An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell @FoldingIdeas

Folding Ideas Clickbait title: THE WORST VIDEO GAME EVER!? [gone wild] [prank][TWIST ENDING] Frozen Elsa Spider-Man

This video would not have been possible without the generosity and help of Nathan, who was able to send me both a PAL PlayStation 2 and not one but two copies of An American Tail, and then didn't freak out when I decided to open the PS2 and swap the power supply with a North American PS2 so I wouldn't need to use a voltage converter. It worked just fine because all PS2 motherboards use +12 v DC power to minimize the cost difference between regions.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

updated 7 years ago

An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell

Folding Ideas 2018-10-04 | Clickbait title: THE WORST VIDEO GAME EVER!? [gone wild] [prank][TWIST ENDING] Frozen Elsa Spider-Man

This video would not have been possible without the generosity and help of Nathan, who was able to send me both a PAL PlayStation 2 and not one but two copies of An American Tail, and then didn't freak out when I decided to open the PS2 and swap the power supply with a North American PS2 so I wouldn't need to use a voltage converter. It worked just fine because all PS2 motherboards use +12 v DC power to minimize the cost difference between regions.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

I Dont Know James Rolfe

Folding Ideas 2024-06-19 | PHOTO-SENSITIVITY WARNING: occasional subtle flickering between 19:00 and 24:36

If ever there were a video I've made that required a companion essay or some kind of artist statement to go along with it I suppose it would be this one. It's a strange project that I've been working on for the better part of six months now, a process of trying to disentangle myself from myself. It's about a lot of different things, it's about James Rolfe but also not about him because we have so many versions of him and we can only react to those imperfect projections. He's been doing this for basically 20 years at this point, and out of that arise a million different ways to tell the story: AVGN is deeply influential, but what does that influence mean? I found myself fascinated with his creative fixations, the motifs and stories that he keeps coming back to, and felt like the only way to engage with that honestly was to expose all my own fixations, insecurities, and fears.

Written by Dan Olson and Nathan Landel
Music by Mike Rugnetta
Performed by Dan Olson
Camera by Dan Olson, Kara Artym, and Alex Mitchell
Crafts by Dan Olson, Kristi O. (@komakesthings), Tim Uruski, and Steve Olson
Executive Assistant Crystal Donovan

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

00:00:00 - I Feel A Certain Kinship With James Rolfe Part 1
00:06:21 - Title Drop (He Said The Thing!)
00:07:19 - A Reintroduction is Necessary
00:16:27 - Even In Rejecting It They Learn Something About Themselves
00:19:00 - Don't Get Your Panties in a Wad
00:23:08 - A Crass Homunculus of Photons
00:28:53 - Book Bad
00:41:20 - I Keep Coming Back
00:44:53 - The Length of Time It Takes To Get To Some Waves
00:48:17 - I Feel A Certain Kinship With James Rolfe Part 0
00:52:58 - The Narrative of AVGN's Decline
00:54:55 - They Are In Fact Just Haters
01:04:08 - I Did The Thing Any Normal Person Would Do
01:10:25 - The Nerd In My Dreams
01:15:39 - Credits

About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary

Folding Ideas 2024-01-11 | Clickbait Title: Can this magical metal make you immortal? Godkings hate this one weird trick!

This was a lot of fun to work on because I got to spend a lot of time learning THE TRUTH ABOUT GOLD and by that I mean actually interesting facts about how humans use gold. The mythology of gold actually makes a lot of sense through the lens of its physical properties, the fact that ancient humans could make things out of it and those things would outlive generations. It's just rare enough that societal elites can monopolize it, but common enough you can gather enough to actually make stuff with it. So these things, namely jewellery for the leaders, are so resistant to the elements that you can see how the gold itself became representative of the power of the kings, of their claimed immortality.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

00:00:00 - Gold Open
00:00:53 - Ads for gold
00:03:05 - Gold is interesting
00:07:17 - Not everything is rosy for gold
00:11:45 - Enter the World Gold Council
00:14:56 - A journey with Idris Elba
00:20:02 - It's boring
00:22:22 - Colonialism
00:24:50 - The environment
00:33:52 - The rest of the doc
00:36:03 - Reception
00:37:47 - The Golden Thread
00:39:53 - Selling shovels in a gold rush

The Darkmoon Fiasco

Folding Ideas 2023-11-12 | Clickbait Title: grown man gets owned by a line of people

Taliesin & Evitel invited me to be on a panel and talk about video games while I was in Anaheim, and you can watch that here: youtube.com/watch?v=Ng71xI3BGjg

Blizzcon 2023 was an interesting experience. I personally had a lot of fun, but maybe not for the reasons or in the ways that the organizers intended.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

This is Financial Advice

Folding Ideas 2023-10-01 | Clickbait Title: if the price is zero then you can buy all the shares

I tell you what, when you try and tell this story you either sum it up in ten minutes with the broadest strokes or you settle in for a rabbit hole made entirely out of onions and ogres. Conspiracy theorists flock together and constantly try and rope each other into the orbit of their personal hobby horse conspiracy, so once you break the surface suddenly you're digging through endless side stories, each with their own cast of characters, trying to figure out if some tertiary claim is true, was maybe true in the past but is no longer true, or was never true, and discover that the only sources on the matter are the same three people quoting each other in an endless circle of false legitimacy.

