Went into the article expecting it to be silly, but there were actually a ton of interesting insights, especially about how no one knows how to manage these celebrities.
Also, slowbeef is being humble; he literally invented the LP and curated the scene forever ago. His Metal Gear 2 annotated playthrough (from the mid-00s at the latest, I'm remembering HTML tables) was absolutely hysterical (at least to my teenage self), and was the only way I could read the earlier plot to that series at the time. He's also been able to figure out how to hack ROMs for translation that nobody else could and ran translation projects, like with Policenauts. He's a hero in the gaming community and totally underrated, so I'm always upset to not hear his name come up more often when people discuss Let's Plays.
There is ALSO a Long Play category for games, which is videos that do a full play through of a game with zero commentary, and in as few segments as possible. (Many longplays are just one video.)
slowbeef is more recently known as a part of the Retsupurae duo (https://youtube.com/user/retsupurae), a channel that I've been following since 2011 and has maintained high quality videos the entire time. (they used to riff on Let's Plays, but now they mostly riff on Flash games/Kickstarters) My personal recommendation is the Negotiator series of riffs: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo4M1tlpv9ruM7k2Pr_0auqL8...
Nice to hear the background context, I got the impression from reading that he has a much, much deeper historical wealth of experiences to draw on. Checked him out on Twitter and quite an interesting fellow. I also agree how salient this article hits points that are not specific necessarily to YouTube, but to the fickle beast of Entertainment as we know it. Fame is exceptionally passing in Music, TV, etc, and it stands to reason YT Content is, at least for now, going to follow that model in the US cultural style.
I highly recommend his policenauts play through for anyone who reads this site. He talks a lot about the romhacking process (the game had no English version until he helped patch it in)
Also, slowbeef is being humble; he literally invented the LP and curated the scene forever ago. His Metal Gear 2 annotated playthrough (from the mid-00s at the latest, I'm remembering HTML tables) was absolutely hysterical (at least to my teenage self), and was the only way I could read the earlier plot to that series at the time. He's also been able to figure out how to hack ROMs for translation that nobody else could and ran translation projects, like with Policenauts. He's a hero in the gaming community and totally underrated, so I'm always upset to not hear his name come up more often when people discuss Let's Plays.