#i need to become a youtube video essayist

[bowserphobia]

the 3k word mario movie review

here are my first thoughts on the mario movie. i'm probably gonna end up watching it again but i think ive had enough time to think about it to get my thoughts straight on what i think! even with how long this is, i'm sure i forgot stuff, but i hit on everything major i think.

tl;dr: 7/10. preddy good.

alright so under the cut is gonna be me being wayyyy too much about super mario brothers, so be ready for that. (but if you're following me then that's probably what you want LOL.) half mario review, half personal essay. very little chris pratt talk. i make fun of a lot of stuff but only because i love Mario so much. if you're mad at me for my Hot Mario Takes, just remember that i care about this more than anything and i'm going to die alone probably.

this is REALLY long and i'm sorry. spoilers, obviously.

my background/perspective: i'm closer to 30 than 20, and i've been a fan of mario since i could look at a tv screen. my introduction was the first Mario Kart game. Mario was my first ever online fandom, going on mario fansites like Lemmy's Land and Neglected Mario Characters was how i learned how to use the internet. a lot of my sense of humor and artistic style comes from the mario franchise, especially Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (if you can believe it lol.) i wrote a mario high school au fic when i was 8 years old. i'm cringe and i'm proud.

i also went to school for animation. i fucking love cartoons. so, needless to say, i was hyped for this movie, even not being the biggest fan of Illumination as a studio. i had measured expectations, but i really went in wanting to like the movie. (which i did, but not in so few words.) i was just as prepared to not like it, and i didn't want to get too excited for something that might not live up to my expectations. yeah yeah, it's just The Mario Movie. well, i love movies and i love mario.

i avoided watching a lot of trailers past the first couple, but i was aware of the content of them. mostly through tumblr gifs, lol. so i went in medium-cold.

as expected by now, the movie looked amazing. Illumination has always had great character animation, but imo this is the best looking movie they've ever made. the environments, especially the ones with mushrooms, were gorgeous. The movie started with that Bowser scene from one of the trailers where he destroys the ice castle. it was cool seeing the full version of the scene, and when Bowser said, "...or DIE!" i was like "oooh. he's a little scary 😈"

before i get any deeper into it i just want to say: this was a movie for babies. obviously, it's the Super Mario Brothers movie. i think everyone is going to go in knowing that. the showing i was at was full of kids, a lot of them in costume or carrying Yoshi plushies. They would cheer at stuff and laugh at the silly slapstick humor, and i honestly think that enhanced the experience. a kid yelled "RAINBOW ROAD, BABY!" and it was amazing! that's Mario, fun for the whole family.

second thing: kid's movie ≠ bad movie. everyone should know this by now, in this post-puss-in-boots world. i would not compare the mario movie to puss in boots, by the way, it's just fresh in my mind and also based off existing kid's media. the only thing they truly have in common is the medium. their target audience is different, even if the vast majority wouldn't notice. like, i wouldn't bring a toddler to puss in boots, but i would to the mario movie. Bowser is not actually going to murder anybody. mario is also not gonna kill him at the end. nobody is gonna DIE in the mario movie.

all this to say. i was dazzled by the imagery in the opening scene for the usual reasons i like Illumination - the set pieces were huge and detailed, the lighting is amazing and atmospheric, the synergy between the character animation and the voice acting is solid. i especially liked the part when Kamek enchanted the pieces of rubble to make stairs for Bowser to walk up, it showed what their relationship is like and what a toady (ha-ha) Kamek is. (not the characterization i would go for with Kamek but *big heavy dramatic sigh* WHATEVER)

so, that scene ends. we cut to Mario and Luigi's commercial, which i LOVED. i thought it was so fun, and i love the analog quality to it and how DIY it was. and the best part for me - i love that we're in Brooklyn, NY!! when that first trailer dropped and i realized the movie was gonna be an isekai, i was so so happy. it's my favorite version of mario bros canon, and one of the few things in actual canon that i think gives Mario depth. it's compelling to me, the idea of a regular blue collar dude who's maybe in his 30s (mario is not 24 and i will die on this hill) who gets spirited away to a magical land where he doesn't belong, but he helps save the day because he wants to (and maybe he falls in love along the way??) uh put a pin in that thought i guess.

so, the dialogue starts, and it hits me - okay, this move is gonna be kinda stupid.

maybe that's harsh? let me try to explain what i mean. it was immediately apparent that this was going to be a funny, silly movie that wasn't gonna be too serious. the comedy is broad. when they walk by Foreman Spike and he's like "YOU'RE A LOOSAH, MARIO! YOU'LL ALWAYS BE A LOOSAH" or whatever, i was like, okay. we're not getting a Deep Mario Character Study. not that that's what i expected, of course, i'm just a weirdo who has dedicated his life to Deep Mario Character Studies. That's a me problem. but i still half expected mario to go "oh yeah, Foreman Spike from Wrecking Crew for NES (1985)? You won't be laughing when I become Nintendo + Illumination: The Super Mario Bros. Movie!" so i don't LOVE that vibe

okay, i'm like 2% of the way into the movie and this is already spiraling out of amuck. my point is that i'm not going to knock this movie for the things it isn't. it has that sorta glossy rounded-edges writing that movies from this studio have. in a way, it the writing is like a mario game. illumination + nintendo is kind of a match made in heaven.

for the rest of this manifesto, i'm going to divide my thoughts into three sections: stuff i liked, stuff i didn't like, and stuff i had complicated feelings about.

stuff i liked

Firstly, MARIO'S FAMILY! maybe the highlight of the whole movie for me. i knew we'd get Brooklyn, but seeing the whole Mario fam was a shock. not a lot of fanworks give them a big family like that, so it was nice to see! everyone looked great, and it was so cool to see mario and luigi in that context.

and Mario's bedroom?? was SO cute. im gonna have to pause and zoom and see what's in there because i dont remember the details but like i said, the environments are SO solid, and that doesn't stop for the Real World scenes. Brooklyn is just as gorgeous and detailed as the Mushroom Kingdom. the movie was never boring to look at.

seriously, the look of this movie is INSANE. That initial little Mushroom Grove location knocked my socks off, it reminded me of The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach, which is the highest compliment I can give to this movie. the visuals were absolutely off the hook.

the character design was also really nice, which i was a little worried about going in. there's this tendency with some artists to make Peach an ethereal boobie goddess and Mario a little baby goblin sprite, so i liked that they looked like they could smooch if they wanted to. (they didn't.) i knew it would be a fine line to walk between staying true to the in-game renders of the characters and keeping things visually interesting/fresh and new, and I think they walked that line well. everybody looked like they were drawn from the same hand. the visual style of the film was the most cohesive part of it.

the action scenes were really fun to watch, and i loved that scene in Brooklyn when Mario is parkouring around the city with Luigi stumbling behind him. they did a good job making Brooklyn really lively and exciting in its movements. everything was super bouncy!

the Mario Kart sequence was REALLY fun and I'm mostly putting this here for how much my dad loved it. it had everything you could want from Mario Kart on the big screen, and the little speedrunning maneuver Mario does was great.

Bowser. maybe the best performance in the movie, which is par for the course for Jack Black showing up in movies. i think everyone agrees on this so i won't go on too much, but for the most part i liked his characterization. i love a goofy bowser, and i like that his actions had consequences in the end, too. i always loved the games where Bowser is on your side. in my opinion, he's at his best when he's a petulant manlizardbaby, not the Supreme Lord of Darkness.

bowser in a jar at the end was really funny. Make That Guy Tiny! i also love the implication that without Bowser telling them what to do, the Koopa army just kinda chills out. i like that vibe.

stuff i didn't like

The trailers gave too much away. I feel bad because this isn't a knock on the movie on its own, but like, EVERYTHING luigi did the whole movie was in the trailers. like, for how short the movie was, it's insane how much they showed. speaking of which...

god bless Illumination and their tight 90 minute runtimes. (this was 92, actually! yay!) the movie overall felt very fast, which in the action/platforming scenes was great! but most of the time, it just forces the plot to happen to the characters while they're tossed around like ragdolls. at one point i remember saying to my dad, "why is mario like this? he's just down for whatever." (put a pin in that. meanwhile...)

here's that pin from earlier! this is a big one for me - i thought every piece of dialogue between Mario and Peach was disappointing. their first meeting was weird as hell, and it gets worse. it's a symptom of the larger problem of things being really rushed - there's almost no time for characters to interact with each other. a lot is resting on existing relationship dynamics. Mario and Luigi as brothers, Peach and Bowser as old enemies, Peach and her toads' bond, ect. The most developed relationship between two characters who meet during the events of the movie is Mario and Donkey Kong, which... sorry DK stans, but it just isn't my jam.

with Luigi being the one kidnapped, i thought maybe we'd have some sort of relationship form between Mario and Peach in the meantime, and i guess it did? kinda? like i said a million words ago, nothing ever really gets too deep. they have conversations looking out onto vast beautiful landscapes, and in romantic fire flower fields, but... i don't know, they just seem like work friends. they don't really talk about anything serious, and even when they do, it just feels like the scene ends right when it's gonna get good. and the one moment where mario is "flirting" with her gets ruined by Donkey Kong. so, that's cool.

