“At the end of the day, it’s just a game”

The Last of Us Part Two It has remained a controversial magnet for more than a year after its initial release.

After anonymity, popular YouTubers girlfriend comments are at the center of the latest scandal Reddit Users claim that they have been receiving death threats from the channel’s fan base. Weekly newspaper Contacted Girlfriend Reviews via email to learn more about the situation and how they responded to these serious allegations.

Who is the girlfriend comment?

The girlfriend reviews became famous on the Internet when they released their first video in November 2018, entitled “Should your boyfriend play?” Red Dead Redemption 2.“

The basic premise of this clip is that the nominal girlfriend (later revealed as Shelby) recounted the experience of watching her partner Matt play Rockstar’s Western EpicIn addition to making effective criticisms, they also interspersed various memes throughout the comments and often made things interesting.

Inspired by the breakthrough success of their first video, the duo began reporting on various other versions-including Fallout 76, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Dark soul and God of War-Whether these games make “backseat gamers” like Shelby happy or not, provides their unique perspective. This quickly evolved into a regular series (94 videos were posted at the time of writing) and is now basically the couple’s daily work.

Their biggest comment to date focuses on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Has accumulated more than 2.8 million views, and the channel itself has 1.28 million subscribers.In 2019, they were even nominated for 9 best gaming channel honors^day The annual Streamy Award in recognition of their concise script, beautiful editing and witty insights.

Over time, the couple tried their signature format, let Matt appear on the screen in the video, and even uploaded some music parody to the channel. However, the core appeal remains basically the same, because “Girlfriend Review” provides a refreshing option for some more serious gaming YouTube users and usually distances themselves from any drama.

However, in the past few weeks, their upload schedule and lighthearted content have been severely disrupted due to the constant controversy surrounding the The Last of Us Part Two.

what is The Last of Us 2 dispute?

Although it has been well received With multiple awards, it’s hard to think of a game that is more polarized than this. The Last of Us 2. Some critics even started dubbing Our last jedi, Refer to the same controversial part eight Star wars legend.

Many people found the sequel risked a bold and exciting narrative, while others criticized them as an unsatisfactory follow-up to one of the most popular games of all time.Everything-from the early plot transition to the mid-game protagonist transition and Ambiguous ending——It is a hotly debated topic on the Internet, Some of them become very ugly.

Those involved in making the game received harassment and multiple death threats (especially actress Laura Bailey, who portrayed Abby’s split role). At the same time, those who make any reasonable criticism of the game tend to be smeared with grease just like those who obviously overdo things.

Although the situation has eased in the past year, the mere mention of online games is still enough to arouse fierce disputes between the two sides. Thanks to their video released in July 2020, Girfriend Reviews has first-hand experience in this area.

Titled “Understanding The Last of Us Part Two“, The video is positive for the game in general and serves as an article about its theme and storytelling decisions.Same as everything else around The Last of Us 2, The response to this was very divided, but the narrative director of the sequel, Neil Druckman, seemed to like it a lot and even shared a link on his website Twitter account.

In Girlfriend Reviews’ own words, it was this public endorsement that put their channel on the “naughty list” along with other content creators who praised the game, including “Videogamedunkey”.

In particular, the subreddit of those who are not satisfied with the sequel, called r/TheLastOfUs2Since the video was uploaded, he has been severely criticizing his girlfriend’s comments. There, some users accused the channel of being “paid” by the developer’s naughty dog ​​and belittled anyone who didn’t like the game.

As often happens in these forums, debates sometimes escalate further, leading to personal insults and abusive comments.say Weekly newspaper Regarding this via email, Matt and Shelby said: “As far as the gaming community’s disagreement is concerned, in the final analysis… it’s just a game. If you don’t like something or disagree with someone, there are thousands of others. Games and the people who play them, you can pass the time.”

What happened to the girlfriend’s comments and death threats?

On Saturday, July 10, the Girlfriend Reviews Twitter account posted some screenshots from the r/TheLastOfUs2 thread (all usernames are censored), showing the remarks that often occur on the site.

Shortly thereafter, a now-deleted account named “TheRealRogerEbert” posted screenshots of death threats they allegedly received from members of the girlfriend’s comment fan group. The anonymous user said that the YouTube channel is fostering a hateful community and should be held responsible for the so-called harassment.

