Recently retired YouTuber Finn “The Punk Rock MBA” McKenty told the truth about content creation and Anthony Fantano can't handle it. The internet's busiest music nerd took offense when McKenty admitted he never cared about music. He just wanted the money. Now Fantano stands in his glass house, throwing stones at a man who walked away from the content game.
But the truth's more complicated than that. McKenty wasn't always the burnt-out, cold-eyed marketer. The guy's got Hatebreed tattoos. He came up in the scene, loved old-school death metal and 1990s hardcore. Back then, the music mattered. People who knew him in those days say, "The Rise of Brutality" was his favorite Hatebreed album, "Diehard As They Come" his favorite track. That kind of detail doesn't come from Wikipedia research.
"I don't really have any interest in music," McKenty—clearly making an extreme statement to underscore his exhaustion with content creation—told interviewer Jesse Lee. "I was just doing it for the money and I hit my financial goals so there's really just no reason for me to keep doing it." Simple as that. No passion play, no artistic mission. Just business. But maybe that's not the whole story. Maybe it's a middle finger to the haters who kept filling his comment sections with bile, or musicians who failed to give him anything interesting to review.
You know how this story goes. A guy builds something good, something that matters to people. Then one day he, like McKenty, admits it was all business. The true believers get angry. They wanted authenticity in a world that’s supposedly running low on the real thing (was there ever that much in the first place?).
For what it’s worth, McKenty did solid work. His videos broke down music trends with a marketer's eye and a historian's scope. He understood why bands blew up and scenes died out. Before the YouTube fame, he was deep in the business side—Director of Operations at URM Academy, working with bands like Periphery and A Day to Remember. He knew the industry inside out.
Fantano's different. He's still grinding, still posting those high-quality, timepassing yellow flannel reviews that made a star out of the “internet’s thiccest vegan” (or whatever he called himself; I give the guy a pass because he and his old man like to lift weights). Ten years in, he hasn't missed a beat. The machine keeps running. But McKenty's exit hit him where it hurts.
"Let this video be a warning and reminder," Fantano said after McKenty's revelation. "If you are to engage with the music world in the way that I do or in the way that even Finn did, please do it from a place of passion."
Easy to say if you, like Fantano, happen to be lost in the funhouse now. The great Johns Hopkins professor John Barth knew the score: "He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator—though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed."
Fantano’s the operator, not the patron. Those reviews need to keep coming. The algorithm's hungry. The fans expect their daily bread. So when McKenty says he cashed out and walked away, it stings. Makes a man wonder about his own choices.
The thing about content creation is it eats you alive. You feed the machine or it forgets you exist. Fantano knows this better than most. He built an empire on consistency. But empires need constant maintenance. Miss a few weeks and the numbers drop. The sponsors get antsy. The whole thing could crumble.
What really bothers Fantano isn't McKenty's cynicism. It's the mirror he's holding up. "Musicians are a lost cause," McKenty declared. "I know lots of people on LinkedIn with less than 10,000 followers that are making way more money than anybody in any band." Every content creator faces the same choice—tend the infernal machine or walk away. Most can't afford to leave. The golden handcuffs get tighter every year.
The tragic part? I really liked McKenty’s videos. They taught us something, made us see music differently. Fantano himself admits it: "For anybody who is uninitiated, the brand proposition for a Finn McKenty, for a Punk Rock MBA, was essentially that he was marrying his passion for music and his background as somebody who was involved and engrossed in the underground West Coast Music Scene."
The fact that he lost his love for the music almost makes it more impressive. He brought a professional's discipline to an amateur's game. Built something worthwhile while keeping his distance. In 2020, he told J. Andrew at Decibel that his objective was "to help anybody watching/listening get a little closer to whatever their goals are." That was true then. Maybe it still is.
Now Fantano's one among thousands of other YouTube critics left holding the bag, defending the place of passion in a cutthroat sole-proprietor industry that runs on a mysterious, ever-changing algorithm they’ve got to worship as intensely as the Canaanites once worshipped Baal and Moloch. He'll keep posting those reviews, keep that head shaved, keep the glasses smudge-free, keep his yellow flannel fresh. The algorithm demands sacrifice. Meanwhile, McKenty's moved on to LinkedIn, chasing the next opportunity.
The content game's a funhouse mirror, distorting everything it reflects. Authenticity, sincerity, metrics, money—it all gets twisted in the glass. McKenty walked out. Fantano's still inside, operating the levers for the content consumers for whom YouTube is designed. But you have to wonder if late at night, staring at those analytics, he doesn't think about following McKenty through the exit door.
Truth is, they're both right. Content creation's a business and a calling. The trick is knowing which one matters more to you. McKenty knew. Maybe Fantano does too. But he's got an algorithm to nurture. The reviews must flow. The funhouse never closes.
