Piero San Giorgio and I discuss the recent events in the Middle East.
Available on UATV.
Tag: UATV
Noble Savage Premiers Today
You will not want to miss this one. The Big Bear is back and he’s doing what he does best: standup comedy without a filter, without a leash, and without authorization.
See OwenBenjamin DOT com for details. It will be released on Unauthorized as well.
The Saga of the Baen Exemplar
Jon is a sociopathic grifter who goes through life trying to insert himself into other peoples’ troubles to try and score clout for himself. He starts shit for others and then cries how he’s a victim. When you take exception to him fucking people over for clout he will say everybody but him is a secret leftist sell out and you just hate him because he’s “Christian”. Do not trust him. He’s fucking cancer. Seriously. I can’t accentuate this enough. Trust him at your own peril. That dude is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
- Larry Correia, 25 September 2023
I have zero interest in saying anything negative about Larry Correia or contributing to the never-ending stream of Baen-related drama. I’ve never had any problem with him, personal or professional. He’s a significant figure of the right-wing cultural scene and I like both his Monster Hunter and Grimoire novels. Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted was a conscious attempt to out gun-porn Larry in a science fiction setting. And even our disagreement about the ideal way to handle the Hugo Awards led directly to my favorite experience of my entire literary career, the epic two-year Rabid Puppies rampage, for which I will always be grateful.
However, given the public nature of these accusations about a valued contributor to both Arktoons and Unauthorized, I would be remiss if I did not clearly state for the record that Larry Correia is flat-out wrong about Jon Del Arroz. Larry is flat-out and provably wrong. I can testify, from personal experience, that Jon is neither “fucking cancer” nor a “vile fucker”, and that it’s both unprofessional and incorrect for any established writer to assert that he is.
Unauthorized subscribers who wish to hear Jon’s take can watch his UATV-exclusive video on the subject.
And since we’re speaking of Jon Del Arroz, I’m pleased to observe that his novel JUSTIFIED, the first in The Saga of the Nano Templar, launched in episodic format on Arktoons today.
Ask Your Questions
Get them in on SocialGalactic and I will probably, though not necessarily, answer them on the next Darkstream.
YouTube Piles On
Despite him not having even been accused of streaming anything objectionable on YouTube, the social media giant has demonetized Russell Brand.
YouTube has stopped Russell Brand from being able to earn any money through his channel for ‘violating our Creator Responsibility policy’.
The 48-year-old produces around five videos a week for his 6.6million subscribers, earning him an estimated £1million a year.
Under the terms of his suspension Brand – whose net worth has been estimated at between £15m and £40m – will still be allowed to post videos on the platform but will not receive any of the advertising revenue.
YouTube said in a statement: ‘If a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community. This decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by Russell Brand.’
This is why it is so foolish for these public figures to prioritize reach over stability. What is the point of building up a massive social media following on a platform where it can, and will, be taken away from you overnight?
This is also why UATV, and other independent platforms with paid subscriptions, are the wave of the future. But it will probably require the collapse of YouTube before most creators are able to seriously consider those platforms, because the allure of YouTube fame and money is far too strong for them to resist despite the obvious risks.
JUST IN: “We will move to an economic model of a small monthly payment to use X.” – Elon Musk
Anyhow, YouTube’s action, in combination with the media blitz, does make it obvious that Brand’s cancellation is an organized, inorganic action.
The Media Extinction Event
Clay Travis explains why ESPN is sinking fast, why the free ride that sports fans enjoyed at the expense of everyone else with a cable subscription has come to an end, and the inevitable implications for everyone in the media business
ESPN knows that their cable and satellite business is collapsing but, and this is key, they’ve also done the math and realize that streaming is going to destroy their existing cable business. Because, and this is what no one seems willing to say, ESPN doesn’t just have one bad business now — the cable and satellite bundle — they have the streaming business too, which is an even worse business. And, and this is very key, each business is accelerating the demise of the other. Streaming isn’t making ESPN stronger, it’s making ESPN weaker because it’s hastening the destruction of a profitable business — cable and satellite — for a money-losing business — streaming.
