I don't know why I was naive enough to think Katers17 would leave the internet forever. But I guess we can talk about it. Again.
Someone linked me the video (thanks for that, by the way) of her explanation as to why she left again. It's on an entirely new channel and everything, and appeared to have probably a couple dozen videos already. The gist of the whining was her claiming she got hacked, claimed she got sick, and now claims she's broke. So she's back to vlogging and literally begging people to send her money. I never thought I'd see the day that it came to outright panhandling.
But let's take this apart objectively rather than being a generalizing asshole about the situation.
So, the hacking. They hacked her wifi, she said. They got into all of her accounts, and then deleted them. She didn't say a word about them stealing her identity, stealing her money, stalking her, no. Nothing reasonably attributable to a crook, or even a lunatic fan. This person just got into her wifi and proceeded to post messages as her before inevitably deleting her accounts.
This is 2014, and yet despite the world becoming a much more technology-savvy place, television still has everyone convinced that hacking is a magical skill which lets you break into literally any piece of technology in roughly five minutes and have full control over it and its information. And yet that's not how it works at all, no matter how hard they tried to make you think Chloe Sullivan characters can really exist.
Without getting too deep into the techno-babble if possible, let's just briefly touch on what exactly the common ways are to "hack" wifi. There are basically three common ways to run your wifi: open (no password at all), WEP, or WPA/WPA2. Right off the bat I'll tell you that WEP is useless. It's literally like putting a deadbolt on your front door and leaving the key sitting in it. It keeps out the casual person trying to borrow your internet, but someone who wants to take a look can do so within seconds, and that's no exaggeration. It's a broken encryption algorithm. That leaves you with WPA and WPA2, which are safer, but only so long as you used a proper password. If you used your house address, or a simple dictionary word, then you're much more easily screwed here because it can be brute-forced. But all routers default to using WPA or WPA2, so assuming you weren't dumb enough to turn it off, and used a decent password, then you should be reasonably secure.
And before you think web encryption methods such as SSL are going to save you on an open or vulnerable internet connection, think again. Look up terms like "man in the middle", "arp poisoning", "sslstrip", "self-signed certificate", etc, and various combinations. Encryption is only as safe as its ability to be used, and there are ways to simply circumvent it once you have access to the person's internet connection.
But for a moment, let's actually believe her. She was "hacked". So Kate either falls into the category of being stupid enough to use her internet on a vulnerable connection, or she used a stupid password. This is a girl who has admitted to being stalked by fans before, so if it was her who failed to secure her own internet properly, then she was practically begging for this to happen. But sure, okay, for a moment, she was "hacked".
So you broke in; what kind of hacker are you? Are you a thief? Are you a stalker? If you're either, then wouldn't common sense dictate that you're going to want to stay hidden? You finally got into her internet, you got into her accounts, wouldn't it now make sense to just lay low and consume her information while she's completely oblivious? Why would you start making posts as her? (Which she didn't mention the nature of.) Why would you start deleting accounts? What does that possibly gain for you? Especially if you're a thief; you just cut off a source of her income for you to steal! If you're a stalker, you just cut off her vlogs. And in both cases, you revealed yourself and are probably going to get locked out now, unless you were able to exploit something in the browser to get a hold on the machine itself. Though if she suspected hacking she would probably reinstall everything, too. So you're out. And the final outcome is that you gained nothing except some girl's misery.
No, the only way that the hacking thing makes sense is if someone was wanting to be vindictive towards her personally, and that gets into a whole 'nother category of lawbreaking. Yet she never once commented to being the victim to anything this sinister. She was simply "hacked". The kind of thing you just shrug off as something that sucks, something that randomly happens, but that's life.
Yeah, no.
The reason I don't buy it is because she honestly looks like she flipped her shit at some point. She said after the hacking that she got "sick" but she never told what from. What it sounds like is that she had a breakdown or some similar mental disorder, cut off her hair, said some crazy stuff online, deleted her accounts, and then after they treated her in some place, she's "better" now. And now she regrets it and is going to play the "I was hacked" card, the same one that politicians and celebrities love to pull when they do something stupid, in order to try to get her accounts back and gain public sympathy.
And the Katers 17 channel? She claims she never logged into it during this entire period of weeks during which she was compromised. Yeah, sure. You're an internet celebrity, and you never once logged into your primary account to check for messages or anything?
I personally think she stopped vlogging for some sudden career change (since vlogging had been her career), maybe left Cory for some other guy around the same time, and when neither of those things worked out, she realized just how bad she had fucked up and she just fucking lost it. But that's just my assumption, who knows.
As for her begging for money, fuck that. Her dad was sitting on the couch behind her while she was making one of those scenes. If she's stooped to begging her audience for money, then she can ask her dad for money. And I'm sure he'd only be too willing to help his daughter. Hell, he'd probably be willing to move her back to where he lives and let her stay there for a little while until she gets on her feet. But no, instead, she's going to pandhandle for money to stay in expensive CA and keep trying to get her career going while drinking Starbucks, while resorting to vlogging again in the meantime.
This is basically the typical celebrity trainwreck failed success story, except by someone who was still down at e-celeb status and got too big for her britches too quickly. She wasn't Shay-Carl. She wasn't Charles Trippy. She was still practically an internet nobody. And she thought she could leave vlogging for a real career, apparently. Looks like she shouldn't have been so ready to fuck her audience over, because it's going to take her a while to ever build that back up again.
Anyway, whatever. I think I ran out of steam on this one. Hopefully it's coherent in expressing my thoughts on the subject without needing a follow-up. There are other things I wanted to post about here lately, but I ended up back on this topic again, unfortunately!
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Saturday, June 28, 2014
The End, Again?
Oh wow, deja vu.
Remember when Kate gave her audience the proverbial middle finger and left, leaving all of the fanboys to bawww and claim that there must be a reason, that she'd never just leave her fans like that?
Well, apparently she did it again, just as abruptly. And probably for good this time.
As George Bush once so eloquently butchered: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I wasn't shamed though of course, and likely nor were the kinds of people who would read this blog. I'd come to accept the kind of person she was. Or the kind of person she became, rather. So none of it was particularly surprising. In fact, none of the stuff I've been hearing lately comes as a surprise. The only surprising part is probably that it took me this many months to learn about it. I've been busy and never even thought to look at the comments here or I'd have known sooner.
I'm just going to cut right to the chase. I doubt that her deleting her channel has anything at all to do with stalking or anything of the sort. I also don't think she deleted it simply from being tired of it. That channel would have still gotten thousands of views a month, and that was free money. We know how much Kate loves money, as seen when she felt it okay to trick her fans into voting for her to win $20k of furniture, so she wouldn't have given that source of income up lightly.
No, the more obvious reason here is that she's gotten herself mixed up with a new crowd of people and doesn't want her newfound fame potential to be marred by anyone finding the vlog. Re-inventing yourself is hard when you have video evidence readily available of what you used to be. This would help explain why the main channel still exists, because that's resume material. I heard someone say it was hackers who deleted her accounts, and that she managed to re-upload her Katers17 channel, but no. All of the original dates are on those videos.
If you need further proof of her new life, just search Google. You can see her and her freshly sheared head posing ridiculously next to some people I've never seen before in my life, on some kind of lower-key red carpet event. Since she never quite managed to achieve Charles Trippy/Shay Carl level of Youtube celebrity despite how hard she tried to insert herself into their circle, and since Cory proved that he was never going to move further up in the world and was actually on the other side of the creative hill, she's gone and shoehorned herself into some other group of people to ride on the coattails of.
But the hair. Good God, the hair. She looks hideous. People can try to defend it as much as they want, but she's no Annie Lennox, not with those pearly white horse teeth sticking out when she smiles, which are far more noticeable now. No, she's down closer to the Britney Spears tier, but I don't even think she can blame insanity. We're talking worse than Britney Spears, because it was more likely a publicity stunt. I mean, this is someone who staged the beginning of a relationship for views. Once you go that far down that path, nothing is out of the question. At least temporary insanity is excusable. Attention-whoring is not.
Meanwhile, I hear Cory was seen with Steph again in one of his videos. I haven't seen it, I don't know the context, and I'm not sure I care enough to go find it. But I just roll my eyes to that whole thing. No surprise whatsoever. He's one of those people who just can't deal with being alone, and will go back to whatever's available, even if that's something which only resulted in misery before. To be someone with a bit of fame and looks, he sure doesn't seem to be able to make new friends outside of that same old circle. That was the case during all of the vlogs, for both him and Kate for that matter. And the handful of friends you ever did happen to see them with were rarely anything to write home about. I never could understand that. They must have had pretty bad personalities off-camera.
Anyway, maybe I'm being too harsh, but whatever. I lost all sympathy for these people, or for the people who kept clinging to the smattering of videos they tossed out. If your feelings are hurt, then good, you should be mad, you should be upset. Maybe this will be a good learning experience on who to trust, and when to stop trusting them. You're never too young to learn that lesson.
In a world where faking everything for money has become business as usual, never take anything for face value.
Remember when Kate gave her audience the proverbial middle finger and left, leaving all of the fanboys to bawww and claim that there must be a reason, that she'd never just leave her fans like that?
Well, apparently she did it again, just as abruptly. And probably for good this time.
As George Bush once so eloquently butchered: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I wasn't shamed though of course, and likely nor were the kinds of people who would read this blog. I'd come to accept the kind of person she was. Or the kind of person she became, rather. So none of it was particularly surprising. In fact, none of the stuff I've been hearing lately comes as a surprise. The only surprising part is probably that it took me this many months to learn about it. I've been busy and never even thought to look at the comments here or I'd have known sooner.
I'm just going to cut right to the chase. I doubt that her deleting her channel has anything at all to do with stalking or anything of the sort. I also don't think she deleted it simply from being tired of it. That channel would have still gotten thousands of views a month, and that was free money. We know how much Kate loves money, as seen when she felt it okay to trick her fans into voting for her to win $20k of furniture, so she wouldn't have given that source of income up lightly.
No, the more obvious reason here is that she's gotten herself mixed up with a new crowd of people and doesn't want her newfound fame potential to be marred by anyone finding the vlog. Re-inventing yourself is hard when you have video evidence readily available of what you used to be. This would help explain why the main channel still exists, because that's resume material. I heard someone say it was hackers who deleted her accounts, and that she managed to re-upload her Katers17 channel, but no. All of the original dates are on those videos.
If you need further proof of her new life, just search Google. You can see her and her freshly sheared head posing ridiculously next to some people I've never seen before in my life, on some kind of lower-key red carpet event. Since she never quite managed to achieve Charles Trippy/Shay Carl level of Youtube celebrity despite how hard she tried to insert herself into their circle, and since Cory proved that he was never going to move further up in the world and was actually on the other side of the creative hill, she's gone and shoehorned herself into some other group of people to ride on the coattails of.
But the hair. Good God, the hair. She looks hideous. People can try to defend it as much as they want, but she's no Annie Lennox, not with those pearly white horse teeth sticking out when she smiles, which are far more noticeable now. No, she's down closer to the Britney Spears tier, but I don't even think she can blame insanity. We're talking worse than Britney Spears, because it was more likely a publicity stunt. I mean, this is someone who staged the beginning of a relationship for views. Once you go that far down that path, nothing is out of the question. At least temporary insanity is excusable. Attention-whoring is not.
Meanwhile, I hear Cory was seen with Steph again in one of his videos. I haven't seen it, I don't know the context, and I'm not sure I care enough to go find it. But I just roll my eyes to that whole thing. No surprise whatsoever. He's one of those people who just can't deal with being alone, and will go back to whatever's available, even if that's something which only resulted in misery before. To be someone with a bit of fame and looks, he sure doesn't seem to be able to make new friends outside of that same old circle. That was the case during all of the vlogs, for both him and Kate for that matter. And the handful of friends you ever did happen to see them with were rarely anything to write home about. I never could understand that. They must have had pretty bad personalities off-camera.
Anyway, maybe I'm being too harsh, but whatever. I lost all sympathy for these people, or for the people who kept clinging to the smattering of videos they tossed out. If your feelings are hurt, then good, you should be mad, you should be upset. Maybe this will be a good learning experience on who to trust, and when to stop trusting them. You're never too young to learn that lesson.
In a world where faking everything for money has become business as usual, never take anything for face value.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
The End?
So hey, I haven't written here in forever. Been busy, and haven't thought of anything particularly interesting enough to ramble about. But somebody commented to tell me that Katers and Cory broke up. I didn't know whether to believe it at first, but I found the vlog and confirmed it. Given how much I've blabbed about them in the past, I figure it only makes sense to say my piece and wrap this topic up for good.
About the only thing I can say regarding the breakup itself is that I'm not surprised. At all. These are two people around ten years apart in age from two completely different parts of the world. Cory gives the impression of being an emotional roller coaster, and seemingly content to keep doing what he's doing, while Kate gives the impression that she's too motivated to sit still or to want to deal with someone or something she perceives as holding her back. He was her proverbial stepping stone to live and start a career in America, but she's apparently ready to step forward again.
As for Cory's vlog about it, I can't comment too much on his reaction. These people are actors, even in their vlogs, and I have to take all of it with a grain of salt. He appeared upset, and I suppose some small part of me still feels bad for him if he's hurt. But then I remind myself of how the audience was misled and lied to, including about their relationship, which just makes me have mixed feelings. Call it karma, perhaps. Especially if some of the other accusations we heard about were true.
I didn't see any comment from Kate about it. I looked at her channel, but I don't particularly enjoy sitting through her videos anymore to find anything. She's even more different now than when I stopped watching. Skipping through, I never saw anything that looked like tears, so I assume she hasn't said anything. Then again, who's to say she would even cry about it? She sure didn't in her "the vlogs are over" video. Not to mention, she took up that mentality of making sure her channel was based entirely around positivity, deleting or banning anything negative in her comments to enforce that, so perhaps she wouldn't mention it at all. Especially when it could mean a possible drop in views. I think the initial potential romance drove some of her viewers to keep watching, and then it peaked when the relationship began. A relationship ending is pretty much the credits rolling for those people.
The thing that bugged me about Cory's video though was that here he was, publicly sharing this with everyone, and yet at the same time telling people not to talk about it in the comments. You're dropping a bombshell on people who have followed this saga for years, and now you're telling them not to voice their feelings? But at least he told his fans, which I guess is more than I can say for Kate (to my knowledge).
