Just wanted to take the op to say thanks so much for watching this folkes! This video has been a LONG time coming with over a year going into it. I hear from a lot of you that the quality of the mic is bad in the intro. I agree and I'm sorry about that. I wish YT would let me replace the audio track with a fixed one but alas, I cannot. This only lasts a few mins however in the intro and I've taken great care to make sure future uploads don't exhibit this behaviour. My apologies 😊
So for 11 years, people have been asking "Why did Jon leave?", Jon gave the excuse of "Creative differences", while Arin held the line of "Creative Differences". And after over a decade of research controversy, NDAs, and speculation, it turns out that the reason Jon left Game Grumps was because they had creative differences.
Well yeah. None of them had a problem with Jon's sense of humor. Only the perpetually on twitters had that problem. The only reason Jon even suffered a small drop in popularity from the obvious fallacious allegations is he only uploads once every 10,000 years. If he uploaded smaller videos monthly like he planned he would probably have led yt to a new age of goathood.
@@DemiSupremi Well, I'd say the "allegations" were more than "fallacious", considering he went onto a live stream to say all sorts of wacky stuff with his own mouth. I haven't followed what all happened since, but none of that spelled very good things for Jon's personal beliefs over time.
From a scope of time perspective, it certainly seems like a terrible decision. I understand staying silent while Danny transitioned into the new role, but after he became adored by fans and cemented himself with a longer tenure in Jon they should have cleared the air. At this point, I can see speculation continuing to haunt them for another 10 years.
Egoprator is a weirdo. Fans of a product aren't stupid, people understand relationship dynamics and they don't like being lied to. When something fishy happens and the crew try to sweep it under the rug and gaslight fans, it becomes insulting and people start wondering why they would feel the need to do that if nothing fishy was happening. Just don't be a manipulative horrible person While also trying to control everyone's perception of reality like some illusory warlock and the Streisand effect will likely pass over whatever petty drama you have
Which is why it’s so mind blowing that people are so fixated on Jon leaving the show, and about portraying him as some helpless victim. He was there to help get things going, but Game Grumps is the product of Arin and Danny. Jon is doing just fine - and as the video points out, doing even better - with his own projects.
@@tgs7515 I found that a little odd to point out. Like YT subs is a big indication of success? Both sides seem happy and successful, and good on them for it. The vid's e-peen measuring comes across as petty to me.
It's weird for me. I was definitely one of those people who didn't initially like Danny and thought the show would never be the same. Now? If I go back to old Jon episodes they usually make me cringe. Both Jon and Arin - but especially Jon - said some really gross, juvenile things that I don't find nearly as funny in my late 30s as I did in my 20s.
@@tgs7515 looking at it that way saying Jon was trying to help things grow as a friend to then leave because he believed his friend is gonna be fine is a nice way to look at it but I feel it’s more underlying issues than just that but that could be part of it too
I remember watching Jon and never touching the Grumps so when Arin appeared in the Star Wars video I was like "Hey, it's Egoraptor! How random!" and completely missed the drama
Ditto. COMPLETELY went over my head! My sister was a die-hard JonTron fan, so when I started watching Danny was already in and I was like "Oh, I finally watched that gamegrumps show you keep talking about. That Arin and Dan-" and she flipped out at me for mentioning the 'fake grump'. It wasn't until Jon's racist comments that we were able to talk about the show again and she was over it. 🤣
When they started saying that they broke up for creative reasons, I believed it. I always think about the story they told when Jon was on the show, about literally creating Game Grumps Inc. with an attorney or something. To the best of my recollection, they had to both write "Partner" next to their names to clarify their official positions, and after Arin did that, Jon wrote "Fartner" and then he had to actually write it correctly. Jon just had a different perspective about the business, and the partnership lasted as long as it could like that.
Thats a really good way to put it holy fuck lol. Honestly I feel like Arin was more playful early on, you could see his passion for games and entertainment in all the animations, rants and videos he created as well as the childhood stories he told. The show-biz side came out later on but then again I don't know him so I could be wrong.
honestly it seems the two just wanted different things. Arin wanted a reliable income, Jon wanted the freedom to be experimental. Neither of those desires are "wrong" they are just not compatible.
As a fan from the beginning, it's so bizarre to watch this video and be like "Oh my gosh. I remember this day." and to have actual explanation behind really weird discoveries at the time. Great work!!
Thanks so much for your lovely words! I remember that day too so much, It's seared into my memory and I could even tell you what I was doing when I found out! I think that means just how much Game Grumps meant to a lot of us. I'm really happy that I can offer a deeper dive on the subject that hasn't been seen up until now
Same, so we must've been watching at the same time. I was a big fan of egoraptor and The Awesome Series from newgrounds. I had never heard of Jon when they channel was created, I was just there to see what Arin was up to. Fell in love and watched every episode on the day it came out after school, with a side of microwave chicken nuggets. Became a big fan of Jon, him quickly becoming my favorite of the pair. Now I'm 28 years old. What even is time.
despite some decisions being very questionable, both of their motives were very understandable, Jon wanted his main channel to be his main thing and didn't want to turn GG in a corporation because it would suck his time away from the JonTron channel, but Arin was sick of how tiresome animation was and didn't want it to be his only source of money, so making GG bigger was his only way of getting an actual job that isn't hell like doing animation only, it just sucks that they did not handle the break up of the aftermath well at all
I'm not completely convinced. If that really was the case, you'd think it would be as simple as one honest conversation where they gave each other's perspective. Because their visions actually align. Arin wants a project other than animation to run, and Jon doesn't want to run anything else and just show up for a podcast style gaming session so he can focus on JonTron. So, what's the problem exactly? How exactly does this prompt Jon to move across the country and sign away his ownership with an NDA? Still something important missing. Probably whatever actually happened at that E3.
@@Deeken171 my guess is that they had multiple conversations about this before, and after Jon got drunk during the whole E3 episode, i don't think they had just a normal argument but a "fight", insults and etc, that's probably when both of them had enough of getting nowhere with all the disagreements, and the fight was so bad they just couldn't live normally with that friendship anymore, Jon wanted to move before this fight happened according to that friend of Jon's fiancé, so if anything his mind was already made up about leaving and focusing on Jontron anyway since Game Grumps was getting way too big and wouldn't be just a side channel anymore, i don't feel like there was anything too fucked up to hide with an NDA, but if there was, considering how young, edgy and imature they seemed to be at that time, it was probably on both their interests to sign that NDA
Those are both valid complaints from both parties. As someone who dabbles in creativity, animation, drawing, 3D modeling, w/e. Having that as a job would be tortures, I would get creatively burnt out so quickly, it being a hobby and enjoying it in moderation is what makes it therapeutic to me. And Jon just wants his channel to grow, a thing most YT creators want. I would've been happy with a compromise like Jon agrees to play games hard with Arin for 2 or 3 days, and have the editor cut and make content out of that for the week and Jon focuses on his Channel and personal life outside that. Maybe that was too much for Jon and not enough time for Erin. Whatever the case, Danny was someone who I didn't know, and therefore didn't expect to like as much as Jon, but I feel he has more chemistry with Arin. I'm glad there's no hard feelings between the two. Just people going their separate career paths, unfortunate, but something that can't be helped.
Oh yeah, switching from animation to let's play game stuff was definetly long sited 😂, remind me which is bigger now? The guys should have just been honest and not done an NDA. Jon came out better because his main channel wasn't the one with the drama.
@@lifeunderthestarstv You talk as if Game Grumps isn’t a successful brand today which it absolutely is. Besides, Arin has talked plenty about how stressful he finds it to work with animation. Even if it’s become financially viable again, what if he just doesn’t want to do it for personal reasons?
12:43 I feel like this is similar to what happened with Super Best Friends. Matt wanted to lean hard into making a "brand," and Pat wanted to hang out and play games together, and it strained the friendship. That's reflected in what they're both doing with their own channels.
The Super best friends breaking up hit me a lot more than the Grumps did on a personal level. But they were at least straight up about not being friends anymore and its something you could kind of tell during the last year of the channel.
I'll never forget going to a 2 week summer camp with no internet whatsoever. Getting back and everything with steam train, Jon leaving had happened. I couldn't believe it :(
That's rough, holy heck. If a favorite channel of mine exploded while I was gone, I'd be pretty upset. I'm a more recent Grumps viewer, having only been watching for the past two or so years, and I do really like the dynamic of Arin and Dan. Maybe if I watched some of the older stuff, then my perspective would change, but I'm satisfied with the current arrangement.
I can relate, I just moved out on my own. No internet except at work, finding out that Jon left was a lot to take in while working midnight shifts at McDonalds
There's nothing wrong with Arin wanting to turn Game Grumps Into a business and there's nothing wrong with Jon not being interested in that. I'm happy for both of them for what they've made of their lives and wish fans would stop trying to paint either as the negative force that ended the duo. It's just how these things go
I agree with the sentiment completely, except that i feel the issue could have been completely avoided if they'd just been upfront about it. It feels like that decision to be completely secretive and silent is what did the most harm to the channel, Arin, Jon, Dan, and probably everyone else involved with the channel throughout that.
Even though I don't like everything Arin's done, I respect him immensely for his work ethic and how he builds up the people below him in Game Grumps. He sounds like a great boss.
I think people really wanted a villain. They wanted to blame someone. Facts are facts, Jon is impulsive, and Arin is career driven. It wasn’t meant to be, they were both idiots in how they handled it, and that’s the end of the story.
@@syruscoy1244 His career. The one where he’s built an almost universally known let’s play channel on TH-cam, where he’s part of a band, where he tours literally the world doing sold out shows with his own touring company? That one. You don’t have to like him, but the man has built a solid career as a creator online with a very large and dedicated fanbase. You just can’t discredit that.
@@ThegbearSome of that came after Jon though. I'd give more credit to his Newgrounds animation days leading up to him and Jon making Game Grumps. Anyone and everyone who frequently visited Newgrounds knew about the "AWESOME" series. Metal Gear AWESOME, Shadow of the AWESOME, etc. He already had fans, he was just figuring out what to do with that influence
While it’s easy to make Arin the villain for being very invested in game grumps as a brand, I remember Arin’s stories about growing up dirt poor. To Arin, a constant paycheck and financial security is the most important thing, and when game grumps became that he had trouble letting go. Also this is a great video, and I really do believe we can finally stop speculating
What bothers me is this video kinda seems to frame it as selfishly? Even though Arin has a lot of people working for him whose stability he wants to protect too, I'm sure
i also dont think its necessarily just brand alone. they have an audience, saying hateful shit in private is bad but broadcasting it to all your viewers, some of whom could be seriously hurt by it is way worse. sure, arin is a bit too quick to call things hurtful like with the pelo video, but its far better to be too careful with this kinda stuff than not careful enough. i personally think hes totally in the right in the whole situation
I remember at a MAGfest, at least one year after Jon left GG, going to an out-of-the-way fast food place that was basically completely empty except for Arin and Jon at a table, by themselves, just talking. To this day I wonder what they were up to.
They seemed to be in contact at least until around the time of Starcade. Honestly if not for the destiny stream they'd probably have made at least one reunion gg ep by now.
@@saltythebear I've always assumed since the Destiny incident that a political difference between Jon and Arin played a role in their split. Not the whole reason, mind you. Or even a large one, perhaps. But anyone who has ever tried to hold a partnership together when they hold two very different perspectives on important matters knows it's *very* difficult. (Especially if one or both are very vocal about these views.)
@@saltythebear While most of us will agree that Jon doesn't have the best political views, the are a lot of things people blow out of proportion with Jon, and I'm going to make some assumptions (Like many of other people are doing anyways) since I don't know him or haven't seem much of his live appearances: 1- Jon is probably not the best "Live Speaker" when put under the spot. People like Destiny are no different from the snakes you see on TV, or the Ben Shapiro's in public debates, they know what they are doing, they know how to make questions that will make you look bad, they will trick you into saying stuff you don't want to, and if you're not well-spoken you will probably end up saying things that don't reflect your true values since you'll be just explaining them badly. 2- None of this should've even been brought to light in the first place. Yes, if the stuff he says or things makes you feel bad about supporting his content, then you're free to stop watching it, however, at least to me, political ideas have never stopped me from enjoying the content from the creators and artists I like. You're not giving them money by watching the content (Your 1 view contribution is not that significant after all). If Jon did commit some actual crime then I'm willing to agree that people have a legitimate reason to throw him under the bus, but at least from what I've seen of him, he just has some dumb views.
I remember when dingdong started streaming a long ass time ago he said something about how he and julian didn't like dream daddy as a concept (they were in the GG offices during its development) and this is eventually what led to oneyplays leaving the GG office/fued between Chris and Oney. Rumor has it that corporate GG didn't like that an actual gay couple in their offices were sharing dissenting opinions about their gay dating sim, and oneyplays was asked to vacate the building.
I watched both DD streams about the situation and its awful. its too bad DD doesn't want the story out there and wants the drama to end. That didn't stop Lex though, now we know Supermega have just as big an ego as Arin@@TheVenhammer
I can't tell you how much a breath of fresh air it is to finally have a video that doesn't write this situation out like it's some dark conspiracy and takes the realistic approach that it was just the creative disagreements of two dudes. These things happen all the time, Jon and Arin are just humans and make mistakes, doesn't mean I agree with all of the decisions that either of them has made and if I'm being honest I've always had a bias a bit more in favor of Arin. I discovered grumps post Jon so Danny has always been Not so grump to me and personally I've always preferred the dynamic between Arin and Danny. The two of them have gotten me through some rough times and I cherish the laughs they have given me, but I've come to recognize that Arin can make some questionable choices and isn't always the most rational of people but he tries his best and that's all you can ask of a person in the end. Both sides are happy and still doing what they love and have ultimately moved on. I think this could be a good lesson for the internet and people in general that dwelling on the past mistakes of others is ultimately unhelpful and perpetuates that toxic cancel culture mindset. Give people their just amount of criticism at the moment that it's appropriate and move on.
Well he compares game grumps censoring a Miiverse post to Stalin so. While he did do a better job explaining the actual reasons behind the whole thing, it’s still a pretty dramatic telling of it hahaha
As someone else who became a Grumps fan post Jon, I can agree that it's nice to see a video like this. I'm glad the whole situation has basically been revealed to just be conflicting viewpoints, and nothing more serious. I love both JonTron and Game Grumps, and will keep supporting both these channels.
@@DoubleKillFilms Definitely a "C'mon dude, really?!?" kinda moment lol. Also did sense some leaning towards Jon, even in light of his...ahem..."views".
To give Arin & co full benefit of the doubt, it could be that censoring the Miiverse post was the best way they could think of to not violate the aforementioned NDA. Depending on how it is written, even just showing the post could be a violation, and showing it *and* reacting to it could easily be a violation.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if Arin's change in attitude was him figuring out whether or not they'd have to censor that post and what they'd do to cover it
Yeah. Arin seemed bummed. Maybe it was because he had to switch his brain into "businessman mode" during what was supposed to be a lighthearted moment he was sharing with fans.
Agreed. Depending on terms, it could be that they saw openly censoring it as not worth the hassle of not being able to explain or as just easier to cover with something else. It's like a poster over a scratch in the wall. Doesn't make things better, but people have to be looking to find something off.
Interesting video, and nice documentation! But i do have to say its kinda weird to place Arin as an "angry overcontrolling boss" to Jon considering we dont know anything regarding they're personal lives at that time. The ending to the "the reason Jon left" segment is a bit too speculatory to be part of a documentary style video. (kinda sounded like you were making Jon out to be some sort of victim to Arin)
Yeah, I think that was a bit too far as well. I genuinely mean it when I say this. Neither Jon nor Arin seem like bad dudes. But really painting Arin as the bad guy when he was just trying to expand the show is shrubbery. If we absolutely HAVE to point a finger at someone, it was kinda messed up that Jon up and left the project suddenly with the other's livelihoods on the line. But it was over a decade ago. I imagine if you were to ask Jon, he would tell you first hand that he would have done things differently in hindsight. They were young.
Yeah, the sudden switch from talking the facts to suddenly going full conspiracy felt out of place at best. Everything up until like the 50 minute mark was reporting on things that had actually happened, and then the video started talking only hypotheticals in the same tone, making it out like those statements are as factually correct as what came before.
Yeah I feel like that ending was missing one follow up point. The "Angry Boss Arin" stuff should have been framed as a "Maybe this was Jon's perspective." And then instead of that being the video conclusion, the follow up to conclude the video should have been the "Or maybe that's not like what it was at all." Maybe even include "or From Arin's perspective, maybe John was that partner who was dragging his feet and holding the channel back from its potential." It was just odd that the whole hour long video seemed to be very neutral, (going back and forth with "maybe this perspn/event was bad? Or maybe this one.." and then the final statement wasn't neutral. It was just a "maybe Arin was bad? The end." But it also didn't come across as a "Maybe" but instead a "Probably Arin was bad." Because it was the final statement to conclude the video and "answer the question" of "what happened?" So, being a Jon-stan lol, I agree. That angry boss comment came across as a "probably what happened" when it should have been a "potentially someone's perspective of the situation" that should have been followed by the other sides relative perspective, and then a conclusion that says "one of, or both of, those perspectives is probably the answer."
It felt really off to me to see so much research and evidence go into most of the video, and then have that entire ending section that sounded equally authoritative, but seems entirely speculative? Do we even have proof that Arin's actions are motivated primarily by public image and not just his own values shifting? I feel like we don't really have a way to say for certain one way or another. I stopped watching JonTron after it became clear that he was sticking with his white nationalist bullshit (I'd love to learn that that's changed but I've moved on at this point), and I stopped watching Game Grumps after evidence surfaced of Danny taking advantage of vulnerable women, so I don't have a particular interest in either side anymore, but it was still kinda uncomfortable to see this theory stated as if it were absolute fact :\
That Total Biscuit comment of "You'll never find out, that's buried " leaves a nagging feeling like there's still an unsolved piece to the puzzle that we'll never hear.
I'm gonna be honest, i think either Jon or Arin might have done some fucked up shit on E3, either on a personal or professional level, and the other left because they don't want to be involved with that kind of thing, people just don't act like that over "creative differences", there was a lot of damage control that would be highly unecessary if Jon just came clear on an Episode and said, "Look guys, i think i'm done with GG, i want to steer my content on new horizons, there's this new guy that we will take over, see you guys around" and showed up once in a while to be a guest or easter egg, in fact, people would love that, Jon actually did that when he started to walk away from game reviews and people took that fine, that was 100% an emergency ejection, if i ever saw one.
I feel like it's important to point out that when you were talking about video views per game grumps and Jon Tron, you only pointed out the number of views per video without addressing that Jon Tron uploads maybe 5 times per year. Whereas game grumps upload every day. So taking that into account, game grumps is getting twice the viewer count of Jon Tron. Personally i'm not partial to either Jon Tron or Game Grumps, I just wanted to say that statistics have to be viewed correctly.
@Rhysman30 he has GG, The Grumps (a side channel), RPGees (enamel pins), recent voice acting (Rick and Morty and OK KO), GG merch, GG tours, his books, and maybe even occasional ad deals
So much about this video, such as that part, come off as framed the way they were to paint a particular picture of a situation. Purposefully missing or ignored context like that. It is dishonest, and gives the impression of ulterior motives with this video. Anyone that is or was a fan of the two knows the polarity in their respective upload schedules. To leave that info out, is thoughtless at best.
