G4 Loses Thousands Of Subscribers Following XPlay Host Indiana Black’s “Sexism In Gaming” Rant

Spencer Baculi |

Jan 21, 2022

Source: Farming Simulator 22 Review - The Next Big Esport? | Xplay, YouTube

In what may be one of the most unsurprising backfires of all time, G4 has begun to bleed subscribers by the thousands following Xplay host Indiana “Frosk” Black’s recent on-air rant against “sexism in gaming.”

Broaching the topic during a recent edition of the show’s “The Airing of Gaming Grievances” segment, Black began her now-infamous speech by asserting to viewers, “In joining G4 I was ecstatic to be part of something I grew up watching as a child, but every time G4 is brought up in various channels, even in this YouTube channel, we have the chat in front of us, I can see you, without a doubt, there will be backlash because I am not as bangable as the previous hosts.”

https://youtu.be/ps12AWRbqpE

“It has somehow been expected that you can talk about how much you jerked off to women as a compliment,” she continued. “It’s not a compliment. It’s dehumanizing, and it’s weird. Women do not exist to be nice on the eyes for you. Morgan Webb, Olivia Munn, did not exist to be nice on the eyes for you.”

Black then declared, “And that’s just obvious sexism. You don’t need to explicitly objectify women or declare that you hate women to be sexist.”

Hinting that the reason for her frustration were various criticisms made in disagreement to her reviews, Black explained, “here at X-play, our reviews are written and produced by a team of people. There are too many games for one person to shoulder the burden, so we divide and conquer.”

“So when we use language like ‘we’ or ‘I’, that’s the reviewer, that’s coming from the mouth and experience of the reviewer reading that review,” she confusingly put forth. “And that’s not to say that Jirard, TBH, Adam, or myself don’t contribute to the reviews. We absolutely do. But it will always be in varying degrees and take a whole team behind us.”

“We have done the experiment and controlled for the variables,” Black further elaborated. “Adam will read a script, written by the same writer, that I will read the other half of the script for, but I’ll be the one flamed.”

She then admitted that though “it also happens to Jirard and [Smallwood],” their experiences do not “discount the sexism of how it happens to me when it does.”

“Both things can be true!” she exclaimed. “That there is a general hatred of any change that isn’t Adam, and that I’ll receive special flame just for being a woman. And I wish I could turn the camera around so you could see the incredible team that make Xplay. Half of our producers and writers are women.”

Drawing her thoughts to a close, Black informed viewers, “When you’re in our DMs, or in those YouTube comments, or in Twitch chat right now, those reactionary threads, thinking that I’m somehow ruining your current Xplay experience because you can’t objectify me, how you previously did to Morgan, or that I’m somehow less qualified to speak on something but you can’t quite put your finger on why, even though I’m reading the exact same script as Adam, but you have no problem with his part of it, you’re letting your unconscious biases ruin my day and you’re gatekeeping the gaming space.”

“So maybe, for 2022, we be a bit nicer, a bit more self-reflective, and we enjoy the fact that people are working hard to make free content for you,” she concluded. “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. PEACE.”

Though the G4 team undoubtedly expected the host’s accusatory speech to generate some sort of positive engagement, as evidenced by their continued promotion of the segment on official channels, publicly available metrics reveal that said moment has delivered a detrimental blow to the recently revived network’s growth.

According to data compiled by Social Blade, G4 has lost at least 6,000 YouTube subscribers since the airing of Black’s rant around January 12th at a rate of nearly 1,000 per day.

While this number may seem insignificant in the face of the 492,000 users who remain subscribed to G4, it should be noted that the channel’s uploads receive an average of only 15,000-75,000 views, with content focusing on host’s personalities doing significantly less than reviews of well-known game titles.

Thus, given the network’s production values including development costs and employee pay, the estimated $5,100 dollars made from the channel in the last 30 days signals that such a loss of subscribers could pose a serious setback to G4’s desired future.

YouTuber Yellowflash opined about the loss of subscribers saying, “Good way to start your company’s new relaunch or whatever by telling fans to get f***ed. That seems like a winning strategy doesn’t it? That seems like a winning strategy there.”

He went on to say that Black “effectively destroyed that entire company. They are never going to recover from this and maybe they shouldn’t. This was a bad business move.”