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Nuns with Guns)
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I AM GRANDO posted:He should never have stopped those weekly videos where he played random games with Mike Mattei and had free-form conversations about how to pronounce “scythe” and whether wet dreams are actually common or whether health teachers just say that to make the rare kids who actually have them feel better. Yeah, I was never a big Mike fan, but they had good chemistry together and were fun to watch. I was a little curious at the time about why Mike left, but after finally watching the Hbomb video, I just have to assume that he got tired of Screenwave's poo poo. Funny thing, also at the time I legit thought all the Screenwave guys were just friends of James since I thought he was still doing everything in-house and was helping his buddies out by having them on the channel. Skippy McPants posted:Yeah, in his case, I think it's more that he got tired with it, and busy with other things. If I was in his place and had a family to consider I would milk the brand for all its worth regardless of if it'd become a shadow of its former self. Yeah, agreed. I think he would have moved on years ago if he had the choice, but AVGN still makes money and he can milk that while talking care of the family
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Dec 6, 2023 13:55
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Skippy McPants posted:But that's always been the gamble when pursuing a creative passion. Even before the internet, plenty of writers, painters, singers, etc., tanked their "real" careers to chase a dream. We do have stuff like Patreon now that lets smaller creators get by without falling into complete obscurity and destitution, but the risk is still extreme for anyone without a robust support network. Penny Arcade kind of lucked their way into having a competent business manager really early on. The business just sort of developed around them as they went on and at worst they had to stop Mike Krahulik from running his mouth a couple of times, I don't think they've ever really been in the situation where James Rolfe is.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:17
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My "recommended" panel is now filling up with videos about Somerton, almost all of which appear to be roughly half hour long addresses to camera with no inserts, cuts or anything else. I guess it's better than plagarism, but man chasing the algorithm must loving suck.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:17
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Is the leaked Somerton video on Revolutionary Girl Utena still up?
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Dec 6, 2023 14:21
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It is, yes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvMq2FejBT8
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Dec 6, 2023 14:28
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Clerical Terrors posted:Penny Arcade kind of lucked their way into having a competent business manager really early on. The business just sort of developed around them as they went on and at worst they had to stop Mike Krahulik from running his mouth a couple of times, I don't think they've ever really been in the situation where James Rolfe is. Not early on enough as they had managed to sell (and get back) their IP TWICE by that point. I've never understood this. Yathzee doesn't own ZP, Walker doesn't (fully) own The Nostaglia Critic, and those are just three examples. I'm sure there are more. Why give up your potential golden goose for what must have been a pittance of investment at the time ?
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Dec 6, 2023 14:39
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Bad Wolf posted:Not early on enough as they had managed to sell (and get back) their IP TWICE by that point. I've never understood this. Yathzee doesn't own ZP, Walker doesn't (fully) own The Nostaglia Critic, and those are just three examples. I'm sure there are more. Why give up your potential golden goose for what must have been a pittance of investment at the time ? I assume in Doug's case it was that he didn't want to be the Critic forever and selling it off meant he wasn't stuck with it forever and could do new things. Lol.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:42
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Yathzee sold ZP almost immediately to The Escapist. He did a few self published reviews on YouTube which they noticed and offered him a contact, which I assume would have them retain ownership of the IP. That was in the relatively early days of youtube where the payouts to creators wasn't what it became, and future profitability was harder to predict than a contact from a media publisher.
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Dec 6, 2023 14:50
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Fil5000 posted:I assume in Doug's case it was that he didn't want to be the Critic forever and selling it off meant he wasn't stuck with it forever and could do new things. Lol. "The Nostalgia Critic is just the first blush of my genius, and I don't even care that much about it! Surely my next projects when I reach my final form will be FAR more successful. I can safely sell this embarrassing moniker on the way to my true destiny!"
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Dec 6, 2023 14:51
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Bad Wolf posted:Not early on enough as they had managed to sell (and get back) their IP TWICE by that point. I've never understood this. Yathzee doesn't own ZP, Walker doesn't (fully) own The Nostaglia Critic, and those are just three examples. I'm sure there are more. Why give up your potential golden goose for what must have been a pittance of investment at the time ? It's an evergreen thing honestly. They don't think what they're doing will be relevant forever so they'll accept some guaranteed cash in the meantime. It's sadly very common, like how the creators of Superman sold the rights for what was a much bigger paycheck than they were used to, and also a pittance compared to what it was worth in the long run. It's easy for folks like that to prey on artists who aren't used to making that much money off their work.
