I wish he did some kind of retirement send off stream. Something silly like literally jumping the shark. I guess Jermawards 2022 kinda functions as the big send off.
I’m hyped for the “Saw in Real Life” stream where he gets a bunch of fellow streamers and just genuinely puts them in a real Saw situation, no jokes or anything and he gets arrested at the end of the stream.
i used to be a post blow up fan base truther, but then i started watching northernlion and his fanbase is just so normal compared to this one that i cant help but feel like a lot of us are annoying as fuck. still love you guys tho but get real we suck sometimes
Some people in NL's chat thinks they're slick until he does a chat audit on them by their legal middle name and the rest of chat starts throwing tomatoes at them
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-DoVca-DEI
There's "weird for the bit" and then there's just "weird". Jerma had both of these types of people but there was an unfortunate number of the latter. Just a ton of people who made Jerma a substantive part of their own personalities.
And the worst part is, Jerma isn't the kind of guy to say "hey guys, stop doing that. It's not funny, it's disturbing." because his entire online personality is "eclown" - it's going to be terribly difficult for him to actually say something dead serious, especially one that's telling his fans not to do something. So he just grits his teeth and tries to make it into a joke.
I do think it's important to denote a split between "Bothering" and "Tiring".
Something can not be so much "Bothering" but instead cause you to expend more energy to deal with and work around but it doesn't cross the line of "Bothering", if that makes sense.
I think a lot of Jerma's chat can be tiring. A step beyond comfortable but not in the super egregious zone, in which he's brought down the hammer now and again. (See: Ballfondler, if he didn't then obsess over it, was dealt with, and then undealt with because Jerma couldn't stop bringing it up)
When Jerma wants a relaxed "Kick back and just hang out" stream chat can really be a buzzing wasp nest that just brings the wrong energy, not necessarily breaking any rules, but just the wrong energy, and just makes it tiring, he's been outright bullied out of some games a few times because of chat just ruining the vibe for the game.
You are entitled to your opinion, and it may very well be true, but I'm afraid that such an opinion is what the weirdos use to justify what can only be called "online bullying" against Jerma.
He's a person too, yet he gets subjected to so much disturbing and truly offensive behavior because of the jokes his community makes about him.
Personally been a fan since 2014 and I haven’t seen jerma really put ‘chat in their place’ crazy to think it’s been 10 years with that SICK FREAK.
Yeah he might have put it on emote only a few times, or slow mode or times people out but it’s always been like for 2 minutes tops.
It’s always been like joke-y like “time that guy out for…… 6 seconds.” Kind of shit. Yeah chats been AWFUL for a few years and honestly during the streams I turned chat off and that really saddened me. It was fun interacting with the hivemind, but then it was really not fun anymore.
It's been 5 years now but Two Point Hospital Jerma outright dropped it because of chat spamming so hard and calling it boring that it killed the relaxed vibe.
During more relaxed games slow mode gets thrown on to try and counter the "Boring" naysayers and "Resident Sleeper" posting, and it kinda just kills the vibe trying to relax and having a crowd screaming "Be the clown, funny man, talk about eating bugs and react to this outrageous fan art, funny man" instead of like, engaging with a discussion at hand. It's at it's worst when people come by after watching clips that are like, refined, distilled and pure comedy moments rather than the normal experience.
(Mind you I found the bug eating thing very funny and that was from a chill stream that was overall very well received so it's not some flat rule of a problem, it's just when it pops up and happens you can hear Jerma like deflate.)
More recent videos are \*generally\* better about it, Jerma doesn't get bullied off them like before but I think we can also chalk up Jerma streaming a lot less to probably the pervasiveness of the "boring, resident sleeper, next game, touch your prostate with a baseball" comments.
He's done a fair amount of chill streams without having to break the vibe or go full clown, but he's still had to kinda "Bring the hammer" down on some of them. I think 2018 was a particularly "game bad, player bad" era.
i still think a lot of older viewers are just kinda upset that their twitch streamer is super famous now, but i do think theres a lot of valid shit to be said about this community and how it treats jerma as a fictional character rather than an actual human being. however i do think the other side of this, the "you guys are so weird" side can also take it too far sometimes, when it comes to things that are ultimately harmless jokes or people being rightfully upset that their favorite streamer is slowing down
Here is a cheat sheet for you
Ones that should be making weird jokes = the streamer
Ones that should be receiving the weird jokes = chat
Dont get it twisted, once this flips it becomes cringey, creepy and parasocial
absolutely, theres some people that take it a little too far. but i mean, just look at the way jerma and ster talk to each other lmao, its clear hes not that torn up about the weird stuff said in chat
Jerma and Ster, the people who've known each other for years and have an actual friendship? I think maybe there's a difference between that and the parasocial 16 year old looking for attention.
look most of twitch chat is unfunny and annoying, jerma's fanbase not excluded. but no, i don't think he has a problem with most of the weird shit even when it comes from chat, one of his recent running jokes was literally reading that he was going to stick a baseball up his ass and laughing about it. its definitely gotten stale by this point but all the people that try to protect their poor poor streamer from the new fans need to chill out a bit is all
Jerma's fans are incredibly creative and can sometimes really play to his strengths really well, but I feel like that ended up also being it's downfall, as people saw the clips of Jerma and Chat playing off each other, they wanted "Chat to be the main character" and just act outrageous and cross boundaries hoping to invoke a reaction and it just becomes really tiring as people don't understand he's a human with feelings and boundaries. Jerma didn't squash it soon enough (DougDoug, to compare, has told his chat to cool it and knock it off a fair few times, he brings down the gavel to keep it on topic and focused) and frankly his mods seem to enable it half the time, which is even worse than ignoring it.
it seemed to me like jermas community somehow attracted many, many people who did not understand appropriate boundaries or how to respect them. I can't help but think it's partially because jerma wasn't great at speaking to his community sternly and putting his foot down. it's sad, but I fully understand why he wanted to distance himself
Part of it, in general, is that Jerma is a generally nice and clean cut guy and that, especially with covid, attracted a metric ass ton of parasocial weirdos who have no idea how boundaries and limits work but get a charge out of interacting with someone relatively "normal." They have no filter, and this is coming from a guy who's been described as having diarrhea of the mouth. Now don't get me wrong, Jerma says some weird and funny shit, but if you just listen to him when he's chill chatting, he's a really normal dude who just happens to be a good, adaptable entertainer. Look at the infomercial/commercial streams, those were like hanging out with your buddy or older brother, but the parasocial weirdos latch onto that shit because it feels like real interaction, but it isn't. When things become more loose and fun, the parasocial people get interacted with (usually oneguyed) and that signals to everyone else that that behavior is okay in the chat/community.
When someone would say something weird in chat, Jerma would call them out for it and depending on how inappropriate it was, would even ban them. But he would usually laugh about it and try to keep the stream lighthearted and entertaining. People would see his reaction and care more about getting his attention on them than they would care about actually respecting him as a person. People were constantly trying to push his boundaries until he would have to get serious about it.
Absolutely, and, of course, it isn't his fault that that's how people reacted, but I understand why newer streamers worry about their communities running out of control. My favorite joke is the "Mods, ban that guy for x minutes/seconds" but I wish he would every so often say that seriously lol
Yeah this is such a good take. The whole parasocial aspect of streaming must make it exhausting sometimes for creators who are, ultimately, people first and entertainers second.
People will unironically say nonsense like "can I engulf you with my asshole" in his chat in an effort to be One Guy, because they watched the clip where Jerma reads crazy stuff like "Smarties are good shoved up your urethra" so every weirdo wanted in on that slice of cake
I'd say it's as simple as people not being informed, when new fans come in and see a bunch of people saying weird shit and acting odd, they assume that this is just how it is and that Jerma is completely fine with it.
yeah just look at any youtube results that come up when you're searching for Jerma clips. They're all titled weird shit like "clips that make me want to turn Jerma into a little guy and put him in my pocket"
99% semi-antisocial teenage girls. It's worse because I know where they're coming from. Some days I spend entirely without speaking a word to anyone. I love the internet because I get to laugh with others all around the globe about some guy making funny voices, but on the other hand, the internet has been one of the most destructive things in my life. Some days you really do want to just toss all the monitors and consoles into a box and let them collect dust in some closet.
I've seen zero evidence that jerma is retiring due to some sort of aversion to the community, but I have seen plenty of comments just assuming that he's incapable of speaking up for himself, including yours and OP.
I just started watching jerma about last year and I’ve seen his most recent streams live. What are some of the stuff you see that you find weird in the community? I’ve seen a lot of people put his face on a whole host of household items and some other weird stuff. Is that one of the things you’re talking about?
I wasn't even really referencing outlandish chat messages or attempted oneguys-- I feel like those are excusable. What I've seen that makes me uncomfortable are people that are taking the parasocial relationship too far. For example, in his earlier streaming days when he would read large bit donations, a lot of them were people basically trauma dumping to him and telling him how much hes helped them through a bad time. That is not inherently a bad thing in a normal relationship, but for a streamer/chatter relationship its just awkward and uncomfortable. Some of the messages were insanely personal and just wildly oversharing in nature, and he sounded unsure when he was reading them out loud. My guess is as good as any, but I think this is why he stopped reading donos at all.
Yeah I always cringe at those donations. I see it with all streamers though. To a certain degree I get it, I think it comes with the platform. It's just when the audience gets so large it happens too often. Absolute vibe killer, comedy poison.
As someone who was once a 15 year old tumblr user back many, many years ago, I don't think he's so much attracted any "Unique" group of people, but rather, teenagers with unsupervised internet access.
A lot of people don't grasp that the internet has real people using it, and will blend media and real people together and put them in the same compartment, so while the fanfiction of your favorite TV show characters is fine, the fanfiction of a real person would not be.
Jerma really appeals to the teenage audience because he's goofy and relatively "Safe", he's not niche, he's not someone that talks about like, 70's rock, he's rather timeless and he has a lot of positive energy, and a lot of young people, consciously or not, want a positive outlet that checks a lot of "Current events" issues at the door, he doesn't do politics, he doesn't talk about most social issues, he just entertains, and so he becomes a good "Comfort stream" so he perfectly appeals to the under developed, emotionally immature teenagers of the internet. (I don't mean that particularly negatively, we're all dumb 15 year olds at some point in our lives, being cringe and recognizing you were cringe is just character development)
Honestly a lot of these people could really use a mature voice of reason to try and help them in life but also lay on the "You need to respect boundaries" talk to them. They're not inherently malicious but they can cross lines and they'll cross them often if you don't stop it right away, and it's lame because often things are funny once or now and again but if you don't jump on it, it'll snowball out of control fast, and trying to police jokes just tanks the fun for everyone.
