[Balls of Steel Forever]

[Balls of Steel Forever]

Sanek, on 26 February 2021 - 04:20 AM, said:

.

Good idea.

I mean something that looks nice.
I'm not in the video games business.
But with family in other stuff.

Straight and to the point
And being esthetically pleasing is all that matters.

I'll dm you my uncles odd graphic design website as an example.
He's a complete asshole so, I don't talk to him.

[Balls of Steel Forever]

[Balls of Steel Forever]

https://nypost.com/2...-and-offensive/

Sia makes an obviously ableist film.
Boycott necessary.

[Outtagum]

Never go full autist.

[Hank]

https://i.imgur.com/mDhp7pF.mp4

I suspect either a blond or full mask wearer was behind the wheel.

[Forge]

[William Beavis]

Hysterical!

[Fox]

Outtagum, on 03 March 2021 - 05:41 PM, said:

Never go full autist.

What if I'm on full autism mode

[ck3D]

Going full Facebook uncle sharing a video with millions of views here, but that's just too spot on:

[Aristotle Gumball]

I'm that Facebook uncle. Subbed to the channel, that was pretty funny.

Edit:



lol

[Jeff]

Got a new cat! Name is Garfield.

[Forge]

[ck3D]

[Danukem]

Coincidentally, I had watched a video that responds to that idea just recently:



Still funny, though.

[ck3D]

^ Ha, I just love how for every random stupid video someone has ever put up on the Internet with no real second thought but entertainment, there seems to be an endless supply of people willing to invest time into one that's ten times longer in which they actually go and seriously dissect the original video. I'd say part of the behavior is consequential to the modern craze of making and monetizing literally every kind of content possible (oftentimes regardless of quality), but it also seems to be fundamentally human to look at the stuff others have 'stupidly' created before us (with or without the intent of actually creating before us) and read an infinity of meanings into it. We do it with some Duke 3D maps all the time.

[Danukem]

I think the clip you posted was a joke video not intended to be practical self defense (because you would have to walk around with a lighter in your hand all the time for that to be practical -- by the time you manage to wrestle it out of your pocket you'd be half unconscious from the RNC). However, in defense of the "realitycheck self defense channel" that posted the reply to it -- there are lots of viewers who take everything seriously, and then there are copycat channels that repeat suggestions even if they were originally jokes. On top of that, there's a lot of straight up frauds out there who post about "self defense techniques" for gullible people that have never really been tested. So I think what the reality check guy does is useful and sort of scientific, even if the intent of what he is responding to isn't always serious.

[ck3D]

Obviously the video I posted was a joke and I was sharing it as such, but as far as my commentary, sometimes I'm just baffled that stuff as silly (in this case the joke video) can seriously catch on and people eventually develop all those more or less serious dimensions of reading into it. What I mean is, in the case of a serious approach, those people actually devote some considerable time out of their life (sometimes before they even realize it) to expand around an idea that very well might have not even existed in the first place, had it not been for the original author's spontaneous creation, which itself could have turned out to be something else in form entirely and thus dictated the corresponding amount of time and energy spent by the subsequent 'sophisticators' accordingly.*

Also that's not necessarily a bad or unjustified behavior (at all) and may in fact be the basis of progress when applied to meaningful fields (my personal definition is lenient there, in this particular case, one is better learned after watching your video than after mine, the original and therefore yours is obviously further up the scale of 'meaningful' - qualifies as 'progress'). It may also have to do with how we are cognitively wired to process information; something might as well be as explicit as it gets, it seems that we will naturally be driven to intellectualize and verbalize concepts out of it, I'm tempted to assume a pattern deeply linked to survival instinct (learn or die) except in this day and age we have the luxury of applying it to the most mundane, niche stuff. I'm merely just amused by the observation, although I do start to worry a bit now that I'm thinking our ancestors in general probably had grander concerns.

