The Trials and Tribulations of Running YouTubers

Seth's problems came right after he got some money in late 2020. Within a few months, he was buying a nearly $1 million dollar home and abandoned Seth James Demoor: Blue Collar Runner for an abrasive new character: Seth James Demoor: Mad Scientist, Evangelist, cloying Family Man, Entrepreneur, and Dude with Money.

He basically took his personality and twisted it into an over-the-top caricature complete with folksy sayings, increasingly weird training, and delusions that he was becoming a household name and brand. A couple of wins at Pike's and some decent road finishes just fueled his egocentric new persona. His video style became increasingly fake and off-putting. How many fake wakeups were we supposed to endure? His strange wandering hand selecting an item to wear from the closet. His nonsensical shoe reviews. After 20 scenes of making coffee in the dark, I fully understood that the man drinks coffee - there was no reason to reinforce that with another 200 scenes of drip coffee making. Imagine watching a TV show where the first half of every episode is literally the same music, dialogue, costumes, sets, camera shots, and jokes as all of the previous episodes. The bad driving, unsecured coffee cups, six pairs of shoes teetering on the dashboard, illegal drone flights, etc. became too much to bear.

He wasn't inspiring any longer. His act became increasingly goofy and it was glaringly obvious that he wasn't authentic any longer. He realized too late and all of his "pivots" became increasingly desperate while he also became increasingly combative over criticism. It all imploded and is not a sustainable entertainment or business model.

I do hope that he is gainfully employed or working on a better, more secure way to take care of his family. He is a socially awkward Icarus that flew too close to the Sun and it melted his drone.

I agree with the post that Seth has a special place in my running heart. He legit was fun to watch during Covid and before. I learned a lot from Seth back in the day.
A lot changed. I didn’t like it either. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt in saying you never know what someone is going through. Though, it does seem like something happened that changed him.

One must remember, PPP came out during Covid (2 times). He likely received over 100k, possibly well over $100k (I’m a banker that initiated these). He bought the house and revenues began falling quite substantially immediately after.

I hope the best for Seth. His grassroots shoodio, love for running, and early mentality changed my life for the better during a time when the world was a bummer.

I think most YouTubers are like child actors. They experience their high point shockingly early, but keep going on auditions decades after their days on Saved By The Bell. I don‘t think Seth will turn it around.

Spencer Brown, on the other hand, is like that random child actor who grows up and finds a niche as a voiceover actor, or a talk show host. (I know „grows up“ is going to get a laugh, but I don‘t care). I just like his videos again!

Molly Seidel has a recent video of her doing strength training. Does anyone else think that molly should embrace her inner galen rupp and not even try to force herself to be a public personality? To me, she seems to dislike the spotlight, so I say, Don‘t bother, then, be a Galen.

It became too frustrating seeing Seth amassing 1000s of shoes, giving every single one a 'Score' between 7.1 and 7.8 whether he hated it or liked it, (and who could really tell?) and never wearing any of them again.

I don't believe she would have had only a 14month contract, and therefore moved across the entire country for such a short period of time if it was truly a contract expiration.

Yes, he records over 1.5-hour race reports where the camera is literally on the ground pointing downwards. He repeats the same stories about each shoe dozens of times, and people watch these videos. He is an example of someone who prioritizes quantity over quality.

Predict where shoetubers will be in a couple years when the market dries up.

I remember early Seth and truly enjoyed him (no sarcasm). He was simple, talented, honest and humble at that time.

I suspect Kofuzi and Seth will have "consultant" in their respective job titles.

I'm not going to make predictions, but of all shoetubers, I hope VO2 Max Productions keeps it up. He is by far the best. His informational/training advice videos at their core, consistently provide better information than similar content from other shoetubers. His "adventure" focused videos are as good as any, particularly his skimo (sp?) focused videos of the last few years. Any lack in cinematography or money spent on camera/picture quality is more than made up by the editing style and actual content. His comedy is funnier than other shoetubers. And last, and certainly not least, he might be the only popular shoetuber to release a shoetube musical (which I'll review in the future)! You never know what you're going to get with a VO2 Max Production release, therefore it's the only channel I actually get excited about when there is a new release. I'm not sure which feature film director I'd compare him with. He is basically the shoetuber version of a director that has the sense of capturing audiences like Spielberg, but has the directorial vision of Akira Kurosawa.

At least for right now, Kofuzi is still growing. He at least understands how to market himself and connect with other personalities and companies. Seth on the other hand, I do feel bad for. He even now will openly admit he is struggling. I can only imagine one of those struggles is financial, as he dumped his entire everything into this DemoorStore business model, and probably got a few flash purchases off the stans, but probably hasnt had a sale in a few months.

It’s easy for Thomas to say that hems fine with the ridiculously high prices of running shoes when almost everything is sent to him for free for the purpose of review. Good lord how tone deaf can you be?

The Believeintherun people have become unwatchable. It's just their same schtick again and again. We get it. Meg really only likes the alphaflys. Robbie and Thomas are high and goofing off. They barely even review a shoe, they toss it around instead like middleschoolers unable to stay on track during a 5 min presentation.

Robbie and Thomas are also running Boston next week with the free bibs they got from Adidas. Not to be confused with the free bibs they got from Asics to run Tokyo, or the free bibs they got from New Balance to run NYC.

Good to see somebody else sees how the whole thing is one giant scam! It's really a shame that BAA cut their qualifier field by 1,000 runners to let in the likes of Robbie and Thomas from Believe in the Run and Matt Choi.

Meg also likes the New Balance More V4.

The BTR Three are the embodiment of all runner stereotypes.

That's what ADHD does to talent.

Ko is about to embark on a month of traveling while the wife gets to watch the kids. So exciting!