Not a fan of the ContraPoints addition but alas, it's her friend. This is a really good video and even include some stuff, like about Ed Gein, that I wasn't familiar with already from the Renegade Cut video and Disclosure.
Channel Awesome, AVGN, and other web review shows
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Just discovered "Hello Future me". He talks a lot about woldbuilding and magic systems and Avatar.
Here's a two and a half hour video on why the movie is bad.
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whelp Lindsay Ellis has deleted her Twitter
From what I've gathered, she caught a lot of flak for some bad takes about Raya and Soul, and then this resulted in people bringing out their dirty laundry about her (making insensitive tweets and/or dismissing PoC critics)
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She made a racist tweet about young adult fiction, so it makes sense that she'd get backlash. Turns out she was also biphobic to Mara Wilson so…oof. Well, looks like I'm done with her.
She/Her
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She made a racist tweet about young adult fiction, so it makes sense that she'd get backlash. Turns out she was also biphobic to Mara Wilson so…oof. Well, looks like I'm done with her.
Do you have screenshots?
Unfortunately there are a lot of JK Rowlings who built their brand on more generalized feminism but then remained closed-minded and angrily faked it when intersectional feminism took over in the mid-2010s.
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Do you have screenshots?
Unfortunately there are a lot of JK Rowlings who built their brand on more generalized feminism but then remained closed-minded and angrily faked it when intersectional feminism took over in the mid-2010s.
For the Mara Wilson point I got it from this
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I mean, dang girl. Yikes.
She/Her
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From all the discussion I've seen (Twitter and at least 3 other forums), , there are at least 4 discussions going on about this:
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Lindsay made some ill-worded at best tweets about Raya and Soul, doubled down and refused to apologise. This was the incident that kicked off the shitshow we now have.
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Lindsay has had a history of receiving abuse, possibly to the point of conflating all criticism as bad-faith. Lots of people like me are (or were) in this boat (a few tweets calling her out acknowledge this).
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Lindsay ALSO has had a history of dismissing PoC critics and/or making problematic tweets beyond the ones I listed in Point 1.
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Twitter is a shitty platform where it can be hard to filter out from outside your mutuals between legitimate criticism and bad-faith actors/pile-ons (given what I've learnt in Point 3 though, I'm not so big on this point as I was before)
Focusing in on just one issue (like those who are nitpicking how malicious she really was with the Raya/ATLA comparison) is missing the forest for the trees
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The twitter mob is relentless.
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I'm a little confused…what's so horrible about her comparing Raya to Avatar? I haven't the watched the film yet and can't speak to the criticisms accuracy, but Honest Trailers made the same comparison.
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Focusing in on just one issue (like those who are nitpicking how malicious she really was with the Raya/ATLA comparison) is missing the forest for the trees
The twitter mob is relentless.
I'm a little confused…what's so horrible about her comparing Raya to Avatar? I haven't the watched the film yet and can't speak to the criticisms accuracy, but Honest Trailers made the same comparison.
I swear to God .
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I don't know about the Soul and Mara Wilson stuff, but the whole Raya thing seems really stupid to me.
From what I understand, people are calling her racist because she compared Raya to Avatar the Last Airbender. Even though everyone who saw that movie compared it to Avatar the Last Airbender. Hell, Honest Trailers dropped a video comparing them just this week, but I don't see anyone getting angry about that.
I don't even get how its racist. Is it racist to say that Maze Runner is the same genre as The Hunger Games? Or that Chronicles of Narnia is the same genre as Lord of the Rings?
EDIT: Okay, so I guess there's a bit more going on with this than just that. Honestly, I don't really make a habit of following people on Twitter. Sucks in any case.
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Lindsay Ellis very publicly once had an abortion, so it seems reasonable that she'd react strongly to a movie that very clearly personalizes individuals pre- birth. Whatever other takeaways she had from the movie are unknown, also why do they matter in terms of judging her character?
