The Right Opinion
What Really Happened To Marina Joyce? Behind The Internet Mysteries | TRO
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The Right Opinion: The Rise And Fall Of Notch - The Truth Behind The Minecraft Creator | TRO
0:00 - Intro
8:49 - Making A Notch
14:33 - Making Minecraft
20:34 - "Success"
26:38 - The Torch
32:30 - Transaction
38:11 - Mo Money
44:07 - Mo Problems
50:11 - Conspiracy
56:13 - Trans Action
1:02:03 - Distance
1:07:47 - Last Person
1:13:16 - First Persson
1:19:08 - Front of the Q
1:25:25 - Legacy
1:31:09 - The End?
1:39:17 - Credits & Outro
The age old question beckons, when we all move on from this world, what will we leave behind? The truth is, none of us can ever know for certain because that moment we pass on we relinquish most control of the narrative surrounding how we’re remembered. People who have been considered controversial and problematic have been recontextualised by their death, and sometimes figures previously revered have had their involvement in some very seedy antics revealed. In some cases, a perspective will take centuries to form, and in other times it will take merely days, however, one thing that remains central in analysis of individuals is the existence of art.
I use the term “art” liberally of course here, I’m not just talking about a painting or a sculpture, I’m talking about the general product of any form of creative process that can affect someone’s life in a meaningful way. An artist’s direct words or thoughts may be long forgotten, but their creations will always serve as a window to their mind. What these works may say specifically is often down to interpretation but there are often general themes that many people identify with, which is what provides them with a following and a reputation. Upon analysis of such content, many of us draw parallels between the pieces and the person behind them, after all, art should be a bit of oneself; we enjoy identifying with others, even when it extends to maestros who we could never really hope to get near in terms of genius.
For the new generation of aspiring creatives, times have somewhat evolved, particularly with the presence of social media which enables many people to speak more directly to their chosen audience. For those who choose to use it, you may have a close up on the person behind a beloved work, and based on their behaviour you may be able to make a summary judgement if you want to delve into their works much further. However, for all the benefits that such an experience can provide, it can also play into an unhealthy parasocial relationship, one that we’ve spoken about in the past, particularly when said art may not appear to reflect a person’s character.
Yes, every now and then though anomalies appear in the system, people who may have created something wonderful that many find to be an uplifting and positive force in their life may also have negatively affected others in a marked way, either due to their actions or words separate to their art. This is where the discourse surrounding distinguishing art from the artist originates, appreciating good workmanship doesn’t necessarily presuppose a complete endorsement of the person behind it. However, over time, the bar for this sort of standard has definitely been lowered a little, with the rise of social media, and people perhaps having a bit too much time to argue, this sort of distinction has become more and more regularly employed. A prime example of such a trend is JK Rowling, a previously renowned celebrity who took a political position that was contrary to many of her colleagues and fans. If she’d never sent out a Tweet on the matter many people who probably regard her with disdain would still adore her.
Humans are complex multifaceted creatures; many of whom are deeply troubled and don’t necessarily benefit from the public spotlight, sometimes leaving us to wonder whether we knew them as well as we thought we did, and perhaps wishing we didn’t know them as well now. This is what leads to probably the most quintessentially Gen Z example: a gentleman by the name Markus Persson, or as he is known to many online: Notch.
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The Dangers of Dr. Phil - A Daytime Tragedy | TRO - The Right Opinion
00:00 - Introduction
10:28 - Tabloid Talk
17:31 - Self Help TV
25:20 - Messiah
31:55 - Renaissance
40:03 - Turn
47:22 - Practise
56:53 - Perfect
1:04:13 - Help
1:12:30 - Disparate Youth
1:22:03 - Turnabout
1:30:28 - Public
1:40:10 - Legal
1:47:00 - Knowledge
1:53:35 - Responsibility
2:00:06 - Cancelling “Dr. Phil”
2:06:34 - Counseling Dr. Phil
2:14:41 - Cancelling Dr. Phil
2:24:22 - “Cancelling” Dr. Phil
Mainstream TV, a contraption that contrary to beliefs held by netizens, many people do actually still watch.
It’s not a necessity in modern day society, with the rise of online content and streaming platforms, you can obtain your daily dose of entertainment from a variety of sources, yet although audiences have certainly been spoiled with an abundance of TV series, and films, many live shows have still predominantly remained on broadcast television, well, at least more than others. These include gameshows, news programs, and of course, today’s genre that has launched so many successful careers: talk shows.
Now this isn’t to say that they don’t have their online counterparts, but I think like other shows that have retained most of their audience from live TV broadcasts, there is something about watching that sort of content in the moment, as it often operates within a very brief window into the spirit of that specific era, if you went back and tried to watch an episode of Oprah from 1992, you’d probably find it hasn’t dated the best. I mean, sometimes these episodes are dated on release…
I digress though, to give them their credit, they have fought hard for their place on the TV guide, and they do provide people with content that can keep them in touch with the world around them through a medium that may be more digestible than the traditional outlets. With this in mind, there aren’t too many set rules for creating a successful talk show, the first rule is that there needs to be some talking, that kinda goes without saying, but it’s also important that the person talking is also relatively interesting, and has a personality to present to those viewing. The second rule is that there needs to be people to talk to, otherwise the host is just rambling into the void. Therefore, they’ll either talk to you: the viewer, directly, or a live audience is drafted in to cheer, jeer, or appear as part of the host’s wacky shenanigans. With such a broad church of TV encompassed by these couple tenets, it's no surprise that a plethora of shows have garnered success off very diverse interpretations of these couple key tenets, from the preppy positivity of Ellen, to the necessary conflict and consequent chaos of a show like The View.
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The Right Opinion: The Disappearance of Dr. Disrespect - Twitch's Biggest Mystery | TRO
0:00:00 - Intro
0:09:02 - Mixed Up (Epilepsy Warning)
0:16:18 - Twitchy
0:23:27 - The Return
0:30:34 - The Lawsuit
0:45:52 - The Outcome
0:52:30 - Confusion
0:58:58 - Why
1:05:50 - Why More
1:14:36 - How Come
1:21:43 - The Unknown
1:28:15 - Finale
1:35:20 - Outro
Many of you are likely well-acquainted with my established status as a gamer, in fact, probably one of the best gamers there is out there, truth is, I only don’t compete in tournaments because I’d really hate to put any of those competitive players out of a job, especially when I am so blessed to have alternative sources of entertainment. Yes, my field of interest isn’t merely restricted to one meadow, you see, like most people, I love a good mystery, and today, we have nothing less than one of the online’s world’s strangest happenings. One that has baffled observers, and even after its resolution, left far more questions than answers. Nonetheless, whereas most of our topics are embroilments on our resident platform, we have to turn our attention to one of YouTube’s contemporaries, and dare I say it, competitors for today’s situation: Twitch.
Twitch, like YouTube, is a video-sharing platform, where one can tune in to their favourite creators and view various genres of content. However, unlike YouTube, Twitch’s format prioritises livestreams, which often provides more direct interaction between a creator, the content, and their audience. YouTube also offers this feature, and most people have taken advantage of it at some point, however, as YouTube isn’t thought to provide the same attention to it that Twitch does, most tend to opt for the latter when it comes to streaming. With that said, Twitch isn’t without its issues either, many of which have been on display in the last few years, particularly their policy which has often led to accusations of hypocrisy and double standards.
Now, with these large platforms, some sort of double standard is inevitable, particularly given the special treatment that larger creators have been known to afford. With that said, Twitch’s attempts to find any “consistency”, have often led to criticisms of the opposite, and their nature to double down hasn’t helped that. I’m not going to detail each individual example because we’d be here all year, but their lack of transparency on the matter has left some streamers being indefinitely banned for the most milquetoast of faux pas, and in the livestreaming scene where there are no editing tools between the video and viewer, that can be risky business. On the other hand though, there are the platform darlings, who have been welcomed back despite multiple breaches of their supposed all-encompassing creator guidelines. For many, there’s unfairness, and then there’s Twitch.
There are a fair few theories about why Twitch is so wildly inconsistent, but I think the most deeply rooted one is that simply put, they’re a business, they need to hold on to the main sources of that business, especially when there are alternative platforms offering the same service. If they went and banned their biggest names, even if it was for good reason, those names may just migrate to a competitor who will tolerate their antics, taking all their audience, and income, with them. Even if it leads to greater moral inconsistency, their current practice keeps their platform afloat, which is probably their prime concern. However, at the core of this pretty logically sound explanation, there is one rather significant exception to that rule, so, I think it’s high time to introduce our title character…
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The Right Opinion: The Rise And Fall of Frenemies - Trisha and Ethan's Impossible Podcast | TRO
0:00- Introduction
14:25 - The Beginning
22:27 - Crash
30:45 - Dynamic
40:07 - Chaos & Control
49:24 - Frenemies
57:08 - Couples Counselling
1:05:04 - Trisha's Counselling
1:15:59 - Resolution
1:23:53 - The Wall
1:33:16 - Penultimatum
1:39:57 - The Final Episode
1:49:11 - Aftermath
1:57:31 - Aftershock
2:13:07 - The Next Episode
2:22:24 - Divergence
2:31:36 - Reconciliation
2:40:44 - Enemies
2:50:08 - Nemeses
3:04:45 - Truth
3:12:14 - Lies
3:22:34 - Who’s Using Who?
3:30:40 - Who’s Using Who, 2
3:41:32 - Five Percent
3:48:46 - Faith
4:04:27 - Frenemies
4:13:26 - Outro & Credits
For me, I guess I’ll always be someone who requires the rehearsed nature of scripts to maximise my full potential, and although I’m not adverse to making appearances on a podcast here and there, I think I need to focus my efforts on my content first and foremost, given how I have regularly failed to do that of recent. However, it is a thought that has taken up residence in my psyche, what if I was to drop everything I was doing now, set up a new channel with the resources I currently possess, and do something that doesn’t require me tearing my hair out. In a way, it’s a decision that Ethan and Hila Klein, also known as h3h3productions made a few years ago, when they decided to launch the h3 podcast, but let’s rewind for just a moment in case anyone here isn’t fully acquainted with the YouTube leviathan that is h3h3productions.
h3h3productions is the YouTube channel run by the aforementioned Klein couple, they established a presence on YouTube for content that often parodied their subjects, usually utilising Ethan’s offbeat sense of humour, alongside editing that put a somewhat amusingly absurdist twist on the content they were lampooning. Nonetheless, many of these videos also had an underlying moral message that resonated with many viewers, often calling out many of the creators of their time for their often shallow exploitation of YouTube culture.
They’re funny, they’re well made, and many of them are still relevant to this day. They’re videos I grew up with, and will always find a place in my heart for. However, a few years ago, as many of you probably know, they themselves became the centre of attention after one of the subjects of their videos: a gentleman by the name of Matt Hoss, decided to sue them for copyright infringement. It had been regularly debated on how much commentary constituted fair use, and with h3’s videos, there was an uneasy trepidation that maybe, if the ruling went in the favour of the plaintiff, that a new gauntlet would be set down for further lawsuits in this domain.
Fortunately the case was won by our protagonists here, and they triumphantly returned to the platform, cheered on by the platform itself, and many creators whose livelihoods seemed to depend on the verdict. However, you can’t really undo the stress that such a case would cause you, and in the aftermath it seemed difficult to return to that content with the same sort of gusto that they’d previously bore. And it’s hard to blame them, if anything a lawsuit which requires such an investment would inevitably sap the fun out of the content that in many ways served as an escape at one point. So, over time, they seemed to distance themselves further from the formula that they had once been inseparable from, venturing into new pastures, including the one we mentioned earlier: the podcast.
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The Right Opinion: The Curious Case of CreepShow Art - A Question of Character | TRO ft. SisterZio & ItzRooster
0:00 - Intro
3:34 - Introduction
9:33 - The Content Cycle
19:11 - Strike 1
26:42 - Strike 2
34:17 - Addressing The Faults
43:37 - This Is Her
51:35 - Hopeless
1:11:51 - Peaches
1:16:56 - Strike 3
1:22:38 - Strike 4?
1:28:43 - The Real Amy
2:09:55 - Shannon's Return
2:19:30 - Emily's Response
2:30:14 - Breadcrumbs
2:37:44 - Moving On
Intro:
Covering drama, isn’t it just the most fun pastime to talk about?
Well, not always, but as people online have grown more invested in the escapades of online creators, coverage is inevitable. At the same time, reporting can take many different forms, and over the years each audience niche has gradually been filled by their corresponding correspondents, whether that’s to do with breaking the news as it happens with an emphatic tone, or analysing the intricacies of a situation through a more retrospective perspective. What matters to people is that they have a voice relaying to them what’s going on in the world, and that voice is at least somewhat reliable, from there they can construct their own hot takes to share to their social media accounts that permeate their relative platforms.
A lot of content is typically very organised, with attention to production value and a clear structure, even if it may not be the most highbrow. However, this sort of content can also have its disadvantages, my sort of content even, it can feel quite distant to some viewers, and if that audience can’t connect to the creator, then they may not feel an interest in the topic that they’re talking about. Sometimes, organisation is unattractive, as much as it pains me to admit. In those cases, viewers may find solace in a creator with a more casual approach to talking about drama, one that reacts to it in an unedited, and unrestrained way, that reflects our innate human reaction to the discovery of revelations about certain shenanigans, and that’s the genre where the person at the centre of today’s video thrived, a person by the name of CreepShow Art.