Like I said, they're from different parts of the world. Kate might have lived in America for a few years now, but England is still her home. I doubt she feels particularly anchored. She could probably decide to move anywhere for her career if it fancied her to do so. I mean, she moved across the ocean for it to begin with, after all. I don't think Cory would be as willing. Cory's also older, more at an age where he would want to settle down a bit, where as Kate's just getting started. People like Kate, who lived much of their early life as more of a hermit from lack of confidence, are going to spend more time being carefree after coming out of their shells.
As for what I said about Cory being her stepping stone, I won't go as far as to say that I think Kate used him. There's no way to really know that for sure. But I think it's safe to say that without him she probably wouldn't be where she is. It's also safe to assume Kate will bounce back just fine and move on, but Cory is the one to be more concerned about. He seemed somewhat clingy towards her, and his emotional state goes to such extremes that you'd almost worry that he might do something stupid. As far as I know, he's never done anything like that, but you can't help but wonder. Hopefully there's people around to keep an eye on him.
Anyway, yeah, like I said, it was inevitable. I saw people saying in Youtube comments that it's all a total shock, but perhaps I'm at an age where I'm able to see these things more easily. These kinds of relationships just don't tend to work out. They not only grew up in different decades, but on different continents. There's not enough in common in the long run. And that's completely aside from the personality differences. It wasn't meant to be.
Oh well, it was a long time coming, but at least the soap opera is over. I doubt I'll have any reason to look in on either one of them from now on. So I wish them just as much luck as either deserves, whether that's for better or worse, in finding what they're looking for.
About the only thing I can say regarding the breakup itself is that I'm not surprised. At all. These are two people around ten years apart in age from two completely different parts of the world. Cory gives the impression of being an emotional roller coaster, and seemingly content to keep doing what he's doing, while Kate gives the impression that she's too motivated to sit still or to want to deal with someone or something she perceives as holding her back. He was her proverbial stepping stone to live and start a career in America, but she's apparently ready to step forward again.
As for Cory's vlog about it, I can't comment too much on his reaction. These people are actors, even in their vlogs, and I have to take all of it with a grain of salt. He appeared upset, and I suppose some small part of me still feels bad for him if he's hurt. But then I remind myself of how the audience was misled and lied to, including about their relationship, which just makes me have mixed feelings. Call it karma, perhaps. Especially if some of the other accusations we heard about were true.
I didn't see any comment from Kate about it. I looked at her channel, but I don't particularly enjoy sitting through her videos anymore to find anything. She's even more different now than when I stopped watching. Skipping through, I never saw anything that looked like tears, so I assume she hasn't said anything. Then again, who's to say she would even cry about it? She sure didn't in her "the vlogs are over" video. Not to mention, she took up that mentality of making sure her channel was based entirely around positivity, deleting or banning anything negative in her comments to enforce that, so perhaps she wouldn't mention it at all. Especially when it could mean a possible drop in views. I think the initial potential romance drove some of her viewers to keep watching, and then it peaked when the relationship began. A relationship ending is pretty much the credits rolling for those people.
The thing that bugged me about Cory's video though was that here he was, publicly sharing this with everyone, and yet at the same time telling people not to talk about it in the comments. You're dropping a bombshell on people who have followed this saga for years, and now you're telling them not to voice their feelings? But at least he told his fans, which I guess is more than I can say for Kate (to my knowledge).
Like I said, they're from different parts of the world. Kate might have lived in America for a few years now, but England is still her home. I doubt she feels particularly anchored. She could probably decide to move anywhere for her career if it fancied her to do so. I mean, she moved across the ocean for it to begin with, after all. I don't think Cory would be as willing. Cory's also older, more at an age where he would want to settle down a bit, where as Kate's just getting started. People like Kate, who lived much of their early life as more of a hermit from lack of confidence, are going to spend more time being carefree after coming out of their shells.
As for what I said about Cory being her stepping stone, I won't go as far as to say that I think Kate used him. There's no way to really know that for sure. But I think it's safe to say that without him she probably wouldn't be where she is. It's also safe to assume Kate will bounce back just fine and move on, but Cory is the one to be more concerned about. He seemed somewhat clingy towards her, and his emotional state goes to such extremes that you'd almost worry that he might do something stupid. As far as I know, he's never done anything like that, but you can't help but wonder. Hopefully there's people around to keep an eye on him.
Anyway, yeah, like I said, it was inevitable. I saw people saying in Youtube comments that it's all a total shock, but perhaps I'm at an age where I'm able to see these things more easily. These kinds of relationships just don't tend to work out. They not only grew up in different decades, but on different continents. There's not enough in common in the long run. And that's completely aside from the personality differences. It wasn't meant to be.
Oh well, it was a long time coming, but at least the soap opera is over. I doubt I'll have any reason to look in on either one of them from now on. So I wish them just as much luck as either deserves, whether that's for better or worse, in finding what they're looking for.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Media Martyr
So hey, everyone's giving their two cents on the Trayvon Martin case, so I thought I'd actually give mine, which is likely based more in reality and fact than the majority of anything else being vomited across the web as we speak.
What nearly everyone whining about this case seems to fail to understand is that George Zimmerman was never on trial for whether he killed Trayvon Martin. This was established already, because, you know, he admitted it. From the start. He never denied killing this kid. This trial has always been about the motivation of the act. And based on that motivation, there were only three possible verdicts: guilty of 2nd degree murder, guilty of manslaughter, or not guilty. A jury chose the latter, because the other two could not be proven.
So for all of the "hurrrr if Zimmerman didn't kill Trayvon, then who did" people, which I've seen a million of at this point, shut the fuck up already. You've already proven that you have absolutely no understanding of this case, so you no longer are allowed an opinion of it.
Now let's look at the actual facts that were available in this case, which, again, most people don't bother with looking into:
- Zimmerman never owned a gun until roaming pit bulls in his neighborhood posed a threat, one of which cornered his wife at one point, after which an official told him the best way to protect himself and his family was to "get a gun." To be such a terrible racist murderer, he certainly seemed to have no interest in guns until his family was threatened by vicious animals. This also explains owning the hollow-point ammunition.
- Zimmerman was appointed head of his local neighborhood watch group. This implies that he was a likable individual in his community, and that they trusted him with this position.
- The neighborhood had been robbed multiple times within the last year alone, by young black males matching Trayvon's thuggish description.
- Trayvon was a self-proclaimed thug. He was interested in drugs and guns. Everything from his Facebook posts to his court-obtained text messages prove this. Given his appearance and body language, Zimmerman's concern over him being in the neighborhood, acting in the way that he was, when it was dark and raining, was justified, as someone who was dedicated to watching out for his neighborhood from the same description of people who had robbed it previously.
- During the initial 911 call, when Zimmerman was calmly talking to the dispatcher from his truck, he indicated that Trayvon spotted him following and then made a gesture at his waistband, giving the implication that he was armed.
- Trayvon suddenly ran. Zimmerman got out of his truck to follow him. Dispatch recognized that he was following based on his winded voice, and told him that they didn't need him to do that. So he stopped. You can hear this in the 911 call very clearly. He completely lost sight of Trayvon.
- Zimmerman stays on the line with the 911 dispatcher for several more minutes after giving up pursuit. You can listen to the call for yourself and see that Trayvon has a lifetime to escape the area, or to run home, which he was very close to.
- After Zimmerman hangs up, Trayvon then returns to confront Zimmerman, and the physical conflict ensues.
- Zimmerman is pummeled in the face multiple times while laying on his back on the ground.
- A single gunshot kills Trayvon. The autopsy showed skinned knuckles from his assault on Zimmerman, and no other injuries, since Zimmerman never even got a punch back on him.
These are the facts of the case. These are known based on the timing sequence of the 911 calls, and by the physical evidence taken when the police arrived.
Based on these facts, how can you prove that Zimmerman killed Trayvon with malicious intent? There's absolutely nothing here to justify that line of thinking other than personal bias. The facts indicate that Trayvon was the aggressor. It doesn't matter that Zimmerman followed Trayvon; that did not justify the physical assault on Zimmerman which resulted in Zimmerman firing his weapon in alleged self-defense. If you recall from the 911 call, Trayvon had already made a gesture to indicate that he was possibly armed, giving Zimmerman even more reason to fear for his life.
So you might be thinking, okay, you can't prove malicious intent from Zimmerman, but why did he not get charged with manslaughter? Well that's because the terminology of Florida's manslaughter statute does not apply. It specifically says that an act of negligence does not constitute the crime, nor if it were self-defense or other excusable reasons.
But even if it were a typical involuntary manslaughter charge of another state, you would have still had a hard time proving negligence. There was no law which stated Zimmerman couldn't carry his gun while performing neighborhood watch duties. And he stopped following Trayvon when the 911 dispatcher asked him to. Other than the risk he put himself at to follow a potentially armed criminal, there simply was no provable negligence in this case.
The media has exploited this case to massive proportions. It took the death of a child and turned it into a ratings frenzy, carefully crafting its narrative of Zimmerman being a villain in the death of a black person in order to fuel racial tensions and public debate. They carefully left out the details such as how Zimmerman himself was mixed race, including black in his family tree. Or that Zimmerman had previously been responsible for the capture of criminals in his neighborhood. Or that Zimmerman had once fought on the side of a black homeless man who had been beaten by the city's police, and accused them of covering it up. That Zimmerman tutored disadvantaged children (read: black) for free. Instead, they turned him into the antichrist. And people fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
The facts of this case are simply indisputable. And they never changed, from the point in which the local police initially cleared him, until even after the media forced the case open again and dragged him through court. I urge you to go and research them for yourself if you're still in doubt.
Trayvon had the opportunity to escape, but he chose to return and assault Zimmerman. That decision cost him his life. It shouldn't cost Zimmerman his as well for defending himself.
What nearly everyone whining about this case seems to fail to understand is that George Zimmerman was never on trial for whether he killed Trayvon Martin. This was established already, because, you know, he admitted it. From the start. He never denied killing this kid. This trial has always been about the motivation of the act. And based on that motivation, there were only three possible verdicts: guilty of 2nd degree murder, guilty of manslaughter, or not guilty. A jury chose the latter, because the other two could not be proven.
So for all of the "hurrrr if Zimmerman didn't kill Trayvon, then who did" people, which I've seen a million of at this point, shut the fuck up already. You've already proven that you have absolutely no understanding of this case, so you no longer are allowed an opinion of it.
Now let's look at the actual facts that were available in this case, which, again, most people don't bother with looking into:
- Zimmerman never owned a gun until roaming pit bulls in his neighborhood posed a threat, one of which cornered his wife at one point, after which an official told him the best way to protect himself and his family was to "get a gun." To be such a terrible racist murderer, he certainly seemed to have no interest in guns until his family was threatened by vicious animals. This also explains owning the hollow-point ammunition.
- Zimmerman was appointed head of his local neighborhood watch group. This implies that he was a likable individual in his community, and that they trusted him with this position.
- The neighborhood had been robbed multiple times within the last year alone, by young black males matching Trayvon's thuggish description.
- Trayvon was a self-proclaimed thug. He was interested in drugs and guns. Everything from his Facebook posts to his court-obtained text messages prove this. Given his appearance and body language, Zimmerman's concern over him being in the neighborhood, acting in the way that he was, when it was dark and raining, was justified, as someone who was dedicated to watching out for his neighborhood from the same description of people who had robbed it previously.
- During the initial 911 call, when Zimmerman was calmly talking to the dispatcher from his truck, he indicated that Trayvon spotted him following and then made a gesture at his waistband, giving the implication that he was armed.
- Trayvon suddenly ran. Zimmerman got out of his truck to follow him. Dispatch recognized that he was following based on his winded voice, and told him that they didn't need him to do that. So he stopped. You can hear this in the 911 call very clearly. He completely lost sight of Trayvon.
- Zimmerman stays on the line with the 911 dispatcher for several more minutes after giving up pursuit. You can listen to the call for yourself and see that Trayvon has a lifetime to escape the area, or to run home, which he was very close to.
- After Zimmerman hangs up, Trayvon then returns to confront Zimmerman, and the physical conflict ensues.
- Zimmerman is pummeled in the face multiple times while laying on his back on the ground.
- A single gunshot kills Trayvon. The autopsy showed skinned knuckles from his assault on Zimmerman, and no other injuries, since Zimmerman never even got a punch back on him.
These are the facts of the case. These are known based on the timing sequence of the 911 calls, and by the physical evidence taken when the police arrived.
Based on these facts, how can you prove that Zimmerman killed Trayvon with malicious intent? There's absolutely nothing here to justify that line of thinking other than personal bias. The facts indicate that Trayvon was the aggressor. It doesn't matter that Zimmerman followed Trayvon; that did not justify the physical assault on Zimmerman which resulted in Zimmerman firing his weapon in alleged self-defense. If you recall from the 911 call, Trayvon had already made a gesture to indicate that he was possibly armed, giving Zimmerman even more reason to fear for his life.
So you might be thinking, okay, you can't prove malicious intent from Zimmerman, but why did he not get charged with manslaughter? Well that's because the terminology of Florida's manslaughter statute does not apply. It specifically says that an act of negligence does not constitute the crime, nor if it were self-defense or other excusable reasons.
But even if it were a typical involuntary manslaughter charge of another state, you would have still had a hard time proving negligence. There was no law which stated Zimmerman couldn't carry his gun while performing neighborhood watch duties. And he stopped following Trayvon when the 911 dispatcher asked him to. Other than the risk he put himself at to follow a potentially armed criminal, there simply was no provable negligence in this case.
The media has exploited this case to massive proportions. It took the death of a child and turned it into a ratings frenzy, carefully crafting its narrative of Zimmerman being a villain in the death of a black person in order to fuel racial tensions and public debate. They carefully left out the details such as how Zimmerman himself was mixed race, including black in his family tree. Or that Zimmerman had previously been responsible for the capture of criminals in his neighborhood. Or that Zimmerman had once fought on the side of a black homeless man who had been beaten by the city's police, and accused them of covering it up. That Zimmerman tutored disadvantaged children (read: black) for free. Instead, they turned him into the antichrist. And people fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
The facts of this case are simply indisputable. And they never changed, from the point in which the local police initially cleared him, until even after the media forced the case open again and dragged him through court. I urge you to go and research them for yourself if you're still in doubt.
Trayvon had the opportunity to escape, but he chose to return and assault Zimmerman. That decision cost him his life. It shouldn't cost Zimmerman his as well for defending himself.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Easy to Forget
Oh hey, it's been three months, maybe I'll post something on here for a change!