Well, I usually do not prefer to watch content that is produced daily. I think, (having not actually watched the documentary yet, but I can comment on this idea, at least) that both styles of content production could serve different audiences.
@@Thalanox well the reason I pointed it out is because in the video he made the argument that JonTron videos get more views than game grumps videos, therefore he is doing better while game grumps is struggling. I just felt the need to point out that technically game grumps is doing better than jon tron and that the infrequency of jon tron can spike the viewership.
I think Arin discovered early on that GG was his lifelong dream. Knowing that Jon mostly saw it as a side fun thing to do, Arin's worst nightmare would be if Jon left or did/said something really stupid that would negatively impact the show. Most likely Jon knew Airn progressively saw him as a potential wildcard as the show continued to grow. This would drive a wedge in their friendship. Some final straw happened at E3 and they got into an argument. With the lack of creative control and Jon feeling underappreciated he decided he was finally going to move to New York leaving the game grumps out to dry. Arin was forced to quickly find a new co-host and had Jon sign a NDA so any drama that would come out from the break up would be minimized to keep the GG business from more fan outrage. If Jon had left and was able to say he said he felt that his friend & co-host thought he might one day doom the show because of his behavior and had little say on where the business was going. GG may not have recovered the way it did. I can't blame Arin too much. Jon is undoubtedly impulsive and not brand safe. And I don't think Arin wants a squeaky clean brand just for business security. I think he's grown and changed over the years and that's his true self now. The dynamic between them won't work as well because they are two different people now. Ultimately they both landed on their feet and are still beloved internet creators. I'm still to this day a huge fan of both GG and JonTron.
This is what I was thinking makes the most sense as well. Jon wasn't as serious about it, and being drunk at E3 is a huge red flag. If he says what he said on Destiny's debate stream sober, think what kind of shit he may spew when drunk, and Arin didn't want to sit around waiting for that time bomb to go off and kill his livelihood when it finally did. I don't think anyone can fault Arin for not wanting to be caught in the blast of Jon's shitty takes blowing up in his face. The only part I disagree with is the last bit. Even though I find Jon's content hilarious, it's becoming harder for me to separate the art from the artist, and Jon is quite the vocal bigot. I don't wish ill for anyone, but once I realized how bad Jon's takes were and how ingrained they are and that he is unlikely to ever change, his content became hard to watch since he is the focal point of it all.
Arin and Danny did awkward stuff early in their partnership like Racist Bassist or Hoshi the Sad Japanese Businessman (Who Is Also A Pedophile). But the important thing is, they stopped. Arin was even open in admitting that even if he lost a swath of viewers who didn't like hom being "PC", he'd rather not have their views. Jontron dug his heels in with his bigotry. He's got good jokes, but beyond that nobody ever has good things to say about him.
Something else that I think is important to note is at the time of the falling out, Arin would've been 26 and Jon would've been 23. Age does not directly correlate to maturity or anything, but having a friend with a similar age difference, there's a handful of areas and subjects where we drastically differ in due to our lived experiences. And I feel like that probably had some role to play in the fall out. Arin's push for brand consistency and stability is probably due to his low income background with little promise beyond Animation. Jon had a lot ahead of him to experiment with and venture through. And in a similar perspective, you can kinda feel in those early videos how frustrated Arin gets with Jon. Like Arin would clearly get irritated and annoyed by some of Jon's antics, and it frequently felt like Arin had to be "the straight man" to Jon's "odd ball" persona in their dynamic, which does not lend well to Arin as a performer in my opinion. I think their separation as co-hosts was probably for the best in the bigger picture, despite how poorly Jon's departure went down.
Was Jon really in a much better position? Some of his oldest interactions with the internet include his Yahoo answers where he asks "Is it okay to feel sad all the time" and other depressing questions a small child shouldn't be asking. I can't tell but I think his parents were divorced at some point. Also, not to make poverty a competition, because developing countries destroy me at this, but Arin's stories are from a position of lower middle class. His parents were educated and trained for their jobs. I was raised by a single father with no marketable skills. We had no video game consoles in our house. We ate ketchup on bread for a meal. Processed cheese was considered meat. Field trips, even when heavily subsidized, were missed out on, because we couldn't afford the sometimes *ten dollars* needed to go. Arin has no idea what real (first world at least) poverty is about. The stories he tell sound alien to me at best, and a slightly worse off version of the suburban 2 car middle class that's so quick to claim woe-is-me at worst. For the record I was a fan of Arin for almost a decade prior to knowing who Jontron was, and I've only found him funny for a small period of time. I'm not a fan of him, but I do have some nostalgia for him at this point. I'm just saying this to frame my post and try and dissuade the idea that I'm playing defense for Jon. He's a grown man and if he feels so strongly about his words standing on their own merit, he doesn't need a defense force anyway.
@@PinkManGuy The basis for my comment was less of how "Good" one had it over the other, and more to do with the particular mindset either of them may have had at their given milestones in life. Arin was at a point where he probably felt he was running out of options and Game Grumps was an incredibly promising option, and Jon being 23 was probably not at that point in life yet. I know when I was 23, I didn't have thoughts like that but by 26, 27, I absolutely did. It's less about who had a better financial situation or upbringing and more about how much time they felt they had left.
@@GruppeSechs I'm going to have to disagree completely. 3 years is the difference between a child starting 6th grade and a teenage starting 9th grade. It's the difference between teen starting 10th grade and a teen start college. It's the difference between a college freshman and someone legally allowed to drink. A lot happens in 3 years, and while yes that gap of time starts to become less impactful as you get older, a 23 year old and a 26 year old are in very different points of their lives. Especially when one grew up being a famous internet personality and the future of their career is starting to take a toll on them, and the other just recently had their TH-cam career take off. From personal experience, I was a drastically different person at 23 than I was at 26. I had different priorities, hobbies, concerns and fears. And at 28 now, I'm a drastically different person from 26. 3 years is a lot of time in your twenties. That's more than 10% of your life. If you don't think that's massive, you're either younger than 25 or you've forgotten how different your life was when you were at Jon's and Erin's ages.
@@DrgoFx The difference for developing children is a completely moot point. Going from 23 to 26 is nothing. Just because your interests change doesn't mean you as a person does. You're kidding yourself if you think that's the case.
I remember some interview where Arin talked about hanging out with Danny early in their friendship and noticed their natural chemistry. He thought that IF Jon ever left Game Grumps, he would bring Danny on. It was treated like a sweet moment, but it proves that Arin never saw Grumps as "the thing me and Jon do together." Jon was always replaceable.
That's an excellent point you raise there. Again we already know how much Arin was focussing on widening the channel and turning into a mega-hub, It really was progressing that way before things fractured with Arin and Jon. Appreciate you and your comment
definitely a thought supported by how game grumps now has a corporate, production, and merchandice sections of employment among their members. even danny could be replaced to keep the content wood mill running its all setup and waiting
I think this is a biased way of thinking. Just think about it, Jon always had a backup plan with the Jontron channel, but it's wrong for Arin to have a backup plan with Danny in mind? GG is a strict format with 2 people, it's just bad business not to have a way out if Jon decides to leave.
I thought he said he would call up Danny if Jontron was ever sick or something, but not as a permanent replacement. The context would be different there. But it's been a while since I saw the clip you're mentioning so I may not be remembering it 100% accurately.
@@itscassette I think it makes a lot of sense *why* they'd have done it, but if they hadn't wanted us to catch on they'd have edited more out, like Arin's mood very noticeably plummeting , people were hyper aware of that kind of stuff and picked up on it right away
@@SurfRock74 basically they edited and censored a Miiverse message that said "Game grumps acknowledge Jontron" And not only they censored that by making it blank like an empty message although that wasn't possible, but also invented a new drawing also Idk for me that's terrible I don't care if some people defend that
@@AlenBear Yeah I feel like there’s no way to defend that, they could have just simply censored it well and it would be implied that it was something else inappropriate, if they really wanted to cover it up. Even then I think it’s just a low integrity move to be so hush-hush about something people are already so aware of, it being there wouldn’t bring any more attention to it than there already was.
As a fan of both, it's really weird that the video definitely vilifies Arin even though it goes out of its way to say it isn't. To your theory, Jon was hungover the morning of scheduled press events and they had a fight about priorities and split. How is the take-away that Arin was some sort of control freak obsessed with PR? It also isn't unreasonable and a good move, not just PR-wise, but ethically and morally to denounce Jon's racist remarks. To my memory, even that 'denouncement' was pretty luke-warm. I liked the video for its informative read through of the conspiracy grump posts and the editing was spectacular, but the editorializing became annoying and eventually straight up off-putting once it seemed to handwave Jon's split with multiple long-term friends/businesses as being impulsive and not a result of his consistent, objectively offensive, past remarks.🤷The video really shows a clear lean towards making Jon some sort of protagonist and ends up making the video as a whole seem to forgive these points.
@LordJamek but Jon was literally borderline nazi. Like borderline Hitlerite nazi. That's bad. Unless there's some proof that he no longer believes in a Jewish conspiracy theory I'm gonna say that he shouldn't be forgiven.
Thanks so much for watching! It's nuts how much lore they have, absolutely! There was so much that was cut from this video for the sake of brevity there's that much to talk about!
With how much if this whole situation is documented, you’d have to spend more time combing through information about the history of Game Grumps than you would for some periods of history.
I know, right? GG has gotten me through all of high school AND college by this point. Hell, there was a period where I could only fall asleep if I was listening to them.
both jon and arin seem to be explosive personalities which are fun to watch but not good for a long term career. dan really is a good balance to arins explosive personality they just compliment each other so well while also sharing a lot of interests.
Thanks so much for watching and for your comment! I agree totally that out of anyone it could have been, Danny was a fab choice. He absolutely earned the respect and love of existing fans no doubt
Dan's good, but he doesn't challenge Arin enough, in my opinion. He's very passive and that comes off as him not having any real opinions when it comes to games.
@@jmartens759 he doesn't need to. It's not a review channel. It's two goofballs talking while playing games. He's a great personality, that's all he needs to be IMO.
This is the most reasonable and simplest explanation. Very well done video. I'm sure there are details that we will never know (like the specifics of their fights/arguments, etc), but it really does just seem like it was about a power struggle concerning the future of the grumps. Jon always wanted it as a chill side project, whereas Arin wanted to turn it into an empire. I'm sure there are some juicy details in there that are still unknown, but that appears to be what it was in a nutshell.
Thanks so much for the lovely words on this! Yeah absolutely. All the sources point to this as the reasoning behind the split and when it came time for GG’s statement on it they really weren’t lying when they said Jon left to work on JonTron, it’s just purposely ambiguous by design. You’re probably right in terms of juicy details, but the crux of the matter is very much a fallout and a robbing of control. Again thanks so much man. Your comment made my day ❤️
facts, as much as it felt odd too see jon go, it doesn't feel right to imagine a timeline where jon stayed. I think it would have become toxic overtime because of some of the similarities in their personalities. Dan and Arin balance each other out and bring different skills and ideas to the channel that have become iconic. They've turned it and themselves into professionals in a business that feels chill to them rather than being exclusively one or the other (the original conflict between Jon and Arin). idk
only disagrree about the part where Jon's vids have millions of views while Game Grumps averages 100-300K because the frequency of uploads is completely different. Averaging above 100K on daily uploads is akin to millions of views on less frequent uploads
yes, i’m not gonna watch every single upload of a channel that posts daily, especially if not every game they play is something that particularly interests me. on the contrary, jon posts every 6 months AT MOST (it’s not uncommon for an entire year to pass between uploads) and nearly every video has a frankly insane production value, and his content is just generally more spectacle than the casual, “tune in when you feel like it” vibe of the grumps
One thing about that, though, alot of those views are repeated. So saying they are one to one is a bit disingenuous. Also GG's views to subscribers ratio is alot worse, which is also a very important stat.
agreeded I'd say both channels have very different strategies for uploading but both seem to have stable and dedicated audiences that give their videos a healthy amount of views overall
It's so crazy how this was made from someone under 1000 subs, like dude this is beyond professional stuff you're so underrated and can't wait to see more
Wow! What a lovely thing to say ❤️ a lot of work went into this so I’m really glad it shows in the finished product! I’ve got plenty more to come! Next project is in the works and I hope you’ll love it! Thanks again for such kind words, they mean more to me than I could possibly communicate
@@Sphyell not really, I just thought he had more subs with how good the quality is. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with 100k subs, this stuff is really good
NormalBoots members have very consistently claimed that Jon was already leaving the group for inactivity well before his controversy. Jon has also reiterated this at least twice, so I feel it's inaccurate to say otherwise.
The sheer amount of incredible music that came out of such a short period of time in the Jon era still blows my mind. There was plenty after too but few really captured the energy of the Jon era. I still listen to playlists occasionally
Controversy shit aside, I stopped watching after the 'Jon Era'. I just don't like Dan and arins humor when they're together. Which is hilarious because I honestly might consider watching it again if they got rid of arin. I never really liked his sense of humor. I think Dan is great.
In the end, I think GG would've died not long later if Jon had stayed. Watching old videos, there is a different feel with Jon that isn't really captured as it is with Danny. It feels a lot more relaxed, even in the real early episodes. I'm just curious, if Dan was really an "emergency replacement" like is said in the video, then is it possible that it would've cycled a little till they found the right fit. Is there an alternate universe where Ross or Barry is the replacement for Jon instead?
I feel game grumps would have had a better success with just Jon and Arin doing their stuff. It was just simple and good. Although it seems like based on this video that it was not meant to be. Watching old videos with Jon and Arin is so damn relaxing to me. But maybe they feel more special because Jon left
Based on the new show announcement with Jon shown and the one-a-day period, my bet's that Dan was less a last minute swap and more of a 'Let's test out the new people with Arin to see what sticks while we have a week to record.'
If I had to make my guess before the reveal at the end, I'd of said Arin wanted to turn GameGrumps into a business, bring in more creators, it was a very good source of income and a dream come true for most people... while Jon wanted it to just stay a side thing they did for fun and not become a second job, perhaps leaving himself room to work on JonTron videos as well. But the conclusion in the video makes a lot of sense too, maybe a little of both.
i dont see anyone mentioning this, but arin isnt the bad guy. maybe im misreading the tone used when talking about him specifically but i heard more hostility towards him than not. the short and simple is: arin wanted more business from GG and jon wanted it for fun, arin acting as a "boss" isnt necessarily a bad thing or something to be looked down upon. this was also very early on in grumps so their behavior and responses to certain situations are going to be different than a response to something today. jon and arin are two separate ppl who made one really awesome thing ! their anniversary was celebrating what game grumps has become rather than what it was in the beginning. cheers to all members of GG old and new 🍻
Sometimes I rewatch the Jon era GG playlist, and if you do, you can kinda tell that Jon is way outside what he expected from the show. They constantly talk about how they sometimes frustrate each other over different things and how the situation when the camera was off wasnt always great. IMO the most likely thing to have happened is that Jon got burnt out. We see this from his main JT channel, he will go dark for a bit and come back for a bit: he seems to just get burnt out and likes to take his time. No shade, I have problems with mental health and motivation that would effect me similarly if I was a creator. (Not saying Jon has those problems) And if Arin was pushing so hard to make a huge network of channels and constantly making headaches for Jon (not saying Arin is wrong to capitalize, just saying that Jon would have seen it as an unnecessary inconvenience), I could see him reaching a tipping point where he just gets soured on the whole thing.
100%. Jon uploading 4 times a year is considered a win, and this last month uploading 3 videos people are going insane. He took a YEAR off after his biggest video, flex tape. He made a banger with 70 million views, and dipped lol. He is not the type of person to upload daily content, let alone the rate early grumps was pumping out videos. For him, it was probably nice to hang out with a friend and play old games with the nice bonus of putting them on TH-cam and making some money. But Jon was already doing that, Arin wasn't. Arin saw the opportunity for a huge business and a steady income and he's not in the wrong for that at all. TH-cam is vicious to animators, and a video Jon could make in a few days playing a vrappy game would take months for Arin to animate and make the same. I love GG, old and new. Gooftroop is my all time favorite play thru, but Danny is amazing as well. Looking back now you can see that the business model was not gonna work for Jon long term. The fact he did it for nearly a year is amazing in it's own right.
Someone else's comment here kinda encapsulated my take on the video and the situation. Jon was doing Game Grumps to have fun with his friend and just shoot the shit while playing vidyagaems, an unscripted, off-the-cuff podcast-like easy breezy channel. Arin was looking at this as a business opportunity. Arin took Game Grumps as seriously as Jon took The JonTron Show. Jon wanted a relaxing time, Arin wanted to capitalize on this. Neither is wrong to want this, but I think the BIG THING is that Jon already had his 'put my working boots on' project, and he wanted to do Game Grumps on auto-pilot. Arin had Game Grumps and very little else (some VA work, maybe? Unreliable at first), so.. well I'm just repeating myself here. I think it was just they both had different wants for Game Grumps and those ended up being incompatible, because Jon was devoted to The JonTron show. Neither was wrong here, but they didn't discuss it beforehand, so it blew up instead of being nipped in the bud.
Back when the split happened I made some snap judgments about the situation, being only about 16 years old at the time. Now that so many years have passed I can see both perspectives on the situation for sure. I only wish there had been a little more openness, but first and foremost I'm glad we got that year of content as I still go back to visit it regularly. Great video.
Oh absolutely, it’s very much a product of who they are which was always going to cause a blow up. I think we all wish they’d be forthcoming but I think that alone is down to who they are for sure. Thanks so much for your kind words man it means the world to me ❤️
@KotoCrash This was yeeeaars ago, so maybe I just forgot, but what exactly did Heidi do wrong? She and Ross broke up (pretty amicably iirc), and she decided to see other people. She didn't actually instigate anything, did she?
@KotoCrash Ross ended his relationship with Holly amicably, and there's more than enough circumstantial evidence to say they were together for his Green Card anyways. Heidi had no part in that other than bringing drama to everyone involved.
@@babulbi "amicably" feels like a stretch after the stuff Holly's had to say about Ross since. Also lbr the biggest villain in the whole scenario was Jared. Don't milk your fanbase for nudes.
@@Vaishino Can't say I know what you're talking about with Holly, but you're straight up wrong about the Jared part. As far as it has been shown, he never got nudes from fans, he just posted his on his NSFW blog.
Hi! I’m sure it could be cut down for brevity’s sake (and trust me a lot did get cut!) but the stuff I did keep in my opinion allows you to get the biggest understanding of the dynamics at play leading up to the separation as with everything together it shows how it was only going to go one way for them because of their opposing forces in perspective in life! I am super grateful you did watch it though and I appreciate your feedback so much ❤️
That opening was so dramatic i love it. I think my favorite style of youtube videos are longer investigative, documentary, or deep dive kind of stuff and i gotta say man this is like equal in quality to some of the bigger channels that i love. This was really good. You deserve a lot more subscribers.
I watched the whole video, but I don't understand why the creator of this content takes issue with Arin wanting to distance himself from Jon after Jon said some f*cked up stuff in that interview clip you showed? Like why frame it as Arin caring about image and his "brand" over just learning that his friend has some pretty questionable and alienating beliefs that he didn't agree with? You repeatedly framed it as Arin choosing business over his friends, but dude, if I learned my friend was racist, I wouldn't want to continue being friends with him either. Racism isn't a wedge issue. Damn.