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The Right Opinion: How Dream Became A Target - A Reflection On Stan Culture | TRO
0:00 - Surfshark Sponsorship
1:58 - Introduction
8:08 - Fever Dream
14:05 - Parasociety
22:16 - Loyalty
27:56 - Influence
34:02 - Timebomb
41:43 - Countdown
48:29 - $ell Out
54:37 - Running Down A Dream
1:02:40 - Bad Dream
1:11:22 - Rinse and Repeat
1:17:14 - The Mask
1:24:15 - Human
1:30:46 - Intentions
1:36:11 - Provocative
1:46:12 - Stan Culture
1:53:38 - Dream Vs. The World
2:02:20 - Finale
2:09:39 - Conclusion & Credits
Dream is a Minecraft YouTuber, he started his channel in 2014, assuming the moniker of “DreamTraps”, and although it didn’t take him too long to hit 1,000 subs, his channel stagnated after that, and although he’s on record doing a little gaming with his friends, and interacting on Twitter, these few years seem pretty uneventful by a YouTuber’s standard. However, this all changed in 2019, where Minecraft was experiencing a bit of a renaissance amongst online communities, and creators alike.
However, it was also a refreshed sense of interest, not necessarily based in nostalgia, and this created a gap for new creators to rise up and fill the increased demand for Minecraft based content. Dream was one of those eager creators, and he wasn’t just any old chump mooching off its popularity, he was a seasoned and experienced patron of the game, and his skills were regularly showcased in the content he produced, which often revolved around challenges that tested his in-game ability, as well as his rather popular Minecraft Manhunt series. Although he wasn’t regarded as a force of personality, his proficiency with the game at hand was highly admirable, and as more people tuned in, his channel picked up momentum, though I’m not sure anyone could have quite predicted where he would be today.
You see, in the space of two years, he went from a thousand subscribers or so to over twenty million, which I think is what some would call “blowing up”. He streams with a crew known as the “Dream Team”, which includes old and new friends alike, he uploads on a semi-regular basis, has various successful side hustles. It would be fair to take a glance at his channel and say he’s doing alright for himself, but is it the full story?
Such a great amount of success, in such a short amount of time is certainly a lot to adjust to, alongside the increased sense of influence and responsibility you hold. However, it’s nothing that creators online aren’t used to, is it?
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0:00:00 - Introduction
0:06:20 - Setting The Scene
0:13:50 - The Anti-Feminist
0:21:54 - The Good One
0:29:25 - The Playground
0:37:39 - A New Leaf
0:47:37 - Changes
0:56:42 - One Step Back
1:04:28 - A New Calling
1:13:19 - Ground Hog Day
1:22:23 - God I'm So Done
1:31:38 - The Moderate
1:42:06 - The Hill
1:51:12 - The Fall
2:00:34 - The Apology
2:09:47 - Credibility
2:17:32 - The Blaire White Saga
2:24:39 - It Never Ends
2:32:42 - Moderation
2:46:00 - Conclusion & Credits
Intro:
I recall back to my Q&A in March, when The Nostradamus Opinion announced that the year seemed to calming down, which in hindsight, was a slightly a misguided forecast, in fact, I’d positively say it was a kiss of death, as the world has careened towards its frankly, well-deserved armageddon.
Honestly, I’ve not handled it too well personally, to see so much going on often makes me want to curl up into a ball and hibernate, or aestivate if you consider when all this was happening. At the same time, there’s always reason within the chaos, and I’ve always lived by the philosophy that I’d emerge from hardships a wiser man, and a part of me hopes that would be similarly applicable on a macro level as well. However, we’ll never reach that if we can’t have a proper, mature discussion to understand how such discord has arisen, and at times where emotions can run high we often need voices of reason to lead that discourse forward, so that we can all learn from such adversities.
In the past few years in particular, I feel that YouTube has become increasingly integral to that conversation, introducing a new generation to the many complex, and sometimes not as complex matters facing down today’s youth, with online creators engaging audiences through fresh mediums, acquainting them with new ideas and perspectives. Although the nature of my channel can be a little biographical, I hope that people have found value in the viewpoints I have to share. And you know what? I’d say the feedback has been broadly positive. One way that people recognise the work you do is what some regard as “Year end lists”, where people compile a selection of their favourite creators, and post it to their preferred social media site.
At the end of 2019, I was once again honoured by being placed amongst YouTubers who put great effort into their respective hustle, however, one name whose presence I was surprised to see was a commentator by the name of Blaire White.
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00:00 | Part 1 - Intro
~
07:24 | Part 2 - Mini Chadd
14:13 | Part 3 - Mad Ladd
21:58 | Part 4 - Mini Gladd
27:56 | Part 5 - Mini Dadd
35:20 | Part 6 - Mini Cladd
42:28 | Part 7 - Mini Fadd
52:02 | Part 8 - Mini Cadd
1:01:05 | Part 9 - Mini Sadd
1:09:08 | Part 10 - His Apology
1:21:45 | Part 11 - Mini Gadd
1:30:58 | Part 12 - Mini Ladd
~
1:39:23 | Part 13 - Outro & Credits
Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Right Opinion, the home of a twat with too much free time, and the past, it’s a strange thing, and one that, in times like these, we probably long for more than ever.
Although I do relate to this sentiment, more than you can possibly know, I likely wouldn’t take anyone other than the person that I am today, minus the chronic health issues of course. Yes, if we can transpose the current version of ourselves to past scenarios, then that’s the choice that many would probably take, it would have likely saved me, and others, from unnecessary disputes and distress, however, at the same time, without many of those past scenarios, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today. In many ways, it’s a paradoxical conundrum, and the best you can do is be thankful for your present wisdom.
As internet dwellers we tend not to talk about our possibly tainted backstories too much, because other people have a nature to be quite judgemental, and if that’s not who we are today, then what right do people really have to know. However, it’s almost always important we keep the past in mind, because if not, we may be destined to repeat it, and for many people that’s the last thing we want. With this said, there are some who will repeat it regardless, whether they know it’s wrong or not, and for those individuals, well, we may have to be a bit more vocal in how we reprimand them. This is especially true if those individuals hold a relative amount of influence as say, I don’t know, a YouTuber, with dedicated fans, probably serving as a role model to a fair proportion of them. What about when said drama involves your followers? Well then, let’s discuss today’s topic…
Gamers unite, yes, we are once more heading back to that corner of YouTube to set the backdrop for today’s discourse, and we’ll begin by talking about one of the titans of the gaming community, Vanoss.
Evan Fong, also known as VanossGaming, is a creator who posts montage-style content of him and his friends playing a variety of video games, on paper, it sounds fairly unexceptional, but the editing, and interplay between Fong and his comrades has garnered widespread attention from viewers, establishing his channel as a cornerstone in the YouTube gaming subculture that has flourished in the past decade. On his channel, he would feature a retinue of creators who would aid that back-and-forth energy that buoyed his content, this roster would evolve over the years, but one individual who became a pretty regular fixture on the channel during the mid 2010s was a gentleman by the name of Mini Ladd.
0:00 - Hunt Down The Freeman
6:30 - Hunt Down The Backstory
13:39 - Hunt Down The Funding
20:49 - Hunt Down The Release
27:29 - Hunt Down The Response
42:30 - Hunt Down The Refund
52:23 - Hunt Down The Controversy
58:32 - Hunt Down The Berkan
1:05:54 - Hunt Down The Conclusion
1:13:11 - Outro & Credits
Intro:
Recently, I have been the recipient of shocking allegations, that I, am frankly astounded anyone would suggest, these are of course, the allegations, that I am in fact, not a gamer.
Fitting reaction of shock
I know my friends, I am as outraged as you are, once again, the pineapple on pizza loving heathens have the audacity to cast doubt on my gamer credentials, needless to say, I would be crying at the club, if it was open. So I guess I will have to debunk these claims by taking on another gamer topic, one which will serve as indisputable evidence for my unflinching gamer status, but for this intro, let’s talk about another curious video game that serves as the backdrop for today’s subject.
Half-Life, it’s a video game, for gamers, like me, who wish to immerse themselves in a first-person shooter with a bit more depth, with the first being released in 1998, the second in 2004, and further successive instalments being released in 2006 and 2007, as well as some additional expansion packs in between. The first game focuses around an individual by the name of Gordon Freeman, who, like many people, triggers an alien invasion when an experiment that he’s running opens up a dimensional rift in time and space. Obviously, antics ensue, and he finds himself up against a diverse plethora of enemies in his mission to return stability to this facility, and the planet alike. Obviously, my synopsis of these games will remain relatively short so I don’t spoil it for anyone planning to play it themselves, but generally speaking it’s considered by many to be one of the greatest games ever published. This is the same story with Half-Life 2, which follows our good friend Gordon a couple decades on after the events of the first, it incorporates many elements present in its predecessor, while adding new features and improving on existing ones. In spite of their shooter status, the series was characterised by its heightened sense of ambition, with Valve President Gabe Newell stating that “if Half-Life 2 isn't viewed as the best PC game of all time, it's going to completely bum out most of the guys on this team”. But Gabe need not have feared, it was released to universal acclaim from reviewers and audiences alike, and is also regarded by many as one of the greatest games of all time.
After the success of the first two games, the developers decided to further metamorphose their approach, with the plan to release a trilogy of episodes, continuing the story from the lens of our protagonist, and a new non-player character by the name of Alyx Vance, a lovely young lady who was present in the previous game, but was now receiving a more prominent role as a companion to Mr. Freeman here. The first two episodes were released to highly positive reception, however, it wasn’t quite equivalent to the rampant appraisal that the previous games had received, though this did not appear to deter them. Episode 3 should have completed the trilogy, and was planned for release in Christmas 2007, however, was initially postponed, and then cancelled following a sequence of delays and changes to company trajectory.
Since then there has been a lot of speculation as to when the long anticipated “Half-Life 3” will be released. In fact, as I’m sure many of you know, there is an infamous meme, revolving around people’s rather excitable nature to seek confirmation of the game’s announcement, indulged by many throughout the industry. On Wikipedia, there is a page exclusively dedicated to documenting unreleased Half-Life games, it seems that in spite of their revered status within gamer society, the hype surrounding prospective Half-Life projects precedes them.
The series have elevated itself to this cult-level status, and wherever there’s a devoted fanbase, there’s typically market potential, combine this with the desire simply for more Half-Life content, yet a significant lack of it in the decade following the uncompleted trilogy, and people were longing for a saviour, holding out for a hero to give them what they wanted, and from the darkness, came an unlikely salvation, but was it the one we needed, or the one we deserved.
The Real Ellen - The Bitter Truth Behind The Daytime Icon | TRO
0:00 - Sponsor's Message
0:37 - Introduction
7:50 - Precipitate
14:41 - Kindness
24:25 - Hierarchy
33:17 - Erosion
40:00 - The Hole
47:50 - Digging Deeep
55:02 - Curtains
1:03:28 - The "Real" Ellen
1:17:10 - Outro & Credits
The Right Opinion: The Family YouTuber Who Gave Away Her Son - Myka Stauffer | TRO
0:00 - Intro
9:10 - Brave New World
18:25 - After Many A Summer
25:18 - The Genius and The Goddess
31:28 - Point Counter Point
38:24 - Antic Hay
44:11 - Those Barren Leaves
52:10 - Island
58:47 - Time Must Have A Stop
Intro:
Family. For better and for worse, there is no connection like the one you create with the family, I have discussed this time and time again, so I shan’t go into too much depth on my philosophical thoughts on one’s kinsfolk, but as you are all aware by this point, emotional potential, breeds market potential, and the family channel took its place on the YouTube terrain a long time ago.
Now, family channels are no stranger to criticism. The extent that some families will go for views, often places some of the channels at odds with the rather rigorous standards that audience members impose for such creators, why do these standards exist? Well, because of the children. If you are a parent, many would assert that you have a responsibility to preserve as idyllic a childhood as possible for your offspring, and that degree of responsibility is only amplified when you’re uploading content of your family onto a public platform.
In spite of this, most criticism is typically confined to parents failing to be adequate role models, not just for their own family, but for others who they are supposed to be educating through their content. Some of these escapades may lead to some asking if they are equipped properly to even have children, however, it is seldom the parents who are asking that question, or even acting on such inclination, this is where today’s subjects appear to be an exception.
0:00 - Intro
8:56 - Disney
15:46 - Cast Away
23:19 - Rewritten
31:17 - Online
41:10 - End Of Days
51:42 - The Fall Of Club Penguin
Today, we are going back to the gaming corner of YouTube, because as I have proven time and time again, I am a gamer, and today we are looking at an online MMO which some would argue is unrivalled in the gamer spirit that it has fostered.
Now, you may have suspected an undertone of irony there, but don’t be fooled my friends, because back in the golden days when The Right Opinion was a young lad, full of zest and zeal, there were three games which shaped his online experience: those being, Runescape, Neopets, and the topic of interest today: Club Penguin.
I can’t remember which order I played them in exactly, though I could take an educated guess, but I still remember them fondly for being able to capture sentiments of wide-eyed wonder and imagination that seem far beyond my grasp these days, and I know this wasn’t just a personal experience, I’m sure many of you similarly reminisce to a time where such avenues felt like a genuine escape to a different world.
However, as time has progressed, so have we, and such memories fade into the background of a distant past. Nonetheless, I find some consolation in the thought that if I ever wanted to attempt to emulate that escapism again, those sites are, as of right now, ready and waiting to welcome me home… well, all except Club Penguin.
Yes, Club Penguin, an abandoned abode. Their tragic demise seemed intangible to many, for a site which had once boasted over 200 million registered accounts, and 30 million active users, however, its last few years have been plagued by drama and conflict, eventually culminating in a rather cataclysmic fashion.
For those who are unfamiliar, Club Penguin was an online game in which your character could take the form of a penguin, and participate in various activities all over this online world, full of many other colourful fluffy characters controlled by very real people. As a child it taught you the ropes of online safety, and interpersonal friendship. It had some pretty fun games too, and for the young mind, Club Penguin helped prepare individuals for what the internet was going to throw at us, which is an ever more important learning curve in today’s society. Yet, in spite of its relevance, it no longer plays this part in the online sphere, and today, we’ll be finding out how that happened.
