Questionable Content XIX: Give Jeph Just A *Little* Credit, Here

[Ionathus]

Considering that “Aurelia hasn’t looked like Claire’s mom since her first appearance” is a complaint I’ve seen multiple times, it’s kind of funny to think of Jeph adding 4 very thin white lines to her hair in this appearance as his way of saying “seeeee? I can draw old people!!”

[Traab]

It took me some time to realize that wasnt claire inexplicably back already.

[Wraith]

I feel kind of sad at how blasé Momo is about her new chassis. I remember when she got her second one, she was literally begging Marigold for it and burst into grateful tears when she was told 'yes'.

Now its just gone without ceremony or event, because "I can reach shelves now". I feel like of all the AIs shown in the comic, its Momo who would have been the most sentimental and would have kept her old body.

[Rodin]

I feel kind of sad at how blasé Momo is about her new chassis. I remember when she got her second one, she was literally begging Marigold for it and burst into grateful tears when she was told 'yes'.

Now its just gone without ceremony or event, because "I can reach shelves now". I feel like of all the AIs shown in the comic, its Momo who would have been the most sentimental and would have kept her old body.

As with the rest of the Marigold crew we haven't been shown any of the intermediate events that make it a story.

We didn't see Marigold becoming a streamer.

We didn't see her becoming famous.

We haven't seen how Momo and Dale react to those changes.

We didn't see Marigold buy the house.

We haven't seen why Momo wanted a new body.

We haven't seen Momo going out and getting the new body. Or people's reaction to it.

-------

My biggest feeling about this portion of the cast is "Why are we seeing this scene?" Jeph hasn't cared enough about them to show the interesting parts of their storylines. Why should I care about them now when we revisit them to...talk about gacha games?

[tomandtish]

It took me some time to realize that wasnt claire inexplicably back already.

Yeah, another example of the characters becoming more similar as time moves on. There was a time where you couldn't tell Dora and Emily apart.

[theangelJean]

Weird question, but ... Today's under-comic text and Jeph's comment both talk about a real world person, and I don't know about this person (being not American). Since we don't talk about real world people here, where would be the best place to find out what specifically Jeph is talking about? Would I find it in one of the QC Reddits?

(I already looked up Wikipedia and Google and Google News - news from 7 hours ago doesn't look like it fits with Jeph's comments, news from 1 month ago maybe, not sure.)

[Johanny]

Not american either, but from what I can infer, it's a joke about the republican Ted Cruz stance on climate change

[Rodin]

With Ted Cruz it could be anything, but the most recent news appears to be that he made an extremely hypocritical tweet. Which I won't go into for obvious reasons.

At least Jeph kept it to the under-comic text I guess? With the way the comic is now I'm surprised the characters didn't stop to discuss it in a totally out-of-character fashion.

[Ionathus]

We should not discuss this person further due to real world reasons, but the reference is just a joke from the lighthearted comedy podcast MBMBaM (from awhile back I think; a year, maybe two?).

If you google Jeph’s caption, exactly as it appears, alongside the words “Griffin McElroy,” it’ll give you the answer you seek!

—-

Add my voice to those disappointed by how blasé Momo seems to be about her new chassis. Just another pastel human now, I guess.

[Beelzebub1111]

I'm sure that Ted Cruz got a real sad when he heard his favorite webcomic dissed him in the page notes /s

[KillianHawkeye]

I heard that if everyone just stops thinking about Ted Cruz, he'll cease to exist

[Ionathus]

Now *I* want a cookie :(


Also - I’m worried the story setup here is going to be “Marigold’s streaming audience were mean to her / Marigold needs to learn to not piss off the internet.” Which would be a phenomenally UNrelatable thing to cover when so many options for this setup (I.e. Marigold buys a house) have already been suggested in this thread.

[Beelzebub1111]

Also - I’m worried the story setup here is going to be “Marigold’s streaming audience were mean to her / Marigold needs to learn to not piss off the internet.” Which would be a phenomenally UNrelatable thing to cover when so many options for this setup (I.e. Marigold buys a house) have already been suggested in this thread.

She won't be graduated over a vanilla-ass take like "Gatcha games are predatory". especially after she built up an online persona of being abrasive and mean. Maybe if she said she was about to play a game set in a universe written by a problematic author that she enjoyed growing up, then she'll be bullied off the platform.

Maybe like...Champions of Xanth.

[Mechalich]

Also - I’m worried the story setup here is going to be “Marigold’s streaming audience were mean to her / Marigold needs to learn to not piss off the internet.” Which would be a phenomenally UNrelatable thing to cover when so many options for this setup (I.e. Marigold buys a house) have already been suggested in this thread.

