(just gonna give a little disclaimer…i obviously don’t know jim personally. in this post, i’ll be discussing the SPECULATIONS i had about the caddicarus show’s production between 2016 and 19 that i gathered through public information on his social media accounts. these are my PERSONAL opinions! you may have different ones about this era of the channel, but i…was an observant little autistic teen.)

so, i’m pretty sure i’ve established several times now that i’m a fan from 2014. and if you happened to know me between 2014 and 2019, you’d probably remember that i was very much a proud 2014-15 era caddicarus fan.

and i had a reason to be proud! i came along the same year as the release of the legendary dalmatians 3 video. the channel went up over 200k subscribers that year - from 100k-something to 300k. it went up to 400k in 2015 before the stagnation period. us buzzcut/apartment-era fans were the most populous group of beautiful people before the 2020 reset. the community interacted a lot, the caddicarus show was fortnightly and it was putting out bangers such as the vib-ribbon, playstation cheats, snow white, and cheesy episodes.

but by mid-late 2015, some problems began to arise. there were rising debates in the fanbase about whether or not the caddicarus show should upload more frequently. the ballz and blossom blast episodes were very controversial. and the puppicarus show was the final nail in the coffin for the older community - it sent the fandom into violent fights and debates in the comment section. it was one of the first times our fanbase was truly divided…the only precedent for this would’ve been the stanley parable tinker time, which couldn’t hold a candle to these events.

and after this incident…the caddicarus show became weekly in february 2016, which was HUGE at the time. all the beautiful people rejoiced as this was the first time in history we’ve had weekly episodes. AND with two bonus videos every week? what’s not to love?

well…even back then, i was simultaneously excited…and worried. i was ecstatic about the show becoming weekly, and i was also excited about the channel getting new branding…and as you may recall, my expectations were a bit too high for the latter.

but i was very worried about caddy. this 21-year-old dude who had just moved into a family situation is now gonna have to pump out three videos a week, while staying consistent in quality and being there for his family?

and you know what? i had a lot of fun with season 6 when it came out. i have a lot of fond memories waiting for the video to come out every sunday, and during that waiting time, me and my fandom buddies would create stuff like memes and fanart.

and season 7 was fun too! that month of terrarr was by far my favorite, and the fall of 2016 is EXTREMELY nostalgic.

by the beginning of 2017, he’d moved to the current house and was still keeping a consistent schedule. current quickies was replaced with the caddy show, which had longer videos and more variety. film fridays was replaced with cinemaggots but it was still a show about movies nonetheless. and hey! even after all the other shows were phased out in 2016, there was still something for everyone on the caddicarus channel! don’t like the monty python madness on the caddicarus show? check out the slower-paced caddy show instead! don’t like video games? well, cinemaggots is the show for you!

season 8 was still great, but it wasn’t as great as the two preceding it. well, surely things can only get better, right…?

season 9 was…a season alright.

sure, after re-evaluation i like it a bit more, but at the time…woof.

and this, my friends…is where i personally thought the cracks began to show.

i was thinking to myself at the ages of 15-16 in 2017-18 - why does jim feel like he needs to appeal to everyone? yeah, he has to make money and pump out these videos to feed his family, but is that really working? look at these view counts! they don’t even begin to halfway reach the sub count! people aren’t tuning in like they used to! the charm is going away! does jim not realize that the caddicarus show used to be an event? in 2014-15, if i got a notification on my phone for a caddicarus upload that said “… - caddicarus” at the end of the title, my ass dropped EVERYTHING i was doing. the caddicarus show was SERIOUS business.

who in god’s name was itching to watch drive thru reviews?? film fridays?? tinker time?? most people who subbed to caddy were coming for the caddicarus show. but when he makes it weekly, not only does the feeling of it being an event go away, but it becomes routine and formulaic along with the other shows. every episode has the same structure, with these repeated jokes sprinkled in. “here’s a crappy kids’ game, here’s me analyzing it in-depth for 20 minutes, obligatory content creator friend saying ‘CADDY i played this WRETCHED game on my OWN channel, PLEASE caddy you are going to DIE if you play this’, obligatory miluk reference, obligatory side character cameo for obligatory lore, here’s me shooting the crappy kids’ game, please remember to stay beautiful.” this mindset is ultimately weakening the show. i can guarantee if he changed up his format and made the caddicarus show fortnightly or monthly again, the quality could go up AND his mental health would improve. please jim. we’re worried about you.