However, to understand its end, we need to go back to the beginning, and maybe provide a little background for anyone who never had the privilege to roleplay online as a virtual bird, unless you’re one of those avians, of course. However, I think it’s time to bring in a friend. Now, if you’re familiar with today’s guest you may have recently seen me pull off a legendary voice performance on one of his newest videos.
0:00 - Intro
6:04 - Red Herring
12:56 - Hackerman
21:30 - Unprotected
38:51 - A Crooked System
47:38 - The Solution
Security online, it’s something that a lot of us value as a personal liberty, for our privacy, and our safety. In the last decade, security online has taken multiple steps forward, but as large platforms are taking steps to protect their users, hackers are never too far behind, always looking for methods to stir up trouble, whether that’s attempting to obtain user data, or merely hijack someone’s account for comedic purposes. Plenty of sites have encountered data breaches, it’s an unfortunate hazard that some are clearly ill-prepared for. However, as much as hackers obtaining user data justifiably causes concern on a macro basis, I think people are much more protective over the possession of their personal accounts.
Our personal accounts, regardless of size, or influence, often pertain great personal value to us, as a platform that represents our thoughts, feelings, and even our creative ventures, it’s a piece of us. That sort of thing can definitely be exemplified with one’s YouTube account, now of course many people create YouTube accounts for the mere purposes of commenting, subscribing, and following content, however for many people, a YouTube account allows us to express ourselves, and even if we’re projecting our content towards a large audience, it’s still a product which feels deeply intimate to us, which is why people care about others when they have their channels unnecessarily terminated or restricted. We like to think that all in all, YouTube, in spite of their flaws have a grip on keeping our accounts secure, however, when you look at their track record, this could be called into contention.
Over the last few years, many creators have reported their channels stolen, and subsequently used for less than dignified purposes, in fact, it seems to be an overwhelmingly common occurrence for many users. Now when you have so many channels on a website like YouTube, it seems inevitable that some accounts will be hacked, or stolen, but today we’re looking at an issue that transcends a few occurrences, and outlines a trend which appears pervasive on the platform, and encompassed by one account, which went by the name of Logan.
The Right Opinion: The Never-Ending Nightmare Of Nikocado Avocado - From Vegan To Villain | TRO
0:00 - Intro
10:28 - Origins
17:58 - New Era
27:10 - Devil's Advocado
38:04 - Calculation
46:27 - Worth The Weight
56:39 - Drama Queen
1:08:31 - Enduriance
1:17:19 - Cracked Foundations
1:31:20 - Trisha
1:42:52 - Twisted Reality
1:59:41 - The Joker
2:11:20 - Collecting the W
2:23:39 - The Standard
2:31:37 - Stephanie
2:49:26 - Nick's Retort
2:57:22 - Self-Incrimination
3:12:15 - Playing Yourself
3:39:56 - By The Sword
3:51:50 - Old Dogs
4:06:59 - New Tricks
4:18:33 - Undeniably Nick
4:28:49 - The Never-Ending Nightmare Of Nikocado Avocado
Intro:
Drama. In the world of YouTube, the word “drama” is typically used to refer to a conflict regarding a creator, or multiple creators at that. It’s a pretty central theme to the current content that I make on my channel, and is a focal point for multiple commentators alike. We tend to associate most drama with a more contemporary era of YouTube, originating from the mid 2010s, spearheaded by many commentators, and really popularised by the Content Cop series, but drama has existed since the dawn of YouTube. I remember all the way back in 2012, when I watched a lot of Call of Duty content, because, as always, I am a gamer, and there was a very renowned callout video uploaded which obtained well over a million views, and probably would have obtained many more if it had not been deleted. In an environment like that, that was hugely impressive.
However, with the constant manifestation of communities, and lack of real culture surrounding the nature of drama, with it more seeming like an unintended side effect, nothing ever seemed mould its way into YouTube history, and we tend to reminisce about the early 2010s on YouTube with the innocent nostalgia that we have since assigned to it. That’s not a facet that can be considered with commentary, and since its rise, every major conflict seems imprinted on this beautiful platform, for better and for worse.
Yet the sensation that drama provokes ever remains the same. It was still one of the most iconic feelings when that Call of Duty drama in 2012 was transpiring, it was a rush, someone being exposed, conflict within the community. The truth is plain, many creators, and audiences alike, thrive on drama, the appeal of it is indisputable, and as it has grown out of its reputation as a byproduct, and into its own genre, it becomes more powerful, and people feel less afraid to indulge their more dramatic side. On top of this, with the increased mobilisation of online communities, it has been granted additional consequential value that we can observe over the past few years.
One of the most noteworthy outcomes of this is “expose culture”, when a person makes strong or revelatory claims regarding another individual, and their behaviour, typically with the intent of depicting a character that had not been previously shown to the audience. You might find someone sitting quite sternly, glaring at the camera, before going into details of whatever they wish to disclose, or you might just see a neatly posted Twitlonger. The overarching message will tell you, this person isn’t who you thought they were, whether its mere business malpractice or something more sinister, there can be very real ramifications.
The mid 2010s weren’t just for sewing the seeds of drama, and commentary though. No, in fact many new genres rose to YouTube prominence, one of those being mukbangs. Mukbang is another delightful portmanteau whose literal translation would be eatcast, with such information you can probably take a guess at what I’m referring to.
Yes, the videos where we have an individual consuming portions of food, often accompanied by them making casual chit-chat with the audience. It originated in South Korea at the end of 2000s, but only really caught fire in 2015, when a few larger channels began to pay attention to it. Since then we’ve seen a wave of creators all over the spectrum take part, either engaging in it as a side venture, or as their dedicated pursuit.
So we have drama, and mukbang, simultaneously emerging into the limelight… two, seemingly quite distinct genres, but what would you end up with, if you merged the two together…
Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to Nikocado Avocado.
0:00 - Intro
5:59 - The Rise Of Samurai Buyer
12:26 - i Dubbbed
19:02 - Cherry Blossom
25:57 - Stormy Weather
33:09 - Collateral
43:39 - Samurai Liar
52:29 - Sayonara
Intro:
Image can be reflected in our demeanour, our actions, our comments, and equally, it will be defined by how people interpret that behaviour. When we encounter people, and other alike entities, we spend a lot of time attempting to paint a mental picture in our head for how we envision them. Now, we cannot look into their minds and read their every intention, but some judgement is always necessary, because when we have to make a decision which may involve bestowing responsibility or trust in certain people, then that mental picture has to be factored in.
However, this is typically reserved for personal relationships, and although we may hold greater opinions about certain issues, we won’t typically assign a face to it. This is particularly the case with corporations. Now, it’s completely valid to have distaste for companies and their conduct, but it’s also reasonable to accept that most companies are made up of a lot of interacting tiers, and this can lead to them pretty much being separated from the idea of consciousness altogether. Although I wouldn’t actually agree with that, and urge others to keep in mind that a decision will typically have a person behind it, it is often hard to conceptually feel any emotional connection to what a company may do, hell, if we did we’d probably never stop being upset, and we need to look out for our mental well being too you know.
YouTube occupies a weird medium between the world of intimacy and distance, because although we may not feel a connection to a lot of creators on a personal level, their success partly relies on the direct support that we pledge towards them. A lot of celebrities feel a bit beyond our world, and YouTube creates communities that people can be involved in, however, because of that, there is a bit more direct accountability, and a judgement that does feel a little more personal. Therefore, we tend to apply certain standards for creators that we may not give to large multinational corporations, partly because of that connection, and partly because we actually have the power to hold them accountable.
Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed companies attempt to be quote “woke”, and relate to the human condition, yet it never feels particularly real because, although amusing, you receive the impression it’s just another campaign focused towards the demographic of depressed teenagers who occupy the Twitter hellscape. On top of this, the Tweets are never really channeled through the mind of an individual, and therefore we never put a face to the company or develop a personal connection.
However, in 2015, a business managed to infiltrate a budding YouTube community, through a character who would become almost synonymous with the product that he was offering. Yes, long before BetterHelp would cause many creators to reevaluate how they keep an eye on the sponsors they collaborate with, there was an even more bewildering controversy, surrounding one of the most iconic YouTube sponsors: Samurai Buyer.
0:00 - Intro
7:32 - Actually
15:31 - Sharing Is Caring
25:33 - Ownership
37:07 - The Response
48:14 - Dissonance
1:00:20 - Small Change
1:11:47 - The Animators
1:28:05 - Unanswered Questions
1:36:05 - The Answers
Intro:
Now, when someone reached out to me about this situation, I will admit, I was not familiar with DanPlan, and in spite of their approximately 2 million strong fanbase, many of my friends were not familiar with their content either, so I sat down and watched a lot of DanPlan. Now I think I have a decent grasp, I will briefly summarise their origins and content, just so people have a grip on how they created such a significant following.
DanPlan as a channel was established in July 2014 by their titular creators: Daniel, and his friend Hosuh, with the first upload coming soon after.
This was the first instalment of their “By the way” series, the video consisted of a slightly crudely drawn character discussing a story told by his youth pastor. Now, the audio could be better, and this video only appears to include Dan himself, but you can definitely see the origins of a great channel in the making, a lot of Hosuh’s creative illustrations enhance Dan’s stories on a comedic basis, and Dan’s outgoing nature makes him an effective storyteller, there was definitely potential here.
However, this series didn’t receive much attention following its initial upload. Animation was in a bit of a lull at that point, and thus it was probably not worth putting too many eggs in that basket. After this DanPlan spent just under a couple years dedicated to gaming content, which was much more popular at the time. These gaming videos weren’t the most unique, though they were often presented more like highlight reels, and used character heads to represent different people talking. Dan was the consistent host of these videos, gaming with a varying roster of guests, such as Anna, Billy, Jay, and of course, Hosuh. However, there was one more character to introduce to this story, that person goes by the name of Stephen.
Stephen was introduced on the 5th of September, 2015, in the upload “Yamete, Titan Senpai”, in which he, and of course, Dan, and Hosuh, played the Attack On Titan tribute game. Like Hosuh, and many of their other friends, they were acquainted through school and college, and for these comrades, this was just a regular gaming session which happened to be uploaded onto YouTube. Stephen was not one of the original members, but he quickly became a recurring guest on the channel as other individuals began to appear less. However, these gaming videos, although enjoyable for those who participated, didn’t set the channel on fire, gaining DanPlan only 50 subscribers. So come May 2016, the “By The Way” series was resumed, but this time, with a slightly different format. ..
Watch the rest of the video for more.
This content is meant to inform, educate, and document, and should be strictly interpreted in that context.
Intro Preview:
Ah anime… my favourite, what do people who like anime say... uwu? I’m gonna level with you guys here, one of my most commonly asked questions is if I watch anime, and although I have seen a couple movies when I was much younger: Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, I haven’t really had the chance to enjoy much of it, although I have heard great things, and I really do respect the art, some of the art is truly beautiful. Now anime has been relatively popular since the early 20th century, it obviously originated in Japan, and often represented the cultural zeitgeist at the time.
The development of digital mediums has allowed the art to flourish and expand into new genres. One of those is of course, the video game genre. There are many anime video games, and it was in the video game heyday of the 1980s that anime inspired video games, and video game inspired anime rose to prominence. Since then, their popularity has continued to extend beyond their borders, with the style attaining international prestige amongst a variety of audiences. I also want to take a moment to talk about manga, which is typically used to refer to comics and graphic novels, often created in the Japanese style, manga precedes anime, and although mangas may be made reflecting an anime style, they are by no means the same. However, there is overlap, that overlap can be demonstrated in many characterisations of individuals, this is where we meet the Yandere.
Yandere is a portmanteau (which is our word of the day) of the words “Yanderu” and “Deredere”, Yanderu meaning sick, and deredere meaning infatuated, deeply in love. So combined you reach the lovely idea that this person is in love to a sick extent, they will do anything for their senpai, even if that means often less than charitable activities. This personality trait is attributed to manga, however, it has gained popularity in anime as well, with many characters being modelled around that mould. The psychotic behaviour paired with an often cute design seems to be a good contrast that has become quite the rave, and it wasn’t until one very cheeky game developer had a very cheeky idea, how about we make a whole video game from the perspective of a Yandere.
That cheeky game developer was a person by the name of Alex Mahan, currently operating under the very fitting name of Yandere Dev.
Watch more to find out...
Intro:
V shows, honestly something that I have an interest in, but seldom get around to actually watching.
My biggest problem is how much time they tend to consume, and although I promise you, I have too much free time™, it’s not time that I typically decide to dedicate all towards one TV show, I like to allocate it across various activities to maintain mental well-being, because after all, in this world called YouTube, we can all use that from time to time. I mostly indulge my time in films, which are typically shorter in total (with exceptions), and gaming, because, as I have always asserted, I am a gamer. Nonetheless, recently I have found myself in an interesting predicament because YouTube’s slow monetisation process has basically delayed so many of my videos that I found myself with a week on my hands, and a desire to cover something slightly different.
So, without further ado, I suggest we tackle that slightly different subject on this glorious, glorious day, and if you have basic reading capabilities you will know that this is 13 Reasons Why.
At one point, I had also planned to make this a kinda “New Year’s” thing, but knowing how long these videos take I think there’s a reasonable chance that it’s closer to next year by the time this video’s out. That is of course a hilarious joke, though you may have believed it regardless. Obviously this is a minor instalment in the TRO catalogue, but I still think it’s a necessary one. As implied in the title, there will be a Q&A that will hopefully provide you a little more insight on the man behind the avatar, I also have a fair few announcements to make, but first of all, I would love to spend some time thanking those who have helped me on this rather chaotic journey.
