The title of this one reads like the kind of word salad you'd get if you gave ChatGPT a prompt for "the most click-bait-y title for a YouTube video possible," but it actually manages to deliver on...
The title of this one reads like the kind of word salad you'd get if you gave ChatGPT a prompt for "the most click-bait-y title for a YouTube video possible," but it actually manages to deliver on its premise.
I've been bingeing this guy's videos after a godly algorithm pull, and have been loving the OldTube vibe of them. I was actually surprised to see the channel is pretty new, and thought that his sub count seemed low for the kind of videos he makes. His writing is on-point, and he has a kind of goofy, autistic charm that might not be everyone's cup of tea, but that I enjoy immensely. I'll be mildly surprised if he doesn't hit a million subs within a year.
In other videos he mentions that he started the show on his college's radio station (Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR), before making it a podcast, and then finally into a YouTube channel. A lot of his videos were scripted for those earlier incarnations and re-recorded for upload to YouTube, which explains how he's managed to be so prolific in such a short time.
This is a total side tangent but I'm really getting tired of YouTube-style censorship like "N*zi." You can say Nazi. It's not a swear. I understand why they do it, but that's a YouTube problem...
This is a total side tangent but I'm really getting tired of YouTube-style censorship like "N*zi." You can say Nazi. It's not a swear. I understand why they do it, but that's a YouTube problem that countless creators are forced to capitulate to. It makes them look puerile and tittering, even when they're having an adult discussion about serious matters. Same goes for audio dropouts when certain (again, non-swear) words are spoken, or when people resort to idiotic euphemisms like "unalive-ing" because they'll get demonetized if they say "killing." I saw a lot of this ridiculousness when creators started speaking out about Ukraine and Gaza. It drives me crazy that the platform is making people self-censor in this way. It's dystopian.
Have you ever used the phrase "passed away" to say someone died? If so, you're essentially doing the same thing that folks who say "unalive" or censor words like nazi are doing. Phrases like this...
Have you ever used the phrase "passed away" to say someone died? If so, you're essentially doing the same thing that folks who say "unalive" or censor words like nazi are doing. Phrases like this come about because there's some taboo on discussing a topic directly - in the case of "passed away" it's because saying "died" was considered rude or uncouth, so the euphemistic "passed away" or other similar phrases were used in "polite" society. "Unalive" or "N*zi" are just linguistic evolution in response to taboos (in this case, algorithmic censorship). Hell, even the word "bear" is a euphemism (probably comes from a word meaning "brown one") because people were worried saying the actual word for bear would attract the attention of one.
But one is used as a way of not coming across as uncouth or curt when discussing someone who has died in front of their loved ones or friends, a simple social pleasantry and the others are foisted...
But one is used as a way of not coming across as uncouth or curt when discussing someone who has died in front of their loved ones or friends, a simple social pleasantry and the others are foisted upon social media and internet users by advertisers and platforms lest their brands become tainted by words like "suicide", "Nazi", "gun", or "paedophile". The second is horrendously dystopian, self-censoring completely natural language for the sake of shareholders and advertiser sensitivities.
I get what you and balooga are saying - and I do find the censoring of those words for purely corporate reasons a little bit cringe myself - but in the end, language evolves continuously, and...
I get what you and balooga are saying - and I do find the censoring of those words for purely corporate reasons a little bit cringe myself - but in the end, language evolves continuously, and nowadays rapidly so. Many (if not all) of us have prescriptivist opinions about language every now and then, don't get me wrong, but in the end it's kind of futile to "protest" changes in mainstream language regardless of whether the source of those changes is a government, a mega-corporation, social dynamics, efficiency, foreign influence, and so on.
I'm fully behind you on this. I can't even say "n-word" without cringing. Every language is rich enough to navigate around words and everyone does it all the time for all kinds of reasons. But I...
I'm fully behind you on this. I can't even say "n-word" without cringing. Every language is rich enough to navigate around words and everyone does it all the time for all kinds of reasons.
But I have to accept that English is probably one of the most democratically evolved languages humanity ever had, and no other human language ever had more speakers. If its users shape it in favor of the advertising industry, it's sad and infuriating, but it's also what has been decided in the only way that matters.
And it's important to keep in mind that it doesn't really matter. Language lovers of the past would probably explode from embarrassment if they could read this comment, and I have no idea what their deal is. This is one of the least important issues we are facing.
Huh. As a counterpoint, it just reads as slang to me; something the youth do to differentiate their language from the olds. Doesn’t really matter whether they’re using different words because...
