#big joel

[viddyessayquotes]

“Call me crazy, but actually I think it’s fine to fight against horrible things because you hate them.”

Big Joel, Netflix Avatar Bad: A Needlessly Thorough Autopsy https://youtu.be/GzQM6YtahSU?si=mDKA7HVqPlkrX67G

[football-in-tuxedos]

One of the most frustrating things about American Evangelical Christianity is that I am opposed to refusing to name them Christians (Chrissy Stroop has a great piece on why) but it does feel increasingly like we need a new word for them. I was raised Christian, I have actually read the Bible, and while I'm an atheist now, it does feel like something is different with modern Evangelicals.

A few days ago I watched Big Joel's video on God's Not Dead 4 and 5 and there was a moment in the clips he showed that earnestly blew my mind; At one point in God's Not Dead 5, during a political debate, the Evil Atheist (TM) throws Jesus' teaching of Love Thy Neighbor and Do Unto Others in the main character's face, asks if they aren't central to the teachings of Jesus. And the main character responds:

"No, central to the teachings of Jesus is Jesus."

That earnestly made my jaw drop, not because I didn't think they believe that, but because I never thought they'd say it. This is not some caricature of Evangelicals, this was a piece of media made by Evangelicals for Evangelicals, and they just blurt it out unprompted.

This might seem odd, but I think it's important to understanding modern American Evangelicals. They want to be Christians, to be clear, but at least partly because Christianity still has massively outsized social and political power in America. Christianity is the only religion where a politician can stand up and say "I want to ban this thing because my religion says it's bad" and get away with it. But the teachings of their supposed Messiah, the actual messages of Love Thy Neighbor, Do Unto Others, that whole thing about Camel and Needles? That stuff can be picked up and dropped as they please.

Modern Evangelicals have, in essence, constructed a new Jesus, one who teaches them to brutalize anyone different from them, to gain wealth as a sign of faith and to abuse their children, and these invented teachings supersede anything and everything in the Bible. And if someone points out the difference, the fact that their Jesus' teaching differ from the teachings in the Bible, they can simply say that Jesus, their constructed, is more important than anything he said. Saying "Jesus believes this" is more important than anything he actually said he believes.

And I guess I wish we just had a word for that.

[zenosanalytic]

When Christians Kill God

I was watching a Big Joel video essay on Nebula this morning(sorry, can't link it rn: he hasn't put it on youtube yet) about the God's Not Dead series of christian-nationalist movies, and it crystalized something for me:

When Nietzsche said "God is Dead"(and I have my Issues with Nietzsche this is not a "Nietzsche is Great" post), he didn't mean god had ltrl had a heart attack or something, nor did he mean ppl didn't BELIEVE in god anymore. He meant "God", as a concept, had lost the explanatory and organizational meaning he felt it had in the past: that "God" was no longer a transcendent and otherworldly point for social cohesion, which provided structure and meaning to society and life, and The Church no longer an institution everyone deferred to and interacted with by dint of its divine-connection, but rather that both had become subordinate to gross political power. He meant that God-as-concept was now a mere rhetorical means to achieve inescapably worldly, political ends(one could fairly argue if "God" had ever been anything BUT that).

There's a moment in one of the latest of these movies subtitled In God We Trust[1](we'll get back to this) that is VERY telling. The hero of the film, a conservative pastor running for congress, is debating a strawman liberal and the liberal says something like "Isn't do unto others the main message of Christianity? Isn't Love Thy Neighbor central to the teachings of Jesus?" to which the hero says "No." both times and then responds "central to the teachings of Jesus, IS Jesus." and follows it up with "the only reason the teachings of Jesus resonate is because he was the son of god" meaning that christianity isn't about following Joshua's teachings or example, but just baldly about worshiping him, as a deity and like:

First off Josh Says(Im going to have to quote the Gospel of John quite extensively here to make a point, so plz excuse that) pretty clearly

I am the way the truth and the life

That how he lived is The Life dedicated to god, and his example the WAY to god, and his life's teachings AND example the TRUTH of god, and reiterates it later when asked by Phillip to show them god by saying

have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and you still do not know me?

in other words 'WHAT HAVE I BEEN TEACHING YOU That you don't know god yet? Haven't you been paying attention to my words and actions?' and later

The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works

in other words 'The Words of my Teachings are the Work of God. I. HAVE. BEEN. TEACHING YOU. GOD' and then, still, following from that

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

and later still

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me

It Could-Not-Be-Fucking-Clearer: Joshua is saying DIRECTLY 'If you believe in me you will live by my example and my teachings, and if you do not live The Way and The Truth I have brought to you FROM GOD, then you DO.NOT. believe in me' His message could not be clearer.

The people who made God's Not Dead: In God We Trust made it's culminating moment a DIRECT RENUNCIATION of Joshua's teachings, and John 14 specifically, in favor of worshiping divinity in-and-of-itself. They reject his life, his teachings, his works --Everything the Gospels equate directly to Joshua and through him to God-- to merely worship a god for being a god, and in doing so mark themselves out as not christian at all. They DO NOT keep his words, and so they do not love him, and they are PROUD OF THIS!