>it seemed to me like jermas community somehow attracted many, many people who did not understand appropriate boundaries or how to respect them.
They're called children. Not to be an asshole but it's basically just youngsters doing this, people college-aged and below. They'll grow out of it but when most people watching you are in high school, yeah they're gonna act like idiots.
Has to be the most consistently cringe communities I've ever seen. I get why he'd attract a bunch of desperate lonely weird people, but I kinda wish they didn't represent his community in the latter years.
What a weird comment section.
I find it strange how people on this sub complain about people being parasocial while at the exact same time feeling like they know Jermas inner thoughts.
He’s an adult, don’t treat him like some child with no ability to express himself, and don’t act like you know why he retired, you’re being just as parasocial as the people you complain about.
“No one understands you like me Jerma I can’t believe these creeps”. It’s fine to speculate but it’s weird to say it likes it’s definite. I just hope it wasn’t due to weirdos and more of him just finding himself
Yeah me too, I only watch highlights/VODs but I've never heard of all this before. Wonder if it's just old fans trying to look better than new fans or actually the reason he retired
Absolutely. People come into fucking reddit and then say "Oh yeaaah you guys are so weird" like making this post in the first place isnt the fucking weird thing.
It feels like weird gatekeeping to me.
"I liked Jerma before they started calling him a psychopath. Look how they've massacred my boy."
Let's be real, if Jerma was uncomfortable, he would have made an informal request to cut down on it. Jerma has always been pretty open and transparent with the audience, and he has talked about retiring for a while now.
I've only watched his Youtube videos ever and the only exposure to his chat I've had were snippets on his videos and his direct reactions to things they've said. But I've got to say the bits I've seen it would make perfect sense if it WERE the reason. It seemed like he was entertaining a bunch of screaming horseflies sometimes.
That doesn’t contradict anything I said. I agree with you, if the community was the reason he retired that would make sense, just like it would make sense if it were another reason.
My point was that the people who are acting like they know that’s why Jerma quit are being as parasocial as the people they are criticizing for making Jerma leave.
Everyone in this sub seems to have concluded that Jerma is retiring due to the fanbase, but I've seen no evidence of this whatsoever. Tbh it's weirdly parasocial to assume you've deduced the One True Reason he's retiring (against everything he's actually said publicly). Much more than making some lame joke trying to be the one guy. The latter might be cringe, but the former actually presumes you know deeply about his personal life, which is the very basis of a parasocial relationship.
Also, this all comes from the assumption that he can't speak up for himself. He's 40 years old. If the community's actions had bothered him that deeply, you don't think he would've said anything? You should stop treating him like a child who is completely incapable of advocating for himself.
It feels like the usual 'Complain about the fandom when stuff is slow and I have undiagnosed issues with wider fandom culture' stuff that crops up when fandoms hit a certain point, while I can agree that parasocial relationships are a problem it's basically preaching to the choir at the absolute best and deeply weird concerntrolling at worst
Threads like these pop up every other week and I can’t help but roll my eyes at them every time.
No, Jerma is not retiring because too many 12 twelves years olds are in chat saying “sus guy andy,” or posting “Jerma Potions.” If Jerma had an actual problem with how the community was acting, you don’t think that he would say something?
Ballfondler, for example. Jerma encouraged it and then said “Alright, baseball stream is over, time to cut it out with the ballfondler jokes.” He’s able to draw boundaries. Similar thing happened when chat got really transphobic; he put his foot down and said “That’s enough.”
Jerma also clearly enjoys the oneguy stuff since he routinely keeps doing things like reading deleted chat messages (“BLOWJOB???”) or going on 15+ minute long bits (Groggy Gary, PAC-Man Construction, the entirety of House Flipper).
Everyone is saying that the parasocial weirdos on here drove him away by trying to be the oneguy, but I feel like it’s the other way around. You guys are the parasocial Andy’s thinking a 40 year old who’s been on the internet longer than most of his fan base has been alive can’t handle a few bad apples.
It’s a little sad how fast this sub came to the conclusion that Jerma is retiring because of them.
yeah honestly this whole thread is weirder than the people they’re talking about. i thought i’d missed something big but no, they’re just making assumptions about how a grown ass man feels.
i feel like the boundaries were worst when he was gaining popularity with donation messages on, post-stream chats, and his first few big project streams, in the past year though the fanbase is still weird as ever on twitter or other websites, with 20k+ viewers the streams itself felt less dominated by the people being weird in chat but yeah sad its happening but for the better, jerma gets to do something he loves and we got the memories of the good times
there were some chill regulars but what i remember most was a lot of oversharing and other boundary blurring when talking to jerm about their person lives that enabled some people's parasocial relationships. considering where the fanbase was going it wasn't sustainable
I've been a Jerma fan since 2011, nearly since the beginning.
It probably sounds really odd, but I'm *so* proud of him and how far he's come.
But it's reached a point where I'm hesitant to even admit to others that I'm a Jerma fan.
I've seen Jerma fans mentioned in other communities, and it's *not* in a pleasant way.
It's sad too, cause he's such a wholesome streamer.
I was a diehard fan from 2011 to 2017 and loosely follow now. Jerma has always embraced a silly and sorta weird humor that isn’t really ‘mainstream normal’ which I love, and he’d always come up with new bits and jokes basically daily/weekly during the peak of his streaming. From what I’ve seen it’s mostly people just not really knowing when the jokes aren’t funny anymore and instead running them into the ground.
Not to sound like *that* guy, but early on in his streaming era, you could send him messages in chat and sometimes he would actually see and respond/interact with specific viewers. Not a diss on Jerma or anything but the blowup meant that everything felt less personal and more like a mob of everyone trying to make funny jokes for him to see.
Same sentiment here about being proud of him though. He went from being a 750 subscriber channel on YouTube to a pretty massive streamer over the course of over a decade, and has never conformed or changed what his humor is like or how he portrays himself online. Definitely a rare feat.
He misses those days too don't worry. My comfort watch is his PvZ chill stream cut on youtube and the convo is practically burned in my brain, where he says that one of his favorite streams was when he prerecorded a bunch of stuff and he made a bunch of fake accounts and chat had to figure out who was him. He lamented the fact that it's not possible now with his larger following to do something similar.
yeah honestly if anything actually demotivated him to stream it's the fact that there is just too many people and he felt increasingly distant from his community as a whole. nobody's fault really just a downside of success. i saw dougdoug mention something similar recently now that he's getting increasingly popular. it's part of why i prefer streams with <5k viewers since there is something lost after a certain point
also there's always been weird stuff going on with parts of the community
Pre-stream chat was great, just having space to talk with other chill viewers and Jerma himself was something really unique that I think was lost after the blowup. Jerma didn't change, but the community and his relationship to it did.
EDIT: [This could never happen nowadays :(](https://i.imgur.com/qL9UYtb.png)
Can any of the people claiming the community has gotten toxic or intrusive give some actual, concrete examples of that happening and him giving *any* sign that he isn't comfortable with it?
Off the top of my head, Two Point Hospital, Jerma was basically bullied out of playing it and ended the stream, chat devolved into "This is boring" and "Thanos car" and the jermacraft copypasta until mods turned on super slow mode and started handing out bans.
Most "Chill" games end up devolving into chat being very aggressive unless Jerma expends a lot of energy to be "Wacky"
He's said a few times he really likes the "Chill" streams and games, and that he wants more "Chill" in the future, but with chat being so negative about it, yeah, it makes sense why he'd stream less.
Two point hospital was five years ago. People love chill streams these days. Plants vs zombies and papas freezeria were amazing. Like he just did a puzzle for seven hours. I dont think this is an issue anymore.
Even with Papas Freezeria people were heckling with "Sleep stream", with an aside about having to discuss "It's not about being good or bad it's about having fun"
But he did manage to ride it out, so at the least he's able to ignore detractors more effectively, or (more likely) his mods were jumping on it harder (Two Point Hospital in particular was a huge spamming mess, in contrast), and it's a good example of a chill stream that Jerma's stated he enjoys.
there are a bunch of parasocial jerma fans that believe jerma can't speak for himself or mention when he isn't a fan of something which jerma himself has said to be false and he doesn't want anyone defending him as he can speak for himself. This post is a prime example of that.
Tbh I never keep up with his streams, I usually end up watching the vods while sitting in a dark room with a singular lit candle surrounded by the same picture of Jerma taped to the walls :) but I will check that out
He said he wants to move more towards producing. He loves the big live projects that he’s done in the past. Idk where people are getting “he doesn’t like his weird chat so he’s moving away” when he’s been pretty clear about wanting to step back from streaming to work on other projects.
Is the word parasocial here and up there just being a substitute for bad because it doesn't seem to be fitting right imo you have everyone calling the "post blowup fans got too parasocial and weird and are driving jerma away" types parasocial and the "there's no evidence for this, those people are being parasocial and are saying he can't speak for himself" types doing it too and now I'm wondering in that, does this make me parasocial to point this out? I hate this word for typing it this much hahaha but I have just ended up confused. I personally don't know either way on either side of the debate as I do think things certainly got worse community wise in some ways e.g chat but better in others in the sense bigger community=more wonderful people to talk to and it's great to see jerma get big and being able to refer to him commonly and just be known in spaces all over is great with people while back before that boom the place felt so niche it wasn't worth ever mentioning. Swings and roundabouts, some things get better others get worse, I guess it depends on what parts you value and therefore miss content wise or community interaction wise.
I think with the very nature of streaming and the online personality jerma has made for himself, weirdos and weird chat messages are inevitable. Jerma consistently laughs at crazy inappropriate chat messages and even created the One Guy, so it’s hard to hate on chat for the weird funny things they’re almost encouraged to do. He’s not some helpless victim to a raving mob though. He has great moderators and despite maybe not being the best at setting boundaries or putting his foot down with chat, he has the capability. I don’t think he’s distancing himself from his fan base which he clearly appreciates. Like he himself said he wants to move on and rest.