You know, it's funny; every few weeks something would remind me of KatersOneSeven, and I'd realize to myself how I went from watching her videos every single day, even looking forward to them, all the way to rarely even thinking or caring about her. I checked her channel just now, and there's only been a dozen uploads since her big middle finger to the internet. I can't bring myself to care enough to watch them, since I'm sure it would just be a lot more facepalming and eye rolling. If anything relevant even happened, give me the cliff notes version. Actually, in some of the comments here, somebody mentioned that she's pregnant and that they're going to get married, but I would question that solely on the basis of a) her not wanting to mess up her California girl image and career, and b) that costs money, which she would rather blow on her dog and herself. But who knows.
I've lost interest in a lot of Youtube in general, actually. I still watch some automotive and gaming channels though. Since it's spring time, various motorcycle vloggers have started coming out of hibernation, but I haven't had quite enough time or interest to watch everybody that I was into last year. I still enjoy people like Boogie2988 though with his opinions on various topics, along with his Francis rants of course. And I've been facepalming quite a bit from the Yogscast guys, as a matter of fact. If you haven't heard of them, it's basically a network of Youtube channels of people who play various games, with the core group having a focus that seems oriented on Minecraft.
That's as good a topic as any, actually. Yogscast. People who have over a million subscribers, are paid lots of money just to play games, yet they put absolutely no research into how to actually do it. They've become so content in being able to just upload a video and get thousands of automatic views that they don't seem to really care what they film anymore. I don't know if any of you watch them, or play Minecraft and/or its mods, so I'll try my best to explain this. One of Yogscast's most popular series was Tekkit, based around the Minecraft modpack (a collection of mods from various developers) with the same name. It had a good mix of humor, plot, and building, and lasted for almost a hundred episodes. When it eventually ended, people had liked it so much that they kept asking for it to continue, or to start a new one of some kind.
Around that time, they started a new series called Voltz, again based on a Minecraft modpack of the same name, both of which under the Technic umbrella of modpacks. Voltz started out well, had some amusing episodes, until gradually it seemed like they were cheating and fibbing to orchestrate scenes for the audience rather than playing the game legitimately. At first I didn't mind too much, because it could be pretty entertaining, but eventually I felt more and more like it was just being misleading. It also became more and more apparent that they didn't really know what they were doing, and wouldn't check the various wikis out there which would have helped them figure something out within moments, bumbling around on camera forever instead. But they still made pretty decent progress and people liked it.
Several episodes into Voltz, they introduced the new Jaffa Factory series, which was a direct continuation of Tekkit, but with a whole new modpack of their own under the FTB umbrella now instead of Technic. This alone caused fanboys to freak out in comments, because Tekkit vs FTB is like ATI vs Nvidia to them, except that these modpacks are literally publicly-available mods developed by people not directly affiliated with either modpack, simply using different front-end launchers to start the game, making it a completely moot argument. Yogscraft (their FTB modpack) used updated versions of all the very outdated mods from Tekkit, and various new ones.
But suddenly the Yogscast gang were like deer in headlights, even with the mods they should have been familiar with. They weren't making any progress, they couldn't figure anything out, there was no kind of plot development or plan, and every episode is basically twenty minutes of them trying to figure out how to make things and usually not even managing to do that. Ten episodes in and they still had no shelter whatsoever, despite tons of items available (cheated in and otherwise), despite the original Tekkit series having had ten times the progress and having started from nothing.
Meanwhile, the Voltz series also seems to have been quietly migrated to an FTB-based server, probably a combined Yogscraft and Ampz pack, because despite still calling it Voltz, it has at least over half a dozen mods which don't belong. With the addition of these extra mods, they're now a deer in headlights yet again, trying to use these other mods' features but not really accomplishing a whole lot. But at least they're still motivated by the fact that it's one team versus another team, as opposed to one big clusterfuck like in Jaffa Factory.
It's all fairly frustrating to watch, to be honest, because a) how the hell can a group of people have played Minecraft mods for this long and still not know the basics, and b) how the hell can you get paid so much money and yet put so little effort into planning your content? They still make some pretty funny content, such as when they play Garry's Mod, but it seems to all be becoming few and far between. The only reason the Garry's Mod stuff is funny is because they're playing with stuff that they didn't even make, with their lack of prior experimentation resulting in some amusing results in that case. The comments on Jaffa Factory, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly negative, asking for more Voltz or trying to tell them how to play the game. I don't think they even look at comments anymore, though. Why would you need to when you get that many views without even trying?
Anyway, enough about Minecraft. Maybe somebody will actually know what I'm talking about! Otherwise, all you need to know is that it's pretty much another case of success going to peoples' heads, as far as I'm concerned.
You know, it's funny; every few weeks something would remind me of KatersOneSeven, and I'd realize to myself how I went from watching her videos every single day, even looking forward to them, all the way to rarely even thinking or caring about her. I checked her channel just now, and there's only been a dozen uploads since her big middle finger to the internet. I can't bring myself to care enough to watch them, since I'm sure it would just be a lot more facepalming and eye rolling. If anything relevant even happened, give me the cliff notes version. Actually, in some of the comments here, somebody mentioned that she's pregnant and that they're going to get married, but I would question that solely on the basis of a) her not wanting to mess up her California girl image and career, and b) that costs money, which she would rather blow on her dog and herself. But who knows.
I've lost interest in a lot of Youtube in general, actually. I still watch some automotive and gaming channels though. Since it's spring time, various motorcycle vloggers have started coming out of hibernation, but I haven't had quite enough time or interest to watch everybody that I was into last year. I still enjoy people like Boogie2988 though with his opinions on various topics, along with his Francis rants of course. And I've been facepalming quite a bit from the Yogscast guys, as a matter of fact. If you haven't heard of them, it's basically a network of Youtube channels of people who play various games, with the core group having a focus that seems oriented on Minecraft.
That's as good a topic as any, actually. Yogscast. People who have over a million subscribers, are paid lots of money just to play games, yet they put absolutely no research into how to actually do it. They've become so content in being able to just upload a video and get thousands of automatic views that they don't seem to really care what they film anymore. I don't know if any of you watch them, or play Minecraft and/or its mods, so I'll try my best to explain this. One of Yogscast's most popular series was Tekkit, based around the Minecraft modpack (a collection of mods from various developers) with the same name. It had a good mix of humor, plot, and building, and lasted for almost a hundred episodes. When it eventually ended, people had liked it so much that they kept asking for it to continue, or to start a new one of some kind.
Around that time, they started a new series called Voltz, again based on a Minecraft modpack of the same name, both of which under the Technic umbrella of modpacks. Voltz started out well, had some amusing episodes, until gradually it seemed like they were cheating and fibbing to orchestrate scenes for the audience rather than playing the game legitimately. At first I didn't mind too much, because it could be pretty entertaining, but eventually I felt more and more like it was just being misleading. It also became more and more apparent that they didn't really know what they were doing, and wouldn't check the various wikis out there which would have helped them figure something out within moments, bumbling around on camera forever instead. But they still made pretty decent progress and people liked it.
Several episodes into Voltz, they introduced the new Jaffa Factory series, which was a direct continuation of Tekkit, but with a whole new modpack of their own under the FTB umbrella now instead of Technic. This alone caused fanboys to freak out in comments, because Tekkit vs FTB is like ATI vs Nvidia to them, except that these modpacks are literally publicly-available mods developed by people not directly affiliated with either modpack, simply using different front-end launchers to start the game, making it a completely moot argument. Yogscraft (their FTB modpack) used updated versions of all the very outdated mods from Tekkit, and various new ones.
But suddenly the Yogscast gang were like deer in headlights, even with the mods they should have been familiar with. They weren't making any progress, they couldn't figure anything out, there was no kind of plot development or plan, and every episode is basically twenty minutes of them trying to figure out how to make things and usually not even managing to do that. Ten episodes in and they still had no shelter whatsoever, despite tons of items available (cheated in and otherwise), despite the original Tekkit series having had ten times the progress and having started from nothing.
Meanwhile, the Voltz series also seems to have been quietly migrated to an FTB-based server, probably a combined Yogscraft and Ampz pack, because despite still calling it Voltz, it has at least over half a dozen mods which don't belong. With the addition of these extra mods, they're now a deer in headlights yet again, trying to use these other mods' features but not really accomplishing a whole lot. But at least they're still motivated by the fact that it's one team versus another team, as opposed to one big clusterfuck like in Jaffa Factory.
It's all fairly frustrating to watch, to be honest, because a) how the hell can a group of people have played Minecraft mods for this long and still not know the basics, and b) how the hell can you get paid so much money and yet put so little effort into planning your content? They still make some pretty funny content, such as when they play Garry's Mod, but it seems to all be becoming few and far between. The only reason the Garry's Mod stuff is funny is because they're playing with stuff that they didn't even make, with their lack of prior experimentation resulting in some amusing results in that case. The comments on Jaffa Factory, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly negative, asking for more Voltz or trying to tell them how to play the game. I don't think they even look at comments anymore, though. Why would you need to when you get that many views without even trying?
Anyway, enough about Minecraft. Maybe somebody will actually know what I'm talking about! Otherwise, all you need to know is that it's pretty much another case of success going to peoples' heads, as far as I'm concerned.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
F.A.Q.
It's been a few days, but "Let's Talk" about what was said in comments to Kate's similarly-named video. There were certainly still some things to be asked, but since I'm blocked, I just had to hope that there were enough other people out there wondering those same things, who also had enough balls to ask without fear of insulting Great Leader. Turns out, people do!
First on the list is the screenshot of Cory's Facebook switching to "in a relationship" in October 2011; a screencap which was made before people even knew that Kate and Cory actually did kiss that month. The official verdict? Neither Kate nor Cory have any idea what it's about, and assume that the screenshot must be fake, because they don't remember it. O-kay. I still think Cory just got over-excited at the kiss and is now too embarrassed to admit that he changed his status (assuming they haven't actually been in a relationship that whole time, of course).
Second, we have the Seann Larson comment, about Cory cheating on Steph with Kate. Official verdict? Kate swears that it's absolutely, positively false, and that maybe Seann is the one with something to hide. It was an adamant denial, so you either have to believe it or think Kate's just a total liar. Personally, I dunno, I guess I'm inclined to believe it. I don't think she would respond to the question at all if she was going to have to lie to it, and in turn imply Seann is the liar in the process. Then again, it did seem to have quite a few thumbs-up, so maybe she felt she had to. But I go back to what I said before, about how Cory had stopped wearing his wedding ring ages before Steph ever moved out. You just don't live with your ex for that long if cheating was involved.
Third, it was asked why she was still Tweeting/Facebooking/Keeking/etc if she had been worried about her safety. Kate made a good point on this one, I suppose: it shows where she's at every day. That could be enough information for a crazy person to have an idea of where to watch for her. Though she doesn't go to the same places every day, and her vlogs are normally a few days late anyway, so I dunno. Either way, take it as you will. I still say it was a knee-jerk reaction.
Fourth, the Facebook screenshot of Cory telling someone to keep it (their relationship) a secret, since as far as everyone's concerned "we're new." Kate said that this was related to a private joke, which nobody else would have understood and misinterpreted. Yeah, I don't really think I buy it, pretty much like the other Facebook screenshot. I actually used to doubt both of these screenshots to varying degrees, but given that this latter one turned out to be real (which is the one I doubted the most), I don't know what to think anymore.
I saw someone ask if Kate and Cory were sponsored by Keek, but that one never got answered.
So yeah. Regardless of the truth involved, at least there was a direct response to these things. All one can do now is wait to see if she or Cory slip up at some point and reveal whether any of it was false. I heard she put up some vlogs since I last watched, but I can't bring myself enough to care to see what they're about, so somebody else will have to keep an eye out for any shenanigans.
I really do think I'm done with Kate now. I truly have no remorse from unsubscribing and have no urge to go see what she's up to. I just wanted to make one last post of the info I saw recently, to conclude this whole series of posts about all of this.
First on the list is the screenshot of Cory's Facebook switching to "in a relationship" in October 2011; a screencap which was made before people even knew that Kate and Cory actually did kiss that month. The official verdict? Neither Kate nor Cory have any idea what it's about, and assume that the screenshot must be fake, because they don't remember it. O-kay. I still think Cory just got over-excited at the kiss and is now too embarrassed to admit that he changed his status (assuming they haven't actually been in a relationship that whole time, of course).
Second, we have the Seann Larson comment, about Cory cheating on Steph with Kate. Official verdict? Kate swears that it's absolutely, positively false, and that maybe Seann is the one with something to hide. It was an adamant denial, so you either have to believe it or think Kate's just a total liar. Personally, I dunno, I guess I'm inclined to believe it. I don't think she would respond to the question at all if she was going to have to lie to it, and in turn imply Seann is the liar in the process. Then again, it did seem to have quite a few thumbs-up, so maybe she felt she had to. But I go back to what I said before, about how Cory had stopped wearing his wedding ring ages before Steph ever moved out. You just don't live with your ex for that long if cheating was involved.
Third, it was asked why she was still Tweeting/Facebooking/Keeking/etc if she had been worried about her safety. Kate made a good point on this one, I suppose: it shows where she's at every day. That could be enough information for a crazy person to have an idea of where to watch for her. Though she doesn't go to the same places every day, and her vlogs are normally a few days late anyway, so I dunno. Either way, take it as you will. I still say it was a knee-jerk reaction.
Fourth, the Facebook screenshot of Cory telling someone to keep it (their relationship) a secret, since as far as everyone's concerned "we're new." Kate said that this was related to a private joke, which nobody else would have understood and misinterpreted. Yeah, I don't really think I buy it, pretty much like the other Facebook screenshot. I actually used to doubt both of these screenshots to varying degrees, but given that this latter one turned out to be real (which is the one I doubted the most), I don't know what to think anymore.
I saw someone ask if Kate and Cory were sponsored by Keek, but that one never got answered.
So yeah. Regardless of the truth involved, at least there was a direct response to these things. All one can do now is wait to see if she or Cory slip up at some point and reveal whether any of it was false. I heard she put up some vlogs since I last watched, but I can't bring myself enough to care to see what they're about, so somebody else will have to keep an eye out for any shenanigans.
