#onionson

Why not Onision supporters? He’s way, way, WAY worse than Jon and he has a longer track record too

No shit Jon isn’t perfect dude, but he never broke the Mann Act nor did he film his wife having a mental breakdown and upload it instead of getting her help 🤷‍♀️

I’ve been getting a lot of submissions recently from people asking me what’s been going on with all of Onision’s new channels, so instead of responding to all of them individually, I’ve decided to make one giant post about it to outline what my thoughts on the subject are.

A couple of days ago, I responded to a post in which somebody was asking why Onision keeps creating new channels even though his old ones are dying. In the past couple of months alone, Greg has doubled his channel count from Onision, OnisionSpeaks, and UhOhBro, to those three plus three more: OnisionEncore, OnionSon, and now Onichan (and there may be more that I’m not aware of). I responded to the post by writing that I believed he was creating all of those new channels because he was stuck in the past, trying to relive his glory days by repeating the same actions and circumstances that catapulted him to YouTube infamy to begin with; because, as we all know, Greg is the kind of person who has a very narrow comfort zone, and as such he has a tendency to repeat the same patterns over and over again - not just with his channels or his video content, but also with his behavior and especially with his relationships. The pattern of idealizing, devaluing, and then discarding that he puts his friends and romantic partners though, the pattern of attacking content creators and even fans who dare to criticize or disagree with him, the pattern of saying/doing offensive things, receiving backlash for those things, acting contrite and apologetic in order to win back the loyalty and forgiveness of his fans (”See, look! He’s trying so hard to change! He’s admitting to his mistakes! He’s really trying this time, and the effort is all that matters!”), and then doing the same thing all over again from the beginning. The patterns in his behavior that we’ve all noticed, and which brought us here in the first place.

But I was thinking about it today and realized that there’s another reason why he’s making all of these new channels, too. It’s not just because he engages in a lot of repetitious behavior (although he does), or because he’s desperately trying to hold on to what little fame, fortune, and influence he has left (although he is); but it’s also because creating all of those new channels gives him a “valid” excuse to re-upload the same videos that he already has published on his main channels, thus garnering extra views (and a little bit of extra money) when fans click to watch his “new” uploads. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this is fraud, but he is representing his channels as being for new or previously unpublished material when really all he’s doing is using it as a dumping ground for all of his old videos so that he can double his profits. (I say “double”, but really he’s only making a fraction of what he used to off them, because the videos on his new channel are only getting like 16,000 views on average each.) 

Today, however, Onision announced that he was planning on doing something new with his channels. My understanding of what Greg is doing here is that it seems as though from now on (and if anybody knows more about this than I do, please correct me if I’m wrong), he will be releasing most of his videos through Patreon to paid fans only, except for what he publishes on Onichan. I suspect that he’s doing this in order to force their hand: he believes that if he makes it so that his fans have to choose between either never seeing his videos again, or paying a measly $0.49 per month (or else they’re a fake fan who lied about how much he meant to them, of course; and we all know how Onision feels about liars), then the ones who were previously unwilling to pay for it will pony up the cash to get access to his videos. We’ll have to wait and see how that works out for him, but I think he made a huge miscalculation here, for a couple of reasons. 1) He (again) chose to ignore the fact that his viewer demographic consists primarily of 14 to 17-year-old girls (most of whom do not have a job, let alone enough money to support him on a month-by-month basis), and 2) I think he has vastly over-estimated his popularity and the loyalty of his fans. This, combined with the fact that just earlier today he was trying to guilt trip his fans into giving him money (with his “If I really liked a YouTuber and claimed that they’d “saved my life”, then I’d be more than willing to spend $0.49 on them. The fact that you won’t proves that you’re not a real fan” bald-faced attempts at emotional manipulation on Twitter today), indicates to me that he’s desperate, is getting ready to privatize his content, and is pulling out every card in the book to try and get his viewers to pay him - even if that means he has to bully, manipulate, insult, and guilt-trip his own impressionable teenage fans in the process. On the plus side, at least this clearly proves one thing that people have been arguing about for years: he never cared about his fans, he was never doing YouTube just because he enjoyed it (despite the fact that he accused many other YouTubers of being in it only for the money), and he never cared about whether or not his videos helped people - even for all of his claims of being “pro-feminism” and “body positive”. 

But probably the biggest mistake that he’s made in doing this is, in my opinion, related to the fact that he refuses to admit that his viewers are primarily teenagers (though he has no problem with doubling that demographic as his dating pool) - and I believe that this miscalculation on his end may ultimately result in him permanently destroying his own channel within two or three years at best. Let me explain why I think this. 

In refusing to acknowledge that his fans are mostly teenagers, he is missing out on recognizing the reason why they’re so young to begin with: and that’s because as his fans grow older, they tend to grow out of finding his brand of juvenile, sophomoric humor amusing. What we found funny at 14 or 15 is not what we still find funny at 20 or 21 - for the most part, our sense of humor is developed and refined over time, and we begin to lose interest in the type of comedy that amused us when we were young. At this point you’re probably thinking, “Why is this information relevant, and what does it have to do with the success of his channels?” The problem here is that in his incredible arrogance, his black-and-white thinking, and his lack of foresight and lateral creativity of thought, he is only thinking of the short-term gains of forcing fans to give him money in order to view all of his content, but ignoring the broader implications and potential consequences of doing so. Since such a significant portion of his fan base is so young, and since they tend to outgrow his humor and the drama surrounding his private life, by removing his content from YouTube and making it available exclusively through Patreon or his website, he is essentially removing the free advertising of his channel that YouTube provides for him just by being a member of the website - effectively cutting off his supply of new, young fans coming on to YouTube and discovering his content. This is the reason why his demographics have consistently remained in the 14-17 range even though he’s been on YouTube for over ten years: because instead of his older, loyal fans aging alongside him, instead they are losing interest in his content as they mature, only to be replaced with newer and younger fans who likely discovered him either because one of their favorite content creators mentioned his name in one of their videos, or because his channel showed up in their “recommended” sidebar. Either way, the only reason they discovered him was because he was on YouTube.