How 2010s YouTube DESTROYED Sonic

Sonic is strong, but nothing could have ever prepared him for his most fearsome opponent yet: 2010s YouTube. The 2010s was truly the most miserable time to be a fan of Sonic. Big YouTubers retroactively labeling Sonic's entire back catalog as "bad." For most people during this time, if you even liked Sonic, it was ironic at best. So how did it get to that point and what role could something like YouTube even have played in this major shift in perspective?

Thank you to @SamProcrastinates and @Mardiculous for the cameos!
Go follow them NOW!!!

Table of Contents
0:00​​​​​​​ Intro
2:08 The Flames of Disaster
4:38 Enter the 2010s
6:39 Bad Faith
9:48 Irony Poisoning
12:37 The Worst Era to Be a Sonic Fan
14:44 Unfortunate Timing
15:51 A Shift in Perspective
17:10 Conclusion
17:53 End Screen

Intro song by Hyper Potions:

⭐Become a chaomix YouTube Member!

🔥Buy chaomix merch here!

👍Follow me!

💬Join the discord!

#sonic #sonicthehedgehog #sega

[chaomix]

Do you remember the 2010s era of YouTube constantly mocking the entirety of Sonic? Do you agree it was the worst era to be a fan? Or do you think there's another era that was worse?

[BWHERE]

Worst era to be a Sonic fan was DEFINITELY the 1950s. It felt like NOTHING Sonic related was getting released...

[zachpro]

Sonic had a rough transition to the 2010s YouTube

[zakjakob]

Pointlesshub said a quote on his video on The Boys that perfectly encapsulates the whole YouTube 2010s fiasco. “Too much hate towards something can become just as annoying and intolerable as the thing it’s making fun of.”

[thereel_real]

Sonic was the definition of “OH, BUT WHEN *I* DO IT, IT’S A PROBLEM!” in the 2010s. Thank God that era’s behind us.

[IdeoHazamaFan]

Didn’t realise how prevalent irony poisoning in the 2010s internet was specifically until this video made me think of more examples. Like how Minecraft was called cringeworthy after a certain point, up until people became nostalgic again. Glad that Sonic could push through.

[Choctopus]

Good video, bro. I dipped out after Secret Rings and Sonic 4 for a while but you gotta know what “It’s over” feels like before you can experience “We are so back.”

[pillls]

I once saw someone point out that when a sonic game has glitches people mock it endlessly but when a mario game has glitches they are 100% necessary to the experience and fans get pissed when they are patched.

[YungandRekless]

Let's be real. A large part of why the mainstream turned against the Sonic was because of Arin and IGN.

[StarBracerr]

I was in high school during this era and I remember having a phase where I would try so hard to hide my love for sonic, even giving away a lot of my sonic merchandise or putting it in storage 😢💔

[GenericProtagonist]

So listing off the things that made Sonic hated for so long:
•Cynical 2010's Internet Culture
•IGN being the worst video game reviewers
•AVGN Clones
•Arin Hanson of Game Grumps being dogsh*t at video games
•The Archie Comics and its occasional weirdness
•DeviantArt having some of the most psychotic fandoms in history.

That's the worst combination of thimgs to happen we'll ever see...

[kinoleogeo]

The moral of the story, stay critical, but sincere about what you love.

[Tazer_Silverscar]

I think the 2010s era was ALL ABOUT kicking things when they're down. There were some truly awful people around at the time... and sadly, a lot of these people are still around.

[areakastudios]

I LOVE how you described the whole “irony” thing. Psychological influence can impact a series more than you think. One of my siblings was always super dismissive of the franchise, and said “Sonic lost, Nintendo won.”

[mushroomdude]

I can’t stress enough how much of a paradigm shift Frontiers was. I’ll never forget how blown away I was by that first titan fight. It felt like I woke up from a coma. It was the first time in so long that this series was unapologetically cool.

Compared to where we started, we’ve never been in a better place as a community.

[OldRedGrizzly]

Reading the comments, I think there's some stuff people either need to remember or to understand when it came to Arin Hanson and his influence. Cause I've seen some people say "oh but it many Youtubers and reviewers, " and that's true, but Arin was different in key ways.

First was, he was huge. His popularity cannot be understated: he was the golden child of Newgrounds back in its peak. He was their #1 for years after he stopped animating. And that's what he was known for at the time! He wasn't known as an "entertainer" back in 2012 or 2013, he was first and foremost known as an artist and animator. The whole "he an entertainer" part wouldn't start to come about until after Jon left the channel.

Not only that, but he was greatly respected within the community. Well... until he backstabbed them and burned every bridge he had years later, but that's a story for another time. At this time, though, people took him at his word when he said things because he had that respect and reputation built up. Just look at his Sequelitis video on Ocarina of Time, people believed his criticisms of the game, even if they were pretty bad. It really wouldn't be until years later, when he played the game for Game Grumps did everyone realize just how garbage that video actually was.

So you got this, basically an internet superstar, dragging Sonic again and again and again, people listened, they believed what he said. Remember, he was chosen by Sega to be an ambassador to their brand, that's not an honor you get by being a nobody, that's something you get when you have a lot of influence, and he did. And it wasn't just Sonic, either, although that's the most infamous. To this day, people still take him at his word about games like Skyward Sword and Mario 64.


So yeah, while there certainly were many others, he was one of if not the loudest of them all, and he had an already dedicated community at his back to hear what he had to say, for the worst. And Game Grumps itself was, for a time extremely influential. However, that's all in the past, but again, that's another story for another time.

[xyiotegaming]

bruh it was this stigma around that led me to get bullied for being a Sonic fan.. defo worst era to be a fan imo

[Thebes]

Ah yes, the “Sonic was never good” era. How… nostalgic.

[UltraSTH]

I remember straight up being picked on in school for a bit for liking Sonic and it absolutely sucked, I ended up just hiding my interests from people until I graduated high school

[coreyferreyra]

When you discussed how society was getting much more irony-pilled, my mind went straight to something Fredrik Knudsen (from Down the Rabbit Hole) said on stream. The only reason Undertale worked as a sincere story is because it was wrapped in the ironic language of the time, and it led to a lot of people starting to re-learn sincerity.