When Popularity Ruins Something You Love

[@DegenerateJay]

This video will definitely be a bit of an intelligence/attention-span test on who actually watched through it based off what I said, vs what some will assume I will say. This issue has been going on forever and will likely never change, but it's still worth talking about. If you enjoy the video, we have channel memberships and a Patreon, our store cosmobunny.shop where you can use code DJAY123 for 10% off your first purchase and other channels like our let's play channel - kzbin.info/door/qUxQUAGade5ek_daIehdKw , an anime variety channel - www.youtube.com/@magicaljill and an RPG channel - www.youtube.com/@DJayRPG ! Thanks for watching!

[@Blazeyy]

I remember seeing this happen with anime in high school. There were these nerdy girls in my class who were constantly bullied for being anime fans. But then, the most popular girl in school decided to watch an anime, and she loved it. She started telling everyone else about it, and soon, everyone was into anime. One popular person’s opinion suddenly made anime cool, and it became mainstream overnight. Now everywhere I go, anime is like a standard thing that everyone watches now.

[@michaeljordan9664]

This happened to basketball because of me. The sport did not even matter until I came along, and then everybody tried to copy me.

[@scaryscarecrow5478]

I totally agree! whenever Something goes Mainstream videogames movies music comics anime cartoons Whatever it is it starts going downhill and gets ruined gaming was honestly so much better from 1989-2013 in my opinion

[@brianlinville5420]

I got made fun of in high school because I love hair metal. I was raised on it and inspired to play guitar because of that music.

[@visionary1138]

The built in audience that enables the stuff drives me nuts too. On the other hand as soon as they do vote with their wallet these companies have no idea what's going on and just assume that everyone dislikes that product and it should be cancelled because it's not worth actually fixing. They want the cheapest and easiest paths.

[@andyowski1515]

Kind of takes me back to when everyone said that they would boycott MW3, but then people were posting viral images of their entire friends list who had made a big deal out of it. And all of the statuses said playing MW3. Nobody sticks by what they say.

[@domwuz144]

This is how I feel about The Amazing Spiderman 1&2. It gets a lot of love now. I’ve personally always thought that the 1st was excellent. While the 2nd was good, but bloated and it would’ve been received better if we got a director’s cut and added back all the scenes that were cut from the original movie, because you could definitely tell the movie should’ve been close to 3hrs. I’ve always thought that Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of the Wall-Crawler was ripped right out of the comics. Specifically the ultimate series (besides the age). He gave us a geek-hipster Peter & a perfect Spiderman. Quips & all. Tobey gave us a great Nerdy, Shy/timid Peter, but his Spiderman was dull (Still Iconic tho) Tom is giving us the youngest acting/portrayal of the character & consistently gets overshadowed by everyone else in his movies. Giving us both a subpar performance as both Peter & Spidey.

[@savagelogic8674]

Batman is a victim of this when his fans either push them as their favorite onto other people, or enable DC’s over reliance of him just because they like him more. It made just not want to invest in the IP anymore for a while.

[@dragonjago5568]

I wasn't expecting this video but it was a nice surprise. I agree with you that popularity does ruin something sometimes. I say that assassin's creed and battlefield kinda got ruined because it became popular. Great video, keep it up.

[@Jak2isPeak]

Some of my game examples (imma leave movies, tv shows, etc out because the list will never end): -Tomb Raider (lets say starting with the first reboots: LAU series, onward) -Sonic (moreso the 2010 decade) -Spyro (both after the original trilogy and the bastardized remake of said trilogy) -Dead Space (DS3 and the botched DS1 remake) -Far Cry (after FC4) -TLOU (with TLOU2) -Ratchet & Clank (mostly after the og trilogy but especially by the joke of that 2016 "remake") Etc. Unfortunately as you grow up, you realize every single ongoing franchise switches its target audience. One thing I hate about the trend to is it almost always reverts/regresses backwards to pander to kids. You can never comfortably chill with a series, instead you'll either have to make compromises with who else they target or move onto other series over and over and over and over. 5:07. We're a minority (unlike the case with Jak II) but Shadow's 2005 games has its fans, me included. Definitely a very overhated game, which in large part objectively comes from people's own misunderstandings and false notions of the game (the topics on the story and characterization of Shadow being some of the dead giveaways of that). You'll find there's several analytical yt videos criticizing BUT primarily defending the game.

