I agree with ChaosEngine here, you don't have to be a chef to recognize puke on a plate.

And, on an entirely different bent, if you needed to be able to create something to critique it, nobody would ever be able to critique a big-budget movie, because nobody can make one of them, it takes a huge team.

Finally http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3943342/

So there. He has written, directed, edited, and even done sound work. (though to be honest, I have a bigger profile on IMDB than him, and I'm not exactly well-known)

I get it and i wouldn't do it as i assume it may be misinterpreted and people would read into "what i really mean". I don't have the want to defend myself if people don't take me at my word. Its a minefield something like this. It helps to know the person/people who make such a critique. Thats why i like the sift. i feel i know many well enough (from past experience) to see where they are coming from. If i didn't know you at all id have no clue what you might mean. Blah blah blah im not good at writing stuff but i think you can understand what im trying to say.

Then you haven't encountered any of his fans on twitter.

And he is pretty much the largest and most 1:1 example the above video is referencing: He uses specious arguments, focuses on minor details or extreme examples to paint with a massive brush, and generally is more vitriol than skepticism.

And the difference between Sarkeesian making videos critiquing and thunderf00t is myriad: Sarkeesian focuses on depictions and media, thunderf00t focuses on indviduals and a very amorphous idea of "feminism" with videos like "Why feminism is poisoning atheism", "Why 'feminism' poisons EVERYTHING", all pretty much completely obsessed with Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson.

That's not skepticism.. that's a creepy personal vendetta.

The other major difference are their fans. I don't recall Sarkeesian ever taking out a personal vendetta against a random person and suggesting her fans bombard their business on Yelp with bad reviews and then people on the doxxing boards of 8chan joined in the online attacks.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/25/1439148/-Phil-Mason-is-Working-With-Baphomet-to-Ruin-DC-Business

I mean, it's not quite as simple as "one person makes videos critiquing, another makes videos critiquing". But I feel like you probably already knew that.

You would think, wouldn't you, that they would be diametrically opposed.

Well it turns out that esjews and islamists both, for example, despise sex and sexuality, differing only in whose sexuality they denigrate the most. They do both believe that women's bodies in particular are disgusting and ought to be covered at all times - certainly this is the impression you receive from esjew film and videogame critiques. They both believe that women are inferior to men and need to be protected from normal social experience - for the islamist this takes the form of, you know, chaining them in a cupboard and shouting verses from the Qur'an at them; for the esjew the creation of safe spaces and online bubbles where they can be protected from white patriarchal oppression, consequences, and new ideas.

They're equally fond of the lie that any opposition to their fanaticism is evidence of bigotry.

And of course they both believe that any dissent from their worthless ideologies should be forcibly silenced.

Turns out regressive belief systems have a lot in common.


I say this all, by the way, as the leftest of lefties. Liberals don't censor. Liberals don't attack men for being men, or white people for being white, or cis het whatever for whatever, and they don't team up with fascists just because they're brown-skinned fascists.

Esjews aren't lefties; they're a shit the left took on the carpet and haven't cleaned up yet.

Jesus christ, I'm 7 minutes in and he still hasn't made anything approaching a critique of "ideological feminism", whatever that's supposed to be.

Get to the fucking point.

right... finally. over 10 minutes in and we get to the first claim.
"what we're denying is that there's a rape culture"

Well, you can deny it all you want, but you're going to want to back that up with facts.. oh no, what's that? Let's just move straight on to the next point.

FFS, he is LITERALLY doing the exact same thing that his fucking stupidly long intro talked about. If you make a claim, that claim should be examined.