…ok, those weren’t my exact words. but i’ll participate in a family prayer before i show y'all direct excerpts from my 2017-18 caddicarus random book on wattpad.

but those were still the thoughts that were brewing in my head. i was campaigning for monthly caddicarus episodes on my wattpad, i was always worried whenever he’d talk about his mental health. i thought that the schedule wasn’t only hurting the video quality, but also him.

and…my suspicions were correct.

caddy has talked about this on many streams, interviews, and convention panels, such as the arlo podcast and this final fantasy stream; this work mindset absolutely destroyed him. paraphrasing these interviews and panels and streams, he would have mental breakdowns where he’d shut himself away from his family and the internet. he was making videos just for the sake of making them.

of course, when i was 14-16, this stuff wasn’t really public knowledge yet. but i looked at clues such as the sub rate which began to stagnate as soon as late 2015, and the view counts of videos which began to suffer. caddy had thought he needed to pump out more videos to have his channel perform better, which obviously wasn’t the case. he was stuck at 500k for over two years…these days, he takes about 8-9 months to gain 100k subs.

so now that i know a lot more, i understand fully why the quality of the show slipped.

i stopped watching in march 2019…and from what i was being told by a fandom friend who kept updating me on what was happening, things weren’t really improving as much. december 2019 was one of his worst months for mental health. looking at this capture of his socialblade, he was bleeding subs in may 2019 and it was one of his worst months yet. that same month, he published the now-unlisted PUBG video, which was extremely divisive. it was also the same month where he tried to start a new film review show that he quickly pulled because he realized he was about to fall into the trap of having multiple shows again. and according to this community post and this video, he almost shut down the channel twice in 2019 because of how poorly it was performing.

needless to say, i stayed very worried about him throughout that year while i was pursuing other fandom endeavors. i would just feel sad watching the view counts deteriorate.

this quote from one of the community posts i linked says a lot:

As it turns out, this was more a strategic early move to save myself over anything. I know exactly how I get when I get overworked, and it isn’t good. Uninspired, stressed, rushed, even sick - so before I got too into it and allowed to to negatively affect the Caddicarus Show, I nipped the movie review series in the bud before it could get too out of control. I REALLY need to stop letting these ideas get to my head. If I feel inspire to create more, PLEASE remind me to channel that ALL into Caddicarus. I’m insane.

this was EXACTLY my concern with the channel…and here it was being said back to us by the man himself.

i never said a word to him about this stuff. i never tried to get attention, i was never overly angry about it, i just had criticism. but this answer from the 2022 TMG panel just confirms to me that caddy had these same thoughts all this time since 2016…but he couldn’t act on them because of the financial situation. and that combined with the mental health stuff…it feels kinda weird looking back on certain years of the show, especially 2019. when i think about the shit caddy was dealing with during the time, it kinda taints them.

here’s a comment from jim in the replies of a top comment on the behind the scenes episode. the comment in question was a person reminiscing about the older videos and wishing caddy didn’t rag on them so much:

"I appreciate it, thank you. For me though, it's not JUST the quality of the videos themselves. For any creative person, that goes without saying. There's a lot of heavy underlying personal reasons why I have chosen to distance myself from pre-2020 videos. Family reasons, life event reasons, mental health reasons, etc. I've come through all of it and everything is totally okay, but I've got far too many awful memories from my worklife before 2020 for me to look back that fondly - and all I see when catching clips from older videos is exactly where I was and what was happening when I was making that specific video. When people quote certain lines from older videos at me, all I hear are influences from very bad people in my life. Even with something as silly as the game topics I covered back then, all I think of are the manipulative ideas from very bad people in my life, hahaha. I'm rambling though, sorry! I'm proud of what I have done in the past, and I have loved all the great memories I've made with things outside of the channel (conventions etc), but I very much prefer to keep looking to the future. Can't live in the past n all that shit."

there’s a lot of confusion as to why those older videos are tagged as such. but they’re tagged for a reason. and it’s not just because of the video quality. trust me, i was confused and irritated when i saw he’d done that, but after returning, i started to understand. of course, i don’t support him straight up privating or deleting them, but simply tagging them is a good compromise. the thing is, a lot of us have amazing memories with these older videos. and i recall him making a tweet that went something like “the more i hear about my older videos the more i want to delete them”, and all the lumpies and germs promptly began telling him “DON’T.”

so, the 2016-19 era was pretty rough. but it’s good knowing that things did get better from there. jim went through so much adversity and bullshit and it paid off astoundingly. this channel has seen hell, been through hell, and crawled out of hell before its putrid hands could pull it back in. caddy adapted, learned to game the system, stopped caring about numbers and staying relevant, and proceeded to create the best videos he’s ever done…while rejuvenating his channel in the process. it had returned to a 2014-like community and sub rate…the sense of community that 15-16 year old me had longed to return. the loving community had faded away after the 2016 changes and i missed it so.

and just how rejuvenated was his channel? well…

just this past august - one day after my 8th anniversary of becoming a fan - he achieved what a lot of us in the fanbase thought was impossible for years. for a while, it looked like he’d never reach it. but with all his determination, resilience, and strength…he made it. and my god, i am so glad i was able to watch all this history unfold.

you are amazing, jim. 💜