I suppose it is hard for any pre-internet virus to compare in terms of damage to these 5, but one that stands out in my mind:

Form (circa 1990 or so), and its variants like Form.A would infect the boot sector of your hard drive, and from there could infect any floppy disk that you used on the computer. Most PCs at the time would try to boot from a floppy disk left in the drive, which would spread the infection.

I guess that many variants didn't really do much of anything particularly bad, but I got Form.A one time and it nuked the Master Boot Record (like virus #5 in the video) of my PC. Since DOS / Windows (3.1 at the time I think) wouldn't boot, I (mistakenly) assumed that it had formatted my hard drive, and then lost all of my data by reformatting.

I remember a span of about a year where any 3.5 inch floppy disk being passed around offices or schools in my home town had a roughly 80% chance of being infected with Form.A. So that seems like a pretty impressive infection and spread rate, without advantage of being able to spread through the internet!

I'm not surprised anymore....when money corrupts...
Does that make me...jaded?

People Cheat at Sports because there is money on the line.

What other newflashes do we have?
One of his weaker bits...but I still love the format.

America is more racist than it realizes.

Cute Furry Animals brighten anyones day.

You do one...

funny, but fuck vine! such an annoying format

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.

NO, a thousand times NO, to the Young Turks

NO to any animal suffering of any kind ... I just can't unsee that no matter how happy the ending!

NO to truth distorters as well as overtly religious anything

NO to racism in any format


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Unlike Eric I adore the Slo Mo Guys ... would enjoy spending the day with them just once and I delight in the cynical smartass that is Bill Maher

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I kind of get it. But on the other hand, every time you change mediums the way you tell the story changes. Every time a movie comes out based on a book (I mean an all-text novel, not a graphic novel / comic), most people that love the source book *think* that they want the movie to be a 100% verbatim adaptation. But the medium just doesn't work the same way.

Describing a setting or a character might take many paragraphs in a book, possibly spread out over multiple chapters or even multiple books. In a movie, *bam* -- you put it on screen, and you can see it. Done. On the other hand, describing a character's motivations can be done very succinctly or in great depth and detail in a book, but it is harder to do that in a purely visual medium like film.

Wolverine's color scheme and costume design works in comic books. His mask/hat thing with the horn-like points works in the comics. But in live-action film, what materials can look or behave like either or those things, and not be jarringly weird? Even cosplay type stuff is generally built to look good in still images -- not necessarily in video, being subjected to action-movie kinds of physical motion. I believe the directors / filmmakers when they say that they have tried more authentic costumes, and felt that they "didn't work".

Deadpool was a very good example of how it *can* work to move the imagery in a direction visually closer to the comic books. But I think the best we can hope for is a happy medium where *some* visual cues are adapted from the comics, in the situations where those things adapt well to the format.

*backup=[...snipped...]

One thing I liked about that in particular:
She looked like she was having fun, even when she wasn't so good.

I've played bass (electric, never tried an upright) for about 15 years. I only got *really* serious about it after getting Rocksmith 2014 -- went from playing once in a while to almost every day. I'm a LOT better than I was, can play a LOT of songs at least decently (say, 97%+ accuracy in Rocksmith), but still nowhere near as skilled as some.

BUT, it has been FUN every step of the way. Especially after trying Rocksmith, which presents "sheet music" in a visual, tab-like format that I can now effectively sight-read (it takes some getting used to, but works great once you figure it out). A lot of people are reluctant to try learning an instrument because they think it won't be fun, particularly in the early going. They think they will suck.

Well, in my experience that is half right. Yeah, you're going to suck (I certainly did). But it is loads of fun, in spite of that. And you get better fast -- the human brain is a pretty amazing thing. One day, you try a new song and think "damn, that is so hard I'll *never* be able to play it right". Then a month or two later you think "oh yeah, I should give that a second try" and all of a sudden it is very doable. Awesome to have those little moments of revelation when you realize that "hey, I am definitely getting better at this!"

