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Also, it's pretty fucking patronizing for Dan to talk about how you can make it in the industry if you just keep at it. I'm sure Mattie Brice and Jenn Frank would still be around if they had spent their college years making drinking game videos.

 

Had that exact same reaction while listening to the podcast a moment ago. I like Dan as a personality but that's definitely a worldview so naïve as to be insulting - note that he wasn't just talking about the games industry in particular, he said specifically that "anyone can do anything" so long as they're persistent enough; which, I suppose, is a philosophy that goes exceedingly well with his stars and stripes pyjama bottoms.

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Also, it's pretty fucking patronizing for Dan to talk about how you can make it in the industry if you just keep at it. I'm sure Mattie Brice and Jenn Frank would still be around if they had spent their college years making drinking game videos.

 

I think that's kind of what really irritates me about him. Personally I didn't buy into the criticism around the time he was hired that it was only because he was a straight white dude. I think it was mostly because Jeff thought he would be entertaining and Giant Bomb is such a personality driven site. However - despite Giant Bomb being class clowns from the beginning - there is a gulf of difference between sometimes acting stupid and just straight up being stupid.

 

"Yes! That's the whole point of life! The less shit you know, the happier you are. I'm smart enough to know how stupid I am. And I know I love it this way."
- Actual thing said by Dan Ryckert.
 
I can't blame Giant Bomb for wanting to be a personality driven site, but the games coverage industry as a whole is moving towards superficial video content and further from genuine editorial and feature content from actual writers. It's just kind of sad that Dan might be right in a sense, anyone can succeed as long as you have no knowledge of any real issues, no opinions that will get you hated and just talk about fucking wrestling all day.

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I can't blame Giant Bomb for wanting to be a personality driven site, but the games coverage industry as a whole is moving towards superficial video content and further from genuine editorial and feature content from actual writers. It's just kind of sad that Dan might be right in a sense, anyone can succeed as long as you have no knowledge of any real issues, no opinions that will get you hated and just talk about fucking wrestling all day.

 

I don't know, I think maybe a dozen people can succeed like that, whereas a hundred thousand other people fail like that, and meanwhile the dozen tell everyone else how easy life is if you really want to succeed.

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I don't know, I think maybe a dozen people can succeed like that, whereas a hundred thousand other people fail like that, and meanwhile the dozen tell everyone else how easy life is if you really want to succeed.

This is cheesy, but it's a valid approach as long as you're open to your definition of success evolving as you get older. Working hard and doing your best won't necessarily mean you end up as chief creative at Blizzard or something, but hopefully you'll end up with a job that matters to you, you'll live in a place you like and be with someone you care about. But absolutely, to make out that people in high profile positions are there purely because they worked hard is inane. Luck, socio-economic and cultural lotteries all play a part.

I know nothing about this guy. I stopped listening to Giantbomb forever ago and the majority of their written content now is poor. I was always waiting for them to shut up about energy drinks and talk about games.

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This is cheesy, but it's a valid approach as long as you're open to your definition of success evolving as you get older. Working hard and doing your best won't necessarily mean you end up as chief creative at Blizzard or something, but hopefully you'll end up with a job that matters to you, you'll live in a place you like and be with someone you care about. But absolutely, to make out that people in high profile positions are there purely because they worked hard is inane. Luck, socio-economic and cultural lotteries all play a part.

I know nothing about this guy. I stopped listening to Giantbomb forever ago and the majority of their written content now is poor. I was always waiting for them to shut up about energy drinks and talk about games.

 

Oh, I don't know him either. I tried to get into Giant Bomb, but a year's worth of amateur junk food and energy drink reviews wore me out before I found the charm. I'm just easily irritated by successful people who think that "work hard and keep trying" is useful advice. I know so many people who don't make it big doing what they love, and they're all working hard too. Most of them kept trying for years and are still trying. It's true for the vast majority of humanity, whether successful or not. Accordingly, when people attribute their success to their own hard work, what it tells me is that they don't really understand how they succeeded, so they're just going to attribute it to themselves.

 

I have to say, I really am nonplussed by the stories about Ryckert I'm reading here. At least tell me he has interesting opinions about games or wrestling or something.

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Also, it's pretty fucking patronizing for Dan to talk about how you can make it in the industry if you just keep at it. I'm sure Mattie Brice and Jenn Frank would still be around if they had spent their college years making drinking game videos.

 

From an outsiders point of view this appears to be a very common way of thought in America (and other parts of the world I'm sure). You know, the whole American Dream.