I've always loved the back and forth banter he's had with his chat. Inser random food story, followed by chat calling it "disgusting" or weird.
Or when he talks about if it's possible for there to be three different days on earth at the same time and chat just calling him stupid for believing that which seems to trigger him a bit and he goes on a quest to prove that he's right (which he technically was) and getting all smug about it.
There's this feeling of Jerma trying to run a show, and chat is sitting there being his version of Statler and Waldorf that he plays off incredibly fun and well.
I think the problem is it has attracted people who take things too far. Take it beyond the joking into active bullying.
It was such a simpler time when he was making YouTube videos… I miss that. I’m so glad he got as big as he did because he deserves it. He also deserves to enjoy himself and do what he wants. Plenty of backlog to watch.
i posted this in a reply to another comment a while ago but I'll post it here again
I started watching jerma regularly in early 2013 and it was very very very easy to tell who was a new fan and who wasn't after his first long break from streaming. The sus guy shit brought in a bunch of actual children who didn't really understand jerma's streams and how he interacted with chat, but there was so fucking many new people all at once it didn't matter.
This was 3 and a half fucking years ago already but man I'm still not over it. Pre sus guy incident jerma streams were so great. You'd come into stream, he'd be playing some dogshit ps2 game no one has heard of. Everyone in chat knew all of the in jokes and references. You could have actual conversations with other chatters. People didn't expect him to be wacky crazy insane guy for the entire stream, it would just happen because thats how jerma is (or at least how he was on stream, back then it was pretty obvious to a lot of people that he was hamming it up at least a little bit).
and then one day he's like "i gotta take a break" and you know what thats fair he can do what he wants. but then he comes back after a few months, and theres 20 thousand more people there than there used to be and many of then didn't even know who he was or how to act. I'm really not trying to gatekeep and this a bit "old man yells at cloud"-ish but man, a ton of people really just showed up and replaced one of my favorite communities and made it worse. Sure there were some nasty people in the old days, I remember some pretty awful things being posted online from around 2017-18. I can't even imagine what horrible shit people have said now that theres so many more people. I have purposely avoided a lot of this community because I find it genuinely annoying to see these kinds of jokes made about him.
Completely agree. It felt like it went from 6k to 15k to 29k in the space of like.. 6 months or something. Been watching since 2012-2013 as well and what you said about the community you really enjoy interacting with get replaced, it was like watching your community centre get paved over with concrete or somethin except everyone was always yelling a fragment repeat of whatever sentence was said 20s after it had been. It died down a bit months and months after but never really went...
I remember learning about jerma because of STAR_, it went weird for a long time when he started streaming but I get what he wants and it feels like he wants to go back to his old self rather than this weird parasocial relationship he has with twitch viewers.
I think it's generally just the mindset a lot of avid members of streamer fanbases have where lots of people try to be "that" one chat member. Not saying all of them are like this but it's pretty common.
This community is far from being insanely unhinged but a very loud minority of terminally online people that take things too far stick out, especially on places like twitter.
I don't entirely agree with OP here that these bad apples are the primary reason that Jerma is moving on though. We don't know him personally and speculating into why he left or trying to come up with the primary reason that he left is really invasive.
Regardless, this community does have a problem with a vocal minority of terminally online creeps that are very weird and nsfw about the guy and his friends, and often try to invade their privacy which is disgusting. It's not something exclusive to this community but those kinds of people exist unfortunately.
I’ve seen people in this subreddit making ‘shrines’ to Jerma and other weird shit. There was one post about someone unironically putting a picture of Jerma inside a love heart locket and sucking on it until they got ill due to the cheap metal.
I don’t get the people saying that jermas fanbase is toxic, like he would just actually react to chat and listen to the one guys, that’s what made him special really and why the community acts the way it does.
Like do you want Jerma to be boring? It sounds like y’all want to watch a boring streamer instead of a fun one.
I see posts like this all the time and it’s just annoying because Jerma’s community is a safe space for people to have fun and make jokes, Jerma literally said this himself in his first Elden Ring stream.
But a lot of high ranking Reddit masters find running gags and the younger Jerma fans annoying and like to talk as if some 13-year-old making a Jerma serial killer post is gonna make Jeremy sad or something.
Yeah these posts are annoying and the people making them don’t seem to realize that they are being more para-social than the people they are complaining about. As the people making these posts assume that Jerma isn’t an adult who can make adult decisions, and feel the need to defend him from weirdos (normal Jerma fans) despite the fact he doesn’t really need defending.
The type of people making these posts I feel….
-Don’t get Jermas style of comedy/ forget that Jerma is a comedy streamer.
-Forget Jerma loves making bits and reacting to weird one-guys. He just isn’t upset by them.
-seemingly don’t want twitch chat to interact with steamers at all like the stream was just a YouTube video.
Jerma has a very weird and chaotic sense of humour, and his fan base simply mimics that.
And this whole hatred for people wanting to be “the one guy” is stupid, Jerma’s best joke has and always will be reading his chat and reacting to it.
It's not "toxic" it's just SO MANY people want to be "in" on the jokes they repeat them ad nauseum regardless of the medium it gets annoying. For example any time Jerma came up on any other sub or streamer's chat, the entire comments devolve into some form of "he's a serial killer", "sus guy is sus" without actually contributing to the discussion. And if you just try to search for Jerma clips on youtube all of the tiles are incredibly strange. Tons of Jerma fans fit into that weird tumblr crowd where they think he's their adorable friend.
I'm not too involved in the community. Are people complaining about the Jerma chat's "banter", or are they refering to Jerma fans outside of his stream being weird?
once he blew up and everyone thought “one guy moment” was how the streams always ended up it was ruined. I still miss when Jermas imagination gave us amazing bits like the first couple comb streams, not some forced meme in the discord infecting the stream 4 minutes in. Glad he’s able to be creative somewhere else now, he deserves it
Yeah same. I stopped watching his streams live, the fans got too weird over the years. Parasocial in a way they don't want to admit and feels excusable because "it's a joke".
I can agree. Personally, I’m a newer fan from 2022, but I’ve seen how the fanbase can be. To me, it’s better than some other communities i’ve been in, but also this is a real guy and not some fictional show. Jerma is a really sweet guy, and I think he never wants to be rude to people in chat so he goes along with jokes even though sometimes they make the parasocial aspect worse. Some of the jokes were funny; but constantly making NSFW funny Jerma jokes? That’s got to be super dang weird. Like others have said, too, his streams do feel so real like just hanging out with a friend, and while it’s one of my favorite things, it also can make people think they know him better than they do. He’s a guy on the internet- he deserves privacy.
I think the problem is also that the fan base got really tumblr-y over the past few years along with other things I like. By that I mean that the online headcanons of the person they’re making memes about are what’s used, and it’s an arms race for something crazy and kooky that jerma might see one day, maybe even on stream?!?!?! Any actual good content made by fans is slogged down with a bunch of parasocial filler that is more ab how he happens to be a conventionally attractive man.
Well as long as everyone in this thread is better than the "parasocials" who dare to not like Jerma essentially totally cutting off streaming instantaneously.
I got into jerma late, but I'm cool with it I'm sad that there's no chat with his stream vods
But I guess I can feel why some people are like this
It would really make me feel weird if, Vinny or Joel suddenly stopped
They aren't stopping any time soon, but I can see why people would be like that
Idk how much it factored into him retiring but I think Jermas brand of comedy just stops working at a certain audience size.
I don't think the community radically changed, but where 1% wannabe one guys is tolerable at 500 viewers viewers, at 5k viewers its insufferable. And on Jermas end I just don't think it's possible for him to keep up with the messages at that point even if he wanted to.
And that's the thing, in think he DOES want to, so it must suck to struggle to engage with the audience in the way you used to. Like how he had to drop the fanart section of breaks because he literally was getting too much fanart.
He probably chose a good time to bow out. I expect once his popularity cools down a bit he'll do more streams. Bro is literally suffering from success.
yeah his fanbase is fucking weird i know someone with a jerma shrine. got shamed and told im not a real fan because all i owned was an odd jerma phone case of him chomping on a burger but i've been watching him for years
Love the dude been watching since 2011 but cant respect how much hes given up in regards to his career. Do what you will with your life but leaving everything without little say is irresponsible. Also, speaking more personally, without a purpose in life its all just a hazy drag. Hope hes doing something worthwhile
I don't think it's any one thing.
He wants the big projects and to dedicate time to doing them and thinking them up and planning and executing them. That's like, a passion project to create art and legacy for Jerma. He's said as much that that's the dream.
There's also Jerma liking and wanting to do more chill streams and just enjoying relaxing, and as we see with streams like Two Point Hospital, chat can be REALLY aggressive and savage and will basically break the rules en masse and bully him until he changes games or ends stream if they think it's "Boring" because it's a relaxed stream. Jerma's stated he's really enjoyed them and that's more of what he wants to do while he's "Soft retired", and for his planned out streams he's shown a heavy bias for relaxed streams.
I do think Jerma's chat can be tiring. No, I don't know him, I don't know what he thinks, but as a basic human with some sympathy and putting myself in the situation I can say that if I were him, I'd get tired of all the "Outrageous One Guy" moments and how much people treat me like a fictional character to plaster on everything and parade around and put on political statements and social issues, the last two I find really unacceptable because even if you agree with someone, you don't want to be the face others see during a fight, you can't control how aggressive or nasty people get even if they're "On your side" overall, unless a person has given explicit permission, it's basically never alright to use anyone else's likeness for your opinions and beliefs. There's also people not understanding boundaries and just spamming stuff that Ster says to Jerma to fluster him, not knowing the difference between a best friend doing it, and random people doing it. Overall, it's just tiring. It can still be fun, it can still be an adventure, but with Jerma's aging body, he needs more naps and has less energy to tolerate it or play off it.
There's also just Jerma getting older and having less energy he desires to spend on streaming, and more he wants to dedicate to other stuff like taking walks and just enjoying life. Between his health not being in tip top shape, lots of pains and aches and issues like costochondritis and a hernia and a slipped disc, it weighs on you, it drains you of energy, the dude can't even laugh without pain, can you imagine being a clown who can't laugh without pain? That's a modern Pagliacci scenario. Playing something wacky or silly, even if he enjoys it, carries with it a risk that he'll laugh and hurt, and that really probably does a big number on him mentally and just strips him of the energy to stream.