Huh. As a counterpoint, it just reads as slang to me; something the youth do to differentiate their language from the olds. Doesn’t really matter whether they’re using different words because YouTube told them to, or their parents.
But it arguably does matter that YouTube told them not to use words that nobody else has a problem with. Parents generally aren't banning words like Nazi and suicide from being discussed. This is...
But it arguably does matter that YouTube told them not to use words that nobody else has a problem with. Parents generally aren't banning words like Nazi and suicide from being discussed. This is a problem very specific to advertisers and their crooked values.
I guess maybe it's the same thing, but I am a lot more bothered by a corporate entity training kids that important topics to discuss are not to be discussed.
Not to mention, actual nazis and fascists are still here and have taken political power, and are implementing their actual agendas over us today as fast as they can. It does no one any good to...
Not to mention, actual nazis and fascists are still here and have taken political power, and are implementing their actual agendas over us today as fast as they can. It does no one any good to speak about that in nervous hushed whispers like we’re afraid we might offend somebody. Fuck ‘em, this is not the moment for pussyfooting around when people’s actual lives and livelihoods are being threatened.
I can definitely understand the corporate hate, as I too share it, but they’ve kinda failed to prevent those topics from being discussed definitionally if that’s your concern ? That’s why the...
I can definitely understand the corporate hate, as I too share it, but they’ve kinda failed to prevent those topics from being discussed definitionally if that’s your concern ? That’s why the slang exists — to get around the filter, and to continue discussing said content regardless.
It feels more like saying “lol” (because people sucked at typing), “hello” (popularized by the invention of the telephone), “ (๑ > ᴗ < ๑)” (kaomoji were made possible due to the extended character sets afforded by non-ASCII character encodings), etc. A lot of language changes are prompted by corporate actions via technology; I dunno, it still gives me the ick when people get up in arms about how kids talk to each other.
When I found the channel, I was sure he was from Eugene...lo and behold, according to the credits, that's where the videos are from, at least. That town does things to people, clearly.
When I found the channel, I was sure he was from Eugene...lo and behold, according to the credits, that's where the videos are from, at least. That town does things to people, clearly.
He's a Eugene townie, which is its own unique species of weirdo–or several species, really. They have all the resentment and underachiever's pride of your stereotypical college town townie, but...
He's a Eugene townie, which is its own unique species of weirdo–or several species, really. They have all the resentment and underachiever's pride of your stereotypical college town townie, but the people they're resentful and prideful about are UO students. I expect it's a similar dynamic as must exist in that Florida town with the clown college, though I can't be certain as I've never been to Florida.
Hey, Corvallis has its own local charm too, I imagine. There's probably an interesting pattern in a wheat field or something there. (Just in case you needed any more proof that yes, I attended UO.)
Hey, Corvallis has its own local charm too, I imagine. There's probably an interesting pattern in a wheat field or something there. (Just in case you needed any more proof that yes, I attended UO.)
I was less specific, I was just "Willamette Valley other than Salem/Keizer," everything from Eugene up to PDX/Vancouver. Dude fits his upbringing well!
I was less specific, I was just "Willamette Valley other than Salem/Keizer," everything from Eugene up to PDX/Vancouver. Dude fits his upbringing well!
I've been meaning to share one of Tor's videos here, as his work has been a bright spot on my YouTube viewing for the last few months. As OP mentioned, he's got an Old YouTube feel, which hits...
I've been meaning to share one of Tor's videos here, as his work has been a bright spot on my YouTube viewing for the last few months. As OP mentioned, he's got an Old YouTube feel, which hits just right for me.
That was quite a topic. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I agree with the other comment that it feels older than it is - the production hearkens back to late 2000s YouTube, which is a bit...
That was quite a topic. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
I agree with the other comment that it feels older than it is - the production hearkens back to late 2000s YouTube, which is a bit of a vibe. It feels very analog, appropriate for the subject covered. I wish the audio was better, both technically and the host's performance, but I still watched the whole thing.
He very passive-aggressively pulls the mic closer to him while staring dead-eyed at the camera in the beginning of another video, so I suspect plenty of people have given him well-intentioned...
He very passive-aggressively pulls the mic closer to him while staring dead-eyed at the camera in the beginning of another video, so I suspect plenty of people have given him well-intentioned technical advice on that point.
