I’m not a fan of this woman’s sanctimonious crap, but what exactly is sexual about that photo? She’s just sitting down & holding a Squirtle plushie. I’m all for criticism but it seems like you guys are looking a little too deep into that photo.
Oh cool, I agree with this. I think there is nothing wrong with an attractive person using their looks to help their career. I was worried it was suggesting more of the “she doesn’t event like PKMN, she’s just another e-girl” kinda vibe which I think too many online female personas get hit with.
Her take about Gary is so bad though and I’m honestly surprised how onboard some people on Twitter/Virbank. Just came across as super toxic.
“Sex sells”, which is what I said, has more to do with marketing to the opposite sex rather than overtly suggestive advertising. She poses for photos to market her brand. Yes or no? We can pretend all we want, and dance around it, but advertising appeals to basic human nature and it’s pull/repel effect is specific to consumer demographics. YouTube thumbnails are evidence of this. A big gaping mouth or a little cleavage go a long way, and there’s nothing wrong with these practices if the goal of the content creator is maximum exposure to a specific fan base. Attractiveness is an asset, same as wealth, charisma, or intellect, and every creator has a prerogative to employ their assets as they see fit. My other point was that her thumbnails along with the vast majority of her content betray her own convictions. If she didn’t embark upon a libelous campaign to tear down her competition, there wouldn’t be an issue—period.
Hold your horses until the Onlyfans drop. Who knows, if she does a good enough job at that once the Judge Judy-gig is over then maybe some of you can repay her by making diss videos about how her Onlyfans income is too high and how it is wrong to inflate the thot market like that.
I wouldn’t pay for it myself, but I’d gladly pay to never hear the phrase “Hello my gooby goobie goobs” in baby voice again for as long as I live.
You guys are focused on the surface of the issue here and misunderstanding what the problem is. I never said “sexy”, I said “sex sells”. In the part you quoted, I was speaking in general about YouTube as a whole, and what gets views. I’m not arguing for or against “sexy” anyway, “sex sells” means people of the opposite sex click on pretty, shiny, and attractive, more than ugly, dull, or unappealing. Why bother with a thumbnail or photo shoots at all if it didn’t effect engagement? Once again, nothing wrong with any of it—I feel as if I need to bold that part. YouTube is a competition. Her hypocrisy is the core problem because the motive behind her thumbnails and content is the same as Pokerev’s or Leonharts or Logan Paul’s. The disconnect is that she was criticizing others for being more successful at what she herself was doing before the printing/distribution issue. Her channel grew in direct correlation to her criticism of bigger personalities, and now her game has become to cash in on divisiveness.
Going to voice some concerns from a different side of the community:
After talking to a few of my fellow competitive PTCG friends, I think a lot of this drama stems from misinformation about Gary, and are quick to point fingers in a time where a cherished franchise has become hyper-monetized. No one in the competitive community knows of the impact Gary has made on the overall PTCG community. (To be quite honest, I don’t know the full scale of his impact on the community and would love to know more to strengthen my perspective lol) They might know him as the Pawn Stars guy, but to a lot of others, he’s just some old dude that had cash in the late 90s and has a ton of Charizard slabs. Therefore, by proxy, he’s a malignant symptom (or a source) of the hype and scalping frenzy that’s pissing off your average Pokémon enthusiast. There’s disdain with Gary calling himself “King” and there’s several raised eyebrows with printing a card with his likeness while sitting in a throne. One of my friends specifically asked, “What did Gary do to gain the respect of the community?”
While I agree that, to an extent, some of these things are questionable, there’s a general air of ignorance that I think could be addressed in a tactful video or podcast or something. The collecting community is in a completely different circle of the Pokémon community Venn diagram than the others because of the inherent lower level of interaction with the others. I know some members have said to ignore the thread and move on as not to continue to fan the flames, but I think this presents as an excellent opportunity to educate and inform those that seem so suddenly invested in Gary’s character about Gary or about what the collector space genuinely stands for without misinterpretation. (Most of us are standing with Gary in this “debate” for one reason or another, shouldn’t we share this?) I wish that Bou honored @king Pokemon’s invitation to talk, but…yeah. I just wanna stop seeing people get demonized. This isn’t how a community moves forward.