I find myself very old for the fact that I was on day one of Game Grumps, because I followed Egoraptor before it and I've seen the ups and downs of the show for a decade.... and the fact that a couple of friends of mine love Game Grumps and when I mentioned JonTron they were in shock yelling "JONTRON WAS A GAME GRUMP???" Oh, the age, it's hitting me hard XD
It’s truly wild how Jon can still have a fan base after all he’s done. Arin has messed up, but not to the degree Jon has. Plus, both arin and Danny have been very open about their struggles with mental health issues throughout their life. Arin and Danny genuinely seem so much happier together and compliment each other so much better.
Most of the ones Jon has now are either people who don't know anything about him personally, cheer him on because of it, or just didn't care. He's lost a good chunk, me included.
@@CouchParty heyo I am new to the GG fandom, I have gotten really into them this last month and I have only picked up bits and pieces about jontron. Tbh, I knew jon's name from many years ago, way before I knew anything about arin. Wasn't he involved in some sort of controversy? I've been on youtube for a long ass time, and I remember that Jon used to be on the list of people I liked, but I dont remember why exactly. Maybe he did some collabs or something with other creators I liked. But I've heard somewhere recently that he might actually have some really bad takes, and I am trying to learn more about that without giving him views directly. Do you know anything about that?
Very well made video, though I find the tone towards Arin a little biased against him. Like the implication that Arin pursued GG over animation solely because it was "easier". This is definitely somewhat true, but it understates how difficult animation is, and how hard it is to be profitable from despite this effort- I can also vouch from personal experience mental health also kills motivation and creativity, which is something Arin's mentioned struggling a lot with. I can't blame him for not wanting to rely primarily on it. I'm sure there's definitely a decent aspect on making money, but it also feels like Arin and Danny genuinely have fun and enjoy what they do. It also feels weird to paint Arin's distancing to Jontron solely as "PR" or "squeaky clean brand image" when Jon was saying pretty blatantly harmful racist stuff. It feels understandable any creator would want to distance themselves from that, and I find it surprising this is so lightly emphasized. It also feels weird to compare views of videos to say Grumps is far less successful than Jon when you're comparing Jon's rare uploads that naturally draw more attention just based on sparsity to GG's extremely frequent uploads, which is bound to have more spread views. I did like how organized the video was, it flowed well, and came to a logical conclusion. The biased tone and injection of opinionated and circumstantial topics just feels very derailing at times.
They just had different priorities. It doesn't make Jon a bad person for wanting his freedom and it doesn't make Arin a bad person for caring about his show and his business.
I've been an Egoraptor fan since the early TH-cam days and immediately fell in love with Game Grumps. It's so strange to see everything that I lived through as a fan explained as if it were a series of historical events. I was always in the audience never a participant when it came to the conspiracies but this video has put me at peace with a longstanding question I've had at the back of my mind. I'd like to see more videos like this about the other Game Grumps related conspiracies to put them to rest, but this was the big one and it would be hard to find as much material and I imagine there would be less interest in things like the Suzy Etsy thing or the split with the Chris O'neil group.
I was somewhat involved with the Miiverse thing. It was actually more in depth than the video makes it appear - people were doing colour-level and pixel-level analysis on the boxes and finding tiny differences in jakey's meaning someone had edited the footage almost perfectly. Genuinely interesting summary post showing the thought process here. /r/ConspiracyGrumps/comments/2s4f9z/censored_miiverse_post_for_real/ The weirdest part of all this is that Chuckles' post is actually probably real. It just looked suspicious enough to warrant the investigation which found an actual doctored post right next to it.
@@anitachamberlain3391 People undersell its severity. She essentially bought cheap mass produced jewellery and sold it as "handmade" (specifically) and under her name for vastly increased prices (documented 3,500% on one item), advertised by Arin a couple of times, and advertised on her twitter as made by her. People found out they were the same items with a massive markup. She blew up at them, Arin made a preachy reddit post condemning those angry at her for it. So she ripped off fans using her clout who thought they were buying something she made herself. Okay, big deal, some fans had their trust betrayed and money wasted, fool and his money, right? Nope. Suzy lives in America and is used to these things happening unpunished. Suzy was selling them internationally. This broke trading standards law in both the EU and Australia. Suzy quickly dropped the entire thing when people started bringing this up, because with a few reports and the piles of easy evidence already collected the relevant authorities in these places could send a note to Etsy to have her banned from international sales or entirely with the push of a button. The full breakdown is here, some of the links are dead but throw them in waybackmachine, they're all recorded. www.reddit.com/r/ConspiracyGrumps/comments/30bhdf/proof_of_suzys_dishonesty_suzys_etsy_scam/
This was really well put together, but it really feels so heavily skewed towards Jon, which given the parasociality of online content makes some sense, you are going to end up on one side or the other I guess. But, from following a number of Let's Play channels with more than one host from back in the day, I would say you are missing a big element in this with how you frame it. For Jon, Jontron was his principle outlet. For Arin, Grumps was the principal. Arin didn't just stop making animations because Grumps was easier, the ad/algorithm changes on TH-cam were already starting to push out the animators who has become very popular with long to produce short form content and was pushing serial long form content like Let's Plays at the time. So yeah, Jon also had some safety in his long form/medium to produce content, whereas Arin had to make Grumps work. Because at the end of the day, you have to eat, you have to pay rent, etc. We all used to laugh at being able to make a living playing video games, but honestly putting in the amount of hours needed to make this kind of content and following trends and arranging your life around this kind of stuff is work. And with almost every Let's Play channel, if you are just recording LPs all day, you are going to want to try to expand out of that. You may have filmmaking aspirations like Markiplier, you may want to be more like a host figure, or you may just need something to break up the monotony. So while you can just say Arin was only in it for the money and brand, you can also say this is someone who used to be an animator (a hard but very creative form), who is now doing something different and easier, but still wants to feel like he is progressing his career in some way. Also there is a fair amount of handwaving Arin's relative progessive stances as just some sort of secure branding. While I do think it does have that effect, I think Arin was also just generally a bit less edgy and a bit more progressive then some of his contemporaries that came out of the NG era. And while Jon didn't go fully off the deep end after his initial weird racist tirade on that podcast (koodos to him on good brand management too), he does seem to be an edgier and less progressive person. I'm not here to pass judgement on that persay, outside of those comments being despicable, but just because Jon says some absolutely wack and impulsive things doesn't mean that Arin considering what he says and does makes him a bad person. Anyways, great work on the construction and styling, very nice work.
The one thing not brought up in this video which should have, especially with including that other dude taking Jon's remarks personal because he's the son of immigrants, is that Jon is also the son of immigrants. Found it kinda odd not to mention that when it fits and makes some context a bit clearer - Jon is DEFINITELY more nuanced than KKK-type hillbillies on these issues, think of his statements what you will.
as someone who started watching GameGrumps when John was in, I had always wondered why this happened. I already had a hunch that it had all happened because of things that happened behind closed doors and away from the public eye. Its sad that they had to break apart like this, but they are both succeeding in their own separate careers at least. I definitely can say the dynamic Arin and Danny have is more fluent and they make amazing content together. Art is art at the end of the day and to those that are not part of creating it will always be left wondering why things happen, we are curious creatures after all. Loved the video! it was very well put, your channel definitely deserves more recognition considering you worked for over a year on this!! keep up the great work!
THIS IS YOUR FIRST VIDEO!!? mate i’m a new enough game grumps fan and didn’t even think i’d have much of an interest in this but you COMPLETELY hooked me??? this was so well made you have a genuine natural talent. this was amazing! :)
Wow! Thanks so much for your lovely words!! This first video went through so much to try and get right and I'm so blown away by the response, as well as reading lovely words like yours. It's made all those long nights worth it
It is extremely difficult to respectfully separate from someone whom you've (essentially) started a business with. It's like getting fired, your boss can be as respectful as possible in terminating you, but you still can't help but feel some form of contempt or even anger towards them. They probably did just have creative differences, Jon wanted to work on JonTron more and didn't want Game Grumps to take a more corporate approach, Arin wanted to expand the business. I have no doubt that they were (to some degree) very respectful with one another when they eventually came to the decision to separate, but contempt is had, rumors are spread, lies are told, and thus conspiracies form. On another note, while I definitely do not agree with Jon's moral/political views, I also don't necessarily agree with what Game Grumps has become either. I would love to see a similar video to this, only with the drama that happened between the Grumps and Ding Dong (a fellow content creator and friend of OneyNG) as there is definitely a lot to unpack there.
47:30 REALLY weird to paint it like Arin was some thought police or dictator when Jon was, at the time, spouting some really harmful rhetoric with a pretty wide platform. While Arin had said pretty messed up things in the past to compare a NG animation from a decade prior to a political Livestream where Jon went entirely mask off is super bad faith.
It makes sense that Arin is concerned with the brand and puts it first because the brand and Arin are one in the same. Arin sticks to his values and doesn't compromise, and the brand reflects that. That's a good thing. It means you're in control of your own life and doing the opposite of selling out. So, what's good for the brand is good for Arin and vice-versa.
The game grumps generally try to stay out of controversy, and it makes sense because they aren’t TH-camrs, they are a company. Any controversies they’ve had came from the past, blank accusations, and the occasional Arin making a fuckup on Twitter. Any controversies are either pushed aside or quickly diffused.
ik this makes sense now, but at the time hearing egoraptor was switching fulltime to lets plays was unthinkable. People still rag on him for that tweet that he made where he said "if i ever become a lets play-er, just kill me" or something along those lines, and it was right around when sequelitis was gaining a lot of traction. He got a lot of flak when this went down because people believed that Arin became "Arin from GG" and not "Egoraptor"
I feel like this video villifies Arin for wanting to maintain a brand image, but as the owner of a business, you have to take care if you want to stick around. From what I can tell, Arin changed and grew up a lot from a volatile teenager with an edgy vocabulary and tried to become a better person, and channeled that into making his business better. If not wanting your business partner to speak badly about black people and cancel meetings and appearances due to partying too hard makes someone "PR obsessed" then I'm PR obsessed too. I sometimes wonder if the NDA wasn't Jon's idea so that Arin wouldn't talk badly of his behavior during E3. That would explain why the Grumps were super silent out of fear of slipping up while Jon got to wink at everyone and allude to things.
I've seen a lot about John's controversies, so I was expecting more of a jab at John. It really does seem to just be creative differences and a falling out between friends/co-workers. Thank you for the video!
Thanks so much for watching and for your comments! It's a super interesting story because on the surface it really was what they were saying, but with all the baggage that came with it that led to this situation. Appreciate you for watching
I feel so bad for Danny in those early days of the transition. He really was the step mom of GG with the audience as the kids hating him cause he's "not our REAL mom". The fact that he was nervous, not because he feared being disliked, but because he didn't want to fail his friends and accidentally ruin their careers. He's such a nice dude. And even though I'll admit I didn't like him at first (but let me be clear I would never leave a hateful comment), he's my favorite part of the channel and it's not even close.
This video has a laughably dramatic view of NDAs. Most NDAs are business as usual and have nothing to do with skeletons in the closet. The agreements are more about keeping company business from leaking out. The fact that JonTron was under an NDA just means someone (it probably _was_ Polaris) was a bit business savvy. A lot of entertainers sign these and generally speaking, if you see a personality suddenly disappear from a show and nobody says anything, it is usually because of an NDA.
For a video that wants to tell an unbiased view of this story it seems like you go out of your way to favor jon and denounce arin quite often. By far the best example is you spending less than a minute discussing jon's genuine racist comments that he never apologized for, then going on to spend several minutes chastising arin for defending his friends and discussing his past with bullying to maintain his "squeaky clean image" and "PR obsession." (For the record I think current game grumps is pretty bad and liked jon grumps much more but this just rubbed me the wrong way)
Hi! Thanks so much for your comment and for your feedback on the video, Truly it means more to me than you can know. I hope you'll accept a little bit of backstory as to why I worded things the way I did and why some factors were given a bit of a lighter touch than others! :) First of, I'm really sorry this video left you with a sour taste in your mouth! My intention was to try to offer a neutral offering with a perspective from Jon as to why he left without falling into another drama video discussing Jon's absolutely with no other way around it, appalling remarks on the Destiny stream. I do understand that on the surface it looks like I'm saying Arin is a one dimensional bad guy but I want it to be absolutely clear I firmly believe both Arin and Jon have made right calls in their outcomes from the split as well as their own issues. Arin's PR focus was a factor that ultimately pushed Jon away (Hence why JON left game grumps, as opposed to Why the Game Grumps split up). Naturally this video would always have an angle on Jon's view on being ostracised from something he founded which naturally is going to make anyone sour. Jon felt like he had no other choice in the matter and this is why he committed to a cross country move. Arin's PR focus also is the exact (maybe in some cases sole) reason that Game Grumps continued past that point. He turned it from a podcast into an empire that attracted huge name recognition throughout YT, And that's to be totally commended This video was originally a LOT longer with more in depth segments but I chose to cut back purely out of the reason of building a profile of why jon left (Fitting the video title) without extra content that's already been summarised. Talking about Jon's comments on the livestream links directly to a friendship reforming being dashed between them which is crucial in the grand scheme of things as it explains how Arin sees how himself and GG is viewed as paramount and it also indicates why Jon will never come back after we saw the two together again, which also indicates a repeat almost of why the two fell out to begin with Again I hope you can understand my reasons behind this, and I hope with a little bit of clarification on the matter from my perspective it's a bit easier for you to understand why things were worded the way they were -- and even though this rubbed you the wrong way I do want to seriously thank you for giving it a go regardless, This video has been a LOT of hard work with writing, research, development, There were 18 different versions of this video alone that got cut! Again thank you for leaving your thoughts, I'll aim to make future points not just that much more impartial but also clearer why I angle things the way I do
This video is amazing. And the comment about Jon being genuinely happy with where he is now? I’ve MET Jon, and I gotta say, he is one of the funniest, nicest people I’ve ever encountered. And he honestly does seem, truly happy.
Very interesting video! Although we might never know what really happened between them, I'm glad we can at least get pretty close. I'm one of those fans that actually preferred Danny over Jon from the beginning, so while I never really cared enough to go too deep into this, I was interested in what happened and I'm glad there are videos like this.
Thank you so much for watching and for your lovely words! I absolutely agree that some details will only be possible if one of the two spill the beans. And owing to how their attitudes with each other have deteriorated so much that may not ever happen, especially when the opportunity to mudsling comes around Paper trail wise however, we can get pretty close to the core of the matter which is something I didn't ever find being done on TH-cam before, hence why I put all this work into this video hahaha! Again thanks so much for your comment. It means more to me than I can possibly tell you
As a fan of both Game Grumps and JonTron: I think you leaned a bit too much into making out Jon as the proverbial "hero" of your video, and Arin as a "villain" in your conclusion. Protecting the brand is not necessarily a bad thing, and with how different the Internet became over the past 10 years, I think you're a bit biased towards portraying Jon as this starving artist who escaped the clutches of a megalomaniac, whereas I never got that impression: at least not from the facts as represented in the video. Your choice of words and some of the information you represented also seem to go in favour of JonTron from a more personal standpoint. That's pretty much my only pet peeve about your essay. All that being said, this, it was a fantastic video to watch! Comprehensive and to the point, I've seen a lot of gossip around this situation but never a solid, coherent timeline or a non-clickbaity take on it. You have my sub, and I hope it doesn't take you another year for another upload! (but if it does, I'll be patiently waiting because I know it will be worth it)
Hi! Thanks so much for your comment and for your feedback on the video, Truly it means more to me than you can know. I hope you'll accept a little bit of backstory as to why I worded things the way I did and why some factors were given a bit of a lighter touch than others! :) My intention was to try to offer a neutral offering with a perspective from Jon as to why he left without falling into another drama video discussing Jon's absolutely with no other way around it, appalling remarks on the Destiny stream. I do understand that on the surface it looks like I'm saying Arin is a one dimensional bad guy but I want it to be absolutely clear I firmly believe both Arin and Jon have made right calls in their outcomes from the split as well as their own issues. Arin's PR focus was a factor that ultimately pushed Jon away (Hence why JON left game grumps, as opposed to Why the Game Grumps split up). Naturally this video would always have an angle on Jon's view on being ostracised from something he founded which naturally is going to make anyone sour. Jon felt like he had no other choice in the matter and this is why he committed to a cross country move. Arin's PR focus also is the exact (maybe in some cases sole) reason that Game Grumps continued past that point. He turned it from a podcast into an empire that attracted huge name recognition throughout YT, And that's to be totally commended This video was originally a LOT longer with more in depth segments but I chose to cut back purely out of the reason of building a profile of why jon left (Fitting the video title) without extra content that's already been summarised. Talking about Jon's comments on the livestream links directly to a friendship reforming being dashed between them which is crucial in the grand scheme of things as it explains how Arin sees how himself and GG is viewed as paramount and it also indicates why Jon will never come back after we saw the two together again, which also indicates a repeat almost of why the two fell out to begin with Again I hope you can understand my reasons behind this, and I hope with a little bit of clarification on the matter from my perspective it's a bit easier for you to understand why things were worded the way they were -- and even though this rubbed you the wrong way I do want to seriously thank you for giving it a go regardless, This video has been a LOT of hard work with writing, research, development, There were 18 different versions of this video alone that got cut! Again thank you for leaving your thoughts, I'll aim to make future points not just that much more impartial but also clearer why I angle things the way I do
@@itscassette Oh hey! So nice of you to reply, thank you so much! And thank you for your words, though I feel bad that you figured it was necessary to reply to this, I understand why you did, and the clarification is very much appreciated. With it, I understand how I might've gotten the wrong impression out of something as simple as word choice. All this being said, I just want to once again reiterate how much I enjoyed it - I cannot even imagine the amount of work that went into creating a coherent timeline of the events around the two and their ambitions (not to mention all the drama), and in spite of my original comment, I do recognize that you tried you best to be fair and impartial during all of it, and I think the vast majority of your viewers and commenters did, too. Thank you so much for replying, and your words! I can't wait to see more of your content, and keep up the fantastic work
Incredible job, man. I think this has got to be the best video I've seen about this so far. Such a bizarre situation this was. I never did understand the NDA and why they were so weird about not discussing anything. It seems to me if nothing really happened, and it was just creative differences, then there's no reason to act like they did. I mean I get Arin just wanting to move on with Game Grumps and not dwell on Jon's absence since there wasn't much to be done about it either way. But why'd Jon keep saying he can't talk about it if it was always just creative differences? That was basically the story from the start, what about it can't he discuss? Always confused me. I'm sure the story probably is something as simple as you said but their handling of it was so poor that it just built the mystery up in everyone's heads. And that TotalBiscuit tweet still hasn't left my brain after all these years. "That shit is buried." Way too ominous.
