Episode 9: The Fall of Jacksfilms

   I've been a big fan of Jacksfilms, real name Jack Douglass, for a long time. He's a comedy YouTuber whose main focus on his channel is each of his videos being part of a series. Sometimes he does other stuff. 

The Jacksfilms of the Past

   He started out on the platform in its early days, as a college student making videos with his friends and family. He started to make series, which, along with his unique style and sense of humor, made him shoot up in popularity. While these series still dominate how people know him, he has fallen in several ways. I will get to that later. Here are his series:

PMS (Parody/Music Video/Sketch)

  Jack would do a video series called PMS every week. It would alternate between a parody, a music video, or a sketch. The parodies would often make fun of tv shows or famous celebrities at the time. The music videos were funny, original songs he would write. The sketches were dumb but funny little performances he would put on with his friends, family, or other YouTubers.

   A sort of spin-off, GamerGod88, consisted of Jack parodizing YouTube gamers.

JackAsk

   Yes, it's supposed to sound like "jackass". This show was where he would take questions from his fans, and answer them. The catch was his answers were fake answers - he would come up with a joke and "answer" the questions comedically. It was a clever satire on the oversaturated "question and answer" format of content. 

Your Grammar Sucks (often abbreviated to YGS)

   My personal favorite series he's ever done. I've rewatched every episode multiple times. In this show, he reads comments from internet comment sections and reads them out as they were written. It's hilarious to hear some of these comments be read out loud, and to this day I still frequently reference this series. The series also incorporated collabs, songs, drinking games, specials, and, for the 100th episode, he did a feature-length video.

YIAY (Yesterday I Asked You)

   Ah, yes. We arrive at what I say is responsible for the fall of Jacksfilms. In this series, he asks a question in advance, then in the episode he reads out his favorite answers his fans gave him. The title suggests the show should be new every day, but it's more like once a week at this point. I'm not a big fan of YIAY because it doesn't show any creativity from Jack. It is merely him making his fans be funny for him.

   Jack also has done series where he "fixes" stuff, like photos and Twitter bios and other things his fans ask him to fix. He fixes them in a funny way. These series came out of YIAY and are YIAY episodes at their core, so I consider them a spin-off of YIAY in the same way I consider GamerGod88 a spin-off of PMS.

The Jacksfilms of the Present

   Take a look at Jacksfilms' recent uploads. Going back a good while, he has been dominated by YIAY and making random YouTube Shorts. His other series, which I think are all better than YIAY, have all fallen by the wayside. He makes these other series either rarely or not at all. He now even refers to himself as the "YIAY Guy". He even has sold a YIAY book, and a YIAY board game, and adapted a game format into YIAY called "Are You Smarter Than A YouTuber (AYSTAY)", which he often plays with viewers on Twitch streams and at live shows. Yep, that's right. He's gone on a whole tour devoted to YIAY.

The Blind Format

   Jack has taken to a "blind format" where, instead of pre-picking the content for his series, he goes into them blind, so he doesn't know what he's gonna see before he goes into it. For a while, this meant Your Grammar Sucks was back. But he has once again stopped doing it.

So how has he fallen?

   I hate to see that Jack is so stuck on one series. What used to be a YouTube channel that was a haven for creative, unique content is now just a wash, rinse, repeat channel of one thing after the other. He has lost his uniqueness that made him so special among the hundreds of creators on the platform. A while ago, Jacksfilms complained that he doesn't think he will ever reach his goal of 5 million subscribers, and that he kept losing some for several months. Not to sound harsh, but I think those both are easily explained by his hang-up on YIAY. I've gotten to the point where I don't watch YIAY anymore. I only watch Jacksfilms videos that aren't YIAY. Unfortunately, that barely ever happens now.

In Conclusion

  If you still like what Jack does, if you like YIAY, then that's great. Keep watching him and keep enjoying his content. And for him, if making just YIAY makes him happy and lets him enjoy his job, then he should keep doing it. This piece I've written is just about how he has fallen in my eyes - why my interest in him and his content is far from what it used to be.

See you next week!