Adam Sessler of G4: Antagonizing Fans was the Business Model

You’ve heard about hate clicks. But have you heard of a show based entirely around the idea as a business model? Given how quickly G4 went down the drain, don’t expect to see it again anytime soon.

Adam Sessler is a great presenter. I’ve enjoyed his work for a long time, although I didn’t really watch him on the original G4. I only started following around the time that Rev3 Gaming came around, but I truly appreciated the man’s work.

After the original G4 ended, I watched every video on his next revival, Rev3 Gaming. Rev3 Gaming was a good collection of up and coming talent with Matt Scoville’s Study Hall, Anthony Carboni (who would go on to host The Star Wars Show), Tara Long, Nick Robinson, all of whom appear to have achieved success after the sunset of Rev3 Gaming.

There has been a lot of talk about the 2nd end to G4 and Sessler’s 3rd run as a video game reviewer. How could there be more? Well…

Adam Sessler recently appeared on the Biggest Problem in the Universe podcast and discussed, among other things, his time at G4, the infamous Frosk rant, and his recent mock tirade against gamers. He also dropped a bomb about his content strategy.

Outside of gaming, Sessler can get quite heated in his political rhetoric although he describes himself as “not a pure progressive by any stretch of the definition.” Although it seems that almost anything could be construed as political these days, the revival of G4 featuring Sessler took a turn in that direction when young G4 host Indiana Juniper Black going by the name Froskurinn or “Frosk” hosted a segment decrying the treatment of women in gaming spaces.

While many would agree that there are always some issues with sexism in any male-dominated space, the discourse around the segment was that Frosk had gone too far and had alienated G4’s core audience, many of whom indicated that they felt personally attacked regardless of whether they actually made comments about Frosk on any level.

After the segment, coverage around G4 was decidedly negative, with articles on their declining subscriber count going out daily from various online outlets. Eventually G4 would cease operations once more and shut their doors for good.

Now that the dust has settled, Sessler appears to be more open about his time at G4 and the strategies they employed to garner attention, even if it meant intentionally antagonizing their fans. While talking with Vito Gesauldi and Adam Masterson, Sessler had this to say about the rant and his time at G4.

Sessler described Frosk’s rant as a “well-written soliloquy defending women’s presence in the space” and that the idea that Frosk deciding not to be a “dancing monkey” being to blame for G4’s demise was kind of ridiculous. He graphically described the rant as a “slow-acting poison that kind of got into the goulash” at G4, but not the reason they shut their doors.

While no one can know how things would turn out if key moments occurred differently, Sessler dropped hints that Frosk’s rant was not the only time that G4 stirred up controversy. In fact, it could be said it’s been a part of Sessler’s business model going back to the late 1990s.

One of the hosts of the podcast jokingly asked about the hyperbolic statements from the masses that pin Sessler with not just the destruction of G4, but also “destroying gaming forever!” The question appeared to be a joke, but Sessler’s response was very interesting.

“I more legitimately take some credit. I started out in 1998 before we had video on the internet. When G4 became G4TechTV we were able to do what YouTube would eventually do when we really started to realize that, wow, the more we insult things the more viewership starts to go up. I think that we were vanguards.”

Sessler compared inciting trolls to the stalwart of comedy: the heckler. “The heckler wants the attention. People love to be insulted in that arena… everyone thinks that are not [a troll].”

“At the end of the day, a view is a view is a view is a view.” [Repetition was Adam Sessler’s, not our own.] “There was a point where if in order to keep ratings going I needed to [inaudible]… okay let’s do it. I was being paid by G4. My interest was in the ratings and the survival of the show.”

It is difficult to determine whether Sessler was referring to the original run of G4, the more recent incarnation, or both because he seems to switch back and forth very quickly. When being more specific, Sessler commented on his return

“In the beginning I was trying to solve for some problems… This is kinda my mea culpa.” Sessler stated. He described a process in which a journalist or review would take tweets that do not necessarily represent popular opinion, but are amplified and brought forward to represent “most people.”

This inflammatory technique is a process that is common in journalism, and we do not approve of it on That Park Place. “We always give more credibility to the negative rather than the positive on the internet” states Sessler, although in fairness he might not have been referring to G4, but possibly the social “we” that represents all human behavior.

Sessler has a history in this space specifically. In the period after Rev3 Gaming, Sessler started an AI company whose services would aggregate social media posts to give companies a better view of how representative negative or positive social media comments were compared to the entire discourse around their products. During his time, he concluded that gamer culture is “full of horrible horrible horrible people” [again, repetition is Sessler’s not our own].

So, was Frosk’s rant intentionally designed to make people angry?

While Sessler seems to imply that G4 doesn’t stay away from controversy, in the podcast he states that he did not know the Frosk rant was coming.

“I would never tell someone what to do. The only thing I would have probably said is what could happen in terms of the attack.” Sessler then describes what it’s like to be the target of this kind of backlash and the safety concerns.

“That’s not fun. That’s not fun at all. When it happened I was deeply sympathetic… I was pretty certain of the s**tstorm that was on the horizon.”

When asked if the network was prepared for the backlash, Sessler paused and pointed out that G4 and the network that controlled it seemed to have different reactions. The network at large did not seem to be understanding of how the internet might react to things and how gamers might react.

Later on, Sessler would mock gamer’s “oh no! There’s a lady in my game now! We need to cover the entrance to our treehouse with broken glass!” as he made pretend whining noises. “If you upset the audience it’s not necessarily a negative and you can’t manufacture virality.”

What Triggered Adam Sessler?!

Sessler seems sincere in his approval of Frosk’s screed and that he did not know it was coming, yet during the segment, the feed cut to a shot of Sessler ,clapping widely and theatrically.

Was the gesture of approval because of ideological alignment? Was it because Sessler knew it would make waves?

We can only state the facts and theorize. But what about the content of the rant itself? Was G4 standing with Frosk against sexism?

While the newer incarnation of G4 was less focused on male demographics, Sessler is clear that he never perceived the original G4 network as catering to men, but rather that their flagship program Attack of the Show catered male audiences.

Fans of the original G4 often bring up a viral clip of model and actress Olivia Munn riding on her co-host’s back while attempting to pull down a dangling hot dog wiener dripping in mustard without using her hands. The clip is full of double entendres and mature references. In layman’s terms “they knew what they were doing.”

The new G4 was different, right?

After Frosk’s rant about gamers, the network raised eyebrows once again by featuring a “bikini ball pit” segment with Twitch streamer Amouranth. Amouranth (real name Kaitlyn Michelle Siragusa) is a female social media personality who posts content to many platforms including, according to Kotaku and Yahoo, amateur adult entertainment site OnlyFans. In the segment, Amouranth frolicked in a kiddie pool filled with plastic balls. The segment also included hot dogs, shake weights, and other placeholder items. Again, in layman’s terms: “they knew what they were doing.”

Whether the final result was desirable, Sessler’s strategy of riling up the audience seemed to work, maybe a little too well. As G4 declined, people could not stop talking about it. Entire creator playlists of G4 coverage deluged gamers on Twitch, YouTube, and other sites. It just didn’t result in people actually watching G4.

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