I just realized that game grumps was my refuge from other internet dramas a few years ago. I had heard Jon mentioned a few times, but never knew it went this deep. I’m actually super thankful for that. I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but it can be traumatizing when your safe escape, in whatever form it takes, has a radical change that’s outside of your control. That safety is damaged, sometimes irreparably. It happened to me with Rooster Teeth, then Achievement Hunter, hell even my favorite DnD creator at one point time got the Voldemort treatment. I say this to point out that “brand safety” can mean many different things to different people. For Arin, it was his livelihood, his dream even, and I don’t blame him for having trust issues with someone who was starting to threaten that. I think they made wise decisions handling it the way they did, even if it was far from ideal. Because Arin defended the brand, the channel was able to stay a safe place, among other things. I can’t watch RWBY vol 3 without crying, I can’t watch old Minecraft let’s plays with Ryan at all (again, that’s just me). How easily could Game Grumps have gone the same way? Instead, they went their separate ways and both ended up happy with where their content went. This is absolutely the good ending. TL;DR Arin’s decision to defend the GG brand also meant that it could remain a safe haven in the age of cancel culture. I just wanted to mention it because “brand safety” can mean so much more than corporate success.
This is the best and most comprehensive video I’ve seen on this topic. 14 year old me would be thrilled. Playing that remix at the end sent me to the nostalgia zone.
This video seems to be painting Arin as some horrible antagonist and has a lot of speculative information. GameGrumps is a business and needs to be treated as one, by both the fans and creators. Sure it started as just Jon and Arin hanging out, but it became a source of income with employees whose livelihood depended on the channel bringing in a consistent paycheck. To say that Arin was obsessive about brand image is a very narrow-minded take. As a business owner, Arin has a responsibility to look after his company and employees, because if he doesn't, then they're all unemployed and won't have time to continue the channel(s). He's a responsible business owner, not some over-controlling villain. Why didn't The Grumps acknowledge Jon? Because he went his own way and was no longer part of the channel. While I do agree that pretending he didn't exist was probably the wrong move, but if they did talk about him, then the comments would just be hating on Danny and/or comparing him to Jon. That wouldn't be fair to him. Jon and Arin both knew that Game Grumps wasn't going to last forever and that Jon wanted to run his own show. Danny was also aware of this and agreed to take over as Not So Grump. The video is well-edited and the script is good, but I honestly think that the messaging behind it isn't accurate.
Thanks for watching and for your feedback! I totally agree with you and in hindight a lot of things could have been worded better! I think this video was always going to seem more Jon focussed because, well, it's about why Jon left the Game Grumps! Not the other way around! Whilst I did mention in the video I am happy for both of them to be enjoying themselves and doing better without each other it is a point I could have hit home harder and I apologise for that! Thanks so much for your feedback though it really really helps me out and stuff like this I've already taken into my next videos! Appreciate you so much
bro we'd have a game grumps episode a year if jon ran it also, it's so strange how people are still hung up on this after 10 years of danny and 1 year of Jon....
So, they really weren't lying when they said it was creative differences. Sure it involved a lot of underlying details, muddying waters, a slew of emotions, and even a potential physical altercation in private...but at the end of the day, a proper "tl;dr" would indeed be that it was just creative differences. Gosh.
I think that's the beauty of it by design. They've never lied but purposefully been ambiguous all the way. It really is a shame that they had such a falling out, I think in hindsight this would always would have happened with how their personalities and takes on life are so opposing - the very reason that keeps them apart now. Appreciate you so much for watching
@@itscassette It stings even more when you step back and realize that...despite how they likely wouldn't have worked out in the best of circumstances, coming together to create Game Grumps basically kickstarted both of their careers for better or worse. Hell, despite being an early adopter of the internet, I personally wasn't familiar with Egoraptor, JonTron, Normal Boots, or Newgrounds until Game Grumps came along. I suspect many many others were as well.
@@sauvagess What's your suspicion based on? Because Newgrounds was very well known in the pre-youtube era and I suspect your suspicion is tainted by personal anecdotes than actual research.
I always assumed it was a personality clash, ever since Jon said the N-word repeatedly, forcing Barry to censor it out. You could really hear how uncomfortable Arin was. Also the Guts episode, where they got legitimately angry at each other over a disagreement of competition styles.
Homie I hate to break it to you but Arin also said the n-word casually at the time, just never on the show. This was also around the time he did the tax refund rap with stamper where he said the n-word like twice. 10 years ago was a real different time on the internet
Yeah, me too. I remember another episode where Arin mentioned Jon's ethnicity and Jon was like, "No! Now everyone's gonna know I'm foreign!" and Arin was audibly confused as to why that was a bad thing. 😅 You can, for sure, hear the uh-oh's.
@@mantoslodge Yeah, I'm aware that was a thing. The discomfort was probably less from the word itself and more from saying it on that particular show in rapid succession, and forcing Barry to bleep it out.
This is so fascinating, as someone who started watching the show since Dan joined. I'm glad that Arin and Jon seem to have found some peace between themselves several years down the line.
I always thought it was Jon defending his use of insulting people by calling them "Fags". The 3rd time it happened in an episode there were Captions from the editor expressing that GameGrumps didn't agree with Jon's language/thoughts on Queer folk. Things ended shortly after. Clearly there was a lot more going on but this was my personal canon at the time based on just watching the episodes. >__
Probably not what it actually said considering "queer folk" wasn't common parlance at the time. But regardless, Arin's said the same thing, Dan said the same thing, Arin had a gay man gaslighted for criticising Dream Daddy's insincere use of queer characters with Brian and Suzy publicly denying he ever saw the game. Matt Watson later confirmed said gay man absolutely saw the game. Arin doesn't genuinely care that much about it, he's defending a brand. That's often the root of each controversy he gets embroiled in. At the end of the day no business ever cares about you or your rights. As soon as pride logos weren't predicted to be investor friendly, almost every brand under the sun suddenly declined to use them this year, all at once.
Man I remember being waist deep in all this stuff as it was happening. It was a pretty wild time and this was a nice summary of it. I thought it was great how you really didn't take sides against either party at any point and just told the story. One thing that makes me sad about this situation that I don't see people talk about a whole lot is that when Jon left Game Grumps, he seemed to split with Barry too. Those dudes were friends since high school, and whether Barry was part of the NDA too or what, he, to my knowledge, never talked about Jon again and never got that moment like Jon and Arin had on Starcade. I always wondered what happened between them because they were definitely bros well before all of this, right along with a bunch of other creators.
At the end of the day. This was honestly the best for everyone involved. Jon works best writing his own material and some of his best videos are his post videos Dan is great. Playing the straight man to arins shenagains is a role he fit perfectly. I hope they keep civil.
I’m guessing Arin wanted to make it into an actual company or LLC but Jon didn’t want to commit to that. Jon probably want to grow his own LLC Jon Tron and be a singular earner as apposed to being a partner in Game Grumps. The reason they don’t talk about it is probably the legality behind this decision. I’m not sure if NDAS are involved as I don’t think they had that much money to enforce this kind of thing.
@@johnolmos8670 I remember Barry openly saying he left GG because he didn't like the direction the channel was headed, with marketing Dan and Arin specifically rather than it being about anyone else involved. I think Arin became a businessman about this shit right away and a lot of the folk in his past saw through it.
Bravo! This video was absolutely wonderful! I'm excited to see what you make in the future because this was so incredibly well made! Edit: I really really wish Jon never went on that stream with Destiny, I really wonder where we would be now with the Grumps stuff if that never happened.
Wow! What a genuinely lovely comment to receive! Thanks so much for watching this video, and I’m beyond thrilled that you enjoyed it! This video took over one year to complete and with comments like yours it made it all worthwhile. The next one is in the works now and I hope you’ll love it as much as this one ❤️ I also echo your sentiments with the destiny podcast completely. It genuinely interests me too what would have been had he not acted so impulsively
The Jon Arin break up always hit me hard, which is a funny thing considering I didn't even discover Game Grumps until after it had already happened. I think the reason is because it felt like as much a breaking up of friendship as anything else, and that touched me in a personal way. My family forced me into social isolation growing up and I was quite lonely, but there was person who I considered my friend from 3rd grade on. Granted, he hurt me deeply when we were teenagers but we reconnected when we were 18 or 19. I had wanted to make videos for years but was terrified to attempt anything on my own, especially editing. This friend is the one who introduced me to Game Grumps, among so many other TH-cam channels and we would watch them all. I wanted to make a channel with him and I realize now that wanting to be on TH-cam was as much about wanting to find connection as it was about making videos. Unfortunately, or probably fortunately if I'm being honest with myself, my friend ghosted me for the 3rd and final time. I lost my hope of TH-cam or a meaningful life. I had envisioned being roommates with this guy and having fun on TH-cam with him, maybe building a community. Somehow the feeling I got from Jon and Arin was the same as me with my lost friend. It made me very sad. Edit: spelling
@@ShiroeZaki I agree, but I feel like it's taught me a good lesson. It's been quite a few years since that experience, and just as I'm learning to love myself without the affirmations of anyone else, I'm starting to make my own solo channel without anyone else's help. If you want to do it, you can do it! BTW, what kind of videos are you trying to create?
@@ShiroeZaki Thanks! Don't get me wrong, it took quite a long time lol, and I'm definitely still working my mental health journey. But I'm happy with the direction my life is headed in.
Amazingly enough I've watched all your showreel videos before this popped up, but I'm here for your journey. You already know 90% of the audience for the other vids are people rewatching and enjoying the content of the other TH-camrs, so I'll be that x10 for you. Keep up the great work, you're much more than just an editor. Long form content can often become rambly, but your way of transitioning from topic to topic and having a clear conclusion makes the video just feel so awe inspiring, you could talk about the evolution of elastic bands in socks and I'd be impressed an intrigued all the way through
Wow! This is probably one of the nicest things I've ever read! Thank you so much! That's mad how you've seen my work elsewhere before with my showreel! Small world hahaha! This video took over 1 year to put together in terms of R&D and it's been worth all the effort when I get to read comments like yours, so thank you so much for your viewership and your lovely words. I cannot begin to tell you how much both mean to me. The next video is in the works now and I hope you'll love it :D
I truly think it had a lot to do with creative freedom and the difference in what Arin wanted game grumps to be and how Jon wanted to express himself. Arin had made it very clear over the years that he made game grumps to be a business and wanted to make a long term career that was financially stable. Jon pushed the edge a lot in his comedy and just generally was a lot more nonchalant on his approach to the show. I think they just couldn’t agree on censorship and Arin wanted to stay in the public good standings.
Idk I think the fact that Jon went on an ethno nationalist rant kind of gives me the impression that he’s likely the more volatile person in the relationship. Also the type of thing to drive away viewers or even just friends exposed to that type of thinking. And as you mention they based their whole show on being at odds with one another so it makes sense they just couldn’t see eye to eye anymore and split over something personal and business related. I also think singling out Suzy (the only consistent female in the group) as some sort of Yoko Ono who pushed Jon out is so gross. Especially when ironically what’s happened to Yoko was exactly this. John was having his own difficulties with Paul and yet she was blamed for their band break up. Idk seems like having there be an NDA means we can only speculate but I don’t believe the issue lies entirely on Arin’s shoulders. Jon bears a lot of responsibility for his own actions and I’m glad they’ve gone separate ways.
I think it was creative differences followed by a really nasty fight where they both said fucked up shit that basically ended the friendship, including jon probably saying something shitty abt suzy (which then got telephoned to jerryterry as suzy being *part of the problem* and caused suzy to be more hair-trigger abt the issue since a supposed friend talked shit on her) and they purposely censored mention of jon so the audience would move on faster but jon likely took it as a diss which almost certainly was the idea conspiracists were pushing to his feed. Honestly it’s probably a lot of miscommunication, immaturity, and bitterness between them that resulted in everything.
I came in after dan had joined and never understood the hate on him and still dont to be fair, definitely has nothing to do with dan and more to do with just people being upset about jon leaving instead
Thank you so much for bringing true final closure to this Day 1 Lovely's poor heart Every time I see that cameo in Starcade I tear up and this time was no different I loved that music video with the Jon Wins remix at the end. Your work was amazingly thorough and well-put. Amazing work and thanks again! T-T
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and feelings with me in your lovely comment! I think the starcade cameo was emotional to a lot of us who had followed this story closely when it happened which is why I wanted to give it the focus it deserves with how much of a landmark moment it was in the video
The Jon and ego raptor drama is indicative of the weird place the internets in right now. Creators are more and more heading towards the direction of making their channels more corporate in nature, due to the multiple financial benefits this brings, however very few creators are actually willing or able to be professional about these sort of things. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a creator going either direction but trying to be both at the same time leads to this sort of drama.
I've been watching Game Grumps since I was a kid and for the longest time I never knew Jon was even in the show, but like idk the whole things seems blown out of proportion, and with the drop in views, tbh I feel like their 10 minute power hour makes up for it
ASTOUNDING work my man. What an emotional journey this video has taken me on. As someone who was a die-hard fan from the beginning and still watches them to this day, I feel like this is the best possible explanation without any further official statements. Even being the die-hard fan that I am I was even surprised at some stuff I didnt know in this video like Arin's dad getting involved! Your editing style really had me sucked in from the very beginning, one particular moment that really had me was when you brought up the miiverse censorship, since I was there for that and remember being really invested in the conspiracies but I also remember it not being fully proven 100% that it was actually censored? So until watching this video I thought it had remained an unsolved mystery! So satisfying for this to all be pretty much solved. The whole Destiny debate with Jon really ruined my perception of him so I've stopped supporting Jon ever since, but this video really made me miss their friendship, considering I've literally watched every Jon-era episode on the GG channel. Also ending it with one of the best GG remixes ever made was the cherry on top. Bravo! I must add, it's funny you used a clip from their Majora's Mask playthrough, because there's another potentially really telling clip you might find interesting. Part 44 of that same playthrough, the episode starts with Arin joking about Dan leaving the show, which leads Dan to ask: "What would you do if you just got a text from me one day saying I quit game grumps and then I never came back?" Normally a question like this would become just a playful bit, or a "what-if" scenario, but instead Arin's response sounds kind of bitter almost? Give it a watch. I could be looking into that tiny moment a bit too much, but that reaction would make a lot of sense if your theory was correct. That Jon impulsively moved to New York one day with no notice, which caused the Game Grumps twitter to tweet "Due to circumstances out of our control, we will be posting one episode a day", and then causing the abrupt change. 👀 Also also one more thing, I'm sorry but I can't stop myself from correcting this. Maybe my perception was wrong, but I got the idea that this video was implying that the Jon-era videos were getting millions of views and now at current day they're getting less views. I don't have proof, but I remember their ONLY video with anything even CLOSE to a million views back then was that one episode of Sonic 06 called "Oh No", and the rest of their videos I'm pretty sure rested at around 200k-500k views average??? (rough guess based solely off of memory) But obviously now everybody who's curious is gonna go see what the very first episode of game grumps was like which would put it at 3 million after the fact. Those videos have been up for 10 years so they've built up way more views now that GG is more successful. Sorry for the nitpick, really enjoyed this documentary!! Thanks for the great watch!
Just wanted to take the op to say thanks so much for watching this folkes! This video has been a LONG time coming with over a year going into it. I hear from a lot of you that the quality of the mic is bad in the intro. I agree and I'm sorry about that. I wish YT would let me replace the audio track with a fixed one but alas, I cannot. This only lasts a few mins however in the intro and I've taken great care to make sure future uploads don't exhibit this behaviour. My apologies 😊
Right now I'm listening to it right now but I hope it's not like the same thing that I already heard from other videos like this
@Haruka Takahashi i'll read your comment in a minute, but I hope it's not like other comments on videos like this
@@Justin_Roiland Rick and Morty?
@Haruka Takahashi yep, it's me :)
Man for the first video on the channel, this was quite a watch. Can't wait to see more stuff from you bro, cheers!
So for 11 years, people have been asking "Why did Jon leave?", Jon gave the excuse of "Creative differences", while Arin held the line of "Creative Differences". And after over a decade of research controversy, NDAs, and speculation, it turns out that the reason Jon left Game Grumps was because they had creative differences.
Well yeah. None of them had a problem with Jon's sense of humor. Only the perpetually on twitters had that problem. The only reason Jon even suffered a small drop in popularity from the obvious fallacious allegations is he only uploads once every 10,000 years. If he uploaded smaller videos monthly like he planned he would probably have led yt to a new age of goathood.
@odintillgren3212 lmao, the only difference is if only C, both C and D, or neither are in caps. Very clever.
I actually clicked this video to leave a similar comment. It's been 11 years. The time to move on has passed years ago
@@DemiSupremi Well, I'd say the "allegations" were more than "fallacious", considering he went onto a live stream to say all sorts of wacky stuff with his own mouth. I haven't followed what all happened since, but none of that spelled very good things for Jon's personal beliefs over time.
@@zlbproductions7340 Did he lie though?
Danny saying he lost interest after Jon left is probably my favorite joke to come out of Game Grumps
Hahaha I feel that, Mine has got to be updog for the giggling fit alone :D
@@itscassette I love the battle kid boss rant! xD
My favorite moment was the giggle fit they went into playing that Santa sled game
Give your dad a Faygo for me
seeing that pfp and that name makes me happy.
I think what's wild is that 10 years later, we're still talking about this. Everything around the situation is just so bizarre.
From a scope of time perspective, it certainly seems like a terrible decision. I understand staying silent while Danny transitioned into the new role, but after he became adored by fans and cemented himself with a longer tenure in Jon they should have cleared the air. At this point, I can see speculation continuing to haunt them for another 10 years.
That's the power of parasocial relationships.
It's internet history. Should be remembered in my opinion
Egoprator is a weirdo. Fans of a product aren't stupid, people understand relationship dynamics and they don't like being lied to. When something fishy happens and the crew try to sweep it under the rug and gaslight fans, it becomes insulting and people start wondering why they would feel the need to do that if nothing fishy was happening.
Just don't be a manipulative horrible person While also trying to control everyone's perception of reality like some illusory warlock and the Streisand effect will likely pass over whatever petty drama you have
Same as The Completonist split, the NDA tells us all we need to know about who's in the wrong.
It's still so crazy to me that Jon was only on the show for less than a year.
Jon's charisma is powerful.
Which is why it’s so mind blowing that people are so fixated on Jon leaving the show, and about portraying him as some helpless victim. He was there to help get things going, but Game Grumps is the product of Arin and Danny. Jon is doing just fine - and as the video points out, doing even better - with his own projects.
@@tgs7515 I found that a little odd to point out. Like YT subs is a big indication of success? Both sides seem happy and successful, and good on them for it. The vid's e-peen measuring comes across as petty to me.
It's weird for me. I was definitely one of those people who didn't initially like Danny and thought the show would never be the same. Now? If I go back to old Jon episodes they usually make me cringe. Both Jon and Arin - but especially Jon - said some really gross, juvenile things that I don't find nearly as funny in my late 30s as I did in my 20s.
@@tgs7515 looking at it that way saying Jon was trying to help things grow as a friend to then leave because he believed his friend is gonna be fine is a nice way to look at it but I feel it’s more underlying issues than just that but that could be part of it too
The shot of Ross and Holly still together in Starcade was a flashbang to my brain man holy shit.
Laughs in foreboding 👀
@@itscassette maaan i remember all that drama. still cant believe a dime like holly fucked that gamerdude that looks like he has a beak
@@itscassette wait
Wow, i'd forgotten about her. that whole debacle was a shitstorm and a half. That thing with her and ProJared was a wild month of unravelings
Wait they're not together anymore? What did I miss?