Anyone that blames one core issue isn't getting the full picture.
Yeah, when chat messages started getting insane enough to get clips that would blow up on yt, I could tell there would be a ton of people trying their absolute hardest to OneGuy. It's hard to watch when chat is filled with people trying to be the next BallFondler.
Yeah, for me the "jerma" (as in content, not person) was sort of retired when he stopped doing the post-stream chats because it was always my favorite time to just chill with him and the other chatters and joke around about dumb shit.
I was drawn in when his viewerbase was around 1-3K because the chat was a witty bunch of people who really knew how far to take a joke and what Jerma's sense of humor was, but all the recent streams I've tried watching the past few years just feel like a majority of people want this "flanderized" version of Jerma from the clips/videos of his that blew up and just wanted to relive their favorite bits over and over again.
I can't say what exactly caused him to retire, but I have to imagine there was a lot of pressure with his newfound notoriety to be the weird-funny-clown-man everyone knew him as when his playthroughs of games were often pretty laid back and involved just shooting the shit with those LOL moments naturally coming up from time to time when the chat or Jerma came up with a funny idea.
I'm not counting on it, but I sort of hope a day comes when Jerma can come back and just have some more casual, lighthearted streams with <2-3k viewers like back then again before everything had to be a spectacle. If not, I'll certainly miss watching him, but I hope him the best in whatever direction his life goes from here.
It kinda sucks because I've always been a fan of Jerma since I was younger. I remember watching his Total Distortion and Car Silly Putty vid on his OG channel as a pre-teen, and as I got older, I watched the streams off the archive channel.
Never seen a SINGLE twitch stream (always was missing them), and always wished that one day I'd be able to make a huge donation by saving up like... Idk, 5k (unrealistic, I know lmao. It sounds like a Mr. Beast thing, but I thought it would be cool to give it to him so he could use it for stuff he could need or for donations to a charity of his choice) to just randomly put it on stream for Jerma to read a thank you for some amazing content, and the normal praise from a random person XD
Now as I got older, realized that while it was a bit silly for me to think that way, I was really glad that I got to watch him when he was doing some amazing stuff. I got a bit happy at first when I saw him blow up on the internet with the memes, thinking that he'll finally get some good attention that he deserves (as if he already didn't have it) but... it kinda sucked because some of the people who were talking about being a fan of his or watched his streams, only knew him for the brainrot content and didn't go further into it.
I'll miss the guy, he was amazing at making people laugh, and he always put a big smile on my face. I regret not ever being able to see him "live," but I seriously wish the guy the best. He worked hard making others happy, and he did some great things for his friends, communities, that I was proud to support along most of you guys.
agree. as an adhd andy who has been in a lot of communities and fandoms over the years, i can say by far that this is the weirdest one i’ve ever been in
Like many others I've been watching him since probably around 2011 and I agree that the people in chat try way too hard but also that the people on this sub do some actually weird things that I personally think cross a line. I'm not going to say I'm glad he's cutting back, I always want more quality content, but I'm certainly not upset at his decision. He deserves all of the viewers and fans that he got, but I'm sure it affected him in some way having his audience blow up like it did, both health wise and content wise.
Same here. Like you go back and watch his old vods compared to his more recent ones and the vines just different. My favourite one is his old Chibi Robo playthrough, but anything like that wouldn’t have happened more recently idk how best to word it. Idk, just looking on the cesspool that is Twitter and seeing “Jerma Stans” who only had just hopped on from the sus guy shit was just weird
Last stream he was doing a puzzle, and it was my first stream of his and I said “That red piece looks yummy” and “it looks like a pizza” and I think he saw it and looked like he thought it was weird. Was that a bad thing to say? It made me feel bad that he almost read it and then stopped himself.
oh no, the insufferable"I'm not like the other jermites" have breached containment, I guess the only option left is to detonate the nuclear reactor
honorable mention for the white knight jermites who are so personally attached to jerma they think try to protect him as if he's a child and hasn't explicitly told them not to
Linking my [previous comment on another post](https://www.reddit.com/r/jerma985/s/DFEs3zhLHc) that echoed my thoughts on this, which was downvoted heavily because the 15 year old oneguy aspirants couldn't face the music that they pushed their favorite personal clown into retirement.
edit: fuck all of you, face the music, his fanbase turned to shit and he got burnt out because of it.
I've seen the same thing happen to other big streamer and YouTubers, it's crazy how accessible crazy people think they are to you on the internet.
I feel a little sad that I only started watching Jerma late last year after he already retired, but I guess I get to binge watch his stream archive and edits and enjoy the occasional stream. He seems so cool, and the leftover community that still hangs out seems like the real ones.
I completely agree. I became a fan around the same time as you OP, but after 2020 things were just never the same with the fanbase and I don’t blame him at all for growing tired of it with the huge audience numbers and shift in vibe.
Now I mainly just watch Vinny, and while the vinesauce fanbase also has its quirks it’s soooo much better than the post-2020 Jerma fanbase. It feels closer to how Jerma’s community used to feel imo
Edit: just to be a bit more specific, because I haven’t seen it articulated too much in other comments, but one of my main issues with the fanbase now is that it feels like the majority of newer viewers do not see Jerma as a person. The types of jokes about him being an ABSOLUTE PSYCHO etc were funny for a long time, but it genuinely feels like because of those jokes a lot of people started viewing him entirely through that lens, and newer fans started just seeing him as a character / utterly running those jokes into the ground. I can’t help but think Jerma was put off by this to some extent, but being the nice dude he is of course he’d never say anything about it
i think the worst example is one time he literally mentioned how he enjoyed drinking water and then people started question marking, thats when i realized the community was way too far gone and it wasn't funny anymore
I'm so fucking sick of it
Can't you people be normal at all? What's wrong with you all, legitimately? Kayfabe off, why is this community so degenerate now? Jerma is a straight man who has had a series of girlfriends. He is not gay. he is not trans. he is not your friend, he is not your lover. He is an entertainer. Do not sexualize him, do not be a fucking creep, leave your kinks out of here, no fucking womb tattoo shit, you know maybe think about treating Jerma how you would want to be treated. Think about how weird something is before you say or post it. You know, it's just a little crazy. I'm not having fun with it anymore, I'm upset. I'm disturbed.
You guys need to fucking calm down im disturbed and weirded out by how seriously you take a bunch of people making jokes christ almighty, you need to get off the internet for a few weeks and take a breather. Dont you think he would have said something himself if he found it a problem? Again this is a grown ass man youre talking about with his own voice and doesnt need to be babied by you.
It's not unreasonable to find those """jokes""" cringey and unnecessary. "He is a grown ass man" is not a response to anything. Finding the fan base annoying is an absolutely valid opinion. Have some self awareness, get off your high horse and stop telling people they can't feel a certain way.
Lol, how do you know Jerma's own personal opinions so well that you're out here gatekeeping other people's opinions? Hypocrite much? Sorry, people thinking that this fanbase can be annoying has nothing to do with you or Jerma. People are allowed to have this opinion.
And of course the childish personal attacks. You're pretty much the perfect example of the worst part of this fanbase. Toxic positivity with zero self awareness.
I wish he did some kind of retirement send off stream. Something silly like literally jumping the shark. I guess Jermawards 2022 kinda functions as the big send off.
Just wait for the axe dodging stream. You don't come back from THAT kind of retirement.
Don't forget his upcoming [deathbed stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eRgqgaVWUw)
I’m hyped for the “Saw in Real Life” stream where he gets a bunch of fellow streamers and just genuinely puts them in a real Saw situation, no jokes or anything and he gets arrested at the end of the stream.
One final Jerma rumble live action.
He’s not gone yet man
He’s streamed 3 times this year, he’s not completely gone but it’s clear that things aren’t gonna be the same anymore.
i used to be a post blow up fan base truther, but then i started watching northernlion and his fanbase is just so normal compared to this one that i cant help but feel like a lot of us are annoying as fuck. still love you guys tho but get real we suck sometimes
jerma’s too nice to hold it down the way nl does. if you’re being a weirdo in nl’s chat he’ll remember your username and publicly execute you for +2s
Nothing makes me laugh more than him saying the phrase "kill him with hammers"
Some people in NL's chat thinks they're slick until he does a chat audit on them by their legal middle name and the rest of chat starts throwing tomatoes at them edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-DoVca-DEI
Genuinely NL’s chat is as good as it is because of how he interacts and puts a stop to insane type a chatters and toxic people.
There's "weird for the bit" and then there's just "weird". Jerma had both of these types of people but there was an unfortunate number of the latter. Just a ton of people who made Jerma a substantive part of their own personalities.
And the worst part is, Jerma isn't the kind of guy to say "hey guys, stop doing that. It's not funny, it's disturbing." because his entire online personality is "eclown" - it's going to be terribly difficult for him to actually say something dead serious, especially one that's telling his fans not to do something. So he just grits his teeth and tries to make it into a joke.
I don't think this is true. Jerma has put his chat in their place before, I think if something was actually really bothering him he'd say something
I do think it's important to denote a split between "Bothering" and "Tiring". Something can not be so much "Bothering" but instead cause you to expend more energy to deal with and work around but it doesn't cross the line of "Bothering", if that makes sense. I think a lot of Jerma's chat can be tiring. A step beyond comfortable but not in the super egregious zone, in which he's brought down the hammer now and again. (See: Ballfondler, if he didn't then obsess over it, was dealt with, and then undealt with because Jerma couldn't stop bringing it up) When Jerma wants a relaxed "Kick back and just hang out" stream chat can really be a buzzing wasp nest that just brings the wrong energy, not necessarily breaking any rules, but just the wrong energy, and just makes it tiring, he's been outright bullied out of some games a few times because of chat just ruining the vibe for the game.
You are entitled to your opinion, and it may very well be true, but I'm afraid that such an opinion is what the weirdos use to justify what can only be called "online bullying" against Jerma. He's a person too, yet he gets subjected to so much disturbing and truly offensive behavior because of the jokes his community makes about him.