As for his performance, I rather like the roughness of it. He's not putting on airs and tightly editing his stuff, he's just being his own spectrum-y self, sharing weird shit he's geeked out about. There's a sort of dignity in it, I think.
I don't disagree, I just think it's a scoche harder to watch because of the comments I made. Which is okay, I am not the arbiter of good taste or good art, they were just observations I made. I...
I don't disagree, I just think it's a scoche harder to watch because of the comments I made. Which is okay, I am not the arbiter of good taste or good art, they were just observations I made.
I haven't seen the other video you refer to, but your comment makes it sound like it's not a stylistic choice by him to have the technical audio like that.
The audio performance in the other hand - I dunno, maybe it's because I grew up in community theater and performing, but I read the telephone book with a lot more emotion than some folks read novels. Now, if that flat delivery was deliberate, I can recognize that as an artistic choice that I just wouldn't have made. If it wasn't deliberate, though, my grumbles above persist.
It's probably a little of both. He talks at some length in other videos about being on the spectrum, and I have noticed some linguistic stumbles of the sort I associate with some folks with...
It's probably a little of both. He talks at some length in other videos about being on the spectrum, and I have noticed some linguistic stumbles of the sort I associate with some folks with autism. I don't reckon he'll ever speak like a classically trained voice performer, even if he tried.
Thing is, I don't think he needs to. I get the impression that to some extent the rough and amateurish style is intentional. As I and others have noted, his channel is reminiscent of an earlier time in YouTube's history, which is part of the appeal for me. There are a lot of more recent YouTube tropes that get under my skin, but they're largely absent in his videos (for example, many creators try to add variety to shot composition by throwing in unnecessary and jarring zoom cuts with little relevance to what's actually being said). He has a kind of outsider style that reminds me of old public access shows, which makes sense considering where he developed the format.
It also reminds me somewhat of the mid-aughts Portland vibe, though I can't articulate exactly why. He wouldn't have seemed out of place in some dive bar on Hawthorne circa 2006, sucking down an ironic cosmopolitan. The sort of place decorated with a holographic Last Supper and a windsurfing board with porn macrame'd onto it. (If that seems oddly specific and weird, you might've had to have been there.)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I totally agree, the amateurish production is deliberate, though to what extent I think we can only speculate. What I learned through this video is that I have...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I totally agree, the amateurish production is deliberate, though to what extent I think we can only speculate. What I learned through this video is that I have far greater tolerance/welcome/enjoyment with amateurish video than with amateurish audio, which is a bit of a surprise for me.
I will also note that I'm far from classically trained, I just grew up with one of my fixations being theater. (I did get moderately panned for "braces-flavored singing" in a show I was the youth lead for once lol)
He definitely fits in Oregon, your description is right on, though I think he'd also go for a NA cider this time of year.
It's a dilemma for your garden-variety Portland weirdo hipster: sure, cider is great and tasty, but it's difficult to drink a hard cider ironically. A Cosmo is tasty in its way as well, but it's...
It's a dilemma for your garden-variety Portland weirdo hipster: sure, cider is great and tasty, but it's difficult to drink a hard cider ironically. A Cosmo is tasty in its way as well, but it's also more than a little ridiculous in its bargain bin ostentatiousness. That's a perfect formula for being unironically enthusiastic about something that deserves scornful irony.
"Unironically enthusiastic about something you should by rights be scornful of" is my mental longhand for "mid-aughts Portland." I think it's a kind of reaction to grunge-era nihilism.
The title of this one reads like the kind of word salad you'd get if you gave ChatGPT a prompt for "the most click-bait-y title for a YouTube video possible," but it actually manages to deliver on its premise.
I've been bingeing this guy's videos after a godly algorithm pull, and have been loving the OldTube vibe of them. I was actually surprised to see the channel is pretty new, and thought that his sub count seemed low for the kind of videos he makes. His writing is on-point, and he has a kind of goofy, autistic charm that might not be everyone's cup of tea, but that I enjoy immensely. I'll be mildly surprised if he doesn't hit a million subs within a year.
In other videos he mentions that he started the show on his college's radio station (Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR), before making it a podcast, and then finally into a YouTube channel. A lot of his videos were scripted for those earlier incarnations and re-recorded for upload to YouTube, which explains how he's managed to be so prolific in such a short time.
