The creepypasta episode is still my favorite, since everything from the doc to the cold open to the music choice felt perfect and tailor-made for me, but this is most definitely a fantastic follow-up. I especially like that the end reflected upon how no-sleep relates to the rest of creepypasta as a genre. I've written my own horror stories since middle school (luckily, I did not post the ones I wrote in middle school), and I tried writing for No-Sleep for a good bit in high school (
this is probably the least embarrassing out of the stuff I dumped there). Honestly, my development really did follow the arc that Boots and the readers laid out, at that stage I had improved enough to have some vague ideas of what I should do, but I was too invested in emulating more popular work to actually understand what made those stories work. I think I have grown out of a lot of those bad habits, but I'm just a college student, so there are plenty more that I need to get over with practice.
In regards to how I feel about creepypasta as a whole, I think I'm in line with a few people here in saying that it's a complicated relationship. I agree that Pale Luna is a legitimately good short story that is somewhat weighed down with its association to the haunted game phenomenon, but I also think some of the good nuggets in that dense mountain of trash have contributed to refined work (PETSCOP, in particular, stands out). My stance on the protest of No-Sleep's community is generally positive because, even if it is a bit absurd when considering the quality exhibited in this episode, there are still constructive elements of the space that should be preserved. I think that one of the understated through-lines of the F-Plus podcast is that there is value in archiving the internet as it exists, even if most of it is terrible and benign, because there is still meaning to be found in the mess of it all. If that were not the case, then I'm not really sure why the podcast has gone on as long as it has, or why this forum exists at all.
To be clear, though, I fully acknowledge that the creepypasta "fandom" (or whatever) is both bizarre and often toxic. I wasn't around for /X/, back then I was just watching Pikmin walkthroughs on the family computer, but I understand enough to know that it was... 4chan. I read from the wiki, no-sleep, SCP, and those weird side blogs like the one mined for the old creepypasta episode. I never fully left from that sort of world, I mostly just shifted spheres. Nowadays, I submit to Bogleech's annual contest and keep my own site for the stories I feel worth sharing. Coming from my own perspective, I understand why the writers on nosleep want some level of ownership for their own work, even if it's often shoddy.