Lemme know what I can tell my competitive buddies lol
This thread is starting to gravitate towards those concerns of misogyny. I disagree with her thoughts as well but let’s not stray too far away from the original issue at hand which was taking Gary’s autograph comment out of context and conveniently forgoing all the great things he has done for the hobby and focusing on the negative aspect of more interest in the hobby=more demand=higher prices. Let’s not give her the ammo.
Pokemon artists tend to treat their autographs really sentimentally. This seems to be a cultural trait. They love to sign for “true fans” and hate when their autographs are sold, or are attributed to value. Knowing Arita, my best guess is he would be offended. The risk of her posting what she did is that it reaches Arita and he’s hurt by it, which helps no one. There was no upside to her posting what she did other than to attempt to virtue signal.
For the secondary market, what Gary said was subjectively true unless you’re some crazy deep pocketed autograph + super high end card collector and if Arita didn’t sign semi regularly. Even then, it’s everyone’s right to enjoy their cards the way they want.
In other news, Smpratte’s new YouTube video came out right when I was fiendin some high quality content earlier today. I’m super excited about what this year holds, and I honestly don’t know how Pokemon will top the 25th anniversary set and the stamp promo. In terms of the market, I’m curious how all the versions of base set will be affected by the upcoming release and how each set will evolve with time.
When I first started collecting a year ago, I couldn’t get around the nuances of modern. Now I can’t get enough. Awesome time to be in the hobby
I do agree, with the point that, unless you are in the USA collection side of the hobby and some outliers outside of US, know about Gary. Here in my country not everyone knows him and do not know of his impact in the hobby.
I do dislike all the throne thing, hate the nfts and more yet i think the issue is not disliking and not agreeing of what he is doing heck even questioning (because i think that the “charity” argument allows a lot of people to embellish their motivations for personal reasons). The issue here is the misinformation, the lack of communication and more importantly, the way of calling out people in public like just throwing random words in the internet. Even being disrespectful to a certain extent.
Also, some people here already getting into the “sexism” or “sex sells” argument is just another whole beast.
Ah the world we live in now. I’m going to ruin your livelihood and attack you because I disagree with your opinion. It’s pathetic. You know what would be reasonable? Making a respectful video where she disputes his opinion with why she feels the opposite. I can’t imagine being so triggered by Gary’s comments, it’s comical.
Yeah its by far my & the mods least favorite thread. We’ve talked internally about nuking it, but also thought it would be better to have one quarantined garbage fire, rather than multiple.
How about telling them Gary is appearing 5 days this month at 2 small card shops in California and 3 days in Colorado all at Pokémon tournaments with no vendor tables. In Denver they had 72 seats then announced I’d be there to support the Pokémon and Yugioh tournaments as well as the multi-level marketing demos and they got so many more tournament entries they had to rent a large space at their Embassy Suites convention center. And since then, because of it becoming a more major event, even Jason Paige and Michael Waddell are coming.
I’m doing all this and making absolutely nothing, except for a room in Denver.
By the way, players interested in the Denver event contact Ellis Maddalena at Rocky Mountain Collectibles at (720)524-3086
Johnny, let your competitive buddies know that. It’ll be a really fun event. And also tell them that 100% of the profits will be donated to the Aoki Foundation for mental health and Autism,
The NFT of me: 100% of my share went to the Aoki foundation as well as an orphanage for disabled children in Ho Chi Minh City, VietNam (see below). If you’d like the translated name of the facility, or more pictures, private message me and I’ll get it from Thuan (AutismInstruct).
The kings chair: this was a complete surprise to me and wasn’t very comfortable with it and the organizers spent 900.00 on it. It felt cringe. Being a team player though, I sucked it up;)
Anything else you’re unhappy with that you want me to explain?