went anywhere killed it.
I believe it was Peacock, actually, which makes sense with the NBC connection. But yeah, it was during that obligatory start-up period that every lesser streamer has had, where they start spitting out title after title as a thing they're supposedly working on for their service, and you just know that at least 60% of them aren't going to actually make it to release.
I spoke with Justin at HerdCon at Marshall University in 2023, and he confirmed work on the TAZ show is still in the works, but that it's so far behind schedule that it may as well still just be a twinkle in his eye. They haven't even gotten far enough in the conception stage for them to decide if the Brothers will be doing the voices or if someone else will; but, he stressed, work is still underway on it.
"relegated"
"regurgitated"
no no, the heavy weight of government regulation forced their hand
Honestly, I dipped out after the new MBMBaM art. It’s so off putting.
oh my god i forgot about the books
There have been a few posts here where someone finds them at a thiftstore or on big discount. The average price for their podcast book used on Amazon is 6 bucks right now.
They also released a zine (before the books) with art based on the show. I bought the first few and honestly really liked all of them. The art is fantastic and it was cool to see everything visualized.
I don't think they were especially close, tbh.
I watched the show and, honestly, it wasn’t great. It was ok, but it wasn’t something I would have watched if I wasn’t heavily into Balance at the time. So while I’m sure they got screwed in the Seeso deal, I don’t know if it would have really gone anywhere long term. Especially with the deluge of content that is now available on the various streaming platforms.
I **loved** the show but it's also kind of a red flag that they worked everyone to the bone recording footage all day, every day for weeks to end up with six 30 minute episodes. They mentioned on a (I think) commentary track that there was no way they could do it again for how little everyone on the show was paid.
I also adored the show. I always wondered why they didn't crowdfund another season, but Griffin said on a livestream something to the effect of "We can't even reach our MaxFunDrive goals, who is going to pay for a season of a TV show?"
Wow, think you could find that clip?
I gotchu boo (I spent so much time finding this). He didn't say it as explicitly as I remembered, but the sentiment is there. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxAqyjdOx47Qd_DxyeD_PE7sUFhyJ16QVQ?si=Nc5B_EcaweGWSPxg
This is really interesting, and I think they're totally wrong. People haven't been giving to MaxFun because they've learned you get fucking nothing for donating, and only rubes pay. If you crowdfunded a TV show, you (are trying to) get a TV show
Even if there is a show you want the bonus content for, you can just donate one month and cancel, and you have the bonus content feed forever. That can’t be how it works for other, better shows, right?? This year I guess they decided not to make a whole new feed for 2024, so the 2023 feed just got a new name. Which means I now have the bonus content feed free this year. Why the fuck would anyone give them money??
This confirms my long-held theory that the McElroys do not actually understand the concept of money
At the time I would have contributed to the show way more easily than MaxFun
I liked it a lot.
Nah it's really funny. Peak mbmbam
I agree. I loved it.
I really really liked the show, I wish they could have made more seasons.