DarksydePhil

"I didn't mean to do that! The controls are fucking lagging!"
"Did you see that? There was nothing I could do man, come on!"

Phil Burnell, more commonly known as Darksyde Phil or "The King of Hate", is a YouTube Let's Player, formerly partnered with Machinima.^[1] He has gathered a sizable Hatedom for his unpleasant and angry Let's Plays.

DarksydePhil provides examples of the following tropes:

• Aborted Arc: Project 7 was introduced fairly early in Phil's YouTube career, but vanished after several videos.
  • It was brought back in spectacular fashion in January of 2012.
• Accentuate the Negative: Even when praising games, he seems to be having bad times playing them, due to his bad gameplay and tactics.
• April Fools' Day: Every April Fools' Day, Phil will play "The Greatest (Insert Genre) Game Of All Time." They're not great.
• Berserk Button: For some reason, so much as mentioning a user named Almighty Tevin, whom Phil is extremely bitter towards for what is most likely a petty reason at best, is enough to send him into a blind rage.
• Catch Phrase: Oh boy, does Phil have a lot of these! So many in fact, that just listing them would turn this page into a checklist.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Invoked often, accurately or otherwise.
• Crippling Overspecialization: If there's one thing Phil struggles with, it is adaptability; any time he plays a game that's vastly different from the last one he played, he often resorts to using the same/similar tactics to try and breeze through, only to be shocked that it didn't work the same way. If he kept dying to an enemy, or even a Wake Up Call Boss, he will continuously attempt to power past them without ever coming up with a different strategy.
  • Phil will often complain about randomness in games, but that's just his preference for fixed AI patterns talking. In Crash Bandicoot for example, he complained about not being able to defeat enemies by jumping on them despite doing so beforehand, but he continued to jump on them without thinking to use the spin attack which is the preferred method of attack in that game. His attitude towards unpredictable AI applies to platforming as well.
  • The same also applies to old school games like Metal Gear Solid, or Crash Bandicoot, simply because he is so used to how modern games work.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Often invoked when Phil is really pissed off, but sometimes does this in an attempt at humour.
• Dirty Coward: Some of his gaming tactics can be summed up as this, like hanging back and letting summoned allies do the work for him in Dark Souls.
  • As of September 2017, he has all comments disabled on his YouTube channel. Many suspect this was to avoid negative criticism, others believe it to be somewhat of a counter to This Is How You DON'T Play videos, which were often interlaced with comments from Phil's own videos. Obviously, this tactic didn't work.
• The Ditz: Let's just say that Phil isn't the smartest guy alive. He has a tendency to forget certain game mechanics right after being told about them. Even when his stream chat gives him advice on how to play a game, he still forgets just moments later. Half the time though, this is because he doesn't pay attention.
• Fan Hater: Phil can be incredibly nasty when he's angry, but he tends to take out his frustrations on his own fans.
• Gasshole: Phil has a habit of snorting or belching loudly into his microphone with no attempt to cover it up.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Particularly if Phil is having a miserable time with a certain segment of a game. Even the slightest jab at him, no matter how harmless can cause him to flip a bitch!
• Hypocrite: So many examples to list, but to keep it brief, everything Phil condemns other people doing, he is guilty of doing the same thing. It never helps Phil's cases though when he tries to make excuses to justify him doing any of the stuff he criticises others for.
• Insistent Terminology: Phil has a tendency to use certain words and phrases with a particular inflection for each one. He will often use words like "positive" almost as a buzzword to assure his fans that things are good, though almost everyone else isn't fooled.
• It Got Worse: The original channel, darksydephil, was taken down by YouTube for copyright claims. DSP created new channels, and got Google Ad-Sense activated on his The King of Hate HD channel, allowing him to make money off of his videos. Phil lost his job during that time. His Ad-Sense privileges were revoked due to claims of fraudulent actions designed to exploit the Ad-Sense system. DSP moves to Blip.tv and gains a partnership. That account was later closed by Blip.tv due to some poorly thought out humor about Those Wacky Nazis. In 2017, he lost his partnership with Machinima after he mouthed off at them for not caring about his money troubles, his then-girlfriend Pandalee left him in May the same year, and lost his second partnership with Curse Network in 2018. In early 2019, Phil was briefly suspended from Twitch twice; once for doing "fundraising" streams (for himself), and again for making fun of someone's avatar.
• Large Ham: Project 7 thrives on this. In fact, one could even say his angry moments qualify as this, even though he may try to deny it.
• Left It In: All of Phil's commentary is live and unedited. This often leads to the viewers watching Phil struggle for minutes on end to get past a section of whatever game he is playing. His pre-streams have become this since he made the move to Twitch.tv, sometimes clocking in at nearly 2 hours!
• Let's Play: The consistent basis for his content, more or less.
• Never My Fault: Around 97% of Phil's content can be summed up in four little words: "I didn't do that!". Or some variation on that.
• Rage Quit: Quite a few games, actually. His reasons for doing so include boredom, low attendance/contributions, frustration, his own incompetence, or a weird combination of the above. One unique case was Scarface: The World Is Yours, in which he initially dropped it to avoid giving a TIHYDP maker, Fred Fuchs, more footage to work with. Despite his undying denial that he ever rage quit any games at all, there is a 7 hour long compilation showcasing 103 DSP rage quits.
• Smug Snake: Phil has shown that he has no empathy for anyone other than himself countless times. Among the many examples of this behaviour, he acts like he is better than everyone else by constantly reminding everyone how long he's been a content creator as if it is supposed to be a massive achievement. If another creator commits some form of career suicide, he is always there to gloat about "outlasting" them.
• Sore Loser: It's no secret that Phil cannot take a loss in a video game, whether he's playing with AI or other players.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer: In MGS3, Phil went to fight The End in a sniper battle, the weapon (SVG) that he had used on every enemy up until this fight. However, what's the first thing out of Phil's mouth when the battle starts? "Where's my shotgun?"
  • In Dark Souls, Phil tends to rely heavily on using magic spells to attack from a distance.

1. ↑ He joined the network in 2008 and was fired on March 2017 (Wikitubia article)