[@doomslayer1991]

I’ve been saying this for years these people are tourists not actual fans of gaming or anime

[@lordcheesus1013]

To answer your question of the day: Pokemon. It's popularity is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. ESPECIALLY in the gamers/collectors market. Thanks to Pokemon's popularity, the secondary market is INSANE. Values on these games have jumped to REALLY crazy high levels and most of them shouldn't be. Trust me, I've played 90% of them (the sun and moon gen is the only one I skipped out on). As with all gaming IP's, gaming quality does vary between game to game. That said NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, warrants certain versions of Pokemon games going between 100-300 bucks. None of these games are that rare yet as the collectors market is so huge the copies of the games are so numerous they may as well have just been released last year. It's all greedy resellers trying to cash in on a popular IP that's only growing in popularity. That's it.

[@RawrItsJuul]

Everything starts becoming ruined when trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Things have better focus when made with a specific target audience in mind, it's impossible to keep old fans satisfied while at the same time dumbing it down to appeal to a wider audience. Companies, remember who your target audience is, make a focussed product that is good instead of something general to appeal to the masses. You can't please everyone, stop trying to in this pursuit of money.

[@quietchap]

I feel like My Hero Academia used to be a really chill community before it got popular. Then it just all went to hell

[@oriongear2499]

I’ll get flack for typing this, but nowadays it’s best to enjoy Anime & Manga like MHA without interacting with the online fandom.

[@quietchap]

@ yeah, you’re probably right

[@saturn_wolf]

Absolutely nothing drives me more insane than just how much Sonic Riders goes for, for some reason. I refuse to believe that anyone who isn't me cares *that* much about a relatively obscure Sonic racing game from almost 20 years ago, there's just no way. I don't even like gatekeeping things! I like having more things to enjoy with people! But this is absolutely ridiculous

[@megamillion5852]

Oh, I absolutely care about it that much! Although, I can agree that copies shouldn't cost a kidney.

[@just_an_elli]

Thankfully I bought a GameCube and like 20+ games just a year before the prices skyrocketed. I got the system for $60, and all of those games for like $90. I think Riders was $7 or $8

[@gto_jojolion7021]

What i hate especially in anime is when it gets so popular that the fanbase gets filled with weirdo’s or because the anime is so popular it is impossible to avoid spoilers. Like i can’t enjoy Berserk because i’ve been spoiled about the eclipse which sucks the enjoyment out of watching the 90s anime or reading the manga because i know what’s gonna happen. Or for example when JJK was getting really popular through not only the anime’s hidden inventory arc but because of the culling games and Shinjuku showdown arc, everywhere on TikTok there would be memes and huge spoilers which completely sucks the enjoyment from watching the anime or reading the manga, and don’t get me started on the amount of bad and overused memes that came from the JJK fanbase

[@bluevolt2014]

nah id win

[@ItsskipppermyG]

You can still enjoy berserk, knowing about some spoilers lol. I feel that majority of modern readers knew about the eclipse simply because berserk has been around for a few decades. I completely agree with the jjk stuff though.

[@gto_jojolion7021]

@ i mean i can still read on with berserk and i will eventually, but it just isn’t that high on my to do list anymore. And i get that when something is around for so long it’s normal to begin talking about it like most people into that thing already know, but it just kind of takes away that extra intrigue and hype that the readers experienced when berserk first came out. It’s like how everyone knows who Sephiroth is now, the mystery of the character that was building up in the original FF7 game is gone now because it’s been around for so long. I understand but it just kinda sucks

[@ItsskipppermyG]

@ I knew going in and it was still impactful. The journey there still made it worthwhile. Plus there is a lot more than just the golden age arc.

