How to spot “Fake News”

I’m going to start posting my videos here again. This one’s a fun 20 minute romp talking about serial fraudster Jacob Wohl (I can’t believe he isn’t in prison) and how to spot “fake news”.

Another spectacular week of Trump train wrecks

It’s so easy for me to find material with Trump and Co. moving from crisis to crisis. Whether it’s his supporters, his lawyer or Trump himself being neck deep in shit, he’s the gift that keeps on giving. And he topped off the week beautifully with a call in interview to Fox and Friends that got so bad, the hosts themselves ended up cutting him off mid sentence.

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Australia’s Banking Royal Commission and ANZAC Day controversy

It’s somewhere between fun and bizarre to watch the conservative LNP government act like they wanted a Royal Commission into the finance sector now that the scale of malfeasance in that industry is becoming apparent.

Also, with ANZAC Day approaching that means it’s time to get ready for the relatively recent national sport of people who call anyone who disagrees with them a snowflake losing their tiny little minds if anyone’s response to ANZAC Day deviates one iota from their declared orthodoxy.

Malcolm Turnbull loses 30 Newspolls in a row

Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters are trying to argue (with some merit) that him losing 30 Newspolls in a row is meaningless in and of itself. But it was one of the key metrics he used to justify knifing then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott and so now Turnbull’s detractors will use it against him.

And the though of more infighting within the conservatives fills my dark heart with glee.

St Patrick’s Day green Poitin cocktail

I celebrated St Patrick’s Day this year with some traditional Irish potato spirit – poitin/poteen. I even coloured it green with the help of some limes.

Game ON – win prizes and ticket upgrades!

For most of the last year, I’ve been working with the organisers of Game ON, a great event that will be held on May 22-24 in Sydney as part of the Vivid Festival. Game ON brings together interactive gaming and online video into one amazing weekend showcase. It’s a great weekend for both creators and fans to get together with some of the stars of YouTube and the gaming world and I have some great bonuses to get you extra excited.

Buy your tickets here: http://gameoninteractive.com.au/buy-tickets/

Just because like you, if you enter the code ANDY when buying your ticket, you’ll get the discounted early bird rate! If I just liked you I’d leave it there. But because I really like you (let’s not let it get weird), here’s how to get win some awesome prizes:

After buying your ticket, post a picture to social media of you showing off your ticket (do yourself a favour and cover up the barcode). On Twitter, use the hashtag ‪#‎GameON‬2015, include the Game ON handle @GameOnInt and a link to where to buy tickets e.g. “Got my ticket to #GameON2015 – will I see you there? Follow @GameOnInt and get your tickets here http://gameoninteractive.com.au/buy-tickets”

On Facebook, include a link to the Game ON Facebook page and where to buy tickets, e.g. “Got my ticket to #GameON2015 – will I see you there? Like https://www.facebook.com/gameoninteractive to get all the news and updates on who will be there and what will be happening. Get your tickets here: http://gameoninteractive.com.au/buy-tickets”

The more shares/likes/retweets your posts get, the more chance you have of winning one of the following:

General Admission: show us your general admission ticket and you could win Game ON gear including t-shirts and caps

Community: show your Community ticket and you could win an upgrade to a VIP ticket

VIP: Show us your VIP ticket and you could win a backstage tour to meet the stars of the show!

To win the Community or VIP prizes you MUST buy your tickets by Monday May 4th. The earlier you buy your tickets the better your chance of winning because each share/retweet of your post is another entry in the draw. There will also regular bonus draws for people who share their Community and VIP tickets with prizes including:

• Game ON gear
• Computer games
• Turtle Beach gaming headsets
• Autographed posters

So get your tickets, share your excitement and be in the running for great prizes!

Photoshop Phunnies

My video camera has a “smile sensor” that results it taking photos while you shoot a video if it senses a nice smile which might therefore make a nice picture. It’s an interesting feature that is more than a bit hit and miss in practice. It almost never takes photos when I make videos alone (I guess I don’t smile much) or when I do rant videos with AIDzee but if the video involves sitting and talking with someone for an extended period it often takes a lot of photos like this example from a recent shoot with Jez:

I’ve also occasionally used this to make lo-fi animations like this example with AIDzee:

For this week’s TFU Friday video my camera took just two photos along with the video (which is in itself unusual) and one of them in particular stood out to me:

The combination of the fact I seem to be staring at something I’m holding and the blue background made me think this was ripe for photo manipulation. A big problem is that I suck at this sort of thing. The obvious solution was asking people who are actually good with photoshop to do something. So I put out the call and hooo boy did people respond.