I broadly agree. Marigold is now a pseudo-anonymous internet celebrity with a lot of money. That's certainly more common than it used to be, but it's still not the kind of thing most people can easily relate too. Also, this is another timeskip-related problem. This cannot possibly be the first controversy-generating thing that Marigold has ranted about online, nor as @Beelzebub1111 accurately noted, is it really controversial at all since everyone already knows gatcha games are predatory.

I mean, Marigold hired a known ex-con to be her business manager. At some point that information came to light and it would have lit off a massive online storm. That plotline would have been both more relatable and more meaningful.

[Beelzebub1111]

This cannot possibly be the first controversy-generating thing that Marigold has ranted about online

Good point. She absolutely gives off tonkatsu sinclaire vibes with her attitude.

The most controversial part of her take is "If you enjoy them, you're a dumb sucker" part of the rant rather than "You're being exploited." or "You're a victim." But it's not that far off base. Overall this controversy doesn't even need to be addressed. But the reaction to this statement? doesn't ring true to me at all. It's like someone heard about what internet controversy is all about second hand and now trying to guess at what would cause one and what the response would be. But he can't have her do anything ACTUALLY controversial because that would grey a character morally and we can't have that.

[Mechalich]

The most controversial part of her take is "If you enjoy them, you're a dumb sucker" part of the rant rather than "You're being exploited." or "You're a victim." But it's not that far off base.

Yeah, and as long as it's an 'in-character' bit of commentary it's just a bit of nasty humor.

Overall this controversy doesn't even need to be addressed. But the reaction to this statement? doesn't ring true to me at all. It's like someone heard about what internet controversy is all about second hand and now trying to guess at what would cause one and what the response would be. But he can't have her do anything ACTUALLY controversial because that would grey a character morally and we can't have that.

Well, the one thing I would give Jeph is that a pseudo-anonymous internet celebrity at Marigold's supposed level of fame - this is, somehow, one of the top ~25 streamer/vtuber personalities on the planet - is liable to have literally everything they post scrutinized to an almost absurd level. She's famous enough to have whole channels that do nothing but produce commentary about everything she does. So this sort of thing would spawn a whole bunch of noise within the specific sub-cultural space that Burger Oni occupies and might even leak out a little into the general press. 'Famous vtuber goes on epic rant about gacha games' is an excuse for a thousand media outlets to launch cheap think-pieces about gacha games (this has happened in the past regarding similar gaming celebs like Pewdiepie).

Of course, the nature of the extremely online news cycle is such that this will blow over incredibly fast. May's point about it jeopardizing Marigold's relationship with gacha game developers (and possibly anyone with similar microtransaction systems) is probably the most relevant bit.

[Traab]

I took this as not controversy but a standard thing that happens whenever something popular is done online. As an example, epic rap battles of history. Within hours of its release you will see dozens of people reacting to it, breaking the lyrics and music down, and debating on if this one sucks or is amazing. So this is actually fairly realistic. I actually took the last panel reaction as sarcasm. Its a pretty standard mix of agreement disagreement and outright robbing of content. If anything they might be shocked at the amount of responses her rant is getting. Its also a sign of her popularity that within the last hour we have at least 5 videos posted dealing with her latest rant. It means other content creators know her name draws views and are using that themselves to try and leech clicks.

[Ionathus]

Possible Jeph wants to do a controversy arc without touching anything actually political. Which I would appreciate because the only thing I want less than “Burger Oni internet controversy” is “REAL WORLD Burger Oni internet controversy”

[Cikomyr2]

Possible Jeph wants to do a controversy arc without touching anything actually political. Which I would appreciate because the only thing I want less than “Burger Oni internet controversy” is “REAL WORLD Burger Oni internet controversy”

Or he recently realized he wasted too much money on these games and just wanted a zany story about this, and hes making it up as he goes.

[Wraith]

I'd sure like to have seen Marigold's supposed rant in some kind of interweb-based visual comic form; if only the technology existed to show us the joke rather than describe it in hindsight later, but alas...

[theangelJean]

I'd sure like to have seen Marigold's supposed rant in some kind of interweb-based visual comic form; if only the technology existed to show us the joke rather than describe it in hindsight later, but alas...

We already did. May has integrated the virtual avatar software with her eye cams and just streamed Marigold's comment from the previous comic live.

As someone with no realistic concept of time and effort, even I have a vague idea of the time involved in making video content. These days any video about gaming will include clip examples, especially coming from someone who normally streams live. That takes scripting, recording and editing. Or did Marigold really just delete her game in spite, then release a bare stream-of-consciousness of herself ranting afterwards?

[Beelzebub1111]

Possible Jeph wants to do a controversy arc without touching anything actually political. Which I would appreciate because the only thing I want less than “Burger Oni internet controversy” is “REAL WORLD Burger Oni internet controversy”

This is kinda my point. He can't have "Burger Oni internet controversy" without "Burger Oni does something actually controversial" Because it would reflect poorly on marigold and Jeph doesn't want to risk his characters seeming like they could be bad people, even in a misunderstanding.

