The Failure of Normal Boots 

New video about Call Me Carson ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--zXcJiAQYOM.html

There is footage of pbg admitting that he does not like peanut butter, think that should have been enough to ruin his credibility

Can’t believe that you didn’t even mention the biggest scandal of PBG’s entire career: hating on MySims

It's hilarious to me that newer viewers just know JonTron as "the Flex Tape guy." What a crazy timeline this is.

I like how jon's voice didn't change since he was 11 years old

Hearing "Arin from game grumps" made me accutely aware of the wrinkles developing on my face

What sucks about the whole "no comments section" policy for Kids content is that basically all retro content like 90s Cartoon Network clips, old cereal commercials, etc., lost a treasure trove of discussion and reminiscing by fans... literal decade+ of probably billions comments erased from existence. Even though RU-vid has their "RU-vid Kids" app and could have just as easily made the main RU-vid platform "13+ Only" like Tiktok, Snapchat, etc. to dodge COPPA.

Honestly kinda happy for PBG. No real drama or controversy, content that is pretty family friendly relative to others with a similar style, and consistent videos for years now.

Tales of Super Jon is so funny to me, because here you have this absolute child of a Jon, complete with 240p video quality, but the same exact voice as adult Jon. I don't know why, but it's hilarious to me.

You forgot to mention that Jirard made his Best Buy the greatest Best Buy in the entire universe because he stole a Mario statue from a GameStop and watched G4

The fact that the Normal Boots logo jingle was a game over sound is so ironic

Referring to DYKG as a "content farm" feels like a very backhanded insult. They've contributed a lot to Video Game history and preservation. Heck, just last year they helped uncovered a lost Pokemon webgame and shared it with everyone.

One quick inaccuracy that I don’t think anyone else has mentioned- Asagao academy wasn’t technically a fan game, it was actually made by PBG’s wife, Danielle (unicornism). It was actually massive, and most of the cast + hidden block were very active within the fandom. Shane Gill’s twitch stream of his route where he passed out drunk mid play through will be forever close to my heart.

Normal Boots is a reference to the Normal Boots from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time specifically. Google highlighting the wrong answer from that reddit post did you dirty on this one

Correction: Jared was the only Normal Boots member to work at ScrewAttack. PBG and Jon were fans and posted their videos as community members. PBG made some minor guest roles, but neither were ever a part of ScrewAttack. Jirard got his videos promoted by ScrewAttack, but also was never hired.

4:15 i want to clarify this game was primarily developed by PBG’s wife, which is why it was sanctioned and allowed to be funded and voiced by the Normal Boots guys

I love how these stories range from: "He then went on a massive political rant on live stream and committed charity fraud" to "He gets fewer views I guess, but he seems alright." Edit: I'm proud to be the creator of an Internet debate. Unintentionally, for the record.

I think a lot about the normal boots dating sim… I can’t imagine it aged well

Small correction: PBG and JonTron didn't work for ScrewAttack. They were users in the ScrewAttack community, and they uploaded to the community section.

NOTE: Screw Attack founder Craig mentioned in an interview that he fired Jared for backstage unprofessional behavior and publicly criticizing coworkers on public social media. It's in an audio interview.

I know Continue isn’t the biggest, but the trio have awesome chemistry and humor. I still watch them when I can.

That normal boots intro, though, is still kino

You didn't mention that Jirad originally lied about Greg leaving saying they ended on good terms and were still friends.

You can tell this was researched but got maybe like 80% of the way there, where the last 20% were probably details not crucial to the video's narrative, but still stick out on their own. Like no, Did You Know Gaming was never intended to be a "content farm". That's just parroting terms that only came into use in the past year. The one thing I can give is that you're not making anything up, but you should possibly keep a cite of sources on hand to refer to when writing. It's not just about proving yourself, it's also about keeping track of what you're saying.

Did You Know Gaming is _way_ more than a content farm, at least nowadays. It's genuine investigative journalism, now. Like, they've been leaking some serious, previously unknown information about the industry exclusively from their channel. They've come a very long way from making videos about fun facts ou could have just as easily read from a Wikipedia article. Seriously, check their newer stuff out, it's very fascinating.

The reason Game Grumps removed videos featuring Jared is because RubberRoss, who's regularly at Game Grumps was married to Holly Conrad.

That debate with JonTron and Destiny was probably one of the most legendary RU-vid moments because Jon was on top of the world and basically just offered his career up to be slaughtered. I have no clue what Jon was thinking, I have no clue how he thought "Goofy Internet Game Guy vs. Guy Who Debates for a Living" could have gone well for him.