First up Mel did this demonic number on me:

She also did this tasteful monochrome version:

Mel also does great “artistic reconstructions” using Photoshop on her YouTube channel.

Then David did a nice Warhol-style interpretation:

Then Daria put me with a particularly large burger that is making the zombie horde jealous:

Then we get to the Tony Abbott inspired ones. I swear I didn’t ask anyone to do this. Sam had me in front of Parliament House (love the blood stains!)

 

William had a similar vibe but it appears the Liberal Party are cheering me on.

Richard incorporated AIDzee and I into a two-headed beast (which I’m sure he’ll love). I’m not sure whose brain we have or what we’re doing with it in a lab.

Lizzie decided I was the Destroyer of Worlds!

And Shaun seems to have taken the beheading theme to the logical conclusion.

Thank you, internet.

The mathematics of trolls

There are many reasons I prefer to block/delete moron commenters rather than “engage” with them. I put engage in quotation marks because although it’s what these trolls often say they want, what they actually want is to bludgeon anyone with an opposing point of view into silence. And before any low-rent moron jumps in thinking they’re being clever by saying that’s what I’m doing – no it isn’t. I’m perfectly happy with these losers having free speech. Somewhere else. Where they aren’t wasting my time.

Also, if that’s what you leapt to, go fuck yourself. You think saying things like that is clever or insightful? I’ve seen your shtick before and you’re boring. And a waste of time.

And that’s the key point about these vermin. It isn’t so much that they’re trolls or bullies, they’re boring and an utter waste of time. Worse still, I’ve learned that the ones with the least to offer make the most noise and demand more of the time and attention of people who are actually doing something. If we lived in a world where even the bitterest hater would simply spit out their insulting comment then go away, I’d probably let them do it. But unfortunately, we live in a world where Bertrand Russell famously observed that idiots are full of certainty and wiser people are full of doubt.

I’ve decided the simplest way to show how worthless these losers are is with a mathematical equation, namely:

v = 1/n

Where v is the value these losers offer to a given conversation and n is the amount of useless noise they make demanding you pay attention to them. For the slow learners (i.e. the people I’m talking about) this means the volume of your incessant blathering is inversely proportional to the amount of attention you’re actually worth. The more you bleat, the less I give a shit about you.

And a final note to the trolls stupid enough to say “if you don’t care, why are you going on about it?” This isn’t for you. You’re not worth addressing. This is for people who genuinely want an understanding of my motivations. By the way, do you trolls see how I know what you’re going to say before you say it? That’s because you’re boring and predictable. And I’m better than you. You notice how you’re reading my blog but I’m not reading yours? That’s because you have nothing to offer.

Brief “your mileage may vary” disclaimer: I’m not dictating how anyone else should react to comments from haters and trolls. This is what works for me. If a different approach works for you, then you go with that.

YouTube musings

 

It’s been a while since I did a video that’s just talking so I’m writing down some thoughts to use for such a video. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but a few things have happened recently that I want to talk about. YouTube has always had a reputation for having the worst commenters and it seems like the most unhinged people on the internet are still thriving on YouTube.

 

So far the winners are Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) and people pushing the lie that cannabis cures cancer (let’s call them CCCs). I predicted Richard Dawkins fanboys would be as bad but it appears I owe an apology here because while there were a couple of idiots they pale in comparison to those other groups. In fact, one of the biggest idiots to respond to my Dawkins video was anti-Dawkins. It’s important to acknowledge when you’re wrong and I was largely wrong about the Dawkins supporters.