Seems to me like this is mostly a reaction from people who had an axe to grind from the start. A lot of 'And now also lets get Jenny Nicholson, that monster' going around. I saw one tweet denouncing Lindsay as transphobic based on a single frame…from her video about transphobia
--- Update From New Post Merge ---
Still trying to parse how the soul take is "bad". Is it the old conundrum of People who liked soul also understanding that the pro-life stance is bad, and so a perspective that Soul is pro-life would mean they are bad for liking Soul, hence anger?
Like, as someone who has his own history with the pro-life/choice debate it was absolutely something that came to mind during Soul, even if it wasn't my main takeaway like Lindsay- I mean the entire premise involves Life Before Birth. Saying the movie has pro-life connotations is hardly some willfully malicious Bad Faith Take; Plus, literally the first hit of a Soul Pro Life google search is a glowing review from a protestant evangelical magazine which also features articles such as "Dad jailed for discussing sons gender dysphoria" and one calling Bidens executive order protecting LGBTQ+ gender identities "an executive order marginalizing women and girls".
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Lindsay ALSO has had a history of dismissing PoC critics and/or making problematic tweets beyond the ones I listed in Point 1.
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Twitter is a shitty platform where it can be hard to filter out from outside your mutuals between legitimate criticism and bad-faith actors/pile-ons (given what I've learnt in Point 3 though, I'm not so big on this point as I was before)
Focusing in on just one issue (like those who are nitpicking how malicious she really was with the Raya/ATLA comparison) is missing the forest for the trees
I. Swear . To. Fucking. God.
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Disgusting.
16 chars.
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26 february 2020
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She made a racist tweet about young adult fiction, so it makes sense that she'd get backlash. Turns out she was also biphobic to Mara Wilson so…oof. Well, looks like I'm done with her.
It's freaking Mara Wilson we're talking about here, petty social media addict extraordinaire. Best not to take anything she says at face value.
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@Daz:
Lindsay Ellis very publicly once had an abortion, so it seems reasonable that she'd react strongly to a movie that very clearly personalizes individuals pre- birth.
I've never actually had an abortion myself and I don't know every woman in America so it's very hard for me to say what is or isn't normal.
I can definitely say that it's not particularly healthy to just go around unfairly dismissing things as pro-life like that.@Daz:
Whatever other takeaways she had from the movie are unknown, also why do they matter in terms of judging her character?
She explicitly had no other takeaways though.
Nothing she'd feel comfortable sharing in public anyway.@Daz:
Seems to me like this is mostly a reaction from people who had an axe to grind from the start. A lot of 'And now also lets get Jenny Nicholson, that monster' going around. I saw one tweet denouncing Lindsay as transphobic based on a single frame…from her video about transphobia
I'd like to see more context on that.
@Daz:
Still trying to parse how the soul take is "bad". Is it the old conundrum of People who liked soul also understanding that the pro-life stance is bad, and so a perspective that Soul is pro-life would mean they are bad for liking Soul, hence anger?
It's that it comes across in a Fox Newsy "everything is communist" way.
It's not a remotely fair or level-headed take, and as a decently well-known white internet feminist I'd expect her to give Pixar's first big film about black culture much more of a chance.I don't think it was a perfect film either, but the fact that it has proto-souls floating out in space for a potentially infinite amount of time before arbitrarily deciding to slip into a human body at some point in early development isn't an acceptable reason to dismiss the whole movie.
It's not even really pro-life because IIRC they're never even stated to be tied to fetuses.
For all we know in the world of the movie a baby only gets a soul at three or four months.@Daz:
Like, as someone who has his own history with the pro-life/choice debate it was absolutely something that came to mind during Soul, even if it wasn't my main takeaway like Lindsay- I mean the entire premise involves Life Before Birth.
No, the premise involves a fantasy spiritual entity that may one day take possession of a body on Earth.
The main "soul kid" has been out in space for hundreds (if not thousands or millions) of years. It can't have been tied to a specific fetus from its "soul-birth", and there's no indication that the fully sentient proto-soul is forced to spend nine months trapped in a womb after descending to Earth.The movie does imply that animals have souls that don't come from the Great Before, so maybe in the world of the movie all fetuses have souls that die the instant they're replaced by a proto-soul?