Luigi didn't do shit! not even a hot gay sex scene with Bowser he just gets captured, almost dies in lava, and then Mario rescues him. as a Mario stan (and comparing this to the live action movie for a sec) i did appreciate the focus on Mario, but it's such a shame that Luigi didn't really get to do much besides sit in a box. :(

To me, the overall structure of the movie was pretty weak. There were so many cool parts, but it just never really coagulated into anything cohesive narratively to me. a huge part of that was that the stakes weren't really there. and it's not that big, dramatic things didn't HAPPEN, the characters just didn't give the weight and gravitas to them one might expect.

the licensed music fucking sucked, but thats par the course for this studio so it didnt surprise me. it made me angry the same way Suicide Squad did, because i'm not against licensed music as a concept. (see: breaking bad/bettercallsaul, shrek, ect.) it's just like, don't go with the FIRST song you think of, y'know? or, like, why BOTHER with something like Mario, which has SO much established score you could do instead.

Mario Not Liking Mushrooms is on the tier of Cruella de Ville's mom being killed by dalmatians or whatever. it made my dad laugh, though.

this is not a knock on finding the movie funny - i was laughing throughout most of it - but it has this self-aware thing about it that a lot of movies have nowadays that i just do not find charming. the whole "oh, these bricks are just FLOATING here? well THAT just happened" or "you mean i have to EAT mushrooms?? but i HATE mushrooms! this is the OPPOSITE of what i want!" it's just so... bland. it doesn't have its own identity. it's studio-funny and really, really safe. (it's Nintendo + illumination: The Super Mario Bros. Movie.)

this last point might be controversial, but i hated the scene with Mario and Luigi as babies. i thought it was dumb and bad. by far, was my least favorite scene. it just felt so... i don't know. it was just a bit much. i'll expand more on why in the 'complicated feelings' section, but i just want to shine a spotlight on that scene as the low point of the movie for me. but my grandma liked it, so i'm probably just a hater.

(VERY close second was the one where Bowser is practicing what to say to Peach, then it cuts to Kamek in a wig. booooo! *throws tomatoes*)

stuff i had complicated feelings about

pratt did fine. it's really easy to forget about the man and just see the character, which is a huge compliment. celebrity voice actors are an industry problem (one that Illumination contributes to a LOT tbf) and i think the fact that pratt kinda 'disappeared into the role' was a plus. it still kinda feels like a silly casting choice overall, though. i remember watching the Nintendo direct live where they announced it, and i was gasping for air from laughing so hard, i had to pause it. but anyway, this is just my own taste, and probably nostalgia from the Super Show, but i prefer a more curmudgeonly, Brooklyn-accented Mario. so for me, pratt did fine.

bowser. i loved jack black's performance and he struck the tone for bowser that i was looking for, but as a big fan of Tenacious D, some parts were less "bowser as a character" and more "Tenacious D song from Bowser's POV." Of everything i've talked about so far this feels the most like nitpicking because Jack Black's performance really was a highlight of the movie, but hey, we've made it this far!! you're locked in this Confessional Box with me and you're getting everything!!

one thing i can point to in regards to this - and i can't believe i'm about to say this because it's so ridiculous sounding - but they gave Bowser a little bit of a "yandere" vibe, right?? *sniper dot appears on my forehead* but they could've leaned further into it, and it was kinda overshadowed by the Jack Black of it all.

here's that second pin! it's for Mario's Daddy Issues! it's not a bad idea per se, like, yeah, you can do that sort of arc with Mario, why not? (he's got a couple daddy issues in my own fanon to be fair!) but the way it was integrated into the plot just felt SO cookie cutter, like literally ANY character could have had Mario's arc in this movie. it didn't feel related thematically to what was actually happening in the movie, and the reason that bothers me is because Mario is just so BLASE about everything happening to him! Like, sure, he's bumbling around all confused like a cheep-cheep out of water, but since there's just no room to breathe, we can't have anything more than narrative shorthand for arcs you've seen before. but the potential for depth is there!! it is!!!

i think what i mean is that there's not really levels to how characters react to things, almost like they're not allowed to have too extreme emotions. it feels like they had constraints, and they couldn't establish too much about the characters. Nintendo is a tightly controlled brand, right?

so, because of that, it's REALLY strange to me that they not only gave Peach a backstory, but to my knowledge, a backstory that doesn't come from any of the games or past adaptations. in a way, her story is the reverse opposite of Daisy from the live action Mario movie. if this movie had been twenty minutes longer, i would've loved to see this resolved in a more satisfying way! it really feels like there was no emotional resolution to her story, which surprises me because there were obvious parallels to Mario's angst about his own family/desire to Save Brooklyn in Peach's struggle to protect the toads. like i said earlier when i was talking about Mario and Peach's conversations, it felt like it stopped right before it was about to get good.

it just doesn't seem like the characters in this movie feel things deeply. most characters end in the same place they started. that isn't a bad thing, by the way, which is why it's in the "complicated feelings" section. lots of movies do that - Back to the Future does that, my favorite movie of all time.

it's all very, very down-the-middle. it's for everyone, it's for no one. it's Nintendo + Illumination: The Super Mario Bros. Movie., and everything that entails.

i think the reason the Baby Mario scene bothers me is because it reminds me too much of the fact that this movie is a product. all movies are, don't get me wrong, but there are so many parts of this movie that felt especially product-y. it was just kinda blatant about it in the stereotypical way that b-tier animated kid's movies are. it was packed with references, which in a way was cool to see. i'm sure that when i watch it again i'll catch all sorts of things i didn't catch before. but this movie kinda just feels like a PILE of stuff all mashed together without much thought put into how the actual world is supposed to work, or what the lives of the people who live there are like, or how they feel that their kingdom is being destroyed.

let me just be totally real for a second. *unzips clown costume a little*

art means a lot to me, obviously. and if i'm being totally real and baring my soul or whatever, nothing has impacted my artistic life and process more than Super Mario Bros. There's nothing I can do about it. the sky is blue, water is wet, and i love mario.

i saw this move sitting in a row with my family, in seats we'd all reserved in advance. i was sitting between my parents, who taught me how to play Mario. i had a smile on my face the whole time, even during the Baby Mario scene. every time something cool or flashy happened, a tiny voice from somewhere in the theater would GASP, or yell "LET'S-A GO" or "IT'S PEACH!!!"

among my group was my youngest cousin, who's eight years old, and i realized that she's the same age i was when i created my account on Lemmy's Land and made a Koopaling OC. (that used to be the Thing to do in mario fandom.) that realization almost gave me a fuckin stroke. the passage of time, am i right?

but anyway, if this movie had come out when i was a kid, it would've blown my mind and changed my life. i felt a weird ennui after the movie ended, and everyone was asking me what i thought. people at work the next day were asking me about it, because i'm the Mario Guy even in real life. and i didn't have an answer. i didn't know what i thought.

what i said to them was, "i'm weird, i'm not a good example of a normal opinion on this movie. 7/10." and then i went home and i wrote the 3000 words you see above you.

this is longer than most of my Mario fics, let's-a wrap this up.

hopefully i've given a little bit of a sense of what i thought of the movie. It's everything, it's nothing. you are in its target demographic whether you like it or not. it's the movie some of you have been waiting for your whole lives. it had expectations that it never had a chance of living up to. it has jack black. it's a pile of mush. (no pun nintended.)

[jeremiahthefroge]

yeah ok so I caved. Lit up another bowl, opened a new folder on my Obsidian vault, and I'm gonna rewatch the minecraft diaries and I'm going to take detailed notes on everything plot related I can, separated episode by episode, make observations, and then create a little personal wikipedia of my interpretations of the characters as they appear on the show.

I just did episode one to do what is essentially a "am I capable of watching this" test (I feared since it was 2016 youtube that I was into in the year 2016, a historically terrible year for me, that I would have some HEAVILY BIASED ideas on the quality of this show, and that if I rewatched I would ruin it for myself) and I honestly didn't have too hard of a time with the youtube of it all. Cringe is and has been dead, and I'm looking at this like a fun little excercise in studying how this piece of media tells the story it tells.

Speaking of, I find it so interesting how the machinima of Zenix and Garroth kicks us off and we then have Aphmau speaking as like... a comentary youtuber. The machinima sets up a plot that isn't even hinted more at in the episode, too, but I can see the first 10 or whatever episodes having all been recorded in 1 batch all at once and then cut up. I don't recall how characterized Aphmau gets in this whole thing.

And also I find Aphmau doing the voices for Garroth and Zenix so unironically fun and endears me to the series. Idk why but it made me smile!

I'll probably liveblog more of this experience bc I'm incapable of keeping my mouth shut.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I dont know if thats the correct way to use this 'asking' feature, but it seems to me like you would be an amazing Art Director. Because all your character design critique and ideas for improvement sound like actually feasible, high level, art-team directing for a video game or an animated series. Honestly curious: Have you ever done something like that in the past?

That's very flattering to say, thank you :)

There is a big difference, though, between being a critic on the outside of a project assessing its output, and being an art director INSIDE a project trying to help manage a team and a collaborative creative process. You have to juggle stakeholders, competing creative visions, manage feedback processes, engage in leadership... it's a complex role, and it's difficult work.

