When he sticks to game reviews, or is in a relaxed mood doing videos with friends, he's a very good content creator, and an excellent critic. His struggle to main professional distance from his subject...pursued to the point where it is occasionally tiresome...is admirable. He has a good analytical mind, he is erudite and has a voice made for radio, and he has a strong comprehensive knowledge of the medium he covers.
When he strays into personal opinion or politics, he becomes a wildly mixed bag depending on how closely your views align to his and thus how predisposed you might be to cheer on someone who is basically losing their shit. He seems incapable of "rising above the fray", and will wade in swinging at even the hint of provocation. He seems allergic to negative feedback (constructive or otherwise, he's gone off the rails at some of the mildest shit imaginable) and occasionally holds his audience in pretty open contempt. Given the nature of YouTube comments, this is most likely a learned behavior over many years of coping with and wrangling idiots, but it doesn't make it any more palatable. Given his thin skin and apparent propensity to take things personally, he appears to be well past the stage at which interacting directly with his audience is wise.
And I guess that's the crux of his problem, because that intimate relationship between content provider and audience is part of what made YouTube "celebrities" so compelling. They were more in touch with their audience and their demands, we had direct access to their personality. Rather than the more "removed" voice of an editorial or written review, they were like a buddy. And the way they present that content shows they're aware of that dynamic and attempt to capitalize on it, despite Biscuit's sensible insistence that we are not his friends and he wants nothing to do with us on a personal level.
That has to a difficult line to walk, and I sympathize...I wouldn't want to be in charge of figuring out how.