It's always rubbed me the wrong way because, while it is a nice thought that everyone has the same chance, it's just blatantly not true.

 

I can see how people want to believe in it, and I can see how maybe Mr. Ryckert has caught enough breaks to actually think he's an example of it... But yeah, it's a very naive mindset that also becomes insulting to people who, if they have not succeded, "just didn't work hard enough" 

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It seems to me like one of those attitudes that works until it doesn't. Maybe Dan has just really not been challenged in his life in any significant way. For me, that "work hard/get lucky until you make it" mentality faded away around the time I had a pile of debt and was taking differential equations in university. I imagine that moment probably takes place far earlier for minorities who are challenged in ways that there's no easy solution to like persecution. If you're a straight white male with a lick of smarts in middle America, you have to go out of your way to find a stumbling block.

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I have mixed feelings about Dan.  Sometimes I find him entertaining and other times I find him stupid and annoying.  While the other GB guys have their own moments of stupidity, on the whole I find them more entertaining and even intelligent than not.  I will admit that Dan is bringing some enthusiasm back to the podcast.  Drew's pretty quiet, Jeff only seems to get energetic when he's making a joke or being sarcastic, and Brad feels very subdued to me.  I still think they're great guys but the dynamic that existed when Vinny and the late, great Ryan Davis were on the cast seems lost forever.  I don't have anything personal against Dan and I can't blame him for wanting to be willfully ignorant about a lot of things (the last few months have certainly made me want to pretend a lot of stuff doesn't exist) but at the same time its getting tiresome to hear.

 

About the Bombcast as a whole, I don't listen to it for the games.  I think of it as a podcast that periodically talks about games but is mostly just random entertainment for me while I drive to/from work.

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I have to say, I really am nonplussed by the stories about Ryckert I'm reading here. At least tell me he has interesting opinions about games or wrestling or something.

Same here, I don't visit much and haven't ever listened to them (tried a couple of times and it just didn't stick for me). But this conversation is basically guaranteeing I will never listen to them.

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I'll chime in for the Pro Ryckert camp here. At first I was like who's this guy who sounds like a dumb Norm McDonald, then for a few podcasts he just added to my lack of like. But then the stories came in like how he wanted glasses as a kid so he failed and I laughed because it's so dumb. He reminds me of Howard Stern show member and infamous metal drummer Richard Christie. I find his views so intriguing and I'm just taken back by what comes out of his mouth. That I find myself laughing out loud a lot. That's something that hasn't happened since Ryan died. 

 

I would pay for a membership if I could get a camera following him and Danny O'dwyer going to Kansas for Thanksgiving.

 

He may be 100% just like that, but I also think he gimmicks it up for the show and his personality, it's a personality driven site as mentioned. He'll probably be divisive going forward but I think it definitely brings a spice to the show that was sorely missing for a year. 

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Huh, Ryckert and I actually had some overlap in when we attended KU, and he was the main video game reviewer for the local newspaper for a few years before the GI job. I knew he was from Kansas, but didn't know that. I almost have to have friends who would have worked with him at the paper gig.

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Yeah, I personally actually like Ryckert on a lot of their content and think he's revitalized GB's output, but, man, I just can't help but be fucking horrified about some of the insane things he's claimed to have done or thought.

Like, on as subscriber video in the last few weeks, Jeff was wearing this shirt that just had a blurred Nike logo (like, printed on the shirt blurred). This prompted Dan to mention that he spent years thinking that the reason rap videos featured a bunch of blurred logos was because rappers smoked weed and the smoke caused logos to blur, a belief he was not disabused of until he went to college.

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Yeah, I personally actually like Ryckert on a lot of their content and think he's revitalized GB's output, but, man, I just can't help but be fucking horrified about some of the insane things he's claimed to have done or thought.

Like, on as subscriber video in the last few weeks, Jeff was wearing this shirt that just had a blurred Nike logo (like, printed on the shirt blurred). This prompted Dan to mention that he spent years thinking that the reason rap videos featured a bunch of blurred logos was because rappers smoked weed and the smoke caused logos to blur, a belief he was not disabused of until he went to college.

 

It's things like this that helped me accept Dan in the first place, when my interest in Giant Bomb was, naturally, waning with the influx of new talent of whom I had prior knowledge. I think Dan's more innocuous ignorances were a godsend in establishing his character on the site and giving me something with which to identify him. The problems arise when, as Merus teased, Dan's benightedness touches on real issues. But, at the same time, that's par for the course with Giant Bomb - I kind of cringe whenever I sense that we're brushing up against Jeff's political views, for instance; and I can't really indict Dan for something also true of Jeff unless I'm willing to wash my hands of the entire site (which some here have done, obviously).

