What YouTube Dramas?

It would seem that many YouTubers spend the bulk of their time creating videos and watching a key set of other people's videos. Perhaps they use Twitter and Skype behind the scenes. But if you have things to do in real life and miss a few moments, a drama or two might unfold in your absence. And good luck trying to figure out what it's all about. It's like the community has collectively turned a page and are now in a private club with inside jokes.

I don't have any actual videos yet that would let others in that community have a better idea of where I am coming from. All I have posted so far are just archives of Google Hangouts livestreams. I do hope to correct that in the near future.
I figure I can do recordings of myself reacting to the weekly news as I read through it. The format is probably overdone, but I suspect it is a useful thing to do since everyone reacts to different stories and the way they process that information will always be slightly unique.
But I also intend to do some camera work of natural scenes where I talk as a monologue in the background. These sorts of videos would be more rare since they'd have to be at least lightly scripted. I think this could also serve a useful function, as it gives us a chance to vent our personal frustrations as we cope with our experiences.

Participating regularly in YouTube is almost intrinsically a dramatic affair. That is not so appealing to me now as it once was. Some of my own interest has been in learning how to cope with SJW's, and I am trying to distance myself from that whole range of issues, It just gets so boring after a while. But I do understand why those issues spin people up and they end up talking about them endlessly. It just seems to me like YouTubers are utilizing the medium to engage in some version of a group therapy, hence why I named my own hangout after that impression.

I will probably be changing my schedule for my Group Therapy livestream, since Fridays are too busy in real life.

Blender for Video Editing

It was recently pointed out to me that Blender can be used as a video editing tool. This is great news, since I thought it was only a 3D graphics application, and I like the idea of using fewer programs so I can learn the ones I do use more thoroughly. The following video provides the basic experience of using this program for editing videos.

It actually looks (relatively) easy to use. I am looking forward to learning more about this software. There are other video tutorials available, as well as loads of documentation. So look around for that stuff before getting too frustrated at its complexity.

Remember; I am just learning how to use this stuff myself. I want us to learn together. So throw up links in the comments if you know of other resources.

New Camera Means New Struggles

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, and it does, sometimes. The big problem is that the new technologies keep on coming, and each new thing has a learning curve involved with it that actually slows us down, at least for a while, before it helps us to pick up speed in the end. And how long will we be able to use that before we feel compelled to chase after the next generation of gadget?

I'm very happy with the camera so far, and with all the junk I bought in order to use it. I got a full size tripod and a tabletop version, a shotgun microphone, light system with stands, carrying bags. I am quite sure that it can produce high quality images and videos because I accidentally get the settings right on occasion. It's less than ideal for a first camera, and probably not good enough for a professional. It's just about right for me, even though it's taking some time to learn how the menus work.


The camera itself is not where the greatest difficulty lies. The editing software is what has really bogged me down. I've never used it before because I haven't had good enough images to start with to warrant trying to improve them. For editing photos, I think GIMP is going to work out well for now. I haven't yet figured out what I will be using for video editing. If you have suggestions for a Linux user, let me know. It's got to be fairly easy to use, yet capable of handling 4k. I haven't looked too hard for this stuff though. I've been collecting some content so I'll have something to edit. Soon.

Reflections on 3rd Group Therapy hangout

Wow. We had quite a few technical difficulties in this episode. But I feel like it was a pretty good start trying to tackle the questions we raised. We as a community still have a long way to go before we can work out how to work through this stuff.

I think there are many points within the conversation that could be delved into more deeply. I'd really appreciate some feedback on what other people believe are worth looking into in greater detail and why you see think it is worthy of discussion. We need to sift through it and focus our attention on key points in a framework that makes them more manageable.

I appreciate Danny Duchamp and Ad Verdiesen coming on as my guests. 

ANTI-SJW's- We Need You!

I am in full support of efforts made by anti-feminists such as Milo Yiannopolous and many others in the YouTube community and Social Media generally. However, I do want to move past that in my own life. I continue to hear criticisms of Feminism or Social Justice Warriors, and that is good for the general culture, but many of us are ready to move to the next step, since most of what is being circulated is just re-hashing the same thing. But, then, what is the next step?

Look at the labels being thrown around. The alt-right and cultural libertarian crowds call the SJW's the “regressive left,” which is meant to poke fun of the fact that they call themselves, “progressives.” What would it take to actually progress? Progress is not just change, though many lefties believe that any change is good. Even a moment of self-reflection should prove the case that this is false. Some change is bad. We want positive change. We want change for the better. But that requires that we know what is better and worse, and these kinds of evaluations come dangerously close to having an objective set of standards by which to judge better and worse. But Social Justice Warriors are cultural and moral relativists. They view any objective standards as intrinsically discriminatory, probably because by any reasonable standard, Western Culture is the most humane culture. That is not to say that it is perfect, or that it doesn't have anything left to learn.