I have transferrable skills for such a job, for sure, and I'm sure I could learn to be effective in it, but there'd be a lot of skills I'd need to sharpen and acquire before I'd be able to get there.

It is the kind of work I would like to look for when or if the YouTube career stops working for me, but no, so far I've not done work as an art director. I am - or was - a professional artist (primarily illustration and cartooning), and I stumbled my way ass-backwards into a job as a professional critic and essayist, which I think I've become quite good at.

[zombie-bait]

Omg i just realized I have something tiny to add to the whole James Somerton debacle. I'm currently watching the hbombguy vid (as you do when procrastinating assignments) and I remembered something that stood out to me in James' old videos.

So I used to be a fan of his stuff. I am also a fan of Hannibal and IWTV. He made a video covering both so naturally I was very hyped. It was called 'The Gay Appeal of Toxic Love.' The vid itself was fine (I don't remember having any super strong opinions of it besides being excited to hear ppl mention Interview cuz I had recently become obsessed) but one thing did stand out to me. In the IWTV section he mentions Nicki and, naturally, his death:

"After becoming a vampire, Nicky becomes nearly catatonic, and eventually slips away from Lestat entirely. And after centuries of dealing with depression and severe mental illness, Nicky kills himself."

(sourced from this transcript: https://github.com/TerraJRiley/James_Somerton_Transcripts/blob/main/Transcripts/The%20Gay%20Appeal%20of%20Toxic%20Love.txt)

To anyone who's read TVL, I don't think I need to explain that Nicki had not, in fact, been around for centuries. "Nicki had lived to be 30" has been rattling around in my head since I first read it.

And like, obviously I don't expect every youtube essayist to read several long-ish novels to have a full grasp of the series' deep lore, especially when the focus was largely on IWTV and Loustat rather than the entire Vampire Chronicles. Still, it makes you wonder a bit about the quality of the research being done here. You can find the proper info in like, 5 seconds by just going on the fan wiki so I'm not sure what his sources were. And that's the issue at hand, isn't it?

At the time I felt a tiny bit smug recognizing the error but in light of everything that's been revealed, it's kind of telling. I'm not saying this part was plagiarized (I haven't found anything but others on reddit have found issues with different sections of the same video) but rereading the transcript it comes off as someone who clearly doesn't know much about Interview.... It feels like he's reading through a loose summary of plot points rather than analyzing a piece of media that actually means anything to him. It's very much Interview for people who don't know Interview which, one could argue is fair. Especially beyond book one, VC is a niche series and a lot of elements that are important to certain characters or plot lines cannot be summarized quickly for an audience unfamiliar with it. A good writer, who's done a lot of research about the specific topic they have chosen to make a video on, would be able to balance this. There is a LOT to analyze about queerness in VC and its a shame to see one of the more popular queer media channels half-assing it just to churn out videos heavily made up of other people's work. In retrospect he had several videos like that, where he would discuss things like manga/manhua communities while clearly having little knowledge on the nuance of those subjects. He was an outsider who presented himself with a strange amount of authority.

This was content created with the sole intention of propping up queer stories and history, yet it's built off stolen work from queer authors and doesn't actually care that much about exploring the communities it features. Vids like the IWTV one weren't really fact checked because it's only people like me who would might give a shit or even notice anything is off in the first place. There's a bit of a similar vibe in some of his other vids where he undermines the experiences of queer women because he clearly has not taken the time to learn about the nuances of representing queer women in media. These are things that irritated me when I first started to notice them but I put those concerns in the back of my mind because I cared about the topics he was covering and was excited to see these discussions becoming more mainstream.

The revelations of this evening have been disappointing to say the least.

(also for the record I know he made other more recent vids about IWTV but I haven't seen those and even if his account was still up I don't think I would lol

BUT

I did look at the transcript for his 'Vampires and the Gays Who Love Them' video (found from the same link I included above) and this quote about the IWTV AMC show is sending me: "Daniel has never grappled with the complexities of being gay"

Shoutout to straight, uncomplicated icon Daniel Molloy. Devil's Minion was a mass hallucination, spread the word)

[wordrage]

Have you read the essay "Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Media Illiteracy"?

If not, you should, it’s a great, fascinating read that tries to take a more nuanced look at the critical reexaminations of the series following Rowling's descent into basically fascism.

The author's thesis statement basically amounts to "Rowling has become a terrible person, her transphobia is awful and inexcusable, and there is a LOT to criticize about her books and a lot in them that's aged poorly… but the inability to focus on those legitimate problems in favor of just doing a blanket statement of 'Harry Potter was always bad and all of Rowling’s messages were always ontologically evil' undermines those criticisms."

Also, it made me see the books in a WHOLE new light when the author detailed how Harry, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Draco and Snape are all not only direct foils for one another, but also all embody the books' overall message about the redemptive power of love, with the final book's "who does the Elder Wand REALLY belong to?" mystery even hammering this point home.

ALSO it came to me at a PERFECT time, because I was going through a "I need to hate Harry Potter in order to support trans people" thing at the time.

Thanks for recommending this essay! I apologize for taking so long to answer this, but work has been incredibly draining for the past few weeks. 😩

I really liked it! I very much agree that people are retroactively trying to make the books more flawed than they are in order to justify their dislike of JKR. I agree too that a lot of the criticism circulating is superficial or, what really annoys me, criticizing decisions and portrayals the films did and not what is in the books. Looking at you YouTube video essayists 😐

The books are not perfect, of course. There's plenty of flaws or themes/plot/characters I would have wanted to see executed differently. Fans have been criticizing the books since they were published.

People are going to feel how they feel. I recently returned to the HP fandom (I had moved on after DH came out) and I was really moved to see fans, both old and new, are still having lots of fun engaging and creating with each other. HP was one of the first not openly hostile queer online spaces accessible to myself at that time, and I'm grateful for that.

When I think of HP, I think of the story and characters I enjoyed as a kid, and enjoy rereading as an adult. I have good memories of the fans I met and interacted with in the past as well as the present.

The HP fandom ≠ JKR.

[elezenappreciator]

In the last week I have seen 3 large companies get caught using AI, one of the largest digital art suppliers Wacom, a very large online game Apex Legends, and the largest patron of fantasy art Wizards of the Coast, as well as the newest clown running SquEnix to talk about AI on the stage celebrating one of the pieces of art I have cherished. Obviously this sucks and is upsetting. The AI art trend feels like the end game of of "content"-ification of media. Through discussions of plagiarism and clickbait and content mills on youtube and other platforms, I think we started loosing ground to corporations when the word "content" started being adopted. People were no longer artists, or amateur film makers, or modern essayists, but became "content creator". All of their deep insights into the human experience viewed through many mediums, with so much complexity and love put into them, no one person could hope see and understand all of these aspects, have been put through the corporate meatgrinder, leaving nothing but a beige, homogenous sludge. Chasing the advertising dollars from platforms like Yotube or Tiktok have done terrible things to creators or even to stab each other in the back, plagiarizing their love and passion of projects in pursuit of these sucesses. Corporations have been forced to work with creatives because they want them to make "content" to put on their tv to watch in between their advertisements, or now to fill their monthly subscription to give the illusion of value, as more and more we feel the crater left behind by video rental stores. Money has stifled these expressions of art through these forms of media, becoming a modern Faustian bargain, giving creatives the power to make art, but corporate committees grinding down all of the edges to leave something hollow and flat after. AI is the beige sludge corporations want us to get used to, but it can never hold a candle to the art I have experienced and cherished. AI will never be able to rip my heart out of my chest, chew up up so terribly, the only way I can put it back together is in a heart shaped gelatin mold. I will continue to refuse to call it "content". I will continue to post what pieces of art I make with infrequent irregularity because I don't want it ground down to "content" by the need to feed algorithms and I will do my best to avoid companies that use AI anything. I hope we can weather this and make this new shitty tech fad unprofitable. Please keep making art, if not for others at least for yourself.

[djvpensayosehistorias]

Should James Somerton be exonerated? - A 3500-word essay on plagiarism and ownership

Should James Somerton be exonerated?

Who even is this guy?

I had not heard of James Somerton before Hbomberguy’s video on Plagiarism and You(Tube). He is the main target of the video, as he has demonstrably plagiarized the content of his videos from other content creators, allegedly being hostile to them when they called him out for it. These accusations don’t interest me much; they are gossip from old Hollywood, and we should not turn the private conflicts of individuals into content. What I find deeply compelling and attractive about this case is that James Somerton became fairly successful by pretending to be a YouTuber. 

Content mills

As more people acquire a grasp on the basics of video making and start professional-looking channels more easily, and as more content is called “video essays” regardless of how the label fits, the bar for quality increases. Everyone is a YouTuber now, sure, but not everyone is a good YouTuber. Before, only people with camera-presence could run YouTube channels. Now, and for some time already, newcomers bet on running faceless YouTube channels and producing videos out of stock-footage, only providing a voiceover as the evidence of their presence. This is probably because so many people have been “exposed”, had their turmoil turned into microcelebrity gossip, become a liability for their companies, that being a corporate brand instead appears to be the preferable, smartest option. Lord knows what would be the current fate of James Somerton if he didn’t prominently show his face in his videos: Internet Historian, someone else who was demonstrated to have plagiarized an article for his channel, hasn’t had hordes of people go after him, perhaps because he uses the likeness of András Arató as his own channel mascot and because he’s never pretended to be a particularly moral individual. I personally have a preference for those who show their face in their YouTube content, even if it’s of poor quality, because they defend it with their life.