Written by Dan Olson and Nathan Landel
Performed by Dan Olson
Camera by Dan Olson and Kara Artym
Edited by Dan Olson
Production Assistant Laura Schultz
Featuring music by Young Neighbours - https://linktr.ee/youngneighbours

Special thanks to Eric Pauls, a friend of mine from film school, for digging up 15 year old hard drives just to re-master some songs he wrote back in college when I was like "those old tracks you and Cam did, they've got the perfect vibe I'm looking for!"

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/foldablehuman.bsky.social

00:00:00 - Diamond Hands
00:02:14 - Heat Lamp
00:13:26 - GME Fallout
00:23:31 - MOASS
00:58:10 - The Vote
01:04:36 - Deep F*ing Value
01:12:39 - Measure of a Meme Stock
01:16:38 - Due Diligence
01:50:27 - The Book King
01:55:38 - Teddy Day
02:07:32 - BBBY Endgame
02:18:03 - BBBankruptcy

The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

Folding Ideas 2023-03-26 | Clickbait Title: I spent three months living in the metaverse and now I'm starving

The metaverse salespeople have a weird fixation with Animal Crossing, in specific. The number of times we saw New Horizons specifically cited as an example of the metaverse was bizarre, like it was their first time experiencing a multiplayer game that wasn't CoD and it melted their brains.

Written by Dan Olson and Nathan Landel

Produced and performed by Dan Olson

Nathan Twitter: twitter.com/choice_au
Dan Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman

00:00:00 Chapter 1 - Welcome to Decentraland
00:05:31 Chapter 2 - The Metaverse
00:21:35 Chapter 3 - The Dead Mall of the Future
01:06:27 Chapter 4 - Clap your Hands or Tinkerbell Dies
01:22:02 Chapter 5 - A Child’s Vision of Governance
01:38:05 Chapter 6 - A Magic Circle

Why Its Rude to Suck at Warcraft

Folding Ideas 2022-11-25 | You enter a bright new digital world, exited to explore and hyped just to enjoy the vibe. Ten months later you're yelling at someone for standing in fire. What changed?

Produced by Dan Olson
Written by Nathan Landel and Dan Olson

Choice's channel - youtube.com/c/Choice_au

Bibliography
A Reports/Books/Articles
Ask, Kristine, ‘The Value of Calculations: The Coproduction of Theorycraft and Player Practices’ (2016) 36(3) Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 190.
Boellstroff, Tom, Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008)
Chen, Mark, ‘Leet Noobs: Expertise and Collaboration in a World of Warcraft Player Group as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice’ (PhD Thesis, University of Washington, 2010) [Not: College of Education].
Consalvo, Mia, Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (MIT Press, 2007) 28.
Egliston, Benjamin, ‘Play to Win: How competitive modes of play have influenced cultural practices in digital games’ (Honours Thesis, University of Sydney 2013) [Not: School of Art, Communication and English] 24.
Genette, Gérard, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Glas, René, Battlefields of Negotiation: Control, Agency, and Ownership in World of Warcraft (Amsterdam University Press, 2013).
Golub, Alex, ‘Being in the World (Of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game’ (2010) 83(1) Anthropological Quarterly 17.
Iser, Wolfgang, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
Lehdonvirta, Vili and Edward Castronova, Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis (The MIT Press, 2014).
McArthur, Victoria et al, ‘Knowing, Not Doing: Modalities of Gameplay Expertise in World of Warcraft Addons’ in CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM, 2012) 101.
Prax, Patrick, ‘Co-Creative Interface Development in MMORPGs - the Case of World of Warcraft Add-Ons’ (2012) 4(1) Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 3.
Skare, Roswitha, ‘Paratext’ (2020) 47(6) Knowledge Organization 511.
Skare, Roswitha, ‘The paratext of digital documents’ (2021) 77(2) Journal of Documentation 449.
Steinkuehler, Constance, ‘The Mangle of Play’ (2006) 1(3) Games and Culture 199.
Taylor, T.L, ‘Does WoW Change Everything?: How a PvP Server, Multinational Player Base, and Surveillance Mod Scene Caused Me Pause’ (2006) 1(4) Games and Culture 318.
Taylor, T.L, ‘The Assemblage of Play’ (2009) 4(4) Games and Culture 331.
Taylor, T.L, Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006).

B Other
Crusader3455, ‘MIESTRO DOES A LEGIT 2v3 AT 2500 CR’ (YouTube, 30 August 2022)
AzAMOus, ‘It’s 2922 and You Enter Utgarde Keep’ (YouTube, 29 September 2022)
Mark Chen, ‘Mark Chen presenting Leet Noobs 10 years later’ (YouTube, 12 March 2021)

pcgamesn.com/world-of-warcraft/wow-legion-max-camera-distance

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

00:00:00 Preface
00:01:28 Chapter 1 - Instrumental Play
00:17:58 Chapter 2 - Paratext
00:31:44 Chapter 3 - How Add-ons Ruined my Manchildhood
00:40:50 Chapter 4 - Join a Guild, They Said
00:56:45 Chapter 5 - WoW Classic, A Hellscape of Instrumental Practices
01:12:03 Chapter 6 - Decomposing the World
01:19:37 Conclusion

Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins

Folding Ideas 2022-09-27 | Clickbait Title: I'm here to teach you about an unmissable business opportunity!