I remember watching Jon and never touching the Grumps so when Arin appeared in the Star Wars video I was like "Hey, it's Egoraptor! How random!" and completely missed the drama
Did you see the Malkovich videos? Ego was in those before GG started
I only wanted JonTron, but miss his video game content.
Ditto. COMPLETELY went over my head! My sister was a die-hard JonTron fan, so when I started watching Danny was already in and I was like "Oh, I finally watched that gamegrumps show you keep talking about. That Arin and Dan-" and she flipped out at me for mentioning the 'fake grump'. It wasn't until Jon's racist comments that we were able to talk about the show again and she was over it. 🤣
@@thingsihate_3333 Get a life if talking about Racism in the western anglosphere. What about affirmative action and diversity hires are real realism
@@mateohodge6998crime rates are completely separate from eugenics dog. It's a cultural phenomenon.
Don't mix business with friendship, a classic tale.
Tale as old as time! Thanks so much for watching ❤️
And don't lend family money when you don't know they're 100% good for it.
ive also heard to not attemp mixing those things with arin hansen unless you want a bad time
fartners
Sure, but Danny and Arin have always had a really strong friendship and have been doing relatively well business wise
When they started saying that they broke up for creative reasons, I believed it. I always think about the story they told when Jon was on the show, about literally creating Game Grumps Inc. with an attorney or something.
To the best of my recollection, they had to both write "Partner" next to their names to clarify their official positions, and after Arin did that, Jon wrote "Fartner" and then he had to actually write it correctly. Jon just had a different perspective about the business, and the partnership lasted as long as it could like that.
Lmao honestly the entire documentary could be replaced with this one comment and still deliver the same message
Here's the clip. It did't age very well..... th-cam.com/video/79L36auwT8Y/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=GrumpsTheMovie
@@iRsemple "Arin wanted a partner, but all Jon wanted to be was a fartner" 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Nah, I never believed it because of how weird the circumstances were and how sudden it all came across.
Thats a really good way to put it holy fuck lol.
Honestly I feel like Arin was more playful early on, you could see his passion for games and entertainment in all the animations, rants and videos he created as well as the childhood stories he told. The show-biz side came out later on but then again I don't know him so I could be wrong.
honestly it seems the two just wanted different things. Arin wanted a reliable income, Jon wanted the freedom to be experimental. Neither of those desires are "wrong" they are just not compatible.
Especially with Arin growing up pretty much poor, I could see why he was being so defensive towards the brand and wanting a reliable income.
As a fan from the beginning, it's so bizarre to watch this video and be like "Oh my gosh. I remember this day." and to have actual explanation behind really weird discoveries at the time. Great work!!
Thanks so much for your lovely words! I remember that day too so much, It's seared into my memory and I could even tell you what I was doing when I found out! I think that means just how much Game Grumps meant to a lot of us. I'm really happy that I can offer a deeper dive on the subject that hasn't been seen up until now
Same, so we must've been watching at the same time. I was a big fan of egoraptor and The Awesome Series from newgrounds. I had never heard of Jon when they channel was created, I was just there to see what Arin was up to. Fell in love and watched every episode on the day it came out after school, with a side of microwave chicken nuggets. Became a big fan of Jon, him quickly becoming my favorite of the pair.
Now I'm 28 years old. What even is time.
despite some decisions being very questionable, both of their motives were very understandable, Jon wanted his main channel to be his main thing and didn't want to turn GG in a corporation because it would suck his time away from the JonTron channel, but Arin was sick of how tiresome animation was and didn't want it to be his only source of money, so making GG bigger was his only way of getting an actual job that isn't hell like doing animation only, it just sucks that they did not handle the break up of the aftermath well at all
I'm not completely convinced. If that really was the case, you'd think it would be as simple as one honest conversation where they gave each other's perspective. Because their visions actually align. Arin wants a project other than animation to run, and Jon doesn't want to run anything else and just show up for a podcast style gaming session so he can focus on JonTron. So, what's the problem exactly? How exactly does this prompt Jon to move across the country and sign away his ownership with an NDA? Still something important missing. Probably whatever actually happened at that E3.
@@Deeken171 my guess is that they had multiple conversations about this before, and after Jon got drunk during the whole E3 episode, i don't think they had just a normal argument but a "fight", insults and etc, that's probably when both of them had enough of getting nowhere with all the disagreements, and the fight was so bad they just couldn't live normally with that friendship anymore, Jon wanted to move before this fight happened according to that friend of Jon's fiancé, so if anything his mind was already made up about leaving and focusing on Jontron anyway since Game Grumps was getting way too big and wouldn't be just a side channel anymore, i don't feel like there was anything too fucked up to hide with an NDA, but if there was, considering how young, edgy and imature they seemed to be at that time, it was probably on both their interests to sign that NDA
Those are both valid complaints from both parties. As someone who dabbles in creativity, animation, drawing, 3D modeling, w/e. Having that as a job would be tortures, I would get creatively burnt out so quickly, it being a hobby and enjoying it in moderation is what makes it therapeutic to me. And Jon just wants his channel to grow, a thing most YT creators want. I would've been happy with a compromise like Jon agrees to play games hard with Arin for 2 or 3 days, and have the editor cut and make content out of that for the week and Jon focuses on his Channel and personal life outside that. Maybe that was too much for Jon and not enough time for Erin. Whatever the case, Danny was someone who I didn't know, and therefore didn't expect to like as much as Jon, but I feel he has more chemistry with Arin. I'm glad there's no hard feelings between the two. Just people going their separate career paths, unfortunate, but something that can't be helped.
Oh yeah, switching from animation to let's play game stuff was definetly long sited 😂, remind me which is bigger now?
The guys should have just been honest and not done an NDA. Jon came out better because his main channel wasn't the one with the drama.
@@lifeunderthestarstv You talk as if Game Grumps isn’t a successful brand today which it absolutely is. Besides, Arin has talked plenty about how stressful he finds it to work with animation. Even if it’s become financially viable again, what if he just doesn’t want to do it for personal reasons?
12:43 I feel like this is similar to what happened with Super Best Friends. Matt wanted to lean hard into making a "brand," and Pat wanted to hang out and play games together, and it strained the friendship. That's reflected in what they're both doing with their own channels.
Yeah and neither really supported Woolie's interest in returning to the woods and living off the land as a proud native american woodswalker.
@@fimmywa Yeah kinda lame
The Super best friends breaking up hit me a lot more than the Grumps did on a personal level. But they were at least straight up about not being friends anymore and its something you could kind of tell during the last year of the channel.
@@BoxcarPhill legitimately, same. I still have trouble going to any of their new works because I remember their dynamics together as SBFP so fondly
SBFP breaking up broke me for a few days.
I'll never forget going to a 2 week summer camp with no internet whatsoever. Getting back and everything with steam train, Jon leaving had happened. I couldn't believe it :(
Damn.
my exact experience
@@thatcityboy73 same!! although I recall somehow having my phone with me, scrolling through tons of posts trying to understand :(
That's rough, holy heck. If a favorite channel of mine exploded while I was gone, I'd be pretty upset. I'm a more recent Grumps viewer, having only been watching for the past two or so years, and I do really like the dynamic of Arin and Dan. Maybe if I watched some of the older stuff, then my perspective would change, but I'm satisfied with the current arrangement.
I can relate, I just moved out on my own. No internet except at work, finding out that Jon left was a lot to take in while working midnight shifts at McDonalds
There's nothing wrong with Arin wanting to turn Game Grumps Into a business and there's nothing wrong with Jon not being interested in that. I'm happy for both of them for what they've made of their lives and wish fans would stop trying to paint either as the negative force that ended the duo. It's just how these things go
True, they're both at fault and should both be punished.
i still wish mom and dad never got divorced tho if only they had somehow compromised
I agree with the sentiment completely, except that i feel the issue could have been completely avoided if they'd just been upfront about it. It feels like that decision to be completely secretive and silent is what did the most harm to the channel, Arin, Jon, Dan, and probably everyone else involved with the channel throughout that.
Even though I don't like everything Arin's done, I respect him immensely for his work ethic and how he builds up the people below him in Game Grumps. He sounds like a great boss.
@@turtlenuggetz7895what's wrong with having 2 Christmases?
I think people really wanted a villain. They wanted to blame someone. Facts are facts, Jon is impulsive, and Arin is career driven. It wasn’t meant to be, they were both idiots in how they handled it, and that’s the end of the story.
That’s probably what happened tbh
@@syruscoy1244 His career. The one where he’s built an almost universally known let’s play channel on TH-cam, where he’s part of a band, where he tours literally the world doing sold out shows with his own touring company? That one. You don’t have to like him, but the man has built a solid career as a creator online with a very large and dedicated fanbase. You just can’t discredit that.
Career driven in fucking sitting on the couch playing video games? Yall gotta have higher standards
@mightymoeish looks like it beats the hell out of sitting around in an office cubicle all day pushing paper
@@ThegbearSome of that came after Jon though. I'd give more credit to his Newgrounds animation days leading up to him and Jon making Game Grumps. Anyone and everyone who frequently visited Newgrounds knew about the "AWESOME" series. Metal Gear AWESOME, Shadow of the AWESOME, etc.
He already had fans, he was just figuring out what to do with that influence
While it’s easy to make Arin the villain for being very invested in game grumps as a brand, I remember Arin’s stories about growing up dirt poor. To Arin, a constant paycheck and financial security is the most important thing, and when game grumps became that he had trouble letting go. Also this is a great video, and I really do believe we can finally stop speculating
What bothers me is this video kinda seems to frame it as selfishly? Even though Arin has a lot of people working for him whose stability he wants to protect too, I'm sure
i also dont think its necessarily just brand alone. they have an audience, saying hateful shit in private is bad but broadcasting it to all your viewers, some of whom could be seriously hurt by it is way worse. sure, arin is a bit too quick to call things hurtful like with the pelo video, but its far better to be too careful with this kinda stuff than not careful enough. i personally think hes totally in the right in the whole situation
people are way too desperate to white knight for jon its kind of concerning
Yep the business was very important. Otherwise there would be no NDA. Jontron was just not careful enough to stay in business simple as that.
@@midoriasakusa
cause Jon has literally not done anything wrong in any of the shit presented lol
I remember at a MAGfest, at least one year after Jon left GG, going to an out-of-the-way fast food place that was basically completely empty except for Arin and Jon at a table, by themselves, just talking. To this day I wonder what they were up to.
They seemed to be in contact at least until around the time of Starcade. Honestly if not for the destiny stream they'd probably have made at least one reunion gg ep by now.
@@saltythebear I've always assumed since the Destiny incident that a political difference between Jon and Arin played a role in their split. Not the whole reason, mind you. Or even a large one, perhaps. But anyone who has ever tried to hold a partnership together when they hold two very different perspectives on important matters knows it's *very* difficult. (Especially if one or both are very vocal about these views.)
They were probably eating fast food
@@saltythebear While most of us will agree that Jon doesn't have the best political views, the are a lot of things people blow out of proportion with Jon, and I'm going to make some assumptions (Like many of other people are doing anyways) since I don't know him or haven't seem much of his live appearances:
1- Jon is probably not the best "Live Speaker" when put under the spot. People like Destiny are no different from the snakes you see on TV, or the Ben Shapiro's in public debates, they know what they are doing, they know how to make questions that will make you look bad, they will trick you into saying stuff you don't want to, and if you're not well-spoken you will probably end up saying things that don't reflect your true values since you'll be just explaining them badly.
2- None of this should've even been brought to light in the first place. Yes, if the stuff he says or things makes you feel bad about supporting his content, then you're free to stop watching it, however, at least to me, political ideas have never stopped me from enjoying the content from the creators and artists I like. You're not giving them money by watching the content (Your 1 view contribution is not that significant after all).
If Jon did commit some actual crime then I'm willing to agree that people have a legitimate reason to throw him under the bus, but at least from what I've seen of him, he just has some dumb views.
@@Seattletyy93 But... that was the one thing they definitely weren't doing! The table was empty! So, so empty!
Now we just need the story of why the Oney Crew, Ding Dong and Julian left the grumps office
Ooooh I’d love if he made that
A channel named spooky weebtrash made a segment in a video on that video is 3hrs long but she has times stamps
I remember when dingdong started streaming a long ass time ago he said something about how he and julian didn't like dream daddy as a concept (they were in the GG offices during its development) and this is eventually what led to oneyplays leaving the GG office/fued between Chris and Oney. Rumor has it that corporate GG didn't like that an actual gay couple in their offices were sharing dissenting opinions about their gay dating sim, and oneyplays was asked to vacate the building.
Ding dong has talked about it on stream. Game Grumps, especially Suzy, are vile and should be ashamed.
I watched both DD streams about the situation and its awful. its too bad DD doesn't want the story out there and wants the drama to end. That didn't stop Lex though, now we know Supermega have just as big an ego as Arin@@TheVenhammer
I can't tell you how much a breath of fresh air it is to finally have a video that doesn't write this situation out like it's some dark conspiracy and takes the realistic approach that it was just the creative disagreements of two dudes. These things happen all the time, Jon and Arin are just humans and make mistakes, doesn't mean I agree with all of the decisions that either of them has made and if I'm being honest I've always had a bias a bit more in favor of Arin. I discovered grumps post Jon so Danny has always been Not so grump to me and personally I've always preferred the dynamic between Arin and Danny. The two of them have gotten me through some rough times and I cherish the laughs they have given me, but I've come to recognize that Arin can make some questionable choices and isn't always the most rational of people but he tries his best and that's all you can ask of a person in the end. Both sides are happy and still doing what they love and have ultimately moved on. I think this could be a good lesson for the internet and people in general that dwelling on the past mistakes of others is ultimately unhelpful and perpetuates that toxic cancel culture mindset. Give people their just amount of criticism at the moment that it's appropriate and move on.
Thanks so much for sharing those lovely words with me
Well stated.👌👏
Well he compares game grumps censoring a Miiverse post to Stalin so. While he did do a better job explaining the actual reasons behind the whole thing, it’s still a pretty dramatic telling of it hahaha
As someone else who became a Grumps fan post Jon, I can agree that it's nice to see a video like this. I'm glad the whole situation has basically been revealed to just be conflicting viewpoints, and nothing more serious. I love both JonTron and Game Grumps, and will keep supporting both these channels.
@@DoubleKillFilms Definitely a "C'mon dude, really?!?" kinda moment lol. Also did sense some leaning towards Jon, even in light of his...ahem..."views".
Dan's joke, "I lost interest after Jon left the show," had me _rolling!_ 😂🤣
He really is a sassy salty Sandra 😂 thanks for watching! It means everything
I think what everyone forgets, is that creators are still real people. They are fallible and make mistakes like everyone else does.
Some mistakes more racist than others.
@@CruzaComplex never said anything about racists
Yeah no shit they're real people.
@@FuzzBucket69 totally missed my point buddy
@@RyanKeller95 No I understood I was just being very literal with my dickish comment.
To give Arin & co full benefit of the doubt, it could be that censoring the Miiverse post was the best way they could think of to not violate the aforementioned NDA. Depending on how it is written, even just showing the post could be a violation, and showing it *and* reacting to it could easily be a violation.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if Arin's change in attitude was him figuring out whether or not they'd have to censor that post and what they'd do to cover it
Yeah. Arin seemed bummed. Maybe it was because he had to switch his brain into "businessman mode" during what was supposed to be a lighthearted moment he was sharing with fans.
Agreed. Depending on terms, it could be that they saw openly censoring it as not worth the hassle of not being able to explain or as just easier to cover with something else. It's like a poster over a scratch in the wall. Doesn't make things better, but people have to be looking to find something off.
Interesting video, and nice documentation! But i do have to say its kinda weird to place Arin as an "angry overcontrolling boss" to Jon considering we dont know anything regarding they're personal lives at that time. The ending to the "the reason Jon left" segment is a bit too speculatory to be part of a documentary style video. (kinda sounded like you were making Jon out to be some sort of victim to Arin)
agreed. this comment needs a boost because, at worst, Arin could sue for defamation, yknow?
Yeah, I think that was a bit too far as well. I genuinely mean it when I say this. Neither Jon nor Arin seem like bad dudes. But really painting Arin as the bad guy when he was just trying to expand the show is shrubbery. If we absolutely HAVE to point a finger at someone, it was kinda messed up that Jon up and left the project suddenly with the other's livelihoods on the line. But it was over a decade ago. I imagine if you were to ask Jon, he would tell you first hand that he would have done things differently in hindsight. They were young.
Yeah, the sudden switch from talking the facts to suddenly going full conspiracy felt out of place at best. Everything up until like the 50 minute mark was reporting on things that had actually happened, and then the video started talking only hypotheticals in the same tone, making it out like those statements are as factually correct as what came before.
Yeah I feel like that ending was missing one follow up point.
The "Angry Boss Arin" stuff should have been framed as a "Maybe this was Jon's perspective."
And then instead of that being the video conclusion, the follow up to conclude the video should have been the "Or maybe that's not like what it was at all."
Maybe even include "or From Arin's perspective, maybe John was that partner who was dragging his feet and holding the channel back from its potential."
It was just odd that the whole hour long video seemed to be very neutral, (going back and forth with "maybe this perspn/event was bad? Or maybe this one.." and then the final statement wasn't neutral. It was just a "maybe Arin was bad? The end."
But it also didn't come across as a "Maybe" but instead a "Probably Arin was bad." Because it was the final statement to conclude the video and "answer the question" of "what happened?"
So, being a Jon-stan lol, I agree.
That angry boss comment came across as a "probably what happened" when it should have been a "potentially someone's perspective of the situation" that should have been followed by the other sides relative perspective, and then a conclusion that says "one of, or both of, those perspectives is probably the answer."
It felt really off to me to see so much research and evidence go into most of the video, and then have that entire ending section that sounded equally authoritative, but seems entirely speculative? Do we even have proof that Arin's actions are motivated primarily by public image and not just his own values shifting? I feel like we don't really have a way to say for certain one way or another. I stopped watching JonTron after it became clear that he was sticking with his white nationalist bullshit (I'd love to learn that that's changed but I've moved on at this point), and I stopped watching Game Grumps after evidence surfaced of Danny taking advantage of vulnerable women, so I don't have a particular interest in either side anymore, but it was still kinda uncomfortable to see this theory stated as if it were absolute fact :\
That Total Biscuit comment of "You'll never find out, that's buried " leaves a nagging feeling like there's still an unsolved piece to the puzzle that we'll never hear.
OMG, same! I wish we could find that out somehow
I'm gonna be honest, i think either Jon or Arin might have done some fucked up shit on E3, either on a personal or professional level, and the other left because they don't want to be involved with that kind of thing, people just don't act like that over "creative differences", there was a lot of damage control that would be highly unecessary if Jon just came clear on an Episode and said, "Look guys, i think i'm done with GG, i want to steer my content on new horizons, there's this new guy that we will take over, see you guys around" and showed up once in a while to be a guest or easter egg, in fact, people would love that, Jon actually did that when he started to walk away from game reviews and people took that fine, that was 100% an emergency ejection, if i ever saw one.
I feel like it's important to point out that when you were talking about video views per game grumps and Jon Tron, you only pointed out the number of views per video without addressing that Jon Tron uploads maybe 5 times per year. Whereas game grumps upload every day. So taking that into account, game grumps is getting twice the viewer count of Jon Tron. Personally i'm not partial to either Jon Tron or Game Grumps, I just wanted to say that statistics have to be viewed correctly.