The main party who have probably played the most prominent part in the advancement, are of course, the editors. Now, as you probably know, I have a fair few editors, so I’ll be leaving them all in the pinned comment, however, I do want to give a few special mentions to individuals who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in the past few months in particular. It’s hard to know exactly who to start with but I’d like to mention Peter Day, he has worked around the clock with some of the toughest edits and post-edits, when other people haven’t been quite able to deliver, he has been on call every time, no exception, the dude is a superhuman and I can’t understate that. We’re going to be working on a new channel project together and I can’t wait to get on that ground.
I’d also like to give thanks to anyone who has helped post-edit on a regular basis, most notably to Lanooski and Mullenax, if you’ve ever heard Danganronpa music in the background then I can tell you that was the product of Mullenax’s magic. They’re both also really talented editors on their own terms with really distinctive styles, I love what they do and all three of these beautiful people have been working with me for over a year, and I hope that we can continue through this year.
I’d also like to give a mention to people who have consistently delivered high quality edits on a regular basis, a large majority of them have, and we’ve all worked on improving throughout the year, it’s good to slowly work to push the bar higher, and I hope I can match their quality. I also want to give a huge shout out to my Discord server, the admins, and the head admin and furry, Derumisis. Many of you probably don’t know that when I was starting off I ran Colossal Is Crazy’s server for a bit, and it was an absolute nightmare. Discord has obviously made it easier to manage certain elements since then, but it’s still a challenge, and when I was working on it, it was always tough to make the decision that I felt would represent Colossal the best. So if you see him, tell him he does an alright job and that he’s a furry, he loves to be told that he’s a furry.
I’d also like to thank my Patrons, for their support, it gives me a bit more security when talking about topics that may be sensitive, obviously I’m always paying money out to others for their work on my videos and so their contributions are a lifeline. I don’t really plug my Patreon too much, I only mention it right at the end of the videos, and a lot of people tend to click off at that point so the fact that people wanna actively involve themselves like that does mean a lot to me. With special mention to the 50 dollar Patreons: Caroline, Niko Deschamps, and somehulabaloo, the latter who has been supporting for over a year now. And extra special mention to Brandon, Stanton and Christopher Karas, my a hundred dollar Patreons, Brandon who, once again, has been donating over a year now. I actually have never met him, but if you’re watching from afar, know that your generosity doesn’t go unnoticed.
Intro:
A lot of what we’ve observed, is initially the product of putting your life online, Onision has in a way, created his own story through the medium of YouTube, and I’ve often wondered if Greg sees his life like a movie, one where he plays the main character, one where he can be this role model to so many other people. This individual, always on the line between good and evil, I mean we saw that in his little project, he had this dark, and light theme, and this sort of line between them, but the thing is you can’t easily manufacture such a character, unless you’re a real artist, and the problem was that Greg clearly integrated a lot of his own personal investments into this character, a lot of strange desires that didn’t merely involve him, and ultimately that led to people being hurt. Movies are often movies for a reason, we may idolise some characters, we may even see parts of ourselves in the worst people, but self-control is a necessary constituent that should be exercised, especially when you’re a public figure with great responsibility.
The way that Onision had cultivated his audience gave him an even greater responsibility than many creators, because his audience were highly committed to him as a personality, and would likely be heavily influenced by his behaviour. He had carved out this corner on the internet that was relatively isolated from reality. Onision was never interested in responsibility, and over time, he had managed to isolate various people who bought into his doctrine more closely, and did, for a significantly amount of time, whether by luck or by judgement, get away with it.
As mentioned at the end of the last video, by September 2019, the tides were beginning to turn, instigated by many people, but brought forward by a person named Sarah primarily, arguably the most concerning example of the people that he involved in his life. A lot of people at this point had already been dunking on Onision, he was a popular target that accumulated views, but this was what finally pushed many people over the top with their criticisms, and it went from “Look at this dude”, to “Look at this dude”. These criticisms have mostly amounted to focusing on his behaviour, although there are many actions that shouldn’t be ignored.
It wasn’t just a control thing over Onision's audience, it was something that he wanted to bring into his personal life, and that which could be found in all of his relationships, often to a degree in which questions would be asked. That’s where we’re going now. I don’t think this part needs too much of an intro, I suggest we just make like DeFranco and jump right in.
If you’ve watched my part in J Aubrey’s video, you’ll likely know that I have had the displeasure of researching a large majority Onision’s relationships while on YouTube, back then, however, it was a matter of tackling the subject from a standpoint of neutrality. Now we are back on my channel and we have already discussed a strong level of theory as it is, I feel we can take that evidence that was shown and use it more inductively.
Onision is a control freak, he wants to shape his life around the fantasies, many of which involve YouTube, and involve people. Having control over a fanbase is one thing, having control over a partner is another, as said, physical proximity works in very significant ways, and by creating relationships he could manufacture new conflicts to present to his audience, but he had his preference.
I don’t know if his choice to enter relationships with younger girls was a kink thing or more a control thing, but going after people who are lacking direction, in a vulnerable position, and open to having someone support them often led Onision to relationships with those between the ages of 16 and 18. Over the years, as he aged, and as he got through a fair few relationships, the age gaps increased, showing that he was still targeting the same people? What exactly did he want? Let’s talk about the relationships of Onision.
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The Right Opinion: The Deranged Cult Of Onision | TRO (ft. The Squad) (@Pinely, @Internet Historian, @Mista GG, @JAubrey & @Fainted)
Intro:
FPSRussia isn’t spoken about too much today, but you know, I think he should be. It’s hard to think of a better example of a creator who could create content catered to popular interests, while uploading videos whose style probably wouldn’t have worked on any other platform besides YouTube. Yes, I have a hunch if the gents over at Sons of Guns suddenly started putting on slightly subpar Russian accents, the producers over at the Discovery Channel may have been rather unimpressed. Though honestly, it'd be the least of their worries considering what happened with the host of that show. However, for those who are a bit newer to the platform, you may not be completely familiar with the background of today’s subject: FPSRussia: aka Kyle, so the next five minutes or so will be focused on that.
Like every creator, FPSRussia did have an extensive history on the platform, starting on the extremely catchy name klm5986. He was originally a gaming channel, who went by the name FPS Kyle. I assume at some point he decided that what happened if he did gaming, but with a Russian accent, and thus FPSRussia was born, because initially this was also a gaming channel, a gaming channel that performed relatively well. Hell, there was even the odd comment that he was about to reach success, and boy did he, but probably not in the way that people predicted.
Apparently finding out that this accent was fake, was like finding out Santa wasn’t real. Well kids, if you’re watching this, Santa is as real as this accent, do what you want with that statement.
Intro
I know that was a bit of an abrupt segue, but there is a morbid fascination we have with celebrities who didn’t necessarily bow out in the most graceful fashion. When someone with such great potential, and such apparent success, is victim to the tragedy of a premature demise, particularly those of artificial sorts. We’re left thinking about what might have been for that individual, and we’re also encouraged to reflect on the industry that may have manufactured such an outcome.
Now make no mistake, some of these individuals were incredibly prolific regardless of their life, and you don’t want to overstate it as if it was to take away from their artistic contribution, but when someone passes away that contribution is often frozen in that moment, and we are drawn to the attention of what that has taken away from us as individuals. A really great example of that was Stefán Karl Stefánsson, the guy who played Robbie Rotten, and provided me, and many others with the numerous memes that yielded from the We Are Number One meme, his diagnosis, recovery, relapse was an emotional rollercoaster that many people were on all the way, but the final outcome also reflected something else.
Because we were there throughout the situation, we had the time to provide our support to someone we loved. Popular individuals leaving this world prematurely is not the most common event, and often what is even rarer is being able to foresee the possibility of that, and therefore the journey to that destination is often a fight we want to be there for. There’s an emotional battle that gives us purpose, to know that we might make a difference in that battle.
Therefore, it was natural when people found out that today’s subjects were facing, they wanted to show their support, who are those subjects? Well, they are a pair of YouTubers by the name of XtremeGamez, the Australian brothers of Thomas and Jonathan, who do what you want to see, have fun, play games, and chill. They describe their content as family friendly, and kid friendly, and in their five years on YouTube, they’ve built up the fairly sturdy subscriber count of 4.24 million, and over 314 million views, pretty impressive. Where did those views come from?
Well, who remembers ProGamerJay? No-one? Well, a couple years back he was the punching bag for many commentators who found his content a bit, well, laughable, he was notorious for rather misleading, albeit amusing clickbait, his most well known was a video that was titled “If you see red then you are colourblind” or words to that effect, as he has changed it since then, the cheeky bugger. However, although many people picked on him, maybe due to his delivery. He was part of a greater trend, that was represented by multiple creators, even to this day, that rated the power of leading your audience to believe that they were doing something higher stake than what actually happened within the video. Now with that said, a lot of these channels specialised in various areas of clickbait, there was obviously a significant amount of overlap but they all occupied various corners. Honestly, these videos should have died out much faster than they did, but some have in fact persisted. They either moved into the creative maestros such as MrBeast who actually follow through on their clickbait, or a level of uninspired irony that I, and other audiences, appear to still be attempting to understand, such as Morgz.
Who is the man behind this channel, who am I? Well, to be honest, it’s not really of great importance, and I’d prefer to keep my identity mostly private, although at this point it’s a bit late for that. Big shoutout to the news websites who published my name.
However, it doesn’t have much significance in the general discussion, because I am just one person presenting what they know and what they think, and honestly, the people behind the respective YouTube channels aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things, and it’s so bizarre that today’s situation seems more important to many creators than it would appear on the surface.
So let’s go back over to the tea community. The tea community has a lot of players in its complex game, firstly the large beauty creators who produce content for millions of individuals. This content is fairly unproblematic on principle, but as observed, their demeanour is quite melodramatic, and there’s a reason why melodramatic has the word “drama” in it. Along with drama came people with opinions on that drama, who would have thought, you might even say that many of these channels provided commentary.
Now, typically the people who provided commentary were individuals with some level of proficiency in reporting of this drama. Their style may not exactly be for everyone but they have an audience, and it seems that many of them are legitimately invested in the outcome of this drama. Many of these creators are quite tabloid, and some are as dramatic as the genre they cover, and honestly, that’s alright, as long as people don’t come to expect anything more from the channels. That’s what commentary is, opinion based ideas, and if you disagree with that person, that’s okay too.
However, at the same time, some people may want a more in depth perspective on YouTube drama, a lot of commentators aren’t the most involved in that, and that’s fine, not everyone has the time to sit down for a 30 minute summary of something that really isn’t the most consequential in their life. Nonetheless, there is a demand, and that demand exists in every genre, so it was natural, within the beauty community, eventually a channel would emerge with more focus on creating long form content that focuses on the delivery and the depth of information rather than merely the gut reaction to it.
The channel that appeared to answer these prayers was a creator by the name of Spill, like the fairly simplistic name, their content never assumes too much about the subjects that they’re covering, and focuses more on the delivery of this information in a journalistic and well cited way, with the conclusions often being well informed and providing some sort of additional insight. They started their channel on the 5th of September 2018, and in the following year have accumulated a pretty healthy 930,000 subscribers. They often received praise from many audiences and creators for representing information in an unbiased and thorough fashion. Spill also appeared to be creating this more deeply rooted nexus, which is our word of the day by the way. This was represented by three additional channels, Brew, Grill, and On The Hill, which all have their own dynamic.They were good at what they did, however, perhaps a little too good.
Intro:
So today we’re going to wade into one of the most unique stories of a cultural manifestation there is, and talk about someone who at a time of sensitivity, caused so much controversy, yet no-one really took seriously. That person is WoahVicky.
WoahVicky, originally branded as Victoria Waldrip, is the YouTube phenomenon that could only be the product of the post-2016 reality that we appear to live in, I don’t remember where I was when I discovered WoahVicky, but it’s clear that honestly I was completely fine with not being able to remember, because Victoria here had a persona that is rather hard to forget. In fact I did cover her in a video a long time ago, back when I was making much shorter videos, however, I don’t really think I provided too much nuance than arguing that shock horror, WoahVicky isn’t African-American…
Now, if this is the first time you’ve heard of this character you may wonder why on earth I would have to argue such a presumed thesis, what would I do next? Argue that Arnold Schwarzanegger is Austrian? Who on earth would argue that such a character is identifiable as an ethnicity that they very seemingly appear to not represent.
Ah yes, Vicky herself… that was what of course made her rather infamous, you see, in the summer of seventeen, when we should have all been enjoying the sunny weather, storm clouds began to form, this presence, on Twitter, and Instagram, of this character. Who openly used certain sensitive words rather liberally, and justified it under the notion of her identity. Through this provocative behaviour she quickly gathered a following of a variety of individuals, I assume some people genuinely liked her, but many were also there to just dish out heavy criticism and to clown on her whenever she decided to provide her less than nuanced input on matters of race. Through this she quickly gained infamy, with many of the attention, whether positive or negative, snowballing into publicity, after all, “White girl thinks she’s black” is arguably some of the best clickbait, and also it’s an easy topic that people love to jump in on because although socially loaded, no-one’s gonna call you out for making fun of her, but why the hunger? Because although the appeal could be observed, it seems strange that people would develop such a desire to clown on such a unique brand of person.
I’ve spoken about this before in my rather old Lil Tay video, but there is this show called Dr. Phil, it’s basically aimed to be a more, therapeutic, professional version of shows such as Jerry Springer, the Pyrocynical to your Leafy per se. On Dr. Phil, he often invites a multitude of guests on who are undergoing conflict within their lives, whether between their friends, family, or themselves, it will often escalate with dispute, with Phil attempting to take a more mediating position and attempting to provide some form of counselling, this has had its fair share of criticism in the past and maybe I’ll dissect that one day, but for now there is one episode that I think is quite important to focus on, and it is of course the episode that includes Danielle Bregoli.