The danger of faceless channels is that they emulate, impersonate, corporate media that passes through quality control and is therefore professional and trustworthy, at least in the case of didactic entertainment. The amateurs immediately blow their cover when they say something out of place, something that would not fly in the worst, most biased fake news outlet, or they omit any references to their sources, as is common on YouTube. James Somerton is a rare case because, while he showed his face, he often presented conjectures as fact, and most importantly he rarely cited anything. That is precisely why he fascinates me. 

Embodiment of the simulation 

James Somerton, pre-cancellation, was a simulacrum of a video-essayist. He played the part to a tee. He spoke confidently, dressed up, and discussed the same things that the consumer demographic of video-essays enjoys. Perhaps it was the quality of his videos what impeded him from partnering with the independent platform Nebula; they looked the same as the videos of more prominent YouTubers who engage in queer cultural analysis, but their content was often either plagiarized or factually incorrect. They couldn’t get past a relatively simple threshold. Cultural analysis of popular media and the queer experience doesn’t necessitate much research; it’s precisely the type of discipline that can thrive on conjecture and subjectivity. The only thing his videos needed was proper citation and, perhaps, more rigorous investigation. I’ve seen the videos that are currently on James’ channel - the ones that do not feature plagiarism or flagrant misinformation according to him. I must say, these actually meet the threshold of quality for YouTube essays; they are authentic YouTube videos. No plagiarism, no misinformation. When he puts his mind to it, the man can craft a good video. (Note: James produced many videos in collaboration with writer Nick Hergott, who is quoted in a video by Todd in the Shadows from a post on James’ Discord server, “But that said…a lot of the claims [at least that I make]...are kinda based on just raw observation. I’m kinda fucking lazy and don’t WANT to look things up so I just kinda take something and ruminate on it.” Other, more succinct confessions of his are “Of course not because I don’t read,” and “I don’t do research.” It is clear that he is culpable for much of the incorrect information on the James Somerton channel.) 

To pardon James

I’m willing to put James Somerton’s plagiarism behind him. Since the beginning, I thought that all that was needed to avoid every single instance of plagiarism in his videos was to cite his sources. Had he done that, nobody would have cared, even if he didn’t ask permission to any of the writers and content creators referenced. It is courtesy on YouTube to ask for permission or let others know when you’re referencing their material, but in the doctrine of fair use that is irrelevant. If all of his plagiarism showed me anything, it’s that James is a good reader. It is crucial to be a good reader to be a good writer. A bad plagiarist (and keep in mind that James was a bad plagiarist) cannot demonstrate that he understands what he stole or that he learned anything. I listened to James’ podcast, where he spoke off-the-cuff, without any script, and he is knowledgeable. He has learned from all that he’s read. Under the definition I just gave, he’s more of a “bad copier” as Roberto Bolaño once defined them, “...those who simply plagiarize”, than a truly bad plagiarist. He has the potential of doing good, non-plagiarized content. 

Good Plagiarists vs. Bad Plagiarists

Let’s continue on what I said about bad plagiarists, or truly bad plagiarists. James was a bad copier because he didn’t hide what he stole. However, there are good plagiarists, and widely celebrated by our culture, at that. We claim to abhor plagiarism while celebrating it at its most shameless. Here is the difference between a good copier and a bad copier: a good copier will transform and even surpass the original, whereas the bad copier will never go beyond simple appropriation and therefore never seriously challenge the existence of the original. To give a contemporary example, Greta Van Fleet became very successful off their first two EPs and debut album in which they emulated a specific period of Led Zeppelin’s career, while Led Zeppelin creatively spun everything they stole into products that are distinct from their influences, whoever they are. The funny thing is that bad copiers will deny that they borrowed from their influences. The members of Greta Van Fleet said that their inspirations for those early records were not Led Zeppelin, but rather AC/DC and Aerosmith. While the complexity of Greta Van Fleet compositions resembles AC/DC’s more than Led Zeppelin’s, the excuse is ludicrous. Everyone knew what they were doing, and the band just played it off. To be clear, a copier is not necessarily a plagiarist, which is a legal category, but plagiarists of course react similarly when they’re caught - No! It wasn’t me! It was the one-armed man! 

Artistic plagiarism 

The YouTuber TomSka posted a video titled TomSka’s Guide to Plagiarism (The Somerton Scale) in which he posits that “plagiarism exists across a spectrum of severity”, which he structures in a scale baptized after James Somerton - the Somerton scale. It consists of ten steps: no correlation, parallel thinking, subconscious appropriation, inspiration, influence, reference, allusion, derivative, imitative, cloning, and freebooting. The only categories that might plausibly qualify as plagiarism are the last three: imitation, cloning and freebooting - TomSka himself says so in the video, calling them “the danger zone” of the scale. His conclusion is that we all build off from the work of others and that originality doesn’t exist and therefore we shouldn’t fall into despair if we find out that our work resembles someone else’s by accident or coincidence and that if we are inspired by someone it doesn’t hurt to differentiate our stuff from the source. All of these are sensible conclusions, but they’re almost not at all related to the James Somerton situation. What TomSka is referring to with his video is artistic plagiarism, which does not exist. How come it doesn’t exist? It is the acceptable form of plagiarism. 

Academic plagiarism

The unacceptable form of plagiarism is academic plagiarism. Plagiarism in academia is extremely easy to detect, especially now that there are multiple plagiarism-checkers that schools utilize; schools also have access to the databases of scientific repositories which feature publications protected by copyright law. Because it is easily traceable, academic plagiarism doesn’t serve its purpose as plagiarism. Plagiarism only works if it replaces the original; it succeeds as long as it goes unnoticed. If you are found to have plagiarized portions of your grade thesis, for example, you get reprimanded; it doesn’t matter if it was a little bit or a big bit. Only if you become a politician you might be immune to any sanction. Returning to the purpose of plagiarism, if the goal is to make money off stolen work, academic plagiarism is the least optimal option, because academic writing does not make money, or at least not enough to be stolen and republished or resold. And just from a philosophical perspective, it is also futile to plagiarize an academic publication, especially if it is research on a hard science, such as medicine, physics, math, chemistry, and so on. Social sciences, such as history, economy, and philosophy, are more up in the air. The point is that there is not much merit in being the owner of a work on the discovery or inquiry on a fact. Facts are facts. Your subjectivity is of little importance to the objective world. The earlier you are on a scientific discovery, the more incorrect you are about it. The fight for originality is not fought in the realm of science. The fight for recognition is worthwhile (looking at you, Rosalind Franklin), but what matters about science is that it is done, not who does it. People will be wrong, but facts will only be right. So that is academic plagiarism: easily spotted, functionally unnecessary, unprofitable, and ultimately useless. But no one defends academic plagiarism. Besides, when it is proven, it is most often punished, which is why nobody considers it a pressing issue. Academic plagiarism is not a problem, because it is unacceptable. 

Artistic plagiarism, continued 

But artistic plagiarism is of importance to the public. The public doesn’t read scientific publications for leisure. They consume art: film and television, music, literature and poetry, theater, and a long etcetera. What the youth nowadays consumes, for it is an immediate form of entertainment, is content - creative content. That is what James Somerton did, creative content. I mentioned before that social sciences don’t have the same inherent protections against academic plagiarism because, although they employ the scientific method, their analysis is highly dependent on subjectivity. Art criticism is arguably the easiest form of critical analysis possible, because the literary world is a dimension separate from the scientific world. One doesn’t need to rely on fact to perform an engaging critical analysis of art. Of course, literary critique, art criticism, social commentary, however one prefers to call it, is enriched by maintaining a contact with the scientific world, and it borders on being scientific if it is compatible with scientific consensus and historical record. Still, what matters about art criticism is that it be truthful rather than factual. That’s why sometimes writers say wild things without justifying them, and we give them a pass. That’s why Nick Hergott felt completely comfortable admitting that he never researched for the James Somerton channel and still felt righteous in distancing himself from James despite contributing to bad information in their videos. Unfortunately, on YouTube and every other social media platform, it is not only in art criticism and social commentary content that we see this flagrant nonchalance about uncited information. It is still interesting that despite both being featured in Hbomberguy’s video, people resent James Somerton and fellow YouTuber Blair Zón or “iilluminaughtii” for different reasons. Zón actually engaged in academic plagiarism, ripping off (much more in volume than James ever did) documentaries and news articles, yet the criticism directed at her is all about personal drama with co-workers and former colleagues that I cannot be assed to care about. Nobody cares about her plagiarism. Perhaps because they don’t actually dislike plagiarism unless they are told. People dislike James Somerton because he plagiarized art criticism from other queer content creators, many of them freelancers and independent workers (and two passed away). Had he plagiarized the right type of content, maybe he would be written off as lazy, but he would still have a platform. 