@Rhysman30 he has GG, The Grumps (a side channel), RPGees (enamel pins), recent voice acting (Rick and Morty and OK KO), GG merch, GG tours, his books, and maybe even occasional ad deals
So much about this video, such as that part, come off as framed the way they were to paint a particular picture of a situation. Purposefully missing or ignored context like that. It is dishonest, and gives the impression of ulterior motives with this video. Anyone that is or was a fan of the two knows the polarity in their respective upload schedules. To leave that info out, is thoughtless at best.
Well, I usually do not prefer to watch content that is produced daily. I think, (having not actually watched the documentary yet, but I can comment on this idea, at least) that both styles of content production could serve different audiences.
@@Thalanox well the reason I pointed it out is because in the video he made the argument that JonTron videos get more views than game grumps videos, therefore he is doing better while game grumps is struggling. I just felt the need to point out that technically game grumps is doing better than jon tron and that the infrequency of jon tron can spike the viewership.
agreed, that part of the video - among some others - felt a little disingenuous.
I think Arin discovered early on that GG was his lifelong dream. Knowing that Jon mostly saw it as a side fun thing to do, Arin's worst nightmare would be if Jon left or did/said something really stupid that would negatively impact the show.
Most likely Jon knew Airn progressively saw him as a potential wildcard as the show continued to grow. This would drive a wedge in their friendship.
Some final straw happened at E3 and they got into an argument. With the lack of creative control and Jon feeling underappreciated he decided he was finally going to move to New York leaving the game grumps out to dry.
Arin was forced to quickly find a new co-host and had Jon sign a NDA so any drama that would come out from the break up would be minimized to keep the GG business from more fan outrage. If Jon had left and was able to say he said he felt that his friend & co-host thought he might one day doom the show because of his behavior and had little say on where the business was going. GG may not have recovered the way it did.
I can't blame Arin too much. Jon is undoubtedly impulsive and not brand safe. And I don't think Arin wants a squeaky clean brand just for business security. I think he's grown and changed over the years and that's his true self now. The dynamic between them won't work as well because they are two different people now.
Ultimately they both landed on their feet and are still beloved internet creators. I'm still to this day a huge fan of both GG and JonTron.
This is what I was thinking makes the most sense as well. Jon wasn't as serious about it, and being drunk at E3 is a huge red flag. If he says what he said on Destiny's debate stream sober, think what kind of shit he may spew when drunk, and Arin didn't want to sit around waiting for that time bomb to go off and kill his livelihood when it finally did. I don't think anyone can fault Arin for not wanting to be caught in the blast of Jon's shitty takes blowing up in his face.
The only part I disagree with is the last bit. Even though I find Jon's content hilarious, it's becoming harder for me to separate the art from the artist, and Jon is quite the vocal bigot. I don't wish ill for anyone, but once I realized how bad Jon's takes were and how ingrained they are and that he is unlikely to ever change, his content became hard to watch since he is the focal point of it all.
Arin and Danny did awkward stuff early in their partnership like Racist Bassist or Hoshi the Sad Japanese Businessman (Who Is Also A Pedophile). But the important thing is, they stopped. Arin was even open in admitting that even if he lost a swath of viewers who didn't like hom being "PC", he'd rather not have their views.
Jontron dug his heels in with his bigotry. He's got good jokes, but beyond that nobody ever has good things to say about him.
Something else that I think is important to note is at the time of the falling out, Arin would've been 26 and Jon would've been 23. Age does not directly correlate to maturity or anything, but having a friend with a similar age difference, there's a handful of areas and subjects where we drastically differ in due to our lived experiences. And I feel like that probably had some role to play in the fall out. Arin's push for brand consistency and stability is probably due to his low income background with little promise beyond Animation. Jon had a lot ahead of him to experiment with and venture through.
And in a similar perspective, you can kinda feel in those early videos how frustrated Arin gets with Jon. Like Arin would clearly get irritated and annoyed by some of Jon's antics, and it frequently felt like Arin had to be "the straight man" to Jon's "odd ball" persona in their dynamic, which does not lend well to Arin as a performer in my opinion. I think their separation as co-hosts was probably for the best in the bigger picture, despite how poorly Jon's departure went down.
Was Jon really in a much better position? Some of his oldest interactions with the internet include his Yahoo answers where he asks "Is it okay to feel sad all the time" and other depressing questions a small child shouldn't be asking. I can't tell but I think his parents were divorced at some point. Also, not to make poverty a competition, because developing countries destroy me at this, but Arin's stories are from a position of lower middle class. His parents were educated and trained for their jobs. I was raised by a single father with no marketable skills. We had no video game consoles in our house. We ate ketchup on bread for a meal. Processed cheese was considered meat. Field trips, even when heavily subsidized, were missed out on, because we couldn't afford the sometimes *ten dollars* needed to go. Arin has no idea what real (first world at least) poverty is about. The stories he tell sound alien to me at best, and a slightly worse off version of the suburban 2 car middle class that's so quick to claim woe-is-me at worst.
For the record I was a fan of Arin for almost a decade prior to knowing who Jontron was, and I've only found him funny for a small period of time. I'm not a fan of him, but I do have some nostalgia for him at this point. I'm just saying this to frame my post and try and dissuade the idea that I'm playing defense for Jon. He's a grown man and if he feels so strongly about his words standing on their own merit, he doesn't need a defense force anyway.
@@PinkManGuy The basis for my comment was less of how "Good" one had it over the other, and more to do with the particular mindset either of them may have had at their given milestones in life. Arin was at a point where he probably felt he was running out of options and Game Grumps was an incredibly promising option, and Jon being 23 was probably not at that point in life yet. I know when I was 23, I didn't have thoughts like that but by 26, 27, I absolutely did. It's less about who had a better financial situation or upbringing and more about how much time they felt they had left.
Dude three years is nothing as far as lived experience. That's an insane take.
@@GruppeSechs I'm going to have to disagree completely. 3 years is the difference between a child starting 6th grade and a teenage starting 9th grade. It's the difference between teen starting 10th grade and a teen start college. It's the difference between a college freshman and someone legally allowed to drink. A lot happens in 3 years, and while yes that gap of time starts to become less impactful as you get older, a 23 year old and a 26 year old are in very different points of their lives. Especially when one grew up being a famous internet personality and the future of their career is starting to take a toll on them, and the other just recently had their TH-cam career take off. From personal experience, I was a drastically different person at 23 than I was at 26. I had different priorities, hobbies, concerns and fears. And at 28 now, I'm a drastically different person from 26. 3 years is a lot of time in your twenties. That's more than 10% of your life. If you don't think that's massive, you're either younger than 25 or you've forgotten how different your life was when you were at Jon's and Erin's ages.
@@DrgoFx The difference for developing children is a completely moot point. Going from 23 to 26 is nothing. Just because your interests change doesn't mean you as a person does. You're kidding yourself if you think that's the case.
I remember some interview where Arin talked about hanging out with Danny early in their friendship and noticed their natural chemistry. He thought that IF Jon ever left Game Grumps, he would bring Danny on. It was treated like a sweet moment, but it proves that Arin never saw Grumps as "the thing me and Jon do together." Jon was always replaceable.
That's an excellent point you raise there. Again we already know how much Arin was focussing on widening the channel and turning into a mega-hub, It really was progressing that way before things fractured with Arin and Jon.
Appreciate you and your comment
definitely a thought supported by how game grumps now has a corporate, production, and merchandice sections of employment among their members. even danny could be replaced to keep the content wood mill running its all setup and waiting
I think this is a biased way of thinking. Just think about it, Jon always had a backup plan with the Jontron channel, but it's wrong for Arin to have a backup plan with Danny in mind? GG is a strict format with 2 people, it's just bad business not to have a way out if Jon decides to leave.
I thought he said he would call up Danny if Jontron was ever sick or something, but not as a permanent replacement. The context would be different there. But it's been a while since I saw the clip you're mentioning so I may not be remembering it 100% accurately.
@@Static_Uproar I don't remember the exact episode, but I think it was Bloodborne or Dark souls maybe, where Arin talked about this.
Holy shit that miiverse thing was insane, I’ve never heard someone talk about it before
It’s mental isn’t it?! It’s just crazy how far they were willing to go to bury any mention! Thanks so much for watching ❤️
@@itscassette I think it makes a lot of sense *why* they'd have done it, but if they hadn't wanted us to catch on they'd have edited more out, like Arin's mood very noticeably plummeting , people were hyper aware of that kind of stuff and picked up on it right away
What happened? I haven't got the time to watch the video right now and was quite curious about that!
@@SurfRock74 basically they edited and censored a Miiverse message that said "Game grumps acknowledge Jontron"
And not only they censored that by making it blank like an empty message although that wasn't possible, but also invented a new drawing also
Idk for me that's terrible I don't care if some people defend that
@@AlenBear Yeah I feel like there’s no way to defend that, they could have just simply censored it well and it would be implied that it was something else inappropriate, if they really wanted to cover it up. Even then I think it’s just a low integrity move to be so hush-hush about something people are already so aware of, it being there wouldn’t bring any more attention to it than there already was.
As a fan of both, it's really weird that the video definitely vilifies Arin even though it goes out of its way to say it isn't. To your theory, Jon was hungover the morning of scheduled press events and they had a fight about priorities and split. How is the take-away that Arin was some sort of control freak obsessed with PR? It also isn't unreasonable and a good move, not just PR-wise, but ethically and morally to denounce Jon's racist remarks. To my memory, even that 'denouncement' was pretty luke-warm. I liked the video for its informative read through of the conspiracy grump posts and the editing was spectacular, but the editorializing became annoying and eventually straight up off-putting once it seemed to handwave Jon's split with multiple long-term friends/businesses as being impulsive and not a result of his consistent, objectively offensive, past remarks.🤷The video really shows a clear lean towards making Jon some sort of protagonist and ends up making the video as a whole seem to forgive these points.
Thank you for articulating this so well. Painting JonTron as some sort of poor little victim is in very poor taste and made me so uncomfortable...
i agree 100% this video is definitely biased towards the defence of jon
@LordJamek but Jon was literally borderline nazi. Like borderline Hitlerite nazi. That's bad. Unless there's some proof that he no longer believes in a Jewish conspiracy theory I'm gonna say that he shouldn't be forgiven.
@@LordJamek the difference is jon is still saying those things, while Arin actually grew up.
seriously it's so weird
It’s odd just how much history the channel has. It may have only been 10 years so far but its felt like 20
Thanks so much for watching! It's nuts how much lore they have, absolutely! There was so much that was cut from this video for the sake of brevity there's that much to talk about!
With how much if this whole situation is documented, you’d have to spend more time combing through information about the history of Game Grumps than you would for some periods of history.
I know, right? GG has gotten me through all of high school AND college by this point. Hell, there was a period where I could only fall asleep if I was listening to them.
Watching that deleted Steam Train promo was surreal, it's like looking into an alternate timeline.
both jon and arin seem to be explosive personalities which are fun to watch but not good for a long term career. dan really is a good balance to arins explosive personality they just compliment each other so well while also sharing a lot of interests.
i believe dan is a worthy successor to jon he does such a good job and is funny to boot
Thanks so much for watching and for your comment! I agree totally that out of anyone it could have been, Danny was a fab choice. He absolutely earned the respect and love of existing fans no doubt
@@itscassette Agreed. Feels like Jon got done dirty, but Danny is a fantastic personality and is worthy of the not so grump crown.
I'm just sad we'll never get a Dan and Jon episode.
Dan's good, but he doesn't challenge Arin enough, in my opinion. He's very passive and that comes off as him not having any real opinions when it comes to games.
@@jmartens759 he doesn't need to. It's not a review channel. It's two goofballs talking while playing games. He's a great personality, that's all he needs to be IMO.
This is the most reasonable and simplest explanation. Very well done video. I'm sure there are details that we will never know (like the specifics of their fights/arguments, etc), but it really does just seem like it was about a power struggle concerning the future of the grumps. Jon always wanted it as a chill side project, whereas Arin wanted to turn it into an empire. I'm sure there are some juicy details in there that are still unknown, but that appears to be what it was in a nutshell.
Thanks so much for the lovely words on this! Yeah absolutely. All the sources point to this as the reasoning behind the split and when it came time for GG’s statement on it they really weren’t lying when they said Jon left to work on JonTron, it’s just purposely ambiguous by design. You’re probably right in terms of juicy details, but the crux of the matter is very much a fallout and a robbing of control. Again thanks so much man. Your comment made my day ❤️
facts, as much as it felt odd too see jon go, it doesn't feel right to imagine a timeline where jon stayed. I think it would have become toxic overtime because of some of the similarities in their personalities. Dan and Arin balance each other out and bring different skills and ideas to the channel that have become iconic. They've turned it and themselves into professionals in a business that feels chill to them rather than being exclusively one or the other (the original conflict between Jon and Arin). idk
only disagrree about the part where Jon's vids have millions of views while Game Grumps averages 100-300K because the frequency of uploads is completely different. Averaging above 100K on daily uploads is akin to millions of views on less frequent uploads
Hell yeah, Facts
yes, i’m not gonna watch every single upload of a channel that posts daily, especially if not every game they play is something that particularly interests me. on the contrary, jon posts every 6 months AT MOST (it’s not uncommon for an entire year to pass between uploads) and nearly every video has a frankly insane production value, and his content is just generally more spectacle than the casual, “tune in when you feel like it” vibe of the grumps
cant glaze Jon when you put it like that.
One thing about that, though, alot of those views are repeated.
So saying they are one to one is a bit disingenuous. Also GG's views to subscribers ratio is alot worse, which is also a very important stat.
agreeded I'd say both channels have very different strategies for uploading but both seem to have stable and dedicated audiences that give their videos a healthy amount of views overall
It's so crazy how this was made from someone under 1000 subs, like dude this is beyond professional stuff
you're so underrated and can't wait to see more
Wow! What a lovely thing to say ❤️ a lot of work went into this so I’m really glad it shows in the finished product!
I’ve got plenty more to come! Next project is in the works and I hope you’ll love it! Thanks again for such kind words, they mean more to me than I could possibly communicate
are you saying bigger number = better person
@@Sphyell not really, I just thought he had more subs with how good the quality is. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with 100k subs, this stuff is really good
Agreed!
RIP TotalBiscuit. I got real sad seeing him again. :(
Same. RIP
NormalBoots members have very consistently claimed that Jon was already leaving the group for inactivity well before his controversy. Jon has also reiterated this at least twice, so I feel it's inaccurate to say otherwise.
The sheer amount of incredible music that came out of such a short period of time in the Jon era still blows my mind. There was plenty after too but few really captured the energy of the Jon era. I still listen to playlists occasionally
most people occasionally listen to albums that are decades old
Sometimes I miss the Jon era and hoped for more but times change and people move on. I’m grateful for all they have done.
Controversy shit aside, I stopped watching after the 'Jon Era'.
I just don't like Dan and arins humor when they're together.
Which is hilarious because I honestly might consider watching it again if they got rid of arin. I never really liked his sense of humor. I think Dan is great.
@@necrocorey6408 I can taste the irony in that statement haha.
@necrocorey6408 Same here, when I watch game videos I don't want to think "Wow this guy is a hypocrite", I want to think " Haha funny"
In the end, I think GG would've died not long later if Jon had stayed. Watching old videos, there is a different feel with Jon that isn't really captured as it is with Danny. It feels a lot more relaxed, even in the real early episodes.
I'm just curious, if Dan was really an "emergency replacement" like is said in the video, then is it possible that it would've cycled a little till they found the right fit. Is there an alternate universe where Ross or Barry is the replacement for Jon instead?
I feel game grumps would have had a better success with just Jon and Arin doing their stuff. It was just simple and good. Although it seems like based on this video that it was not meant to be. Watching old videos with Jon and Arin is so damn relaxing to me. But maybe they feel more special because Jon left
Based on the new show announcement with Jon shown and the one-a-day period, my bet's that Dan was less a last minute swap and more of a 'Let's test out the new people with Arin to see what sticks while we have a week to record.'
if jon stayed he probably wouldve been kicked off anyways after the destiny debate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I had to make my guess before the reveal at the end, I'd of said Arin wanted to turn GameGrumps into a business, bring in more creators, it was a very good source of income and a dream come true for most people... while Jon wanted it to just stay a side thing they did for fun and not become a second job, perhaps leaving himself room to work on JonTron videos as well.
But the conclusion in the video makes a lot of sense too, maybe a little of both.
Thanks so much for watching! I love your take on this story too, that's the best thing about it - it being so open to interpretation
i dont see anyone mentioning this, but arin isnt the bad guy. maybe im misreading the tone used when talking about him specifically but i heard more hostility towards him than not. the short and simple is: arin wanted more business from GG and jon wanted it for fun, arin acting as a "boss" isnt necessarily a bad thing or something to be looked down upon. this was also very early on in grumps so their behavior and responses to certain situations are going to be different than a response to something today. jon and arin are two separate ppl who made one really awesome thing ! their anniversary was celebrating what game grumps has become rather than what it was in the beginning. cheers to all members of GG old and new 🍻
Sometimes I rewatch the Jon era GG playlist, and if you do, you can kinda tell that Jon is way outside what he expected from the show. They constantly talk about how they sometimes frustrate each other over different things and how the situation when the camera was off wasnt always great. IMO the most likely thing to have happened is that Jon got burnt out. We see this from his main JT channel, he will go dark for a bit and come back for a bit: he seems to just get burnt out and likes to take his time. No shade, I have problems with mental health and motivation that would effect me similarly if I was a creator. (Not saying Jon has those problems) And if Arin was pushing so hard to make a huge network of channels and constantly making headaches for Jon (not saying Arin is wrong to capitalize, just saying that Jon would have seen it as an unnecessary inconvenience), I could see him reaching a tipping point where he just gets soured on the whole thing.
100%. Jon uploading 4 times a year is considered a win, and this last month uploading 3 videos people are going insane. He took a YEAR off after his biggest video, flex tape. He made a banger with 70 million views, and dipped lol. He is not the type of person to upload daily content, let alone the rate early grumps was pumping out videos.
For him, it was probably nice to hang out with a friend and play old games with the nice bonus of putting them on TH-cam and making some money. But Jon was already doing that, Arin wasn't. Arin saw the opportunity for a huge business and a steady income and he's not in the wrong for that at all. TH-cam is vicious to animators, and a video Jon could make in a few days playing a vrappy game would take months for Arin to animate and make the same.
I love GG, old and new. Gooftroop is my all time favorite play thru, but Danny is amazing as well. Looking back now you can see that the business model was not gonna work for Jon long term. The fact he did it for nearly a year is amazing in it's own right.
Someone else's comment here kinda encapsulated my take on the video and the situation. Jon was doing Game Grumps to have fun with his friend and just shoot the shit while playing vidyagaems, an unscripted, off-the-cuff podcast-like easy breezy channel. Arin was looking at this as a business opportunity. Arin took Game Grumps as seriously as Jon took The JonTron Show. Jon wanted a relaxing time, Arin wanted to capitalize on this. Neither is wrong to want this, but I think the BIG THING is that Jon already had his 'put my working boots on' project, and he wanted to do Game Grumps on auto-pilot. Arin had Game Grumps and very little else (some VA work, maybe? Unreliable at first), so.. well I'm just repeating myself here.
