u/GOLDIEM_J

I'm actually very critical of the way Stampy handled his groups system. I wasn't able to enjoy Lovely World as much because Stampy enabled a large portion of his target audience to believe that it was real, and that doesn't sit well with me. There was literally no reason for Stampy Exposed to become as big as it did. I was in group 1 unto that point, and I remember commenting on his truth video "you didn't address Sqaishey playing Polly," and I showed the video to my little cousin and he was going "WOAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!" Don't get me wrong, I loved Stampy back in the day. I have a lot of nostalgia for his challenge series and Building Time, and I have a builder world that I've been working on for years. I'm trying to do terrain and everything. I didn't watch everything though, for example dens and quests I never really got into, but that's just because I didn't get into them properly. But the reason I was able to enjoy them more is because Stampy had nothing to pretend was real. And that goes for the Lovely World itself, too. But as a series, and this is gonna sound a bit harsh, it felt like I was watching Cocomelon. I actually didn't like Stampy's fictional helpers at all for a while because of how impersonal it felt, and there was speculation that he did it because of "beargate" as well, which only added to it. And that's died down in recent years because Stampy's explained it properly now, but I think it would've massively helped me to enjoy it better if we got something like the Thanks for Watching behind the scenes video earlier on. Clear the air on who was playing who and all of that. And that's another sticking point for me as well, because Lovely World was very much the opposite at the beginning. Obviously, I didn't know Stampy until 2016 (the first video I saw was Hot Potato,) but I still naturally gravitate towards the raw genuinity from Stampy's earlier videos. Hit The Target is a prime example of this because it started off as a genuine gimmick between two real people. Unexpected Drama still had the real person behind the gamertag playing him. And I have a lot of respect for Stampy for continuing that tradition, but don't enable a large portion of your audience to believe it's real and have their world torn apart when Stampy Exposed comes out. And I understand he was trying to be cautious of his groups system, brilliant, I'm not gonna put any blame on him for that. But I think he could've handled it differently. If children being upset that Trip to the Moon wasn't real is enough to take you off guard, then you quite frankly don't let them think so. You clear the air. And he did put disclaimers in his Hit The Target videos for a while after that, but then he stopped, and that's how we ended up with all that "Sqaishey is Polly" talk. In a way, it was actually a bit condescending to all three groups. Group 1 got strung along, group 2 were tantalised, and group 3 were basically just correct. And I'm gonna put this bluntly, it's a learning experience for the children as well to find out it isn't real. Yes, it may upset them in the moment, but that's just how growing up works. I remember when I used to think Dora the Explorer was real. Shielding children from that indefinitely isn't protection, it's just delay.