I really do think I'm done with Kate now. I truly have no remorse from unsubscribing and have no urge to go see what she's up to. I just wanted to make one last post of the info I saw recently, to conclude this whole series of posts about all of this.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
All Good Things
Well, it's over, folks. KatersOneSeven finally posted a video to address the situation, and it's essentially the tearful explanation I predicted before. We learned a little from it, while it still managed to leave plenty of unanswered questions.
The first half of the explanation for the vlogs ending is indeed what was being alluded to: she was scared for her safety. And I don't question for a second that she has dozens of fucked up fanboys who hang on her every word, to the point that their lives practically revolve around her. And I'm sure there's varying degrees of them as well, from the simple comment warriors all the way to the crazy fucks who would actually think it's okay to go to her house or mess with her stuff. Those people need a pop in the nose, and it'd be funny if Kate or Cory gave it to'em.
But, as we've previously covered, finding out where she lives isn't very hard, so she shouldn't be too surprised that eventually she would start having these kinds of issues. Several of the big vloggers I've watched, such as Shaycarl, have remarked on similar issues of people just showing up uninvited. Some are nuts, and some are truly just stupid enough to think it's okay to just show up. It comes with the territory, particularly for an attractive girl on the internet. When you have 100k people watching you as Kate does, then you're certainly a celebrity, only on a smaller scale than the Hollywood variety. She should be better prepared to deal with this, and I don't even say that out of criticism, but just in general regard for anyone in her position against all the idiots out there.
Now for the second half of her reasoning for ending the vlogs: haters. I'll give her that one, to some degree. People can be assholes, many times intentionally wanting to hurt someone's feelings or rile them up. The cover of anonymity brings out the worst in people, whether they're simply having a bad day, jealous, or just outright trolling. But dealing with haters is something you have to do, more so than with the crazy folks. Ask Justin Bieber. If it's going to upset you to the point that you're crying "every day" then it's probably time to find a less stressful occupation.
I do have a bone to pick with this excuse, though; I think she's combining the average troll with people who offer constructive criticism or question things which she doesn't want to talk about. If enough fans don't like a particular something, then perhaps she should be listening. Also, under that definition, then I myself am a hater. Despite taking the time to write what I do here, I don't hate Kate, I don't wish ill of her, nor would I ever say anything to her simply out of spite. I wouldn't be writing this at all if I hadn't enjoyed her vlogs at some point along the way. I don't feel I'm a hateful person, but I would certainly admit I'm cynical. So I do believe that she's changed, and I do believe that there are occasional incidents which lead to suspicion. You better believe that I'm going to talk about it and ask questions, because that's just how I am. I don't believe everything I see and hear. And as it turned out, I had good reason.
This brings us to where Kate said she didn't lie about anything. "Lie" is a strong word, which I won't use directly without specific proof. But she certainly misled. Their relationship began in October all along. It was a kiss and an admission of feelings for one another; whether they acted on it again in the following two months is beside the point in my opinion, because it was a major event of their friendship/relationship. My problem with it though is that, in the videos which followed the New Years kiss, they talked and cuddled and were admitting on camera the first times that they'd felt that way, how this was all a new thing, and essentially as if they'd never expressed feelings prior to this. Kate didn't have to actually tell us at the time of the first kiss, but you would think that she'd have offered this information soon after New Years. Given that she didn't tell us about this to begin with, we're still taking Kate's word that this new information is any more factual than the last. And even if it's true, she still made a conscious decision to mislead the fans. I don't remember if she specifically apologized for doing so (and honestly don't really care enough to go and look), but it doesn't inspire trust, regardless. Though she may in fact be telling the truth this time, which I won't really dispute based solely on her leaving details out.
She said that if there's any more questions then to just ask in the comments. I was certainly going to do so, but it looks like I'm blocked. Apparently I'm one of those people bringing too much negativity to her life! I don't know if she associated my comments on her channel with this blog (if she even knows anything about it), or whether it was solely from the comments themselves. Based on how fanboy behavior is very predictable, I'm somewhat confident that a handful of white knights have sent her links to here. Whether she ever actually looked at it though is the question. And hey, maybe I actually was an ass to some people in the comments, depending on your point of view. I made quite a few comments, so I won't pretend to be completely innocent. But if it were related to the blog at all, then I'd be slightly disappointed. This is my place to talk about how I feel about things which interest me, where I think out loud in deducing a situation, and don't actually direct what I say towards anyone. You have to seek me out to hear what I have to say. So block me for making comments, not for having opinions. But at the end of the day it just doesn't bother me enough to find out why or attempt to get it undone.
This all still leaves us with unresolved questions, such as Seann Larson's remarks, or all of the screenshots from Facebook regarding Cory in a relationship. Maybe the former is lying, and maybe the latter was Photoshopped. But let's consider something regarding the latter: what are the odds that people faked an image from Facebook, which has apparently been circulating the web for a little while now, based on the exact same month when Kate and Cory did in fact kiss for the first time (unbeknownst to the fans till now)? Don't you think that's a huge coincidence? Could be that Cory simply overreacted to the kiss. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
As for the future, it looks like the "vlog idea" Kate had is just combining multiple days into one video, which still does next to nothing for her privacy or the haters, the very things which she says stopped her to begin with. But I won't likely be watching. I'm blocked, for one, which will be a constant reminder that she's not interested in my opinions, so why should I continue to be interested in hers? And second, there's still unanswered things to be suspicious about in my opinion, leaving me to presently question the legitimacy of her future vlogs. And last, but most importantly, I meant what I said before about Kate not being the same person anymore. I don't care if hearing that kind of thing is part of why she quit vlogging, it's true. Don't get me wrong, people change; Kate will continue to change, just as all the rest of us will. But she doesn't entertain me the way she used to. It's like a TV show which you aren't entirely interested in anymore, but you still watch because you want to know what happens to the characters. Sometimes, though, you come to a point where you just can't bring yourself to keep watching. And based on how I feel at this particular moment, I think that time is pretty much here for me and KatersOneSeven (and all of Cory's channels, by relation).
Her vlog used to be one of the highlights of my time online, much as Shaycarl or CTFxC used to be, but unfortunately I can't say that anymore. The tears she expressed in her explanation video didn't really move me, although there was a time when they probably would have, which I think says a lot. I don't see the same genuine girl anymore, I see an aspiring actress who only wants to portray happy things instead of real life; someone who would mislead her fans and hide aspects of her life, things which I believe she once would have shared, in order to mold our perception. I watch vlogs because I want to watch real people with real problems, just the same as all the rest of us have. For example, I liked back when Shaycarl was a normal fellow, working a radio job, paying a mortgage, and raising a family no different than anyone else. But much like with Shaycarl these days, Kate's problems, the ones she actually still chooses to share, are just not relatable to me anymore. I'm just not really interested in what constitutes her life most of the time now. I very harshly referred to her before as a stereotypical California girl, but as mean as it might sound, it's just how I see her most of the time now, especially more recently. I would very likely never associate with a person like that in real life (and vice versa), which is probably why I'm so critical of her vlogs these days, because I would in fact have associated with someone like the old Kate. There's moments when I think she's still being genuine, but then there's also lots of times now when I actually stop to question it, which is never how it's supposed to be. There's still some Youtubers/vloggers out there which I never stop to question.
So perhaps this is the end of the line for me. I'm sure it is for many others as well. Plenty of people on the fence will probably accept Kate's explanations though, and the rest will question it but keep watching anyway. And this doesn't count the fanboys, who are probably proudly strutting around the comments about having stuck by her. Regardless of which you are, this incident likely won't hurt her views/subscriptions much at all. Everyone's shock will wear off now that she's posting again, and things will start to return to normal. The only thing that could really will hurt her popularity at this point is switching to the somewhat-weekly format and thinking her occasional skits could make up for the lack of views. It's certainly not going to help her much with any of the reasons she quit to begin with, though.
I'm sure I still have things to say about all this as they come to mind, and I'm sure new information will still come about in the following days until all the dust has finally settled. She did say that people can ask questions in the comments, so maybe people will ask some of the stuff mentioned here. But as far as I can tell, for the most part, it's pretty much over.
The first half of the explanation for the vlogs ending is indeed what was being alluded to: she was scared for her safety. And I don't question for a second that she has dozens of fucked up fanboys who hang on her every word, to the point that their lives practically revolve around her. And I'm sure there's varying degrees of them as well, from the simple comment warriors all the way to the crazy fucks who would actually think it's okay to go to her house or mess with her stuff. Those people need a pop in the nose, and it'd be funny if Kate or Cory gave it to'em.
But, as we've previously covered, finding out where she lives isn't very hard, so she shouldn't be too surprised that eventually she would start having these kinds of issues. Several of the big vloggers I've watched, such as Shaycarl, have remarked on similar issues of people just showing up uninvited. Some are nuts, and some are truly just stupid enough to think it's okay to just show up. It comes with the territory, particularly for an attractive girl on the internet. When you have 100k people watching you as Kate does, then you're certainly a celebrity, only on a smaller scale than the Hollywood variety. She should be better prepared to deal with this, and I don't even say that out of criticism, but just in general regard for anyone in her position against all the idiots out there.
Now for the second half of her reasoning for ending the vlogs: haters. I'll give her that one, to some degree. People can be assholes, many times intentionally wanting to hurt someone's feelings or rile them up. The cover of anonymity brings out the worst in people, whether they're simply having a bad day, jealous, or just outright trolling. But dealing with haters is something you have to do, more so than with the crazy folks. Ask Justin Bieber. If it's going to upset you to the point that you're crying "every day" then it's probably time to find a less stressful occupation.
I do have a bone to pick with this excuse, though; I think she's combining the average troll with people who offer constructive criticism or question things which she doesn't want to talk about. If enough fans don't like a particular something, then perhaps she should be listening. Also, under that definition, then I myself am a hater. Despite taking the time to write what I do here, I don't hate Kate, I don't wish ill of her, nor would I ever say anything to her simply out of spite. I wouldn't be writing this at all if I hadn't enjoyed her vlogs at some point along the way. I don't feel I'm a hateful person, but I would certainly admit I'm cynical. So I do believe that she's changed, and I do believe that there are occasional incidents which lead to suspicion. You better believe that I'm going to talk about it and ask questions, because that's just how I am. I don't believe everything I see and hear. And as it turned out, I had good reason.
This brings us to where Kate said she didn't lie about anything. "Lie" is a strong word, which I won't use directly without specific proof. But she certainly misled. Their relationship began in October all along. It was a kiss and an admission of feelings for one another; whether they acted on it again in the following two months is beside the point in my opinion, because it was a major event of their friendship/relationship. My problem with it though is that, in the videos which followed the New Years kiss, they talked and cuddled and were admitting on camera the first times that they'd felt that way, how this was all a new thing, and essentially as if they'd never expressed feelings prior to this. Kate didn't have to actually tell us at the time of the first kiss, but you would think that she'd have offered this information soon after New Years. Given that she didn't tell us about this to begin with, we're still taking Kate's word that this new information is any more factual than the last. And even if it's true, she still made a conscious decision to mislead the fans. I don't remember if she specifically apologized for doing so (and honestly don't really care enough to go and look), but it doesn't inspire trust, regardless. Though she may in fact be telling the truth this time, which I won't really dispute based solely on her leaving details out.
She said that if there's any more questions then to just ask in the comments. I was certainly going to do so, but it looks like I'm blocked. Apparently I'm one of those people bringing too much negativity to her life! I don't know if she associated my comments on her channel with this blog (if she even knows anything about it), or whether it was solely from the comments themselves. Based on how fanboy behavior is very predictable, I'm somewhat confident that a handful of white knights have sent her links to here. Whether she ever actually looked at it though is the question. And hey, maybe I actually was an ass to some people in the comments, depending on your point of view. I made quite a few comments, so I won't pretend to be completely innocent. But if it were related to the blog at all, then I'd be slightly disappointed. This is my place to talk about how I feel about things which interest me, where I think out loud in deducing a situation, and don't actually direct what I say towards anyone. You have to seek me out to hear what I have to say. So block me for making comments, not for having opinions. But at the end of the day it just doesn't bother me enough to find out why or attempt to get it undone.
This all still leaves us with unresolved questions, such as Seann Larson's remarks, or all of the screenshots from Facebook regarding Cory in a relationship. Maybe the former is lying, and maybe the latter was Photoshopped. But let's consider something regarding the latter: what are the odds that people faked an image from Facebook, which has apparently been circulating the web for a little while now, based on the exact same month when Kate and Cory did in fact kiss for the first time (unbeknownst to the fans till now)? Don't you think that's a huge coincidence? Could be that Cory simply overreacted to the kiss. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
As for the future, it looks like the "vlog idea" Kate had is just combining multiple days into one video, which still does next to nothing for her privacy or the haters, the very things which she says stopped her to begin with. But I won't likely be watching. I'm blocked, for one, which will be a constant reminder that she's not interested in my opinions, so why should I continue to be interested in hers? And second, there's still unanswered things to be suspicious about in my opinion, leaving me to presently question the legitimacy of her future vlogs. And last, but most importantly, I meant what I said before about Kate not being the same person anymore. I don't care if hearing that kind of thing is part of why she quit vlogging, it's true. Don't get me wrong, people change; Kate will continue to change, just as all the rest of us will. But she doesn't entertain me the way she used to. It's like a TV show which you aren't entirely interested in anymore, but you still watch because you want to know what happens to the characters. Sometimes, though, you come to a point where you just can't bring yourself to keep watching. And based on how I feel at this particular moment, I think that time is pretty much here for me and KatersOneSeven (and all of Cory's channels, by relation).
Her vlog used to be one of the highlights of my time online, much as Shaycarl or CTFxC used to be, but unfortunately I can't say that anymore. The tears she expressed in her explanation video didn't really move me, although there was a time when they probably would have, which I think says a lot. I don't see the same genuine girl anymore, I see an aspiring actress who only wants to portray happy things instead of real life; someone who would mislead her fans and hide aspects of her life, things which I believe she once would have shared, in order to mold our perception. I watch vlogs because I want to watch real people with real problems, just the same as all the rest of us have. For example, I liked back when Shaycarl was a normal fellow, working a radio job, paying a mortgage, and raising a family no different than anyone else. But much like with Shaycarl these days, Kate's problems, the ones she actually still chooses to share, are just not relatable to me anymore. I'm just not really interested in what constitutes her life most of the time now. I very harshly referred to her before as a stereotypical California girl, but as mean as it might sound, it's just how I see her most of the time now, especially more recently. I would very likely never associate with a person like that in real life (and vice versa), which is probably why I'm so critical of her vlogs these days, because I would in fact have associated with someone like the old Kate. There's moments when I think she's still being genuine, but then there's also lots of times now when I actually stop to question it, which is never how it's supposed to be. There's still some Youtubers/vloggers out there which I never stop to question.