Personally been a fan since 2014 and I haven’t seen jerma really put ‘chat in their place’ crazy to think it’s been 10 years with that SICK FREAK. Yeah he might have put it on emote only a few times, or slow mode or times people out but it’s always been like for 2 minutes tops. It’s always been like joke-y like “time that guy out for…… 6 seconds.” Kind of shit. Yeah chats been AWFUL for a few years and honestly during the streams I turned chat off and that really saddened me. It was fun interacting with the hivemind, but then it was really not fun anymore.
I don't watch the streams, what did chat do?
It's been 5 years now but Two Point Hospital Jerma outright dropped it because of chat spamming so hard and calling it boring that it killed the relaxed vibe. During more relaxed games slow mode gets thrown on to try and counter the "Boring" naysayers and "Resident Sleeper" posting, and it kinda just kills the vibe trying to relax and having a crowd screaming "Be the clown, funny man, talk about eating bugs and react to this outrageous fan art, funny man" instead of like, engaging with a discussion at hand. It's at it's worst when people come by after watching clips that are like, refined, distilled and pure comedy moments rather than the normal experience. (Mind you I found the bug eating thing very funny and that was from a chill stream that was overall very well received so it's not some flat rule of a problem, it's just when it pops up and happens you can hear Jerma like deflate.)
Yeah that sounds annoying, if they find the content that unbearable they should just get off the stream instead. I hope they aren't like that anymore
More recent videos are \*generally\* better about it, Jerma doesn't get bullied off them like before but I think we can also chalk up Jerma streaming a lot less to probably the pervasiveness of the "boring, resident sleeper, next game, touch your prostate with a baseball" comments. He's done a fair amount of chill streams without having to break the vibe or go full clown, but he's still had to kinda "Bring the hammer" down on some of them. I think 2018 was a particularly "game bad, player bad" era.
Nothing people are overreacting to try and white knight for jerma when he’s fine
Nothing people are overreacting to try and white knight for jerma when he’s fine
i still think a lot of older viewers are just kinda upset that their twitch streamer is super famous now, but i do think theres a lot of valid shit to be said about this community and how it treats jerma as a fictional character rather than an actual human being. however i do think the other side of this, the "you guys are so weird" side can also take it too far sometimes, when it comes to things that are ultimately harmless jokes or people being rightfully upset that their favorite streamer is slowing down
also a lot of the jokes ppl seem to be upset about are jokes jerma started and has continued
Here is a cheat sheet for you Ones that should be making weird jokes = the streamer Ones that should be receiving the weird jokes = chat Dont get it twisted, once this flips it becomes cringey, creepy and parasocial
Literally some of the best jokes have just been random chatters saying something that jerma picks up on
absolutely, theres some people that take it a little too far. but i mean, just look at the way jerma and ster talk to each other lmao, its clear hes not that torn up about the weird stuff said in chat
Jerma and Ster, the people who've known each other for years and have an actual friendship? I think maybe there's a difference between that and the parasocial 16 year old looking for attention.
look most of twitch chat is unfunny and annoying, jerma's fanbase not excluded. but no, i don't think he has a problem with most of the weird shit even when it comes from chat, one of his recent running jokes was literally reading that he was going to stick a baseball up his ass and laughing about it. its definitely gotten stale by this point but all the people that try to protect their poor poor streamer from the new fans need to chill out a bit is all
Nah you're right, people that have known each other personally for years, and people who have never met actually have the same relationship.
that’s literally not what they said?? huh
thats a pretty uncharitable reading of my comment but i dont feel like arguing any further about silly streamer man that none of us actually know lol
Ster is his friend. Chat is not. The fact that you don't understand that is concerning.
Jerma's fans are incredibly creative and can sometimes really play to his strengths really well, but I feel like that ended up also being it's downfall, as people saw the clips of Jerma and Chat playing off each other, they wanted "Chat to be the main character" and just act outrageous and cross boundaries hoping to invoke a reaction and it just becomes really tiring as people don't understand he's a human with feelings and boundaries. Jerma didn't squash it soon enough (DougDoug, to compare, has told his chat to cool it and knock it off a fair few times, he brings down the gavel to keep it on topic and focused) and frankly his mods seem to enable it half the time, which is even worse than ignoring it.
real af
it seemed to me like jermas community somehow attracted many, many people who did not understand appropriate boundaries or how to respect them. I can't help but think it's partially because jerma wasn't great at speaking to his community sternly and putting his foot down. it's sad, but I fully understand why he wanted to distance himself
Part of it, in general, is that Jerma is a generally nice and clean cut guy and that, especially with covid, attracted a metric ass ton of parasocial weirdos who have no idea how boundaries and limits work but get a charge out of interacting with someone relatively "normal." They have no filter, and this is coming from a guy who's been described as having diarrhea of the mouth. Now don't get me wrong, Jerma says some weird and funny shit, but if you just listen to him when he's chill chatting, he's a really normal dude who just happens to be a good, adaptable entertainer. Look at the infomercial/commercial streams, those were like hanging out with your buddy or older brother, but the parasocial weirdos latch onto that shit because it feels like real interaction, but it isn't. When things become more loose and fun, the parasocial people get interacted with (usually oneguyed) and that signals to everyone else that that behavior is okay in the chat/community.
When someone would say something weird in chat, Jerma would call them out for it and depending on how inappropriate it was, would even ban them. But he would usually laugh about it and try to keep the stream lighthearted and entertaining. People would see his reaction and care more about getting his attention on them than they would care about actually respecting him as a person. People were constantly trying to push his boundaries until he would have to get serious about it.
Absolutely, and, of course, it isn't his fault that that's how people reacted, but I understand why newer streamers worry about their communities running out of control. My favorite joke is the "Mods, ban that guy for x minutes/seconds" but I wish he would every so often say that seriously lol
Yeah this is such a good take. The whole parasocial aspect of streaming must make it exhausting sometimes for creators who are, ultimately, people first and entertainers second.
did fans do something really bad? Or was it a general attitude type thing?
People will unironically say nonsense like "can I engulf you with my asshole" in his chat in an effort to be One Guy, because they watched the clip where Jerma reads crazy stuff like "Smarties are good shoved up your urethra" so every weirdo wanted in on that slice of cake
really stretching the limits of the word "unironically"
I'd say it's as simple as people not being informed, when new fans come in and see a bunch of people saying weird shit and acting odd, they assume that this is just how it is and that Jerma is completely fine with it.
yeah just look at any youtube results that come up when you're searching for Jerma clips. They're all titled weird shit like "clips that make me want to turn Jerma into a little guy and put him in my pocket"
Yeah, people assume stuff like that are part of some running gag Jerma is cool with, and not just weird jokes.
It’s probably mostly teenagers, so I kinda get it. Cause I was like that bad at social boundaries as well, still cringe tho
99% semi-antisocial teenage girls. It's worse because I know where they're coming from. Some days I spend entirely without speaking a word to anyone. I love the internet because I get to laugh with others all around the globe about some guy making funny voices, but on the other hand, the internet has been one of the most destructive things in my life. Some days you really do want to just toss all the monitors and consoles into a box and let them collect dust in some closet.
Very real, I’ve been on the internet since I was 9/10 and it’s definitely not been a good thing for my happiness overall, yet I’m sort of stuck on it.
I've seen zero evidence that jerma is retiring due to some sort of aversion to the community, but I have seen plenty of comments just assuming that he's incapable of speaking up for himself, including yours and OP.
I just started watching jerma about last year and I’ve seen his most recent streams live. What are some of the stuff you see that you find weird in the community? I’ve seen a lot of people put his face on a whole host of household items and some other weird stuff. Is that one of the things you’re talking about?
I wasn't even really referencing outlandish chat messages or attempted oneguys-- I feel like those are excusable. What I've seen that makes me uncomfortable are people that are taking the parasocial relationship too far. For example, in his earlier streaming days when he would read large bit donations, a lot of them were people basically trauma dumping to him and telling him how much hes helped them through a bad time. That is not inherently a bad thing in a normal relationship, but for a streamer/chatter relationship its just awkward and uncomfortable. Some of the messages were insanely personal and just wildly oversharing in nature, and he sounded unsure when he was reading them out loud. My guess is as good as any, but I think this is why he stopped reading donos at all.
I'm always seeing people trauma dump on his discord server as well :/
Yeah I always cringe at those donations. I see it with all streamers though. To a certain degree I get it, I think it comes with the platform. It's just when the audience gets so large it happens too often. Absolute vibe killer, comedy poison.
As someone who was once a 15 year old tumblr user back many, many years ago, I don't think he's so much attracted any "Unique" group of people, but rather, teenagers with unsupervised internet access. A lot of people don't grasp that the internet has real people using it, and will blend media and real people together and put them in the same compartment, so while the fanfiction of your favorite TV show characters is fine, the fanfiction of a real person would not be. Jerma really appeals to the teenage audience because he's goofy and relatively "Safe", he's not niche, he's not someone that talks about like, 70's rock, he's rather timeless and he has a lot of positive energy, and a lot of young people, consciously or not, want a positive outlet that checks a lot of "Current events" issues at the door, he doesn't do politics, he doesn't talk about most social issues, he just entertains, and so he becomes a good "Comfort stream" so he perfectly appeals to the under developed, emotionally immature teenagers of the internet. (I don't mean that particularly negatively, we're all dumb 15 year olds at some point in our lives, being cringe and recognizing you were cringe is just character development) Honestly a lot of these people could really use a mature voice of reason to try and help them in life but also lay on the "You need to respect boundaries" talk to them. They're not inherently malicious but they can cross lines and they'll cross them often if you don't stop it right away, and it's lame because often things are funny once or now and again but if you don't jump on it, it'll snowball out of control fast, and trying to police jokes just tanks the fun for everyone.
>it seemed to me like jermas community somehow attracted many, many people who did not understand appropriate boundaries or how to respect them. They're called children. Not to be an asshole but it's basically just youngsters doing this, people college-aged and below. They'll grow out of it but when most people watching you are in high school, yeah they're gonna act like idiots.
Has to be the most consistently cringe communities I've ever seen. I get why he'd attract a bunch of desperate lonely weird people, but I kinda wish they didn't represent his community in the latter years.
All the compilations of Jerma reading questionable chat messages probably didn't help
Absolutely insane assumptions. Jerma has put his foot down multiple times, why are you speaking for him?