On copyright law 

Andy of AtunShei Films once joked that the collection of content creators affectionately nicknamed Breadtube were “liberals who make YouTube videos.” It is incredible that one of the most prominent YouTubers making anti-capitalism content is such an ardent defender of copyright law. Copyright law serves to give creatives control over the value generated by their labor; however, it also exists to screw people over in abusive, petty ways. The lawsuits that have happened over music are the most outrageous example.

The Marvin Gaye estate successfully sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over the song Blurred Lines being too similar to Got to Give It Up, so they tried their luck again with a lawsuit against Ed Sheeran for supposedly copying Let’s Get it On to make Thinking Out Loud. Fortunately, they lost the second case. Similarly, a no name Christian rapper won a lawsuit against Katy Perry, whose song Dark Horse allegedly used the same riff from his song, whatever it was. Recently, that decision was overturned after Katy Perry appealed. One last case, that of Neil Innes, illustrates how one can be frivolously sued over a creative work and come out an authoritarian, an enforcer of and believer in the system. After he was sued by ATV Music for his Beatles parodies and forced to split the revenue with the company, Innes sued Oasis for eight notes of their song Whatever. He believed he was owed credit and compensation for a bar in a six-minute song. He had no empathy to spare for fellow artists. That is the ideology promoted by copyright law.   

It is ludicrous to uphold a mechanism that exists so that malicious agents can squeeze large amounts of easy money out of more successful people (and sometimes less successful people) while setting precedents to stifle creativity under the excuse of ownership.

Plagiarism vs. Copyright infringement

To clarify, plagiarism and copyright infringement are different things. You can plagiarize something that is not copyrighted, to define the distinction through an example. Plagiarism is a claim of authorship: the seller of pirated movies doesn’t claim to have produced the films himself. Legally, it is easier to find someone guilty of copyright infringement than of plagiarism. The easiest way to determine an occurrence of copyright infringement is when copyrighted material is unlawfully distributed in its entirety, representing losses in the earnings of the copyright holder. Pirated movies, music, books; bootleg recordings of concerts or live theater. Episodes of television uploaded to YouTube. The material is reproduced, and the copy may not generate money, or it might generate money to the incorrect person. That form of copyright infringement is the easiest to find and litigate. However, if a copy is not a reproduction, a clone, but a new entity that somewhat resembles the original, claims of copyright infringement become shaky. If as much of a single atom of a copy is different, the accusation of copyright infringement is no longer completely solid, so it is safer to decry plagiarism, and at that point there is nothing that can (or should) be done about it.    

a brief manifesto on combating artistic plagiarism

As I see it, the problem of artistic plagiarism should be treated the same way as with copyright infringement: whether the copy threatens the original market. The threat should be quantified in practice: if a creative sees a dip in revenue that can be proven as caused by imitators, the imitators shall split the revenue with the original creative. Otherwise, imitators should be allowed to exist, for their right to earn money under the capitalist mode of production and for their right to free speech.  

The absurdity of ownership

Private property is a highly contested concept in ideologies such as communism and anarchism, and intellectual property, or intellectual private property, should be perceived with the same skepticism. Intellectual property is as preposterous as immaterial labor. We cannot own an idea. An idea is immaterial. We cannot prevent others from using an idea. That is the crux of the problem of ownership. Anything that is good should not be deprived from others. An idea is an inexhaustible resource, an infinite commodity. What is the use of limiting its distribution? You don’t have the right to have my idea. Who is any of us to dictate to others what they can or cannot do, with an idea or in general? While the discussion hitherto has focused on artistic and academic literature, intellectual property extends to inventions. How much progress for the benefit of humanity has been hindered by patent protections? To give an example, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to develop new vaccine technology to provide vaccinations to the population and lessen the debilitating and potentially fatal emergency. The distribution and rollout of vaccines was slowed down by Bill Gates’ refusal to waive patents on vaccines produced by his company. Patents on inventions are obviously a device to make rich people more money, but trademarks and copyright law help artists keep the money they make, right? No. Most of the money generated by the labor of artists is kept by the real copyright holders: publishers. Publishers, record labels, movie studios. In our current day, publishers are trying to devise methods to pay less and less royalties, with music and entertainment streaming and refundable digital books. The artist earns a wage as any other worker.

If intellectual property does not provide complete ownership of their labor to creatives, it probably does not merit the ardent defense of any creative. If intellectual property prevents access to knowledge, it probably does not merit the appreciation of anyone who values the utility of knowledge. That is why anarchists pay hosting fees on websites to distribute anarchist literature for free: they are committed to the spread of ideas, the education of the masses, rather than to privatizing their knowledge for profit and the prestige of ownership. Intellectual property is antithetical to the democratization of knowledge.  

Harry Brewis, the Hbomberguy, says on his Plagiarism and You(Tube) video, “On YouTube, if you have an original idea, if it’s good, it won’t be yours for long.” Good.

Conclusion & Call to action to the reader

After the fallout of the James Somerton spectacle, YouTubers are becoming bold and publicly calling out smaller YouTubers who copy - but not infringe on their copyright - their work. This is bad. People are not upset at content theft. People don’t care about quality content, or originality, or any of that bullshit. Nobody believes in that. What they are upset about is that some have found the solution. Nobody is angry at the copiers for doing things “the easy way.” Everybody wants to do things “the easy way.” Nobody likes to work. Everyone wishes to earn as much money as possible with the least labor. Those upset at James Somerton and other copiers are upset at the fact that some people found a way approved by the administrators of capital to make money. They, like every liberal, are angry at capitalism while believing in it and supporting it. Is there a solution for them? There are plenty. To ignore the copiers is a good first step; after all, the free market regulates itself and consuming quality content will create a demand for quality content. If you are more interested in the enrichment of the intellectual landscape, of common discourse, than in petty drama, my advice is that we all become active consumers. Passive consumers don’t question what they consume - they read something and believe it. Even if you think that the present essay is total horseshit, at least engage with its arguments, even if you disagree anyway. That is my advice to you: read. Read more. Learn to evaluate and critique sources. A list of references is not just a display of intellectual honesty: it’s the evidence of the quality of your research. Become an active viewer, an active reader, an active consumer, a participant in the discourse. If you are a good reader, you might recognize from where I borrowed the structure of this essay, and I’m sure he would not mind. And if you’re really desperate about the low bar for quality for video-essay content on YouTube, I suggest you graduate and start reading books. 

[wolfnanaki]

If you think about it, the whole Snoot/Wani situation did kind of unfortunately prove the rightwingers correct on one thing: If you tell a story that makes the audience feel good, then they will ignore any and all problematic themes it has. The whole "Tell a good story and stop worrying about politics." idea rightwing media critics love to use did end up being correct because of how many normal people with no skin in the game love Snoot/Wani.

I mean, we already knew that, Harry Potter exists. :v

But anyway, in general, once people become more educated on the topics that are discussed, it becomes harder to ignore problematic elements in the media they consume. That's why it's so important to keep educating people on these kinds of topics, and teach people critical thinking and analysis skills. Not everyone needs to be a video essayist or critic, but the skills to be able to critically examine media is vital and, unfortunately, very lacking nowadays. Most people just consume what's available and stop when some Tumblr user or YouTuber says "this thing is bad actually".

[ms-all-sunday]

yeah i think video essays are given an air of legitimacy that written blog posts aren't, regardless of the quality of the analysis. which sucks when you have a particularly poor video essayist who makes a video completely missing the point of a particular part of the story and just because they're a popular youtuber it becomes a widely held opinion. tumblr remains the best place for one piece analysis because it's the only platform i've seen consistently new and interesting interpretations of the original story.

theres a lot to account for.

from my perception of melontrees content, i dont think she makes the same kind of analysis i do. she makes very genre-focused analysis while I'm focused on traditional art analysis, (what did it make you feel and why) and there's summarization and analysis, which people get mixed up, even within the context of only-good analysis, things can get confusing if you don't know how to categorize one opinion and another, you might see them as mutually exclusive, when often opinions arent. even in the same kind of analysis, this distinction can be hard to make.

they don't even need for it to be a bad opinion for something to become widespread and a poor opinion, i'll give a theoretical example.

say a video essayer was particularly defensive about something they believed to be true: people would pick up on the lack of confidence and then the doubt the video essayer sowed, despite them having a fine opinion.

and then the narrative would become that doubt and people would become defensive and life would be a whole lot worse because it would become expected that you be defensive about this opinion. (which in my experience has never convinced anybody of anything anyways)

that doesn't help anybody, and the lack of confidence some people have in their opinions in analysis can become a real issue because it doesn't contribute well to analysis. that's the purpose of the formal voice in analysis writing is so problems like this don't arise.

having a varied amount of sources for analysis is key so problems of individuals don't become what you externalize when talking about it

im glad you think tumblr is the best. im happy to hear that. proud of behalf of myself and my peers and associates <3

[vidreview]

VIDEO ESSAY ROUNDUP #1

[originally posted october 11th 2023]

so, i watch a lot of video essays.

i started this blog with the intention of reviewing video essays at length, in the hopes of highlighting best & worst practices, discussing the history of the form, and using them as a jumping off point for personal/political introspection. but as time has gone on, i've found myself encountering more and more videos that i didn't have a whole lot to say about, but that felt worthy of a spotlight anyway.