And that’s what many are still missing — as the cable and satellite bundle boat takes on water and sinks, the streaming bundle is also taking on water and sinking too. ESPN has tried to sell people on the idea that at the exact moment that the cable and satellite bundle collapses they are going to step to a brand new business, the streaming business, and it’s going to be a sturdy and successful lifeboat that carries them to richer waters.
But the reality is, streaming is a way worse business than the cable and satellite bundle. Because the only people who pay for ESPN will be sports fans. The free ride is over, your Aunt Gladys is never signing up and subsidizing your sports viewing again.
Let’s say ESPN makes $8 billion a year now in subscription fees. ($10 a month x 70 million subscribers they has before Charter cut this by 15 million). Toss in another two billion in advertising and let’s say ESPN presently nets around $10 billion a year. Okay, how many people will sign up for ESPN as a direct to consumer streaming service? If they could get 70 million subscribers we’d all have to pay $120 a year for ESPN streaming by itself. (This assumes advertising will still be the same, which it won’t, but let’s just be generous and pretend it will.) But, as I noted above, many of these people paying for ESPN now as part of their cable and satellite package never watch ESPN.
So how many people will actually subscribe to a direct to consumer ESPN streaming service? Turns out there are some early test cases.
The NFL Sunday Ticket is the most desirable direct to consumer product on the planet. Do you know how many households subscribe for NFL Sunday Ticket? Around three million.
Uh oh.
Wait a minute, you’re telling me that the NFL can only get around three million households to sign up for actual NFL games, all of the out of market games, in the entire country?
We’ve got a major math problem here for ESPN.
In other words, even if we’re generous and we assume all the other sports combined generate as much television interest as the NFL, we’re looking at a decline from 100 million at peak to six million. That’s a decline of 94 percent in households. In monetary terms, if we use a single-season, single-team MLB subscription as a stand-in for all other sports, that’s an 88 percent decline in revenue from $10 billion to $1.23 billion… with $45 billion in rights fees owed through 2027.
No wonder the Saudis are licking their lips and looking to buy up more sports leagues instead of teams. It also explains why Bob Iger is desperately casting around for anyone who wants to buy pieces of the collapsing Devil Mouse empire. But it’s not just Disney that is facing the precipice.
TNT, Turner, AMC, Nickelodeon, you name the channel, all of them are basically being held together by the cable bundle. And ESPN is the most important channel in the cable and satellite bundle, it’s the linchpin, the anchor store. ESPN is your neighborhood shopping mall’s anchor tenant — the Macy’s, the Nordstrom, the Dillard’s the JC Penny. When a mall’s anchor tenant leaves the mall is often dead for, the rest of the shopping mall collapses around it. That’s why the best analogy for ESPN isn’t Blockbuster, it’s Sears, a big mall anchor tenant that collapsed and went bankrupt.
Okay, if you’ve read to this point, you might be thinking, “This feels like it’s going to be really bad, Clay.”
Uh, yeah, it is, that’s why I called it a media extinction level event.
And yet, the alternative media will survive this unscathed, because we’re already accustomed to being entirely dependent upon our direct supporters. No free riders, no advertisers. And so, as it happens, the great media extinction may be the best possible thing for the future growth of Arkhaven and UATV.
A UATV Offer
It’s become clear that a lot of readers are very interested in contemplating what is likely to come next in WWIII. As a wargamer and game developer, it’s also of particular interest to me.
Here’s the deal. If there are 10 new Premium subscriptions or 25 new Basic subscriptions in the next 24 hours, I will broadcast a supersized Darkstream dedicated to reviewing in detail the 165-page report on the CSIS summary of the 24 US vs China wargames conducted in January, entitled The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.