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Dec 6, 2023 15:07
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I mean, how many creators and gimmicks have just died that we all forgot about? I can't think of any ATM which either proves or disproves my point
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Dec 6, 2023 15:19
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Endorph posted:hes fairly boring Knight Dude. imagine paying dlc for carth. The most I remember about DLC dude was that he makes an incredibly tasteless holocaust joke if you bring him on the mission where Templars are lobotomizing mages.
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Dec 6, 2023 15:21
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I wonder if being the Nostalgia Critic forever is Doug's own perpetual purgatory I don't think he has tried to do anything new since Demo Reel imploded
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Dec 6, 2023 15:22
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Some more topical videos are coming out lately. Hoots sort of talks about the Dirtbag Left, but mostly talks about how being a messy bitch that loves drama is fun but probably best done with friends and not dogpiling people on twitter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribvJZAS9bk And speaking of lying, scamming, personality cult-builders, Strange Aeons finished her follow up video on Andy, one of those classic fandom con-artists who combined fake charity drives, extraplanar spirit channeling, m'lady fedoraposting, and bad Irish accents to build a reputation and online fame. This time, he's jumped from the Lord of the Rings fandom to writing edgy war fiction about Neville Longbottom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQS_NY-FOBg This is the first video, if you want to catch up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJU3AuF3AWs
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Dec 6, 2023 15:30
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:one of Dan Olson's key points is that all the things that Doug is writing off as shallow whining or pretentious posturing are the fallout of real events and situations that Roger Waters, and almost every other British person that was a child during WW2, would have lived through/been intimately familiar with. Doug is incapable of engaging with it from outside the POV of his own upbringing, so can only talk about it on the most shallow, surface level. To Doug, it might as well be Harry Potter for how alien the movie's raw emotional metaphors are to him. The part where Doug says that the album is whining about school being boring and that people shouldn’t object to having to go to school because school helps you develop skills and get a job is amazing. It must be wild to have absolutely no context for anything you hear or see. It’s like a less objectionable version of those 2010s “feminism cringe” videos where some idiot mocks women for wanting birth control and wonders why they’re so concerned about not being able to get it.
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Dec 6, 2023 15:42
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Nuns with Guns posted:And speaking of lying, scamming, personality cult-builders, Strange Aeons finished her follow up video on Andy, one of those classic fandom con-artists who combined fake charity drives, extraplanar spirit channeling, m'lady fedoraposting, and bad Irish accents to build a reputation and online fame. This time, he's jumped from the Lord of the Rings fandom to writing edgy war fiction about Neville Longbottom: I should watch more of that channel, my first exposure was the vid on a fanfic writer of color and former sex trafficking victim who had HIV and an Ethiopian girlfriend… and it turned out she was none of those things
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Dec 6, 2023 15:43
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Todd has a Patreon post about his thought process and history behind making the James Somerton video: My Year with James Would recommend y'all to throw him some dollars but here's some previews:quote:Still, I knew the consequences for him would probably be dire. His channel would die. He would effectively lose his job, not an easy thing to do to a person. Plus, there was a strong undercurrent of loneliness and sadness in his videos – sometimes outright text rather than subtext – and I couldn’t help but feel for him. I myself am also a weird loner isolated by this terrible career, so I sympathized. quote:I couldn’t wait for this motherfucker to be destroyed, and from what I could tell watching Harry’s video, he absolutely would be. This was a loving homicide. Somerton’s career would be laid waste by the end of the day. He also mentioned a Discord server, which I actually had known about but not explored – I got someone to send me a link and I started digging around in there (and partially to see the fallout of the video) and I found the part where Nick admitted the fat Nazis claim was based on “raw observation.” I’ve never been angrier. I had read so much trying to be sure that I wasn’t wrong about it, trying to be sure that I wasn’t falsely accusing them, and this motherfucker was just straight up admitting that he had made it up. No, I’m sorry, he had “observed” it as if you can just look at changing beauty standards and decide that the Nazis must have done it. My loving God, gently caress you. quote:I had promised myself I wouldn’t gloat about this, that I would remain professional so as not to feel scummy. I did not keep that promise. This was the funniest goddamn thing that had ever happened. HBomb’s video had so thoroughly destroyed Somerton’s reputation overnight that there was now a massive market for James Somerton content, and the views for my video skyrocketed. This was the biggest video I had ever made in my life. It’s a shame I don’t do drama content, because it turns out I’m very good at it. My video isn’t as slick or as sharp as Harry’s but I did do more work than it might seem. I deliberately started with “Gay porn invented Skype” to start off with something loving ridiculous, and I dropped his most offensive lie – that the SS was dominated by gay men – early, around twenty minutes in. It’s like a roller coaster; you start with the biggest drop early so that the momentum carries you through the rest of the ride (with more drops later, like a lie that the Nazis invented abs, to keep the thrills coming). It clearly worked; for the next three hours, my mentions were flooded with the same three jokes: "Todd with the steel chair!!," "A second video essay has hit the James Somerton," and "Stop Stop He's Already Dead!!" Obviously this wouldn't have happened if Harry hadn't opened this lane for me to walk through, but I had been convinced that my basic, barebones video would pale compare to Harry’s. I joked with a friend that it would get maybe ten views. As I write this, it just hit a million.
