Arin Hanson vs. Sonic Fans

Overview

Arin Hanson vs. Sonic Fans refers to consistent arguments made within the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom that Arin Hanson, aka Egoraptor, has unfairly criticized games in the franchise on Game Grumps, with some going as far as to argue he has singlehandedly swayed public opinion against Sonic the Hedgehog.

Background

On November 1st, 2012, Game Grumps began their memorable playthrough of Sonic '06, largely considered one of the worst games of all time. Throughout the playthrough, Arin Hanson and Jon Jafari make fun of the game and Sonic the Hedgehog in general. During that playthrough, Arin posited that the Sonic Adventure games, which are more liked in the fandom, are "just like" Sonic '06^[2] (clip shown below, left).

One of the first notable instances of the fandom discussing whether Hanson was being too critical of all Sonic games was posted on June 3rd, 2015, by SonicStadium forums^[1] user ThePrinceOfSaiyans, who pointed to a clip of a Game Grumps episode in which Arin plays Sonic 3 & Knuckles and comments that from its outset, the Sonic games don't reward the player for "going fast" despite that being the supposed point of the games (clip shown below, right).

Developments

In July 2015, Game Grumps began a playthrough of Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut, a more well-liked game in the franchise, during which time Arin voiced his frustration with the game and experienced numerous glitches in his playthrough.

Over the course of this playthrough and playthroughs of other Sonic games, particularly the 3D ones, a narrative among Sonic fans emerged that Arin was simply bad at Sonic games, blamed them for his inability to enjoy them, and pushed a false narrative that the games are bad. Arin acknowledged this during his Sonic and the Black Knight playthrough in which he struggled during a section and predicted a Sonic fan would make a video mocking him for skipping a tutorial section (shown below, right).

Over the following years, Sonic fans regularly expressed outrage at Hanson's distaste for the franchise, to the point that some argued that Hanson singlehandedly damaged the public perception of Sonic. On June 14th, 2020, Redditor TidyWire posted about Arin's relationship with the Sonic franchise to /r/rantgrumps^[2] that gained over 110 points in four years. They argued:

My issue comes in that he comes in with his influencer status and outreach of a massive mainstream following, causes irreparable damage to a fandom by having his fans eat up his every word and develop this increased social stigma, and then pretends to be a fan while doubling down on his ignorant and artificially inflated opinions on this series being entirely bad.

On December 19th, 2020, YouTuber HugoTheIcyFire laid out a similar argument in a ten-minute video that gained over 10,000 views in three and a half years (shown below).

The idea that Arin poisoned public perception of Sonic has been the subject of numerous arguments and posts on Twitter. For example, on November 7th, 2020, Twitter user @SirDemiface^[3] said that because "Arin poisoned the internet’s opinion on Sonic he deserves s---," gaining over 65 likes in three and a half years (shown below, left).

On May 14th, 2024, user @_BLUBOT_^[4] posted an edit of the Literal Coolest Thing Ever meme showing Arin and Sonic Adventure, writing, "Seriously fuck Arin using his popularity to sway popular opinion of SA1 leading to the eventual rewriting of history," gaining over 210 retweets and 1,000 likes in two days (shown below, right).

The @_BLUBOT_ meme led to some defenses of Hanson, with some arguing that his opinion on the game did not have the power to sway public opinion. For example, on May 15th, user @DarkTomeYGO^[5] wrote, "Seeing Sonic fans blame any and all negative reception of a Sonic game on Arin Hanson specifically is really funny to me," gaining 12 likes in one day (shown below, left).

The same day, user @The_Galactabee^[6] argued, "People act like Arin G. Grump is the sole reason people are critical of Sonic from Adventure onwards. That’s not true at all, those games have always been divisive, especially on the internet," gaining over 20 retweets and 230 likes in the same time frame (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References