By the way, there are now 5,463 videos available on UATV, with 3-6 more being added every single day. The duplicate set of servers has already been installed at the European data center and is expected to go operational before the end of the month.
UPDATE: Apparently there is considerable interest in WWIII. The 24 hours aren’t even close to being up and BOTH targets were blown away. So it’s on. I’m up to page 30 already, and I’m also working on seeing if I can obtain the rules of the wargame. They’re not necessary for the detailed analysis as I should be able to glean their assumptions from the results, but I like to read wargame rules.
Also, in order to express my appreciation for the high degree of interest indicated and support provided, I’m going to add a second review of the CNAS wargame conducted in June 2022.
Then They Came for Wranglerstar
Miles Klee of Rolling Stone gets Wranglerstar banned from Tik Tok and goes after his YouTube account with a hit piece written on behalf of Jared Holt, the social media hit man who was previously “instrumental in getting social media and other internet platforms to give Infowars the boot” from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, among others.
While his comments are a mixed bag of supporters and detractors, there’s no telling whether someone will put Crone’s more irresponsible recommendations into practice. “It’s alarming to see content that he offers instructions for doing damage paired with content that promotes a generally paranoid worldview,” says Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who studies the intersection of tech and U.S. political extremism. “That can be a volatile cocktail, and I worry that it normalizes types of violence.”
After Rolling Stone brought the UN helmet video and other clips to TikTok’s attention, the company deleted Crone’s page. A TikTok representative confirmed that Crone was banned for “repeatedly violating” their policies, though did not enumerate which rules he had broken. The TikTok representative also reported that Crone had never made money on the platform. “While our investigation is ongoing, I can confirm that it did not monetize through our product features this year, and we’ve so far not found an indication it did so before that,” the rep said. Another Wranglerstar-branded TikTok account with more than 200,000 followers has preserved clips including a guide on breaking into buildings and a screed about “pushing back” against police officers by showing up to their houses to confront them. (It’s unclear whether Crone operates the account or someone else is reposting his content.)
YouTube, for its part, did not remove any of Crone’s videos or issue him a warning, and continues to generate revenue from his brand. (Crone, who has had an ad partnership with the site for at least a decade, was previously featured as an “On The Rise” influencer and on YouTube’s “Spotlight” channel.) In a statement to Rolling Stone, YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon says Crone’s videos have not violated the site’s community or the advertising-friendly guidelines for official YouTube Partners. “As such, they will remain on the platform,” Malon says.
According to the site’s policy guidelines, YouTube forbids “content intended to praise, promote, or aid violent extremist or criminal organizations is not allowed on YouTube,” though notably, Crone does not seem to identify with any particular radical group. YouTube also prohibits “content encouraging others to commit violent acts.” Whether Crone risks violating this policy with material like the arson clip — which falls into something of a gray area — is an open question. Malon’s statement did not address the assessments YouTube made of any individual video.
Holt tells Rolling Stone that Crone is “crossing or edging on the line of policies that platforms have against what’s usually called ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmful’ content,” but that such rules are useless without rigorous enforcement. If YouTube doesn’t see fit to remove this kind of content, says Holt, it would “be responsible to at least down-rank it in sorting.”
Though Holt emphasizes that “most people who view this sort of content will not be compelled to act, and even fewer will be violent,” he says a slim minority may feel emboldened to take action “in harmful or violent ways.” For YouTube to allow this content on their platform, he explains, is “to provide the next would-be attacker or vigilante with the tools they need to act,” comparable to “scattering instruments all over a stage and inviting musicians into the theater.”
Of course, Holt cautions, we can’t say for sure that this is what Crone intends — which gives him the plausible deniability to continue operating on YouTube without interference. As long as he is ambiguous enough in his prophecies, avoiding direct imperatives to act or praise for known terrorist groups, he comes across as just another eccentric, gun-loving conservative. This way, Crone is able to walk a thin line, seeding extremist propaganda while separately laying out strategies for an anticipated clash with authorities, leaving his audience to connect the dots. Unlike his less-filtered TikTok channel, his YouTube presence relies on the power of what remains unsaid.
