You have made many good points. I would firstly like to say I enjoyed the ZP and I enjoy CAD. I get that people hate him for whatever their reasons are.
Secondly I would like to say that he's not here to defend himself and if I believe he's being misrepresented that I should defend him. I mean, come on, if someone insults your friend or someone you like then you defend them.
I can totally understand him being lazy. In fact, he sounds an awful lot like me except I wouldn't go around locking threads.
I would like to know what you meant by this line.
What stuff did he used to start and why can't he anymore?
He had a talent for instigating fights or falling into fights with other comic artists/people/entities.
The Tim I knew when I signed on back in 2002 was a far different man than the one that exists today, at least in terms of public facing. He was smart, well aware of the fact that he was walking a road that someone else paved with this comic of his. He was looking for some way to differentiate himself, early on he accomplished that by admitting that he was pretty much ripping off Penny Arcade and PvP, with a slightly different lens on it. Also, early on he had a full time job as a lifeguard so he didn't have the time to draw the strip, hence the copy/pasting.
My job was effectively to help set CAD apart from the rest of the pack by offering editorial content. The original plan circa 2002 that I came up with was to create a sort of socially-driven hub for game, movie, and dvd news called CADMedia. If you go back to the very first posts in the news archives on that site you can find my call for talent. I sifted through a few thousand applicants trying to find a group of people that I could wrangle into editors, the plan from there being to use a core staff of unpaid volunteers to start the reviews and editorials, ultimately shifting the focus to the community reviews and editorials, which would be vetted by the trained "staff". It had real potential. The Escapist actually uses a lot of these ideas, not that they stole them, it was a rather natural evolution and many people came up with them at once I think.
CADMedia languished, though, and by the time any form of it saw the light of day, I was long gone.
Here's where my direct knowledge ends and my theory begins. Sometime in 2003-4 he realized he didn't need to differentiate himself from the pack, because he could do alright without improving his comic. He had a fairly substantial fanbase and initially quite a few friends in the gaming comics world. Even Penny Arcade linked him once upon a time, which is akin to a blessing in that business. Megatokyo, Little Gamers, VGCats, 8-Bit Theater, they all got the Penny Arcade blessing, and the influx of traffic that provided laid the groundwork for what they are today, of course not all of those are created equal in monetary success, but they all live off their comics, which is the point.
At this point there was some upheaval in Tim's personal life, a personal life that was tied directly to the "webcomics community". His girlfriend at the time, Ellen, better known as EllChan, was a talented artist and designer in her own right, she did the layout and such for his first printed book. The first real sign of Monster Tim is that following that, she wanted to use the book in her design portfolio, a fairly reasonable request. Tim didn't let her buy a copy. Not only did he not let her buy a copy, he gave shit to the Applegeeks guys in public at Otakon (who were also once friends with him, Hawk in fact did the art for the cover) after they tried to buy Ellchan a copy. He didn't let them do that either.
So first he pisses off them. Hawk gets involved with Penny Arcade, and I'm guessing the story is related. Penny Arcade guys create the character R.H. Franzibald to lampoon Buckley, and Scott Kurtz picks a fight with him after Buckley lifts a PvP storyline wholesale.
Keep in mind, while all this inter-comic upheaval is going on, the man publicly bans an entire subforum, publicly bans me, his majordomo, disbands his world of warcraft and city of heroes guilds after angrily berating their members. Scott Kurtz, whose WoW guilds are on the same realm (again this was Tim going the "me too" route and making his own guild on Dark Iron along with the PA guilds and the PvP guilds) decided to take in the refugees and chastise Tim again for his behavior.
There are rumors that he was drunk or worse when he did that, rumors I can believe to a point. He had a talent for creating drama by handling situations wrong, and perpetuating it by putting on the ego armor when people didn't just let him do it. Eventually he settled on a doctrine that has worked well insofar as keeping him insulated from drama, namely he locks every thread that could possibly result in criticism of him or his work, or any thread about criticism and his work. He also actively engages in Wikipedia vandalism to keep his name and history out of articles there. To my knowledge his account is actually banned now.
The problem with him is one of pride, he's very wrong and he knows he's very wrong, but at the same time he's doing alright for himself, and so he lets his fans do his fighting for him, and make his excuses for him. Otherwise he has to swallow his pride and own up, which could jeopardize his zealotous fanbase. As I said, he locks threads about this video or the Yahtzee interview, or the John Solomon page, he doesn't delete them. "Everyone's entitled to their opinion" is his brooding way of saying "now go deck the motherfuckers". And a good chunk of his fans do just that. Just check out the backlash on The Escapist's forums. There's a reason I didn't go there.
Thats it for the history lesson/insight.
Tim isn't here because Tim doesn't fight his own battles. He won't go after Yahtzee directly, Yahtzee knows that, probably. He doesn't go after anyone directly, he just keeps his forums heavily censored and insulated and silently condones people to go out and beat on his critics in his stead. In that manner I can understand the Hitler references entirely. Its orders of magnitude different, but there are parallels between that regime and the way Tim runs his ship these days.
I'd urge you again to reconsider defending him. The best thing you can do to defend him is to say you like his comic and let that stand, not defend the work or the man, because that's not your job and trust me, if Tim wanted to post here, he would, and it would not be pretty. The only thing that could draw him out if my presence alone doesn't would be Yahtzee coming along and calling him a pedophile, which again, stupid baseless claim, see my first post here for the explanation.
Also I'd like to say that once upon a time Tim was my friend. Not to speak for them, but he was also Hawk's friend, Ananth's friend, and at the least friendly with Scott Kurtz, Gabe and Tycho, etc. I don't have the whole picture and I never will but I do know that he's done enough to alienate them permanently. He's certainly done and said enough to alienate me permanently, so no, I'm not misrepresenting him, I'm representing my former friend the way I would anywhere. I consider it a loss because that comic and website could have been so much more than it is or ever will be, and he could have gone a different path that wouldn't have resulted in this video or this post or this thread. Instead he's something of a legendary prick, deserved or undeserved. All I know is what I've experienced, deduced, and heard second-hand, and it isn't the whole picture, but its closer than anyone else has so that'll have to do, unless, yes, Tim wants to tell his side of the story, along with everyone else involved.
Something tells me that's a story better left incomplete.