Thank you to Savy over at Savy Writes Books for helping out with this video - youtube.com/c/SAVYLEISER

Emma Thorne - The Mikkelsen Twins' "Publishing Life" Scam? - youtube.com/watch?v=Klu8U5P35a4

I spared everyone the part of the story where I got COVID and spent months recovering. A Skeptic's Guide to Hypnosis is available for you to read for free, the hitch is that it's been distributed to Patreon subscribers who have permission to hand out as many copies as they want.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

00:00:00 Preface
00:05:03 GRIFTMAP
00:22:19 SAUSAGE FACTORY
00:34:12 I WROTE A BOOK
00:45:39 LET'S GET SOME CHARTS
01:01:11 SAVY WRITES BOOKS
01:11:00 LET'S WRAP THIS UP

Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

Folding Ideas 2022-01-21 | If someone pitches you on a "great" Web3 project, ask them if it requires buying or selling crypto to do what they say it does.

Sources and Further Reading
web3isgoinggreat.com
tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web
davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/03/11/nfts-crypto-grifters-try-to-scam-artists-again
amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme
stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-absurd.html
blog.mollywhite.net/blockchains-are-not-what-they-say
motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/who-goes-crypto-eth-bitcoin-etc-financialization-gamestop-class-wealth
twitter.com/davetroy/status/1478017698676228099?s=20
davidgolumbia.medium.com/cryptocurrency-is-garbage-so-is-blockchain-3e80078e77fe
marker.medium.com/fintech-is-a-scam-a-listicle-in-eight-parts-7b6161f3a35a
naavik.co/business-breakdowns/axie-infinity/#axie-decon=
gawker.com/culture/the-future-is-useless-expensive
twitter.com/NFTtheft
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/nfts-werent-supposed-end-like/618488
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-11-05-baseless-nft-hype-hits-a-crescendo-but-its-play-to-earn-thats-worth-watching-opinion
technollama.co.uk/platform-is-law-the-cautionary-tale-of-stolen-nfts
davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2021/02/12/libra-shrugged-chapter-6-banking-the-unbanked
twitter.com/Bitfinexed

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
00:00:00 Preface
00:01:12 0. In 2008 The Economy Collapsed
00:07:09 1. Bitcoin
00:18:18 2. Ethereum
00:24:34 3. The Machine
00:39:07 4. NFTs Exist To Get You To Buy Crypto
00:57:54 5. The Unbearable Cringe Of Crypto
01:11:46 6. A Self-Organizing High Control Group
01:16:57 7. Crypto Reality
01:25:36 8. There Is No Privacy On The Chain
01:32:52 9. If This "Looks Like Scam" Then Every NFT Room I'm In Looks Like Scam LOL
01:38:29 10. Play To Earn Exists To Get You To Buy Crypto
01:46:39 11. We're All Gonna Make It And By "We" I Mean "Us" Not You
01:56:08 12. DAOs Exist To Get You To Buy Crypto
02:13:21 13. I Know It's Rigged, But It's The Only Game In Town

Jamie Olivers War on Nuggets

Folding Ideas 2021-10-29 | Clickbait Title: Chefs Hate Him!

Big thanks to Hot Dad for letting me use his absolute banger, you can put the whole song in your ear holes here: youtube.com/watch?v=qr-sDJX72WY

I wanted to make this because I see this clip make the rounds again and again and every time I'm like "of all the arguments you could make, that's the worst one." So I decided to make a whole video around "of all the arguments you could make, that's the worst one." Jamie Oliver in particular seems to have that effect on people, he gets into this kinda crap all the time, and I think it has a lot to do with the sheer audacity of his lies or near-lies that make even people otherwise sympathetic to his goals wish that he'd just go away. The willingness to just brazenly misrepresent how and why things are the way they are demonstrates a fundamental disrespect for the intelligence of the viewer.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

An Exhaustive History of Ralph Bakshis Lord of the Rings

Folding Ideas 2021-08-20 | While the video talks mostly about The Lord of the Rings (1978) there is a discussion of Bakshi's earlier R-rated and NC-17 films, which deal with heavy subject matter like racism, police violence, transphobia, drug abuse, and various adult scenarios.

This was intended to be a quick little video that I could churn out in a couple weeks at the end of June, but it's now taken almost the whole summer. I haven't done animation like this in years, and never with this kind of a coherent goal, so approximately 48 seconds of this video consumed 80% of the entire post production time.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Background artist: Agata Pankowska
twitter.com/AgataPortfolio

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

The Nostalgia Critic and The Wall

Folding Ideas 2021-04-13 | Clickbait Title: I remember it so you don't have to.

Mild flashing effects in the last 40s.

"Pink Floyd - The Wall" deals with mature subject matter and contains intense imagery some viewers may find distressing.