WITH THAT IN MIND, welcome to video essay roundup, an occasional list of stuff i've watched recently that i think is worth your time. enough preamble, let's get started.

"Self-Discovery Stories | Video Essay" by Glouder Glens.

are you watching Sylvia Schweikert? i know you're not because its numbers are disastrously low. her video about it/its pronouns is a genuine work of art, a video essay about the dehumanization of trans people that seamlessly transforms into lesbian werewolf erotica. this newest video is just as beautiful and strange, not least because it's rendered in portrait mode like a tiktok. it's an honest, far-ranging and personal essay whose sub-300 views is genuinely criminal. seriously, seriously, Sylvia's an essayist you NEED to be paying attention to. it's making the kind of stuff that simply does not play well with the youtube algorithm, and that's the stuff that i live for. watch her videos and share them with your friends. give it money on patreon for gods sake! also definitely go watch her short film "Self Centered," it's a haunting and masterful work of art.

"More unremarkable and odd places in Mario 64" by Any Austin.

i stumbled across Any Austin a couple months ago and he's quickly become one of my favorite "it's time to relax" creators. his "unremarkable and odd places" series scratches an itch i never knew i had, as someone who loves exploring the least interesting corners of any digital world i find myself in. his other series involves calculating the unemployment rate of video game locations by talking to every NPC and deducing their employment status. the editing is calm, his tone is measured and matter of fact, and his sense of humor ties it all together. this is the kind of thing that used to be the bread and butter of video teams at outlets like Cracked or Polygon, before they were summarily laid off or pushed out. it's good to see someone else picking up that mantle in a way that seems relatively sustainable and isn't under the umbrella of a layoff-happy corporate enterprise (except for google of course, but we're all in that boat together aren't we?)

does this count as a video essay? i think that's a reasonable question. i'm inclined to say yes, with the understanding that there are many different types and genres of video essay. but that's a conversation for another day.

"On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People" by Patricia Taxxon.

i should do a full vidrev on this one honestly, but i can't do a post like this and not include it. if you play around in any sort of furry-adjacent fetish space, have opinions about the sexual proclivities of furries, or are otherwise prone to pearl-clutching as an outsider, this is an essential watch. Patricia here does a great job drawing attention to how even well-meaning defenders of, say, feral furry porn, often give up unnecessary ground to opponents with fallacious devices like the Harkness test. i've talked to a lot of fellow kinky furries who came out of this essay exalting in the joy that finally, someone said it! many of the arguments made here, especially in underlining that all furry porn is immaterial and imaginary, are thoughts i've had since i first made a furaffinity account in 2007 or 08 (though i swore up and down i wasn't a furry until 2019) but was always too afraid to express.

this is scary, sensitive territory, but that's what makes this such an essential intervention. this is the perspective of an autistic transfem furry who just wants to have an honest conversation without all the moral fearmongering and shortsighted kneejerk cliches that come up when a topic skirts dangerously close to taboos that we just, generally, refuse to talk about like adults. these are conversations that, in my experience, only ever happened among friendgroups with a long-established repartee and understanding of each other's boundaries, if at all. otherwise, even progressive supposedly kink-positive spaces can encourage a sort of cop-brained punitive attitude towards imaginary sex acts that very easily bleeds over into puritanical takes on, say, kink at pride. frankly, i'm sick of the language & rhetoric of Respectability, because saying "no, most of us aren't like the freaks" only ever results in a liberal block decrying the deplorables and subjecting them to further marginalization and abuse. it takes a lot of guts to make a video like this and i'm so, so glad that Patricia Taxxon stuck the landing.

"Who Is Killing Cinema? - A Murder Mystery" by Patrick (H) Willems.

i've already written two separate vidrevs on Willems, but what can i say? this most recent stretch of work focusing on the business and philosophy of cinema in the streaming era is good stuff. nothing in this particular essay is new per se if you've been paying attention to the business of hollywood for the last ten years, but it does a great job assembling the broad strokes of a lot of different-but-common arguments into one far ranging thesis. much like the prior two videos, i think this works as a solid introductory primer to a more materialist understanding of these trends for folks who aren't necessarily familiar with materialist theory. bonus points for wasting no time getting to the point, unlike his otherwise excellent video on the word "content."

alright, i think that'll do it for this video essay roundup! enjoy :)

ROUNDUP #2 ->

[NOTE: as i'm migrating the archive, links between roundups will direct back to cohost. i probably won't get around to changing that until i write a new one.]

[trainsinanime]

Turnverbot

So James Somerton, a Youtube video essayist, has been the Tumblr and Youtube main character of the week. Between a video by HBomberguy about his (and other people’s) plagiarism…

…and a video by Todd in the Shadows about how everything James made up is mostly bullshit as well…

…and a Twitter thread by Dan Olson about deceptive business practices, this guy has been thoroughly demolished.

I don’t really want to add to that; this has gone as far as needed to give you an accurate impression of his character and content, and then some. Anything more isn’t actually helping, it’s just piling on for fun, and this has definitely gone too far when I see people arguing that it has always been immoral to be a fan of his or something like that. That’s just plain wrong.

…but I do have something I want to add here, specifically with regards to one of the earliest things in the Todd in the Shadows video: The famous idea that sports and fitness ideals came into the US because GIs were jealous of the toned masculine bodies of the Nazis. That is bullshit, obviously, everyone in Germany was malnourished by the end of the war and the whole fitness thing has many different sources (see e.g. Pierre de Coubertin, who created the modern Olympic Games in the late 19th century).

But this reminds me of one story that I want to share: The time when sports was illegal in Germany. And don’t worry, this doesn’t actually have anything to do with James Somerton whatsoever.

Yes, sports was illegal in Germany from 1820 to 1842, the so-called “Turnsperre” or “Turnverbot” (roughly “athletics ban”), although it was not uniformly enforced in all parts of Germany and faded away before the official repeal. In our modern worlds where sports seem like a natural part of life whether we want it to be or not, this sounds completely crazy. The reason given was that the athletes were dangerous revolutionaries who wanted to destroy the social order. And the really fun thing is: This was basically true.

Let’s set the scene. We are near the start of the epoch sometimes called the “long 19th century”, which started in 1789 with the French Revolution (though I’d argue that 1775, with the American Revolution and Watt’s steam engine, works just as well), and ends with the start of World War I. During this time we see a rapid change of the way the world works, with industrialisation going into full force, cities growing and new ideas becoming widespread. We start the era with most people believing in the divine right of kings, and end with democratic and Marxist ideals ruling the world. And throughout it all we see different groups constantly argue, often violently, about what a country is and how it should work.

This is most notable in Germany. In 1789, there is no real Germany. Sure, there is a German king, who can also get himself crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, though not all do. But the power of these rulers is mostly limited to their own countries, which, in the case of the Habsburg’s, were considerable. The rest of Germany, though, was a smattering of more or less large princedoms, free cities, knight alliances, small and large countries, all basically independent with their own laws, their own customs borders, and with very different amounts of e.g. freedom of the press. They were united by a common imperial council (Reichstag) and court, but those were some very loose connections. There was never a unified army, and attempts to raise unified taxes mostly failed.

This status quo was never rigid, stuff kept changing constantly, but the start of the “long 19th century” really put it to the test. The ideals of the French Revolution appealed to many, and constantly improving printing presses and road networks meant they could spread further more easily. Then we got Napoleon, who conquered much of Europe, including much of Germany. He was an evil dictator, sure, but he modernised and liberalised the political systems of the areas he conquered.

(A particularly famous example: When the french conquered the german city of Cologne, one of the things they did was assign house numbers to all houses for the first time, without street names at the time. A well-known Cologne perfume maker still uses the number, 4711, their house received at the time in their marketing.)

Napoleon was eventually defeated by ABBA, and at the Vienna Congress Europe was re-arranged: The old German empire, which had collapsed basically the moment Napoleon asked nicely, was replaced by a loose confederation of independent states, which grew by taking over many of the smaller ones. The states there agreed to largely repress demands for more liberal constitutions, freedom of the press, and they insisted that all states should have a legitimate ruler, meaning someone appointed by God (i.e. born to the right family).

During that period we see the start of people calling for a unified, modern German country. The princes are initially opposed; not a surprise given that this would destroy their power bases. There is also the question what a modern Germany should be.

Around this time, starting around the turn of the century, we meet Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. Jahn was well educated, son of a protestant priest, and mostly worked as a teacher. Around 1800, he published his first political pamphlets, at that time still loyal to Prussia, one of the biggest parts of Germany at the time. But during the napoleonic wars, his opinion shifted: In 1810, he published pamphlets arguing for a united, modern Germany and invented a definition of a “German people”. He also argued against old feudal systems and demanded a Germany that is egalitarian, where all members of the German people have the same rights and freedoms.

Around this time he also came into contact with Franz Christian Boll, a preacher who argued that some movement and exercise is probably good for you. Boll convinces Jahn, and Jahn forms this idea into the gymnastics (or athletics? Not sure how to translate this) movement. This movement is based on a certain type of idealism: The modern Germany is full of free Germans with sound bodies and sound minds. This became very popular very quickly.