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Dec 6, 2023 15:53
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settle down todd
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Dec 6, 2023 15:57
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The Chad Jihad posted:I mean, how many creators and gimmicks have just died that we all forgot about? I can't think of any ATM which either proves or disproves my point One of those forgotten creators I will never forget (entirely) is some guy named "Ahmed48" or something. An early AVGN-bandwagon rider. All I know of him is that in one of Spoony's earlier reviews, he off-handedly mentions him and the AVGN as inspirations, and assures them that he isn't trying to rip them off. So at one point, internet review fans must have held this rando in similar regard as the AVGN. 
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Dec 6, 2023 15:59
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Pachylad posted:Todd has a Patreon post about his thought process and history behind making the James Somerton video: My Year with James Would recommend y'all to throw him some dollars but here's some previews: Stop, stop, he's already dead (keep going)
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Dec 6, 2023 15:59
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Genthil posted:TeamFourStar commentates the third part of their last abridged episode. Things get rather emotional at the beginning as the guys look back on the people they met and hung out with at conventions while they were producing the series, namely the late Chris Ayres, who was one of the voice actors for Frieza in the Funimation dub. TeamFourStar's an interesting example of the whole 'hobby turned into a job' thing earlier in the thread. They technically did learn skills but they're very specific and not at all on a professional level (voice acting, editing in Kaiser's case) and they didn't really have a good way to turn that into something sustainable in no small part to using a copyrighted work. Now they've all pivoted to other stuff, like streaming for Taka and Lani - although I remember Lani saying he was going to move to LA to maybe try to be a professional voice actor which, you know, good luck and God bless - and stuff that capitalizes on their popularity but doesn't use what they became popular for. Taka at least seems to be doing really good for himself.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:04
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can't wait for the content mills take notice and you start seeing james somerton finger family videos
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Dec 6, 2023 16:05
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The Chad Jihad posted:I mean, how many creators and gimmicks have just died that we all forgot about? I can't think of any ATM which either proves or disproves my point The depths of youtube are filled with AVGN/Nostalgia Critic clones. Hell, outside this site, who even thinks about Retsuprae anymore.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:07
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My wife and I have followed Todd's channel for a long time. It's amusing but also kind of sad that the James Somerton Drama Content will probably be his most viewed video ever when all is said and done, because it really has nothing to do with most of the material he puts out. I think Todd is pretty well-known but his channel never seemed to be as popular as I thought it should be. But that's youtube for you.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:08
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Bad Wolf posted:Not early on enough as they had managed to sell (and get back) their IP TWICE by that point. I've never understood this. Yathzee doesn't own ZP, Walker doesn't (fully) own The Nostaglia Critic, and those are just three examples. I'm sure there are more. Why give up your potential golden goose for what must have been a pittance of investment at the time ? If you're young, inexperienced, and without a network those are the kinds of deals you'll find. And by the time all of these people sold their IPs they didn't know it was going to be their golden goose. ZP wasn't Yahtzee's magnum opus, it was just something he hastily put together and it wasn't his dream career either, I'm pretty sure that from his POV he wasn't signing away a valuable brand but just taking a contract to produce some medium-to-low effort video content like most places at the time.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:11
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Libluini posted:One of those forgotten creators I will never forget (entirely) is some guy named "Ahmed48" or something. An early AVGN-bandwagon rider. Alexander4488? The Game Dude! A video of his was the main inspiration for what still must be the absolute funniest thing the Game Grumps have ever made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-LfKbCR0MI
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Dec 6, 2023 16:33
