Mechanical Cat Fish said:
This is incredibly difficult to answer properly, because if you speak out against Escapist material on their forums, you tend to get suspended.
That said, his last show concerning accountability had many, many good points, but the bottom line for me is he delivers them horribly badly. It feels like he's a robot that read the definition of sarcasm and cynicism in a book once, but can't quite wrap his head around it. His constant references to how awesome he is are obviously comical, but are played a bit too straight, and can come off as grating - that'd be why his following is so small.
His closest neighbor, in terms of what it seems he's trying to pull off and what's on Escapist, would probably be Yahtzee, and being compared to him isn't going to do Jim any good at all. Whereas Yahtzee has a wider emotive spectrum in his voice - that you can immediately tell when he's being deliberately sarcastic or cynical, Jim seems to deliver most of his lines sounding like a mid-90s British news anchor: kind of flat and factual, which doesn't fit his actual material well.
Of course, again, that isn't to say his last posting didn't hit on a
VERY important subject that I'd hope could be brought directly to the media powers behind the ridiculous nonsense. Good on him for that.
Amusingly, I was looking into being a radio personality for awhile, and with some top level help from an old giant around here, discovered that I also tend to read material like some mid 90's news robot, however when I talk normally, or adlib my whole presentation, it sounds properly engaging. Guess I'd sum it up as 'public speaking is hard, but speaking in public is easy.'
Choppaduel said:
He should have a column, not a show; the "show" distracts from his points & isn't entertaining.
Very, very this, in short. His material tends to be good, but the presentation of it is what's hurting it.