As a full disclosure, I was briefly a contributor to Channel Awesome for about six months in 2014/15. Channel Awesome CEO Mike Michaud severed the relationship after he received angry emails about an exposé of 8chan I had published on Medium and I refused to take it down or commit to not doing "anything else like that." Several of the songs are a roundabout veiled reference to #ChangeTheChannel, a hashtag that gained some traction in the spring of 2018 as contributors and former contributors to Channel Awesome spilled all the beans about CA's incompetence and mismanagement. What started as a bunch of people sharing stories about how the scheduling page never worked right escalated to Channel Awesome leadership releasing a counterattack letter in which they inadvertently admitted to covering for a sex predator.

Fantano (who I stole two lines from): youtube.com/watch?v=OEbf8YhTWEo
Ms. Lola: youtube.com/watch?v=QgGZmwGUIJ4
JAR Media: youtube.com/watch?v=uKmLEwyWDkw

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

0:00 - The Wall
7:37 - Doug
19:13 - We Need More Victimization
25:51 - So Long, Weird Song
33:34 - Comfortably Dumb
34:48 - It's not that vague, Doug
38:44 - The Trial

Lets Argue About Christmas Movies (ft. Movies w/ Mikey)

Folding Ideas 2020-12-24 | Clickbait Title: Die Hard Isn't A Christmas Movie

The Trial of Christmas Movies: youtu.be/68JSod6pIRM

Go watch Mikey's companion video for the other half of the Dan and Mikey Christmas Special. His is way better and he put so much work into it.

We had a proper blizzard a couple days ago, so I just had to dig my car out from under over six inches of snow. And that's not like "oh, we got six inches" but it's kinda spread all around, this was six inches at the shallowest. It actually snapped my car's radio antenna. Anyway my arms feel like noodles from all the digging so I'm just going to wish you all happy New Year.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

That Time Geocentrists Tricked A Bunch of Physicists

Folding Ideas 2020-11-20 | Clickbait Title: Is There Proof We Really Are The Center of the Universe?!

Shortly before the election my cat escaped the house and got her belly covered in sticky mud which then picked up all sorts of junk. During the extremely needed bath, which she hates, I lost control of her head and she managed to latch onto my arm and break the skin with two teeth. It looked kinda rough, so I figured I should get a tetanus shot in the morning. By the time the clinic opened I was in some of the worst pain of my life, the swollen bite looked like a tennis ball was embedded inside my arm, and the selling was pressing constantly against my ulnar nerve. The pressure was so intense that I could feel gravity pulling on my skin and fingers. Anyway, that's a big part of why this is late.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

The Minnewanka Curve Experiment [2K/1440p]

Folding Ideas 2020-09-18 | A companion video for "In Search of a Flat Earth" containing the details of the Minnewanka curve experiment in greater detail. Appropriate for a classroom environment.

Dizzib's curve calculator:
dizzib.github.io/earth/curve-calc/?d0=30&h0=10&unit=imperial

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Music:
Trampled by P C III

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

00:00 Preamble
00:23 Part 1 - The Math
04:34 Part 2 - The Footage

In Search Of A Flat Earth

Folding Ideas 2020-09-11 | Clickbait Title: The Twist at 37 Minutes Will Make You Believe We Live In Hell

More Lake Footage: youtu.be/y8MboQzXO1o

This has taken a long time to make, and it was a very winding road, but I'm glad I did it. Hiking out to the north shore of Minnewanka, a 19km round trip, is one of the worst decisions I've ever made but I'm glad I did it. I'm not sure what else to say. I'm so tired. So very, very, very tired.

Flat Earth OR Why Do People Reject Science? - Philosophy Tube
youtube.com/watch?v=AGvGQSazaTM

Flat Earth: A Measured Response - hbomberguy
youtube.com/watch?v=2gFsOoKAHZg

I Read The Most Hateful Book Ever Written - Thought Slime
youtube.com/watch?v=67Rg8V4g3ak

Maybe We Should Be Concerned About Qanon? - SOME MORE NEWS
youtube.com/watch?v=XJgX20S0Zdg

If you want to stay up to date on QAnon, The QAnon Anonymous Podcast, YouTube channel Some More News, and the work of journalists Will Sommer and Alex Kaplan will give you a place to start.

Music:
Isolated by Kevin MacLeod (prologue)
Oxygen Mask by Andy G. Cohen (title/credits)
Sunset by Kai Engel (across a curved lake)
Fastest Man on Earth by Jahzzer (they're all going to Q)
Released under a Creative Commons Attribution International License

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

00:00 Prologue
03:21 Intro
05:01 Part 1
37:39 Part 2

Cooking Food On The Internet For Fun And Profit

Folding Ideas 2020-05-16 | Clickbait Title: World's Largest Activated Charcoal Superfood Epic Burger Made With Acai Cake

In this video I mention Gourmet Makes a bunch and I actually felt really insecure about that just because for a long time during the edit it was feeling like I only had one example. But the reason it was on my mind so much is that the recent video with the gourmet Tater Tots was just so perfect with the intro where a parade of chefs, cooks, and foodies, the kind of folks who regularly cook hundred-dollar cuts of meat with obscure Italian names, stop by to talk about just how much they love frozen potato nuggets.