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16-bit Butt-Head posted:you must understand that james rolfe isnt a gamer and doesnt really like video games all that much unless its something he grew up playing. if you have him talking about a game he played in his childhood he can be enthusiastic but if its something from the sixth generation onwards he's not to going to give a poo poo because its something he doesnt care about. his real passion is film and film making but the avgn pays the bills so he's stuck doing it. its a similar situation to the nostalgia critic only james rolfe appears to be a more down to earth family man who wants to support his family anyway he can compared to doug walkers narcissism and lack of self awareness and inability to do anything else but the nostalgia critic because of a lack of talent and burning of bridges I used to watch a bunch of tabletop wargaming terrain tutorial channels on Youtube including this Rich Evans lookalike UK guy Terrain Made Easy. He ran the channel for years and years and posted dozens and dozens of videos and had a small Patreon following then one day out of the blue he quit, leaving a farewell video where he explained that he didn't actually enjoy making terrain and he just sort of got stuck making those videos for a significant chunk of his life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrCUYbf0wA8
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Dec 6, 2023 16:37
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All your favorite movie/music/video game/anime youtubers going Joker Mode.Autisanal Cheese posted:I should watch more of that channel, my first exposure was the vid on a fanfic writer of color and former sex trafficking victim who had HIV and an Ethiopian girlfriend… and it turned out she was none of those things Her recaps of old fandom dramas are interesting. This one gets pretty dark, but it's still fascinating to see him recycle the same cult indoctrination techniques over and over. Flatting people with attention first, dragging them out of their circle of friends and family, pushing them through some grueling physical trials while depriving them of proper sleep and food, etc. until they break. I know there was some spicy take going around about how there was some spike in cults in the 60s or 70s because soldiers were coming back from war with indirect indoctrination training, but I don't know what it says that this guy just seemed to figure out all this on his own. Does it just come second nature if you're a sociopath and pathological liar?
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Dec 6, 2023 16:39
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exquisite tea posted:My wife and I have followed Todd's channel for a long time. It's amusing but also kind of sad that the James Somerton Drama Content will probably be his most viewed video ever when all is said and done, because it really has nothing to do with most of the material he puts out. I think Todd is pretty well-known but his channel never seemed to be as popular as I thought it should be. But that's youtube for you. i get why people feel this generally but it does warm my heart to know that at the very least, the people who have the audiences willing to listen to them are starting to take a more proactive community approach. even knowing that it means becoming a part of a public "spectacle", i would be able to sleep at night knowing i did what i could to get these scumbags the hell out.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:48
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Nuns with Guns posted:I know there was some spicy take going around about how there was some spike in cults in the 60s or 70s because soldiers were coming back from war with indirect indoctrination training, but I don't know what it says that this guy just seemed to figure out all this on his own. Does it just come second nature if you're a sociopath and pathological liar? You can find how-tos on anything, and I'm sure somebody or some LLM has happily distilled "how 2 cult" down for people who won't read a book.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:49
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I think AVGN videos have seen a big improvement over the past year or two, and that did come with separating Screenwave appearances, or maybe he rediscovered his passion a little. When James was focusing on the band stuff and putting fairly minimal effort into Screenwave videos was probably the low point for the channel though, even outside of the plagiarism.
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Dec 6, 2023 17:08
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Kim Justice posted:Alexander4488? The Game Dude! The instant I heard that "Mickey Mouse!" again, I started uncontrollably giggling. An absolute joy of a video.
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Dec 6, 2023 17:13
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Mr Interweb posted:the AVGN situation sorta puzzles me because - and i haven't been following his channel super closely so i could be way off - haven't his videos (at least, specifically the 'AVGN' ones) continued to be wildly popular? he's not like one of those yt channels that might have been popular at one point then fell off a cliff like boogie2929whatever. his most recent AVGN vid has over a million views. he had a successful gimmick that people didn't get tired of and was continuing to rake it in, as far as i can tell. Boogie very large Boogie very big
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Dec 6, 2023 17:15
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Pachylad posted:Todd has a Patreon post about his thought process and history behind making the James Somerton video: My Year with James Would recommend y'all to throw him some dollars but here's some previews: i hope todd doesnt take away from the video that he is "good at drama content". It was interesting because Somerton is interesting right now, but it is far from Todds best work. Quite a bit more boring than Hbombs, and way more boring than anything Todd usually puts out.
