An important transformation continued on Saturday as Jose “Chille” DeCastro continued his creative decline on Saturday as he took on more aspects lifted from Clash with Bao and Lackluster’s productions, heavily restreaming content from other commentary channels while providing feedback over the original commentary.
While this aspect of DeCastro’s presentation was always a minor part of his overall show, a clip from Rights On here, a clip from Here’s the Deal there, but Saturday seemed to show the YouTuber fully embracing the format with extended clips from other YouTubers.
Falling silent, and letting alpha males such as Liberty Net Radio, Bill Roberts, and James Freeman dominate his thought process, his fans are criticizing his transformation into what some are calling a follower and a copycat channel as he takes aspects of others’ formats to define his “new” presentation.
A few weeks back, DeCastro embraced YouTube’s vertical format and ditched the costly Streamyard software in favor of the popular self-hosted OBS streaming software. Ditching most aspects of his traditional widescreen format in favor of the higher algorithm placement and shorts style viewership numbers.
Viewership of his now-daily shows has increased exponentially as there are times when he peaks at over 2,000 live viewers for mere moments, before they come crashing down with his new average coming in at between 600 and 900 live viewers who stick around for more than a minute or two at a time.
The viewership figures have come at the expense of his previous style, and problems with stuttering and freezing as his ancient iPhone and MacBook struggle to keep up with the demands of streaming without help from the old Streamyard service.
A hilarious addition to his daily shows comes when he needs to phone a friend when he has problems with the OBS software, or his internet provider when he’s reached a data cap from streamlining for four hours at a time. The calls all played live on the air, with his dog barking in the background, showcasing his lack of professionalism while his viewers grow accustomed to the NEW Chille DeCastro show.
In redefining himself, he seemed to lose the aspects of his show that people really enjoyed. His new green screened overlay of himself in a floating window at the bottom of the screen (which he constantly and jarringly moves around for no real purpose), mimics the worst aspects of Christopher “Direct D” Ruff and Clash with Bao’s productions.
He is an ever-present figure, with the viewer’s eyes focused on his often dead or unintentionally inappropriate expressions as he leers and jitters at parts of the videos he features that really really excite him.
The videos themselves still retrain their widescreen format as he presents them. This causes a significant problem as the vertical format cuts off at least half of the videos and focuses on the dead center of the video. While DeCastro can see the full video as he plays it, more often than not, he has to awkwardly move the window around in order to showcase things he feels are important to the viewer to notice.
This creates a jarring experience for the viewer as his big talking head becomes frustrated as he misses whatever he’s trying to get the YouTuber to focus on. He becomes angry and often lashes out as he’s simply not good at providing a one-man video production.
Add his new reliance on talking over videos that already have commentary on them and he’s become a poor man’s version of Lackluster’s channel. Lacking what made his previous shows tolerable to downgrade his visual production in favor of the cheap pop fleeting YouTube shorts viewers.
Also downgraded by the move to OBS is his ability to stream to other platforms. DeCastro’s previous strengths included his ability to stream to multiple platforms and reach a diverse audience.
His current format is perfect for vertical streaming services such as Tik Tok and has the visual format to attract viewers on Kick, Twitch or Twitter/X, but DeCastro doesn’t know how to or lacks the resources to expand his audience beyond a single stream to YouTube at a time.
DeCastro either doesn’t know how to or doesn’t have the ability to put even simple text on his screens. He can’t highlight super chats or comments, he literally doesn’t have the space in the vertical format to display his chat, and he has no means to show his own text to highlight his websites or even his GoFundMe campaign.
On a side note, he did mention his GoFundMe campaign on Saturday, telling his viewers to go to the GoFundMe campaign as if they knew the URL off hand. No one did. For the first time in days, his campaign saw no donations. It joined the market in goose eggs for the day, apparently abandoned by his supporters as they put money into super chats, which he’ll get on the 21st of the month, rather than cash in his pocket right now.
He maintains a strong showing in super chat donations, though he says he despises them due to YouTube taking out a good portion of the revenue and holding payouts until midmonth. Unlike Direct D and Turtleboy, he hasn’t figured out alternative means to take in the same sort of funding without YouTube taking a cut.
But with his reliance on super chats, and his strange need to give away his 5A Cop Card and “indestructible” Trifold products, he is all the more reliant on “YouTube/China” for his livelihood.
DeCastro’s Saturday production got a brief boost for the YouTuber as he found a video of a man using a print at home copy of his trifold in traffic stop. The man took a few moments to remember to use the printed copy and ultimately handed it to a police officer and forgot to ask for it back.
He invoked his fifth amendment right not to answer questions and got a warning from the officer for a minor traffic infraction before going on his way.
DeCastro, marveling at the fact that someone used his product on camera, replayed the encounter multiple times before going on to new videos, only to return to the video again as he was closing out his four-hour livestream.
He feels he’s successful, despite the downgrades and now permanent reliance on the hated YouTube/China for his only real source of revenue. Isn’t that all that matters?
DeCastro provided no updates on Saturday to the meeting he supposedly had about the $150,000.00 in financing he needs to produce his Constitution HQ board game. Though he did announce that he was putting all his Constitution HQ content on his DLZ Clips channel due to his Constitution HQ channel suffering from a lack of subscribers.
The new page for the game, featuring the dramatic $89.99 pricing with $22.00 shipping remains in place. The counter stuck on 9999 (out of 9999) for the world to see.
No trifold sales were made during the livestream, though he pledged to give away 10, he didn’t indicate 10 sales to support those giveaways. But he had super chats and membership giveaways, so in just three weeks he can make rent and continue the on-going adventures of Chille DeCastro.
That’s something, isn’t it?
DeCastro says he’ll be live on his DLZ Clips channel on Sunday for another installment of his Constitution HQ board game lecture series.