Intro:
My content has been a long journey from 2016, where I would rant about domestic UK politics and figures who most people watching this video probably wouldn’t even know in the slightest, to 2019, where I make long form videos on drama and conflicts, and the sorts of mentalities that lie behind them. However, one thing has never changed, the fact that I do care deeply about the topics I discuss. Every now and then I get the comment about how I’ve changed from what I used to do and honestly I have, and it has brought me more considerable success than previous topics of interest, but honestly if I wasn’t interested in the topics I spoke about, if I wasn’t invested in it, if I didn’t think I had something to say, then I probably wouldn’t have the tolerance to talk about it for half an hour in multiple videos. Make no mistake, you don’t have to like my videos, but I definitely care about them.
And that’s the thing, I’ve always loved talking, in case you don’t have that impression already, and I love having opinions on everything, and honestly if I don’t have an opinion on something it just probably means that I haven’t had the time to look into it. I’ve always argued that it’s important to care about the content that you’re actually making, I obviously can’t sit here and look into the mind of every single person that I’m analysing in my videos, which is why I don’t tend to state intent, but I obviously have my own opinions on why I feel they made their videos, but it would be such a level of conjecture that I seldom include speculation. Personally, it’s always safer to side on the benefit of the doubt when making videos about people’s intent because I think a false negative is much more harmful than a false positive. If people take the assumption that a person is good, then that may still have grounds to be changed in the future about that person, however, if the community assumes a person is bad, then I do think it gives that person a tougher job. Nonetheless, when someone behaves in a way that I feel does underline a much deeper mentality of that creator then we should take the chance to call them out, not just for audience awareness of the specific situation, but of the underlying mentality that can often drive these incidents. This is where we meet Brooke Houts.
Intro:
Twitch and YouTube, although having a lot of creator overlap, also have very different dynamics, which is why there are people who use both platforms. In a way, it seems that there is a mutual understanding, Twitch understand that they probably can’t compete with YouTube’s upload features, and YouTube, although attempting to have their own stream assets, know that Twitch’s specialised setup are a bit of a step up from their own. Twitch and YouTube, however, due to the overlap, will have similar audiences, and that means that you can typically expect that you can find some underlying commonalities in the popular content creators, one of those markets being: attractive females.
Now, being an attractive female does not predispose you to success, but in the glorious society that we live in, many younger individuals feel excitement from viewing people who may be attractive, probably the YouTube embodiment of this character is SSSniperwolf, you know, that person who won a gaming award, even though she switched to reaction commentary ages ago. She flossed, and although I can’t say for sure, my judgement deemed it lacking the sufficient irony to be classed as remotely humorous, she’s also doing it with very little gusto, I want more effort next time. Now, I don’t doubt that Sniperwolf has a great business mind, but as a creator, her work sometimes leaves a lot to be desired…
This is what I’d class as the sort of “attractive female content”, and I’m not stating that being attractive is a prerequisite for success exclusive for females, there’s a reason I haven’t started doing facecam content yet, and it’s clear that it’s good clickbait that might grab external audiences, but in the core fanbase, yeah…
So yes, SSSniperwolf may be the best example of the exploitation of that sort of appeal, however, very few people necessarily see her reflective of YouTube’s cultural landscape, in spite of the significant views she pulls and the number of times she ends up on YouTube’s trending. If I was to say “women of YouTube”, people would probably come up with a variety of answers, Lele Pons, Jenna Marbles, Lilly Singh etc. If you asked any standard creator about the “women of Twitch”, well you’d probably hear an answer that encapsulates one of the more notorious genres.
Intro:
Gaming festivals, who loves them?
I mean, honestly, I think gaming festivals would be really swell if there were less people, because I do like video games, but I don’t like having to wait to play them, often I just find myself aimlessly wandering and occasionally bumping into people who I may have seen at previous events and retaking the same photo, just this time with a slightly greater inkling of fatigue reflected in my weary smile. The pinball machines are great though, especially when you don’t have to pay for them. Hooray for free things, anyhow, the gaming festival that is of interest is Insomnia Gaming Festival 64, abbreviated to i64, this ran from the Easter weekend from the 19th to the 22nd of April. I saw a lot of close friends again, and met a lot of great creators, it’s always nice to do so because it humanises all these people and puts the internet into perspective. One of the people I met at the event was a bloke called Michael, known online as Slazo. He was pleasant, I had some facetious flirtatious exchanges with him, and after the event my life carried on. I knew some of the creators that I had met there were going to London afterwards, I would’ve joined them, but alas, I had University to complete, and I still feel YouTube is an unstable source of income so I wanted something to fall back onto in the case of everything falling apart.
A few weeks later, around mid May, I was likely alternating between University work and checking my social blade when one of my acquaintances messaged me some news. Apparently, Slazo, the person who I had multiple exchanges with at i64, was going to be shown up, he was just as surprised as I was. Apparently, these claims were going to be published in a TwitLonger in the following week, so I waited with anticipation, as I hadn’t actually seen any of the evidence I didn’t really talk to anyone about it, although I did tell one of my friends who was making a documentary about i64 to perhaps consider excluding any footage with him in, in case it tainted the finished product, more as an act of caution really. So I waited, and waited, and waited…
US: 1-800-273-8255
UK: 116 123
Australia: 13 11 14
Canada: 1-833-456-4566
Netherlands: 0900 0113
Germany: 0800 111 0 111 (Protestant), 0800 111 0 222 (Catholic), 0800 111 0 333 (for children and youth)
Further International List:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
Now, by the time this video is released it’ll probably mid July earliest, anything before that will probably be a miracle, and I’ll have to find a way to celebrate, but given my track record of how to quote “celebrate” I might open myself up to suggestions. But yeah, it’s Pride Month and I assume most of you guys have the memo for what happens, it’s nothing too defined, but then again, neither is the community.
The community has a very significant online presence, and it’s perfectly natural that many people may take the hopefully supportive atmosphere to talk about their experiences, or even come out themselves. YouTube, in spite of its often rocky relationship with the LGBT community, for many justified reasons, provided one of the greatest, most personal mediums for creators to have unique moments that would not be captured on the TV. Making the individual the direct owner of their creation, managed to create content more personal, and with personal content, comes personal problems. One of those prevailing problems was sexuality.
The internet is a hotbed of social outcasts, for many reasons, and YouTube was a platform for those people to converge in a place where they didn’t need the socially accepted qualifications to go places. This led to a real platform for the LGBT community, with one of the real staples being “coming out videos”. Coming out videos are pretty self-explanatory, they involve one individual coming out as LGBT to friends, family, or even you, the audience. It was a meaningful experience often for both creators, who may have felt isolated in their moment of vulnerability, and audiences who may be looking for guidance on how to traverse these scenarios themselves. YouTube has been important for that.
However, it’s certainly not every day a highly popular, reputable public YouTube figure decides not just to come out, but to come out in a way that deals with it in an incredibly introspective and detailed fashion with multiple social statements. However, the individual that I have decided to cover today has just done that, that individual is Daniel Howell, also known from the YouTube duo: Dan and Phil.
Howell is bona fide YouTube unit, he’s been on the platform since 2009, and really does represent the wholesome online come up that many people like to visualise regarding the website. His style definitely represented the syndicate of sketch YouTubers that were sprouting from the fertile earth at that point, but make no mistake, Howell was his own creator, and definitely represented the Brits well on that side, capturing the irony tainted cynicism that is signature to much of our humour. It’s also content that has aged incredibly well, in this video, he basically predicts stan culture.
Nonetheless, in spite of the very idiosyncratically British tone, this received appreciation across the globe, and his channel proceeded to gain a strong amount of traction, he continued to work with his compadre Phil Lester, of AmazingPhil, and created this entertaining sketch content, that continued to thrive for a good few years. Increasing production values, furthering the creative vision, working on new channels, such as their epic gaming ventures, and moving beyond YouTube, most notably to their show on BBC Radio 1 very aptly named: Dan and Phil.
The fact that at a time, where YouTube still wasn’t quite at its level of cultural magnitude, a pair of British lads could use that content to gain a spot on arguably the most iconic British radio station should be a real testament to how significant they were in the landscape of YouTube.
However, when you have all that fame dropped in your lap, you sometimes find it difficult to express who you really are. Content will always be reflective of an individual to an extent, but at the same time it’s not gonna tell you who the person behind the camera is, and people start to theorise, for various reasons that we’ll break down in a bit. Fan fictions, and the rest, Dan even entertained a purposefully bizarre fanfiction which, in hindsight think was meant to be a bait-and-switch for those who wanted to find out more about their relationship, perhaps even taking a pot shot at those same theorists.
I always received the impression that many of Dan’s videos were just meant to be ironic takedowns masqueraded in fan popular content, I kinda love it. Nonetheless, the theories remained, and persisted, and at a point, Dan just went kinda quiet on the content front, now, unlike Phil, he was not necessarily known for his incredibly regular uploads, and when you get this deep into your career sometimes it’s therapeutic to take a break, and it wasn’t like he fell off the face of the earth, so no-one was really ready for what he was about to drop.
*Part that was missed*
The United States has a system known as congress, this is made up of the senate and the house, the senate is considered the more senior chamber, with more experienced individuals, elections ran through these are typically pretty notable, and chances are you’ve heard of your senator if you’re American, and vaguely interested in politics, the Senate is pretty exclusive with few senators often covering large areas. Joey isn’t running for that, he’s running for the lower chamber, known as the house. This is really the place where you enter into politics, chances are you won’t know many congresspeople unless you’re really involved, and there is a much greater number of them. Each state that would otherwise have two senators, is now much more split on the basis of population, some with such low populations that they’re not split at all.
But New York is a populous state, and New York the city is a populous city, so the 11th District that Joey is running for isn’t particularly large at all, and all quite local. People constantly see New York as the real Democratic bastion in many ways, but Staten Island doesn’t quite adhere to that formula. In fact, in the 2016 Election, Staten Island went Republican, with Donald Trump receiving approximately 57% of the vote to Democrat’s 40%, now the district does include parts of Brooklyn, which is likely democrat, but it still wasn’t enough to unseat the then Republican representative: Dan Donovan. No, that didn’t happen until 2018, when democratic war veteran Max Rose, defeated him in the midterms. And that’s the thing about House seats, they’re up for election every two years, so Joey could be running for 2020, which is just around the corner really…
But hell Max Rose is a war veteran, and an incumbent, it’ll be harder to unseat him if he’s popular. True, but at the same time, if the election’s on 2020, it’s very possible that people will be much more distracted by the Presidential election, and people may well vote in line with their Presidential vote, which if it swings in Trump’s favour, the Republican candidate may well win. However, with that said, there is certainly no guarantee currently that Joey Salads is the Republican candidate for the area, chances are there will be a more professional figure running against him, and he’ll have to prove that he is more desirable than them. But can he? And will his past come back to haunt him? And should it?
Intro:
Contrary to the slogan, which I pretty much retain for branding purposes at this point, I don’t have much free time, and therefore I don’t play as many video games as I’d like. One of the games or series of games I’ve always wanted to play, but never quite got round to was Fallout, it seems like a fascinating concept, the dystopian open-world adventure concept really captures my attention. Fallout, as a game-series has been going for a few decades, and with its critical acclaim and popularity, it quickly obtained a substantial fanbase which spilled over into the internet gaming scene, and launched the careers of a lot of creators.
From an outsider’s perspective, it’s not just the gameplay of Fallout that seems to attract a lot of attention, but it’s also the lore, the stories, the mystery in a way. When playing games, we might experience something, that provokes a question in our head about them, makes us think, I wonder what the story is behind them. Like creators who delve into the mysteries of the internet for example, the gaming equivalent of these creators gained prominence with the same sort of approach, talking about the mysterious backgrounds of all these characters. And out of these roots came a YouTuber known as Oxhorn, the Fallout lore investigator with a creamy voice. His videos delving into various cases, stories and features gained traction over the 2017-2018 period.
Now this wasn’t Oxhorn’s first venture on the platform, in fact he is one of the older creators as the platform’s history goes. Prior to the Oxhorn channel he had a channel named “Oxhorn Movies”, in which he uploaded World of Warcraft related content, which was certainly… interesting to say the least.
This has 17 million views by the way, good luck ever obtaining the success of this sort of this content. He made the comment that he started making movies in 2004, and therefore he must’ve preexisted the platform with his interests he engaged in. However, in 2013, he decided that it was time to move on from this brand of content, and onto other ventures. He had a podcast that he called scotch and smoke-rings, he also had a website where had advised on beard care, and marketed products known as growabeardnow.com, and he had his own personal blog: bloggingwithclass.com. Now when someone’s on the internet for such a long time, it’s natural that they’ve probably got a lot of history, a lot of pages up there, that documents their journey. However, sometimes when we look over a person’s journey, we see a few potholes that they may have encountered, and we want to know how they would address it, these are two separate processes that can definitely shape the perception of a creator and the possible implications regarding their reputation.
I found myself confused about being contacted about such drama. Because drama has a normal formula, one side presents their case, another side presents their case, and then the beleaguered, bewildered audience try and pick a side on the basis of what truths they can hopefully take away, why would people want me to do a video on this bloke? As far as I could see, a fairly inoffensive Fallout channel that isn’t pulling so many views these days. Well, when I began to spend some time researching content, and watching the videos on it, I very quickly realised why people were messaging me, because the truths that I just spoke about, they’re very unclear.
The videos on him were long, I mean very long, and some of you creators clearly didn’t get the memo, because only I’m allowed to do long videos with pretentious rants, but I watched them, because The Right Opinion is a trooper, out on the front lines, watching the videos, so you don’t have to.