How To Cook That's investigative reporting: youtube.com/watch?v=pvqa8dsBtno

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Music:
"Good Ol Plan B" – Mela
"Headway" – Kai Engel

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

I Cant Stop Watching Contagion | Folding Ideas

Folding Ideas 2020-03-31 | Clickbait Title: Spreading Misinformation During A Crisis Makes You A Bad Person

The one thing that I'm expecting someone in the comments is going to latch onto is the exact timeline of the abolition of serfdom in Europe because it was very much not a uniform thing and the process took a couple hundred years to encompass the entire continent. It's a super big and complex subject because it encompasses both the fallout of the Black Death and various technological developments. But some of those developments were, themselves, responses to the plague, built to solve problems it created. Ultimately I chose a super simplified, ultra-compressed version of history because the story of history is ultimately the story of the present. We can come out of this crisis better than we went in.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

The Art of Editing and The Snowman | Folding Ideas

Folding Ideas 2020-02-29 | Clickbait Title: Only 1% Can Last All Forty Minutes!

Cut example: youtu.be/MQoFW02BNjA

The Snowman has been a bugbear on my back for years now. I first tried to make this video January 2018, but skidded out when I got distracted by Fifty Shades Freed, which inspired me to expand my already-in-the-works Fifty Shades video into a full three-part series that took most of the rest of the year to make. Then I tried again in January 2019, but things were moving along poorly, the script just wouldn't crack, and eventually I ran out of winter when I decided to Pivot to Fortnite, a video which took a huge number of hours to make. So it feels good to finally have this off my plate, even if it doesn't feel like a video that should have taken two years to come out.

To add to all that, because The Snowman is cursed, it took ten hours of revisions, fifteen different versions, to get this video past Universal, who would flag it instantly with a total global block.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Special thanks to Kara and Crystal and all my Patrons.

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

CATS: An Existential Crisis

Folding Ideas 2019-12-24 | Clickbait Title: 10 Reasons To Go See CATS Before It Vanishes Forever

CATS is poised to be one of the biggest box office bombs in terms of both % gross and absolute dollars lost. I'm not sure if it'll take the throne, but it's definitely up there, having made a scant $6.2m against its $95m budget. It averaged less than 200 tickets per cinema over its entire weekend. At this point anyone and everyone who wants to see it purely to gawk could do so five times each and it would still be an utter financial disaster.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

The Snyder Cut Does (Not) Exist | Folding Ideas

Folding Ideas 2019-12-13 | Clickbait Title: Odds Are You'll Probably Never See The Snyder Cut of Justice League

I do talk about the recent rumours with HBO Max, but it's not until the end of the video, so it's basically a guarantee that the comments are going to be full of commenters telling me I didn't talk about things that I definitely did talk about. I know mocking knee-jerk comments in the description is pretty hack, but knee-jerk comments are also pretty hack, so a hack for a hack I guess.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Tuca And Bertie Cant Make It Alone | Folding Ideas

Folding Ideas 2019-12-07 | Clickbait Title: Check Out This Hot Bird On Bird Action

I have spent an unusual amount of time agonizing over the title and thumbnail for this video. I'm not sure I can vocalize exactly why they've been so difficult, but they have. I know I usually write a lot more here, but I'm very hungry and want to catch Pokemon and get a pizza.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Whats Gone Wrong With the FTCs COPPA Agreement With YouTube

Folding Ideas 2019-11-22 | Sources:
FTC Reaches Landmark Settlement Regarding Kids’ Privacy, Clarifies Platforms’ and Video Creators’ COPPA Obligations for Child-Directed Content - Sara Collins fpf.org/2019/09/09/ftc-reaches-landmark-settlement-regarding-kids-privacy-clarifies-platforms-and-video-creators-coppa-obligations-for-child-directed-content

Commissioner Slaughter's Statement [PDF]
ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1542971/slaughter_google_youtube_statement.pdf
Chairman Simon & Commissioner Wilson's Statement [PDF]
ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1542922/simons_wilson_google_youtube_statement.pdf
Google and YouTube Will Pay Record $170 Million for Alleged Violations of Children’s Privacy Law ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-alleged-violations

While voluntary content flagging is useful and a good measure, and some measure of automated detection is likely necessary, YouTube’s response has been deliberately broad, utilizing their status as a monopoly in online video to force creators to bear the burdens of compliance without providing them with the tools and data to do so in a meaningful, educated manner.
Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

I Saw Three Versions of Gemini Man In One Day: A 60 FPS Vlog

Folding Ideas 2019-10-14 | Clickbait Title: Two Will Smiths? You Won't Believe What Happens Next!

I had to go home and take a nap in between viewings because the 3D HF DBOX UltraAVX Experience™ was just that draining.