I should make a quick note here, that relativism invariably deteriorates into hedonism, and then to Nihilism. Nihilism has a couple of relevant meanings that can be applied in this context. There is the one side of it having to do with the non-existence of objective moral facts, and the consequence of such a belief, that life itself has no particular meaning. There is no way to save relativists from this fate. They must be reformed.

Next I want to point out that Feminism has been described as a type of religion. Is it a fair characterization? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And maybe this is not a dictionary definition, but we all know that practicing feminists do not subscribe to the dictionary definition when they mount their attacks on us. It would be better to describe it as a cult. So, if this is true, we need to start addressing it as such.

Therefore, we need to look at how people have dealt with cults in the past; that is, how to help the victims of cults to come back to a healthy view of reality. Which means that we need to have at least some compassion for these SJW's, when seeing them as victims of an unhealthy ideology. Even though they may not treat their adversaries as human, we should not respond to them in the same fashion.

Furthermore, it's not only Feminism that we have to confront with this. We have to be able to apply this to all manner of Social Justice Warrior insanities, now and in the future. So we are going to dedicate this episode of “Group Therapy” to the investigation of cults behaviors and the treatments utilized when treating their victims. This way, hopefully, we will be properly armed to dispelling whatever crap comes from their mouths.

Anyone who understands what I am arguing for (and why), and who is willing to do minimal research into how cult victims have been treated clinically for those experiences, please help us out. We need to figure out how to adapt those forms of treatments to the SJW's. So look into it, if you can, and contact me if you feel like you have something to contribute to the conversation. 

SJW's War on Sanity

I'm forever trying to make sense of the Social Justice Warriors. It certainly feels like an exercise in futility, since it feels like they are waging a war on sanity as such. There's not always any visible point to the kinds of things they claim to want. And it's ever so frustrating to try to make sense of such irrational people.

It does seem at times that they don't want us to believe our own judgment, like some burly guy that suddenly decides he wants to use your little girl's bathroom, because he "identifies as female." What kind of crap is this? And they have gone to such elaborate detail in justifying their delusions that you run the risk of buying into the same delusions yourself if you try to sympathize with their cause. It's crazy town.

The thing is, they do need us to be gullible for their tactics to work on us. You have to actually believe what they are saying when they saying something so obviously stupid for it to have any effect on you. They say crap like "all whites are racist," when it's so obviously itself a racist statement that you start to wonder if your own judgment is going berserk. No really, you're not the one that going insane. They are. And they expect all of the rest of us to adopt their insanity as our own.

There's a book used by mental health professionals, at least here in the United States, called, "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," used not only to diagnose patients but also used for the purpose of writing grant proposals so new research can be funded. That's right, if it's not in the DSM, it doesn't exist. Like the Gender Identity Disorder that got removed from that manual. It's not a mental disease because their holy bible doesn't say that it exists... anymore.

The cultural and moral relativists have convinced themselves that there is no objective moral truths due to the fact there do indeed exist a myriad number of cultures in the world, and because they have not arrived at any single standard by which to judge the merit of a given culture, there must not be one, not now, not ever. Because that would be racist. It's pretty clear they are working from some professional guilt given the Christian missionaries trying to export their religion all over the world. And now the pendulum as swung to the opposite extreme. Now we are expected to believe that every culture is just as good as every other culture. Never mind the fact that some of these cultures are strapping on suicide vests. We're supposed to overlook that fact. Or even blame ourselves for their behavior.

Oh thinking about these fools is so tiring. It's just so much insanity it wears a person down.

Creation vs Curation

Let's reflect for a minute about Social Media. Many times we focus quite heavily on content creation. Maybe we want to start a blog or YouTube channel, but we don't know exactly what it is we want to create, let alone how to go about creating it. And there's lots of materials out there to try to figure that stuff out. But you're probably already creating some content of your own in the form of microblogging. Most people online have either a Twitter or Facebook account, if not both. And there's a ton of other platforms, too, maybe with LinkedIn or Instagram. The point is that you are already engaged with creating content, even if only shorter versions of what I am doing with this blog. If this is true for you, then you have already started your creative expression. So it's just a matter of lengthening it up a bit and maybe changing formats.

Yet there's another side to Social Media, something a little more passive. And it does happen in the same platforms. When you like or share somebody else's posts, you are doing what is known as content curation. It is another component to your overall branding. By sharing other people's content, you are expressing a type of editorial control. It does reveal to others what media you are ingesting. It tells the rest of the world what world you are looking at. 

I assume that most people are doing a little creation and curation all of the time, but in a fairly unconscious way. I also assume that creativity is not always easy for people, especially when they are still learning how to use the technology to create their own content. In my opinion, curation has a value unto itself, and I believe there's a place for it in that arena. I suspect that thinking of curation first may be easier for users to find out for themselves what most interests them and what they might be most familiar with so when it does come time to create more, they might extrapolate some kind of theme from the stuff they have liked or favorited on their other platforms.