"Two things
1.) I'm not right wing
2.) I've never been on EFAP
And oh yeah... Fuck EFAP"
- Matt, saying three things
Matt Jarbo, also known as Mundane Matt, is a YouTuber and boulder salesman who primarily talks about media. He runs the series 3 Buck Theater.
History[]
PreFAP[]
Matt gained notoriety when a video of his talking about a controversy surrounding Zoe Quinn was false DMCA'd by Quinn herself. Naturally, Matt fought back against this, and the story caught other people's eye. Matt later apologized for having been false DMCA'd, as he believed it directly led to the storming of the US Capitol Building in January of 2021, for some reason.
Matt was later caught false-flagging videos, attempting to get them down because they were saying mean things about him, the same thing he had been the victim of previously. He pretended for months that it didn’t happen, then lied about it on stream, saying that he couldn't have been the one responsible because at the time of the flags, since he was out with his family collecting boulders, a Jarbo Family pastime. When asked to show a screenshot of his flagging history, he stalled for eight minutes, until eventually showing the screenshot that proved he was guilty. He then gave a half-hearted apology on his Tumblr.
Matt wrote the book (breath) No Bullshit Social Media Marketing: Tips and TrIcks on How to Create and Sustain a Solid Online Presence on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Google+ for the Entertainment Industry. This book attempted to teach people how to succeed on social media, for some fucking reason.
Two-Minute Apology Video[]
On EFAP 5, MauLer, Rags, Wolf, and Fringy took a look at Matt's video, "A long overdue talk", "apology" for false-flagging videos that made fun of him. He began his video by saying he should have made it a long time ago, and apologizing to the people he flagged, but not to the people he lied to. He called what he did “antithetical to my core principles,” which the gang found hard to believe as he did it multiple times over the course of months, lying to defend himself, and only apologized when he was caught. Matt said he was embarrassed by his actions, and that he gave into the natural human instinct to protect himself, and only came to understand now that he wasn't protecting himself, but his ego. EFAP countered that he should have figured it out a long time before that, since everyone around him was making it known to him that what he was doing wasn't right, but he kept doing it anyway. He called what he did “a mistake,” rather than multiple mistakes done repeatedly, said he wants to move forward "as a group," even though it was him alone who did these things and not any group.
MauLer brought up that while Matt shouldn't have done it in the first place, now that what's been done has been done, all that Matt can do is prove that he's learned and he won't do it again, but exactly how he would do that is difficult to pin down. He said that admitting to what he'd done and apologizing for it gave him "one point," and hesitantly suggested that maybe taking a break would be a good next step. Fringy pointed out that what makes it so difficult is that Matt's job is to be honest, and now that he's lied so repeatedly and doggedly it would be difficult to prove he isn't being dishonest in the future. Rags suggested that maybe repaying the other creators for their lost revenue may be a start, and MauLer added that working on improving his content and showing the evidence that what he's saying is true going forward would be a realistic way to show he's changed.
Game of Thrones was Good, and it's George's Fault it's Bad[]
On EFAP 36, MauLer, Rags, Fringy, SmilerAl, and RobotHead took a look at Matt's video, "GAME OF THRONES is better than you think", defending the final season of Game of Thrones after the release of Season 8 Episode 4. Matt couldn't understand why all the popular outlets were shitting on Game of Thrones because it had terrible writing, but, "not really." According to Matt, the writing of the season so far was pretty on par with how it has been, but also it was bad because they ran out of books to adapt, and only had a "summarization" (not a summary) to work with. He argued the main culprit was George R R Martin, who wrote the actually good books that the actually good seasons were based on, for no longer giving them books to copy, thus making him responsible for the bad writing decisions that D&D made in his absence, ignoring all of the things that D&D had failed to adapt when they were still adapting the books. Fringy compared this to cheating off of someone’s test and then saying “for fuck's sake man, why didn't you do better?” when you fail. Matt said the writers, who Al pointed out seemed to have not even read the books, did the best they could with what they got, to which Rags questioned what can't you excuse by saying someone tried their best. He argued that George had time to write the books but, unlike J K Rowling, didn't get them finished, to which Fringy pointed out that plenty of authors finish their books in two months and the books are shit. He compared the show to the Full Metal Alchemist anime, which ran out of manga to adapt and had to do its own ending that was later redone in Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood once the manga was finished, failing to realize that the ending of Full Metal Alchemist was still actually good, and still well-received. Rags compared blaming D&D's writing on Martin to saying that the Hobbit films were Tolkien's fault. MauLer concluded that based on Matt's reasoning, any good things that were in the show but not the books would be thanks to Martin as well.
Matt described the season as closing storylines and giving closure to characters, which is true, in the same way that dropping a meteor on everyone provides closure. What was truly to blame (in addition to George, presumably) was that the audience had expectations, thinking that the Night King was the big bad of the series, when in actuality the series is called Game of Thrones, since it's about getting the throne. This ignores that the title of the book series was A Song of Ice and Fire, because the whole point was that people were letting petty political squabbles over who gets to sit in a chair distract them from the battle between life and death, which the show ended up failing to understand. Matt pointed out that killing the Night King wouldn't make you the king, which literally nobody thought in the first place, and defended the show removing the Night King as the big bad in place of Circe, on the grounds that the Night King isn't the big bad, Circe is (which turned out to also not be true). Matt liked that the Night King was just a monster that could easily be killed, because the show explained it by saying in another context that Arya looks in the face of death and closes many eyes - it wasn't explained maybe that well, but Matt picked up on it pretty quickly, because he was the one who made it up. He argued that Game of Thrones should have ended at Season 5 like most shows, since most shows get bad at the fifth season, and then argued that the ending needed to be longer rather than shorter, assuming it was HBO that made D&D cut it short, when the exact opposite is what happened. He compared it to The Big Bang Theory, since in both shows the actors got more expensive with each season, as if that wasn't common for most long-running shows, and cited that as the probable reason why HBO didn't see it as profitable to continue the record-breaking show that regularly kills off major characters, which HBO didn't even actually do. Matt differentiated Season 8 of Game of Thrones from the actual bad writing of The Last Jedi, because The Last Jedi ruined all its characters in the middle while Game of Thrones did so at the end, and promised that Game of Thrones won't end with someone fading away on a rock, as if that was what was wrong with Luke in The Last Jedi.