This page seems like a response to his own forums complaints about where they thought this was going and is either a left turn or to assuage them that this isn't what he's doing.

As far as house exploration goes, Is that a deck overlooking a lake or a balcony? They appear to be in the mountains? how high up are they? Mysteries abound with this house layout.

[Wraith]

Or did Marigold really just delete her game in spite, then release a bare stream-of-consciousness of herself ranting afterwards?

Marigold deleted her game out of spite, while also admitting that she was a hypocrite because she was still playing half a dozen other gatcha games at the same time.

Marigold streamed for X hours. I'm assuming there is a multiple-hour timeskip between those two comics, otherwise it implies that Marigold streams for an hour per day, or that Aurelia turned up and then sat around doing nothing for most of the day.

Marigold complains that she hates the internet for taking her perfectly normal words and twisting them into clickbait and reaction videos. Again, a small skip between Aurelia arriving and Marigold ending her stream - in a normal world, Aurelia would probably know Marigold's streaming schedule and deliberately arrived when she thought it was about to end, but I don't know if QC has anything so logical.

Presumably, the idea is that Marigold streamed for several hours and made a passing comment about the gatcha game that she had just quit playing, and then in between that comment and the end of her stream it supposedly blew up and "went viral" (despite those viewing numbers being pretty pathetic insofar by even C-tier youtubers' standards).

It implies that Marigold is so insanely popular and worthy of instant hot-take gratification that people are recording her stream as she is streaming, making reaction videos with them, then sending her links to watch during the same stream. I can't say that this doesn't happen, but it's a side of the internet that I'm truly glad to not be a part of. I think its also showing us just how unlikely and 'made up' Marigold's 'popularity' is; this is a Beyonce/Taylor Swift/Michelle Obama level of obsession happening to.... a niche vtuber who plays indie porno games?

[Gnoman]

It implies that Marigold is so insanely popular and worthy of instant hot-take gratification that people are recording her stream as she is streaming, making reaction videos with them, then sending her links to watch during the same stream. I can't say that this doesn't happen, but it's a side of the internet that I'm truly glad to not be a part of. I think its also showing us just how unlikely and 'made up' Marigold's 'popularity' is; this is a Beyonce/Taylor Swift/Michelle Obama level of obsession happening to.... a niche vtuber who plays indie porno games?

Technically we don't know how long passed between the stream and the videos going up - all she says in the immediately post-stream strip is that people in her Youtube comments are screaming at her. It can't be too long because there's still cookie left, but Marigold freaking out over this for an hour or two is believable. And there's been more than one major online tempest that's got going in that amount of time.

[Vinyadan]

The reaction is preposterous in speed and size, but the preposterousness of the Youtuber scene is kinda the point. It's similar to the Twitter trendwagon jumping, where hopping on a thread or controversy without actually having anything to say while trying to draw attention to yourself is the norm (similarly to the mechanics of certain tv shows).

Also, it's worth remembering that there is no demographic as loud and whiny as gamers Except maybe Star Wars fans.

Sure, it's a weak thing to face backlash for. But we can't have Marigold go full Nazi like real Youtubers do. It would be more Something Positive than Questionable Content. Also, the one "Face Backlash for Something you Said" story I can remember from QC was Winslow Gets A Body, which I really didn't like; but I admit that, in a social media enviroment where driving engagement makes good faith irrelevant, such a plot could have been more interesting, while telling us something about direct and indirect AI issue advocacy on the net.

What I wonder is how much the blowup for Marigold's words could reflect Jeph's experience as an Internet celebrity. I believe he has a few hundred thousand daily readers, and everything he writes gets dissected, analysed, and frequently dissed, not always in good faith.

[Mechalich]

I'd sure like to have seen Marigold's supposed rant in some kind of interweb-based visual comic form; if only the technology existed to show us the joke rather than describe it in hindsight later, but alas...

Yeah, this is like Roko's rant during the AI-labor rights arc. It's a case where it is extremely important to the plot to know exactly what was said during the epic rant, but the author refuses to tell the audience.

Specifically, did Marigold admit that she herself was playing and spending apparently a large amount of money on gacha games herself before condemning them? Because if she didn't, then she's guilty of some pretty massive hypocrisy that she deserves to be called out for. Victim-blaming a huge class of people as 'dumb suckers' if you are part of that class but don't admit to it is pretty bad. Gacha games are essentially a highly esoteric form of gambling, and if a celebrity went on a massive anti-gambling rant while was privately a huge poker addict, that would blow up in their face when the truth came out and deservedly so. By contrast, if Burger Oni included herself in the 'dumb sucker' category openly, circumstances are very different.

However, we don't know, which robs the scenario of functionally all of its impact.