He Taught People to Make Bombs — And YouTube Is Helping Him Cash In, ROLLING STONE, 11 August 2023
When, as they like to say, there is no place in their society for us, it is clear that there is no place for them in our society. It’s not paranoia when they really are out to demonetize, deplatform, and destroy you. This is why it is foolish to rely in any way upon enemy platforms; there is more to preparation than building a cabin in the deep woods. Fortunately for us, our half of the global economy is much bigger than the one they have coopted; the two leading BRICSIA nations, Russia and China, have already declared war on their Empire of Lies.
It’s fascinating to see the Imperial SJWtroopers intensifying their attacks and expanding their range of targets at the same time that the companies they utilize as weapons are in decline and increasingly desperate to bring people, including those they previously banned, back to their platforms. Just this week, one major platform unsuspended an account that was frozen in 2020 and tried to get us back on the platform; we declined and took advantage of the unsuspension to cancel it for good. Just as it’s a mistake for consumers to subscribe to Disney+ or ESPN, or drink Bud Light, it’s a mistake for a non-SJW creator to become reliant upon YouTube, Facebook, or any other converged platform.
Big Bear and I have warned other creators about this for years. Most of them didn’t heed those warnings. But it’s just going to keep getting worse as the US continues to implode internally and the external pressure on its various institutions and corporations grows. Is it going to be easy at first? No. Are you going to take an initial hit in terms of every single metric? Yes. But that’s the price of playing the long game that ensures you’ll be around in the future.
YouTube Deplatforms Scott Ritter
It’s getting a little tedious seeing people who insist on relying solely upon hostile platforms affecting surprise upon discovering that they, too, are on the hit list. This must be what it was like in a historical society where people were rounded up gradually, and no one ever did anything because, after all, nothing had happened to them yet.
YouTube has terminated the account of former US spy Scott Ritter and deleted all of his videos on the platform. According to Ritter, the Google-owned social media giant accused his channel of violating the terms of service.
Writing on X, Ritter stated that his channel, ‘The Scott Ritter Show’, through which he attempted to “import Russian voices to an American/Western audience,” had been flagged for ‘hate speech’ and taken down without prior warning or any specific examples of the offense.
Sooner or later, you would think that people would begin to grasp that it’s not necessary to actually break any of the rules to be metaphorically accused, arrested, charged, found guilty, and punished with deplatforming in one fell swoop. Do they seriously believe that everyone who had previously been deplatformed was genuinely guilty? Do they seriously think X isn’t going to do the same thing, sooner or later?
It’s interesting that they targeted Ritter now, though. This suggests that either a) something is going to happen in Ukraine or b) something is going to come out about Ukraine. He’s a fairly esoteric figure; if he was going to be deplatformed over the Special Military Operation, one would have expected it to happen about a year ago. So the question is not why, but why now? If Col. MacGregor is similarly deplatformed soon, that will tend to heighten suspicions.
Anyhow, this is precisely why UATV exists. And this is precisely why I encourage everyone who reads the blog to subscribe to UATV. And speaking of UATV, the SG community has suggested that we launch a DIY channel where UATV subscribers who specialize in useful skills can send videos to the channel moderators who will review and upload them for the benefit of the UATV community.
It’s a good idea, especially since YouTube is getting less and less useful for even the most vanilla subjects, so we’re sorting out how we’re going to make that happen.
Learning from The Legend
I think the format used by the Legend for his highly informative Ask Chuck Dixon videos works a lot better than having people ask them during the live stream, so if you’ve got a question for the upcoming Stupid Question Day, please ask it in the comments of the SG post linked below.
Superchat questions will continue to be prioritized, of course.
Also, the second part of the Material Greed vs Spiritual Wickedness stream has been posted on UATV.