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Dec 6, 2023 17:31
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xeria posted:The next Bioware-like (or I guess now, Larian-like) game should lean all the way in and let you Fire Emblem-style play matchmaker between your companions, or just lean further into it happening incidentally as the game goes on like Tali and Garrus getting together on the side if neither's been romanced by Shepard. I'm going to be honest, I feel like that would actually be a really smart move. The impression I've gotten is that a contingent of the people upset that there isn't a polyamorous option with Shadowheart and Karlach in BG3 (Myself included) don't necessarily want the option to fulfill a threesome fantasy, they've just picked up on the obvious romantic chemistry the two NPCs have and want to see them hook up without having to actually play as one of them. I actually feel like a Larian-style game with mechanics to let you play matchmaker between the cast of various weirdos you recruit would actually be pretty engaging to a not insignificant chunk of the fanbase? KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Dec 6, 2023 |
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Dec 6, 2023 17:33
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Lmao Lol ROFLMAO even. If only James had held on a little longer he would have been able to use Google's new tools to just write his scripts for him and extract the things to plagiarize for him instead of having to barely google poo poo to steal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPiOP_CB54A Also still on the topic of lazy content production, this tool is probably going to be mostly smoke and mirrors, the rest of the videos about it are really trying to sell it as a "totally real" AGI without using those words, but that particular example seems like a fairly realistic use case for such an AI to exceed at. "Hey, here's a bunch of blogs, books, articles, and essays about X, read them and extract the relevant topics and summarize them for me as a video script". Boom. Done. Hbomb touched on that very briefly as something that could have been done to obfuscate the plagiarism, simply dropping the text into a GPT model and having it rework it, but this would even remove the need to search for and copy relevant text.
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Dec 6, 2023 17:41
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Judge Tesla" pos="536376551 posted:
Heeh, people for years would ask TieTuesday and Slowbeef for more Dahir Insaat riffs, but if you want that you can watch the earlier riff on youtube tutorials\riddles\etc on Fridays and occasionally the crew gets back together to riff for donation drives on twitch. Add to that a bunch of people there either disappearing or becoming celebrities on their right or tackled by onlookers, and you can sorta see why RetsuPurae is now just a MST3k sorta thing where they'll riff on something on cons or for special occasions to help someone out. This is technically Internet Creator news, but yesterday Twitch Korea announced their offices would close in Ferb 24. While I saw some writers state this would be the beggining of the death of such an industry, I heavily disagree: The annoucement was met with a lot of korean streamers moving to other streaming platformers, not to mention it was more about working costs than the demand itself going away. Kunster fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Dec 6, 2023 |
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Dec 6, 2023 17:42
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UnderFreddy posted:i hope todd doesnt take away from the video that he is "good at drama content". It was interesting because Somerton is interesting right now, but it is far from Todds best work. Quite a bit more boring than Hbombs, and way more boring than anything Todd usually puts out. At this point I'd be concerned that he's "hosed up" his channel algorithmically-- I've heard creators say youtube explicitly rabbitholes you and if you have a banger of a video it's a blessing and a curse, because it becomes exceptionally hard to pivot away from that content without being "punished" for it, since you're ending up in the recs of people who want that content and them not watching your subsequent videos means you end up in a feedback loop of getting fewer and fewer eyeballs on your other videos, even as your one old viral video keeps reinforcing itself and your channel as a whole as that specific content
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Dec 6, 2023 17:44
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UnderFreddy posted:i hope todd doesnt take away from the video that he is "good at drama content". It was interesting because Somerton is interesting right now, but it is far from Todds best work. Quite a bit more boring than Hbombs, and way more boring than anything Todd usually puts out. Being "good at drama content" is just being timely and lucky, right? There's no art to what some gently caress like Keemstar does (did? Did he retire), it's just talking about what everyone is talking about.
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Dec 6, 2023 17:45
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being good at drama content means being involved in drama 24/7 sounds exhausting...
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Dec 6, 2023 17:47
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