@Daz:
Saying the movie has pro-life connotations is hardly some willfully malicious Bad Faith Take; Plus, literally the first hit of a Soul Pro Life google search is a glowing review from a protestant evangelical magazine which also features articles such as "Dad jailed for discussing sons gender dysphoria" and one calling Bidens executive order protecting LGBTQ+ gender identities "an executive order marginalizing women and girls".
There's Zootopia pro-life propaganda too.
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I'd say responding to the movie with "oh god it's pro-life, I hate it and I have nothing more to say" is definitely a bad take.
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Raya being Last Airbender is completely fair takes, as is all YA fiction being inspired by it recently. That's beyond the cultural trappings, that's people just taking story beats regardless of setting.
So that's completely fair.
The other stuff I have no real opinion on. Soul was whatever and did nothign for me. Had nothing to do with the black parts of the movie (those were the good parts!) and everything to do with the Soul parts.
Wondering "are people making horrible fanfics out of this subject matter that they should NOT be making fanfics of" is a legit question… that becomes cringe when applied to a movie about Harriet Tubman. If she asked that question about a bad relationship like say, Hermione and Draco, or Twilight, no one would bat an eye.
So there's levels there, and someone constantly in the public eye constantly being harassed and nitpicked having to make content while being sexualized and criticized constantly IS going to take its toll... while at the same time being such a low level celebrity that they're not even getting the money to put up with the nonsense.
I do know the people celebrating on Twitter are all coming across as asshole trolls, so that's its own issue.
Seems like many youtubers end up being terrible if they do it long enough and have enough raw takes put out into the wild without a filter. Being responsible for their very person being a brand means they have to constantly say everything that comes to mind and always be on with trying to say something to entertain the audience constantly, and that eventually they lose their filter for things they should maybe wait three seconds before saying in public. Its juuust enough fame to screw them up while making them approachable, but also better than their fans.
To say nothing of the ones that go kind of full out nuts like Spoony did, or those that turn out to be kind of... using their fans like groupies.
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@Lindsay Ellis:
I'm posting this here because I feel like if I owe anyone an explanation it's you guys, so with regard to the Twitter thing - needless to say there is a lot of projection and assumption of why I did decide to delete it, but at the end of the day I took this whole debacle as a sign that I really need to rethink my "career," such as it were, because clearly this is not working.
Twitter and social media in general have become such an incredible source of toxicity, for culture in general and for me in particular. It was making me so unhappy, which is part of why I had been getting increasingly snippy and defensive in ways that were unnecessary and unprofessional. The people who are saying that this is the result of carelessness are right–I was careless.
As for the question of "why now", it wasn't that this controversy was the worst ever, it honestly was just the last straw, and not just for Twitter. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, how I should engage with content or if I should continue making it at all. So I'm taking some time away from Internet, try to detox from it, and then we'll see what the state of things will be going forward.
As for an actual statement, I'm not making one now. I'm going to take some time to consider how to respond, because I think it will take some time to figure out what I want to say and how to say it.
For the people who've sent messages of support I appreciate it, and I do apologize for any hurt or stress this may have caused. I don't feel awesome about it.
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I must be getting old because i do not understand a single thing about this conversation.
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I must be getting old because i do not understand a single thing about this conversation.
I feel ya bro.
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It's not just the twitter mob, but twitter in general that causes stuff like this. The instinct and temptation to quickly respond to everything often produces bad takes and the instinct to quickly respond to people who critique bad (or misinterpreted) takes creates even worse ones. It's also created a culture of pitchforks and rewards for holding them, which isn't healthy. People should be called out for their shit, but I'm increasingly becoming convinced that social media does a horrible job at doing so. Too many voices, too many bad faith actors, and things move too fast.
Check out my podcast for conversations about Greatness in anime, sports, music, and whatever else we can think of.
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It's not just the twitter mob, but twitter in general that causes stuff like this. The instinct and temptation to quickly respond to everything often produces bad takes and the instinct to quickly respond to people who critique bad (or misinterpreted) takes creates even worse ones. It's also created a culture of pitchforks and rewards for holding them, which isn't healthy. People should be called out for their shit, but I'm increasingly becoming convinced that social media does a horrible job at doing so. Too many voices, too many bad faith actors, and things move too fast.