So perhaps this is the end of the line for me. I'm sure it is for many others as well. Plenty of people on the fence will probably accept Kate's explanations though, and the rest will question it but keep watching anyway. And this doesn't count the fanboys, who are probably proudly strutting around the comments about having stuck by her. Regardless of which you are, this incident likely won't hurt her views/subscriptions much at all. Everyone's shock will wear off now that she's posting again, and things will start to return to normal. The only thing that could really will hurt her popularity at this point is switching to the somewhat-weekly format and thinking her occasional skits could make up for the lack of views. It's certainly not going to help her much with any of the reasons she quit to begin with, though.
I'm sure I still have things to say about all this as they come to mind, and I'm sure new information will still come about in the following days until all the dust has finally settled. She did say that people can ask questions in the comments, so maybe people will ask some of the stuff mentioned here. But as far as I can tell, for the most part, it's pretty much over.
All Quiet on the Western Front
So the KatersOneSeven drama has presently quietened, but still left in the air. Though there's still a few things worthy of note.
First up, Kate deleted her final vlog. I'm sure plenty of people saved a copy, but it's not exactly anything worth keeping in my opinion. The only thing of possible value in it was where the beginning referred to the car break-in thing, and one might have been able to use that for possible evidence in their theories. Apparently quite a few people question the validity of the situation. Other than that, sayonara. (UPDATE: She made it visible again shortly after writing this, with comments disabled.)
Second, commenting was also restored on the other videos. But as I predicted last post, it's all been radically pruned, with censoring and possible blocking gone into full effect. Personally I roll my eyes at the "out of sight, out of mind" method of damage control. This situation is way too big to quietly sweep under the rug. Just address it already.
Third, she mentioned on Twitter that she's "so excited for my vlogging idea I can't even tell you! I've already started!" I'm not quite sure how you can have a "vlogging idea" given that vlogging can't really be any different than it ever was, other than changing the schedule on which you post them, and I can't see how one would be excited about that. But hey, it's pretty much the first time she's really even addressed the situation, so there's that.
I saw someone say something in a comment somewhere which I think was relevant enough to repeat, which goes along with what I was saying before regarding crazy fans and stalkers. Basically they said that if Kate and Cory were worried about their safety, then why are they still Tweeting/Facebooking/Keeking? Absolutely true. You wouldn't end just the vlogs if you felt that it were an immediate safety concern, you'd cut all of it off. And I'm fairly certain that Cory said something in a Tweet which may have hinted at blaming that break-in incident for the vlogs ending, but I can't find it now to be sure. But either way, whatever, I'm calling bullshit on it; safety couldn't have been a concern based on their online behavior afterwards.
Speaking of Cory, I did engage in a brief dialog with him regarding the Seann Larson thing, part of which you've seen, which essentially resulted in him repeating that he had no reason to defend himself. It concluded with this: "Please stop bringing this up. I didn't do anything wrong and I shouldn't be involved. I just make people happy for a living." The Tweet is still there, mind you. So I told him okay, that since he asked nicely, I'll respect that. Then he thanked me, and that was that.
That being said, I do still think that his response didn't really answer anything, and the "just make people happy for a living" part was really unnecessary and diverting from the point. As to whether he did anything wrong, he's not specific on what in particular he means. I'm to assume he means that he didn't cheat on Steph with Kate, but the "I shouldn't be involved" part maybe implies that he's referring to the situation with Kate ending her vlogs. So who knows, no point in trying to dissect it. He's obviously not going to give a clear answer on the issue of him/Steph/Seann/Kate, so I plan to keep my word on not bothering him about it anymore.
I mean, other than the Seann Larson comment, the only real evidence that I've seen of the rumor regarding Kate being with Cory before New Years are a couple of screencaps from Facebook, and I don't tend to believe anything on the internet unless I can see it for myself. That's especially due to seeing some actual fake stuff out there, such as Kate supposedly calling some guy a nigger in an email. So it's all still speculation as far as I'm concerned. All I know is that Steph sure lived at the apartment for quite some time after Cory stopped wearing his wedding ring, which throws enough of a wrench in the rumor for me to have no idea what the hell to believe.
I think the only other thing worth mentioning is that a few people seem to be upset that Kate Tweeted a picture of herself wearing things that Dedikaters sent her, mentioning that they make her feel safe. Folks are saying that she rarely wears their stuff, or certainly not that much at a time, and that it's obviously to suck up. I think the timing is certainly suspicious, but I can't really offer any opinion beyond that since I honestly have no idea if she wears that kind of stuff often. I don't pay attention to her jewelry, and don't care enough to go and look!
I guess that's it. Everything else is pretty much them still behaving as if everything's normal.
Oh and hey, thanks to everyone who's started following and commenting on this vlog. It's nice to be able to discuss this with folks and try to figure this mess out in a place where we won't get deleted for doing so!
p.s. I forgot to mention, Kate's subscribers have stopped dropping, and went up by a small amount today (Friday). I assume the trend will continue, making up for any losses, and eventually life will go on with people likely forgetting this all ever happened.
First up, Kate deleted her final vlog. I'm sure plenty of people saved a copy, but it's not exactly anything worth keeping in my opinion. The only thing of possible value in it was where the beginning referred to the car break-in thing, and one might have been able to use that for possible evidence in their theories. Apparently quite a few people question the validity of the situation. Other than that, sayonara. (UPDATE: She made it visible again shortly after writing this, with comments disabled.)
Second, commenting was also restored on the other videos. But as I predicted last post, it's all been radically pruned, with censoring and possible blocking gone into full effect. Personally I roll my eyes at the "out of sight, out of mind" method of damage control. This situation is way too big to quietly sweep under the rug. Just address it already.
Third, she mentioned on Twitter that she's "so excited for my vlogging idea I can't even tell you! I've already started!" I'm not quite sure how you can have a "vlogging idea" given that vlogging can't really be any different than it ever was, other than changing the schedule on which you post them, and I can't see how one would be excited about that. But hey, it's pretty much the first time she's really even addressed the situation, so there's that.
I saw someone say something in a comment somewhere which I think was relevant enough to repeat, which goes along with what I was saying before regarding crazy fans and stalkers. Basically they said that if Kate and Cory were worried about their safety, then why are they still Tweeting/Facebooking/Keeking? Absolutely true. You wouldn't end just the vlogs if you felt that it were an immediate safety concern, you'd cut all of it off. And I'm fairly certain that Cory said something in a Tweet which may have hinted at blaming that break-in incident for the vlogs ending, but I can't find it now to be sure. But either way, whatever, I'm calling bullshit on it; safety couldn't have been a concern based on their online behavior afterwards.
Speaking of Cory, I did engage in a brief dialog with him regarding the Seann Larson thing, part of which you've seen, which essentially resulted in him repeating that he had no reason to defend himself. It concluded with this: "Please stop bringing this up. I didn't do anything wrong and I shouldn't be involved. I just make people happy for a living." The Tweet is still there, mind you. So I told him okay, that since he asked nicely, I'll respect that. Then he thanked me, and that was that.
That being said, I do still think that his response didn't really answer anything, and the "just make people happy for a living" part was really unnecessary and diverting from the point. As to whether he did anything wrong, he's not specific on what in particular he means. I'm to assume he means that he didn't cheat on Steph with Kate, but the "I shouldn't be involved" part maybe implies that he's referring to the situation with Kate ending her vlogs. So who knows, no point in trying to dissect it. He's obviously not going to give a clear answer on the issue of him/Steph/Seann/Kate, so I plan to keep my word on not bothering him about it anymore.
I mean, other than the Seann Larson comment, the only real evidence that I've seen of the rumor regarding Kate being with Cory before New Years are a couple of screencaps from Facebook, and I don't tend to believe anything on the internet unless I can see it for myself. That's especially due to seeing some actual fake stuff out there, such as Kate supposedly calling some guy a nigger in an email. So it's all still speculation as far as I'm concerned. All I know is that Steph sure lived at the apartment for quite some time after Cory stopped wearing his wedding ring, which throws enough of a wrench in the rumor for me to have no idea what the hell to believe.
I think the only other thing worth mentioning is that a few people seem to be upset that Kate Tweeted a picture of herself wearing things that Dedikaters sent her, mentioning that they make her feel safe. Folks are saying that she rarely wears their stuff, or certainly not that much at a time, and that it's obviously to suck up. I think the timing is certainly suspicious, but I can't really offer any opinion beyond that since I honestly have no idea if she wears that kind of stuff often. I don't pay attention to her jewelry, and don't care enough to go and look!
I guess that's it. Everything else is pretty much them still behaving as if everything's normal.
Oh and hey, thanks to everyone who's started following and commenting on this vlog. It's nice to be able to discuss this with folks and try to figure this mess out in a place where we won't get deleted for doing so!
p.s. I forgot to mention, Kate's subscribers have stopped dropping, and went up by a small amount today (Friday). I assume the trend will continue, making up for any losses, and eventually life will go on with people likely forgetting this all ever happened.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Plots, They Thicken
This story is like the Energizer Bunny, cause the developments keep on going.
People are saying that Kate disabled comments on her last several videos, which is a bit illogical to me given that people are just going to flock to the last video before that where comments are still allowed. In fact, I looked, and that's exactly what they're doing! I imagine that if the comments ever get enabled again, though, that they'll be thoroughly pruned. Kate does have a tendency to silence critics, after all. Has happened to me more than once.
Meanwhile, last night I sent Cory a Tweet to point out to him that the evidence regarding the Seann Larson account on Youtube pointed to it really being him, and asked him for the real story. When I checked my email this morning, I found a Tweet reply:
The reason I'm uploading a screenshot instead of linking you to the Tweet directly is because when I clicked to reply, the original Tweet is now apparently gone. So I guess Cory spoke without thinking and quickly swept up the mess.
So now you're left with the option to believe whether that image is real or not since there's no other proof to the contrary, unless one of you out there captured the Tweet before he deleted it. I know that I would automatically be skeptical, as I've been with other screencaps, so you'll just have to take that as you will.
That being said, it makes me wonder; is Cory now implying that Steph cheated on him? Or is he simply saying that after they separated (but not divorced) is when Steph got with Seann? But the way he says it almost implies that he's defending himself being with Kate before the divorce due to Steph being with Seann
If it turns out all the rumors are wrong, and that Steph actually cheated on Cory, then I would have some degree of sympathy for him. But I honestly don't know how to take what he said. So I just replied back to him that he should in fact defend himself if things aren't how Seann accused in that Youtube comment. I mean seriously, if it were that guy and/or Steph who are spreading shit, then Cory really should set things straight instead of letting things get this far out of control. Rumors spread like wildfire, with most people never bothering to try to confirm anything.
So yeah, I dunno. No matter how you look at this situation, things aren't how they seem. It's all probably going to come down to how much everyone was lied to, and what they were lied to about.
People are saying that Kate disabled comments on her last several videos, which is a bit illogical to me given that people are just going to flock to the last video before that where comments are still allowed. In fact, I looked, and that's exactly what they're doing! I imagine that if the comments ever get enabled again, though, that they'll be thoroughly pruned. Kate does have a tendency to silence critics, after all. Has happened to me more than once.
Meanwhile, last night I sent Cory a Tweet to point out to him that the evidence regarding the Seann Larson account on Youtube pointed to it really being him, and asked him for the real story. When I checked my email this morning, I found a Tweet reply:
The reason I'm uploading a screenshot instead of linking you to the Tweet directly is because when I clicked to reply, the original Tweet is now apparently gone. So I guess Cory spoke without thinking and quickly swept up the mess.
So now you're left with the option to believe whether that image is real or not since there's no other proof to the contrary, unless one of you out there captured the Tweet before he deleted it. I know that I would automatically be skeptical, as I've been with other screencaps, so you'll just have to take that as you will.
That being said, it makes me wonder; is Cory now implying that Steph cheated on him? Or is he simply saying that after they separated (but not divorced) is when Steph got with Seann? But the way he says it almost implies that he's defending himself being with Kate before the divorce due to Steph being with Seann
If it turns out all the rumors are wrong, and that Steph actually cheated on Cory, then I would have some degree of sympathy for him. But I honestly don't know how to take what he said. So I just replied back to him that he should in fact defend himself if things aren't how Seann accused in that Youtube comment. I mean seriously, if it were that guy and/or Steph who are spreading shit, then Cory really should set things straight instead of letting things get this far out of control. Rumors spread like wildfire, with most people never bothering to try to confirm anything.
So yeah, I dunno. No matter how you look at this situation, things aren't how they seem. It's all probably going to come down to how much everyone was lied to, and what they were lied to about.
News at 17
I feel like one of those news anchors who keeps covering a developing story. And this is all still regarding KatersOneSeven and SMPFilms, so if you don't care about them then I'm sure there's some cute cat videos or awesome crashes or something somewhere you could be watching instead.
So, Steph's boyfriend, Seann Larson, posted that comment on Youtube saying that Cory and Kate had fooled around before he was even divorced, and is in fact what prompted the divorce. When people confronted Cory about this, he simply denied that that Youtube account was even Seann. Well since I prefer not to spread blatant rumors and at least try to confirm the info, I did my own digging.
There's two Youtube accounts here in question. One is killingunclbld (but titled Seann Larson), the other is SeannLarson. The former made the comment regarding Cory and Kate. So, first of all, those two Youtube accounts "Feature" each other, so obviously they belong to the same person. They also both "Feature" Steph, for what it's worth. Second, the video on killingunclbld has Steph in it, as you can see her dog and her pants, identical to the ones in Steph's video on SMPLady. Third, you'll also notice that the SeannLarson profile has liked some band local to Oakdale. Oakdale is where both Seann and Steph live. Aside from the Youtube channel, a Mylife profile also confirms the same Seann Larson is in Oakdale. Now we go to Steph's Facebook page. The same Seann Larson is in New Years photos with Steph. Steph owns The Craft Haus, a business in Oakdale, CA. So, location confirmed. Lastly, we come full circle, and find an old band profile of Seann, where he links a now-defunct Myspace account with the user ID killingunclbld.