Can someone tell me if this gets any better? 'cos right now, I can't be bothered watching the rest of this unless there's a marked improvement in the quality of his "argument".

this is exactly way i think it's important to separate "islam" from "muslims" and why i think the critique of the ideology needs to give its followers the opportunity to adapt. islam may be rigid, have its problems, and may even be "incompatible with civilization" (a sentiment i don't necessarily share) but there is nothing like opportunity, upward mobility, and freedom of expression to shake the foundations of rigid religious ideology and bring people, whatever their belief, into the fold of cultural, civil, and intellectual advancement.

there's kind of this weird rhetoric that i keep noticing that implies that "gays" and "islam" are the same category of thing and can be compared but can't be prioritized because they're somehow equal. they're not.

homosexuality is an inherent quality. there is nothing to critique or change other than our views of it.

islam, however, is just an idea and needs to be treated as such. it absolutely can be critiqued and changed and i would argue this is required.

the tricky part i see is the conflating of "islam" with "muslims" and using the ugliness of islam as justification for mistreatment and ostracizing of muslims. sometimes to the extent of treating them as sub human, most notably in refugee conversations. islam is gross, imo, and should be criticized (fervently) but muslims are still people and need to be treated as such, just as the gay community should. they both have the right to live and have the opportunity to live with some semblance of safety. people deserve compassion. ideas do not.

Although it is comedy and my critique is not meant in any serious way, I think some of those pitfalls are not about adulthood, but just being a bit too bourgeois. Vegetable spiralizers probably are not the hallmark of being an adult, but more of having too much disposable income and being part of a consumerist mindset.

I liked the game but I like the Honest Trailers critique.

I even love their critique of ...

I'll agree with everyone on TYT. I like the message, but the delivery needs work.

Captain Disillusion. I enjoy debunking, but the persona and gimmick makes it hard to watch most of the time.

Thunderf00t. I enjoyed him for awhile, especially his Creationist debunking era, but then something happened and I just can't do his videos most of the time. Partly it was his stance on elevator gate, which he just pushed and pushed endlessly, but he seemed to just go off after that whole incident. I don't mind the opinion, I disagree, but he just wouldn't let it go... and never got back to what he originally was doing.

Oh and yeah, Angry Videogame Nerd I agree with. Way too much fluff...

Markplier. My kids love him, so my suggestion box is full of him for a few days after every other weekend. I love Twitch and stuff like that, but I don't find his personality at all enjoyable. He's a Pew De Pie wannabe and I can't stand Pew either.

Earthling Cinema... no. Just no. Another annoying personality, I just don't get the appeal.

Speaking of cinema related ones, Cinema Sins. They give 50 or 60, and really only a third or so actually count, even on movies I hated. I appreciate critique but I don't know, I normally can't watch a full episode.

I'll agree with others about mean spirited pranks. Truth distorters, especially when it is for financial, political or religious gain, which I guess is most of those types.

Joshua Feuerstein is a perfect example of the above.

People doing videos in cars, even if parked... there are exceptions to that, like the guy who does carpool karaoke, but most others...

Guy on the street type videos. It's been a format around for too long. How many people did you have to edit out to get a few idiots? Occasionally they'll show one person who knows among 8 others.

When otherwise smart science channels like SciShow and the like use the word "theory" in the common sense of the term and not the scientific use. It continues to distort the public image of the word. They come to a science channel, see it used where they should be using hypothesis. If they want to keep it simple and use guess or ideas. Just don't use the word theory until it's a more accepted theory. This way people don't keep saying "it's just a theory" on actual facts like the big bang, evolution, human accelerated climate change, etc.

in response to the TYT comments: i really appreciate what TYT are trying to do but they need to get their shit on lock. they're too experienced to be operating like a high school news channel/early morning radio comedy show.

same with the real news but their stories are way, way better. and why can't they title their videos in any kind of coherent way?

and i feel similarly about bill maher. about 10-20% of the time he has something worth saying. he does, however, put together some awesomely bizarre groups of people, which i appreciate so long as they're allowed to speak in complete sentences.

anything from the amazing atheist or thunderf00t is just pure cringe these days. they lost the plot years ago and now just their voices sound like crying toddlers to me.

any MRA/ideologically anti-feminist stuff is also pure cringe. i'm all about critiquing ideas and i have my own critiques for parts of feminism but pretty much everything i've seen devolves to "look at this stupid fat girl" pretty quickly.

i also second what newtboy said.

anything political that bobknight posts is just a clusterfuck of wrong/partially wrong/intentionally misleading and adds nothing of substance to any discussion.



what i miss rachael maddow articles. she always seems to research and cover the facts of her stories really well.

