An(other) Open Letter To Bob Chipman

Dear Bob,

Listen, we're all worried about you. We've all been watching your "Anti-Thinker Saga", and... well, okay, that's not true. A lot of us just gave up when you started putting in a baffling evil-twin side-plot into your videos. What we HAVE seen is the fallout; your stubborn refusal to budge on something that is clearly not working. We have watched as your web series, which once focused on opening an intelligent dialogue on entertainment matters, developed into this... this cry for help. This ham-fisted, unironic, overdramatic enterprise so full of itself, so completely unaware of its own ineptitude it would make Tommy Wiseau cringe. We know not where your pain began, Mr. Chipman, but we hear your anguish.

But it's got to stop. You can't keep doing this to yourself. You can't keep doing the same thing that you know everyone hates and expect to get different results. I understand that every critic wants to be a film-maker. We get to a point where we think we could do better than those guys, and we try it, and it's terrible. But if we give up, that would be seen as a defeat. It might undermine whatever authority we have to speak on these matters.

I tried to convince myself when I got that itch that I was "too far in to quit now". Although it wasn't so much film-making for me as general story-telling. Comics, in fact. I was so convinced my years of pointing out failures in other people's works would mean my work would be spun gold. I should have known when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em. I would have spared the world one of the most humiliating chapters of my life, and on the internet that shit is not quickly forgotten. In fact, the failures of our species are archived for all to see.

I could not escape my hubris. I flew too close to the sun. But you sir, you who have made me and many others really stop and stroke our chins in contemplation, on subjects that aren't approached as thoughtfully as they should be, or as much, or at all. You, who dared to question if the greatest thing holding back video games are not merely the people who make and sell them, but those who consume them. You, whose videos have made us all want to put more effort into having sensible, thought-out beliefs on these things:

THERE'S STILL A WAY OUT FOR YOU.



Listen, you and me haven't seen eye-to-eye on a few things. You think "Final Fight" would make a better movie than "Shadow of the Colossus", whereas I... think you should know better than that. But even I don't think you deserve this. No amount of sour grapes can make me will this cruelty on you, your series or your audience. You are too old and too talented to be making my amateur mistakes. You're better than this.

That, and the very idea of the Anti-Thinker is just impractical. He's a bloated, hit-over-the-head stereotype strawman, essentially saying your opinions backwards and with less eloquency. How is that an improvement over addressing to your audience, clearly and plainly, how you feel? When you did attempt to sneak in a point or two, they felt stifled by having to compete for the spotlight with your ridiculous "quest". It is actually hurting your ability to convey an opinion, which is what you do better than anything else!

I think the problem is that you tried out this storyline stuff in a series where it was never meant to happen. "The Game Overthinker" was never meant to be a story-based show. It's just a means for you to get a dialogue started on certain issues you think need more attention. If this amateur film-making self-indulgence were confined from your other content, there wouldn't be a problem. But shoe-horning it into your series on screwattack makes about as much sense as placing "Rapelay" into Super Mario Bros. 3. There may be a time and place for everything, but it wasn't here. 

Did you start to feel having "The Big Picture" accomplish the same goal made the Overthinker series redundant, and that a story would justify its continued existence? Were you just running out of stuff to talk about across three different shows? Is there seriously no better way you could think of to commemorate fifty episodes than by ruining the previous seven? Can we expect this clownshit from Escape to the Movies?

Like I said before, every critic wishes he could be a film-maker. Every one of us has that itch. But there's a reason why you are a critic instead. Please, heed these words well and know that in spite of everything, a few of us are still here for you. You are too valuable a reminder that the entertainment we consume is worthy of appreciating on a deeper level. In a world with Twitter and Facebook updates, we need people like you. But we can't help you until you can help yourself. 

"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem.They're in there every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can't do it themselves."

-Behan, Brendan Francis

 END OF LINE

~A.H.