This is a total side tangent but I'm really getting tired of YouTube-style censorship like "N*zi." You can say Nazi. It's not a swear. I understand why they do it, but that's a YouTube problem that countless creators are forced to capitulate to. It makes them look puerile and tittering, even when they're having an adult discussion about serious matters. Same goes for audio dropouts when certain (again, non-swear) words are spoken, or when people resort to idiotic euphemisms like "unalive-ing" because they'll get demonetized if they say "killing." I saw a lot of this ridiculousness when creators started speaking out about Ukraine and Gaza. It drives me crazy that the platform is making people self-censor in this way. It's dystopian.
Have you ever used the phrase "passed away" to say someone died? If so, you're essentially doing the same thing that folks who say "unalive" or censor words like nazi are doing. Phrases like this come about because there's some taboo on discussing a topic directly - in the case of "passed away" it's because saying "died" was considered rude or uncouth, so the euphemistic "passed away" or other similar phrases were used in "polite" society. "Unalive" or "N*zi" are just linguistic evolution in response to taboos (in this case, algorithmic censorship). Hell, even the word "bear" is a euphemism (probably comes from a word meaning "brown one") because people were worried saying the actual word for bear would attract the attention of one.
But one is used as a way of not coming across as uncouth or curt when discussing someone who has died in front of their loved ones or friends, a simple social pleasantry and the others are foisted upon social media and internet users by advertisers and platforms lest their brands become tainted by words like "suicide", "Nazi", "gun", or "paedophile". The second is horrendously dystopian, self-censoring completely natural language for the sake of shareholders and advertiser sensitivities.
I get what you and balooga are saying - and I do find the censoring of those words for purely corporate reasons a little bit cringe myself - but in the end, language evolves continuously, and nowadays rapidly so. Many (if not all) of us have prescriptivist opinions about language every now and then, don't get me wrong, but in the end it's kind of futile to "protest" changes in mainstream language regardless of whether the source of those changes is a government, a mega-corporation, social dynamics, efficiency, foreign influence, and so on.
I'm fully behind you on this. I can't even say "n-word" without cringing. Every language is rich enough to navigate around words and everyone does it all the time for all kinds of reasons.
But I have to accept that English is probably one of the most democratically evolved languages humanity ever had, and no other human language ever had more speakers. If its users shape it in favor of the advertising industry, it's sad and infuriating, but it's also what has been decided in the only way that matters.
And it's important to keep in mind that it doesn't really matter. Language lovers of the past would probably explode from embarrassment if they could read this comment, and I have no idea what their deal is. This is one of the least important issues we are facing.
Huh. As a counterpoint, it just reads as slang to me; something the youth do to differentiate their language from the olds. Doesn’t really matter whether they’re using different words because YouTube told them to, or their parents.
But it arguably does matter that YouTube told them not to use words that nobody else has a problem with. Parents generally aren't banning words like Nazi and suicide from being discussed. This is a problem very specific to advertisers and their crooked values.
I guess maybe it's the same thing, but I am a lot more bothered by a corporate entity training kids that important topics to discuss are not to be discussed.
Not to mention, actual nazis and fascists are still here and have taken political power, and are implementing their actual agendas over us today as fast as they can. It does no one any good to speak about that in nervous hushed whispers like we’re afraid we might offend somebody. Fuck ‘em, this is not the moment for pussyfooting around when people’s actual lives and livelihoods are being threatened.
I can definitely understand the corporate hate, as I too share it, but they’ve kinda failed to prevent those topics from being discussed definitionally if that’s your concern ? That’s why the slang exists — to get around the filter, and to continue discussing said content regardless.
It feels more like saying “lol” (because people sucked at typing), “hello” (popularized by the invention of the telephone), “ (๑ > ᴗ < ๑)” (kaomoji were made possible due to the extended character sets afforded by non-ASCII character encodings), etc. A lot of language changes are prompted by corporate actions via technology; I dunno, it still gives me the ick when people get up in arms about how kids talk to each other.
Would you be willing to share some keywords about the cult in the title? I'm not much of video watcher but would be interested in reading about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Sisterhood
Thank you!
I could have guessed he was from Oregon. The hair, the aesthetic, the topic, the mascot...just screams Oregonian. Source: Oregon.
When I found the channel, I was sure he was from Eugene...lo and behold, according to the credits, that's where the videos are from, at least. That town does things to people, clearly.
He's a Eugene townie, which is its own unique species of weirdo–or several species, really. They have all the resentment and underachiever's pride of your stereotypical college town townie, but the people they're resentful and prideful about are UO students. I expect it's a similar dynamic as must exist in that Florida town with the clown college, though I can't be certain as I've never been to Florida.