I don't think mass "calling people out for their shit" was ever helpful, honestly.
It was good for helping to identify a few wealthy and powerful bad actors, but most of those people landed on their feet and those that weren't caught quickly started turning callout culture into a weapon for political and financial advancement.
The regular people targeted by callouts either had their lives ruined and learned nothing, gave fake apologies and learned nothing, or apologized and learned to join/support the angry mob.
Everyone perceived as an innocent victim of one angry mob fed the anger of another nearly-identical mob and over time the whole platform descended into chaos and pain.
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I don't think mass "calling people out for their shit" was ever helpful, honestly.
It was good for helping to identify a few wealthy and powerful bad actors, but most of those people landed on their feet and those that weren't caught quickly started turning callout culture into a weapon for political and financial advancement.
The regular people targeted by callouts either had their lives ruined and learned nothing, gave fake apologies and learned nothing, or apologized and learned to join/support the angry mob.
Everyone perceived as an innocent victim of one angry mob fed the anger of another nearly-identical mob and over time the whole platform descended into chaos and pain.
I think there can be a balance between holding people accountable and fostering a world in which we can help each other become better at respecting one another and call out those who don't. Twitter will never be that place and never has been good at it, but the impetus for cancelling was initially somewhat solid. I don't really know what the right answer is, but I haven't tried to cancel anyone either. I do think patreon seems to be a better venue for engaging with people since everyone you're talking with presumably has an actual interest in your success and isn't just a bad faith actor.
Check out my podcast for conversations about Greatness in anime, sports, music, and whatever else we can think of.
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I think there can be a balance between holding people accountable and fostering a world in which we can help each other become better at respecting one another and call out those who don't. Twitter will never be that place and never has been good at it, but the impetus for cancelling was initially somewhat solid. I don't really know what the right answer is, but I haven't tried to cancel anyone either. I do think patreon seems to be a better venue for engaging with people since everyone you're talking with presumably has an actual interest in your success and isn't just a bad faith actor.
I agree, but I think the concept needs to be scaled way back to focus almost exclusively on rich people and authority figures like cops.
There's just way too much potential for abuse when the mob has no restraint and will stalk and doxx kids over petty things like ideological differences.
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I must be getting old because i do not understand a single thing about this conversation.
Lindsay expressed some opinions.
Because she's a youtuber with a large following, lots of people saw these opinions.
Some people took these opinions badly. Some are actually offended, some are in bad faith and just being offended because they don't like Lindsay.
These takes snowball and become super toxic.
What was a 3 second hot take she didn't think about at all turns into "she's obviously a homophobic racist monster and we need to cancel her." Even when that's probably not the case.
Many people saying this and harassing her gets overwhelming, so she gets off the platform to just get away from it.
This is different from the author of Harry Potter being anti-trans, or Orson Scott Card being anti-gay, because they repeated and doubled down on their stances many many times now and clarified that it IS their stance, not a misunderstanding or something taken out of context or a poorly thought out hot take..
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Recently discovered this channel. It's more of a react series, but it's a hell of a react series. This video made me appreciate Inside Out a lot more.
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Josh Strife Hayes plays bad MMOs for a few hours and talks about how they're bad.
But then he found one that was special. Buggy as hell, and literally 0 people playing it. But special.
He played it to the end.
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Linkara has release the schedule for upcoming episodes plus History Of Power Rangers of Power Rangers Beast Morphers coming July 29th
4/5 – Star Trek (Gold Key) #9
4/12 – PATREON: Star Trek/Legion of Superheroes
4/19 – Mystery Science Theater 3000 #1
4/26 – PATREON: MILLER TIME: The Dark Knight Returns
5/3 – Late Night Double Feature
5/10 – Ultimate Power #7
5/17 – PATREON: Batman: The Dark Knight #23.4(Joker's Daughter)
5/24 – Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating Aquaman
5/31 – PATREON: Sword Interval: Flashback Arc(Webcomic)
6/7 – PSA Hell: The Amazing Spider-Man: Riot at Robotworld
6/14 – PATREON: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Ultimate Cut)
6/21 – PATREON: Transformers/Ghostbusters: Ghosts of Cybertron
6/28 – New Guardians #4
7/5 – Codename: Ninja #1
7/12 – PATREON: Batman #608-619: Hush
7/19 – PATREON: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger Episodes 15-16
7/26 – Mr. T and the T-Force #6
http://atopthefourthwall.com/state-of-the-wall-4-7-21/ -
Dan Olson is Youtuber #49 to take on dissecting Doug Walker's infamous review of The Wall.