 

I feel like explaining why I’m so brutal with stupid commenters. YouTube is a brilliant medium for sharing your views, video is a really effective way to engage with people and make it feel like a conversation. Conversely, a comment thread is a terrible way to have an argument. If you want to make one point and get my response, that can work. But when people disagree with me that’s rarely the way they behave. They simply won’t shut up. And 9 times out of 10 what they comment is utter rubbish. Four categories in particular that I won’t waste time on: 

 

• People who state the complete opposite of the truth as a “fact” (e.g. climate change deniers). There is absolutely no point in engaging with people like this. When someone can aggressively assert an easily provable lie as the “truth” there is no way forward. Conspiracy nutbags fall into this category as well.
• Really hateful commenters (bigots of any stripe). I simply refuse to give these vermin a platform.
• People bringing up something I have directly answered in the video as if I hadn’t answered it. Repeating the answer never gets through to them.
• People who assert that I said something I clearly didn’t (or people who want to tell me what I think or what I am – reality be damned). I know what I said, what I think and who I am. I don’t need some random idiot who knows nothing about me spouting rubbish driven by their own prejudices.

 

In short, it’s a waste of my time and creative energy. Every minute that one of these emotional black holes sucks up is one more minute I don’t have to develop entertainment for everyone else. How tolerant/intolerant I am of idiot commenters tends to swing back and forth like a pendulum depending on my mood but my response is always about preserving my own sanity. Nobody else gets to dictate how I live my life and how I choose to protect my sanity. No amount of petulant (and incorrect) whining about “censorship” will change that.

 

In a different setting (say, face to face) I’m willing to engage in a conversation with someone who has radically different views to mine *if* they’re willing to treat it as a conversation. If all somebody is going to do is dig their heels in and keep shouting their opinion without taking in anything that’s said in response then it’s waste of time talking to them. And that’s the problem with comments threads – they lack the subtlety of an actual conversation and trying to develop an extended discourse this way is far too time consuming and all too often a complete waste of time.

 

My recent exposure to MRAs made me feel like it was the “old days” on YouTube again. I hadn’t attracted that much hate from worthless losers since I used to go after racists and self-proclaimed Nazis. I didn’t realise there was still that much troll activism on YouTube (hooray for sheltered hetero white guy experience). Then came the CCCs. They are so tied up with selling snake oil cures that they remind me more of a cult. MRAs might be losers but I really, really hate these vermin seeking to profit from the suffering of others with their totally bogus “cures”.

 

Seeing the cult like behaviour of CCCs reminded me I’ve always thought it would be really easy to start a cult on YouTube. The cult of personality definitely exists but I mean a full blown cult, with a leader and slavish followers. I remember a guy from the early days of YouTube who I thought was on course to do this (not going to name him). He was basically immature, self-absorbed, and had that annoying trait some drug users have of deluding themselves that they are deep and original thinkers while talking rubbish. Unfortunately he was good looking and could speak in a way that was quite compelling to some impressionable people. He started to get quite dangerous as he was talking people into not taking their medication (for everything from mental health to cancer).

 

He ultimately faded away but he was the first YouTuber I saw that made me consider how easy it would be to move from being popular to actually exerting control over people and starting your own cult. I’ve consciously shied away from this sort of behaviour (telling people what to do) but all it would take to start building a cult is to speak with a compelling voice and lure people in by saying things they want to hear. Oh, and a complete lack of human decency.

 

Of course I could push the conflict with people like MRAs and CCCs for my own gain. Now I’ve found how easily they take the bait I could rage on them regularly just for notoriety. Or maybe go for some old school YouTube Drama and start a beef with a well-known neckbeard who isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is. But honestly, I don’t think I can be bothered. That’s never been my motivation. When I’ve gone after particular groups of people it’s been to get something off my chest and provide a bit of entertainment while I do it.

 

The biggest challenge to me has always been to be internally consistent or to put it another way, to stay true to myself. I’m quite conscious that some people would have trouble seeing that and accuse me of being a hypocrite but I can’t bring myself to compromise my own ethics to make other people happy. I always think very carefully about what I say before I say it (even if some people would argue I don’t) and I’ve never regretted anything I’ve said in a blog or a video. Well, not much.

 

It can be quite a challenge to keep to that standard but I’ll keep trying.

 

Why I abuse people who disagree with me

I still get people asking why I abuse anyone who disagrees with me even though I’ve effectively answered the question multiple times over the years. I assume they keep asking because they’re stupid. To be more accurate, they don’t ask: they complain and whine that I abuse people. So they’re stupid whiners.

It’s fair to call people who make these complaint stupid because they are factually wrong. I don’t abuse everyone I disagree with. I disagree with everyone I disagree with. In the vast majority of cases, when someone posts a comment I disagree with I simply ignore them.

