Tag: UATV

Number Six Video Essayist

Academic Agent lists and analyzes his top ten video essayists. He was gracious enough to include me on the list, and as high as number six, which is a nice surprise.

Next person on the list, and again this is somebody who’s still around but they tend not to do video essays anymore, they tend now to focus on doing streams, although this person’s streams are still typically solo and straight to camera so they are kind of essayish, but that is Vox Day. Now, again, he might not be to everybody’s cup of tea, but back in the day Vox Day made some of the best videos going, so let’s have a little watch of one of his…

You get the idea. So I did notice a lot of people kind of instinctively reacted against that. To me it’s just self-evidently true. It’s just obviously true. All of this stuff is clearly, self-evidently, observationally true, and all Vox has done is codified something that exists in the world. I mean, you all know this guy, you all know this guy and if you don’t know this guy, or if you’re instinctively reacting against it, you probably are that guy.

So in terms of why have I rated Vox, he has very clear way of articulating himself. He does have this kind of slow kind of speech pattern but he’s quite good at articulating exactly what a concept is, defining it well, I think Vox has some sort of background, whether it’s formal or informal, he has some sort of philosophy background. I seem to remember he certainly studied ancient rhetoric and so on, so he’s quite good at explaining his concept in a very clear way.

Vox has also got something that I think is an underrated skill, basically which is coining a phrase. I am actually very good at doing this, I have so many phrases, you know, back to Fresh Prince and Boomer Truth Regime, and you know, you all know my little slogans and phrases. Aon McIntyre is fantastic at this on Twitter as well, but Vox has also always been very good at coining a phrase, you know, day of the pillow is one of Vox Day’s, for example, and you know he’s got others as well, but his categories here in the psychosexual hierarchy are also a good example of it and you’ll casually see these terms used around the place so that is why I have ranked Vox Day.

The Deepest Lore, 25 Oct 2023

It’s always nice to see that one’s work is appreciated. I really need to somehow find the time to get back to doing more Voxiversities. One per month would probably be doable, assuming that one of my preferred producers have the time. Perhaps once I get a camera installed in the library, which is something I’m already planning to do, we can revive the concept in the new year.

DISCUSS ON SG

Aborted by the Market

The end of the age of free money has finally brought about the always-inevitable demise of the wicked e-thots of Jezebel:

Jezebel, a feminist US news site, was shut down by its owners on Thursday, with 23 people laid off and no plans for the outlet to resume publication. G/O Media, which owns Jezebel and other sites including Gizmodo and the Onion, announced the closure in a memo to staff, which was obtained by the Guardian.

“Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel’s,” Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of G/O Media, wrote in the memo, which was sent to staff on Thursday morning. “And when that became clear, we undertook an expansive search for a new, perhaps better home that might ensure Jezebel a path forward. It became a personal mission of Lea Goldman, who worked tirelessly on the project, talking with over two dozen potential buyers. It is a testament to Jezebel’s heritage and bona fides that so many players engaged us. Still, despite every effort, we could not find Jez a new home.”

Translation: Jezebel was losing so much money on a monthly basis that not even its most ardent ideological admirers in the media believed they had a chance of making a go of it.

Remember this inability to find anyone to fund a well-known and supposedly influential operation when people are talking about success in Clown World. None of it is real, none of it is popular, and none of it is genuinely profitable. It’s all been propped up by free money. The business world covered by the media is a Potemkin one that is little more than a brightly-painted facade that conceals the fact that there is nothing substantial behind it.

Razorfist, as is his wont, empathized with the newly disemployed Jezebelles, and helpfully encouraged them to look at the situation in what they might see as positive light, which is to say, as being aborted from the marketplace.

Looks like you’ll have to propagandize the old-fashioned way: by inserting your insipid horseshit into a children’s movie, video game, or sitcom script while flagrantly denying you’re fucking doing it!

And here is an interesting statement by a member of the union: “A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude.”

Not that it was needed at this point, but the statement further confirms the wisdom of building platforms that religiously avoid reliance upon the advertising model and thereby being able to put the interests of the core subscribers first.

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of Free Social Media

It would appear that either the intelligence services of the world have all the information they need now, or, more likely, they’ve decided that all those pictures of people’s pets and lunches simply isn’t worth the expense to obtain them and effort to analyze them.

Facebook and Instagram users have blasted the launch of a new paid-for service to remove adverts from the two platforms. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company which owns the two social media sites, said it was launching the subscription option to comply with EU regulations.

The change will force millions of users to decide whether they want to face personalised adverts, or fork out the fee for an ad-free offering.

But users attacked the idea, vowing to delete their accounts rather than pay for the privilege of no ads. The monthly subscription plans will cost €9.99 for web users, while iOS and Android users will have to shell out €12.99 a month. They will not be available in the UK.

I find it interesting that while UATV and SG have been criticized on occasion for requiring paid subscriptions for access – never mind that we were starting from complete scratch with no corporate stock market billions to spend on infrastructure – the realities of the market imposing itself is proving that it was the correct strategy from the start.

And notice that UATV+SG is half the price of the Facebook services, which shows how heavily these “free” services were being subsidized all along.

Facebook may be claiming that it’s only instituting subscriptions in order to comply with EU regulations, but you can be certain that it’s eventually going to do the same thing in the USA.

DISCUSS ON SG

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.

DISCUSS ON SG

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.

DISCUSS ON SG