Jahn quickly established lots of outdoor exercise places, and invented a lot of forms of exercise and devices that we still use today. He and his friends took the idea of “some exercise is good for you” and turned it into a systematic approach.

And yes, this movement is racist in nature. Historians go back and forth about how racist exactly, but it’s clear that there was at least some here. Jahn has low opinions of Jews, Roma and Black people, and defines his German people in part in opposition to them. He also voices similar disdain for the French and for catholic priests, but, you know, different power dynamics there.

The gymnastics movement is part of the first all-german meeting on the Wartburg (known centuries earlier for housing Martin Luther) in 1817, where lots of people with similar ideas meet up to start their campaigning for a unified, modern and democratic Germany. At this meeting the black-red-gold flag of the free Germany is introduced, and here the first “Burschenschaften” (university fraternities) are founded, which also fight vehemently for a unified Germany. But it is also here where we see the first big political book burnings. They burn French laws, but also books by jewish authors. Wikipedia says that this was probably because Jahn just hated that author because he liked France too much, not because he was a Jew. Wikipedia has a citation for that, personally I haven’t read the book so I can’t say how plausible that is.

These meetings on the Wartburg are still being held today, but they’re now mostly a meeting place of the rich and old racists and far-right extremists, including fraternities, some (not all, not even most, but some) of which are just incredibly racist.

The fraternities and the gymnastics movements, who have basically the same ideals, just different means, are of course immediately at odds with the much more conservative opinions by the governments after the explicitly conservative Vienna Congress. But it’s also important to note that these movements did not have universal support in Germany. There were plenty of educated people who thought these were all unpatriotic idiots. In the case of the gymnastics movement, that came to a head when Russian consul August von Kotzebue (a name that is incredibly funny in German, just trust me) was murdered by a member of the fraternities and gymnastics movement.

The reaction by the authorities was swift. The very loose German confederation issued laws that forbade gymnastics and closed all the spaces and clubs where gymnastics were being done. Jahn himself was briefly arrested.

Of course that didn’t actually settle things, especially since the revolutionary part of the movements were the politics, not the sit-ups (note: I don’t actually know whether they were doing sit-ups at the time already).

In the next decades, the calls for a unified Germany became louder rather than quieter. We also see that many of the princes come around to this idea. The king of Bavaria, for example, commissioned huge memorials dedicated to the idea of Germany, like the Walhalla, a greek temple near Regensburg that houses busts of famous Germans.

(Note that at this time, it’s still unclear what Germany even is and where it ends, so the Walhalla includes some danish and English kings among others. This is a problem that will take not only the rest of the long 19th century to resolve, but also a good chunk of the 20th. The language borders and fuzzy and don’t match political ones and mostly never did, and there are lots of weird details: For example, the kings of Denmark, the Netherlands and England all were rulers of some territories that were part of the Holy Roman Empire. And the question what to do about the ethnically heterogenous states of Prussia and in particular Austria was also open. A good example for this are the regions of Alsace and Lorraine, which change hands between Germany and France every few decades until the end of the Second World War.)

The states become more liberal, and in 1842, the gymnastics ban is repealed and Jahn got restitution payments. Ever since then, sports have (sadly) been legal in Germany.

The rest of the story is also interesting but not really sports-related anymore: In 1848, triggered by yet another revolution in France, revolutionary fervour sweeps all of Europe, and under the pressure of public opinion, the princes of Germany agree to a united, constitutional, sort of democratic Germany. The constitutional congress meets in the Paul’s church in Frankfurt am Main (the Main is a river, but it is also the main Frankfurt) and works out a constitution. But the Prussian king refuses the emperor’s crown, because it smelled too republican for him, and in 1849 the princes stage what is legally speaking a coup, dissolve the congress in Frankfurt, and take power back for themselves. In 1871, a new modern Germany is formed, under Prussian leadership, without Austria and explicitly as a union of princes, rather than a democratic thing, though it does include a parliament. That Germany is instrumental in starting the First World War, and from there we leave the area.

You don’t need to know any of this, I just think it’s fascinating.

[goldenpinof]

Hi. original alienation anon here. I'm happy to report that my fears (so far) are unfounded :)

I'm going to try to explain why I found dd to be alienating as succinctly as possible.

I get that he was basically trying to make the YT version of the Eric André show, but it didn't work for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, YT is not a good platform for that kind of content. The Eric André show is on a network that is known for bizarre, offensive shows. YT is not that. It's a personality-driven platform that runs on the parasocial relationships between creators and their audiences. Dan was also not the best person to pull that concept off. Eric André is and always has been known for his chaotic, rude, unlikable persona. Dan is not. He built an audience by being likable and relatable. So for him to suddenly do a total 180 and become this rude, mean, cold person was alienating to me and other viewers who had built a parasocial relationship with the person he presented himself as in his videos.

Secondly, and this is gonna sound harsh, Dan is not as deep as he thinks he is. DD isn't good satire. He basically just made the content he was supposed to be satirizing and dressed it up in this pretentious concept of a dystopian variety show. He clearly was pressured into making those videos to promote WAD and it shows. His commentary on the concepts he talked about was surface level. he didn't say anything that countless video essayists who are smarter and more educated than him haven't already said. I also agree with the person who said it felt overproduced and cheap at the same time.

My third and main problem with DD though, is how mean-spirited it often felt. I watch dnp for light-hearted entertainment. I don't want to watch someone I usually like being a dickhead to their friends and family for 20 minutes, whether it's joking or not. There were times when you could tell that the guest was uncomfortable, but Dan just didn't seem to care? The worst was Louise. I felt so much second-hand embarrassment watching that video. She clearly felt uncomfortable but Dan just kept pushing it. The cringiest part was when he said that thing about the 2012-2014 YT era being nostalgic and Louise said "it wasn't a good time for me. I had a 2 yr old and was going through a divorce." Yikes! That just made Dan come off like a self-absorbed, inconsiderate asshole to me. Obviously we don't know how Louise really felt or what went on behind the scenes but that video left a bad taste in my mouth and completely changed how I viewed Dan.

Here's my conclusion. I think Dan needs to play to his strengths. social commentary and irreverent comedy are not two of them. People like him mainly for 3 reasons; his ability to relate to others through his own personal struggles, his chemistry with Phil, and his aspirational relationship with Phil (whatever the nature of that relationship is). DD pretty much destroyed all of that in one fell swoop. Even though I think that was entirely intentional, it was a very, very bad move. He can't just toss his entire image in the fire and expect it to work out for him. Not without doing the work to win over a new audience, like say, Joji did when he went from being Filthy Frank to a serious, sad-boy musician. I'm glad he got the chance to try new things, even if they didn't work out, but I think he's smart for going back to doing what he's good at and I hope for our sake and his that he sticks to it.

I said succint and then this turned into a whole essay lol. Sorry. I know some people are not going to like what I said, but that's how I feel.

hi! so sorry it took me so long to get to this!

i agree with some things and disagree with others. just so people won't argue with me because of your perception of dd, i'll list disagreements (and the hardest agreements, i guess). but it's totally cool to feel what you feel, and youtube content is made for people to have different opinions and obviously, we have different reactions to intentional harshness and rudeness. also, i'm so so glad you gave dnpgames a chance! we're back and stronger than ever!!

putting under the cut to not disturb the dnpgames euphoria <3

i agree that youtube , and specifically Dan's main channel, wasn't the best place to put this type of content on. maybe his 2nd channel would have been better, but it would have given even less views. so like, the point? because now his main channel looks all over the place. the usual content flow was interrupted by a video trashing youtube and the whole conceptual series of dd. and even dd was interrupted by the 2nd wad trailer and the memes video. right now it looks, dare i say, ugly. if he ever returns to actual youtube content and not promo videos, he will have to swallow this hard pill.

your 2nd reason - agree. but i don't think it's a bad thing, considering the circumstances (dd being made under pressure to somehow promote wad. with limited time and budget). lots of people comment on the same things and happen to give the same remarks. it's fine, it's still interesting to hear. (ironically, that's youtube and its algorithm for you)

hard agree on Dan (almost) destroying his image, especially in relation to dnp™. but we're still here, he can't push us away no matter how hard he tries.

disagreements :))

i think the video with Louise was good. that comment about 2012-2014 (the prime Brit crew times specifically) being nostalgic - i mean, it IS. for some people more, for some people less. it can be nostalgic and not a good time equally. i have personal examples when it's both. and i rewatched that moment. Louise said, "I loved those years for the most part." Dan went on to question WHAT exactly she loved, and only then she had to specify that it wasn't actually that simple. Dan likes to say how simple life was "back then". "back then" being any time in the past lol. "simpler, better times" is a phrase i still quote, and it was said years ago (i don't even remember where). he was rude in the video, but not ruder than with others. motherhood is a more sensitive topic for Louise than for Dan and, may i say, the majority of us. but they are friends, and at the end of the day, she could literally say "shut the fuck up and stop" and that would be accepted.

i also think that Dan would be amazing at social commentary if you give him more time to prepare scripts and find the right tone. his liveshows are a good indicator of that. he wasn't trying to punch anyone with his words while delivering his thoughts. he was giving his opinions and explaining them. 2017 has so many amazing quotes from his liveshows. and none of them felt like dd, despite touching on politics, sexuality, mental health, youtube as a platform, our community, the internet as a job, etc. he can do that, he can comment and criticise without trying to prove something. dd had a concept though. he was that obnoxious character playing by "youtube rules". "youtube likes this, this and this. so i'm gonna do all of it, and you're gonna see how bizarre it looks thrown in your face at once and deal with it." social platforms' algorithms are dystopian, he's got a point. his version of satire isn't ideal and you can clearly see that dd was rushed. and that's unfortunate!

anyway, thank you so much for explaining your dd experience. i'm sure there are people who relate to it. i'm sorry, if i sound rude, or like, pushy. i'm not trying to be. actually, dd is probably the easiest topic to discuss because of how ambiguous it is (in a good way).