I think it’s worth reiterating that when people make an issue out of this, we’re talking about people I am RESPONDING to. I don’t go around chasing people to make negative comments on their videos/ channels/ blogs, even when they make personal attacks on me. We are talking about people who come into my domain and make comments that nobody in their right mind could think I’d have an interest in seeing.

The idiots I take the time to rip into are a subset of the ones who make obnoxious comments. Sometimes they say something so egregiously awful or clueless they thoroughly deserve to be ripped apart.  Sometimes it’s just the smug self-righteousness they exude. Other times it’s the obvious total lack of thought behind the comment.

And there’s on more thing: I’ve dealt with thousands of these idiots over the years (not even a slight exaggeration) and I’ve gotten very good at picking losers who aren’t used to being called to account, just by the tone of their comments. I find these opinionated little dweebs to be particularly deserving of punishment. I often go to their channels and get a confirmation of the sort of comments they leave all over the place and I’m almost never wrong.

These scumbags sped their time spraying around negativity and develop an insanely distorted view of how important their “contribution” to the world is. Here’s a news flash, meatheads: your contribution to humanity is less than zero. You are an actively negative force that makes it harder for decent people to interact. The world would be better off if you didn’t exist.

This is why blocking is one of the favourite weapons in my arsenal. I can’t literally make them cease to exist. You know, unless I hire an assassin. Which I totally haven’t done. Shut up, you can’t prove anything! WHERE’S THE BODY?! There’s no case without a body!

I got distracted.

While my central topic here is why I rip into people, it is actually far more common for me to ignore/block/delete these idiots. I thoroughly recommend this approach to people over engaging with obnoxious commenters. This is mostly because these dribbling morons are not capable of engaging in any meaningful way. Their extremely limited thought processes barely go as far as far as vomiting out their pathetic brain farts and demanding they be acknowledged. And they will NOT shut up!

So don’t hesitate to shut them up. Besides relieving you of their non stop drivel, it’s a timely reminder to them that they aren’t the ones in control. If you allow them any level of control, i.e. you succumb to the mistaken idea you “have to” let them comment, they will never let you go. You don’t have to justify what you do in your own domain and you should never let other people dictate how you conduct yourself – that is your own decision to make.

But back to those times when I choose to rip into people rather than ignore them. To the people who say “you just abuse anyone who disagrees with you” I say “Your mother is a dirty stinking whore.” The other thing I will say is “no I don’t.” That statement is so far wide of the truth that it doesn’t deserve any other response. If you are going to make a comment that stupid, fatuous and WRONG I don’t feel inclined to bother with you.

If you’re convinced this is something I actually do, I don’t fucking care. If you harbour some belief that I am somehow compelled to respond to everyone in a way you find acceptable simply because they watched my video and commented then you’re a deluded fucking moron. So far as me producing video or written content and someone watching and commenting goes, there is no comparison at all.

The hours of effort that goes into creating content versus the seconds it takes a moron to smash their ugly face into a keyboard and provide their “insight” means their precious little comment has earned them precisely nothing. They don’t deserve anything in return and the twisted sense of entitlement that comes from fuckwits who think they have a right to be addressed just makes me more likely to treat them like the shitstain they are.

As for anyone who wants to say “that’s fair enough but you go too far,” there’s only one person who gets to decide what an acceptable response is. Guess what? It isn’t fucking you. I simply don’t have the time to waste worrying about whose feelings I’m hurting and my sanity is too valuable to me to be fucked about by morons on the internet who think they’re the centre of the universe.

If you have a problem with this, you essentially have two choices. You could follow the advice of Gandhi who famously said “harden the fuck up, princess.” Failing that you could always fuck off. It’s that simple. If there is anyone still labouring under the misapprehension that I’m focused on retaining viewers at any cost, let me correct that right now. I checked my YouTube stats and I’ve blocked thousands of accounts over the years. If you have a problem with anything about me and it’s too much for you to manage to keep that shit to yourself, let me know. I won’t hesitate to add you to that list.

I would have a lot more viewers on YouTube if I wasn’t in the habit of blocking people and/or telling them to piss off when they annoy me. But I’d have a lot less sanity. Of course, in your own online interactions you should follow your own path. If it works for you, it’s the right thing for you to do.

But if you’re wasting any of your life agonising over how I treat anyone online, that’s just sad.