Post Lineal Debrief and existential crisis about what's to come

Whats up gang!

I do hope you're all doing well this lovely Summers Eve. It's been unseasonably warm in Dublin this week which means I've been enjoying this heatwave by sitting indoors with the curtains drawn and spinning the wheel of fate that is PC gaming in high summer, all the while nervously side eyeing its temperature gauges and praying it doesn't spontaneously combust because i asked it to load something that isn't a 2D pixel art game.

But, as is traditional by now, it's time to put down the video games I've been voraciously bingeing for the last 2 weeks in a desperate attempt to catch up on everything I missed over the 3 months, and do a post video debriefing! So strap in and strap on, for a WALL OF FUCKING TEXT.

WHAT ABOUT THE NUMBERS MASON??

Views:

Lineal 4 has done 150k views on Youtube in a little over a week, which is respectable. Realistically the only video Ive done in the last year to clear 200K in a week was the Lesnar video which is a far more casual friendly topic. I didn't expect it to set the world on fire, and I had kinda assumed it'd do 100-120k in the first week, so I'm happy with 150k.

Did anyone like it:

Its like-dislike ratio is pretty much identical to every other video at 97.9% positive, that's actually higher than the Dante video by .1 of a percent! I was surprised by that as I kinda thought there'd be a bit of a backlash but more on that later.

You all killed Vimeo

You maniacs streamed so many hours of Lineal 4 that Vimeo are threatening to cut me off again! It exceeded their 2TB a month streaming limit and now they want me to upgrade my membership from the $16 a month tier, to their next tier, which is... $300 a month lmao. Yeah, good fucking luck with that Vimeo.

Who attended the Premiere?

2100 concurrent viewers snuck out of 4th of July celebrations to watch the live premiere! That's about 100 more than were in attendance for the Dante video, but over 1000 less than joined for the End of Year video in December.

So yeah, not exactly a needle mover, in the immortal words of Dana White, but, performing as expected. Most importantly though, I'm happy with how it turned out. A buttload of work went into this one, from the obvious things like the research and writing, to the art direction of incorporating the posters I'd made (again full transparency, the posters were made using guides and tutorials I found online, I'm actually pretty shit as photoshop & design), to the more subtle and borderline stupid stuff like how in the final 3rd of the video, i splashed out for a subscription to a semi-professional colour grading package for my editing software. The keen eyed among you may have noticed a lot of the Cain Velasquez fights, and even the Creepy Heihachi/Backwards talking Bob Sapp segments have a kinda filmic look to them, well thats the reason why. I used a program called rehancer to emulate specific cameras and film types and honestly, its dumb, and kinda pointless, but i loved how those segments looked and only wished id started off the video using it. Next time.

It wasn't all plain sailing though, as Lineal 4 did receive probably more negativity than any other video that wasn't about a coked up rapist running for President of Ireland, and for reasons you can probably guess if you've seen it. I'm not gonna get into it too much, but me saying it would've been more beneficial for Overeem to support his trans child instead of trying to invent a cure for being trans, was enough to get a slew of hate comments, from the usual lamentations of WOKE IDEOLOGIES, to straight up shit like "fuck you and your faggy politics" (actual quote) to some from other "prominent" YouTuber chiming in. I'm not even gonna say who it was but some fucking cretinous troglodyte who does nothing but whinge about race swapping the Little Mermaid or if the new Paw Patrol movie is gone woke or whatever the fuck, jumped in my comments to tell me to keep my opinions to myself. The irony. These people can die in a shit ditch for all i care, and their opinion is worth less than nothing to me. I'll keep talking about what I want to, and if a 2 minute segment in a 150 minute long video is "too much politics" for them, then I dunno, maybe get off YouTube, or stick to reviewing whether the new Wiggles reunion tour is woke or not. Or stop being so easily offended by a differing opinion, there's always that option too.

ANYWAY.

So what's next? That's the question I've been sweating over for the last week, ever since I hit the upload button on YouTube.

The way I see it now, I have a few options available.

1. Dive right back in and Finish the Lineal series.

Cap it off by talking about the desperate state of Heavyweight MMA we find ourselves in nowadays, and the role of one Jonathan Jones in all of it. Almost like a follow up to my original Jones video.

2. Take a break from Lineal and do something different.

I have a few ideas for a full length videos kicking around. One in particular i think could be a really good idea but there's a fair amount of research to go into it so it could be a pretty big task.

3. Do a shorter video as a bit of a palate cleanser in between "big" projects.

If any of you are into the BJJ world, you'll know there's some controversy recently over a con man who essentially paid for a black belt, and its a story that's 100% a candidate for a fakes and frauds style video. I don't imagine would take too long, maybe a 30-45 minute video. A fakes frauds and cults spin off episode as it were. Sorta like how that Brock Lesnar video was a 30-45 minute project in between lineal videos..

So yeah that's where I'm at currently! I'll have a serious think this week, and maybe toss around a few more ideas and see whats ticking my fancy, and well take it from there.

Again, before I go, I have to give a massive shoutout to all of you on Patreon for this one. The ad revenue from YouTube for this year so far, has still not even exceeded one months wages from my 9-5 job, and I turned down sponsorships for Lineal 4 because I refuse to devalue my videos by shilling fucking gambling apps in them. Yeah, I'm not making high art, but I'm also not making throwaway trash that you can cram adverts for fucking draftkings into. That, and I'm not a corporate sellout, maaaan! But yeah in all seriousness its only Patreon that keeps me from having to take sponsorships so thank you all.

This really has been a test of endurance to read through I'm sure, so here's a photo of Puddles as my way of apology. I know many of you heard his bell jingling in the end of the trailer for Lineal 4 and were wondering who this not-Biscuit cat was.

See you all soon for a proper next video update!