Snyder seems to have an excellent sense of style in his films, but this critique is mostly about the writing. (FWIW, I haven't seen 300, but enjoyed Watchmen.)

You didn't like it.
There - saved myself 17 more minutes of your high-school critique.

You know, I read a recent interview with John Oliver where he is very emphatic that his show is "comedy" and that, despite what people want to read into it, he is not making political statements. I think if I had watched this video before reading that interview I would have scoffed (as others here already have). But it's pretty clear to me now that he and his writers know exactly what they are doing.

Basically, this video is the result of John Oliver saying, "You know, when you think about this history of racism in American cinema you can find some pretty fucked up stuff. How can we make a joke out of that?"

It's not designed to be an actual literary critique, it's meant to use the facts to play up a punch line. I'm pretty sure John and his writing crew know that "The Last Samurai" does not refer to Tom Cruise's character (i.e. just because the character is trained how to use the sword and armor does not automatically make him a samurai), but it's easy to see how they can make a joke out of the ambiguity of the title and Americans' tendency for self-centeredness (I'm sure there are people in the U.S. who think the title does indeed refer to Cruise's character).

I actually don't have a problem with actors "playing outside their ethnicity" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean). I'm reminded of the recent controversy about the video game Uncharted 4 which has a white actress voice-acting the role of a black South African character. The Creative Director responded to the controversy by pointing out that a white character is voiced by a black actor in the same game, and that the decisions were made based on the choosing the best actor for the role--not on what the actor looked like in real life (read more about the story here).

As CG progresses and digital characters become a norm, I think this is an issue that's only going to get greater in the film industry. In our demand for political correctness will we demand that the actors physically resemble the characters they are portraying onscreen? That seems a bit absurd to me. But so too is the idea of excluding people for consideration from roles based solely on the color of their skin.

i have been watching interviews where prominent comics are refusing to do gigs at universities due to the fact that the PC culture has become so saturated that they can't even do their bits,and it becomes a horror show.

young,educated people who mistake their own little bubble-world and attempt to project their sense of morality onto others by demanding changes in language and attitude by way of shrill harpy speak,is totally missing the point of humor.

comedy is the examination and critique of certain truths we may hold sacred,and expose the absurdity.a good comedian can do this fairly well,a great comedian does so with a finesse that is epic.

see:george carlin.lenny bruce,bill hicks,patrice o'neal,bill burr,louis ck.doug stanhope

so i have to disagree with you @Imagoamin.
comedians who thrive on being edgy are not thriving just for the simple fact of being edgy or controversial.they thrive because they are adept at exposing the absurdity of life in such a way that makes us all laugh.....at ourselves.

they experience pushback constantly in the form of heckling and jeering,and do so on a nightly basis and do not get upset that people get offended by their material.that is the very boundary they are pushing!

self examination,criticism and the ability to accept that maybe those things we held so dear are,in fact,absurd and in need of ridicule.the great comedians all give us a great,totally effective self-cleansing pill.they call it "the get the fuck over yourself" pill.

but the overly sensitive PC culture that is festering in our current higher education institutions is creating a new breed of human that lacks basic self-awareness and,on the whole,a gaggle of humorless cunts.

humor is a concept beyond their ken.they dont get it and instead of relaxing a bit,they prefer to get their panties in a knot over.....words.so they all get together and tweet and facebook,in order to share their outrage and make their little signs and march in front of a chris rock show with absolutely zero sense of irony.

to them they are striking a blow for justice!

which is just absurd,and in desperate need of ridicule.