I always like the Jared receipts line.

DidYouKnowGaming has gotten pretty good recently, revealing some obscure things and doing some work, and not just reading wikipedia.

The decline of normal boots is like what would happen if Doug Walker left channel awesome, without that key figure at the helm to act as a draw, you're left in a permanent decline. Normal boots was just too late to the party, coming around at a time where copyright started to be much more forgiving (and it always was way more forgiving for games than it was movies anyway) and more people were able to get their start on youtube, not needing alternative sites for hosting videos. Another key aspect is the rise of patreon, with less reliance on ad revenue to make a living, creators could even face a video being demonetized and still profit thanks to fan donations.

apples and grapes

I still watch The Continue? boys. Always seem so low profile and straight forward. No bad sketches: just some awkward Dad Dudes playin' games. Wish they got more views.

I don't know how to feel that Arin is remembered more for GameGrumps than his animations and JonTron is more known by new viewers as "The Flex Tape Guy".

It's nice to see that Peanut Butter Gamer is just keepin on keepin on

22:45 I argue dykg is doing more for video game journalism than most others in the field. The effort to find new stuff is insane

I’m a big ole Normal Boots fan, Asagao Academy was technically fan-made but one of those fans was Austin’s (PBG) wife. She was also a fan prior to meeting Austin while he was still a smaller creator. She sent him an email and he was interested. Sounds like a recipe for disaster these days, but it was still early days like EARLY days so I mean their continuing marriage and growing family is probably a testament that their relationship is going strong. Asagao was created well after they were already married, and Austin was very open about how this was a passion project for his wife and her game developer partner. They released it for free download and it was a really well made game, all things considered. It’s a bit cringe looking back on some of the things some of the guys did since then for sure but I was always a Continue? girl more than anything so I still have fond mems. Edit note: projared’s Asagao character was obsessed with himself which is kind of hilarious looking back

The Projared situation is so sad. Especially that last part. He goes out to defend Jirard whom he cares about likely because he experienced a similar situation, only on the other end, Jirard didn't give two shits about him and actually sees Projared as someone below him. Like in the leaked audio he talked about surviving the Projared situation unscathed. Man cared about his image more than helping people. It's sad how someone innocent was dogpiled on from the start whilst someone truly malicious was defended for great while.

I miss the normal boots intros. Actually nostalgic. And I was gonna say, all the NB members have been through some sort of controversy through the years. Thanks for talking about this😊

No way I was just thinking “wouldn’t it be cool if there was a normal boots retrospective” awesome vid

PBG single handedly carried them on his back. Half of the videos you on his channel have a “normal boots is back!” segment😭😭

It is hard to listen to a long video like this when the narrator sounds bored or half-asleep, like they actively don't care about what they're reading.

I like how much you sanatized what he said into just the consequences. "People on the left wanted to cancel him" What did he say about black people and gene pool tho to make that happen?

I swear some youtubers have Zero Foresight to their actions, it goes from “not thinking it was gonna bite you in the ass” to “WHY DID YOU THINK YOU WERE GONNA HAVE A CAREER AFTER THAT”

About Did You Know Gaming, I think multiple guests narrators have said this although I can only truly remember Arin saying it on an episode of Guest Grumps (on the Game Grumps), where they are always so amazed & pleased with the trivia they have to read that they constantly interupt themselves with "huh."s and "oh wows" during recordings, which Shane would constantly have to edit out

Young JonTron gives me strong Josh Peck vibes.

I'm surprised Satchell Drakes wasn't mentioned.

You missed talking about the Normal Boots RU-vid channel that for some strange reason is run by The Completionist and his brother. Yes that brother from the charity.

I will say this: The Continue and Jontron Drunkstravaganza Collab is one of the best things to ever come out of Normal Boots.

I can already picture the discussion Greg and Jirard had: G: "So the charity, did you donate the money yet?" J: "YOU ARE FIRED!"

You forgot to mention Projared's new show (and his main focus now) "Now in the 90's"

I know Normal Boots for two things: 1. The intro that shows up on older videos at random 2. PBG Hardcore

These guys were my childhood, and my inspiration for the creative endeavors I partake in now. PBG was the first youtuber I ever watched, and watching one of his videos on a Saturday morning has been a tradition of mine for over 12 years now. I love that man, an inspiration to me to this very day.