The Youtube account in question is almost undoubtedly Seann's. I asked him myself on Facebook, but no response yet. He either hasn't seen my message or chose not to answer, which is totally fine because I'm intruding by even asking him, and admitted as much in my message to him. But I think I've collected enough evidence to be 99% positive without him responding.
So we're at a point where there's essentially three possibilities: Steph lied to Seann, Seann lied to Youtube, or Cory cheated on Steph with Kate.
We also take into account that Cory has now apparently deleted some tweets. And Seann has now supposedly deleted his Youtube comment. And suddenly everyone is silent.
STAY TUNED? Or don't. Seriously, I don't know how much longer I can write about this mess!
UPDATE: I wanted to update this post with some info which I didn't feel relevant enough to be a separate post. If anyone is still doubting the legitimacy of the Seann Larson comment on Youtube despite the info I just provided, then I've collected further evidence. Seann Larson has a newer Myspace account. Newer, as in started in 2007. Seann Larson was a member of the Carousel Massacre band, which he has friended the account of on Myspace. The Myspace profile for this band lists "www.CarouselMassacre.5u.com" as their website, which brings us full circle to the band profile page linked above, which contains the ID matching the Youtube account. The Killinguncldbld account on Youtube has been there since 2006.
So, Steph's boyfriend, Seann Larson, posted that comment on Youtube saying that Cory and Kate had fooled around before he was even divorced, and is in fact what prompted the divorce. When people confronted Cory about this, he simply denied that that Youtube account was even Seann. Well since I prefer not to spread blatant rumors and at least try to confirm the info, I did my own digging.
There's two Youtube accounts here in question. One is killingunclbld (but titled Seann Larson), the other is SeannLarson. The former made the comment regarding Cory and Kate. So, first of all, those two Youtube accounts "Feature" each other, so obviously they belong to the same person. They also both "Feature" Steph, for what it's worth. Second, the video on killingunclbld has Steph in it, as you can see her dog and her pants, identical to the ones in Steph's video on SMPLady. Third, you'll also notice that the SeannLarson profile has liked some band local to Oakdale. Oakdale is where both Seann and Steph live. Aside from the Youtube channel, a Mylife profile also confirms the same Seann Larson is in Oakdale. Now we go to Steph's Facebook page. The same Seann Larson is in New Years photos with Steph. Steph owns The Craft Haus, a business in Oakdale, CA. So, location confirmed. Lastly, we come full circle, and find an old band profile of Seann, where he links a now-defunct Myspace account with the user ID killingunclbld.
The Youtube account in question is almost undoubtedly Seann's. I asked him myself on Facebook, but no response yet. He either hasn't seen my message or chose not to answer, which is totally fine because I'm intruding by even asking him, and admitted as much in my message to him. But I think I've collected enough evidence to be 99% positive without him responding.
So we're at a point where there's essentially three possibilities: Steph lied to Seann, Seann lied to Youtube, or Cory cheated on Steph with Kate.
We also take into account that Cory has now apparently deleted some tweets. And Seann has now supposedly deleted his Youtube comment. And suddenly everyone is silent.
STAY TUNED? Or don't. Seriously, I don't know how much longer I can write about this mess!
UPDATE: I wanted to update this post with some info which I didn't feel relevant enough to be a separate post. If anyone is still doubting the legitimacy of the Seann Larson comment on Youtube despite the info I just provided, then I've collected further evidence. Seann Larson has a newer Myspace account. Newer, as in started in 2007. Seann Larson was a member of the Carousel Massacre band, which he has friended the account of on Myspace. The Myspace profile for this band lists "www.CarouselMassacre.5u.com" as their website, which brings us full circle to the band profile page linked above, which contains the ID matching the Youtube account. The Killinguncldbld account on Youtube has been there since 2006.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
SMPSpam
I had to post about this, because it cracked me up. I was browsing through the comments again on the last Katers video when I saw someone comment about Cory having said something. Took me a bit to find it, because he posted it as DudeLikeHella instead of SMPFilms. What cracked me up is that the comment was marked as spam. If that's not proof of peoples' attitudes about all of this, nothing is.
As for the content, blah blah:
Don't you think it's funny that his attempt to calm people down came shortly before a Tweet from Kate to plug Ding Ding's Youtube channel debut?
..I swear I think my intelligence drops a little every time I say that poor dog's name.
Anyway, if it turns out that the car break-in incident is what triggered this, then give me a break. She's an attractive girl on the internet who shares her life with thousands of people; of course one of them is eventually bound to get too close. If the car had been locked and the alarm set, then maybe they wouldn't have gotten inside very easily. Cory's jeep is another story, because any random kid could get into one of those. And besides, we've heard no evidence that it even was a fan who did it. People break into shit. If you park two cars near each other then it's no surprise they'd target both.
Not to mention, does she think her address is a secret? Quite a while back I found out where they lived after a few minutes of Googling and some looking around on Google Maps. I was able to figure out exactly which apartment was Kate's (back when she had her own) and Cory's just from various camera shots of one vlog. And this was purely out of curiosity. I think it was back when Kate had said that her mother told her not to walk around at night time, and then a few videos later there she was out walking around at night to Target or something, which prompted me to see just how far out she was dawdling around in the dark. I think around the same time I also found out where Shay Carl's fancy new house was in Idaho, because I wanted to check the property value, which ended up proving to me that he had way more money than he let on, because he'd bought it outright. Regardless, point is, nobody's information is truly secret. It's just a matter of degree as to how difficult it is to obtain it. In the case of the aforementioned Youtubers, it was incredibly easy. Don't be surprised when someone with ill intent shows up, and then suddenly screw over your entire subscriber base and career in response. And again, we're still assuming it even was someone from the internet.
So anyway, yeah. Kate will likely release some tearful video soon, then, trying to reconcile with viewers (read: limit lost income potential). Many of them will come running back to her to say "I knew it" and immediately attempt to separate themselves from everyone who posted a negative comment. A number of others who did respond negatively will then apologize, or simply accept Kate's apology, and resume their regular posterior endearment of her. The amount of negativity from everyone else, however, is still yet to be seen!
As for the content, blah blah:
Hey guys! First of all, lets take a big breath in together. Ready? In.... aaand out. Feels better right? We all just need to relax. There's a good reason for all of this. She'll clear it up for everyone soon. On behalf of myself and Kate, we're sorry this happened. We don't hate you but we do appreciate you all for the years you've given us. As for the rumors... I'm pregnant. :D
Don't you think it's funny that his attempt to calm people down came shortly before a Tweet from Kate to plug Ding Ding's Youtube channel debut?
..I swear I think my intelligence drops a little every time I say that poor dog's name.
Anyway, if it turns out that the car break-in incident is what triggered this, then give me a break. She's an attractive girl on the internet who shares her life with thousands of people; of course one of them is eventually bound to get too close. If the car had been locked and the alarm set, then maybe they wouldn't have gotten inside very easily. Cory's jeep is another story, because any random kid could get into one of those. And besides, we've heard no evidence that it even was a fan who did it. People break into shit. If you park two cars near each other then it's no surprise they'd target both.
Not to mention, does she think her address is a secret? Quite a while back I found out where they lived after a few minutes of Googling and some looking around on Google Maps. I was able to figure out exactly which apartment was Kate's (back when she had her own) and Cory's just from various camera shots of one vlog. And this was purely out of curiosity. I think it was back when Kate had said that her mother told her not to walk around at night time, and then a few videos later there she was out walking around at night to Target or something, which prompted me to see just how far out she was dawdling around in the dark. I think around the same time I also found out where Shay Carl's fancy new house was in Idaho, because I wanted to check the property value, which ended up proving to me that he had way more money than he let on, because he'd bought it outright. Regardless, point is, nobody's information is truly secret. It's just a matter of degree as to how difficult it is to obtain it. In the case of the aforementioned Youtubers, it was incredibly easy. Don't be surprised when someone with ill intent shows up, and then suddenly screw over your entire subscriber base and career in response. And again, we're still assuming it even was someone from the internet.
So anyway, yeah. Kate will likely release some tearful video soon, then, trying to reconcile with viewers (read: limit lost income potential). Many of them will come running back to her to say "I knew it" and immediately attempt to separate themselves from everyone who posted a negative comment. A number of others who did respond negatively will then apologize, or simply accept Kate's apology, and resume their regular posterior endearment of her. The amount of negativity from everyone else, however, is still yet to be seen!
Drama Denial
KatersOneSeven leaves her fanbase in shambles, then completely ignores it while going on elsewhere about how awesome everything is in her life right now. Then many of her fans adamantly proclaim in the comments that they're not bothered by her decision, while defending her actions. I think there's enough denial to go around for everyone!
I know it's bad form to mess with people in comments, but I couldn't resist lately. It's like some of these people see themselves as completely separate from those who are upset, as if somehow Kate's unprofessional exit wasn't meant for them because they're still loyal fans. Sorry, folks, but Kate's double middle was directed at everyone, no matter how firmly your lips are planted to her ass. In fact, I might even go as far as to say she ended it like this intentionally to upset them. So there is no "loyal fan" and "dedihater." There's simply one large group of people covered in Ding Ding.
Think about how many incidents have sent Kate into tears, though. Everything from the stealing sunglasses incident, to her fish dying, to having a meltdown over her hair color. Each of these incidents, and others, evoked several minutes of tears and response in her vlogs. So I refuse to believe that if she cared about vlogging at all that she could simply throw her sixty-second bow on top and leave without that producing any visible emotion. Either it was all an act, or her grand finale was an act of spite which she passive-aggressively enjoyed. Somehow, some people are fine with that. Or they're simply too dense to think beyond the fanboy/fangirl mindset.
I've heard some little things over the last day or two which are interesting. There's the screenshot of Cory's Facebook set to "in a relationship" in October, before the New Years kiss. That could be fake, sure, I dunno. I don't care enough to dig through his Facebook to find it, if it's still there and not private. Though then there's the coincidental October 29th vlog, supposedly exactly one year after the Facebook thing, where Cory somehow found tickets in a letter he supposedly never opened to take Kate to Disneyland. And then we find out that Steph's boyfriend posted a response on a different video to say that Steph left Cory because he'd been fooling around with Kate even back then. So who really knows what to believe. At this point though I'd believe pretty much any of it.
As someone who has been generally dissatisfied with Kate for quite a while now (as evidenced by so many blog posts about it!), I can say that I won't really miss the vlogs. Nor do I believe I would ever start watching them again if she did decide to continue. If she came back and offered some kind of believable apology and explanation, then I would at least give her the benefit of the doubt. But I'm fairly certain that the shallow valley girl persona I've perceived has been solidified. There's essentially nothing left of the vlogs I subscribed to.
At this point, she is quite literally the stereotypical bleached blond aspiring actress living in California who totes a tiny dog in one arm and a Starbucks in the other, following dollar signs wherever they may lead her. And it will take a heck of a lot now to convince me of otherwise.
My question is whether she bought Ding Ding solely to use to make money on Youtube, or whether she'll scrap that channel entirely after all of this.
On the bright side, it's good for this kind of thing to happen. There's enough fake garbage out there, from "reality" TV to modern music, than for it to be bleeding over into the vlogging world too. People should learn to question things more often, and be prepared to accept that it might not be what it appeared.
I know it's bad form to mess with people in comments, but I couldn't resist lately. It's like some of these people see themselves as completely separate from those who are upset, as if somehow Kate's unprofessional exit wasn't meant for them because they're still loyal fans. Sorry, folks, but Kate's double middle was directed at everyone, no matter how firmly your lips are planted to her ass. In fact, I might even go as far as to say she ended it like this intentionally to upset them. So there is no "loyal fan" and "dedihater." There's simply one large group of people covered in Ding Ding.
Think about how many incidents have sent Kate into tears, though. Everything from the stealing sunglasses incident, to her fish dying, to having a meltdown over her hair color. Each of these incidents, and others, evoked several minutes of tears and response in her vlogs. So I refuse to believe that if she cared about vlogging at all that she could simply throw her sixty-second bow on top and leave without that producing any visible emotion. Either it was all an act, or her grand finale was an act of spite which she passive-aggressively enjoyed. Somehow, some people are fine with that. Or they're simply too dense to think beyond the fanboy/fangirl mindset.
I've heard some little things over the last day or two which are interesting. There's the screenshot of Cory's Facebook set to "in a relationship" in October, before the New Years kiss. That could be fake, sure, I dunno. I don't care enough to dig through his Facebook to find it, if it's still there and not private. Though then there's the coincidental October 29th vlog, supposedly exactly one year after the Facebook thing, where Cory somehow found tickets in a letter he supposedly never opened to take Kate to Disneyland. And then we find out that Steph's boyfriend posted a response on a different video to say that Steph left Cory because he'd been fooling around with Kate even back then. So who really knows what to believe. At this point though I'd believe pretty much any of it.
As someone who has been generally dissatisfied with Kate for quite a while now (as evidenced by so many blog posts about it!), I can say that I won't really miss the vlogs. Nor do I believe I would ever start watching them again if she did decide to continue. If she came back and offered some kind of believable apology and explanation, then I would at least give her the benefit of the doubt. But I'm fairly certain that the shallow valley girl persona I've perceived has been solidified. There's essentially nothing left of the vlogs I subscribed to.
At this point, she is quite literally the stereotypical bleached blond aspiring actress living in California who totes a tiny dog in one arm and a Starbucks in the other, following dollar signs wherever they may lead her. And it will take a heck of a lot now to convince me of otherwise.
My question is whether she bought Ding Ding solely to use to make money on Youtube, or whether she'll scrap that channel entirely after all of this.
On the bright side, it's good for this kind of thing to happen. There's enough fake garbage out there, from "reality" TV to modern music, than for it to be bleeding over into the vlogging world too. People should learn to question things more often, and be prepared to accept that it might not be what it appeared.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Out of the Loop
Somebody made me aware of something with the Shaytards which I hadn't heard about, which led to me realizing more and more things. Talk about out of the loop!
First of all, he's editing his own vlogs again? Never saw that coming. I guess the money train might be drying up in California, and he's trying to fall back on his real money maker. Or who knows, maybe he actually realized they're not the same if he doesn't do it. My cynical side has a hard time deciding! I don't know how long he plans to do it, but good for him.
And directly related to that is that he's back in Idaho. Is that to stay? Is Cali too expensive? Or is it just for the holidays? Either way, it was nice to see that place again. His family, too. Their interactions were always way more entertaining than any of the California people.