So, No, God's Not Dead: In God We Trust(which you CLEARLY DONT DO, Actually): Christ is NOT "the central message of christianity", his WORDS are his BODY and those who KEEP them in their Hearts make themselves a HOME FOR GOD. When you reject his Words, you reject his Way, you reject his Life, you reject God, You. Reject. Christ.

I am no christian, but by the standards of the professed beliefs of the people who made this work, of the VERY TEXT they claim is their inspiration and truth, bowing down to divinity is NOT Enough. You HAVE to Walk the Way; you MUST Accept his Words.

But more to my point: What better proof that "God Is Dead", no longer a pillar to build your life around and bring ppl together by, now nothing more than a tool for unscrupulous power-seekers, than a gang of wealthy liars calling themselves ~Christians~ proudly celebrating their Rejection of "The Way The Truth The Life" in favor of scraping at divinity's feet, as a tawdry tactic to drum up votes for an election.

They Spit on their God and call it "Faith".

[1]That they'd name it this is particularly galling, given everything else, because of course that Wasn't The Original Motto of the US, E Pluribus Unum(Out of Many, One) is, but rather one adopted in 1956 after a long campaign of political christians campaigning for it. In other words: That "In God We Trust" is the official US motto is yet another example of God being reduced from something holy to a political football. ↩︎

[blazehedgehog]

I have been thinking of this video for a while. I'm not going to watch it. But, like, Youtube videos used to be short, right? Like 10-15 minutes. So if you're watching every (xyz) movie, you could do one video for each. 30, even 60 episodes. So why don't you? Well, that's easy.

I remember the Let's Play boom. My cousin and I even started our own channel. When you start a series, episode 1 is your peak and things slowly fall off from there until the end, and sometimes there's a big surge for the final episode. Happens to everyone. It's natural.

By rolling a series into one, big, long video, you can point to a big viewership number -- like Big Joel's 887,000 views. But I'm going to guess not even 50% watched past the 30 minute mark. Source: my own hour-long Youtube video. Analytics tell me 53% of viewers abandon in the first 30 seconds.

Of those 887,000 viewers Big Joel got, how many made it to the one hour mark? 200,000? Or what about the four hour mark? I doubt its even 50k at that point.

How many creators are lying to themselves, I wonder? To say nothing about Youtube itself, which pays for longer watch times over raw views.

There are a lot of questions I don't have answers for. Is it intrinsically better to have longer videos? Surely you're getting some amount of people who forget they have it on and watch the whole thing to completion, right? And that has to be higher than if it was a series of videos. But how high? And even if only 10,000 people watch all six hours of a long essay, the bigger viewership number has to be good advertising, right? "Oh wow nearly a million people watched this six hour essay, maybe I'll give it a shot." Right? That probably exists. But that's a "probably."

Personally speaking, I can't help but feel like this is a bubble that will pop some day. And there will be a graveyard of 2+ hour video essays nobody will ever go near ever again. But what do I know? My 19 year old Youtube channel hasn't even broken 100k subscribers yet.

[cartoonscientist]

Jeannette:

[whatthehekko]

speedrunning fever hallucinations by getting belligerently high and watching an hour long philosophical examination of Adam sandler’s Click with one airpod while also listening to the love of my life play Yakuza: Like a Dragon

[padawanduck]

"It's rare in life, to get to be the biggest hater. To not just hate something, but hate it more perhaps than anyone else on the planet. When that opportunity presents itself, you need to express yourself, to share your evil opinions. Who else can do it?"

- Big Joel, in the intro of this video

[lipslost]

🫧 6 Hours of Disney Channel Original Movie Reviews 🫧

I have both seen more and less Disney Channel movies than I thought. More, because many of these I had no idea were Disney Channel Movies. And less, because I had no idea there were over a hundred of them.

Big Joel is such a cutie reviewing them tho <3 And I really need to watch the color of friendship.

[thesuperawesomeaarpong]

This is sooo funny 😂

[kendallroyjenner]

5 1/2 hours into this big joel video about disney channel original movies and i’m not surprised to find that he loved almost all of the lawrence brothers movies because they really were just incredible actors. but he has not once mentioned how cute they all were, nor how sexy they became. which is why when he said that jumping ship (2001) the sequel to horse sense (1999) was not good, he had simply failed to consider how hot they were. which made it a much better movie despite it not being a very good movie.

[viddyessayquotes]

“But you know, good storytelling isn’t natural. It doesn’t just occur. There’s a billion things under the hood of this original episode that make it work, and none of them had to be there.”

Big Joel, Netflix Avatar Bad: A Needlessly Thorough Autopsy https://youtu.be/GzQM6YtahSU?si=mDKA7HVqPlkrX67G

[marshvlovestv]

I left this comment on Big Joel's newest video about all the DCOMs and it sums up my feelings quite nicely. It's a good one :)

[azelletown]

THE PHANTOM OF THE MEGAPLEX IS HERE

[brbnightmares]

[luminouslumity]

I Watched Every Disney Channel Original Movie

Six hours!

[mwagneto]

> bored

> take 10 minute nap

> wake up

> think "haha what someone i like finally posted a big ass video while i was out"

> new 6 hour big joel video