It's really insightful, giving us lines like "He wants to make art, but he can’t because he’s a fundamentally incurious person who isn’t much interested in what other people think or feel and all of his ideas boil down to 'What if Batman met Mario?' ", which is just brutal.
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Not having watched i can't say anything about it's quality, but i don't really get this subsection of youtube. Making youtube content analysing other youtubers analysing stuff feels a little too up its own ass
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Well, Doug Walker is one of the more iconic reviewer youtubers that inspired a huge number of other reviewers in terms of format and style, (or at least he used to be) and was the "boss" of dozens of others. And his overall story and out output, and everything that came out with the change thechannel drama… and that he's still doing stuff! is such a train wreck its kind of fascinating.
It'd be less so if someone was doing a video about say, Mars girl or Diamanda Haggan or The Completionist or Game Grumps or Team Four Star or something.
But covering Doug is a subject for analysis. It'd be kind of gross to do it on say, Spoony given his actual mental breakdown and slow decline.
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I don't know if it's just me (I suspect it isn't), but Doug's content has just not been that good for a very, very long time.
He peaked during the angry nerd phase and never recovered from… what was that terrible spinoff series called?
Oh well, now that I've posted this I may as well watch the video.
Edit: wow I really underestimated just how much of a trainwreck Doug turned into.
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Don't know if anyone here watches Weird History. I know it sounds like the millionth and first 'didya know Andrew Jackson was crazy?' youtube channel out there, and it was early on, but now it's about cultural norms, survival tips, and etiquette of the past considered unusual today.
They also run a timeline series of video detailing every major event in a year, started at 1980, currently at 1992. -
Demo Reel was the replacement he was hoping would be huge.
Pop Quiz was a money laundering scheme.
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Well, Doug Walker is one of the more iconic reviewer youtubers that inspired a huge number of other reviewers in terms of format and style, (or at least he used to be) and was the "boss" of dozens of others. And his overall story and out output, and everything that came out with the change thechannel drama… and that he's still doing stuff! is such a train wreck its kind of fascinating.
It'd be less so if someone was doing a video about say, Mars girl or Diamanda Haggan or The Completionist or Game Grumps or Team Four Star or something.
But covering Doug is a subject for analysis. It'd be kind of gross to do it on say, Spoony given his actual mental breakdown and slow decline.
After watching a bit i don't really get it tbh. At heart a riff track on a person feels weird. I got like 25 minutes in and i was lost on why this was such a popular thing. In the comments people seemed to be pissing themselves with enjoyment, competing who could deliver the cruelest put me down in the most verbose way. Like i sort of get those videos detailing the fall of channel awesome, they atleast cover a topic worth covering, but Doug Walker is too dumb for art feels both pretentious and wholey meanspirited. Not to mention meta beyond what i'd consider meaningful. I'd like to say that i'm too old to appreciate the current state of entertainment, but these people are all about my age so i dunno, maybe i'm just the odd one out
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After watching a bit i don't really get it tbh. At heart a riff track on a person feels weird. I got like 25 minutes in and i was lost on why this was such a popular thing. In the comments people seemed to be pissing themselves with enjoyment, competing who could deliver the cruelest put me down in the most verbose way. Like i sort of get those videos detailing the fall of channel awesome, they atleast cover a topic worth covering, but Doug Walker is too dumb for art feels both pretentious and wholey meanspirited. Not to mention meta beyond what i'd consider meaningful. I'd like to say that i'm too old to appreciate the current state of entertainment, but these people are all about my age so i dunno, maybe i'm just the odd one out
Nah. I'm with you on this one Wolfwood. Unless the creator is actively using their money/platform for harassment/hate/something in that general area, it seems weird to me when people just seem to be focused on this kind of stuff.