Intro:
The beauty community, for all it’s make up, has some real savagery lying underneath, and we witnessed that last year when Jeffree Star got into drama with a few people, but most notoriously Manny Mua, and Laura Lee, and when the court of public opinion came out in favour of Star, damage was dealt that can still be witnessed to this day. The beauty community is truly brutal, a cheeky exposé or well-placed drama can really go for someone, for ages, you don’t see that in too many other places.
So when I saw that today’s subject: James Charles was experiencing a decrease in subscribers of unprecedented proportions, well, it didn’t surprise me looking at how cutthroat the beauty community has the capability to be, but even with that said it’s more than that, James Charles is not just any ordinary beauty creator.
This changed however, on the 10th of May, when Tati Westbrook, another beauty creator dropped a video by the name of “Bye Sister”, a play on James’s iconic phrase, in which she documents why, in spite of her extensive history supporting, and working with him, no longer wants to associate with him, these entail a series of criticisms that relate back to the way he has treated his friends, his inappropriate behaviour at certain events, and the fact that he promoted a brand that would be sensitive to younger children, in spite of the fact that he had said to Tati that he wouldn’t promote hers, due to the age of his demographic.
Music Used:
12. 猛者どもの睥睨 Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
04. 緋色の瞳の哀歌 Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
20. くじら島より Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
27. Mystic Land Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
30. 迷妄 Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
32. 銀髪のララバイ Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
[HQ] Hunter x Hunter (2011) OST 2 - Requiem Aranea! (Genei Ryodan theme)
[HQ] Hunter x Hunter (2011) OST 2 - Requiem Aranea! (Genei Ryodan theme)
[HQ] Hunter x Hunter (2011) OST 2 - Latent Power.
[HQ] Hunter x Hunter (2011) OST 2 - Ansatsu Ikka no Yakata (Zoldyck Family Theme)
[HQ] Hunter x Hunter (2011) OST 2 - Dr. Warm-Hearted Miser
Hunter x Hunter 2011 OST 3 - 6 - Elegy Of The Dynast
Hunter x Hunter 2011 OST 3 - 10 - In The Palace Lamentoso
Hunter x Hunter 2011 OST 3 - 15 - New Mutation
Hunter x Hunter 2011 OST 3 - 29 - Who's The Bomber
02. Presentiment Hunter x Hunter Phantom Rouge Original Soundtrack
07. To Give a Marionette Life Hunter x Hunter Phantom Rouge Original Soundtrack
Hunter x Hunter 2011 OST 3 - 1 - Kingdom of Predators
06. The Puppeteer Hunter x Hunter Phantom Rouge Original Soundtrack
03. 銀髪の少年 Hunter x Hunter 2011 Original Soundtrack
outro: ゆず「表裏一体」
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Today, we have a topic that I received a disproportionately high amount of requests to cover while it was all transpiring, but little to their knowledge, I was already following the whole situation quite closely, detective TRO is always one step ahead, anticipating each and every move that transpired, like a bloodhound, though let me clarify I’m not a furry. This is the sort of drama that blows hot and cold very quickly, and I warned people who asked me to cover it that it would be a while, but I still think in spite of the very current drama, there were a lot of messages that can be taken away from it regardless of how trending it is. So without further ado, I suggest I provide a quick rundown of the situation, as when I posted about this in my community tab, many people were not aware.
This is Kurzgesagt, they are an educational YouTube channel, ran by Philipp Dettmer. Educational YouTube channels are pretty much as they sound, basically content that’s used to educate or inform the viewers. Kurzgesagt is definitely a significant player in this community with over eight million subscribers. They’ve been making videos since 2013, and their videos typically present themselves to deliver information with a unique animation finesse, according to them they want to make science look beautiful, because it is. Very respectable intentions indeed. Arguably however, channels like his own have some of the greatest responsibility on the platform to deliver accurate representation of the topics they cover, because they are not merely opinionated, but they are factual, many people who may be slightly uninformed go into a video with the expectation that the information presented will be truthful, a high majority of people do not pause documentaries every five seconds to fact check them.
However, on the other side of the spectrum you will face vehement inspection from ruthless academics and upcoming YouTubers alike, and if you fail to deliver your content concisely and honestly you risk having your reputation completely decimated, and that’s important when you’re a channel like Kurzgesagt. And that’s what leads us to the crux of the discussion today.
In October 2015, they released a video that was titled “Everything We Think We Know About Addiction Is Wrong”, a pretty strong title. In the video, they rebut the notion that chemicals are the main root cause of an individual becoming addicted, and actually the circumstances that many of these individuals find themselves in are much more influential, and we should begin to ask questions about society, this was conducted in collaboration with the works of a psychologist known as Johann Hari. This video grew to be one of their most successful, accumulating over 15 million views, pretty incredible. However, it has also been criticised as being overly one sided in the favour of the circumstantial narrative, and arguing about it from an excessively objective narrative, when there is a significant amount of counter evidence that challenges this.
This is where we introduce another player into this tale, a YouTuber by the name of Coffee Break or Stephen, he’s a video essayist who makes content covering various topics related to media, he’s been going for a little over two years and has racked up some pretty impressive video performances in that time, on fairly unique interesting topics. Nothing to be discredited whatsoever. However, he was one of the people who wasn’t entirely happy with Kurzgesagt’s video covering addiction, so he planned to make a video in which part of it incorporated his problems with that video, and further questions around the credibility. While doing this he reached out to Philipp Deitmer, and Hari in around February of this year, to try and ascertain their opinions from the glorious position of hindsight. After an exchange with Dettmer, Stephen noticed that Kurzgesagt had dropped a video that directly responded to some of the criticisms that he raised in his initial emails. This video was called “Can You Trust Kurzgesagt”, in which they admit the shortcomings of their videos on Refugees and of course, Addiction, before stating that they will be removing these videos from their catalogue. So, in response to this, Coffee Break uploaded a video alleging that Deitmer basically hoodwinked him, taking the criticisms that Stephen had presented and making a video to get ahead of him, while keeping him from this knowledge, thus stalling his video. I’ll be breaking down the details of this all in a bit.
You see my friends, I attend University, or college, as the Americans love to call it, exciting, I know, behind basically everything else in my life, education is my favourite activity. However, I’m not here to discuss how much I definitely love my courses, because for all I know, my tutors might be watching, but if they are, give me good grades or else my next video might be on you.
No, as always, the subjects I cover have a YouTube twist thrown in, and today is no exception, because we’re going to University! Yay! But more importantly to the University of Southern California, to a situation that has garnered a lot of attention recently, and a YouTuber who has been at the centre of it. Now, to provide some background for all you twats, the University of Southern California, abbreviated to USC, is one of the more prestigious educational institutes in the world, which specialises in business, performing arts, and engineering, and if I asked you, my audience, what you think it would take to obtain entry into such a coveted establishment, you might say… good grades, strong SATs…
A willingness to learn, strong work ethic
And of course, no meddling, and no corruption whatsoever
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Olivia Jade.
Olivia Jade is a YouTuber, a beauty, fashion and lifestyle YouTuber to be more precise. She makes videos in which she buys expensive items, does fun quirky challenges, publishes tutorials for her adoring, loving fanbase, and more interestingly, collabs. Sometimes with her friends, sometimes with more popular YouTubers, but sometimes, and most interestingly with her mother, who is also deeply involved in the topic today.
Her mother is actress Lori Loughlin, if you’ve watched any mid-tier TV show then you’ll probably be familiar with her face, because that’s the market that she has decided to dominate, her husband is Mossimo Giannulli, the founder of Mossimo fashion house, so with all that talent in the genes, she must have success running through the veins, right? Well, let’s discuss that.
Because Olivia Jade was a student at the prolific University of Southern California, and on top of this it appeared that she was a competitive rower, with athletic credentials to boot. However, all was not as it seemed, as in 2019, she was involved in a huge scandal which alleged that certain families, had been bribing various institutions to enable admission where they may not have obtained it otherwise. In the midst of this, Olivia Jade’s parents were amongst those indicted for their participation in the scandal. Now, in the instance of many of these children, because they weren’t public figures, the attention was on the parents, as they were considerably higher profile, the exception in this situation being our good friend here: Olivia Jade, because she, is a YouTuber. It seems that the only rowing Olivia Jade was doing was up the creek without the paddle.
The publication of this led to immediate backlash spilling over onto her channel and subsequently causing her to practically disappear from social media, disabling comments on her Instagram account, and laying low throughout the public uproar. On top of this, many sponsors who had worked with her in the past made the decision to cease relations, including Sephora, and TRESemmé, she has suffered, and many would argue, justifiably so. Unfortunately, when you’re a public figure preaching all this content, when people claim you’re involved in a corrupt scheme, many don’t just feel annoyed, but betrayed, that a person who may have inspired them, was not who they claimed to be.
In the heat of the moment, and with the outrage brimming, it was probably understandable that many people just wanted to go in on her for hand in the whole situation. But as always, at The Right Opinion, we go deeper than I go in Primink.
In less than a year after Grade’s channel was resuscitated through a Reddit post, he had turned his content into some of the most unique and marketable work on YouTube, and was approaching the peak of his career, he was stepping effortlessly between his drama and non-drama content, and gaining support at an unassailable rate. The sudden interest in an actual genre that could generate its own conflict while simultaneously being able to comment on it definitely had its appeals, and being a person of strong, unmitigated sentiments, Grade had found his rhythm.
His content picked up to an unbelievable pace at around mid January of 2016, just after the release of his second Nicole Arbour video, in which he breaks down Arbour’s side of her abuse story against Matthew Santoro, and exposes some rather glaring inconsistencies with her testimony, but equally, as quick as he took off, he was to encounter his fair share of drama.
Intro: I thought it’d be neat that we begin this video with a story because I love a good story like anyone else. When I was growing up, I wasn’t really the type of person who used Twitter, or any the social media sites that I used today, I remember when I was around 13, I was at school, and back then the only app that was really considered fashionable was Facebook, now this is before it was taken over by the Minion moms, but just take my word, at one point, Facebook was cool, I promise guys, please don’t reject me.
Whatever, at that time it was also cool to follow ridiculous numbers of Facebook pages, and before they were taken over by cash farmed sponsorships they had the capacity to be pretty funny, to my juvenile brain at least, however, it was one day that I clicked on one of the videos, I highly doubt I could find it now, but I remember it being this page called UniLad, and I clicked the video, and it was this guy, with this really strange accent, talking about Manly Drinks vs Girly Drinks? Basically mocking the gender stereotypes behind alcoholic beverages.
And to be honest, I didn’t really know what to think, it was alright enough, and I did agree with the sentiment, I’d personally take cocktails over beer and so on any day, though I do like penis, so I might be biased. Either way, I didn’t really think too much about it, my life had very little to do with YouTube, the man in the video was GradeAUnderA, or Grade for short, he is a commentator with a very distinct style, I’ll talk about the styles that he was inspired by in a bit, but as you can see from that clip, it bathes in its rather amateurish charm. Currently Grade sits on just shy of 3 and a half million subscribers, and is very prolific in the commentary community for both good, and not so good reasons, but I didn’t know that back then, I was just a pleb.
Fast forward a couple years and I was much more engaged with the commentary community, all this drama with Leafy was transpiring, I wasn’t really an avid viewer of him but I was thoroughly involved in the whole feud with Keemstar, and I remember really rallying behind Leafy, I think I even sent him an email in support, that was incredibly sad. Not just the sentiment of it, but the fact that I used email, I’m like Benjamin Button because I used to be a boomer, but now I’m a epic woke man.
Then iDubbbz’s Content Cop dropped and I had my perception completely 180’d, everything I thought was fact, was not, and iDubbbz did a great job at destroying Leafy, who only managed to destroy himself with his response video, proving he was well out of his depth, but maybe that’s a story for another time. Grade was dragged into all of this because he’d made videos on the situation, and jumped on the train, in fact he’d been heavily involved in the drama, until the Content Cop, in which he just dropped off the radar. What a surprise.
And after a few more months of videos, people just kinda moved on, there were a few thought pieces, asking where he had gone, how he had fallen from grace, and so on, everyone kinda knew he’d return, and at the turn of 2019, he did. How long he’ll be around for again we don’t know, honestly he might have left already, but at the same time his return did complete the arc that I felt necessary to make this video.
I always felt there was more to his story, because my two experiences with his content were radically different, covering themes that could’ve been related to a different channel, my perception going into this is that of a person who became something else than he initially set out to be, from that person on my Facebook feed, it never felt like he was setting himself up to become another channel caught up in drama, so today if you’re not familiar with the tale of GradeAUnderA, I want this to be a learning experience not just for you, but also for me, understanding his rise, his peak, his fall. But we’re not just going to be documenting how it happened, we’ll ask why it happened, and maybe provide some opinions on the whole situation, let’s just hope they’re the right ones.
YouTube is a monumental platform, with a lot of people, a lot of power, and thus, a lot of danger. There are currently 1.3 billion users on the site, an alleged 300 hours worth of content gets uploaded in a single minute, and if you go from video to video, then it can take you down multiple different rabbit holes and multiple different directions, it’s kinda weird to think about how much content is out there and how many things we might miss.
I’ve felt a whirlwind of sentiments of this, and initially expressed it in a Twitter thread that I feel is now obsolete due to this video, so I shan’t be referring it, because I’ve refined my thoughts a bit more now, but the background that I stated in the first Tweet is true, it was a probably bit more than one and a half years ago, I don’t know when to be exact, but I was just a small YouTuber, at the time I was doing some research with Kavos, back when he was still on around 20,000 subs, and someone messaged me talking to me about a situation they’d found.