I remember finding Jon in his early days, and I was addicted to his videos while on vacation. It was at a time when he would only get 10s of thousands of views, and his latest video released when I subbed was his Space Ace video. I was subbed to him since then, but I kinda skipped his videos when he stopped doing videogames. But I eventually watched his newer stuff and it's pretty entertaining. I still miss his gaming content though.

*Normal boots logo comes on "Oh yeah i used to watch a lot of Jontron. Wait I still watch a lot of Jontron. Wait I only clicked this video because I thought it was Jontron's bi annual video release." I'm 6 seconds in and youve already taken me for a wild ride.

realizing I know the full historys of everyone your talking about off the top of my head is really making my hair turn grey

I watched so much Normal Boots content back in the day that when I heard that iconic intro, I instantly forgot what I was watching and started to relax.

2 screen-scrolls of the top comments point out several points of misinformation in this video.

I think Peebz is the only one who never royally screwed up?

You forgot to mention that the reason Projareds main channel is one hiatus was to distance himself from that label for his side channel Now In The 90s.

Great job compiling all the normal boots lore, there's actually a bunch of stuff I didn't know about them. Austin and the Continue boys seem to be the only ones who have came out of things unscathed.

Ah yes, Jon "Gene Pool" Jafari

“Game Grumps glory days are long over” is something that has been said since the beginning of Game Grumps 😂 they just had audio go viral on tiktok

Underbelly became hard to search with a crime drama series using the name and getting the search results

I've been watching these guys for so long. It's been crazy watching things rise and fall apart.

That clip of JonTron pre JonTron makes him look like such an endearing little theatre kid, especially if you know about him and Barry’s highschool project about Beowulf.

I've been doing research on this for the last two years and while this video is good, I've found some inaccuracies. 1:35 Jon and Austin met through messaging on the Screwattack website, but neither of them worked for the company. (c. SGC 2014 Panel on AngryJoeShow) 3:33 To say Shane launched hiddenblock is quite an overstatment. Shane designed the website and along with Jirard they helped internally get the group started, but Shane/DYKG was never an official member. (C. Caddicarus hiddenblock announcement video) 7:57 Same as earlier, while Projared did actually work for screwattack on several of their official shows, Jon only uploaded to the site, which are very distinct differences. (C. SGC 2015 ProJared Panel) 16:14 This isn't wrong, but it's worth noting that it wasn't just a shoutout that kicked off Jirard's career. He found a modest following quickly by uploading the completionist to Screwattack, and he joined NormalBoots with his second video. One or two videos later, he also joined The Game Station network, which was a feat for how new his channel was. But ive no doubt that Jon's cross promotion further helped. 19:28 Jirard never left NormalBoots. He continued to stay in the group through the Jared drama that put NB on a hiatus, but he was there when they rebooted the 3rd time. Unlike other former members, there was no announcement of his leave. Also Satchel Drakes was part of NormalBoots from 2014-2019, and while he didn't make many videos with the group, he did go to a lot of panels with them so it seems strange to not mention him. Pelvic Gaming and Protonjon also joined NB in 2021, that's a more understandable omission given how little time they've been members. Everything else seemed factual to my knowledge, and I know how hard it is to track down info on this.

To give a bit more insight to Jared's current activities, he seems more invested in his "Now in the 90's" channel of the history of retro releases and uploads weekly.

Love the video! I was so shocked when I heard Vriska's theme. You have great taste!

Thank you for such a comprehensive video. It was fun to watch.

The early to mid 2010s aka when youtubers stopped copying Avgn and nostalgia critic and decided to instead copy JonTron

Being involved in any capacity with Destiny is always going to be a bad decision with net negative consequences.

I began scripting a video for my channel called “(Not So) Normal Boots” that would have been made in January and released around now that covered pretty much exactly what you covered. I didn’t make it because every way I approached it I knew that it would be a video I would regret making but I’m grateful to have watched this video and thought you did a good job. Thank you.

aaaaa tht normal boots intro brought me back, continue was like crack to me lmao could not get enough

I miss the days of youtubers having a troupe

I don't think it's very intellectually honest to be as vague as this video is on the Jontron controversy. It is technically true that he was defending that senator's comments on immigration but what is left out is what exactly he said. The claim that got Jontron in trouble was that he thought immigration was going to lead to white people being made a minority in the US. This claim is laughably untrue but the integrity of it isn't really the point. It's a dogwhistle. It is meant to make the idea that immigrants are invaders look acceptable enough to spread to paranoid white people. Now, on some level I do agree that he was and is just someone who heard some very dumb ideas online but that doesn't make what he said and the ideas implicit in it any less horrible.