"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

I don't think they could really present the original storyline in a cinematic format. The comic worked because they were able to employ the ENTIRE Marvel universe, and reference years and years of superhero / supervillain interactions. With a drastically more limited cast and history the story simply wouldn't feel right. They're still using the general concept of the story it appears, but in a significantly more limited context.

I think my only complaint will be that they're not pulling the television characters into CW, but perhaps (hopefully!) they're saving the full-cast spectacle for Infinity War.

I have Circle Jerks Golden Shower of Hits on cassette. What you state is true. Its so true. Its really the perfect format, dirty, raw, quick and cheap.

Not at all from my read.
To me, it's like trademarking the word "news!", forcibly removing any videos labeled "news!", and insisting anyone that posts one pay them 1/2 the revenue they might make...and probably taking it too far and going after those making 'news' claiming they're also infringing and forcing them to pay or defend themselves in court.
It's not at all as specific as you claim.
I see the difference in your analogy, but I totally disagree with your characterization. It's far more like trademarking 'news!' than trademarking 'news filmed and broadcast from a window of a bathysphere sitting in your swimming pool'. If it were that specific, there would be no outrage.
If they didn't come up with it, it's not their idea...and 'humans react to' videos is NOT distinctive enough by far, IMO, and in the opinion of MOST people. If they actually limited it to videos with the exact format of people watching unseen videos at an angle, and the exact same title of "Kids React!" they're still over reaching to control something they did not invent and should not own. Kids reacting was a genre of video/photograph LONG before they started making them, and if the reaction is exciting, using an exclamation point is normal English, as is capitalization of all words in a title.

They have no right to 'protect' something they didn't invent by taking other people's money, first that's not protection, it's simple extortion, second, it's theft, since it's not even their idea in the first place.
They don't have to be the first, possibly, but they certainly shouldn't be able to trademark a common phrase that existed before their company, or a format that existed long before their company, which is what they did.
If they want to 'protect their brand', they need to re-name it something that's not already a common phrase, otherwise they're trying to co-opt a commonly used phrase (that they didn't come up with in the first place) and extort money from those who commonly use it under threat of lawsuit. They also need to steer FAR away from attempting to enforce it against ANY video not in their EXACT format, including font, capitalization, punctuation, stated video format, content, etc. It a video doesn't meet EVERY standard there, they should leave it alone. I'm fairly certain that's NOT their intent, as it would make it impossible for them to extort money and make this move useless.


EDIT: Can we at least agree that, if a company is going to do something like this that COULD be a huge over reach and could easily be abused to both extort money and remove any competition, and their spokes people do such a piss poor job of explaining what they're doing that it sounds like they're using the law to steal property and money from actual content creators and erase those they can't control, while creating absolutely nothing themselves, and offering nothing for the money they forcibly take, that that company deserves ALL the ridicule and losses that follow, and their best move left would be to drop the entire thing rather than continuing and making numerous failed attempts to explain themselves?

That's the thing, they did not trademark the concept of react videos!
They trademarked a very specific format of their shows.
It's not like trademarking 'news programs'.
It's more trademarking 'news programs filmed and broadcast from a window of a bathysphere sitting in your swimming pool'.
See the difference?
They don't have to be the first to do it. But if their content and ideas are distinctive enough, they have every right to protect it.

Once again you do not understand the fucking difference between COPYRIGHT and TRADEMARK.

They shut down that guy's video for a COPYRIGHT violation because he used their videos wholesale without permission from them.

Whereas you can bet your ass that fine bros get all the legal permissions necessary from all the videos, items and people before they run any of their episodes. They are too big of a target and too much money at stake not to do it!

They shut down that guys video for COPYRIGHT violation, not TRADEMARK violation. They got a trademark for the logos and the exact format of their shows!
They did not trademark the concept of a "react" video!