And then there's the hour+ long Christmas special. Gotta give Shay credit for that. That's how you make a Christmas vlog.
I noticed a few things though which reminded me of why I got tired of him to begin with. First was the religious stuff. I know it's a big part of their family, but I'm really just not interested in hearing it all the time, and especially not in seeing them ingrain all that into their kids' heads. Seeing kids awkwardly reciting the bible stuff just comes across as weird to me. But the other thing which probably annoys me more so is plugging and namedropping Dave Ramsey. For crying out loud, you'd think they were related to the guy the way the talk about him so much. It always just reminds me that Shay is conservative, and I'd hate to see what he had to say about politics during the election. That is, unless he was smart enough not to discuss it!
But then I noticed that I didn't see Malachi anywhere. I was jumping around through the videos trying to find when they came back to Idaho, and still nothing. I saw a different dog, though, and that gave me a bad feeling. A quick Google search later revealed the sad truth: he had died.
I went back and found the video from April, and I gotta say, I don't know if I'm going to be able to watch it. I'm tearing up hardcore just from the parts where he's sick and they think the worst, and just had to pause it when Shay said they were going to leave him at the vet. I went through the same thing with a black lab once, who was old and gray and just couldn't hardly walk anymore. How terrible. I sincerely feel bad for them.
Just a few hours till New Years, so I want to finish this up quick (and less depressing!). I have no idea what the new year will hold for Youtube. Will we have upcoming Youtube stars? Will I give old vloggers another try? I guess we'll see!
Happy New Years!
First of all, he's editing his own vlogs again? Never saw that coming. I guess the money train might be drying up in California, and he's trying to fall back on his real money maker. Or who knows, maybe he actually realized they're not the same if he doesn't do it. My cynical side has a hard time deciding! I don't know how long he plans to do it, but good for him.
And directly related to that is that he's back in Idaho. Is that to stay? Is Cali too expensive? Or is it just for the holidays? Either way, it was nice to see that place again. His family, too. Their interactions were always way more entertaining than any of the California people.
And then there's the hour+ long Christmas special. Gotta give Shay credit for that. That's how you make a Christmas vlog.
I noticed a few things though which reminded me of why I got tired of him to begin with. First was the religious stuff. I know it's a big part of their family, but I'm really just not interested in hearing it all the time, and especially not in seeing them ingrain all that into their kids' heads. Seeing kids awkwardly reciting the bible stuff just comes across as weird to me. But the other thing which probably annoys me more so is plugging and namedropping Dave Ramsey. For crying out loud, you'd think they were related to the guy the way the talk about him so much. It always just reminds me that Shay is conservative, and I'd hate to see what he had to say about politics during the election. That is, unless he was smart enough not to discuss it!
But then I noticed that I didn't see Malachi anywhere. I was jumping around through the videos trying to find when they came back to Idaho, and still nothing. I saw a different dog, though, and that gave me a bad feeling. A quick Google search later revealed the sad truth: he had died.
I went back and found the video from April, and I gotta say, I don't know if I'm going to be able to watch it. I'm tearing up hardcore just from the parts where he's sick and they think the worst, and just had to pause it when Shay said they were going to leave him at the vet. I went through the same thing with a black lab once, who was old and gray and just couldn't hardly walk anymore. How terrible. I sincerely feel bad for them.
Just a few hours till New Years, so I want to finish this up quick (and less depressing!). I have no idea what the new year will hold for Youtube. Will we have upcoming Youtube stars? Will I give old vloggers another try? I guess we'll see!
Happy New Years!
How to Ruin Your Career 2.0
The last post with this title was referring to Cory. I guess Kate learned from the best, because now her career is over as well.
Haven't watched the latest Katersoneseven vlog? Don't bother. It's just a big middle finger to all the fans, followed by a Keek advertisement.
Is this just a trick to see how fans would react? Doubt it. Is it being opportunistic and finding an alternative money source which doesn't depend on the daily effort required to make vlogs? Probably!
So, let's look at this based on what we know of the situation. Kate obviously had to be making a reasonable amount of money all of this time to live where they do in California, and to buy all the clothes and makeup that she does. But she was still always rather tight with her money. And yet, she suddenly buys a brand new car, despite having already bought one a few months prior which ran fine. Then she buys an expensive dog and hundreds of dollars of supplies. Not to mention, she's been talking of them moving into a house soon. Meanwhile, Cory gets this Heathcliff movie deal with Sparta. And between all of this, the two of them have been promoting Keek like it's going out of style. So, money situation? Probably rather good right now!
But here's the kicker; shortly before buying that car, she returned a $2k computer she'd bought to better edit videos on, because of something related to her finances not working out as she'd thought (and yet bought the aforementioned car shortly after). Then later, after paying a fortune for the dog, she said she can't afford to replace the camera, which was making noises. These two particular things stand out to me for a reason: both of them were at times where she seemed to have had quite a bit of money available shortly beforehand, and yet she chose personal/luxury items instead. Maybe she really was planning on dumping the vlogs way back then, and couldn't justify the expense of a new computer or camera anymore. But money certainly seemed to be coming from somewhere.
But we have to take something else into consideration. Kate just went to the doctor, and then suddenly the next day she's ending the vlogs. Does she have some medical issue she doesn't wish to share? And/or is she pregnant? You certainly can't hide a growing belly in a daily vlog.
Either way, to me, the reason is irrelevant. She slammed the door in the face of almost one-hundred-thousand subscribers. Her video announcing this has twice as many thumbs down as thumbs up. Even the most hardcore fanboys who are trying to defend her in the comments are being out-commented by all of the people who are completely disappointed or angry about the situation.
So basically, Kate has destroyed most of her fanbase in exactly one minute worth of video. She's obviously not counting on views from her Katers17 channel to support herself, so this "making short films" thing is either total bullshit to pacify angry fans, or she's actually naive enough to believe that she can somehow continue to make any money from Youtube after ruining years of work to build a fanbase. Let's face it, her Katers17 channel just isn't very good. Particularly the more recent stuff. It wasn't until she became a vlogger that her career really went anywhere. I do hope she realizes that.
If Kate wanted to stop vlogging, she should have simply started intentionally missing days here and there, or going to just weekdays, or three days a week, etc. Fans might have been upset, but they wouldn't have been completely taken aback by it. Unless she has a significant health problem to deal with, then the way she handled this was completely unprofessional, and I do in fact hope it's negative to her career in the future. Seriously, this is essentially the same as spontaneously quitting a job without notice. Employers don't like that when looking to hire someone, because they don't want to be left hanging themselves.
So, whatever, I guess. Things in her vlogs seemed to have bugged me on a more frequent basis as she continued to deteriorate into this vapid individual who we see today. This just saves me from having to make the decision to unsubscribe. But the underlying point of the matter is irregardless of whether it's Kate or Shaycarl or any popular Youtuber: this isn't how you handle fans.
p.s. She's lost 500 subscribers in two days.
Haven't watched the latest Katersoneseven vlog? Don't bother. It's just a big middle finger to all the fans, followed by a Keek advertisement.
Is this just a trick to see how fans would react? Doubt it. Is it being opportunistic and finding an alternative money source which doesn't depend on the daily effort required to make vlogs? Probably!
So, let's look at this based on what we know of the situation. Kate obviously had to be making a reasonable amount of money all of this time to live where they do in California, and to buy all the clothes and makeup that she does. But she was still always rather tight with her money. And yet, she suddenly buys a brand new car, despite having already bought one a few months prior which ran fine. Then she buys an expensive dog and hundreds of dollars of supplies. Not to mention, she's been talking of them moving into a house soon. Meanwhile, Cory gets this Heathcliff movie deal with Sparta. And between all of this, the two of them have been promoting Keek like it's going out of style. So, money situation? Probably rather good right now!
But here's the kicker; shortly before buying that car, she returned a $2k computer she'd bought to better edit videos on, because of something related to her finances not working out as she'd thought (and yet bought the aforementioned car shortly after). Then later, after paying a fortune for the dog, she said she can't afford to replace the camera, which was making noises. These two particular things stand out to me for a reason: both of them were at times where she seemed to have had quite a bit of money available shortly beforehand, and yet she chose personal/luxury items instead. Maybe she really was planning on dumping the vlogs way back then, and couldn't justify the expense of a new computer or camera anymore. But money certainly seemed to be coming from somewhere.
But we have to take something else into consideration. Kate just went to the doctor, and then suddenly the next day she's ending the vlogs. Does she have some medical issue she doesn't wish to share? And/or is she pregnant? You certainly can't hide a growing belly in a daily vlog.
Either way, to me, the reason is irrelevant. She slammed the door in the face of almost one-hundred-thousand subscribers. Her video announcing this has twice as many thumbs down as thumbs up. Even the most hardcore fanboys who are trying to defend her in the comments are being out-commented by all of the people who are completely disappointed or angry about the situation.
So basically, Kate has destroyed most of her fanbase in exactly one minute worth of video. She's obviously not counting on views from her Katers17 channel to support herself, so this "making short films" thing is either total bullshit to pacify angry fans, or she's actually naive enough to believe that she can somehow continue to make any money from Youtube after ruining years of work to build a fanbase. Let's face it, her Katers17 channel just isn't very good. Particularly the more recent stuff. It wasn't until she became a vlogger that her career really went anywhere. I do hope she realizes that.
If Kate wanted to stop vlogging, she should have simply started intentionally missing days here and there, or going to just weekdays, or three days a week, etc. Fans might have been upset, but they wouldn't have been completely taken aback by it. Unless she has a significant health problem to deal with, then the way she handled this was completely unprofessional, and I do in fact hope it's negative to her career in the future. Seriously, this is essentially the same as spontaneously quitting a job without notice. Employers don't like that when looking to hire someone, because they don't want to be left hanging themselves.
So, whatever, I guess. Things in her vlogs seemed to have bugged me on a more frequent basis as she continued to deteriorate into this vapid individual who we see today. This just saves me from having to make the decision to unsubscribe. But the underlying point of the matter is irregardless of whether it's Kate or Shaycarl or any popular Youtuber: this isn't how you handle fans.
p.s. She's lost 500 subscribers in two days.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Merry Mediocrity-mas.
You know, maybe I just got bored of the Youtubers who probably still do a lot for Christmas in their videos (Shaycarl, Charlies Trippy, etc). And maybe those of you who still watch those channels can fill me in on whether they did anything worthwhile. But it seemed that this year's videos (at least, what I still subscribe to) were a bit mediocre to me. I kinda expected more from Wheezy Waiter, Arturo Trejo, Meekakitty/Nanalew, etc. And maybe some are still coming, but some folks didn't really even post anything!
Despite all my regular nitpicking, I have to admit that the Christmas Eve + Day vlogs of Katers weren't bad. Though I do want to point out that, again, they kept the majority of the gifts a secret. I think last year they said that it's because they want to keep some moments for themselves. And to some degree, sure, I get it, that's fine. But at the same time, one of the biggest gifts she wanted Cory to open was the robe, and she filmed that. The cynic in me pretty much thinks that they don't open presents on camera because she doesn't want people to see how much they spent on gifts. I think that's partially why she doesn't film her mail much anymore, too.
There's one other Katers-related thing I wanted to say, particularly after just watching the most recent vlog: Kate is turning into one of "those people." You know, the kind who takes their dog into stores, and restaurants. Come on, people eat their food in there, they don't want hairy animals being carried around. That's why the FDA has actual rules against animals (except service animals) being allowed into restaurants, rules which most states adopt into their local health ordinances. Plus, a lot of people out there are allergic to dogs, and I just think it's rude to shove one in their faces in places where they wouldn't normally expect to have to deal with one. People will excuse service animals, but I think they would be pretty aggravated with you if they started having allergy troubles while trying to eat. If you're going to drag the dog along with you everywhere, then send Cory in to order and you wait outside, or vice versa. Better yet, leave the thing at home. It's not a human baby for crying out loud, it'll be fine.
Cory put up a couple of Christmas videos on SMP Films, but they pretty much fit into the mediocre category I've been talking about. The first one with the alien wasn't really funny to me, nor was it very original. Think about it; how many times have you seen videos where there's an alien and completely made-up words are used to carry out a particular situation? The second one with Josh was okay I guess. It didn't turn out quite as I expected, which made it make a little less sense, but whatever.
And actually, speaking of Cory, somebody pointed out something to me in a comment which I never even realized: 36 seconds is how long a Keek video is. That's what this 36-Second Films is all about! It makes total sense now. I don't know how I missed that, even. But I swear to you, eventually we're going to find out that Cory is getting paid or sponsored somehow by Keek, because those two have been pushing that damn site worse than a used car salesman. It's not even a fad, because it's a stupid idea to begin with. You can't combine Youtube and Twitter and get anything good, because Twitter is already annoying enough. Who wants message size limits anymore? Even Facebook realized how stupid that was. If I want to deal with that shit I'll use SMS rather than filling the web with abbreviated words and sentences.
Meanwhile, I did think that the Christmas episode of Prank vs Prank was funny. Lately I think the pranks have gone way over the top, and really just weren't funny at all. Between Jeana intentionally dancing dirty with that guy to make Jesse mad, or Jesse putting hot pepper extract rated at 2,000,000 scoville into Jeana's food despite the warning label, along with various other recent pranks, I was pretty much starting to get tired of the channel. Seriously, he might as well have sprayed pepper spray in her mouth, because it's the same scoville rating. And worse yet, he wasn't even prepared to help her when she panicked. But anyhow, no, the Christmas prank wasn't the most original, but it was still funny to me, and got back more to their roots rather than this crazy over-the-top stuff they've done lately. They've had some pretty funny pranks in the past, and most of them were really pretty simple, so I hope they head back towards what made them popular to begin with.
One of the more entertaining Christmas vlogs though was somebody who I doubt anyone reading this would have ever heard of. He's one of the people who used to be a Dave's Farm regular, but has distanced himself after the most recent news. He goes by the name CrazyBritishBloke, and is a daily vlogger from Canada. He pretty much starts out the day responding to comments and videos, then goes out and films things he encounters while working or helping out friends, and usually finishes up the day with his family and showing what they're going to have for dinner (along with how to make it sometimes). Most of the people associated with Dave's Farm are essentially the Canadian equivalent to American rednecks of the south, though Bloke is a bit different. I think the biggest reason I still keep up with his vlogs (even if I skip through parts) is because he's a pretty positive guy. He always seems to encourage people or point out the bright side of a situation. He's got a sense of humor, always laughing about something. And he's always been rather impartial despite any of the drama that went on between other Dave's Farm regulars. But anyhow, point being, his Christmas vlog was good if you ask me. He and his family went to visit other family, and they all had an entertaining Secret Santa exchange. I'm sure that his channel wouldn't appeal to everyone, but given that I was entertained more by that than most of the other holiday videos so far, I thought it was worth giving some credit to.
