Barney Bunch Renaissance

The Barney Bunch Renaissance was a period in Speakonia Community history that lasted from roughly December 2015 to December 16, 2016. It saw an increase in production of Speakonia videos, new members joining the community, and most famously, the return of several veteran members who had not been heard from for years by then. It is considered to be one of the community's greatest periods of activity and content output since the early days on Newgrounds and YouTube during the mid to late 2000s. It also marked a creative shift, as the Goes To format was traded in for the Blood-style videos, the introduction of "Trap Videos", and the emergence of the Wiggles as the most prominent characters used in said videos. The Renaissance came to an end in late 2016, and following a stagnant period in 2017 and 2018, lead to a second renaissance in 2019 that was considered even bigger than the first.

History

The Barney Bunch Renaissance first began with the return of BarneyBunchCompany, who, after being inactive since 2013, began making new videos poking fun at the then rising social justice movement, which in turn embraced the then new blood of the community, specifically Skewt, who's 2014 homage to his 2009 Wiggles videos on the SRRSisGay account, Bob The Builder Is Really Really Gay, inspired him to create a Blood-style reimagining of one of said Wiggles videos, THE WIGGLES ARE MASSIVE FAGGOTS. Said video inspired Skewt to create a sequel to Bob The Builder Is Really Really Gay, which featured a long list of butt buddies and good men. These two videos would serve as foreshadowing of the main theme that would pervade the Renaissance; Blood style videos featuring low pitched voices with maybe a long list of butt buddies and good men at the end.

At around February 2016, Life Or Death, longtime collaborator and partner in crime to Blood, returned after a prolonged absence from the community since the late 2000s. He made several videos making fun of indie pop bands he was forced to listen to while at work (which in retrospect, seems genuinely good in comparison to the Trap music that followed). February also marked the beginning of several collaborative videos done by Blood and several other users, but, unfortunately, most of them are long gone. In May, Blood had an incredibly ambitious plan to create 100 spam videos in a single day, creating a new account for the sole purpose of doing so, but this account was terminated before he could achieve this goal. By the summer of 2016, video production and new member intake was at an all time high, with the Wiggles seeing a massive spike in popularity, almost to the point where Drew Pickles, who had been the most prominent character to use prior, was playing second fiddle.

Around this time, Blood and Life or Death's parody musical project from 2009, Assfuck, a fictional gaycore band consisting of Nathan on vocals, Johnny on guitar and bass, and Nolan on drums, was rebooted with the release of three new tracks, and has gone on to amass a massive discography over five SoundCloud accounts.

Perhaps the most famous video to come out of the Renaissance was made around June, The Wiggles Go To Denny's by Prime8NStuff. This video pushed the Blood-style videos quite possibly as far as it could go with a long list of butt buddies and good men lasting a whole two minutes, and instead of still pictures of the characters listed, Prime took small bits of actual clips from the media in which they originated (with some exceptions). Also around this time, a new video type known as Trap Videos emerged, in which instead of dialogue the video maker instead inserts terrible music so the viewer gets tricked into listening to a bad song instead of witnessing swell action. Trap videos got so absurdly common at one point that people actually began using good songs in trap videos just to be contrarian.

This period also saw an influx of new users such as SavageBoy, Mister Incognito, Emmasturbate, Droo Pikilz, and others. These users were some of the first new members to really take in the post-Blood influence.

July 14th, 2016 was the day when Blood, Skewt, and Life or Death (and a few other users) started making BB spam videos on minor irrelevant Rugrats characters such as Larry & Steve, Billy Maxwell, and several others. Also around this time, a few more veteran community members such as Mr300MilesOfSwellness (inactive since 2014), and, more importantly, ToiletPranker (inactive since 2012), miraculously returned. July-August 2016 was arguably the peak of the Renaissance and of activity in the community as a whole.

End of the Renaissance

On September of 2016, Life Or Death closed his account. What followed was countless tribute videos featuring his profile picture on a tombstone with sad music playing, hoping he would come back. Eventually, he did indeed come back. He started a new series where he talks about "shitty run down establishments" in which he worked, detailing his experiences working there and how horrible and inept the management was. The episode on his graphic design firm he worked at introduced his former manager, Loric, to the roster of characters to be featured in videos, as well as making Loric the in-universe keyboardist of Assfuck.

In October, Blood, noticing that the community had become less active since the end of the summer, devised the idea of a Barney Bunch Weekly Contest, where each week, a user would pick a theme for the week, have participants make videos based around said theme, have said users submit their videos by posting their links in the comments, and whoever made the best video would host the next week. When Skewt was due to host the contest for the first time in November, his original channel was terminated, forcing him to restart on a new channel the day he was to select the winner. On 13 December, during Week 10 of the contest, Life or Death disappeared for good. More tribute videos set to sad generic music ensued, but unfortunately, he did not return this time.

On December 12-13, 2016, SavageBoy made a particularly infamous comment that would possibly prove instrumental in the rapid end of the Renaissance. "I know this may sound dumb but we need to make money from this...", citing a Secret Missing Episode of Cailou that accumulated half a million views and another Secret Missing Episode that "could have made $586" according to TubeBuddy. This suggestion was immediately met with almost immediate and visceral backlash from the community. Savage later made an apology video but it really didn't matter as the damage had already been done, and acrimony between the members of the community was really beginning to show, culminating in Blood's eventual retirement. The Renaissance officially ended on December 18, 2016, when Blood uploaded DREW PICKLES HAS GAY SEX IN KMART, where he said multiple times that the Barney Bunch was dead.

2016 fizzled out on an incredibly sour note for the community, although the year proved so tumultuous for it that user Alfardo made an entire retrospective on the year towards the end of December, which had never been done for any other year prior. Users such as Skewt felt the fallout of the end of the Renaissance and kept chasing those 2016 highs that were clearly never coming back, leading to extremely low tier videos. 2017 marked the beginning of a long drought in activity which appeared to be unstoppable.

Impact

The first Renaissance had a profound impact on Speakonia content that followed in it's wake, being more realized, and the effects of which began to be really felt by 2019 and the Second Renaissance. While 2017 had a fair share of the old guard and the useless "wars" that are more associated with early on, the increasingly edgier, more hardcore humor set a new standard in the community in the years to come.

The Renaissance marked, quite possibly, the first time since the early days that the community felt unified and began to collaborate more, as evidenced by the Weekly Contest. Content also began to shift, as the Wiggles and Blood-style videos began to take prominence at this time. It would also cement users like Skewt and SavageBoy as pioneers of the community at that time, and they would eventually lead it into new heights, especially during the Second Renaissance.