Presented in 60fps because I've fallen victim to my own weird quirks of replicating carious elements of a film in the videos I make about those films. In the last two days I've had a bigger existential crisis about the narrative value of HFR than the characters had about being clones/cloned. I broadly agree with the sentiment that audiences can and will acclimate to HFR as they watch more of it, but that's definitely never going to happen if it all looks like this. I can settle in and feel comfortable and normal watching HFR footage of my own creation, like this vlog, but Gemini Man resisted that at every turn. Everything looked bad, sped up, and cheap. Ang Lee seems to have decided that a "real" explosion looks like a firework, with a bunch of sparks in the mix, because sparks are really easy for the brain to track in HFR, so they look neat. But I couldn't ever get past it looking "neat". It was like watching stock footage or a tech demo for two hours. There's no attempt at using the frame rate to enhance the emotional state, it's just "turn it up to 11 and leave it there" which makes the experience just tiring.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

World of Warcraft Classic And What We Left Behind

Folding Ideas 2019-10-04 | Clickbait Title: WoW Classic – Everything Sucks, Therefore You Are Free

I'm really excited to see where Classic goes down the road. The predictable outcome is that Classic rolls into Burning Crusade and Wrath with essentially the chaos of legacy servers that we see in EverQuest and many of the other surviving MMOs, but there's the tantalizing, though slim, possibility of an alternate development path, where Classic becomes a second attempt at history, basically WoW 2, but starting from where things were 13 years ago. I wouldn't even entirely mind if some of the hazier, less balanced sensibilities of Classic cropped back up in the future, if the pace of the game slowed a bit without necessarily just making things bad and inconvenient to get there.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism | Folding Ideas

Folding Ideas 2019-08-23 | Clickbait title: OOPS! Did I Do A Colonialism In Minecraft?!

This video has been "done" for a while now, but I had a lot of trouble finishing it owing to a lingering sickness in my lungs that has made it difficult to record vocals that don't sound froggy and gross. Aside from that bit of TMI I do want to stress that I really love Minecraft, I love creative games, I love construction games, I love logistics games. All of the game footage in this video is mine. I have it because I own all these games and have played them all for somewhere between dozens and hundreds of hours each.

Music used:
Minecraft OST
Visager - Windy Bluffs

Bibliography:
Video Games and the Global South, 2019, Phillip Penix-Tadsen ed. http://press.etc.cmu.edu/index.php/product/video-games-and-the-global-south/
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, 2017, Caroline Frasier

Texture pack and shaders:
Bare Bones Texture Pack
BSL Shaders
planetminecraft.com/texture_pack/bare-bones

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Is Detective Pikachu Mathematically The Worst?!

Folding Ideas 2019-05-11 | Clickbait Title: A Short Review and Discussion of Detective Pikachu and The Broader Subject of Video Game Movies

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the Channel: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/

Lets Spoil The Endgame

Folding Ideas 2019-04-27 | Clickbait Title: Everyone Who Dies In Avengers Endgame

And, yes, I realize that even by suggesting that someone does, in fact, die in Endgame could be construed as a spoiler because addressing the idea of a subject, even devoid of details, is already an indicator that the subject is relevant to the film.

I feel like with Endgame we have truly reached the apotheosis of spoiler-aversion. It has been so thoroughly hijacked by marketing forces that even reasonable discussion is viewed as hostility, that wanting to talk about movies is characterized as a betrayal of the movie itself.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the channel: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/

Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite

Folding Ideas 2019-04-01 | Clickbait Title: Dab your hearts out and jump on the battle bus, I'm dropping in to Retail Row and I've got an orange pump pointed right at your default.

If you want to know one thing about making a machinima in Fortnite it's that it's super, super rad when you spend several hours late at night setting up footage in your virtual digital studio with the intent that you'll record the properly-composed shots in replay mode in the morning, only to wake up to a minor patch that breaks all your replays. It's extra rad when this happens three days in a row.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Music used:
"Airship" by Visager
"Shrine" by Visager
"Fortnite Lobby Theme" by Epic Games

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the show: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/

Wonder Park: Why Movies Generally Need Directors

Folding Ideas 2019-03-15 | Clickbait title: 5 Broken Things About Wonder Park

If anything my experience with Wonder Park was a double stack of disappointment. It's not good, but it's also not the spectacular train wreck I was hoping it would be.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the show: https://d.rip/foldablehuman

What Is Vsauce?

Folding Ideas 2019-02-15 | Clickbait title: 10 WILDEST Geek Girls OMG!!!

I found myself stonewalled on a number of other projects, to the point that I needed to make something just to get something done. More specifically I needed to finish something. Starting projects is easy, finishing them is hard. This isn't a thorough historiography of Vsauce, it's a story. It's not about the business of running the channel, the ways that it has fractured into sub-channels with multiple hosts and how the stand alone DONG channel functions as its own version of what Vsauce was, it's about the narrative created by the channel itself. Part of why I didn't go into all that is because the self-contained story is applicable to so many channels. It's a very prototypical story unique to the structure of YouTube itself. As much as there's a possible future where Mind Field is done, cancelled, over, whatever, and Vsauce goes on to do something else, something old, something new, there's as much a possible future that this is it, that when Mind Field is over so is Vsauce. Either way when you walk from one end of Vsauce to the other it's quite a journey.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the show with money: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/

