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Wow, such a great reflective and introspective interview. I really appreciate reading about hbomberguy's own feelings about the whole thing and I've gained even more respect for him, which I didn't think was possible.
I might come across as an old fuddy-duddy, but when a headline refers to something/someone/someplace/ as 'that', it had better be of such earth-shattering importance that the entire readership knows what 'that' is.
I read vulture once in awhile and I know neither about who 'hbomberguy' is, nor do I know what 'that video' is.
the whole goddamn point of a headline has moved from "quick summary of material" to World Weekly News style "hook-em with Bat Boy!", and it sucks.
To be fair it gets right in to explaining what it is and has a embed of it
Yeah, I don't blame him for not wanting to make this kind of content at all. His answer to why kinda sums it up perfectly:
> It’s something I’ve always wanted to avoid doing because people are immediately rewarded for it, and then you have a very strong incentive to make worse videos that make your life sadder, because of the income and attention it can bring you.
Drama videos are like culture war videos in that they draw a certain audience in quickly and in large numbers. So once you make one, it can become very tempting to look at the stats of the video and how quickly your audience is seemingly growing, and pivot entirely to that type of content.
We see that all the time with tech and gaming channels for example. They start off talking about Linux operating systems and new game releases, then end up either going down the "oh my god [YouTuber name] is such a scumbag!" or [latest movie] is SJW written woke trash!" route, sacrificing all that made their work interesting in the process.
So it makes sense he was hesitant to make such a video here. The topic tends to bring in the kind of audience you don't want as a creator, and can end up incentivising you to change from talking about varied, interesting things to talking about the same reality TV level trash that floods much of the platform.
To be honest HBomberguy could do a video on the merits of watching paint dry and I'd probably watch it. That guy is just intelligent, compassionate, funny and has a big heart.
that's why the smarter, more business oriented content creators make separate channels for separate types of content, and only cross promote using the channel audience to get the initial "kick".
as an example, the well known channel "economics explained" has found that there's a lot of political content when talking about economics of a country. It brings in different and perhaps undesirable audiences - in the comments for example, arguing.
Instead of changing, their (correct, imho) move is to create a new channel ("context matters"), which discusses geopolitical events and such, but cross promote it so that it gets a head start in the algorithm.
A youtube channel is a business. Don't let it be personal. Go where the money is, but also keep your integrity. Use smarts to avoid breakdowns in incentives.
hbomberguy rocks.
His documentary on Andrew Wakefield has become my definitive answer to people who ask me if the MMR vaccine causes autism, a question I have been asked directly and indirectly for decades. Despite the fact I'd been asked this for decades, and despite me having much time to research this topic in that time, his 2 hour documentary released two years ago blew everything I had ever seen anybody say on the subject out of the water.
This video is great but the guy is just not by any degree presentable to a wider audience.
This is also decent and less, well, colourful. Just dated.
This comes across as posturing around internet drama. The article's subject demolished a plagiarist for ripping off the community they're apart of; not bad at all! Then the subject gets an interview where they talk endlessly about their guilt and the good they've done; well, this part feels off.
"Virtue signaling" might be the lazy term to describe it. Or maybe it's how self-awareness mixed with self-marketing is too self-convincing. Particularly when one's audience is too eager to confirm that marketing as reality.
Well what do you want him to say? I think the interview is fine, what's wrong with talking about his feelings?
You call it "virtue signaling", usually that refers to signaling your support for a cause but not actually putting effort in to support the cause.
I don't think he did any signaling. He did what he could do, he put in a lot of effort to make a video about a wrong that he observed.
I don't see any reason to call it marketing, most of the claims in his video are verifiable.