I've got a soft spot for that little pocket of the 60s. But damn if you didn't nail them with
I should know. I was one of those clowns who blew into town to give the townies conniptions.
As one who blew through a town with far less local culture to warrant the resentment, I salute your service.
Hey, Corvallis has its own local charm too, I imagine. There's probably an interesting pattern in a wheat field or something there. (Just in case you needed any more proof that yes, I attended UO.)
I was less specific, I was just "Willamette Valley other than Salem/Keizer," everything from Eugene up to PDX/Vancouver. Dude fits his upbringing well!
Thank you so much for sharing, I'm obsessed. I love everything about this video. I'm going to look for more :)
I've been meaning to share one of Tor's videos here, as his work has been a bright spot on my YouTube viewing for the last few months. As OP mentioned, he's got an Old YouTube feel, which hits just right for me.
I considered making a topic for his recent video giving an overview of the rationalist community, but I was afraid the discussion would get too spicy.
FWIW we did have a thread on rationalist cults last month: https://tildes.net/~life/1pm6/why_are_there_so_many_rationalist_cults
That was quite a topic. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
I agree with the other comment that it feels older than it is - the production hearkens back to late 2000s YouTube, which is a bit of a vibe. It feels very analog, appropriate for the subject covered. I wish the audio was better, both technically and the host's performance, but I still watched the whole thing.
He very passive-aggressively pulls the mic closer to him while staring dead-eyed at the camera in the beginning of another video, so I suspect plenty of people have given him well-intentioned technical advice on that point.
As for his performance, I rather like the roughness of it. He's not putting on airs and tightly editing his stuff, he's just being his own spectrum-y self, sharing weird shit he's geeked out about. There's a sort of dignity in it, I think.
I don't disagree, I just think it's a scoche harder to watch because of the comments I made. Which is okay, I am not the arbiter of good taste or good art, they were just observations I made.
I haven't seen the other video you refer to, but your comment makes it sound like it's not a stylistic choice by him to have the technical audio like that.
The audio performance in the other hand - I dunno, maybe it's because I grew up in community theater and performing, but I read the telephone book with a lot more emotion than some folks read novels. Now, if that flat delivery was deliberate, I can recognize that as an artistic choice that I just wouldn't have made. If it wasn't deliberate, though, my grumbles above persist.
It's probably a little of both. He talks at some length in other videos about being on the spectrum, and I have noticed some linguistic stumbles of the sort I associate with some folks with autism. I don't reckon he'll ever speak like a classically trained voice performer, even if he tried.
Thing is, I don't think he needs to. I get the impression that to some extent the rough and amateurish style is intentional. As I and others have noted, his channel is reminiscent of an earlier time in YouTube's history, which is part of the appeal for me. There are a lot of more recent YouTube tropes that get under my skin, but they're largely absent in his videos (for example, many creators try to add variety to shot composition by throwing in unnecessary and jarring zoom cuts with little relevance to what's actually being said). He has a kind of outsider style that reminds me of old public access shows, which makes sense considering where he developed the format.
It also reminds me somewhat of the mid-aughts Portland vibe, though I can't articulate exactly why. He wouldn't have seemed out of place in some dive bar on Hawthorne circa 2006, sucking down an ironic cosmopolitan. The sort of place decorated with a holographic Last Supper and a windsurfing board with porn macrame'd onto it. (If that seems oddly specific and weird, you might've had to have been there.)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I totally agree, the amateurish production is deliberate, though to what extent I think we can only speculate. What I learned through this video is that I have far greater tolerance/welcome/enjoyment with amateurish video than with amateurish audio, which is a bit of a surprise for me.
I will also note that I'm far from classically trained, I just grew up with one of my fixations being theater. (I did get moderately panned for "braces-flavored singing" in a show I was the youth lead for once lol)
He definitely fits in Oregon, your description is right on, though I think he'd also go for a NA cider this time of year.
It's a dilemma for your garden-variety Portland weirdo hipster: sure, cider is great and tasty, but it's difficult to drink a hard cider ironically. A Cosmo is tasty in its way as well, but it's also more than a little ridiculous in its bargain bin ostentatiousness. That's a perfect formula for being unironically enthusiastic about something that deserves scornful irony.
"Unironically enthusiastic about something you should by rights be scornful of" is my mental longhand for "mid-aughts Portland." I think it's a kind of reaction to grunge-era nihilism.
Fred Armisen embodied it so well.