The video came out, garnered around 25,000, 30,000 views at the time, and within a few days the playlists were gone, videos were deleted and if not the comment sections were deactivated, now, I knew that it was far from over. This was not the first time YouTube has been caught up in this very specific issue, and I’ll definitely discuss this more later, but at this point there are more gates than an airport.
Enter stage left, Matt Watson, aka MattsWhatItis, a disillusioned YouTuber who decided to make a damning video documenting the problem on YouTube, he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last but he was definitely the most impassioned.
Matt, made the proclamation that this had to be dealt with, establishing the line of reasoning that YouTube have not been listening to this persisting problem, particularly due to their alleged ignorance, and the only way to make them learn would be to go straight for their income, and thus their advertisers. So, Matt went on a passionate campaign about gaining the advertiser attention to hold YouTube’s accountable, to force them to address this. His original video on YouTube, is a passionate, dramatic rant with high level editing, and with perseverance he muscled his way to the front page of Reddit, and subsequently attracted attention from all arenas, not taking long to reach the ravenous media who were raring to report on YouTube’s latest oopsie. Other news oriented YouTubers decided to report it as well, providing their thoughts on the situation.
However, with such instantaneous momentum, Matt decided to do multiple live streams to consolidate his viewpoints and positions, but many people began to become suspicious about his credibility, and his integrity, and so certain creators took to Twitter, took to his stream, and even took to their channels to take him, and some of his narratives on.
Essentially, this has led to a load of back and forth, caused confusion, division, and frustration in the community, who can pretty much all agree on one thing but can create no consensus on what to actually do. I’m going to try and work out what we can do, but I also have a lot of criticism to hand out, because I am annoyed, for various reasons, we’ll explore each one of them now, I guess we should start a our home base, because there’s no place quite like home.
With the shift in cultural focus by many people, it appears that access to consumption and sedentary lifestyle has created what many view as an epidemic, particularly in countries like the US, where obesity has ballooned, there are many reasons why this might be considered. However, with the existence of fat people, comes the existence of fat YouTubers.
Larger YouTubers are nothing particularly new, you’re dealing with a platform that is based online, many people on the platform are not the most active, and they might even find appeal within their great weight.
However, from this transpired a new genre, this mainly revolved around weight loss, the reason should be fairly obvious: we as viewers, typically look for some element of ourselves in the creator, whether that’s something that we currently have, or something that we aspire to be, now when you have a weight loss YouTuber, this is someone that we should follow their journey with. We find inspiration in their progress, maybe you are an overweight person, but at the same time, you’re an introvert, or an agoraphobe, and don’t want to show your body at a Weight Watchers meeting, maybe they can give some advice on how to lose weight from the realms of the screen, although it may not be sufficient to make you lose weight on its own, they may provide inspiration, may provide you with that extra motivation, and then maybe you can document your journey online too, and inspire other people to come along with you.
The problem is that this vision doesn’t always happen, and sometimes people themselves aren’t strong enough to create that arc through their own volition, and thus the story changes very significantly, and because they’re documenting all on YouTube, suddenly this augments into something much uglier, this is where we reach today’s creator, the creator known as Amberlynn Reid.
It was a late evening, I had worked on a video only to make the decision that actually, although I wasn’t a fan of the creator’s content, there wasn’t enough to make a video, so I decided to watching a few videos, I knew one of my fellow creators known as Danarchy had released a couple of uploads on these YouTubers who were rather notorious for the handling of their weight on the platform and so, in my crisis I decided to sit down and watch them, and although he was a tad too insulting for my rather polite demeanour, he touched on some important points, that I definitely feel could be expanded on in a Right Opinion video, his content definitely does a great job at individually calling out the YouTubers in question, but what is there beneath the surface? Well let’s talk about the YouTuber in question.
This is Amberlynn Reid, she is a 28 year old YouTuber from the United States of America, she recently become a target for a lot of YouTubers, for a multitude of reasons, typically the cycle consists of her doing something, people reacting, people noting her rather counterproductive efforts to lose weight, people noting various other negative traits, such as her apparent compulsion to lie, and deceive her audience, and alleged manipulation of certain situations. Hell, there is a whole channel dedicated to exposing Amberlynn for her weight, that is some spicy commitment considering that many of these videos receive more views than Amber’s videos themselves.
Amberlynn appears to be a dubious character for more reasons than just her weight, and although I do consider many of them valid criticism, and would definitely implore people to look into that, that will typically be a secondary narrative of this video, because although I will definitely touch on that, there’s a lot of detail to these stories that I think you can only really see from the testimonies, and I don’t plan on addressing all of those. Though if you are interested, I’ll definitely reference and link some of the more controversial incidents sooner or later in the video, because there is a lot to cover.
The Right Opinion: This 11 Year Old Instagram Model Was Used By Her Father - MelodyOficial3 | TRO
I’ve spoken about in the past, and I’ll likely speak about them in the future. I’d say in my new style I properly covered this sensation was in my Lil’ Tay video, which once again attributed a strange fixation to this idea, the point of that video was to document how fascinated we become when someone behaves in a way that is not necessarily expected of them, and because of that exceptionalism they quickly spike to fame. Whenever you’re doing something that has an appeal, that no-one else is doing, you will typically gain fame for it, and there are many other factors that will determine the longevity. However, with someone like Lil’ Tay, the whole system is broken, the fact that it is driven off being more and more audacious, it is destined to slide into an absolute burn out, or you end up not being able to keep up, the outcomes are not particularly rosy, and if none of that fails to kill your career, growing up will.
Premature fame is not something that really should be glorified, we’ll always need such individuals in our media, particularly in areas such as film, to make sure they are provided representation, at the same time, the unique mental circumstances that an individual encounters cannot be discounted, and cannot be exposed to the ravenous hordes of internet dwellers like many of us YouTubers. There are nuances to this argument, and I’ll probably address them another time, particularly when that person might be able to exert adult levels of influence, but most of the time these people are just puppets for fame hungry parents, and/or siblings, who want to find ways to exploit that reliance to make them conduct certain actions that arouse online interest, and use the fact that they’re not autonomous to claim any profits and benefits, it’s a scummy but unsurprisingly common dynamic that you’ll find, and these kids are often the ones who take the mental fall from it.
However, Lil Tay, was as predicted, a brief fad, that was in itself, an escalation of a juxtaposition between adult behaviour and appearance, one that could inevitably not be topped, and left a trail of destruction in the culture that had ultimately set her up, though admittedly one that I find rather refreshing. However, the death of one market always leads to the rise of a new one, and the thing is that although many trends are short-lived, they are almost always borne out of a longer-term human interest, these long term human interest provide anchors, and unfortunately, the fascination with them being placed in environments that would seem surreal for them is a constant one, and today, more than ever, this has pushed into a serious boundary.
I’m gonna leave this narrative on hold, because the new market leads us to this very interesting individual, known as MelodyOficial3, now MelodyOficial3 is a Brazilian figure online, her real name is Gabriela Severino, and according to the very quaint Wikipedia page, she’s a singer and songwriter, all at the age of eleven, wow very impressive feat. She has released a plethora of singles, ones that I’m sure we’ll reach at some point in this video, a few of these songs have even performed well in the Brazilian charts, she’s been around since 2015, from the age of eight, so she’s already had more of an esteemed music career than yours truly. One day Morning Sun, one day.
However, today, as we’ll see, she’s in the YouTube headlines, well, in this video at least, so The Right Opinion headlines, for certain conduct that is much more questionable than just writing songs.
You see I have a friend, I know, surprising, he goes by the name Marriott, James Marriott, and he made this video on someone he branded as Danielle Cohn’s sister, which you know, I used my genius to decipher that it wasn’t actually Danielle Cohn’s sister, the resemblance just wasn’t there, but that’s besides the point, it’s spicy clickbait, and although I love a good James Marriott video, I didn’t really have the time so I passed up on it, and anyway, he didn’t need my patronage, his video was enticing enough for a couple million other people.
Now I’ve covered Twitch streamers, before, and I’ll cover Twitch streamers again, because they are a highly interesting set of people, and in spite of the fact that many of them are categorised by commentators, they are all at least somewhat distinguished in what they do. In a video last year I covered Zoie Burgher, someone whose rise to meteoric stardom was paired with an equally catastrophic fall, she was an absolute magnet of drama, and one of the more sexually suggestive characters out of that legion, but at the same time, she was her own individual character, she was banned off Twitch, and mainly gained infamy for antics on YouTube and subsequent drama. On the other hand we have female streamers, who may well be considered attractive by the audience, I mean, who doesn’t want to look their best on camera, but at the same time doesn’t necessarily seek to exploit that. And this is where we reach Pokimane.
Pokimane is someone who is established on both YouTube and Twitch, with over two and a half million subscribers slash followers on each platform, that’s something which cannot be ignored, she does some gaming, she does some reaction based videos, but overall, as people go she’s not an individual who has received exceptional attention. This is fairly typical for most genres, with a fairly undemanding audience, much less demanding than the ones who watch critical commentators like myself. Most commentators also tend to have a list of people who are controversial and easy to make videos on, this is a rotating list of people, typically including Ricegum, the Pauls, Morgz, KSI, Deji, with a bit of variation between certain YouTubers, maybe you’re a bit more interested in people like Emma Chamberlain, maybe you like making thought pieces on who the next Content Cop is gonna be on or even if there will be a new Content Cop. What this means is that although people will be doing shady or at least debatable actions, if the public isn’t focusing on them then it’ll probably pass under the radar, and a lot of creators, including the person we’re going to discuss today have been sheltered from that sort of environment.
However, as spoken about in the past, the alienation of drama, can often mean that when it eventually does confront one of these people, it means that they are way out of their depth with no idea of how to actually handle it, generally this has meant that in the history of Twitch Streamers vs Commentators, the Twitch Streamers tend to lose. Looking back to Pyrocynical vs Zoie Burgher, Pewdiepie vs Alinity, and yes, in both of those situations, it’s fairly reasonable to argue that you could side with Pyrocynical and Pewdiepie in the situations regardless of the outcome, but as much as the circumstance does comprise the drama, the handling, and presentation are equally important. Another real problem is how a lot of this drama can often be perceived, exposé videos have been monopolised recently by the commentary genre, and so attempting to make any sort of response to them, is the equivalent of going to play an away match, you’re entering someone else’s stadium, and you’ll be attracting their audience, even if you’re responding on your own channel. One of the problems with a lot of drama is that it always feels like an us vs them, you really are expected to side with one of the people involved, and often there is a clear moral high ground when it comes to the claims, but often when there isn’t we have to look a bit closer than many people choose to.
The thing about drama, is that whatever yields from it can be assumed as some sort of moral standard, even though we often forget about the conclusions we make and just contradict ourselves in the future, I’m a man who does enjoy some sort of consistency, because whatever disputes occur do have reputational legacies, and it’s important that we’re holding people to account, but not unfairly singling them out because of some subconscious bias, so let’s talk about today’s situation.
On the 28th of December, a very small YouTuber by the name of Fainted released a video called “The Dark Side of Pokimane”, in which he alleged, that while the public’s back was turned, Pokimane had done some pretty shady stuff, I’ll be breaking down the details in a moment, but like some of the infamous streamers in the past, some of the main claims were on the notion of copyright striking, or as many people now like to call it, “copystriking”, firstly in the incident of a series of uploaded Twitter clips on a feud between her and Keemstar, and secondly on a channel that reuploaded stream clips of her, known as DavCev. These are both fairly separate situations, but fell under the umbrella of criticism that Pokimane was facing down.
Music: Persona 5 - Layer Cake
Persona 5 - A Woman
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Persona 5 - The Days When My Mother Was There
When I was a very small commentator, I made a little video called Matt Hoss Could Win, in which I expressed my feelings on his whole lawsuit and how in fact he could be successful, at the time Fair Use was still a very untested concept, and there had been cases in the past where creators had lost against claimants, so I was especially sceptical of how some out of touch court might handle the case, I think it was a justified concern, and at the end of the video sister snapped and went off on a memorable rant that today would make such a typically placid individual like myself cringe.
That video was really the first taste of any success I had as it amassed approximately fifty thousand views at the time, and I was pretty excited, I mean what would this spell for an aspiring commentator like myself? Well, basically nothing for another year as all my videos afterwards didn’t really do much, but I guess today, like Chris Martin once said, we’re going back to the start, because I do find Matt Hoss a fascinating bloke.
Matt Hoss’s channel is known as the Matt Hoss Zone, he did used to have an Instagram but that’s gone, and he has been relatively inactive on all platforms where he expresses his distaste of Donald Trump, and promises his inevitable return to the followers who are eagerly awaiting another masterpiece from the maestro himself. As a creator he is fairly established, running on the platform for a few years, with a fairly respectable backlog of content, his description reads: “Original comedy, action, horror, and fantasy short films. With electronic dance music. From the mind of Matt Hosseinzadeh.” Hosseinzadeh being his full last name, which you know he has mercifully shortened so I appreciate that, it’s going to probably knock around 10 minutes off this video. The original comedy, action, horror and fantasy short films, were a mix of him picking up girls with his mad parkour, and vampires, I mean that’s a simplification, but I think the emphasis on his description is “Matt”, there is no other way to describe his channel, other than it is Matt Hoss, unfiltered Matt Hoss. Like The Room was unfiltered Tommy Wiseau. This is where h3 are introduced.
Most people know how the story goes, that basically Matt filed a civil action against h3 under the premise that their use of his content wasn’t fair and defamed his character, h3 disputed this, and this then escalated to the courts, fortunately this time round, the judge then, Katherine Forrest, the absolute legend, ruled in favour of the Kleins, it was probably one of the most famous motions and it was really heartwarming to see an often divided community uniting for the cause of something that transcended the differences.