I think it was just they both had different wants for Game Grumps and those ended up being incompatible, because Jon was devoted to The JonTron show. Neither was wrong here, but they didn't discuss it beforehand, so it blew up instead of being nipped in the bud.
@@higglybiggly1174Woops I accidentally copied most of your post before reading it because I had the same idea. Have my upvote.
Back when the split happened I made some snap judgments about the situation, being only about 16 years old at the time. Now that so many years have passed I can see both perspectives on the situation for sure. I only wish there had been a little more openness, but first and foremost I'm glad we got that year of content as I still go back to visit it regularly. Great video.
Oh absolutely, it’s very much a product of who they are which was always going to cause a blow up. I think we all wish they’d be forthcoming but I think that alone is down to who they are for sure. Thanks so much for your kind words man it means the world to me ❤️
@@itscassette You're welcome, man. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff.
Seeing Ross and Holly in the same video (the StarCade reunion) made me go "eugh..." Brings back bad memories of watching that drama unfold.
@KotoCrash She didn't do shit, it was Heidi who was getting ready to drag everyone down into the shitshow.
@KotoCrash This was yeeeaars ago, so maybe I just forgot, but what exactly did Heidi do wrong? She and Ross broke up (pretty amicably iirc), and she decided to see other people. She didn't actually instigate anything, did she?
@KotoCrash Ross ended his relationship with Holly amicably, and there's more than enough circumstantial evidence to say they were together for his Green Card anyways. Heidi had no part in that other than bringing drama to everyone involved.
@@babulbi "amicably" feels like a stretch after the stuff Holly's had to say about Ross since.
Also lbr the biggest villain in the whole scenario was Jared. Don't milk your fanbase for nudes.
@@Vaishino Can't say I know what you're talking about with Holly, but you're straight up wrong about the Jared part. As far as it has been shown, he never got nudes from fans, he just posted his on his NSFW blog.
This really didnt need to be an hour long.
yeah i bet you dont last an hour
@@sleepybosslamb yeah my adhd snaps me out pretty fast, ya live with it
@@HexiCore skill issue
@@sleepybosslamb age
Hi! I’m sure it could be cut down for brevity’s sake (and trust me a lot did get cut!) but the stuff I did keep in my opinion allows you to get the biggest understanding of the dynamics at play leading up to the separation as with everything together it shows how it was only going to go one way for them because of their opposing forces in perspective in life! I am super grateful you did watch it though and I appreciate your feedback so much ❤️
That opening was so dramatic i love it. I think my favorite style of youtube videos are longer investigative, documentary, or deep dive kind of stuff and i gotta say man this is like equal in quality to some of the bigger channels that i love. This was really good. You deserve a lot more subscribers.
Thank you so much! Effects wise the intro was one of my favourite pieces to date! :D Thanks so much for your kind words, it means the world to me
I watched the whole video, but I don't understand why the creator of this content takes issue with Arin wanting to distance himself from Jon after Jon said some f*cked up stuff in that interview clip you showed? Like why frame it as Arin caring about image and his "brand" over just learning that his friend has some pretty questionable and alienating beliefs that he didn't agree with? You repeatedly framed it as Arin choosing business over his friends, but dude, if I learned my friend was racist, I wouldn't want to continue being friends with him either. Racism isn't a wedge issue. Damn.
I find myself very old for the fact that I was on day one of Game Grumps, because I followed Egoraptor before it and I've seen the ups and downs of the show for a decade.... and the fact that a couple of friends of mine love Game Grumps and when I mentioned JonTron they were in shock yelling "JONTRON WAS A GAME GRUMP???"
Oh, the age, it's hitting me hard XD
It’s truly wild how Jon can still have a fan base after all he’s done. Arin has messed up, but not to the degree Jon has. Plus, both arin and Danny have been very open about their struggles with mental health issues throughout their life. Arin and Danny genuinely seem so much happier together and compliment each other so much better.
Most of the ones Jon has now are either people who don't know anything about him personally, cheer him on because of it, or just didn't care. He's lost a good chunk, me included.
@@CouchParty heyo I am new to the GG fandom, I have gotten really into them this last month and I have only picked up bits and pieces about jontron. Tbh, I knew jon's name from many years ago, way before I knew anything about arin. Wasn't he involved in some sort of controversy? I've been on youtube for a long ass time, and I remember that Jon used to be on the list of people I liked, but I dont remember why exactly. Maybe he did some collabs or something with other creators I liked. But I've heard somewhere recently that he might actually have some really bad takes, and I am trying to learn more about that without giving him views directly. Do you know anything about that?
Very well made video, though I find the tone towards Arin a little biased against him. Like the implication that Arin pursued GG over animation solely because it was "easier". This is definitely somewhat true, but it understates how difficult animation is, and how hard it is to be profitable from despite this effort- I can also vouch from personal experience mental health also kills motivation and creativity, which is something Arin's mentioned struggling a lot with. I can't blame him for not wanting to rely primarily on it. I'm sure there's definitely a decent aspect on making money, but it also feels like Arin and Danny genuinely have fun and enjoy what they do.
It also feels weird to paint Arin's distancing to Jontron solely as "PR" or "squeaky clean brand image" when Jon was saying pretty blatantly harmful racist stuff. It feels understandable any creator would want to distance themselves from that, and I find it surprising this is so lightly emphasized. It also feels weird to compare views of videos to say Grumps is far less successful than Jon when you're comparing Jon's rare uploads that naturally draw more attention just based on sparsity to GG's extremely frequent uploads, which is bound to have more spread views.
I did like how organized the video was, it flowed well, and came to a logical conclusion. The biased tone and injection of opinionated and circumstantial topics just feels very derailing at times.
They just had different priorities. It doesn't make Jon a bad person for wanting his freedom and it doesn't make Arin a bad person for caring about his show and his business.
I've been an Egoraptor fan since the early TH-cam days and immediately fell in love with Game Grumps. It's so strange to see everything that I lived through as a fan explained as if it were a series of historical events. I was always in the audience never a participant when it came to the conspiracies but this video has put me at peace with a longstanding question I've had at the back of my mind. I'd like to see more videos like this about the other Game Grumps related conspiracies to put them to rest, but this was the big one and it would be hard to find as much material and I imagine there would be less interest in things like the Suzy Etsy thing or the split with the Chris O'neil group.
I was somewhat involved with the Miiverse thing. It was actually more in depth than the video makes it appear - people were doing colour-level and pixel-level analysis on the boxes and finding tiny differences in jakey's meaning someone had edited the footage almost perfectly. Genuinely interesting summary post showing the thought process here. /r/ConspiracyGrumps/comments/2s4f9z/censored_miiverse_post_for_real/
The weirdest part of all this is that Chuckles' post is actually probably real. It just looked suspicious enough to warrant the investigation which found an actual doctored post right next to it.
I would Love an analysis on the Suzy Etsy stuff. Been curious about it for awhile.
@@anitachamberlain3391 People undersell its severity. She essentially bought cheap mass produced jewellery and sold it as "handmade" (specifically) and under her name for vastly increased prices (documented 3,500% on one item), advertised by Arin a couple of times, and advertised on her twitter as made by her. People found out they were the same items with a massive markup.
She blew up at them, Arin made a preachy reddit post condemning those angry at her for it. So she ripped off fans using her clout who thought they were buying something she made herself.
Okay, big deal, some fans had their trust betrayed and money wasted, fool and his money, right? Nope. Suzy lives in America and is used to these things happening unpunished. Suzy was selling them internationally. This broke trading standards law in both the EU and Australia. Suzy quickly dropped the entire thing when people started bringing this up, because with a few reports and the piles of easy evidence already collected the relevant authorities in these places could send a note to Etsy to have her banned from international sales or entirely with the push of a button.
The full breakdown is here, some of the links are dead but throw them in waybackmachine, they're all recorded. www.reddit.com/r/ConspiracyGrumps/comments/30bhdf/proof_of_suzys_dishonesty_suzys_etsy_scam/
Cassette: "Arin's sense of humor is more refined"
Arin: "Do you think Sonic shits?"
This was really well put together, but it really feels so heavily skewed towards Jon, which given the parasociality of online content makes some sense, you are going to end up on one side or the other I guess.
But, from following a number of Let's Play channels with more than one host from back in the day, I would say you are missing a big element in this with how you frame it. For Jon, Jontron was his principle outlet. For Arin, Grumps was the principal. Arin didn't just stop making animations because Grumps was easier, the ad/algorithm changes on TH-cam were already starting to push out the animators who has become very popular with long to produce short form content and was pushing serial long form content like Let's Plays at the time.
So yeah, Jon also had some safety in his long form/medium to produce content, whereas Arin had to make Grumps work. Because at the end of the day, you have to eat, you have to pay rent, etc. We all used to laugh at being able to make a living playing video games, but honestly putting in the amount of hours needed to make this kind of content and following trends and arranging your life around this kind of stuff is work. And with almost every Let's Play channel, if you are just recording LPs all day, you are going to want to try to expand out of that. You may have filmmaking aspirations like Markiplier, you may want to be more like a host figure, or you may just need something to break up the monotony.
So while you can just say Arin was only in it for the money and brand, you can also say this is someone who used to be an animator (a hard but very creative form), who is now doing something different and easier, but still wants to feel like he is progressing his career in some way.
Also there is a fair amount of handwaving Arin's relative progessive stances as just some sort of secure branding. While I do think it does have that effect, I think Arin was also just generally a bit less edgy and a bit more progressive then some of his contemporaries that came out of the NG era. And while Jon didn't go fully off the deep end after his initial weird racist tirade on that podcast (koodos to him on good brand management too), he does seem to be an edgier and less progressive person. I'm not here to pass judgement on that persay, outside of those comments being despicable, but just because Jon says some absolutely wack and impulsive things doesn't mean that Arin considering what he says and does makes him a bad person.
Anyways, great work on the construction and styling, very nice work.
The one thing not brought up in this video which should have, especially with including that other dude taking Jon's remarks personal because he's the son of immigrants, is that Jon is also the son of immigrants. Found it kinda odd not to mention that when it fits and makes some context a bit clearer - Jon is DEFINITELY more nuanced than KKK-type hillbillies on these issues, think of his statements what you will.
as someone who started watching GameGrumps when John was in, I had always wondered why this happened. I already had a hunch that it had all happened because of things that happened behind closed doors and away from the public eye. Its sad that they had to break apart like this, but they are both succeeding in their own separate careers at least. I definitely can say the dynamic Arin and Danny have is more fluent and they make amazing content together. Art is art at the end of the day and to those that are not part of creating it will always be left wondering why things happen, we are curious creatures after all.
Loved the video! it was very well put, your channel definitely deserves more recognition considering you worked for over a year on this!! keep up the great work!
THIS IS YOUR FIRST VIDEO!!? mate i’m a new enough game grumps fan and didn’t even think i’d have much of an interest in this but you COMPLETELY hooked me??? this was so well made you have a genuine natural talent. this was amazing! :)
Wow! Thanks so much for your lovely words!! This first video went through so much to try and get right and I'm so blown away by the response, as well as reading lovely words like yours. It's made all those long nights worth it
It is extremely difficult to respectfully separate from someone whom you've (essentially) started a business with. It's like getting fired, your boss can be as respectful as possible in terminating you, but you still can't help but feel some form of contempt or even anger towards them. They probably did just have creative differences, Jon wanted to work on JonTron more and didn't want Game Grumps to take a more corporate approach, Arin wanted to expand the business. I have no doubt that they were (to some degree) very respectful with one another when they eventually came to the decision to separate, but contempt is had, rumors are spread, lies are told, and thus conspiracies form.
On another note, while I definitely do not agree with Jon's moral/political views, I also don't necessarily agree with what Game Grumps has become either. I would love to see a similar video to this, only with the drama that happened between the Grumps and Ding Dong (a fellow content creator and friend of OneyNG) as there is definitely a lot to unpack there.
47:30 REALLY weird to paint it like Arin was some thought police or dictator when Jon was, at the time, spouting some really harmful rhetoric with a pretty wide platform. While Arin had said pretty messed up things in the past to compare a NG animation from a decade prior to a political Livestream where Jon went entirely mask off is super bad faith.
It makes sense that Arin is concerned with the brand and puts it first because the brand and Arin are one in the same. Arin sticks to his values and doesn't compromise, and the brand reflects that. That's a good thing. It means you're in control of your own life and doing the opposite of selling out. So, what's good for the brand is good for Arin and vice-versa.
The game grumps generally try to stay out of controversy, and it makes sense because they aren’t TH-camrs, they are a company.
Any controversies they’ve had came from the past, blank accusations, and the occasional Arin making a fuckup on Twitter. Any controversies are either pushed aside or quickly diffused.
ik this makes sense now, but at the time hearing egoraptor was switching fulltime to lets plays was unthinkable. People still rag on him for that tweet that he made where he said "if i ever become a lets play-er, just kill me" or something along those lines, and it was right around when sequelitis was gaining a lot of traction. He got a lot of flak when this went down because people believed that Arin became "Arin from GG" and not "Egoraptor"
I feel like this video villifies Arin for wanting to maintain a brand image, but as the owner of a business, you have to take care if you want to stick around. From what I can tell, Arin changed and grew up a lot from a volatile teenager with an edgy vocabulary and tried to become a better person, and channeled that into making his business better. If not wanting your business partner to speak badly about black people and cancel meetings and appearances due to partying too hard makes someone "PR obsessed" then I'm PR obsessed too. I sometimes wonder if the NDA wasn't Jon's idea so that Arin wouldn't talk badly of his behavior during E3. That would explain why the Grumps were super silent out of fear of slipping up while Jon got to wink at everyone and allude to things.
I've seen a lot about John's controversies, so I was expecting more of a jab at John. It really does seem to just be creative differences and a falling out between friends/co-workers. Thank you for the video!
Thanks so much for watching and for your comments! It's a super interesting story because on the surface it really was what they were saying, but with all the baggage that came with it that led to this situation. Appreciate you for watching
I feel so bad for Danny in those early days of the transition. He really was the step mom of GG with the audience as the kids hating him cause he's "not our REAL mom". The fact that he was nervous, not because he feared being disliked, but because he didn't want to fail his friends and accidentally ruin their careers. He's such a nice dude. And even though I'll admit I didn't like him at first (but let me be clear I would never leave a hateful comment), he's my favorite part of the channel and it's not even close.
This video has a laughably dramatic view of NDAs.
Most NDAs are business as usual and have nothing to do with skeletons in the closet. The agreements are more about keeping company business from leaking out. The fact that JonTron was under an NDA just means someone (it probably _was_ Polaris) was a bit business savvy.
A lot of entertainers sign these and generally speaking, if you see a personality suddenly disappear from a show and nobody says anything, it is usually because of an NDA.
For a video that wants to tell an unbiased view of this story it seems like you go out of your way to favor jon and denounce arin quite often. By far the best example is you spending less than a minute discussing jon's genuine racist comments that he never apologized for, then going on to spend several minutes chastising arin for defending his friends and discussing his past with bullying to maintain his "squeaky clean image" and "PR obsession."
(For the record I think current game grumps is pretty bad and liked jon grumps much more but this just rubbed me the wrong way)
Hi! Thanks so much for your comment and for your feedback on the video, Truly it means more to me than you can know.
I hope you'll accept a little bit of backstory as to why I worded things the way I did and why some factors were given a bit of a lighter touch than others! :)
First of, I'm really sorry this video left you with a sour taste in your mouth! My intention was to try to offer a neutral offering with a perspective from Jon as to why he left without falling into another drama video discussing Jon's absolutely with no other way around it, appalling remarks on the Destiny stream. I do understand that on the surface it looks like I'm saying Arin is a one dimensional bad guy but I want it to be absolutely clear I firmly believe both Arin and Jon have made right calls in their outcomes from the split as well as their own issues.
Arin's PR focus was a factor that ultimately pushed Jon away (Hence why JON left game grumps, as opposed to Why the Game Grumps split up). Naturally this video would always have an angle on Jon's view on being ostracised from something he founded which naturally is going to make anyone sour. Jon felt like he had no other choice in the matter and this is why he committed to a cross country move.
Arin's PR focus also is the exact (maybe in some cases sole) reason that Game Grumps continued past that point. He turned it from a podcast into an empire that attracted huge name recognition throughout YT, And that's to be totally commended
This video was originally a LOT longer with more in depth segments but I chose to cut back purely out of the reason of building a profile of why jon left (Fitting the video title) without extra content that's already been summarised. Talking about Jon's comments on the livestream links directly to a friendship reforming being dashed between them which is crucial in the grand scheme of things as it explains how Arin sees how himself and GG is viewed as paramount and it also indicates why Jon will never come back after we saw the two together again, which also indicates a repeat almost of why the two fell out to begin with
Again I hope you can understand my reasons behind this, and I hope with a little bit of clarification on the matter from my perspective it's a bit easier for you to understand why things were worded the way they were -- and even though this rubbed you the wrong way I do want to seriously thank you for giving it a go regardless, This video has been a LOT of hard work with writing, research, development, There were 18 different versions of this video alone that got cut!
Again thank you for leaving your thoughts, I'll aim to make future points not just that much more impartial but also clearer why I angle things the way I do
@@itscassette I appreciate the thoughtful and genuine reply, you just earned yourself a subscription 👍
This video is amazing. And the comment about Jon being genuinely happy with where he is now? I’ve MET Jon, and I gotta say, he is one of the funniest, nicest people I’ve ever encountered. And he honestly does seem, truly happy.
Very interesting video! Although we might never know what really happened between them, I'm glad we can at least get pretty close. I'm one of those fans that actually preferred Danny over Jon from the beginning, so while I never really cared enough to go too deep into this, I was interested in what happened and I'm glad there are videos like this.
Thank you so much for watching and for your lovely words! I absolutely agree that some details will only be possible if one of the two spill the beans. And owing to how their attitudes with each other have deteriorated so much that may not ever happen, especially when the opportunity to mudsling comes around
Paper trail wise however, we can get pretty close to the core of the matter which is something I didn't ever find being done on TH-cam before, hence why I put all this work into this video hahaha!
Again thanks so much for your comment. It means more to me than I can possibly tell you
As a fan of both Game Grumps and JonTron: I think you leaned a bit too much into making out Jon as the proverbial "hero" of your video, and Arin as a "villain" in your conclusion. Protecting the brand is not necessarily a bad thing, and with how different the Internet became over the past 10 years, I think you're a bit biased towards portraying Jon as this starving artist who escaped the clutches of a megalomaniac, whereas I never got that impression: at least not from the facts as represented in the video. Your choice of words and some of the information you represented also seem to go in favour of JonTron from a more personal standpoint. That's pretty much my only pet peeve about your essay.
All that being said, this, it was a fantastic video to watch! Comprehensive and to the point, I've seen a lot of gossip around this situation but never a solid, coherent timeline or a non-clickbaity take on it. You have my sub, and I hope it doesn't take you another year for another upload! (but if it does, I'll be patiently waiting because I know it will be worth it)
Hi! Thanks so much for your comment and for your feedback on the video, Truly it means more to me than you can know.
