I've never liked VNN, for a number of reasons. I would argue that he uses Valve in his name to imply that he's somehow associated with Valve, even though this is basically the first time he's had any inside information that nobody else had or that wasn't already public knowledge. Normally his news posts are scraped from whatever's on reddit or facepunch that week. When I watch his stream or videos I get the feeling that he wants to keep up this appearance of being an insider as much as possible, and you can see it in the questions kids ask him. His stream is usually kids coming to HIM with the Valve news, i.e. the Steam exploit a few days ago. Which on its own, would be fine.

But he's not really VALVE News Network, it's mostly TF2 and CS:GO. Which is fine, there's no problem with that. But all these kids come to him with Dota2 news or questions or with HL mods or Portal stuff or anything else Valve related, and he feigns interest a bit and just kinda sticks to TF2 and some CS.

But I also once saw him run a goodbye screen for literally 20 minutes, during which ads were playing. He is a little obnoxious with the ads and product placement (as you see in this very video), and the feeling I've gotten in his stream before is that he is way too in your face with trying to extract virtual items from kids. Maybe he has cut down on these things a bit since I last watched, I have no idea.

Besides my personal gripes, I just found the interviewing in this video tough to watch. I'm not saying I'm great, but I worked as a journalist for over a year and interviewing was what I did for a living, and it was embarrassing to see his questions for Dave Riller. I couldn't watch, I had to listen. It was too awkward for me. For him to mention he's there along with other video game press is painful. If I'm not mistaken, he got in because he made a post in the Gabe Newell AMA which he had his community upvote for visibility, which finally got him his connection at Valve. For contrast, I appreciated that when Uncle Dane visited Valve recently, he didn't tell anyone at Valve he was coming, he didn't introduce himself as a YouTuber or personality at all, just as "Dane", and he got really awesome inside information just as easily and made a great video about it (without infomercials for a CS:GO skin site at the beginning). I guess I prefer humble people versus not so much.

End of the day I'm sure he's a nice guy in real life, but I can't stand anything he does online, he doesn't seem to care about his viewers, only their items, he seems mega fake and not at all genuine, and I think if his username was "Tyler123" or something versus Valve News Network, he would be lost in a sea of content creators, like many others are. Maybe the follow-up videos will be better, we'll see. I try to remain positive. All this is just my personal opinion.

http://i.imgur.com/Jv1xAar.jpg

http://puu.sh/tVWAp/db0a1b7834.png

I tried the A&W Root Beer flavor in Virginia and let me tell you.. do not try those

There's one just down the road still, is there not

no you didn't

edit: for late comers, the original thread title was "paddie rejoins froyo????"

Very well put

I'm curious though how respondents in this survey approached the question.. it'd be easy to say "I am against that" as a knee-jerk reaction, I think. Don't want to seem like you're in favor of people hating gays.

Not sure what I think of the second question, "Do you favor or oppose allowing a small business owner in your state to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people, if doing so violates their religious beliefs?"

We had a highly public case of that here a couple years ago, where a jewelry store owner was against gay marriage due to religious reasons as well, and a lesbian couple claimed they were discriminated against. Many people agreed that yes, you have a right to refuse service if it is your small business and that is against your beliefs (it's your business after all, your rules), but then customers also have a right to NOT SHOP at your store because they see you as close-minded, bigoted, etc.

I think of Canada and the US as mostly free countries in many ways, but I'd be curious to compare laws/rulings/precedents around a situation like this, if they exist.

same reason everyone hates Froyotech

they win everything and the majority of their fans are insufferable and shitty

good kid

much love

http://i.imgur.com/QTM6aNB.jpg

omg

http://puu.sh/tNiuY/fb50279423.png

AND HERE COME THE MEMES

so are you saying don't take the deal or

Good one but he actually played incredibly well for someone who hadn't touched the game in 3 months, minus rollouts