[@perfidious333]

I have this experience with Junji Ito and Dandadan. It hurts.

[@gto_jojolion7021]

What was the issue in popularity with Dandadan? Fanbase, Spoilers, or writing quality dropped? I want to start it but i don’t want to get disappointed like i did with JJK and Chainsaw Man

[@degeneratetrump3057]

This has ruined pretty much everything I enjoy, collectibles, video games, card games, its becoming increasingly annoying

[@ColonelCorrect-b8j]

Star Trek was a victim of this too. It seems like the Abrams Kelvin movies' success pushed them to not only put Alex Kurtzman in charge, who misunderstands a lot of the appeal, but also to oversaturate the market with more Trek shows.

[@jervarislakes9774]

It's always a good day when Jay uploads! To answer the question, I believe Pokémon is something that has been ruined due to popularity. They keep making these lazy games that barley work and people keep buying them.

[@andyowski1515]

Yeah people buy so many copies they have no reason to fix it.

[@andyowski1515]

Honestly the thing that's frustrating is that with the other franchises Nintendo owns they are still willing to put that effort in.

[@jervarislakes9774]

@andyowski1515 yeah Mario is a great example of that.

[@hughmunguss5338]

​@@jervarislakes9774That's a great point. It's probably because it's basically their Mickey Mouse. Where if they let that fall off the company will just become a laughing stock. They are very protective of Mario but I would be interested to see the sales. Does Mario really sell that much more than pokémon? Because I would think you'd want to protect pokémon. And then they're willing to protect pokémon by bullying things like pal world with copyright lawsuits. So I just don't understand.

[@inkchariot6147]

Pokemon makes so much money that they think they can get away with churning out bullshit that any other company would catch flack for.

[@Angel-7z]

I feel best examples that got horribly ruined by its popularity would be the Arkham universe and Mortal Kombat they were made for the fans and by passionate devs then later on, they could pretty much ruined and kinda disrespect what came before and just burned bridge and made people just tired yk I feel sskills, like Gotham Knights I know it’s not part of that canon, but you kind of start seeing the weird shift and weird questionable things in that game and then by ss it horrendous and and then with Mortal Kombat, MK 11 was mostly a good game, but there was a few things were made people kinda not be the happiest with it and then I feel like MK1 it really showed a lot of those issues. It tried to be a different thing It tried to be a Marvel heartless rip off It tried to change the characters people knew for like 20 years and gender bending (it’s not the fact they’re doing it. It’s a fact they’re doing it lazy who was actually asking for that no one asked for female Syrex or sector, but I feel like female night wolf which is canon will be kind of cool but the gender bends was just done in a lazy way) they came out with an expansion that most people didn’t pay for the game was doing horribly people just honestly didn’t like the game so the support got canceled and I feel like the same thing with ss They cash grab something that’s special and means a lot to people wb runs it into the ground by changing and ruining what people actually love about it the way they disrespected Batman in suicide squad or even how Mortal Kombat now just feels like a bunch of fanfiction that just destroys the old lore trying to be something else horribly I just feel like wb run there ips into the ground the second they find something that makes money they rot it from the insideout

[@ryanbalkwill6609]

Marvel because It got too much popularity.

[@CherryBombPlays]

Kpop 00s to late 2010s SLAPS . Recent years people are now"fans" and to a kpop group release full english songs and sadly its more Popular to their Korean songs (with a few english words added). The company(s) are more money hungry .

[@iamawesome4026]

I think this happened with Comic books in the 80’s and 90’s where people kept buying the same comic thinking they would be worth something. It wasn't and they kept buying it and they couldn't keep making them

[@diavolo1326]

For what you were saying about the prequels being more popular as time has gone on, I think a lot of that has to do with people around my age (I’m 22) who grew up with the prequels getting older and voicing their love for them online. Back when they were coming out we were kids so we didn’t really have a voice in the discussion about the prequels due to the people engaging in these talks being old fans who watched the original beforehand. I think that’s why you’ve seen the pendulum shift so drastically in regards to that.