*I guess an acceptable modern analogy would be, say someone creates a meme - takes them 3 minutes tops, they upload it somewhere for quick funnies and then don't really think about it again. In the meantime the meme goes viral, thousands of people see it, re-use it, some in particular really like it and in the end spend way more time out of their life under the influence of the meme (thinking about it, bringing it up in a conversation, sharing it, etc.) than the original creator ever did; and that's time and energy they would have spent completely differently had the meme never existed, or taken a different form. Of course in this particular example, we're talking about relatively minor and meaningless consequences, but in other cases they don't always have to be and I think the principle itself runs deep. (Disclaimer: here right now is that time of the night morning where a lot of things seem to run deep)

[Danukem]

ck3D, on 04 July 2021 - 08:04 PM, said:

Obviously the video I posted was a joke and I was sharing it as such, but as far as my commentary, sometimes I'm just baffled that stuff as silly (in this case the joke video) can seriously catch on and people eventually develop all those more or less serious dimensions of reading into it. What I mean is, in the case of a serious approach, those people actually devote some considerable time out of their life

Well in this particular case you have a YouTuber with a self defense channel who specializes in testing out martial arts claims, and who is no doubt on the constant lookout for content ideas because he's trying to make a living at it. I'm sure it's hard to come up with different ideas for videos every day and keep it fresh, but people who try to make a living at it are pretty much required to, which is one reason there are so many reaction videos out there.

In the martial arts world, just about any idea no matter how ludicrous has been seriously proposed or taught at some point. Even though the original video using a lighter for self defense wasn't serious, you can bet there are people out there who have thought of the idea independently and are probably teaching it in a self defense seminar somewhere. So for that reason I would say it can still be worthwhile topic for a video.

As for the effort asymmetry -- the phenomon of one person making a small effort to create something which large numbers of other people then spend a lot of time and effort to disect, disseminate, and appreciate, etc. -- that seems to be the normal way of things for anything of cultural value, whether its an invention, a work of art or a meme. What's different about modern memes is that it's now usually possible to *identify* the source and see exactly how it spread, how much effort went into creating it, and so on. Before the internet this was much more difficult. Even famous inventions were often misattributed (ok they still are, but at least now the competing histories are more well known).

https://youtu.be/5W3kALD-GtY?t=88

[ck3D]

Danukem, on 04 July 2021 - 10:19 PM, said:

Well in this particular case you have a YouTuber with a self defense channel who specializes in testing out martial arts claims, and who is no doubt on the constant lookout for content ideas because he's trying to make a living at it. I'm sure it's hard to come up with different ideas for videos every day and keep it fresh, but people who try to make a living at it are pretty much required to, which is one reason there are so many reaction videos out there.

In the martial arts world, just about any idea no matter how ludicrous has been seriously proposed or taught at some point. Even though the original video using a lighter for self defense wasn't serious, you can bet there are people out there who have thought of the idea independently and are probably teaching it in a self defense seminar somewhere. So for that reason I would say it can still be worthwhile topic for a video.

As for the effort asymmetry -- the phenomon of one person making a small effort to create something which large numbers of other people then spend a lot of time and effort to disect, disseminate, and appreciate, etc. -- that seems to be the normal way of things for anything of cultural value, whether its an invention, a work of art or a meme. What's different about modern memes is that it's now usually possible to *identify* the source and see exactly how it spread, how much effort went into creating it, and so on. Before the internet this was much more difficult. Even famous inventions were often misattributed (ok they still are, but at least now the competing histories are more well known).

https://youtu.be/5W3kALD-GtY?t=88

But it's funny, this newfound pressure of always having to find fresh content and basically renew yourself (even if just for the sake of it) all the time, just to stay on your audience's radar. Now, creators have always had to do that (and would always evolve along time anyway, regardless of a system although maybe in different directions then), but never really at a pace as frenetic as nowadays', with so much urgency that if you stop showing activity for a week then your audience visibly declines (also because direct competition is more explicit than ever in those fields, if we're talking business and not artistic terms).

The upside is now we're getting all those singular sources of sometimes extremely niche information as opposed to being restricted to the official, something directly curated by industrials and tailor-fit to their best interest, and so we have access to a greater array of truth; the downside is as a whole, we may be losing the necessary focus, time and energy to further develop ideas, including the interesting ones, as we keep being bombarded and obsessed with the newest as though just as many distractions. Occasionally, we also end up feeling negative energies and frustrations as a direct consequence to the stress but by that time we've already forgotten where they come from (and logically blame it on ourselves, when we're not necessarily personally at fault).