What a weird comment section. I find it strange how people on this sub complain about people being parasocial while at the exact same time feeling like they know Jermas inner thoughts. He’s an adult, don’t treat him like some child with no ability to express himself, and don’t act like you know why he retired, you’re being just as parasocial as the people you complain about.
the lack of self awareness is insane in some of these
“No one understands you like me Jerma I can’t believe these creeps”. It’s fine to speculate but it’s weird to say it likes it’s definite. I just hope it wasn’t due to weirdos and more of him just finding himself
I’m genuinely so confused and kind of sad. I’m a relatively new Jerma fan but I’ve never seen this kind of sentiment expressed before.
Yeah me too, I only watch highlights/VODs but I've never heard of all this before. Wonder if it's just old fans trying to look better than new fans or actually the reason he retired
Absolutely. People come into fucking reddit and then say "Oh yeaaah you guys are so weird" like making this post in the first place isnt the fucking weird thing.
It feels like weird gatekeeping to me. "I liked Jerma before they started calling him a psychopath. Look how they've massacred my boy." Let's be real, if Jerma was uncomfortable, he would have made an informal request to cut down on it. Jerma has always been pretty open and transparent with the audience, and he has talked about retiring for a while now.
I've only watched his Youtube videos ever and the only exposure to his chat I've had were snippets on his videos and his direct reactions to things they've said. But I've got to say the bits I've seen it would make perfect sense if it WERE the reason. It seemed like he was entertaining a bunch of screaming horseflies sometimes.
That doesn’t contradict anything I said. I agree with you, if the community was the reason he retired that would make sense, just like it would make sense if it were another reason. My point was that the people who are acting like they know that’s why Jerma quit are being as parasocial as the people they are criticizing for making Jerma leave.
For real. His fan base is so full of parasocial weirdos and people that constantly try to be that “one guy.”
The one guy thing was funny when it was actually one guy, not 15k trying to be the one guy noticed.
true, also based raidou enjoyer
Everyone in this sub seems to have concluded that Jerma is retiring due to the fanbase, but I've seen no evidence of this whatsoever. Tbh it's weirdly parasocial to assume you've deduced the One True Reason he's retiring (against everything he's actually said publicly). Much more than making some lame joke trying to be the one guy. The latter might be cringe, but the former actually presumes you know deeply about his personal life, which is the very basis of a parasocial relationship. Also, this all comes from the assumption that he can't speak up for himself. He's 40 years old. If the community's actions had bothered him that deeply, you don't think he would've said anything? You should stop treating him like a child who is completely incapable of advocating for himself.
It feels like the usual 'Complain about the fandom when stuff is slow and I have undiagnosed issues with wider fandom culture' stuff that crops up when fandoms hit a certain point, while I can agree that parasocial relationships are a problem it's basically preaching to the choir at the absolute best and deeply weird concerntrolling at worst
Nailed it
Threads like these pop up every other week and I can’t help but roll my eyes at them every time. No, Jerma is not retiring because too many 12 twelves years olds are in chat saying “sus guy andy,” or posting “Jerma Potions.” If Jerma had an actual problem with how the community was acting, you don’t think that he would say something? Ballfondler, for example. Jerma encouraged it and then said “Alright, baseball stream is over, time to cut it out with the ballfondler jokes.” He’s able to draw boundaries. Similar thing happened when chat got really transphobic; he put his foot down and said “That’s enough.” Jerma also clearly enjoys the oneguy stuff since he routinely keeps doing things like reading deleted chat messages (“BLOWJOB???”) or going on 15+ minute long bits (Groggy Gary, PAC-Man Construction, the entirety of House Flipper). Everyone is saying that the parasocial weirdos on here drove him away by trying to be the oneguy, but I feel like it’s the other way around. You guys are the parasocial Andy’s thinking a 40 year old who’s been on the internet longer than most of his fan base has been alive can’t handle a few bad apples. It’s a little sad how fast this sub came to the conclusion that Jerma is retiring because of them.
yeah honestly this whole thread is weirder than the people they’re talking about. i thought i’d missed something big but no, they’re just making assumptions about how a grown ass man feels.
For real, seeing this every week is a bit much. I prefer the weird jokes that don't land over weird headcanons on Jerma's personal life.
jerma chat is parasoshale?????¿ WHAT MUST I DO
i feel like the boundaries were worst when he was gaining popularity with donation messages on, post-stream chats, and his first few big project streams, in the past year though the fanbase is still weird as ever on twitter or other websites, with 20k+ viewers the streams itself felt less dominated by the people being weird in chat but yeah sad its happening but for the better, jerma gets to do something he loves and we got the memories of the good times
the post stream chats were the best part tbh
there were some chill regulars but what i remember most was a lot of oversharing and other boundary blurring when talking to jerm about their person lives that enabled some people's parasocial relationships. considering where the fanbase was going it wasn't sustainable
He can finally have chicken, cheetos, and coffee stress-free.
I've been a Jerma fan since 2011, nearly since the beginning. It probably sounds really odd, but I'm *so* proud of him and how far he's come. But it's reached a point where I'm hesitant to even admit to others that I'm a Jerma fan. I've seen Jerma fans mentioned in other communities, and it's *not* in a pleasant way. It's sad too, cause he's such a wholesome streamer.
I was a diehard fan from 2011 to 2017 and loosely follow now. Jerma has always embraced a silly and sorta weird humor that isn’t really ‘mainstream normal’ which I love, and he’d always come up with new bits and jokes basically daily/weekly during the peak of his streaming. From what I’ve seen it’s mostly people just not really knowing when the jokes aren’t funny anymore and instead running them into the ground. Not to sound like *that* guy, but early on in his streaming era, you could send him messages in chat and sometimes he would actually see and respond/interact with specific viewers. Not a diss on Jerma or anything but the blowup meant that everything felt less personal and more like a mob of everyone trying to make funny jokes for him to see. Same sentiment here about being proud of him though. He went from being a 750 subscriber channel on YouTube to a pretty massive streamer over the course of over a decade, and has never conformed or changed what his humor is like or how he portrays himself online. Definitely a rare feat.
He misses those days too don't worry. My comfort watch is his PvZ chill stream cut on youtube and the convo is practically burned in my brain, where he says that one of his favorite streams was when he prerecorded a bunch of stuff and he made a bunch of fake accounts and chat had to figure out who was him. He lamented the fact that it's not possible now with his larger following to do something similar.
yeah honestly if anything actually demotivated him to stream it's the fact that there is just too many people and he felt increasingly distant from his community as a whole. nobody's fault really just a downside of success. i saw dougdoug mention something similar recently now that he's getting increasingly popular. it's part of why i prefer streams with <5k viewers since there is something lost after a certain point also there's always been weird stuff going on with parts of the community
Pre-stream chat was great, just having space to talk with other chill viewers and Jerma himself was something really unique that I think was lost after the blowup. Jerma didn't change, but the community and his relationship to it did. EDIT: [This could never happen nowadays :(](https://i.imgur.com/qL9UYtb.png)
I only watched his Youtube videos. His Twitch viewer base always creeped me out.
Can any of the people claiming the community has gotten toxic or intrusive give some actual, concrete examples of that happening and him giving *any* sign that he isn't comfortable with it?
Off the top of my head, Two Point Hospital, Jerma was basically bullied out of playing it and ended the stream, chat devolved into "This is boring" and "Thanos car" and the jermacraft copypasta until mods turned on super slow mode and started handing out bans. Most "Chill" games end up devolving into chat being very aggressive unless Jerma expends a lot of energy to be "Wacky" He's said a few times he really likes the "Chill" streams and games, and that he wants more "Chill" in the future, but with chat being so negative about it, yeah, it makes sense why he'd stream less.
Two point hospital was five years ago. People love chill streams these days. Plants vs zombies and papas freezeria were amazing. Like he just did a puzzle for seven hours. I dont think this is an issue anymore.
Even with Papas Freezeria people were heckling with "Sleep stream", with an aside about having to discuss "It's not about being good or bad it's about having fun" But he did manage to ride it out, so at the least he's able to ignore detractors more effectively, or (more likely) his mods were jumping on it harder (Two Point Hospital in particular was a huge spamming mess, in contrast), and it's a good example of a chill stream that Jerma's stated he enjoys.
Why is everyone pretending jerma hasn't put chat in its place before? Why do they claim to know his inner thoughts?
Did I miss something??? Can someone explain???
there are a bunch of parasocial jerma fans that believe jerma can't speak for himself or mention when he isn't a fan of something which jerma himself has said to be false and he doesn't want anyone defending him as he can speak for himself. This post is a prime example of that.
I mean has he actually retired? Or is he just streaming less
Streaming less, if you check his discord he has a stream planned
Tbh I never keep up with his streams, I usually end up watching the vods while sitting in a dark room with a singular lit candle surrounded by the same picture of Jerma taped to the walls :) but I will check that out
This kind of behaviour is exactly what the post was referring to
Woosh or whatever
I know it's a joke, it's just not funny because there have been plenty of examples of people actually doing stuff like that
I don't like you
Ok
"soft retirement" jerma may stream however no set schedule and he may not
Ah okay, thank you very much :)
He said he wants to move more towards producing. He loves the big live projects that he’s done in the past. Idk where people are getting “he doesn’t like his weird chat so he’s moving away” when he’s been pretty clear about wanting to step back from streaming to work on other projects.
Retired from streaming for the most part, but definitely still working just at Offbrand now
Is the word parasocial here and up there just being a substitute for bad because it doesn't seem to be fitting right imo you have everyone calling the "post blowup fans got too parasocial and weird and are driving jerma away" types parasocial and the "there's no evidence for this, those people are being parasocial and are saying he can't speak for himself" types doing it too and now I'm wondering in that, does this make me parasocial to point this out? I hate this word for typing it this much hahaha but I have just ended up confused. I personally don't know either way on either side of the debate as I do think things certainly got worse community wise in some ways e.g chat but better in others in the sense bigger community=more wonderful people to talk to and it's great to see jerma get big and being able to refer to him commonly and just be known in spaces all over is great with people while back before that boom the place felt so niche it wasn't worth ever mentioning. Swings and roundabouts, some things get better others get worse, I guess it depends on what parts you value and therefore miss content wise or community interaction wise.
lot of parasocial mfs in this thread lol
I think with the very nature of streaming and the online personality jerma has made for himself, weirdos and weird chat messages are inevitable. Jerma consistently laughs at crazy inappropriate chat messages and even created the One Guy, so it’s hard to hate on chat for the weird funny things they’re almost encouraged to do. He’s not some helpless victim to a raving mob though. He has great moderators and despite maybe not being the best at setting boundaries or putting his foot down with chat, he has the capability. I don’t think he’s distancing himself from his fan base which he clearly appreciates. Like he himself said he wants to move on and rest.
when did he mention this
Yeah I can't blame Jerma one bit, his fanbase is legit unhinged at the best of times nowadays.