This article reached the homepage of subreddit and stayed there for a few days. During this period, TheRealRogerEbert uploaded screenshots of more abusive messages they claimed to have received from other Girlfriend Reviews subscribers.

Redditor eventually contacted the couple via email and threatened that if they did not publicly condemn the harassment, they would turn the matter over to the authorities. It was at this point that Matt and Shelby decided to do a little digging on their own, and then concluded that TheRealRogerEbert “sent himself a false death threat to accuse and slander his girlfriend’s comments.”

Girlfriend comments for investigation

On Saturday, the two announced their findings in a 22-minute YouTube video, decomposing the evidence and corroborating their claims.

To summarize a long legend, they checked the so-called death threats issued by u/TheRealRogerEbert, and after careful inspection, they decided that “it’s not difficult to prove that this person forged the whole thing.”

According to Matt and Shelby, although these abusive messages are said to come from different people, they all contain the same special punctuation errors. They claim that in every now-deleted screenshot, backticks (or accents) were mistakenly used instead of apostrophes. This led them to conclude that death threats were written by the same person using different usernames.

Then, they took a closer look at these usernames (only partially reviewed in the screenshots) and might identify one of them as u/VivaLaEverything. This Redditor only published one article on the r/Shakespear subreddit, in which they made the exact same backtick error.

After further investigation, Matt and Shelby said they found the link to VivaLaEverything Google Play store page. Allegedly, they discovered there that the user is Cyrillic and that they have a Google AdSense account. At the same time, they noticed that TheRealRogerEbert, the alleged victim of death threats, had previously posted about himself as a Polish and using an AdSense account.

Nevertheless, they admitted that this does not prove that the two accounts are operated by the same person. After all, it is not impossible that fans of Slavic girlfriend comments may send abusive messages to another Slavic Redditor.

Therefore, YouTubers decided to “play ball” and emailed TheRealRogerEbert to discuss the situation further. In this communication, they allegedly noticed that TheRealRogerEbert made the same backtick error as VivaLaEverything.

According to Matt and Shelby, this was enough to convince them that they “have pulled the fox out of his hole”, so they decided to call the Redditor’s bluff and tell them to go to the authorities.

They promised to report everything to the site administrator, at which time the VivaLaEverything and RealRogerEbert accounts were suddenly deleted (you will never find them anymore), as well as the personal email accounts used to communicate directly with Girlfriend Reviews.

Write to Weekly newspaper Regarding this situation, Matt and Shelby said: “Detective and detective work is fun and exhausting. As the dots begin to connect, we celebrate our little victories, and those moments of excitement are always accompanied by this sinking. ‘Well, it’s weird and scary. Why does this happen?

Consequences of the dispute

When asked about their reaction to the video, Matt and Shelby said: “We are very nervous about uploading this video. […] This is not our typical stupid content, so we really don’t know how our audience will react. Fortunately, the reaction from our fans and people who don’t know who we are is incredible. Our biggest fear is that people will think we overreact, but they all agree. “

However, the response was not widespread, and some members of the r/TheLastOfUs2 community accused the channel of fabricating the entire situation in order to click.As far as they are concerned, the administrators of subreddit Issued a lengthy statement State that they believe that their girlfriend commented on the video.

It read: “[U/therealrogerebert] lie. For us, for you, last but not least, there are Matt and Shelby from Girlfriend Review. We condemn your actions/therealrogerebert. This behavior has no place in this subreddit. If he does not delete his account, we will immediately ban him after we realize that he has forged the threat he claimed to have received.

“In the beginning, we didn’t really doubt these claims, because we ourselves often received threats and harassment from avid fans. the second part His statement seemed to us not that weird, so we left his position unchanged from the beginning. “

Speaking of misinformation in this regard, Matt and Shelby said Weekly newspaper: “What we learned from the whole thing is how important it is to be responsible on the Internet. Remember, anyone can say anything, if you find that you have a great reaction to what you read, it might be It’s a good idea to do a little research before sharing this information.”

In order to create a positive side from this situation, Girlfriend Reviews ended their video by promoting a new charity event that is raising funds for the “Best Friends Animal Association”. At the time of writing, this has successfully generated $29,372.