That 2019 Movie Called Serenity About a Fish Named Justice - a Spoiler Rich vlog

Folding Ideas 2019-01-25 | Clickbait title: You Literally Won't Believe The Twist In This Movie

This movie really kinda defies classification. I'm not sure it's a bad movie, but it's not quite a good movie either. If they had stuck to just the A plot it would probably have been a passible but forgettable thriller, but they didn't, and we have been blessed with the result. Jenny Nicholson's vlog is going to be so much better than mine.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the channel: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/

Glass Isnt a Very Good Movie - A Spoiler-Rich Vlog

Folding Ideas 2019-01-18 | Clickbait title: Glass Isn't Very Good

One of the most remarkable things about the film is that it leaves you consistently bewildered about which characters you're supposed to care about, and it's almost impossible to parse who the story is supposed to be about while you're sitting in the theatre. Whole swaths of confusing character behaviour are waved away with sloppy last-minute reveals that play less like reveals and more like excuses.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Support the channel: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/

The Art of Storytelling and The Legend of Chun Li

Folding Ideas 2019-01-11 | Written and performed by Dan Olson

Clickbait title: You won't believe what these videos look like now!
Support the show on Drip: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

This is my first attempt at doing a second edition of an old video. I like the original (link below) but there's a bunch of jokes in there that didn't really land, the audio was awful, and a couple assertions that just didn't hold up. I'm leaving the original up and marking it as "first edition" but it's pretty much just staying there for posterity. This is the better version in every way. It's the second edition.

First edition: youtu.be/XBS5ywyngxY

A Christmas Story: A Tale of Technological Nostalgia

Folding Ideas 2018-12-24 | Clickbait title: This Christmas Video Gonna Get You Hornt

Oh my, what a year it has been! The upside to awful is that it pulls personal successes into stark contrast. I'm trying really hard to focus on those and not on everything else. I do think that, despite everything, I wrote some of my best work this year, and I got to perform at SGDQ which was a total blast, and I helped make one of the best Youtube documentaries on the site with Lindsay Ellis' Hobbit videos. 2018 has been two years long, but it hasn't all been awful.

Cheers, everyone, have a happy New Year.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Charlie Tango [FULL MUSIC VIDEO]

Folding Ideas 2018-12-05 | Featured in the video "A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades Part 3: Freed" youtu.be/0R4bczm8BPY

Written by James Fairlie
Performed by Crystal Rhoney
Featuring Mike Rugnetta as Christian Grey
Camera by Dain Evans
Editing by Dan Olson

Download: soundcloud.com/james-alexander-paul-fairlie/crystal-rhoney-charlie-tango/s-1s4NF

twitter.com/FoldableHuman

A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades Part 3: Freed

Folding Ideas 2018-12-01 | Clickbait Title: A Eurocopter EC135?!

Well, here we are. I want to say I'm done with Fifty Shades forever, but given the legacy it's leaving behind, the upcoming slate of fanfiction-turned-novel-turned-movies, I'm sure we'll be back sometime. There's always more that I can say. I just can't stop talking about it.

Also Charlie Tango, Eurocopter EC135, is played in the film by a Eurocopter EC130 because Seattle noise laws prohibit civilian use of a helicopter as large as the EC135 within city limits. I do not know how this impacts Charlie Tango's safety rating.

Ana: Crystal Rhoney
Christian: Mike Rugnetta
Taylor: Mikey Neumann
Kate: Lindsay Ellis
Dr. Flynn: H. Bomberguy
SnowQueen’s IceDragon: Jenny Nicholson

“Charlie Tango” written by James Fairlie, Performed by Crystal Rhoney

Camera: Kara Artym

GarBox art: Magdalen Rose

Special thanks to Jenny Trout for her amazing read-along blogs and Anne Jamison for both her writing on the subject of Fifty Shades and fanfiction and for tolerating my emails.

Jenny Trout: http://jennytrout.com
Anne Jamison: goodreads.com/book/show/17675435-fic

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Zero Dark Loxley - A Robin Hood Bad Movie Vlog

Folding Ideas 2018-11-22 | Robin of Loxley's Long Halftime Walk
The Hurt Loxley
Thin Red Loxley
Full Metal Loxley
Saving Private Loxley

There's so much to talk about I didn't even get around to mentioning the wall of fire that soldiers just push open like a door, the way characters will just stand and have Very Important Conversations at full volume in the middle of crowds of snooping nobles, Little John's iron arm stub that he makes so that they don't need to keep disguising Jamie Foxx's real hand, or how Friar Tuck is simultaneously the most entertaining and least meaningful character, largely present out of obligation.

If you want a better Robin Hood watch the Errol Flynn movie, and if you want more entertaining cheese watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

I will say this was more entertaining than the endless bore of the 2010 Ridley Scott film.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor

Folding Ideas 2018-11-01 | Clickbait Title: The Ending of Annihilation Actually Explained For Real

There was a lot of anxiety in the final stretch of this one, I got really worried that the front half was too mean. I wondered what Mikey would think of me. I always admire his commitment to optimism, but I also envy it, because I am an envious person. So you'll have to forgive me for my weakness.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades Part 2: Things Go Downhill Very Quickly

Folding Ideas 2018-08-31 | Clickbait Title: Does This Video Have a Direct Line to Your Inner Goddess? Of Course It Does.