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I haven't listened to the bombcast since March (intend to still, but backlogged) so I have never heard Ryckert on the 'cast. I am a GB subscriber though, and have found his chemistry with Drew to be really great in the videos they do together. Drew being potentially the smartest member of the crew paired against Dan being Dan makes for some really funny moments. I think Dan is an idiot, but have not yet personally seen something that makes me think he is offensively so rather than just kind of amusing to watch flail about.

 

On that note, I'm not sure how much I really want to go down this rabbit hole, but what do you mean about Jeff's political views? From comments that I've seen and the impression I get of the guy, he seems like he's sticking up for the right people when necessary and has always seemed to otherwise just keep that out of things. I've assumed that he's more liberal than not and his supporting of Patrick when he goes off and attempts to make statements has bolstered this. Am I missing something super sinister here?

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*

On that note, I'm not sure how much I really want to go down this rabbit hole, but what do you mean about Jeff's political views? From comments that I've seen and the impression I get of the guy, he seems like he's sticking up for the right people when necessary and has always seemed to otherwise just keep that out of things. I've assumed that he's more liberal than not and his supporting of Patrick when he goes off and attempts to make statements has bolstered this. Am I missing something super sinister here?

 

I have no insight into the subject so I definitely don't mean to slander anyone! Just the same old story of trying to infer what one can from someone who generally stays mum on the subject - I can recount a number of trivial things Jeff has said over the years that may trouble me politically, but no, nothing super sinister.

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Honestly the thing I find the most troubling with the Bombcast is their opinions on food.  Namely Jeff and Dan's idea that food is just a thing you consume and that taste seems to be irrelevant.  Brad has on multiple occasions tried to convince them to do even simple things like seasoning a steak and while Dan seems to be somewhat open to the idea, Jeff pretty much just wants a hunk of cooked meat.  The topic of sous vide comes up fairly often too and I'd like to try that if I could afford the equipment.

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I don't know, I think maybe a dozen people can succeed like that, whereas a hundred thousand other people fail like that, and meanwhile the dozen tell everyone else how easy life is if you really want to succeed.

 

Oh no you're totally right, I was just being facetious. Obviously the attitude of anyone can succeed at anything if they try their damnedest and believe in the American Way is bullshit just for the fact that in a lot of cases there are more people who want to achieve something than there are opportunities to achieve it (especially in any form of the games industry), that's before you even bring in socio-political biases. It's a fallacy of the winners - that because they achieved something it must mean other people didn't try hard enough or didn't want it enough, ignoring that in some cases they succeed expressly at the expense of others. It's the lie our society tells itself for two reasons 1) for the successful folks to satisfy their egos and 2) for the unsuccessful folks to keep trying.

 

Anyway I feel bad for feeding into an impression of Dan for people who don't know him, so I will let him speak for himself.

 

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Honestly the thing I find the most troubling with the Bombcast is their opinions on food.  Namely Jeff and Dan's idea that food is just a thing you consume and that taste seems to be irrelevant.  Brad has on multiple occasions tried to convince them to do even simple things like seasoning a steak and while Dan seems to be somewhat open to the idea, Jeff pretty much just wants a hunk of cooked meat.  The topic of sous vide comes up fairly often too and I'd like to try that if I could afford the equipment.

 

Anova's immersion circulator is only $200... I've been sorely tempted on multiple occasions.

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My only Dan-experience is from this thread, from Thumbs IRC, and from the PAX panel which I watched.

 

He sounds pretty great to me! A lot of people's reasons for disliking him sound like reasons to do the opposite. I'm looking forward to finally catching up on the 'cast. I'm currently somewhere in late 2012...

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On that note, I'm not sure how much I really want to go down this rabbit hole, but what do you mean about Jeff's political views? From comments that I've seen and the impression I get of the guy, he seems like he's sticking up for the right people when necessary and has always seemed to otherwise just keep that out of things. I've assumed that he's more liberal than not and his supporting of Patrick when he goes off and attempts to make statements has bolstered this. Am I missing something super sinister here?

 

I'm guessing the comment about Jeff politics is that sometimes he says that what he really wants is just to watch the world burn? I think he's more fascinated with the idea of post-civilization anarchy than he is a capital-A Anarchist. He seems to share the general viewpoint of most of us on most social and equality issues.

 

The guys sometimes have crazy statements about games and the games industry that I feel like they wouldn't make for other industries they weren't so close to, not because of anything but forest-> trees mentality.

