Northern Verve said:
I've always viewed Game Theory/MatPat as just doing the stuff he does purely for entertainment, Mat simply think it's fun to make these crazy theroies and use in-game knowledge to support it.
It's the insane fans that treat it like it's the gospel for everything video games are really the most bad thing about all of it. It's cool if someone likes to view some of Mat's theories as true, but they shouldn't spread it as like it's fact. Especially ones that might be derogatory to a character like the "Mario is a sociopath" one. Alot of people love Mario, no one should start flaming people who like Mario as a character when their only basis that a theory from MatPat said he's as evil as that theory says he is.
That's absolutely my point. I don't mind Game Theory, as I said - in fact, I will concede that his videos are really entertaining, and he has some nice diction and a great way of capturing the attention of an audience. The
quality of his videos is uncontested; however, many of his theories have holes, and a lot of times over none he states his opinions rather definitively. I mean, I suppose go long or go home, but I'm not the only one to have noticed that his fact-assertion might be a reason why people so easily follow him.
well , i'd praise Matpat for actually trying to do some legit research and come out with decent conclusions even if they are only for entertainment purposes.
Seeing his videos just for the sake of entertainment and fun , means that you clearly don't take the internet seriously , which is how all the people should be in my opinion.
The problem is that a lot of his research is cherry-picking and outright ignoring any pieces of evidence that disagree with his thesis. If I could provide an example, he states that Mario is abusive to Luigi, while conveniently glossing over all of the Mario & Luigi RPG games, which are all extremely important if you need to determine how Mario behaves around Luigi under normal settings. In fact, it's far more likely, given Mario's behavior in those other games, that Mario is simply a sore loser in sports games, or that it's typical brotherly ribbing. This is pretty inconsistent with him, too, as he'll bring them up in his Mario timeline thesis instead, so it's not as if he doesn't know of their existence.
For a lot of people, though, picking apart his theories
is fun. I like engaging in debates and discussing headcanons and ideas like that. Some of his ideas are pretty interesting, even if false, such as Rosalina being related to Princess Peach, and I wouldn't mind seeing writings of fanfiction or the like depicting them. Really, the issue is that people can be so adamantly stuck in these ideas that they'll outright say untrue things to people that can, and has, bordered on harassment in some circles. This isn't just a problem with Mario, either. Any influential figure within a fandom tends to influence the fandom to believe things that aren't true.
MatPat, at the end of the day, is an entertainer. Often, people forget that he is not perfect, nor does he work for Nintendo.
That actually happened? A direct attack?
I haven't personally seen anyone attacking Mario but I have frequented the Undertale fandom and seen something very similar to that before, although in the exact opposite direction (sympathizing with a character that is generally pointed as antagonistic within the game's narrative).
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if people have actually harassed others in regard to headcanons revolving Mario. I've seen it way too many times in other places.
Game "Theory" should be treated as entertainment purposes, but it's pretty much drivel. I've seen other fan "theories" before, especially the one about Super Mario Bros. 2, where characters' abilities are actually a reflection on Mario's views on them. Mario's an ordinary guy with no special traits, yet Peach can fly (flying is associated with freedom), Toad is the strongest and fastest even though he's small and weak-looking, and Luigi can jump really high and even surpass Mario. If you interpret it like that, it seems that Mario really counts on his friends.
There are a lot of intriguing fan theories out there that get overshadowed by Game Theory, and it's rather unfortunate. I have to actually dig to find them sometimes. I've also noticed that rebuttal videos to any of his theories wind up getting lots of Dislikes on YouTube, no matter how logical they may be, which of course makes it harder for those videos to be found.
I've always been the kind of person to encourage free thought and expression of that free thought, even if there may be contradictory evidence (see: my post in the Mario headcanons thread, where even though my own headcanon has some contradictory ideas, I still think it's a pretty neat thing to think about). That, however, is not the same thing as endorsing someone heralding their opinion as fact above everyone else. You shouldn't claim something is canon when it isn't. Unfortunately, misinformation spreads easily on the internet, and especially with big name channels like Game Theory, it results in a sort of hive mind. It doesn't help that Game Theory doesn't seem to make any effort in encouraging free discussion of his theories, since he never responds to them.
I say that my opinion posted earlier in regard to Game Theory is unpopular because honestly, his stuff is
everywhere. It's actually strange being on a forum like this where nobody agrees with him.