I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure that I can identify the exact scene where Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson started drinking to get through the nudity and sex, and it’s the shower scene where they’re on the boat. The reason I pinpoint this one is because we have so many examples of Johnson doing an admirable job at acting while crying, but in that scene she’s suddenly delivering her lines like she just got home from the dentist.

Written and produced by Dan Olson

Drip: https://d.rip/foldablehuman/
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Dan Will Be Presenting Live At Summer Games Done Quick on June 26th

Folding Ideas 2018-06-21 | For up to date schedule check gamesdonequick.com/schedule
and search for FoldableHuman

At the time of publishing the run is scheduled for 5:10am Central Daylight Time.

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
Twitch: twitch.tv/foldablehuman

Book Club Is A Theatrical Made-For-TV Movie: A Vlog

Folding Ideas 2018-06-01 | Book Club isn't very good, but you probably already guessed that, so instead let's talk about why and how it exists in the first place.

Erin Simms' bio makes it sound like she actually was on the Power Rangers, but she apparently left the show before filming anything.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades of Grey

Folding Ideas 2018-05-25 | Clickbait Title: A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades of Grey

It's been a long time coming. This was originally supposed to be ready for the release of Fifty Shades Freed back in February, but that clearly didn't happen. I know I like to try and write little mini-essays down here in the description, but I'm hard pressed to think of something to put here that isn't already in this video. It's over an hour long.

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Filmmaking Q&A - Dan & Kara

Folding Ideas 2018-05-02 | I probably meant to be streaming at Twitch

twitch.tv/foldablehuman

The Art of Storytelling and The Book of Henry

Folding Ideas 2017-12-20 | Clickbait title: 7 Reasons The Book of Henry FAILS

The Book of Henry is pretty close to an ideal awful movie. There's dimensions to watching the film that I can't convey fully in a condensed video, like how stop-start the plots are, how Henry gets sick and the movie basically stops what it was doing for twenty minutes waiting for him to die, and how watching the film is to go through a rolling process of trying to figure out what the film is trying to actually tell you. People who are familiar with Jurassic World should catch the similar ways that Book of Henry demonizes a woman for not behaving exactly and precisely as the mother figure that the filmmakers think she should be. Susan gets off light, though, since she isn't executed by dinosaur for the crime of texting.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

The Last Jedi Vlog - It Made Me Feel Feelings

Folding Ideas 2017-12-16 | There's a lot of things that I didn't get around to in this video, but I wanted it to be a mix of criticism and the things I liked the most from a storytelling perspective, rather than just being a rundown of suff.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

The Disaster Artist Vlog (and stories about awful movies Dan has worked on)

Folding Ideas 2017-12-08 | I enjoyed The Disaster Artist. It's a good film for people who probably already know they want to see it. It's a bit Inside Baseball for a wide audience, not as accessible as its comparison Ed Wood, because there's a lot of moments that rely on the audience knowing just how awful the final product actually is, but if you think you're gonna like it, you're probably going to like it.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Weird Kids Videos and Gaming the Algorithm

Folding Ideas 2017-11-22 | Clickbait Title: Video Criticism YouTube Exploitation Meta Commentary Pregnant Algorithm Educational Spam Fidget Spinner Buried Alive For Kids

Very late in the process of making this I decided to change the name, largely because the moment I made the original title "YouTube and the Business of Exploiting Children" public in a promotional Tweet I realized that there was an entire constellation of related issues that I wanted to talk about. From channels that exist to get kids hooked on gambling to parents subjecting their children to abusive conditions as "pranks", there's a lot of shady stuff going on. In that context, weird spam and unsettling videos about poop didn't rank high enough to warrant burning a title that good.

References:
James Bridle "Something is Wrong on the Internet" medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

H3H3 "Toy Channels are Ruining Society" youtube.com/watch?v=fBWf6Zvn0jQ

Down the Rabbit Hole "Finger Family Videos" youtube.com/watch?v=NceTdz8KlYU

Retsupurae "Joker Mouse Lethal Injection" youtube.com/watch?v=5If1ZWfNoJM

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Justice League Vlog

Folding Ideas 2017-11-17 | Justice League isn't good, but I didn't hate it. If you want a bottom line, that's it, but if you watch the video I go into a lot more detail. Because I couldn't take notes in the theatre there's a bunch I forgot, like a completely misplaced scene near the start where Batman's beard disappears, a sequence set to Icky Thump that seems to have been left in purely because they already paid the licensing fee, how Steppenwolf looks like he's been lifted from a Dragon Age: Origins cutscene, and Cyborg's uniformly weird, floaty movements that aren't strange enough to feel intentionally alien nor normal enough to feel natural.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman

Cinematic Trainwreck – The Snowman: A Vlog

Folding Ideas 2017-10-25 | Hello mister police. I forgot to mention this in the body of the vlog itself, but the lighting is ass. Sometimes it's good, but most of the time it's ass. This extends to the grade as well. One little girl looks green. It's almost as bad as Sherlock season 1.

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman