Biting The Hand Humor / Web Media

• The Angry Video Game Nerd In the Season 7 episode "The Wish List" Part 1, When he reviews bad sonic games and comes to play Shadow the Hedgehog He criticizes the games use of cinematics by saying:
  Nerd: It's pretty spectacular but why is it always like this now. Is this what kids do nowadays, Just sit down and WATCH video games?
• The Bugle podcast is put out by the London Times, which is owned by Murdoch's News Corporation. They've had a couple of digs at Murdoch media products, including "The Sun is, of course, a cousin of the Bugle - not that we all get on with all our relatives."
• This episode of David Mitchell's Soap Box. (Originally the video went out as a podcast sponsored by Bulldog Natural Grooming.)
  • Later episodes have a Running Gag that David can't remember the name of the company that is sponsoring his podcasts. Eventually Bulldog got in on the joke by announcing "Robert Webb's Soapbox."
• 50 Ways to Die in Minecraft: Some of the deaths involve jabs at YouTube and their lack of transparency in explaining and enforcing guidelines.
• Psycomedia hosts Tim and Ben both attended Oxford University but many episodes focus on the bizarre research of their teachers and other faculty members. Lovingly. And not libellously.
• That Guy With The Glasses and Channel Awesome examples:
  • According to Todd in the Shadows, Lady Gaga's "Telephone" has more advertisements than ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com.
    • Another Todd quote: "And I've realised something about my new workplace. YOU ARE ALL A BUNCH OF NERDS! NERDS! NERDS!"
    • Continues in Linkara's review of KISS comics. When asking Todd if he'd like to co-review after giving the history of KISS, he just laughs at the thought of him reviewing a comic. "I forget how nerdy this site is." Linkara didn't look pleased.
  • In "The Sexual Awakening Of The Human Nerd" by The Nostalgia Chick's supporting cast, Dr. Tease interviews the other reviewers, describing them as "These creatures - I mean, humans - I mean, nerds."
  • Welshy and Sad Panda take every opportunity they can to make fun of their employers. (Whenever they're not taking jabs at each other.)
  • The The Nostalgia Critic delves into this a few times since his revival in 2013:
    • In his "Rise of the Commercials" he gives this humorous Take That! at youtube:
    Those are good and all, but every once in a while you come across a commercial that's so ridiculous and so stupid you swear they're not even trying - like this one. *review stops and YouTube advertisement loads*
    • In the Nostalgia Critics Fox Kids retrospective where he regrettingly lets Walter and Heather run the review for the last few shows that he didn't grow up with, When they came to talk about the show Beast Wars Walter promotes his top 5 episodes video of the show, Critic and Walter give this controversial but pretty humorous back and forth...
    Critic: If my face isn't on it I don't watch it.
    Walter: Like I haven't heard that before.
    • In his review of A Goofy Movie during the song After Today he gives this humorous response to the lyrics "I'm going to sit on my but".
    Critic: If you do it while complaining about movies, You could make a very good living that way.
    • At the beginning of his review of Planet of the Apes (2001) he has the Honest Trailers voice guy do an honest trailer of his show and its obvious that the whole segment fits into this trope.
    • In his review of Jem and the Holograms (2015), after Jem (who became famous off a YouTube video) signs a contract with a Corrupt Corporate Executive:
    Critic: You signed a bullshit contract that completely screws you over? You really ARE an Internet star!
  • In Demo Reel Donnie's rants about taking something miserable from the past and obsessing over it was a direct reference to TGWTG's usual shtick (and considering his actor, towards the then-retired Nostalgia Critic in particular).
  • Although unintentional, in an episode of Battle Geek Plus with the The Nostalgia Critic, Critic sends Ryan a very special gift to review, consisting of the Zelda CDI Games. Upon receiving them, he asks him why doesn't he give them to the other producers at Channel Awesome. The Critic responds "I don't see them anywhere do you?" After the Channel Awesome brou ha ha, this hits too close to home for when it came out.
• Yahtzee has an infrequent habit of calling the Escapist out on having him play and review games he'd rather not. It's not exactly surprising, considering he insults basically everyone else.
• Totalbiscuit made fun of the executives of Squarespace (the sponsors of his Co-optional Podcast) in multiple ads, occasionally having a commercial with someone from Squarespace saying what he could and couldn't do in a commercial.
• Emma Blackery:
  • For a long time, Emma Blackery's most viewed video was her singing about how no one liked YouTube's integration with Google Plus.
  Emma: Basically, I have this kinda feeling that YouTube isn't gonna like this video too much.
  • Like many YouTubers, Emma made a video mocking the idea of "YouTube Heroes", comparing it to Communism.
• When YouTube Heroes was announced, PewDiePie made a satire video of himself abusing the power that would be given to YouTube Heroes.
• Mr. Mendo ended an episode with a surprise guest to lead into the Blip ad. Her only line? "And the award for the Worst Commercial Ever goes to..."
• Game Trailers program "The Final Bosman," starring analyst Kyle Bosman, has an episode called "So Long Last Gen" in which Bosman makes fun of Game Trailer's "next gen" stance on the Wii U system (where GT keeps saying the Wii U is "not next gen," something Bosman highly disagrees with), and makes fun of the fact GT gave The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD only a 7.8 out of 10.
• Defied in Grantland's preview of the Summer 2014 movies, where after the weird concept for Guardians of the Galaxy is given there is:
  (Full disclosure: Guardians of the Galaxy is a product of Marvel Studios, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, which is the corporate entity that allows me to buy food.)^note Grantland is owned by ESPN, one of Disney's TV networks
  • Grantland writers have a tendency for this, such as this NHL article.