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Doug Walker is too dumb for art feels both pretentious and wholey meanspirited.
As Dan said towards the end of the video, the main problems with Doug's The Wall video are:
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He spent a lot of money and effort on the animation and filming yet none on the actual criticism of the movie that it makes you wonder what the point of this whole video was (basically calling him Youtube's equivalent of Tommy Wiseau/Neil Breen) - "Certain things are going to take all week, no matter how half you ass them."
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“It’s trying to be impressive without being vulnerable. And simultaneous to that it’s pissing on a really earnest piece of art specifically for being vulnerable”.
Also lol at being 'wholly meanspirited' towards a man who built up a persona around nitpicking/overreacting at mainstream movies aimed towards kids.
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Pachylad, I kinda agree with wolfwood here. I would be more on your side if you instead pointed out how many people Doug made suffer instead. Mocking a guy who mocks kids movies is kinda like being a bully.
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Yeah, "this guy makes of fun movies and stuff so it's ok to mock and ridicule him as a person" is kind of crappy reasoning. It's much more personal and definitely mean-spirited. Even if Doug seems to be kind of an ass in RL, still no reason to basically bully him for his content.
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After watching a bit i don't really get it tbh. At heart a riff track on a person feels weird. I got like 25 minutes in and i was lost on why this was such a popular thing. In the comments people seemed to be pissing themselves with enjoyment, competing who could deliver the cruelest put me down in the most verbose way. Like i sort of get those videos detailing the fall of channel awesome, they atleast cover a topic worth covering, but Doug Walker is too dumb for art feels both pretentious and wholey meanspirited. Not to mention meta beyond what i'd consider meaningful. I'd like to say that i'm too old to appreciate the current state of entertainment, but these people are all about my age so i dunno, maybe i'm just the odd one out
It's because judging someone and being part of a hate mob is fun, and gossiping over someone you think has massively screwed up or has huge problems is similarly fun.
It's not really a good aspect of the human condition but Doug really invited this by trying to spark his own hate mob against a well-loved band and an iconic film.
If you find yourself loudly, proudly and smugly shouting at the entire internet that something a ton of people like actually sucks, you kind of forfeit the right to be upset when people rake you over the coals for it.
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Theres definetely more of a personal angle to a video like this, and I get it feeling mean-spirited even if I myself have little sympathy to spare for Doug Walker. But even if this whole thing originated as a one-off patreon stretch goal lark, in the video Dan points out that the straw that broke the camels back for many in this case is the fact that Doug Walker was selling an accompanying Album to go with his spoof recreation, an album he specifically promotes in the video as a "such a love letter to Pink Floyd, whom we really love", which just rings so, so hollow and flies in the face of all the half-assed surface level digs made at The Wall in the video. When you do somethiing like that you move beyond simply making a negative if shallow and misinformed take on sometihng, you're setting yourself up for ridicule and call-outs.
Apart from everything else, the video is not purely a roast of Doug Walker as a person, but uses him as a springboard for analysis of The Wall, and how it can be interpreted /misinterpreted. I felt like I learnt a lot about Roger Waters listening to the video, at the very least.
(also, Dan used to work for Doug, which instantly makes me more forgiving of digs made at Doug)
Also also Dan ends the video saying actually he really thought Dougs the Wall review was fine if a little pretentious, so theres no issue.
(this last bit is an in-joke) -
that dan olson guy is one of the dumbest people to ever post on youtube which is really impressive
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that dan olson guy is one of the dumbest people to ever post on youtube which is really impressive
I did some googling to see what he did wrong and found some claims that he was one of the people who knew about the accusations against Jew Wario well before it blew up.
Is that what you were referencing?
Does anyone know if there's any actual evidence for that?I knew Marzgurl did because I saw her defending him shortly after his death (in an extremely unsympathetic tone).