Thank you for this video! I’m 24 now and didn’t realize how much I loved watching PBG, jontron, projared, game grumps, the completionist, etc. I miss the simple computer days

this video so far is amazing and thorough! i hope to see gametrailers, screwattack and the game station/polaris documentaries like this!

Got political sure is doing some heavy lifting.

no mention of satchell drakes?

Man this was a trip down memory lane, I miss this era of RU-vid and the world in general lol. Good stuff, thanks for making this video!

great video! I was hoping to hear something about Satchbag's Goods. He was always the hidden gem of Normal Boots to me. I loved his videos and his Case Study's. it was a different approach compared to the other creators of NB and maybe that's why he appealed to me so much. I never found out what he's been doing after NB and it would've been cool to see you talk about that briefly. Other than that your video is fantastic & I enjoyed watching it to the very end, keep it up! ^~^

ProJared's main channel does not have much recent content, but he has another channel he made called "Now in the 90's", talking about games that were released 30 years ago to the day. The first video was in November 29th 2022 and a new video comes out every week. My assumption is that this is where most of Jared's production energy tends to go, which would explain why there aren't many big videos on his main channel as of late. As of writing, "Now in the 90's" has a bit over 62k subscribers and 97 videos, with the most viewed video being on Ecco the Dolphin: 262k+ views. It's not much, but I'm glad Jared is just doing something he enjoys. It's a niche channel, but with this, Twitch, and his let's play channel (which was just updated less than a day ago, having 240k+ subs) I'm sure he's just living his best life and I'm proud of him.

@6:40 *NOT* infamous, famous. The Putt-Putt games where, and still are A++ games.

It feels weird to put ProJared in the thumbnail alongside Jon and Jirard. I mean yeah he's the OTHER notable controversy from the group but at the end of the day his crime was being a bit horny and weird on the internet and then apologizing for abusing his power dynamics. Meanwhile Jon and Jirard are...actually really bad people.

I'm one of those loyal Continue? fans that pays to their patreon. definitely have loved them for about a decade plus now. I also adore how you only used old footage of them because they definitely look like dads/uncles now lmao.

I think this is really well done. Hits most of the important notes without dragging on or being too brief. I would've thought it would good to note some details like Heidi and Jared having an open relationship before their divorce or John most likely being drunk on that stream with destiny. Probably would've stretched the video too long, though.

Man, Continue has always been underrated.

That moment when you realize Hidden Block, the competing content group, technically lasted longer than Normal Boots did.

There was also Satchbag/Satchell Drakes joining at the first reunion and ProtonJon joining for the more recent one.

Interesting that you describe jon's statement as "controversial statements" and not quoting him openly espousing white supremacy. Like he straight up said he believes that the richest black people will commit more crimes than the poorest white people. Sooo uhh. Interesting you don't quote the man himself and then add an interview where you ask if he was unfairly targeted by left-leaning people. It's just an odd way to explain the situation, I understand you might not want to stoke arguments in the comments or might not have actually watched the livestream or read his article in Breitbart. The way you describe Jons controversy seems to give a lot of grace to a man who said that wanting a majority white country wasn't racist. Like... dude straight up argued for an ethnostate lol. And his apology for it was pathetic! So we can't even say that he just mispoke and recanted all of that.

I had literally never even heard of normal boots before, but i recognize all 3 people from their thumbnail and many of the people shown in the video from various scandals.....which is wild to consider how much they are overshadowed by their falls from grace

As someone who only ever watched PBG growing up this is pretty eye opening I genuinely had no clue this was going on behind the scenes

I didn't even know Chadtronic was in Normal Boots. I watched him years and years ago when I was in middle school. He seems like a genuine guy. Good for him.

Did you know gaming isnt a content farm since there focusing on more bigger scope videos

It is sad to see how Jared jumped to protect Jirard by doing exactly what was done to him (not researching, jumping into a bandwagon, spreading misinformation, etc.) and when the full call between Muta, Karl, and Jirard was published, one could hear how Jirard threw JonTron and ProJared under the bus.

This was so nostalgic. Thanks for this video

Man this is kinda sad because it just reminds me that nothing good lasts forever

This video comes off as a PR job for johntron, you should have included the clips of what he said.

awesome video, the vriska music during the continue? segment gave me huge whiplash though lmao

I could have sworn that 'BrutalMoose' was once part of Normal Boots too