[@BlankDiceEnt]

The immersion in Call of Duty is nonexistent now. I just uninstalled BO6 after getting killed by a laser beam sniper thing online. They sell the games mainly based on their historical settings and then you buy it just for Michael Myers beat you to death with nunchucks in a normal team death match game. It’s horrible. Imagine playing God of war and every other enemy was Snoop Dogg and had a lightsaber. It sounds fun but it would be take me out of the setting and game every time.

[@DegenerateJay]

Yeah I completely agree with you. I'm fine with it in something like fortnite, and I even enjoy it there, but that was always the identity of what that was. It was always this crazy cartoony thing that teased crossovers and all this other stuff. I'm also fine with certain event maps on Call of Duty, like back on Ghosts where there was a whole crossover with The Predator franchise that had its own mechanics and everything, but I wanted those things to be more self-contained. Not just an excuse to throw random things into warzone.

[@fexizp4272]

This is why I was so both terrified and excited about moon knight being made into a TV show

[@BenDover-y5l]

Did you like it? Seemed like the internet collectively disdained it.

[@just_an_elli]

I liked it, though I do prefer the comic version slightly more. I think both can coexist

[@moondough6010]

WWE is going through this, love how it’s getting mainstream attention but these fans get crazy 😂

[@brianlinville5420]

Yes i grew up watching it with my dad it was are thing and I got made fun of for that. Now everyone loves it but they hate me because I dont like kevin owens and thank hes a crappy stone cold rip off

[@senorpython2262]

Call of Duty even in its prime unfortunately, negatively impacted the FPS market. Now Fortnite has changed the gaming landscape forever in terms of monetization. Has anyone else noticed the lack of AAA FPS multiplayer games?

[@zombiegamercat777]

2:08 I 100% agree on Call of Duty

[@Nick-yv1rm]

DUDE HOLY CRAP! When you started talking about avatar the last air bender and how the live action stuff started changing things like in the lore and whatever. How you would point it out and these new fans would start labeling you a hater and attacking you for not being a "Real fan". Directly correlates to how fallout is now after that live action tv show released. now all of a sudden, all the lore and things I know that were true when I was a fan back then during fallout 1,2,3 and New Vegas are all wrong and I am not a real fan for pointing this stuff out. I'm a hater because I don't like how the biggest faction in fallout ever "the NCR" was just nuked and replaced by the brotherhood of steel. How Mr. House's personality and perspective on the great war has suddenly changed. How the entire message of the show is different, and that vault tech started it all. It has nothing to do with war anymore, but instead it's about how capitalism is bad. How everything is just a joke now. Nonstop oldies music playing and stupid sexual jokes just being flung out like candy. It's not even fallout anymore. But back then I was a loser for even liking this stuff. Back then I would be made fun of if I told someone I liked fallout.

[@FZVideos9630]

For me it was Power Rangers franchise like when its became too popular because of Mighty Morphin that it undermines the importances other seasons which is done better than MMPR but this enabled this type of mentality where people worship MMPR as the 'god' entity for this franchise's existence as if Power Rangers weren't entirely original due to be being American adaptation of long-running series Super Sentai , stuff like this makes difficult for Power Rangers to grow and evolved with times because depend too much on MMPR's nostalgia , like if ever the franchise will get revived its better being original creations and just ditching the MMPR elements and themes otherwise its pointless , like I don't viewed the Power Rangers franchise existence around MMPR but I viewed its existence of how it can go for 30 years

[@midnighterx]

I think for me a one that comes to mind is the souls games as as soon as elden ring blew up it became so popular as before tha they dark souls games were allot more niche

[@oriongear2499]

For me, one of the issues with something becoming mainstream or too mainstream is that it leads me to question whether or not someone enjoys the media for it’s characters and story or if he/she enjoys it because it’s cool to enjoy it. Edit: That said, while I'm against any sort of media becoming too mainstream, I think a balance can be struck between being too niche and too mainstream.