Now I'm not familiar with what that YouTuber in particular does and so it would be silly of me to argue their seriousness at all, but in the bigger picture general quality and substance of interpersonal communication seems to suffer as a result, messages lose their weight, what is so grand in using your voice if it's to make a billionth reaction or unboxing video, how really purposeful to humanity are those words at the end of the day over a fart in the wind if you know what I mean? I think I remember you once (rightfully) saying that one's creative resources were finite (or at least could be temporarily exhausted), that would sort of parallel what I mean here even on the author's end. Sure with constant stress, you can keep squeezing more and more juice out of a soul but it's only going to be that mature with the more you over do it. I feel like this modern pressure has a lot to do with impulses, too; just like social media doping dopamine levels via the anonymous validation of one's nothingness, people have gotten addicted to this rhythm that's constantly accelerating and ironically, they seem to hate it and be tired of it just as much as they keep craving it. And in the end, a lot of 'content' (sometimes very successfully) gets around being appreciated as 'content', but not always for its intrinsic value. Seems like a cool gimmick for entrepreneurs to bank on short term, but when it comes to the long term effect on the culture I'm quite split.

I can see what you mean with how in martial arts (or really any art?) most people never waited for the Internet to seriously experiment and theorize with the wildest stuff, of course the Internet has made that more apparent but I'd also say that eventually, in turn, it encouraged if not normalized the trend (which again I believe qualifies as progress there). I remember a few years back running into a self-defense video with very detailed instructions on how to properly use a skateboard as a defensive weapon, which I thought was pretty amazing (in most real-life scenarii where you would have to do something like that, a.k.a. practically never, 99.9% of the time one's reaction would be to swing the object around like a primate with zero conscious thought of what exactly it is that they're doing; now, this guy had derived his own mini-martial art out of it).

About the effort asymmetry, regardless of how common it is (or maybe especially because of how common it is) I still think it's key to many cool things to ponder, if only to realize how accessible everything really can be in this world as long as you know which are the (few, very) right strings to pull, and also to constantly reevaluate how much you're being a victim on the daily.

[Danukem]

ck3D, on 04 July 2021 - 11:39 PM, said:

But it's funny, this newfound pressure of always having to find fresh content and basically renew yourself (even if just for the sake of it) all the time, just to stay on your audience's radar. Now, creators have always had to do that (and would always evolve along time anyway, regardless of a system although maybe in different directions then), but never really at a pace as frenetic as nowadays', with so much urgency that if you stop showing activity for a week then your audience visibly declines (also because direct competition is more explicit than ever in those fields, if we're talking business and not artistic terms).

The upside is now we're getting all those singular sources of sometimes extremely niche information as opposed to being restricted to the official, something directly curated by industrials and tailor-fit to their best interest, and so we have access to a greater array of truth; the downside is as a whole, we may be losing the necessary focus, time and energy to further develop ideas, including the interesting ones, as we keep being bombarded and obsessed with the newest as though just as many distractions.

The constant need to come up with new content for your channel would no doubt make it difficult to do in-depth research, *if* the channel is taking most of your time. Of course we're only talking about content producers who traffic in real information about substantive topics. I would compare them to teachers who have to keep making up lectures and assignments for their students every day that school is open. This is why college professors who are good at research are (ideally) given lighter teaching loads so that can actually do research and bring glory to the institution, or are sometimes given research sabbaticals. There are no research sabbaticals on YouTube; if you stop publishing videos for any length of time, you become irrelevant.

However, it's not all bad. Creators with a simple setup (or who can afford to hire video editors) can put more time into developing their expertise. In some cases their channel is a fun outlet for them to share their expertise at the end of a work day. The connections between content creators in the same field can be a great source of inspiration for them, too.

[Forge]

ck3D, on 04 July 2021 - 08:04 PM, said:

In the meantime the meme goes viral, thousands of people see it, re-use it, some in particular really like it and in the end spend way more time out of their life under the influence of the meme (thinking about it, bringing it up in a conversation, sharing it, etc.) than the original creator ever did; and that's time and energy they would have spent completely differently had the meme never existed, or taken a different form. Of course in this particular example, we're talking about relatively minor and meaningless consequences, but in other cases they don't always have to be and I think the principle itself runs deep.

or you can just accept the fact that this planet is populated by idiots that need their 'look at me' fix filled like a heroin addict

[Sanek]

[Mark]

oops, mistake.

[Mark]

X-Vector, on 26 January 2021 - 11:45 AM, said:

https://www.fuelcurv...nuys-boulevard/

I'm not into car culture, but there are some amazing shots in this collection.

Hmm... I didn't notice a car in that photo.

[Mark]

He kinda looks like Marty Mcfly's dad in back to the future movies.

[Forge]

[Danukem]

WHERE ARE HER ORGANS?! THIS IS TERRIBLE ANATOMY!!

[Hank]