Matt brushed off any criticisms of the production by saying that the dark lighting didn't bother him, and the only real criticism he could think of was that the editing was bad. He figured that the negative reception was happening because it was profitable to bash the show to get clicks without "adding to the conversation," and that people were too demanding of an adaptation to give them everything that they wanted, when they should have gone into the show wanting to enjoy it, that way they could give actual criticism, with nuance. He explained how people didn't understand the work that goes into the production and visual effects, which makes the show good, unlike himself, who went to film school and has worked in Hollywood. Matt further demonstrated his Game of Thrones knowledge by fondly remembering the big explosions in the Season 6 finale when they took out the High Septum with dragon fire, which was actually the High Septon, but was actually actually the High Sparrow, and was actually taken out with wildfire, not dragon fire.
Making The Don Boring[]
After watching Matt attempt to defend Game of Thrones, the gang took notice of his video on The Don from Captain Marvel, which turned out to just be about the actor and some Hollywood drama he was involved in. The video was so boring that they gave up on watching it.
Mathematical Proof That People Loved Game of Thrones[]
On EFAP 37, MauLer, Rags, Smiler, and PSA Sitch took a look at Matt's video, "63% of GAME OF THRONES fans enjoyed the finale", looking at a poll and attempting to prove that the Game of Thrones finale was popular among viewers.
people either like the finale or don’t - thought the game of thrones ended decently - ending was bittersweet and was in line with the rest of the series - people like the ending though, despite the online outrage - the Hollywood poll shows that only 42% didn’t like it, but rotten tomato shows that 65 percent hate it. based on survey of 2200 people, not a lot, but these people do polls for living - someone says that no one liked it, but that’s wrong, only half of the people didn’t like it - absolutely opposite to everyone hated it, means that half hated it - decides that his poll is the correct one - survey is bad as it has people that might be just people that wanted to watch the finale or people that just watch it for the heck of it and only 22% of the people were fans of the show and half of the full group did watch the finale. overall it shows that people were just disappointed and mildly pissy. biggest return is that people weren’t bored of the finale. 67 didn't care for tv and 69 didn't care if the writers were going to work for Star Wars - he doesn’t do it for fame or money, he does it for some reason - thinks is best to look at the creator by the project by project case - more than zero diversity hires is suspicious - thinks fan backlash didn’t affect Captain Marvel - even he agrees that not everyone loved Game of Thrones Season 8 - wants conversation without tribalism
Matt vs Geeks & Gamers (ft not Matt)[]
After taking some potshots at Jeremy from Geeks and Gamers, MundaneMatt said on stream that he would be perfectly willing to talk things over with Jeremy if he was in a call with him. When he was informed that Jeremy was coming into that very call, he quickly said that his phone was dying and he had to leave.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Boulder to share - Uses rocky excuse to weasel his way out of apologizing to people he wronged.
- Turning Stones - Compares himself to persons tragedy to gain sympathy.
- Little too slate - Utters an apology weeks after been caught.
Trivia[]
- Originally, Matt hated The Last Jedi, but changed his mind after seeing Rey lifting a mountain of boulders with the Force. He was hyped by The Rise Of Skywalker.
- Took a photo together with Aydin Paladin, then told people she was Holocaust denier
- Claims to advocate for free speech, but flagged videos that smack talked him.
- His favorite movie is The Last Crusade, but his favorite Indiana Jones movie is The Temple of Doom.
- Watches Game of Thrones with his dad.
- You have watch Matt with not a grain of salt, but a boulder of salt.
Quotes[]
- “I hope we can get past this, as a group” - EFAP 5
- “Get off the YouTube, go collect your boulders somewhere else” - Wolf, EFAP 5
- “And I think what they've done so far, is pretty damn good” - Matt after the Night King's death in Season 8
- “It definitely does some good shit and there's nothing wrong with that” - EFAP 36
- “It becomes a vocal port of a fandom"
- “Not everything is necessary to yell about”
- “They have done lot of great things with it”
- "Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt... I know the concept of working really hard is foreign to you... but have you ever written a book before Matt?"
"Hey those boulders were heavy!"
- Fringy and Rags, EFAP 36 - "Wrap up and go from there" - EFAP 36
- "Look at Big Bang Theory for example"
- "Listen Matt, I know you've been through some rough times, almost all of it because of your own doing, but listen..." - The Don
- "Professor Jarbo takes an extreme stance on the controversial Jewish Question" - review of Matt's book
- "This... is, well, Robert Kazansky! Kazinsky! I probably said that wrong." - EFAP 36
- "I'm sorry I'm a soy-filled cuck and flagged your videos." - not Matt