[adorabledestruction]

Okay okay okay, I don't think I've seen the 1999 game Katya come up yet and it deserves to be mentioned.

The game mostly flew under the radar because of the cultural obscurity Goncharov had ended up in thanks to becoming lost media, that it got made at all is a miracle in and of itself.

A bit of history first and foremost! I need to emphasize just how incredible it is that a game as underrated as Katya was made. Most of this information comes from the research and interviews conducted by YouTube Video Essayists back in 2018.

Katya was made thanks to the boom in Mafia movies in the 90s. Many of these movies creators had been influenced by Goncharov one way or another and it showed in subtle ways throughout the movies of that era.

The developers, many of whom had themselves watched Goncharov in their youth, saw and recognized many of the references, but no mafia movie could quite do justice the feelings that Goncharov had made them feel.

Katya was the passion project born from their desire to share how they felt with the world, and to bring their memories of Goncharov out of the realm of lost media and into something tangible.

They were faced with a dilemma however, because not only would trying to retell the movie with the technology of the time mean they had to make compromises, but not having access to the original movie limited how well they could recreate it to how well they could remember it. Something needed to change, and that change came in the form of Katya, Forgotten (1968) entering the public domain.

They made the decision to draw on Katya, Forgotten, instead of a retelling of either the book or the movie, the game was to be a standalone story that explored the character of Katya through the imagery of a dream she has.

Switching from a retelling to a psychological exploration meant that they could focus on the strengths of the medium, The art is abstract and interesting, the dream evolves and branches depending on the choices the player makes, and the original 8bit soundtrack slaps. The game was an ambitious work, and though it isn't particularly long, that's more because the developers chose to focus on detail.

The events of the game itself are probably best enjoyed unspoiled, so I'll refrain from describing them, and instead encourage you to play it yourself if you're interested, its a short game that can be played in its entirety in an afternoon, so check it out!

The game doesn't specify at what point in the timeline Katya is having this dream, though it makes allusions to Katya's actions in Goncharov, these could be read as foreshadowing. The developers later explain in an interview that they left this open to the player on purpose, their choice when it takes place, as part of the theme of choices so core to Katya's character that the game plays on.

The game would fall into obscurity like its predecessors, but like Goncharov's touch can be felt in the Mafia movies of 90s, Katya's would be felt in the games of the 2010s.

When asked about the choice of name, developers explained that its in reference to the title of the novel, Katya, Forgotten. They named the game "Katya" because they had decided to come together to make sure she wasn't forgotten, and now, one way or another, she's will be remembered.

[redbuddi]

As a former youtube reviewer who had no idea what they were doing at the time, something a lot of people including myself at the time don't recognize is that before you put your opinion out there is that you need to ask yourself "What purpose does it serve telling people how I feel about this?" and "What are the possible effects of my words?"

A lot of people put out reviews and essays just to get an opinion off their chest, and that's fine, but if they aren't careful and thorough in what they say they could end up fully doing the opposite of what they wanted. If you feel that might be the case, rewrite the video, or don't make it. If you research and the facts contradict your purpose, either revise your purpose or don't make the video. If you don't research or double check your words, don't make the video. You have no idea how damaging just a tiny bit of misinformation can become.

And if you read this and you think "fuck that, I just want to say what I want to say," then it's whatever, it's not like I can stop you, but it doesn't exactly reflect well on a person when they seem perfectly fine saying whatever they want to without thought to who it could harm. And if you only ever put out things filtered through your own rigid lens, it won't be long until you lose the ability to turn it off, and suddenly nothing is fun anymore.

Never trust the essayist or the critic who never takes in the opinions of other people. Never trust the critic who doesn't do their research. Never trust the critic who seems to have no purpose behind their words beyond the money and attention of making a popular video. These people are the enemy of true artistic expression and progress.

the problem with everyone becoming a reviewer and essayist now is that, plainly and gently, a lot of these people are not smart enough for the position

[mozillavulpix]

Not gonna lie, I didn't really like hbomberguy's newest video

The first half was quite fun, going over how rampant plagiarism has become even amongst big youtubers from the rush to keep producing content. But then when he got to the second half, it became clear the whole thing was only supposed to be a callout video for some video essayist in the queer community who was serially plagiarising for his videos and lying about it, and the only reason the other stuff was even part of the video was because he got carried away while he was trying to research it all.

Looking at the whole thing, it feels like the only reason he even made the video was because he made a callout post on twitter about James's plagiarism and not everybody agreed with him there, so now he has to put all the proof in one place so he can definitively win the argument.

And like, the reason why the Roblox oof video was entertaining was because Tommy Tallarico is also a weird guy. He has a ridiculous house with an indoor fountain and displays his Guinness World Records and shows off to everyone he meets even when he doesn't need to. It was fun because he wasn't just "a bad person", he was also pretty insane to hear about.

Even his older videos talking about the alt-right back when the alt-right were just a bunch of pathetic lonely dudes grifting each other and didn't have mainstream American political acceptance. They were also acceptable targets because they were so insane.

In comparison, James's craziest things were...lying about stealing content from people and making a patreon for a film production studio that doesn't seem like it's doing anything with the money. Not nearly as wild or entertaining.

Basically, his newest video felt mean-spirited. Like, the fact some popular youtube videos are plagiarised is a good point and a good discussion to have in the youtube community, but did he have to spend hours going over why he was right and James was lying and wow isn't stealing from queer people the most despicable act we should deplatform people who commit sins

he used to make jokes about how the alt-right were so pathetic they were actively turning on each other but it sounds like the queer community does the same thing and then celebrates when it happens because they've gotten rid of "a bad person"

Although I did like the part where the editor brought up Screenrant Dragon Ball Super articles as an example of a content farm who are you and can we talk about the time Megan Peters from comicbook.com would make 'articles' that were just our tweets from when a new Super episode came out

[mysticdragon3md3]

📺🤮

When i check out a YouTube channel i havent tried before, and they start talking about "we're not like the MAINSTREAM MEDIA because we have a DIVERSITY of political opinions", why does that set off my dog whistle alarms? I feel like most times i hear that, it turns out they're an outlet that allows for bigotted, elitist classist views. And then i went to look up this particular channel's Wikipedia. Yes, it was founded by a guy with tenture as a film critic. I started watching this particular vid of his because he had quotes from insider sources who work at Disney. But i also remember how he's been making several distasteful statements in recent years. Probably safer to add this channel to my list of YouTube channels to avoid.

I swear, it's always safer to stick to YouTubers who are queer or are a constantly vocal ally to non dominant social groups. Otherwise, I'll just be listening along and then hear something jarringly...distasteful...🤢 First time, it's "did i hear what i thought i just heard?" Second time, "isn't that a dog whistle used by bigots?" Third time, "omg I don't think they're using it ironically! I need to get out of here! Omg i just wanted to listen to a video essay about superheroes!"

The only healthy/productive "diverse opinions" are an INCLUSIVE diversity in perspectives of cultures that does NOT tolerate bigotry. Like that old saying: the irony of tolerance is to be intolerant of intolerance. Yeah, the world is shades of grey, not absolutes, and that's how to stamp out bigotry. So when i hear a channel imply that they might tolerate perspectives that actively disdain and try to take away people's human rights---just because they're different from the "norm" (white cishet Christian male)---for the sake of "a diversity of opinions"? Then it's time to run far away from that YouTube channel.

EDIT 8:52 AM 12/6/2023: After the whole James Somerton thing, it's become clear to me that simply being queer isn't a reliable signal for a safe YouTuber. My general rule has always been to evaluate YouTubers by how much empathy they have for all people. Do they catch themselves to ensure they always speak with inclusivity? Do they give their opposition the benefit of the doubt? Do they show a general concern for all groups, even the ones they aren't a part of? After the vlogbrothers showed how it's done, I usually watch for the same type of vibe. I didn't think Somerton passed; actually I thought he spoke with a lot of passive-aggressive hostility in his tone. But a lot of the information he gave was good, so I pushed through my discomfort with his tone. But I should have listened to my instincts. Now my only consolation is that it's ok for me to like most of what Somerton said in his vids, because most of those words WEREN'T HIS. They were stolen from much better authors, activists, documentarians, and video essayists. So I don't have to feel bad that I liked those ideas. I just have to watch them from their actual sources instead. I'm so glad hbomberguy made a playlist of recommended video essayists.