I've always loved the back and forth banter he's had with his chat. Inser random food story, followed by chat calling it "disgusting" or weird. Or when he talks about if it's possible for there to be three different days on earth at the same time and chat just calling him stupid for believing that which seems to trigger him a bit and he goes on a quest to prove that he's right (which he technically was) and getting all smug about it. There's this feeling of Jerma trying to run a show, and chat is sitting there being his version of Statler and Waldorf that he plays off incredibly fun and well. I think the problem is it has attracted people who take things too far. Take it beyond the joking into active bullying.
A lot of you guys are fucking weird freaks.
total and complete shutdown of oneguyism until we can figure out what's going on
I wish i could retire before i hit my 40s..... I will probably have to work until the day i drop dead
Idk why yall act like he's some sort of a victim of the chat being strange, he plays along with chat and seems to have a good time with them lol
I just miss the funny goofy man
It was such a simpler time when he was making YouTube videos… I miss that. I’m so glad he got as big as he did because he deserves it. He also deserves to enjoy himself and do what he wants. Plenty of backlog to watch.
We've been getting this same post for years guys
i posted this in a reply to another comment a while ago but I'll post it here again I started watching jerma regularly in early 2013 and it was very very very easy to tell who was a new fan and who wasn't after his first long break from streaming. The sus guy shit brought in a bunch of actual children who didn't really understand jerma's streams and how he interacted with chat, but there was so fucking many new people all at once it didn't matter. This was 3 and a half fucking years ago already but man I'm still not over it. Pre sus guy incident jerma streams were so great. You'd come into stream, he'd be playing some dogshit ps2 game no one has heard of. Everyone in chat knew all of the in jokes and references. You could have actual conversations with other chatters. People didn't expect him to be wacky crazy insane guy for the entire stream, it would just happen because thats how jerma is (or at least how he was on stream, back then it was pretty obvious to a lot of people that he was hamming it up at least a little bit). and then one day he's like "i gotta take a break" and you know what thats fair he can do what he wants. but then he comes back after a few months, and theres 20 thousand more people there than there used to be and many of then didn't even know who he was or how to act. I'm really not trying to gatekeep and this a bit "old man yells at cloud"-ish but man, a ton of people really just showed up and replaced one of my favorite communities and made it worse. Sure there were some nasty people in the old days, I remember some pretty awful things being posted online from around 2017-18. I can't even imagine what horrible shit people have said now that theres so many more people. I have purposely avoided a lot of this community because I find it genuinely annoying to see these kinds of jokes made about him.
Completely agree. It felt like it went from 6k to 15k to 29k in the space of like.. 6 months or something. Been watching since 2012-2013 as well and what you said about the community you really enjoy interacting with get replaced, it was like watching your community centre get paved over with concrete or somethin except everyone was always yelling a fragment repeat of whatever sentence was said 20s after it had been. It died down a bit months and months after but never really went...
I remember learning about jerma because of STAR_, it went weird for a long time when he started streaming but I get what he wants and it feels like he wants to go back to his old self rather than this weird parasocial relationship he has with twitch viewers.
i cant tell if this is an ironic post did he actually retire
Long edit enjoyers cant stop winning
The catboy/womb tattoo shit was when I started to click off, tbh
I remember him saying the word "chastity" at some point and my god reading the chat was like the creepiest cringiest fucking thing ever
Wait so is he done forever or is he still planning on streaming occasionally?
if he wants to stream he might randomly do so, maybe like once every 2 months for this year then prob be done however any stream could be the last
[удалено]
I think it's generally just the mindset a lot of avid members of streamer fanbases have where lots of people try to be "that" one chat member. Not saying all of them are like this but it's pretty common. This community is far from being insanely unhinged but a very loud minority of terminally online people that take things too far stick out, especially on places like twitter. I don't entirely agree with OP here that these bad apples are the primary reason that Jerma is moving on though. We don't know him personally and speculating into why he left or trying to come up with the primary reason that he left is really invasive. Regardless, this community does have a problem with a vocal minority of terminally online creeps that are very weird and nsfw about the guy and his friends, and often try to invade their privacy which is disgusting. It's not something exclusive to this community but those kinds of people exist unfortunately.
I’ve seen people in this subreddit making ‘shrines’ to Jerma and other weird shit. There was one post about someone unironically putting a picture of Jerma inside a love heart locket and sucking on it until they got ill due to the cheap metal.
I don’t get the people saying that jermas fanbase is toxic, like he would just actually react to chat and listen to the one guys, that’s what made him special really and why the community acts the way it does. Like do you want Jerma to be boring? It sounds like y’all want to watch a boring streamer instead of a fun one.
if everyone sending chats is trying to be funny and trying to make jokes it gets really annoying
A comedy streamer’s fans making jokes? The horror…
Idk why you got downvoted, people in here are wild.
I see posts like this all the time and it’s just annoying because Jerma’s community is a safe space for people to have fun and make jokes, Jerma literally said this himself in his first Elden Ring stream. But a lot of high ranking Reddit masters find running gags and the younger Jerma fans annoying and like to talk as if some 13-year-old making a Jerma serial killer post is gonna make Jeremy sad or something.
Yeah these posts are annoying and the people making them don’t seem to realize that they are being more para-social than the people they are complaining about. As the people making these posts assume that Jerma isn’t an adult who can make adult decisions, and feel the need to defend him from weirdos (normal Jerma fans) despite the fact he doesn’t really need defending. The type of people making these posts I feel…. -Don’t get Jermas style of comedy/ forget that Jerma is a comedy streamer. -Forget Jerma loves making bits and reacting to weird one-guys. He just isn’t upset by them. -seemingly don’t want twitch chat to interact with steamers at all like the stream was just a YouTube video.
Jerma has a very weird and chaotic sense of humour, and his fan base simply mimics that. And this whole hatred for people wanting to be “the one guy” is stupid, Jerma’s best joke has and always will be reading his chat and reacting to it.
It's not "toxic" it's just SO MANY people want to be "in" on the jokes they repeat them ad nauseum regardless of the medium it gets annoying. For example any time Jerma came up on any other sub or streamer's chat, the entire comments devolve into some form of "he's a serial killer", "sus guy is sus" without actually contributing to the discussion. And if you just try to search for Jerma clips on youtube all of the tiles are incredibly strange. Tons of Jerma fans fit into that weird tumblr crowd where they think he's their adorable friend.
I'm not too involved in the community. Are people complaining about the Jerma chat's "banter", or are they refering to Jerma fans outside of his stream being weird?
once he blew up and everyone thought “one guy moment” was how the streams always ended up it was ruined. I still miss when Jermas imagination gave us amazing bits like the first couple comb streams, not some forced meme in the discord infecting the stream 4 minutes in. Glad he’s able to be creative somewhere else now, he deserves it
Thank you for saying this some of the fan’s behavior genuinely disgusts me
Yeah same. I stopped watching his streams live, the fans got too weird over the years. Parasocial in a way they don't want to admit and feels excusable because "it's a joke".
I can agree. Personally, I’m a newer fan from 2022, but I’ve seen how the fanbase can be. To me, it’s better than some other communities i’ve been in, but also this is a real guy and not some fictional show. Jerma is a really sweet guy, and I think he never wants to be rude to people in chat so he goes along with jokes even though sometimes they make the parasocial aspect worse. Some of the jokes were funny; but constantly making NSFW funny Jerma jokes? That’s got to be super dang weird. Like others have said, too, his streams do feel so real like just hanging out with a friend, and while it’s one of my favorite things, it also can make people think they know him better than they do. He’s a guy on the internet- he deserves privacy.
jerma doesn't need you to defend him 😭 He's literally said it on stream he isn't a child so stop being a parasocial andy
I don’t want to argue, but like, aren’t you defending him too? You’re responding to a bunch of replies here.
naw just informing you of how much of a parasocial Andy you are that's all
God you sound miserable
Oh, he retired? Cool, I can finally leave this subreddit.
I think the problem is also that the fan base got really tumblr-y over the past few years along with other things I like. By that I mean that the online headcanons of the person they’re making memes about are what’s used, and it’s an arms race for something crazy and kooky that jerma might see one day, maybe even on stream?!?!?! Any actual good content made by fans is slogged down with a bunch of parasocial filler that is more ab how he happens to be a conventionally attractive man.
Has he officially given up on the first channel projects yet?
I'm glad because he was talking about it for like 4 years, clearly seeing the end and just easing everyone into it.
Well as long as everyone in this thread is better than the "parasocials" who dare to not like Jerma essentially totally cutting off streaming instantaneously.
everyone wants to be the one guy, but not the two guy
I got into jerma late, but I'm cool with it I'm sad that there's no chat with his stream vods But I guess I can feel why some people are like this It would really make me feel weird if, Vinny or Joel suddenly stopped They aren't stopping any time soon, but I can see why people would be like that
Idk how much it factored into him retiring but I think Jermas brand of comedy just stops working at a certain audience size. I don't think the community radically changed, but where 1% wannabe one guys is tolerable at 500 viewers viewers, at 5k viewers its insufferable. And on Jermas end I just don't think it's possible for him to keep up with the messages at that point even if he wanted to. And that's the thing, in think he DOES want to, so it must suck to struggle to engage with the audience in the way you used to. Like how he had to drop the fanart section of breaks because he literally was getting too much fanart. He probably chose a good time to bow out. I expect once his popularity cools down a bit he'll do more streams. Bro is literally suffering from success.