[@brianlinville5420]

That's fine but me not being a real metal head because I love hair metal because it's to mainstream. Execpt I'm a advocate for it i push the unknown hair bands and want them to be recognized for the one album they released.

[@just_an_elli]

As someone who adores Persona 3 but doesn’t really care for the other Persona games (especially P5), it kinda annoyed me how the game that saved the entire franchise is almost never talked about... but maybe that's for the best. I hope we at least get Aigis in the next Smash Bros.

[@brianlinville5420]

For me its hair metal being 23 i got made fun of through highschool for loving the 80s and hair metal then all of a sudden its cool to love the 80s and hair metal. Its like where were you when i got made fun of for liking it.

[@Jamal-bl7yh]

Super Easy Robot Chicken I Was On The bandwagon when Adult Swim debuted the show but It got more and more popular Like SpongeBob SquarePants and Adult Swim's other Stop Motion shows like Moral Orel and Titan Maximum got prematurely cancelled like that and I gotten unfair to that point same applies to MADtv loved It for a good while but It got discovered by new audiences the reboot happened and It was ass Doo Doo Water even

[@oxelord3011]

For me, it's not a franchise, movie or game, but the one that always comes to mind is Red Hood. Not that Jason's writing was spotless before he got super duper popular, but comparing his modern iteration to his Winick days in terms of writing, it's night and day. He's been watered down so much that's he feels like a cheap copy of his former self. Why I think his popularity is the cause of it, is because the more popular a character is, the more the higher ups will interfere. Daredevil for example is pretty much in a sweet spot, where he's popular enough to akmost always have a book running, but not so popular that the higher ups will force the writers to do some superbly dumb stuff to cater to whatever they think consumers will pay the most for. Jason on the other hand has flipflopped so much, he at times feels like a different character, which pains me inexplicably.

[@Pan-cackes]

The lion king is a good example.

[@JasonBellows]

Agreed when it gets popular both sides want to use it for their messages.

[@Kyubee5136]

Tokusatsu becoming mainstream was a mistake. Power Rangers had big mainstream appeal in the 1990s which lead to Gen-Z Westerners discovering Japanese Toku (Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Ultraman, Godzilla). When Gen-Z discovered Tokusatsu they immediately started inserting politics into it. When I was a kid we didn't care about the actor's political beliefs but now I go on Twitter and see people mad at Power Rangers actors for voting for Trump. I don't like Trump, but what does Trump have to do with Power Rangers. Another thing is a lot of people watching Toku don't care about the story. They only care about yaoi ships and identity politics. I'm LGBT and I support LGBT rights but, once again, what does LGBT have to do with Kamen Rider. They'll take a scene where two male characters are friends and try to interpret it as gay. Then you watch the episode and it's just two male characters talking to each other. After the 2024 election results there was discourse in the Toku fandom because there were people saying "If you voted for Donald Trump, stop watching Tokusatsu". There is no correlation between watching Japanese superheroes fighting monsters and who you voted for in the United States Presidential Election. There are Trump supporters who like Super Sentai/Power Rangers and Kamen Rider. I may disagree with them but they're still allowed to be in the fandom.

[@conradojavier7547]

Also the Wokestream hated the Actor who play Vice from Revice, cuz they saw a Picture of him doing Blackface, & he's Also the New VA for One Piece's Franky.

[@cathylickpriest7775]

The only thing that wasn’t ruined by being popular is the word of Jesus Christ amen 🙏🏻

[@darthvader5621]

Amen. Although, there were the Crusades.

[@Imadeyoumadlol]

@@darthvader5621 Islam had those too though so I think it evens out.

[@mrb4783]

Are you sure about that one? Sorry just remined me of all the parodies and interruptions of Jesus plus all the other religions having their own takes as well.

[@Imadeyoumadlol]

@@mrb4783 Pretty sure it's a joke, but stay edgy.

[@mrb4783]

@@Imadeyoumadlol I wasn't trying to be so this is awkward.