I hope you'll accept a little bit of backstory as to why I worded things the way I did and why some factors were given a bit of a lighter touch than others! :)
My intention was to try to offer a neutral offering with a perspective from Jon as to why he left without falling into another drama video discussing Jon's absolutely with no other way around it, appalling remarks on the Destiny stream. I do understand that on the surface it looks like I'm saying Arin is a one dimensional bad guy but I want it to be absolutely clear I firmly believe both Arin and Jon have made right calls in their outcomes from the split as well as their own issues.
Arin's PR focus was a factor that ultimately pushed Jon away (Hence why JON left game grumps, as opposed to Why the Game Grumps split up). Naturally this video would always have an angle on Jon's view on being ostracised from something he founded which naturally is going to make anyone sour. Jon felt like he had no other choice in the matter and this is why he committed to a cross country move.
Arin's PR focus also is the exact (maybe in some cases sole) reason that Game Grumps continued past that point. He turned it from a podcast into an empire that attracted huge name recognition throughout YT, And that's to be totally commended
This video was originally a LOT longer with more in depth segments but I chose to cut back purely out of the reason of building a profile of why jon left (Fitting the video title) without extra content that's already been summarised. Talking about Jon's comments on the livestream links directly to a friendship reforming being dashed between them which is crucial in the grand scheme of things as it explains how Arin sees how himself and GG is viewed as paramount and it also indicates why Jon will never come back after we saw the two together again, which also indicates a repeat almost of why the two fell out to begin with
Again I hope you can understand my reasons behind this, and I hope with a little bit of clarification on the matter from my perspective it's a bit easier for you to understand why things were worded the way they were -- and even though this rubbed you the wrong way I do want to seriously thank you for giving it a go regardless, This video has been a LOT of hard work with writing, research, development, There were 18 different versions of this video alone that got cut!
Again thank you for leaving your thoughts, I'll aim to make future points not just that much more impartial but also clearer why I angle things the way I do
@@itscassette Oh hey! So nice of you to reply, thank you so much! And thank you for your words, though I feel bad that you figured it was necessary to reply to this, I understand why you did, and the clarification is very much appreciated. With it, I understand how I might've gotten the wrong impression out of something as simple as word choice.
All this being said, I just want to once again reiterate how much I enjoyed it - I cannot even imagine the amount of work that went into creating a coherent timeline of the events around the two and their ambitions (not to mention all the drama), and in spite of my original comment, I do recognize that you tried you best to be fair and impartial during all of it, and I think the vast majority of your viewers and commenters did, too.
Thank you so much for replying, and your words! I can't wait to see more of your content, and keep up the fantastic work
@@Binkyouka I appreciate that so much!! Nothing but love ❤️
microphone settings are obnoxious. good video though.
The fact that this channel only has 256 subscribers is a genuine crime, glad your video got recommended! 💚
Thanks so much for watching
Incredible job, man. I think this has got to be the best video I've seen about this so far. Such a bizarre situation this was. I never did understand the NDA and why they were so weird about not discussing anything. It seems to me if nothing really happened, and it was just creative differences, then there's no reason to act like they did. I mean I get Arin just wanting to move on with Game Grumps and not dwell on Jon's absence since there wasn't much to be done about it either way. But why'd Jon keep saying he can't talk about it if it was always just creative differences? That was basically the story from the start, what about it can't he discuss? Always confused me. I'm sure the story probably is something as simple as you said but their handling of it was so poor that it just built the mystery up in everyone's heads. And that TotalBiscuit tweet still hasn't left my brain after all these years. "That shit is buried." Way too ominous.
Thanks so so SO much for your incredible words. It's comments like yours that made all the R&D and countless hours of work worthwile, I mean it
I just realized that game grumps was my refuge from other internet dramas a few years ago. I had heard Jon mentioned a few times, but never knew it went this deep. I’m actually super thankful for that. I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but it can be traumatizing when your safe escape, in whatever form it takes, has a radical change that’s outside of your control. That safety is damaged, sometimes irreparably. It happened to me with Rooster Teeth, then Achievement Hunter, hell even my favorite DnD creator at one point time got the Voldemort treatment.
I say this to point out that “brand safety” can mean many different things to different people. For Arin, it was his livelihood, his dream even, and I don’t blame him for having trust issues with someone who was starting to threaten that. I think they made wise decisions handling it the way they did, even if it was far from ideal. Because Arin defended the brand, the channel was able to stay a safe place, among other things.
I can’t watch RWBY vol 3 without crying, I can’t watch old Minecraft let’s plays with Ryan at all (again, that’s just me). How easily could Game Grumps have gone the same way? Instead, they went their separate ways and both ended up happy with where their content went. This is absolutely the good ending.
TL;DR Arin’s decision to defend the GG brand also meant that it could remain a safe haven in the age of cancel culture. I just wanted to mention it because “brand safety” can mean so much more than corporate success.
This is the best and most comprehensive video I’ve seen on this topic. 14 year old me would be thrilled. Playing that remix at the end sent me to the nostalgia zone.
This video seems to be painting Arin as some horrible antagonist and has a lot of speculative information.
GameGrumps is a business and needs to be treated as one, by both the fans and creators. Sure it started as just Jon and Arin hanging out, but it became a source of income with employees whose livelihood depended on the channel bringing in a consistent paycheck. To say that Arin was obsessive about brand image is a very narrow-minded take. As a business owner, Arin has a responsibility to look after his company and employees, because if he doesn't, then they're all unemployed and won't have time to continue the channel(s). He's a responsible business owner, not some over-controlling villain.
Why didn't The Grumps acknowledge Jon? Because he went his own way and was no longer part of the channel. While I do agree that pretending he didn't exist was probably the wrong move, but if they did talk about him, then the comments would just be hating on Danny and/or comparing him to Jon. That wouldn't be fair to him.
Jon and Arin both knew that Game Grumps wasn't going to last forever and that Jon wanted to run his own show. Danny was also aware of this and agreed to take over as Not So Grump.
The video is well-edited and the script is good, but I honestly think that the messaging behind it isn't accurate.
Thanks for watching and for your feedback! I totally agree with you and in hindight a lot of things could have been worded better! I think this video was always going to seem more Jon focussed because, well, it's about why Jon left the Game Grumps! Not the other way around! Whilst I did mention in the video I am happy for both of them to be enjoying themselves and doing better without each other it is a point I could have hit home harder and I apologise for that! Thanks so much for your feedback though it really really helps me out and stuff like this I've already taken into my next videos! Appreciate you so much
bro we'd have a game grumps episode a year if jon ran it
also, it's so strange how people are still hung up on this after 10 years of danny and 1 year of Jon....
So, they really weren't lying when they said it was creative differences. Sure it involved a lot of underlying details, muddying waters, a slew of emotions, and even a potential physical altercation in private...but at the end of the day, a proper "tl;dr" would indeed be that it was just creative differences. Gosh.
I think that's the beauty of it by design. They've never lied but purposefully been ambiguous all the way. It really is a shame that they had such a falling out, I think in hindsight this would always would have happened with how their personalities and takes on life are so opposing - the very reason that keeps them apart now.
Appreciate you so much for watching
@@itscassette It stings even more when you step back and realize that...despite how they likely wouldn't have worked out in the best of circumstances, coming together to create Game Grumps basically kickstarted both of their careers for better or worse.
Hell, despite being an early adopter of the internet, I personally wasn't familiar with Egoraptor, JonTron, Normal Boots, or Newgrounds until Game Grumps came along. I suspect many many others were as well.
@@sauvagess What's your suspicion based on? Because Newgrounds was very well known in the pre-youtube era and I suspect your suspicion is tainted by personal anecdotes than actual research.
@@symbiote1982pk ...It's based on the very video that this comment is on. Did you watch it?
I always assumed it was a personality clash, ever since Jon said the N-word repeatedly, forcing Barry to censor it out. You could really hear how uncomfortable Arin was. Also the Guts episode, where they got legitimately angry at each other over a disagreement of competition styles.
Homie I hate to break it to you but Arin also said the n-word casually at the time, just never on the show. This was also around the time he did the tax refund rap with stamper where he said the n-word like twice. 10 years ago was a real different time on the internet
Yeah, me too. I remember another episode where Arin mentioned Jon's ethnicity and Jon was like, "No! Now everyone's gonna know I'm foreign!" and Arin was audibly confused as to why that was a bad thing. 😅
You can, for sure, hear the uh-oh's.
@@mantoslodge Yeah, I'm aware that was a thing. The discomfort was probably less from the word itself and more from saying it on that particular show in rapid succession, and forcing Barry to bleep it out.
Check out game grumps N word compilation. They both said it alot
Talk about a strong start out of the gate. You're going places man this is so well made, researched and told.
That's super super kind of you to say that! Thank you so much
This is so fascinating, as someone who started watching the show since Dan joined. I'm glad that Arin and Jon seem to have found some peace between themselves several years down the line.
I always thought it was Jon defending his use of insulting people by calling them "Fags". The 3rd time it happened in an episode there were Captions from the editor expressing that GameGrumps didn't agree with Jon's language/thoughts on Queer folk. Things ended shortly after. Clearly there was a lot more going on but this was my personal canon at the time based on just watching the episodes. >__
Probably not what it actually said considering "queer folk" wasn't common parlance at the time. But regardless, Arin's said the same thing, Dan said the same thing, Arin had a gay man gaslighted for criticising Dream Daddy's insincere use of queer characters with Brian and Suzy publicly denying he ever saw the game. Matt Watson later confirmed said gay man absolutely saw the game.
Arin doesn't genuinely care that much about it, he's defending a brand. That's often the root of each controversy he gets embroiled in.
At the end of the day no business ever cares about you or your rights. As soon as pride logos weren't predicted to be investor friendly, almost every brand under the sun suddenly declined to use them this year, all at once.
Man I remember being waist deep in all this stuff as it was happening. It was a pretty wild time and this was a nice summary of it. I thought it was great how you really didn't take sides against either party at any point and just told the story.
One thing that makes me sad about this situation that I don't see people talk about a whole lot is that when Jon left Game Grumps, he seemed to split with Barry too. Those dudes were friends since high school, and whether Barry was part of the NDA too or what, he, to my knowledge, never talked about Jon again and never got that moment like Jon and Arin had on Starcade. I always wondered what happened between them because they were definitely bros well before all of this, right along with a bunch of other creators.
At the end of the day. This was honestly the best for everyone involved.
Jon works best writing his own material and some of his best videos are his post videos
Dan is great. Playing the straight man to arins shenagains is a role he fit perfectly.
I hope they keep civil.
I’m guessing Arin wanted to make it into an actual company or LLC but Jon didn’t want to commit to that.
Jon probably want to grow his own LLC Jon Tron and be a singular earner as apposed to being a partner in Game Grumps.
The reason they don’t talk about it is probably the legality behind this decision.
I’m not sure if NDAS are involved as I don’t think they had that much money to enforce this kind of thing.
@@johnolmos8670 I remember Barry openly saying he left GG because he didn't like the direction the channel was headed, with marketing Dan and Arin specifically rather than it being about anyone else involved. I think Arin became a businessman about this shit right away and a lot of the folk in his past saw through it.
Bravo! This video was absolutely wonderful! I'm excited to see what you make in the future because this was so incredibly well made!
Edit: I really really wish Jon never went on that stream with Destiny, I really wonder where we would be now with the Grumps stuff if that never happened.
Wow! What a genuinely lovely comment to receive! Thanks so much for watching this video, and I’m beyond thrilled that you enjoyed it! This video took over one year to complete and with comments like yours it made it all worthwhile. The next one is in the works now and I hope you’ll love it as much as this one ❤️
I also echo your sentiments with the destiny podcast completely. It genuinely interests me too what would have been had he not acted so impulsively
The Jon Arin break up always hit me hard, which is a funny thing considering I didn't even discover Game Grumps until after it had already happened. I think the reason is because it felt like as much a breaking up of friendship as anything else, and that touched me in a personal way. My family forced me into social isolation growing up and I was quite lonely, but there was person who I considered my friend from 3rd grade on. Granted, he hurt me deeply when we were teenagers but we reconnected when we were 18 or 19. I had wanted to make videos for years but was terrified to attempt anything on my own, especially editing. This friend is the one who introduced me to Game Grumps, among so many other TH-cam channels and we would watch them all. I wanted to make a channel with him and I realize now that wanting to be on TH-cam was as much about wanting to find connection as it was about making videos. Unfortunately, or probably fortunately if I'm being honest with myself, my friend ghosted me for the 3rd and final time. I lost my hope of TH-cam or a meaningful life. I had envisioned being roommates with this guy and having fun on TH-cam with him, maybe building a community. Somehow the feeling I got from Jon and Arin was the same as me with my lost friend. It made me very sad.
Edit: spelling
I get how you feel, I wish I had people to do TH-cam with myself. It's hard to run solo
@@ShiroeZaki I agree, but I feel like it's taught me a good lesson. It's been quite a few years since that experience, and just as I'm learning to love myself without the affirmations of anyone else, I'm starting to make my own solo channel without anyone else's help.
If you want to do it, you can do it!
BTW, what kind of videos are you trying to create?
@@nothingsacred8684 Mostly gaming content, wouldn't minde skits or podcasts. Glad you seemed to make it out the other side my dude!
@@ShiroeZaki Thanks! Don't get me wrong, it took quite a long time lol, and I'm definitely still working my mental health journey. But I'm happy with the direction my life is headed in.
i feel like using Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" for the intro is just a *tad* extra lol
Amazingly enough I've watched all your showreel videos before this popped up, but I'm here for your journey. You already know 90% of the audience for the other vids are people rewatching and enjoying the content of the other TH-camrs, so I'll be that x10 for you. Keep up the great work, you're much more than just an editor. Long form content can often become rambly, but your way of transitioning from topic to topic and having a clear conclusion makes the video just feel so awe inspiring, you could talk about the evolution of elastic bands in socks and I'd be impressed an intrigued all the way through
Wow! This is probably one of the nicest things I've ever read! Thank you so much! That's mad how you've seen my work elsewhere before with my showreel! Small world hahaha!
This video took over 1 year to put together in terms of R&D and it's been worth all the effort when I get to read comments like yours, so thank you so much for your viewership and your lovely words. I cannot begin to tell you how much both mean to me. The next video is in the works now and I hope you'll love it :D
@@itscassette I'll try being the first comment on that video then! Even if it won't be out for another year😉
I truly think it had a lot to do with creative freedom and the difference in what Arin wanted game grumps to be and how Jon wanted to express himself. Arin had made it very clear over the years that he made game grumps to be a business and wanted to make a long term career that was financially stable. Jon pushed the edge a lot in his comedy and just generally was a lot more nonchalant on his approach to the show. I think they just couldn’t agree on censorship and Arin wanted to stay in the public good standings.
Idk I think the fact that Jon went on an ethno nationalist rant kind of gives me the impression that he’s likely the more volatile person in the relationship. Also the type of thing to drive away viewers or even just friends exposed to that type of thinking. And as you mention they based their whole show on being at odds with one another so it makes sense they just couldn’t see eye to eye anymore and split over something personal and business related. I also think singling out Suzy (the only consistent female in the group) as some sort of Yoko Ono who pushed Jon out is so gross. Especially when ironically what’s happened to Yoko was exactly this. John was having his own difficulties with Paul and yet she was blamed for their band break up. Idk seems like having there be an NDA means we can only speculate but I don’t believe the issue lies entirely on Arin’s shoulders. Jon bears a lot of responsibility for his own actions and I’m glad they’ve gone separate ways.
I think it was creative differences followed by a really nasty fight where they both said fucked up shit that basically ended the friendship, including jon probably saying something shitty abt suzy (which then got telephoned to jerryterry as suzy being *part of the problem* and caused suzy to be more hair-trigger abt the issue since a supposed friend talked shit on her) and they purposely censored mention of jon so the audience would move on faster but jon likely took it as a diss which almost certainly was the idea conspiracists were pushing to his feed.
Honestly it’s probably a lot of miscommunication, immaturity, and bitterness between them that resulted in everything.
Actually insane how this is your first video essay. INCREDIBLE editing and work! Excited to see more! ❤️
I came in after dan had joined and never understood the hate on him and still dont to be fair, definitely has nothing to do with dan and more to do with just people being upset about jon leaving instead
Thank you so much for bringing true final closure to this Day 1 Lovely's poor heart
Every time I see that cameo in Starcade I tear up and this time was no different
I loved that music video with the Jon Wins remix at the end.
Your work was amazingly thorough and well-put. Amazing work and thanks again! T-T
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and feelings with me in your lovely comment! I think the starcade cameo was emotional to a lot of us who had followed this story closely when it happened which is why I wanted to give it the focus it deserves with how much of a landmark moment it was in the video
The Jon and ego raptor drama is indicative of the weird place the internets in right now. Creators are more and more heading towards the direction of making their channels more corporate in nature, due to the multiple financial benefits this brings, however very few creators are actually willing or able to be professional about these sort of things. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a creator going either direction but trying to be both at the same time leads to this sort of drama.
I can't believe videos are still being made about this topic over 10 years later.
I've been watching Game Grumps since I was a kid and for the longest time I never knew Jon was even in the show, but like idk the whole things seems blown out of proportion, and with the drop in views, tbh I feel like their 10 minute power hour makes up for it
ASTOUNDING work my man. What an emotional journey this video has taken me on. As someone who was a die-hard fan from the beginning and still watches them to this day, I feel like this is the best possible explanation without any further official statements. Even being the die-hard fan that I am I was even surprised at some stuff I didnt know in this video like Arin's dad getting involved! Your editing style really had me sucked in from the very beginning, one particular moment that really had me was when you brought up the miiverse censorship, since I was there for that and remember being really invested in the conspiracies but I also remember it not being fully proven 100% that it was actually censored? So until watching this video I thought it had remained an unsolved mystery! So satisfying for this to all be pretty much solved. The whole Destiny debate with Jon really ruined my perception of him so I've stopped supporting Jon ever since, but this video really made me miss their friendship, considering I've literally watched every Jon-era episode on the GG channel. Also ending it with one of the best GG remixes ever made was the cherry on top. Bravo!
I must add, it's funny you used a clip from their Majora's Mask playthrough, because there's another potentially really telling clip you might find interesting. Part 44 of that same playthrough, the episode starts with Arin joking about Dan leaving the show, which leads Dan to ask: "What would you do if you just got a text from me one day saying I quit game grumps and then I never came back?" Normally a question like this would become just a playful bit, or a "what-if" scenario, but instead Arin's response sounds kind of bitter almost? Give it a watch. I could be looking into that tiny moment a bit too much, but that reaction would make a lot of sense if your theory was correct. That Jon impulsively moved to New York one day with no notice, which caused the Game Grumps twitter to tweet "Due to circumstances out of our control, we will be posting one episode a day", and then causing the abrupt change. 👀
Also also one more thing, I'm sorry but I can't stop myself from correcting this. Maybe my perception was wrong, but I got the idea that this video was implying that the Jon-era videos were getting millions of views and now at current day they're getting less views. I don't have proof, but I remember their ONLY video with anything even CLOSE to a million views back then was that one episode of Sonic 06 called "Oh No", and the rest of their videos I'm pretty sure rested at around 200k-500k views average??? (rough guess based solely off of memory) But obviously now everybody who's curious is gonna go see what the very first episode of game grumps was like which would put it at 3 million after the fact. Those videos have been up for 10 years so they've built up way more views now that GG is more successful.
Sorry for the nitpick, really enjoyed this documentary!! Thanks for the great watch!