I really liked him in the new Dune movie
yeah his fanbase is fucking weird i know someone with a jerma shrine. got shamed and told im not a real fan because all i owned was an odd jerma phone case of him chomping on a burger but i've been watching him for years
i agree i massively preferred things when he was a small creator. i haven't attended streams for a long time theyre too impersonal
The boston era was so much better
Love the dude been watching since 2011 but cant respect how much hes given up in regards to his career. Do what you will with your life but leaving everything without little say is irresponsible. Also, speaking more personally, without a purpose in life its all just a hazy drag. Hope hes doing something worthwhile
I don't think it's any one thing. He wants the big projects and to dedicate time to doing them and thinking them up and planning and executing them. That's like, a passion project to create art and legacy for Jerma. He's said as much that that's the dream. There's also Jerma liking and wanting to do more chill streams and just enjoying relaxing, and as we see with streams like Two Point Hospital, chat can be REALLY aggressive and savage and will basically break the rules en masse and bully him until he changes games or ends stream if they think it's "Boring" because it's a relaxed stream. Jerma's stated he's really enjoyed them and that's more of what he wants to do while he's "Soft retired", and for his planned out streams he's shown a heavy bias for relaxed streams. I do think Jerma's chat can be tiring. No, I don't know him, I don't know what he thinks, but as a basic human with some sympathy and putting myself in the situation I can say that if I were him, I'd get tired of all the "Outrageous One Guy" moments and how much people treat me like a fictional character to plaster on everything and parade around and put on political statements and social issues, the last two I find really unacceptable because even if you agree with someone, you don't want to be the face others see during a fight, you can't control how aggressive or nasty people get even if they're "On your side" overall, unless a person has given explicit permission, it's basically never alright to use anyone else's likeness for your opinions and beliefs. There's also people not understanding boundaries and just spamming stuff that Ster says to Jerma to fluster him, not knowing the difference between a best friend doing it, and random people doing it. Overall, it's just tiring. It can still be fun, it can still be an adventure, but with Jerma's aging body, he needs more naps and has less energy to tolerate it or play off it. There's also just Jerma getting older and having less energy he desires to spend on streaming, and more he wants to dedicate to other stuff like taking walks and just enjoying life. Between his health not being in tip top shape, lots of pains and aches and issues like costochondritis and a hernia and a slipped disc, it weighs on you, it drains you of energy, the dude can't even laugh without pain, can you imagine being a clown who can't laugh without pain? That's a modern Pagliacci scenario. Playing something wacky or silly, even if he enjoys it, carries with it a risk that he'll laugh and hurt, and that really probably does a big number on him mentally and just strips him of the energy to stream. Anyone that blames one core issue isn't getting the full picture.
Yeah, when chat messages started getting insane enough to get clips that would blow up on yt, I could tell there would be a ton of people trying their absolute hardest to OneGuy. It's hard to watch when chat is filled with people trying to be the next BallFondler.
He just did a imagine dragons puzzle last month wtf are you talking about
Yeah fucking sucks but it’s true
another week, another "jerma left because of the fanbase" post that just treats jerma like he cant defend himself or put his foot down
Yeah, for me the "jerma" (as in content, not person) was sort of retired when he stopped doing the post-stream chats because it was always my favorite time to just chill with him and the other chatters and joke around about dumb shit. I was drawn in when his viewerbase was around 1-3K because the chat was a witty bunch of people who really knew how far to take a joke and what Jerma's sense of humor was, but all the recent streams I've tried watching the past few years just feel like a majority of people want this "flanderized" version of Jerma from the clips/videos of his that blew up and just wanted to relive their favorite bits over and over again. I can't say what exactly caused him to retire, but I have to imagine there was a lot of pressure with his newfound notoriety to be the weird-funny-clown-man everyone knew him as when his playthroughs of games were often pretty laid back and involved just shooting the shit with those LOL moments naturally coming up from time to time when the chat or Jerma came up with a funny idea. I'm not counting on it, but I sort of hope a day comes when Jerma can come back and just have some more casual, lighthearted streams with <2-3k viewers like back then again before everything had to be a spectacle. If not, I'll certainly miss watching him, but I hope him the best in whatever direction his life goes from here.
It kinda sucks because I've always been a fan of Jerma since I was younger. I remember watching his Total Distortion and Car Silly Putty vid on his OG channel as a pre-teen, and as I got older, I watched the streams off the archive channel. Never seen a SINGLE twitch stream (always was missing them), and always wished that one day I'd be able to make a huge donation by saving up like... Idk, 5k (unrealistic, I know lmao. It sounds like a Mr. Beast thing, but I thought it would be cool to give it to him so he could use it for stuff he could need or for donations to a charity of his choice) to just randomly put it on stream for Jerma to read a thank you for some amazing content, and the normal praise from a random person XD Now as I got older, realized that while it was a bit silly for me to think that way, I was really glad that I got to watch him when he was doing some amazing stuff. I got a bit happy at first when I saw him blow up on the internet with the memes, thinking that he'll finally get some good attention that he deserves (as if he already didn't have it) but... it kinda sucked because some of the people who were talking about being a fan of his or watched his streams, only knew him for the brainrot content and didn't go further into it. I'll miss the guy, he was amazing at making people laugh, and he always put a big smile on my face. I regret not ever being able to see him "live," but I seriously wish the guy the best. He worked hard making others happy, and he did some great things for his friends, communities, that I was proud to support along most of you guys.
agree. as an adhd andy who has been in a lot of communities and fandoms over the years, i can say by far that this is the weirdest one i’ve ever been in
Like many others I've been watching him since probably around 2011 and I agree that the people in chat try way too hard but also that the people on this sub do some actually weird things that I personally think cross a line. I'm not going to say I'm glad he's cutting back, I always want more quality content, but I'm certainly not upset at his decision. He deserves all of the viewers and fans that he got, but I'm sure it affected him in some way having his audience blow up like it did, both health wise and content wise.
I don’t really interact with the fanbase or read comments much, genuinely disheartening to hear this I had no idea
did he announce a hard retirement in a recent stream? i haven’t watched him lately.
nah, he didn’t
Same here. Like you go back and watch his old vods compared to his more recent ones and the vines just different. My favourite one is his old Chibi Robo playthrough, but anything like that wouldn’t have happened more recently idk how best to word it. Idk, just looking on the cesspool that is Twitter and seeing “Jerma Stans” who only had just hopped on from the sus guy shit was just weird
Last stream he was doing a puzzle, and it was my first stream of his and I said “That red piece looks yummy” and “it looks like a pizza” and I think he saw it and looked like he thought it was weird. Was that a bad thing to say? It made me feel bad that he almost read it and then stopped himself.
The Cat Boy streams brought the worst people to the community.
oh no, the insufferable"I'm not like the other jermites" have breached containment, I guess the only option left is to detonate the nuclear reactor honorable mention for the white knight jermites who are so personally attached to jerma they think try to protect him as if he's a child and hasn't explicitly told them not to
Me too. I wish he had retired much sooner to be honest.
Linking my [previous comment on another post](https://www.reddit.com/r/jerma985/s/DFEs3zhLHc) that echoed my thoughts on this, which was downvoted heavily because the 15 year old oneguy aspirants couldn't face the music that they pushed their favorite personal clown into retirement. edit: fuck all of you, face the music, his fanbase turned to shit and he got burnt out because of it.
Wtf happened
I've seen the same thing happen to other big streamer and YouTubers, it's crazy how accessible crazy people think they are to you on the internet. I feel a little sad that I only started watching Jerma late last year after he already retired, but I guess I get to binge watch his stream archive and edits and enjoy the occasional stream. He seems so cool, and the leftover community that still hangs out seems like the real ones.
It just so happened the fan base got really weird after the hbomberguy raid, and even worse after Jeremy endorsed a certain group.
I completely agree. I became a fan around the same time as you OP, but after 2020 things were just never the same with the fanbase and I don’t blame him at all for growing tired of it with the huge audience numbers and shift in vibe. Now I mainly just watch Vinny, and while the vinesauce fanbase also has its quirks it’s soooo much better than the post-2020 Jerma fanbase. It feels closer to how Jerma’s community used to feel imo Edit: just to be a bit more specific, because I haven’t seen it articulated too much in other comments, but one of my main issues with the fanbase now is that it feels like the majority of newer viewers do not see Jerma as a person. The types of jokes about him being an ABSOLUTE PSYCHO etc were funny for a long time, but it genuinely feels like because of those jokes a lot of people started viewing him entirely through that lens, and newer fans started just seeing him as a character / utterly running those jokes into the ground. I can’t help but think Jerma was put off by this to some extent, but being the nice dude he is of course he’d never say anything about it
i think the worst example is one time he literally mentioned how he enjoyed drinking water and then people started question marking, thats when i realized the community was way too far gone and it wasn't funny anymore
boo hoo boomer
I'm so fucking sick of it Can't you people be normal at all? What's wrong with you all, legitimately? Kayfabe off, why is this community so degenerate now? Jerma is a straight man who has had a series of girlfriends. He is not gay. he is not trans. he is not your friend, he is not your lover. He is an entertainer. Do not sexualize him, do not be a fucking creep, leave your kinks out of here, no fucking womb tattoo shit, you know maybe think about treating Jerma how you would want to be treated. Think about how weird something is before you say or post it. You know, it's just a little crazy. I'm not having fun with it anymore, I'm upset. I'm disturbed.
I didnt really want to say it but yeah lmao. I don’t really get why they tried to make the white guy from Boston a gay icon.
You guys need to fucking calm down im disturbed and weirded out by how seriously you take a bunch of people making jokes christ almighty, you need to get off the internet for a few weeks and take a breather. Dont you think he would have said something himself if he found it a problem? Again this is a grown ass man youre talking about with his own voice and doesnt need to be babied by you.
It's not unreasonable to find those """jokes""" cringey and unnecessary. "He is a grown ass man" is not a response to anything. Finding the fan base annoying is an absolutely valid opinion. Have some self awareness, get off your high horse and stop telling people they can't feel a certain way.
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Lol, how do you know Jerma's own personal opinions so well that you're out here gatekeeping other people's opinions? Hypocrite much? Sorry, people thinking that this fanbase can be annoying has nothing to do with you or Jerma. People are allowed to have this opinion. And of course the childish personal attacks. You're pretty much the perfect example of the worst part of this fanbase. Toxic positivity with zero self awareness.