[@themultiversalmagpie7827]

Anime going through that rn

[@baki484]

A lot of things are ruined by popularity look at gaming.

[@DemigodShmurda]

Don't get me wrong, is it cool that a superhero movie was at one point the highest grossing movie in the world? Yes. However, superheroes haven't fully been cool since they went mainstream. We've had a few good projects here and there, but things have been going steadily downhill since Endgame. James Gunn could totally change that, who knows, but I definitely think that in the grand scheme of things Marvel and DC got ruined when they got as big as they are. There's been so many needless changes to canon, discussion about race and or genderbending where there wasn't before, and overall I think the brand has just been too watered down. It hasn't all been bad, but quality control used to be a lot greater. Also, I don't have as big of an opinion on it, but I think gaming also falls into this category. The fact that we're waiting years and years for games only to still somehow have rushed game development is mind-boggling, especially considering how bloated the budgets for these projects are. Gaming has a lot of the same problems with quality control that superhero movies do, but it's arguably been worse since nowadays games will just straight-up release to the public in an unfinished state. That's not how things used to be.

[@Maldo2011]

Yeah I don’t understand why sellers and different businesses are so greedy when an IP becomes more popular. The prices for Sonic Adventure 2 are atrocious. I also can’t stand bandwagoning. I’ve loved Sonic for so long and it was lame back then but now all of a sudden it’s cool.

[@AnthonySmith-bj9mo]

hi Jay

[@samgourhan207]

So i bought the 09 wolverine game for full retail this year. In 2018 I got a copy of the deadpool game on ps4 for free. I gave it away go look up the price

[@DegenerateJay]

Love the Advent Children picture. Doesn't get enough love. Yeah some of those old superhero games are just insane in general. Not sure if it went down but The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was climbing a lot as well in value and it's not even a great game.

[@samgourhan207]

@DegenerateJay I gotta say man. For a name like degenerate Jay, You are very insightful & open minded. While I'm not a religious man anymore, I love that You are open about your religious views. I always enjoy your real talks. Thanks for all You do for us Jay, Have a great new year :)

[@hyperonrex]

Well form my view point it definitely not a argument you have some thing you do love watch or play like enjoy Marvel and DC and another good example is Cobra Kai,Invincible,and more etc that I’m curious or sound interest to me but with this it just depend on how it handle or done right to honor and please that fandom or everyone overall that what matter and a little bit same with gaming too as along we all enjoy the game and have fun that all we want at the end of the day from both sides with this start a lesson to all company and game studios out there just saying

[@visionary1138]

Did you watch the full video? I'm assuming not because of when you answered but there's several great points brought up here including how the market scalps all retro games based on a property as soon as it becomes popular. This is not a long video at all so it shouldn't be hard to get to that part.

[@Chaso-1124]

The one that really bothers me is Resident Evil. The series going mainstream has ruined it for different people at different times, but it got ruined for me when re7 and the other RE engine games came out. The series changed so much between having sequels that arent really sequels and watered down reimaginings that cater to modern mainstream audiences while leaving OG fans behind. The series began to desperately try and appeal to western audiences while scrubbing away nearly all of its japanese style and origins. The new fans want the entire series to be reimagined in an entirely different direction and we will never get a proper faithful remake like re1. The modern fambase has some of the wildest takes imaginable and have no respect for the original series or its fans. They make weird sex jokes and excuse any kind of bad business practice from capcom, like cutting out original soundtracks and charging extra money for it and cutting out many parts of re4 and adding them into separate ways as paid DLC. I remember the days when people got mad at day 1 DLC and nobody would excuse it but now theres corporate bootlickers who will gobble up whatever slop they come out with and attack anyone who says differently.

[@ryanbalkwill6609]

Marvel

[@BigBlackBarret]

Ay yo black music used to be good til it got popular too. Popularity ruins everything

[@iraford5788]

What do you mean black music!?, Do you mean Rap/Hip hop because if so that's always been a popular genre of music since the late 80s and early 90s.