  Such an occasion calls for a pregame ceremony of some sort, and we’re in luck, because the Mighty Ducks are owned by the Walt Disney Company, one of the world’s most successful producers of family-friendly entertainment. This is going to be good! (Full disclosure: Disney owns ESPN and pays my salary, which means it is wonderful.)
• Random Assault: The hosts tend to badmouth the few active listeners they have. For example, Alex calling Pipgirl fucking weird for eating toast with ketchup and that 510BrotherPanda talks like Randy Newman.
• Epic Rap Battles of History: Jim Henson vs. Stan Lee ends with a final verse by Walt Disney, depicting him as a tyrant, despite the fact that, as he points out, the Battles are produced by a Disney subsidiary.
• Jello Apocalypse's Welcome to YouTube takes consistent jabs at YouTube, its policies, and its community. And yet it's hosted on YouTube.
  Jello: In fact, the only thing you'll use on the main page is Subscriptions, which aren't even on the main page anymore. They're off to the side and you have to click on them, and there's no way to set them as your default. Don't worry though, they'll probably change it in the next update. I bet there won't even be subscriptions anymore!
  • He then takes a jab at himself by joking about making an Abridged Series, which is what, aside from his "Welcome to" videos, made his channel so popular.
  • His So This Is Basically... series manages to do this with some sponsored videos. His episodes on Persona 5 and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel are both sponsored by their publishers (Atlus and NISA). But that did not stop Brenden from tearing into the games and pointing out some of their nastier flaws (Persona 5's Broken Aesop and creepy dating mechanics, Cold Steel's poor pacing and overuse of Permanently Missable Content)
• Matthew Santoro uploads all of his videos on YouTube. In his video "Catching Up: With Matt! (#1)," he says that he'll take questions posted from his fans on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. He then says that he was gonna take questions from Google +, the social network that is associated with YouTube, but since nobody uses Google+, he didn't bother.
• The failures of Neocities, Froghand's host site, often comes up in the BUAFYs.
  Fuck you to Neocities, and though for all the time I say "fuck you" to it, they still keep me on here despite committing multiple acts of sedition (everybody download the site while it's still up!). I assume it's for the fat advertising money they're making from the invisible ads they put exclusively for mimes, or to entice the hundreds of thousands of hamsters they use to run the server with.
• Inverted on Sky Williams' series. Sky is notably optimistic about his platform on YouTube and his audience and always takes full responsibility for problems related to his channel... even when it makes more sense not to.
• In season 15 of Red vs. Blue, when the series' status as Rooster Teeth's flagship had perhaps been eclipsed somewhat:
  Grumpy McBossypants: The Reds and Blues are old news anyway. People are bored of them. Why don't you do a series about those monster fighting sexy teenagers? Yeah! My kids love those nudnicks.
• Learning with Manga! FGO, though originally intended to help new players learn to play the game, draws most of its jokes from complaining about it, between Allegedly Free Game-style practices, rigged drop rates, and not letting you skip the longer animations. The protagonist and Audience Surrogate is portrayed as The Gambling Addict and a serial molester who only cares about the game because it lets her see pictures of pretty girls, and the devs are consistently treated as incompetent. Weirdly, the comic is incredibly popular among both fans and the developers, to the point of influencing official merchandise. One comic even claims the protagonist's biggest weakness is being unable to really insult the devs.
• ProZD's sponsored videos usually fall into this, since he'll spend the entire sketch riffing on a certain game mechanic, often portraying it as annoying and exhausting, only for the sketch to end by promoting a game that revolves around that exact mechanic. This is extra funny for his Crunchyroll sponsorships, in which he usually mocks the cliches of anime or the embarrassing fanbase, since he also has a show on Crunchyroll.
• Because of the COVID-19 Pandemic and his own advanced age, Andrew Klavan worked from home throughout 2020, and regularly joked in his show about The Daily Wire (which he works for) trying to "distance themselves" from him.
• The majority of NoPixel livestreams are on Twitch, so Twitch and its policies (and meta) are all frequent targets.
  • A handful of NoPixel streamers are on Facebook Gaming, so whenever those streamers' characters are around, other characters will make fun of Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg.
• The talent of hololive often make jokes at the expense of their CEO, Tanigou "YAGOO" Motoaki. Mostly about how his "dream" was to make an idol group similar to AKB48, only for all the girls to show "un-idol" like behavior (cursing, drinking, sexual comments, etc.)
• The MeatCanyon video "youtube is killing me..." consists of MeatCanyon throwing shade at YouTube's restrictive policies by depicting himself as slaving under the control of a pair of Eldritch Abominations representing YouTube moderators and the website's then-CEO Susan Wojcicki who "demonetize" his creations on a whim in spite of his protests. The video ends with MeatCanyon getting the last laugh by obtaining a Patreon card, which leads to the YouTube monsters' destruction and MeatCanyon leading his creations towards freedom.
• James Lee: Invoked in "PewDiePie SΤRΑNGLΕS DOGS!?". After he gains a sudden spike in viewership, James tries to up his subscriber-count by making fake scandals based around the "YouTube 1%", and he picks PewDiePie as his first victim... and it's right after that does he find out that it was a shout-out from PewDiePie that suddenly made him so popular.
• In 2023, Llamas with Hats got demonetized and creator Jason Steele retaliated by creating a video titled "Llamas with Hats: Re-Cut for Brand Conscientiousness", where a personification of YouTube hosts an ad-friendly compilation of the series that poorly edits out all the gore and has Carl and Paul blatantly dubbed over with generic voices that spout bootlicking praises of sponsors and bottled water. Partway through the video, the personification of YouTube finds himself at the mercy of an empty void that represents the consequences of putting profit over freedom of expression.
• CaptainSparklez's sword in SMPLive is named "The Demonetizor", a reference to YouTube's tendency to remove monetization from videos including too much swearing.

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