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Comment by Eisenstein | Hacker News Reader

I like how the RLM guys subvert the parasocial dynamic with their viewers by telling us that we aren't part of their group and never will be. They never ask for comments or for interaction with fans, and I remember Mike specifically saying once to the camera 'we don't want to hang out with you -- ever' or something similar. It is refreshing and a reminder that we do not know these people.

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And yet they are my bestest screen friends of all

Yep. I was telling my wife a few weeks ago that the RLM guys have really satisfied a social need I have had for the past few years. I don't know what it is about them.

A parasocial bull session[1]?

(I don't mean parasocial in a negative way; I enjoy a lot of RLM's videos.)

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bull%20session

They recently played a fan-made RLM-themed video game on the channel, which seems to be the most they’ve done to acknowledge their audience in a long time.

Of course to balance it out they’ve trolled the audience again with this video.

> Of course to balance it out they’ve trolled the audience again with this video.

How?

What was the point of the video? The big reveal is that they’re never going to reveal these pictures.

What was he point of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin Wu-Tang Clan album?

To make money selling music of unknown quality to a supervillain maybe.

The persona they deliberately give off is of being deeply unkind. It was fantastic when they did that in character for the take-down of Phantom Menace but it’s less attractive knowing they might be like that in real life. Maybe the joke is on me, and they are still in character?

It’s as if we were to discover Stephen Colbert is actually a neocon boot licker.

> and they are still in character?

They go to conventions and interact with fans in public, and I haven't seen anyone mention it having gone poorly. I see this more as a consequence of "mid-level fame" on Youtube. You might be likely to draw a rather fanatic following while being much more accessible to them than other celebrities. I take it more as preemptive means of avoiding this issue.

That's the whole point though -- if you only see someone in media or on a stage, then you never know them at all. I personally believe that they are acting to an extent -- I would be very surprised if Mike were actually a scumbag who abused his best friend and that Jay is either too stupid or too sadistic to have empathy. You can see glimpses of their actual interpersonal dealings if you watch the special feature on the Space Cop blu-ray call 'How Not to Make A Movie' which is a kind of documentary-style collection of them behind the scenes starting when they first mean up with Jay in the 90s. They seem like normal mid-western white boys who like weird films and probably got a bit bullied in high school.

That said, I remind myself that even though it is tremendously fun sitting and watching them and thinking that we would probably have a great time being friends, they are real people with real faults and I already have great friends who have those. The difference is that if I met not sets of those people on the street one of those sets would have no idea who I am and the other would be my actual friends.

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