 

 

I miss Vinny.

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Other people have mentioned it, but let me reiterate that Daft Souls is super good. I've been obsessed and listening to the whole backlog.

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I learned just now when watching Metal Gear Scanlon episode 10 that Dan Ryckert was put in a gifted program back when he was in school. He suddenly makes so much more sense to me. In my experience, both having gone through a gifted program myself as a child and as a teacher in one last year, a gifted kid can pretty much be defined as someone who is so good with their words that,being able to bluff their way through whatever, they never needed to learn how to actually work. When people looked at my writing in university, they always assumed that I put SO MUCH time into it. In reality, it was most often a first draft and usually written the night before. I just happened to be pretty damn good with my words. I got an honours degree with a 3.86 GPA while feeling like I never had to work that hard for it based on this ability. Math and logic related courses would routinely kick my ass until I learned how to work to succeed in them. Dan never took those, so only had the easy part of that experience and never learned how to work. He also enjoys dumb things.

 

Dan being a talented guy who's world-view is influenced by the fact that things always came easily to him (and never realizing that he is an exception) pretty much perfectly explains him in my mind. It wasn't until I started tutoring that I realized how much quicker I understood things than is the norm and how lucky I was. If I hadn't done that, I'd probably be very Dan-like myself.

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I think that's probably why I empathize with Dan as well, except my run of things coming naturally ended about halfway through university when I dropped out because I was suddenly shit after just breezing through everything in my life. I must have sounded like such a huge dick when I'd tell people that you can just skip half of the work required and naturally ace tests to get As and Bs in classes. Nowadays, I just wish I was a hard worker and not gifted because having a gift and abusing it is more harmful than helpful.

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I learned just now when watching Metal Gear Scanlon episode 10 that Dan Ryckert was put in a gifted program back when he was in school. He suddenly makes so much more sense to me. In my experience, both having gone through a gifted program myself as a child and as a teacher in one last year, a gifted kid can pretty much be defined as someone who is so good with their words that,being able to bluff their way through whatever, they never needed to learn how to actually work. When people looked at my writing in university, they always assumed that I put SO MUCH time into it. In reality, it was most often a first draft and usually written the night before. I just happened to be pretty damn good with my words. I got an honours degree with a 3.86 GPA while feeling like I never had to work that hard for it based on this ability. Math and logic related courses would routinely kick my ass until I learned how to work to succeed in them. Dan never took those, so only had the easy part of that experience and never learned how to work. He also enjoys dumb things.

 

Dan being a talented guy who's world-view is influenced by the fact that things always came easily to him (and never realizing that he is an exception) pretty much perfectly explains him in my mind. It wasn't until I started tutoring that I realized how much quicker I understood things than is the norm and how lucky I was. If I hadn't done that, I'd probably be very Dan-like myself.

I think that's probably why I empathize with Dan as well, except my run of things coming naturally ended about halfway through university when I dropped out because I was suddenly shit after just breezing through everything in my life. I must have sounded like such a huge dick when I'd tell people that you can just skip half of the work required and naturally ace tests to get As and Bs in classes. Nowadays, I just wish I was a hard worker and not gifted because having a gift and abusing it is more harmful than helpful.

 

Yeah, I sometimes think about gifted programs and how they're often just a way to quarantine smug little twerps away from the rest of the student population. I was in REACH for DISD since the first grade and I remember enjoying it a lot but never really learning anything. If I weren't an avid reader, which grew into a passion for autodidacticism as I entered college, I could see myself being pretty lazy in terms of my own intellect. It would be nice if gifted programs actually tried to teach the value of hard work and of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but I'm sure there would be massive backlash among kids who just want to sit around and feel smart.

 

Still, even knowing that, some of Dan's ignorance seems like a terrifying lack of curiosity to me, with which I cannot sympathize. How do you manage to go without the knowledge that you can't breathe in space?

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My only Dan-experience is from this thread, from Thumbs IRC, and from the PAX panel which I watched.

 

He sounds pretty great to me! A lot of people's reasons for disliking him sound like reasons to do the opposite. I'm looking forward to finally catching up on the 'cast. I'm currently somewhere in late 2012...

He's extremely naïve about a lot of subjects, which leads to statements that are sometimes charming and sometimes infuriating.

 

The only thing he's said that I've been really bothered by was the "anyone can succeed if they just keep on trying, giving up means you're a failure" bullshit from last week. Other than that he's said some occasionally horrifying stuff but it's been mostly entertaining from my perspective.

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