Matt Hoss, the man at the centre of the lawsuit, became the sort of Disney Villain of YouTube, he himself was a content creator, and thus the lawsuit felt very personal. I spoke about this in the Smosh video, but often when businesses file lawsuits there is a lack of accountability, we’ll hate the business, but they have no personality to hate, they have no face to lambast, Matt Hoss put himself at the front and centre of the controversy, and there were very few people who were willing to defend him, he didn’t set himself out there as a likeable character.
He often came across as highly egocentric, and narcissistic and people tended to hone in on this, people hated him for it, and when videos came out, they were very critical of Matt Hoss in the moment, but no-one really asked why he did it, and in a way, when the situation is transpiring, I wouldn’t expect people to, the stakes seemed very high and theorising over motivations when they weren’t exactly relevant to the outcome seemed unnecessary, but I feel like now the time has passed, and we’re all on the Tubes, just chilling, like the fellow kids we are, I feel maybe we have time for a discussion, because as I said, I really do find the character of Hoss a very one.
I think many people at the time just saw him as this delusional reactionary, completely high off his own hubris, and with this image in his head that the persona that he had crafted in his content had been completely undermined, and you know when you look at the evidence, it’s one hundred percent a credible point of view, and one that I may even agree with to an extent, but I want to have a discussion, because I think there was a level of calculation that many people didn’t pay attention to, and I want to watch his videos so we can perhaps understand the mind, and motivations of Matt Hoss.
I first heard about Emma Chamberlain when a friend mentioned her to me in passing, told me that it would make a good video and there was a lot of content to discuss. I encountered here again when I was making my Beauty Community video, I was doing research of people who were involved in it, and she came up, now I didn’t include her in that video because I didn’t really consider herself necessarily part of that community, but she was working with individuals like James Charles and so I stumbled into her, I knew that there were a lot of videos being made, and I was like, alright, well she looks like a fairly regular lass, you know, whatever floats her boat.
There were more videos, and more videos, and I didn’t know what was happening, but now I finally had a bit more time freed up, I decided to look into it because now, with a bit of research I can fairly affirmatively say that this is a very interesting case. So, Emma Chamberlain is a 17 year old Vlogger, which you know is incredibly depressing but hey who cares, definitely not me, I don’t care. *Sigh*
Anyhow, she started her vlogging channel last year, and vlogging is an incredibly saturated genre, I’ve had friends who tried vlogging and it didn’t work out for them, mainly because I think it’s so hard to define yourself with something that like 99% of other people have, the only thing is that I do receive the impression that a lot of people enjoy vlogging, which probably explains the numerous creators, I mean, in a way, if I could do something like that, I probably would, one day, my friends, The Vlogging Opinion will I’m sure be a reality…
But Emma Chamberlain isn’t just any vlogger, in fact, many have branded her the anti-vlogger, and I think that’s a really interesting way to describe her, you see, her brand is definitely unique, and it’s clear why her ascension to the top of the YouTube totem pole was so rapid, she has this very sardonic tone that doesn’t really fit in with the normal YouTube vibes.
There has been this narrative drummed up recently that many creators themselves have fallen out of touch with the desires of their viewers, I’ve heard it increasingly of recent, and honestly, on one hand it’s a sentiment I agree with, particularly with that in the vlogging industry, but on the flipside I also feel part of that change has been undertaken by the audience, the shift in general sentiment, rather than the creators necessarily, that’s just made their ploys more transparent, on one hand, fame definitely pushes people out of sphere, but I think people are just increasingly aware of it. Emma Chamberlain definitely plays into that self-awareness, with the sort of snark and sass definitely needed, and we’ll explore the success very soon, but it does have its flaws.
And in the last few months, as noted Emma Chamberlain’s been in a bit of hot water, drama, after drama, after drama, firsty for a merchandising situation, and then for behaviours that show a double standard that didn’t match the attitude of her old content. This in a way, goes hand in hand, with a lot of the rise of commentary on these creators, we’ve definitely become more critical towards the vlogging community, this is for better, and for worse, as documented in my previous videos, on one hand it pushes the community for higher standards, on the other hand I think sometimes the criticism can lean into unreasonable territories, and at the end of the day it’s important that we, as creators have some sort of gauge on our own criticism.
I’ve often clashed with fellow creators over the notion of criticising our peers, because in many ways, a cohesive community is a functional one, and doing that is often seen as burning bridges, but at The Right Opinion, we always come equipped with a molotov cocktail, so cheers to that. There will be sometimes when I agree, sometimes when I don’t. Today we participate in that exercise of critical thinking because Emma Chamberlain has been the subject of extensive criticism, that itself should be brought into the light and scrutinised, just like Emma Chamberlain has been.
Most of my videos I put out on my channel are topics that I think will have your interest, this is a general philosophy because I like to entertain people and try and find a balance between what I care about and what you care about, equally it’s a learning process, finding out this new information and sharing with you guys is a great experience for me.
However, every now and then, I know I have to make a video that won’t be the most fun to make, and will require a lot of detail, and today is that day my friends. I held off this for a while but I knew that I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t raise my voice.
So let’s talk about the EU, because during my time in America, I’ve been surprised to find that many people actually do not have a clue how it operates. So consider the next five to ten minutes a little crash course. EU is an abbreviation for the European Union, an organisation of countries that forms its own absolute body, often cooperating and creating legislation to maintain a more cohesive relationship.
It was initially borne out of the fact that politically, Europe has been a bit of a mess, and to provide almost a grounding, a central body would stabilise the lawmaking process, very modest intentions. Over the years, this has developed, with new institutions and initiatives being integrated and established, typically through treaties, which are essentially contracts between countries, that’s a very simplified definition but I just want you to have a general gist. The European Union that we know today was formed by a treaty in 1992 known as the Maastricht Treaty, which aided the transition of the European Union beyond just an economic community.
I’m not going to go into too many more details because they’re not entirely relevant, and honestly it’s not the most fun things to hear, however, it is of importance to have some basic information so that we can then apply that and think critically about what’s going to be discussed today and its implications. Because the European Union has been expanding its control over many different disciplines over the last few decades, and the internet has been of their interest for a while.
And there are many concerns over the ownership of intellectual property on the internet, given the new international realms it expands over. In the past everything that we watch on the TV has been run through a limited number of corporations who adhere to regulations that they can be reprimanded under if they don’t follow, the new domains granted by the internet has created a plethora of content that is exceptionally hard to regulate. However, over the last few years, we have become increasingly aware of this, with this awareness being raised, there have been filters instated to assure that people aren’t profiting off copyrighted content. For example, someone uploading a copyrighted song on YouTube, may have it removed or monetised by the original artist. The internet is a place of new opportunity, but it also is a state of great lawlessness, many of us will remember the ads that they’d put at the start of a film saying “You wouldn’t steal a film”, because online makes all these forms of media much more accessible.
With this in mind, many sites like YouTube are overbearing in the imposition of copyright restrictions, with many people, myself included, that they give too much power to the actual claimant to be the arbiter of the content. I’ve had this experience myself with my content in the past, situations where I’ve been claimed, appealed, and the appeal goes straight to the owner, and they reject it because they like money more than fair use, the only way I resolved it that time was by threatening a lawsuit. I don’t fuck around.
It’s pretty much understood at this point, that the internet isn’t going anywhere, however, this also means that other competitors, and governments will be under increasing pressure to respond to such freedoms, with new restrictions. Now, we’ve seen this in this in the US and the EU, this is not a new thing, we already have copyright directives for the internet to try and prevent illegal usage of content, although it is unavoidable to an extent.
But the European Union really want to up the regulation, with their new copyright directive, that closes in on many of the issues that they feel they haven’t been stringent enough on in the past. The most notorious component of this little document is something known as Article 13, which has prompted backlash and outcry amongst many of us internet dwellers. This outrage has been amplified by a collective of media outlets that have been reporting on the content.
When people look back on YouTubers, and ask themselves who have been the most influential creators on the platform, there are many individuals that I’m sure come to mind, people who are relevant now, and people who used to be relevant, whether it’s Pewdiepie, Smosh, Nigahiga, Shane Dawson, or Ray William Johnson, Fred, TheAnnoyingOrange and so on. Many creators past and present have had a significant cultural impact.
However, when speaking to people about their childhood, one name that seldom seems to come up, is Toby Turner, or Tobuscus, or TobyGames, despite the fact that I’m sure that a huge number of people have watched at least one video of his. Two of his channels have amassed over 6 million subscribers each which is certainly a feat not to be overlooked.
Yet I feel that his story is one that often is overlooked, one that is heavily integrated in the culture that we will discuss today, and one that we can perhaps learn a bit from, and maybe seek to explain, how everyone forgot about Toby Turner, hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Right Opinion, the home of a twat with too much free time, and bless your face.
I’m sure not everyone is aware of who Toby Turner is but for a basic rundown he is one of the original YouTubers on the platform, who began his craft in 2006, and twelve years later is still going, as mentioned, it’s not to the intensity that he used to, after he probably made a fat stack of cash in his time, or at least enough to keep him going, I can’t look into a man’s bank account.
He ascended to his peak around the turn of the 2010s, particularly encompassed by the success of his Literal Trailer series, on top of this he also had a gaming channel, in which he would achieve even greater results in terms of subscribers, in spite of a marginally lower view count.
Generally if you ask someone involved with YouTube what has been their most recent experience with him, chances are it’ll be the allegations, now at the time this was created in a Tumblr post by an individual named April Fletcher and this information isn’t wholly relevant right now, but I am going to bring it back up in the future for why it is important.
Turner had three succeeding channels, had made videos that are pretty much iconic in many people’s childhoods, and had so much media branching out in so many various directions he almost seemed set to succeed, rewatching a video in preparation by FootOfAFerret in which he runs down the brief history of our good friend Toby here, he says this.
So it does indeed beg the question, what happened? Even I’m not entirely sure yet, but by the end of the video, I’m sure we’ll have a definitive answer.
Turner is still uploading content to this day on his channel, mostly more commentary facecam oriented, and talking about various random topics that interest him, some topics more trending, others more spontaneous, or personal to him.
Given the fact that I don’t think there’s really too much else to summarise in this situation, which is a bit earlier than normal, we’re running ahead of schedule lads but I consider that a good thing, without further ado, I suggest we get right into it.
Intro:
Because my friends, we are once again going back to a blast from the past, but we shall begin with a little anecdote as always, because I have actually made a video on DaddyOFive, although, no-one has ever seen it. You see, as an artist, if that’s what you can call my work, I have started, scripted, and worked on many videos that will probably never see the light of day, that is the case for pretty much everyone in the creative industry, it’s about running with a lot of ideas, some of which don’t work, sometimes you’ll realise these ideas don’t work three lines into scripting them, sometimes you’ll realise they don’t work three years after you uploaded them. That is the life of the miserable creator.
However, the DaddyOFive video was a classic case of changing circumstances, I had the video, uploaded it to YouTube, was ready to drop some very stinging criticism of him, had a big, saucy thumbnail, and suddenly this video dropped.
And I felt the circumstances had changed, the thing about DaddyOFive, is that it was a situation that greatly put his children in the spotlight, and regardless of whether they were sincere about this apology or not, I was not going to continue to drag them for something in which they had shown a motivation to change philosophy, and their approach to parenting. There were children involved, and the apology video changed the context to the point where I no longer felt confident in my upload. Now that the dust has settled, hopefully I can quell my allergic reaction, as well as look at the situation and the legacy with fresh eyes. What was he apologising for? Well I’ll dive into the devil in the details in a bit, but he was facing down a number of serious allegations, and evidence that the creation of his content was being elicited through his children, something not to be taken lightly at all.
He was terminated by the YouTube Gods, for his transgressions, and likely because the media were picking up on it and YouTube’s relationship with the media is rocky, and no compromises can be taken when it comes to their reputation, to say the least, and we as human beings, continued with our daily lives, so why bring it back now? Well for a few reasons, the first one being, some cheeky twats over on my Twitter, tagged me in a thread, asking me to cover it. Now, I want to make this clear, I do not often take requests, but if there’s enough meat on the bone, I’ll throw myself into the ring, the only reason I’m saying this is because last time I credited someone’s request I was bombarded with requests of the newest naughty YouTuber, and I only have so much time on this planet. I’m not saying don’t send me spicy news on people, I’m just saying don’t get your hopes up. So I was mulling on this for a while, and then I saw my good acquaintance Primink’s video, which reignited my passion for the whole debacle. Because although the barebones information was something that I was aware of, seeing someone expressing their opinion on it, and seeing the sphere of debate thrive interested me further, and then the fact that DaddyOFive threw a tantrum in response, made me think that maybe there’s a bit more to this story than we give it credit for. Because, the story on the headlines is that DaddyOFive is back! Back in what way? Has he had his channel restored? Is he returning to some old ways? Well, no not really.
You see, DaddyOFive never technically left, in fact, they were on YouTube until a few months back, in which YouTube, decided that they’d had enough of that platform as well, and chucked them off, in which there was a very emotional video uploaded onto another channel where they pled with the viewers to save them, alas, their tears fell upon the frosty heart of the viewer. But a few months later, they are once again back, as Primink documents, but not exactly, you see, their children now have a channel in which they create their own content, which the DaddyOFive claims to be not associated at all. This channel is known as The Martin Boys, which is comprised of the three remaining siblings, after the biological mother of Cody, and Emma regained custody, there aren’t too many indications of where this channel is going exactly to be about, but one can assume it won’t be too sinister given how I’m sure the Martin family are aware they are on thin ice.
Nonetheless, it seems there are some questions about the ethics of this whole debacle, with DaddyOFive positioning himself as a staunch defender of the lad’s rights to do what they want while also decrying any association with it. This has opened another debate about the whole morality of it, and frankly I find it all a bit messy.