There may still be some other holiday videos and vlogs that pop up, so we'll have to see how they compare. But so far, it just hasn't seemed like a very merry time on the Youtubes!
Despite all my regular nitpicking, I have to admit that the Christmas Eve + Day vlogs of Katers weren't bad. Though I do want to point out that, again, they kept the majority of the gifts a secret. I think last year they said that it's because they want to keep some moments for themselves. And to some degree, sure, I get it, that's fine. But at the same time, one of the biggest gifts she wanted Cory to open was the robe, and she filmed that. The cynic in me pretty much thinks that they don't open presents on camera because she doesn't want people to see how much they spent on gifts. I think that's partially why she doesn't film her mail much anymore, too.
There's one other Katers-related thing I wanted to say, particularly after just watching the most recent vlog: Kate is turning into one of "those people." You know, the kind who takes their dog into stores, and restaurants. Come on, people eat their food in there, they don't want hairy animals being carried around. That's why the FDA has actual rules against animals (except service animals) being allowed into restaurants, rules which most states adopt into their local health ordinances. Plus, a lot of people out there are allergic to dogs, and I just think it's rude to shove one in their faces in places where they wouldn't normally expect to have to deal with one. People will excuse service animals, but I think they would be pretty aggravated with you if they started having allergy troubles while trying to eat. If you're going to drag the dog along with you everywhere, then send Cory in to order and you wait outside, or vice versa. Better yet, leave the thing at home. It's not a human baby for crying out loud, it'll be fine.
Cory put up a couple of Christmas videos on SMP Films, but they pretty much fit into the mediocre category I've been talking about. The first one with the alien wasn't really funny to me, nor was it very original. Think about it; how many times have you seen videos where there's an alien and completely made-up words are used to carry out a particular situation? The second one with Josh was okay I guess. It didn't turn out quite as I expected, which made it make a little less sense, but whatever.
And actually, speaking of Cory, somebody pointed out something to me in a comment which I never even realized: 36 seconds is how long a Keek video is. That's what this 36-Second Films is all about! It makes total sense now. I don't know how I missed that, even. But I swear to you, eventually we're going to find out that Cory is getting paid or sponsored somehow by Keek, because those two have been pushing that damn site worse than a used car salesman. It's not even a fad, because it's a stupid idea to begin with. You can't combine Youtube and Twitter and get anything good, because Twitter is already annoying enough. Who wants message size limits anymore? Even Facebook realized how stupid that was. If I want to deal with that shit I'll use SMS rather than filling the web with abbreviated words and sentences.
Meanwhile, I did think that the Christmas episode of Prank vs Prank was funny. Lately I think the pranks have gone way over the top, and really just weren't funny at all. Between Jeana intentionally dancing dirty with that guy to make Jesse mad, or Jesse putting hot pepper extract rated at 2,000,000 scoville into Jeana's food despite the warning label, along with various other recent pranks, I was pretty much starting to get tired of the channel. Seriously, he might as well have sprayed pepper spray in her mouth, because it's the same scoville rating. And worse yet, he wasn't even prepared to help her when she panicked. But anyhow, no, the Christmas prank wasn't the most original, but it was still funny to me, and got back more to their roots rather than this crazy over-the-top stuff they've done lately. They've had some pretty funny pranks in the past, and most of them were really pretty simple, so I hope they head back towards what made them popular to begin with.
One of the more entertaining Christmas vlogs though was somebody who I doubt anyone reading this would have ever heard of. He's one of the people who used to be a Dave's Farm regular, but has distanced himself after the most recent news. He goes by the name CrazyBritishBloke, and is a daily vlogger from Canada. He pretty much starts out the day responding to comments and videos, then goes out and films things he encounters while working or helping out friends, and usually finishes up the day with his family and showing what they're going to have for dinner (along with how to make it sometimes). Most of the people associated with Dave's Farm are essentially the Canadian equivalent to American rednecks of the south, though Bloke is a bit different. I think the biggest reason I still keep up with his vlogs (even if I skip through parts) is because he's a pretty positive guy. He always seems to encourage people or point out the bright side of a situation. He's got a sense of humor, always laughing about something. And he's always been rather impartial despite any of the drama that went on between other Dave's Farm regulars. But anyhow, point being, his Christmas vlog was good if you ask me. He and his family went to visit other family, and they all had an entertaining Secret Santa exchange. I'm sure that his channel wouldn't appeal to everyone, but given that I was entertained more by that than most of the other holiday videos so far, I thought it was worth giving some credit to.
There may still be some other holiday videos and vlogs that pop up, so we'll have to see how they compare. But so far, it just hasn't seemed like a very merry time on the Youtubes!
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Four-Hundred-and-Seventy-Two-Second Films
I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Can't complain, myself. But now that it's over, I can write another critical blog post without ruining any holiday cheer!
This one is about, you guessed it, Kate and Cory again. I caught up on my vlogs, and there's a few things to mention.
First, we find out that Cory and Sparta are somehow going to be involved with the new Heathcliff movie. After everyone's had a chance to roll their eyes at this movie even being made, and lived through terrible flashbacks of the CG Garfield movies, let's get to the real question here: what is the point of hiring Cory and Sparta to begin with? Sparta isn't a trained animal. Not to mention, Sparta isn't even a kitten anymore. When that Mean Kitty Song video was made, Sparta was very young and rambunctious. What's he going to do now? Stand around and look intimidated on a sound stage? They're also talking about doing some kind of music video for the movie using Sparta. Again, all I can ask is, why Sparta? It's not like he's even a recognizable cat. Maru and Grumpy Cat are way more iconic. I just don't get it. Hollywood is grasping for straws these days.
I noticed this in particular, though: "Sparta, a California-based cat known for his “Mean Kitty Song,” is in. But that took a holding deal, meaning money up front, against a full fee to be paid when the “Heathcliff” movie is released, probably in 2014." I guess Cory took the quicker deal instead of waiting for a bigger amount later on. Kind of brings us back to his financial situation in which we occasionally get insight. Probably not a terrible idea, though, because shit movies like this have a good chance of never getting released to begin with. Kids have no idea who Heathcliff even is these days.
So, moving on. Kate made a Christmas video of the Easter Bunny saying "happy birthday."
...so, moving on. Cory shares a bit about his upcoming plans. It involves something called 36-Second Films. Because, you know, that's an original name, and has definitely not been used by 5-Second Films, 30-Second Films, 60-Second Films, or similarly-named segments of other media groups or anything. But hey, I'd figured he'd already come down from his happy phase and decided not to bother with whatever it was he was going on about. So it's something, at least. We'll see if he follows through.
Lastly, Kate let Cory edit her most recent video. As you might expect, we get lots of fans saying she should let Cory edit all her videos, because they wouldn't dare criticize even if they hated it. In fact, I bet it was the fans who suggested him doing it after he edited the ending of a prior one. I, for one, can do without the goofball video and sound effects. Plus, when you let someone else edit your vlog, then it's not really yours anymore. It becomes just a collection of video clips of the person. I covered this ages ago when we first heard that Shaycarl was going to start paying somebody to edit his vlogs for him. It loses that personal touch of the person choosing which clips to use, when to cut'em, etc. It might have a slightly different meaning to someone else who wasn't there to experience it. But whatever, I doubt it'll become a usual thing in this case.
On a side note, I recently went back and watched some older Katers vlogs, even as recent as when Amy visited. It was just so much more entertaining to me, and they behaved way more natural in my opinion. I can't put too fine a point on it, but Kate today is just not quite the same person I subscribed to. Tis a shame.
This one is about, you guessed it, Kate and Cory again. I caught up on my vlogs, and there's a few things to mention.
First, we find out that Cory and Sparta are somehow going to be involved with the new Heathcliff movie. After everyone's had a chance to roll their eyes at this movie even being made, and lived through terrible flashbacks of the CG Garfield movies, let's get to the real question here: what is the point of hiring Cory and Sparta to begin with? Sparta isn't a trained animal. Not to mention, Sparta isn't even a kitten anymore. When that Mean Kitty Song video was made, Sparta was very young and rambunctious. What's he going to do now? Stand around and look intimidated on a sound stage? They're also talking about doing some kind of music video for the movie using Sparta. Again, all I can ask is, why Sparta? It's not like he's even a recognizable cat. Maru and Grumpy Cat are way more iconic. I just don't get it. Hollywood is grasping for straws these days.
I noticed this in particular, though: "Sparta, a California-based cat known for his “Mean Kitty Song,” is in. But that took a holding deal, meaning money up front, against a full fee to be paid when the “Heathcliff” movie is released, probably in 2014." I guess Cory took the quicker deal instead of waiting for a bigger amount later on. Kind of brings us back to his financial situation in which we occasionally get insight. Probably not a terrible idea, though, because shit movies like this have a good chance of never getting released to begin with. Kids have no idea who Heathcliff even is these days.
So, moving on. Kate made a Christmas video of the Easter Bunny saying "happy birthday."
...so, moving on. Cory shares a bit about his upcoming plans. It involves something called 36-Second Films. Because, you know, that's an original name, and has definitely not been used by 5-Second Films, 30-Second Films, 60-Second Films, or similarly-named segments of other media groups or anything. But hey, I'd figured he'd already come down from his happy phase and decided not to bother with whatever it was he was going on about. So it's something, at least. We'll see if he follows through.
Lastly, Kate let Cory edit her most recent video. As you might expect, we get lots of fans saying she should let Cory edit all her videos, because they wouldn't dare criticize even if they hated it. In fact, I bet it was the fans who suggested him doing it after he edited the ending of a prior one. I, for one, can do without the goofball video and sound effects. Plus, when you let someone else edit your vlog, then it's not really yours anymore. It becomes just a collection of video clips of the person. I covered this ages ago when we first heard that Shaycarl was going to start paying somebody to edit his vlogs for him. It loses that personal touch of the person choosing which clips to use, when to cut'em, etc. It might have a slightly different meaning to someone else who wasn't there to experience it. But whatever, I doubt it'll become a usual thing in this case.
On a side note, I recently went back and watched some older Katers vlogs, even as recent as when Amy visited. It was just so much more entertaining to me, and they behaved way more natural in my opinion. I can't put too fine a point on it, but Kate today is just not quite the same person I subscribed to. Tis a shame.
Monday, December 24, 2012
How to Justify Pedophilia
If you read the topic of this post and immediately said "there is no fucking way to justify that," then you and I are in total agreement! But let's talk about how I've witnessed this actually happen, thanks to the 'ol internet. It's actually a topic I've started writing about in the past but never got around to finishing. This worked out fine, because there's recent news.
You see, I used to be a big fan of this Youtube channel called Dave's Farm. Primarily there were lots of car stunts and stuff out on his farm full of dirt roads and hills, which honestly wasn't really my cup of tea. But he also had mechanical repair and building videos, including some specifically devoted to explaining how something worked. He'd cover topics from refrigerators, to microwaves, to car transmissions. Plus he'd put together some crazy mechanical contraptions. I'd never really had a lot of mechanical interest beforehand, and I learned a lot by watching these things, to which I honestly have to credit him with improving my knowledge and confidence enough in this stuff to be a catalyst in eventually learning what I know today. Combined with my existing electronics knowledge, I do most of my own car and lawn equipment repairs now, and am able to help friends and family at times as well. Money has definitely been saved.
Then eventually I came to find out that Dave himself is a convicted pedophile, involving his own children. It had happened years beforehand, but the revelation kind of exploded across Youtubers who knew him or knew of him. I was pretty shocked myself. A news article came out in a Canadian newspaper about it, since by that point Dave was kind of a local name where he lived I guess, making lots of money and views from Youtube by that point. The fan base fractured, with some believing Dave's side of the story, that he simply was suffering from untreated manic depression and supposedly wasn't really a pedophile. Others totally shunned him, unsubscribing and/or bringing down negative attention on him when possible. Then you had the third group of people who didn't necessarily like what he did, but wanted to watch his videos anyway. But this led to lots of arguing in the comments.
Well, regardless of why people still watched, it didn't last for long. His ex-wives had gotten together with some of his "hater group" to push Youtube to close his channel, citing that he was using it to attract young boys to his farm. And they weren't really wrong, because people visited him all the time, including kids, so it was rather easy for one to make the accusation. Dave himself admitted that his target audience was teen males. So his channel got shut down. Then it came back, and got shut down again. I can't remember how many times it happened, to the point that eventually he was trying to get everyone to come to a different video site altogether. Then he essentially disappeared for a while.
Well, sometime later, a news program interviewed him, doing the story in a negative light. Dave came out in defense mode over it, making new videos to respond to everything he felt was wrong about the report, and I think threatening a lawsuit. Shortly following that, Dave cooperated for a documentary about himself, by a guy who actually turned out to just be an opportunistic creep. He let Dave think he was on his side to get the gig, then turned it around on him and dumped a bunch of dirt, some related to Dave's father potentially molesting him as a boy. It was just a big debacle, with that guy raging at people who torrented the documentary and everything. I think Dave compared the whole situation to blackmail, but he's been known to exaggerate, so. I can't remember if lawsuits were involved with this or not.
Regardless, Dave is back on Youtube these days. He doesn't post videos too often, and he's not part of the partner program anymore I don't believe (meaning probably no money is involved), but he's there. More drama crept back into his videos related to accusations of theft against someone who had been going to the farm for years, which split the fan base a bit further. Blind loyalty to Dave continued, with many wholeheartedly believing all of his accusations against the other guy. This was spilling over into this guy's Youtube channel and everything, and resparked the pedophile debate over and over.
And so now we finally come to present day. Despite Dave's repeated attempts to convince everyone he's not a pedophile, he was arrested on charges of child pornography a few days ago. We've heard no word out of Dave about the incident other than what the news article said, where he defended himself by claiming the content they found was simply nudist videos (since yes, Dave is a nudist, as it turned out). But come on. This is a guy who has already been in trouble with the law for recording children; does he really not have enough sense to not be present around naked children, and sure as hell not be filming them? And this isn't even the first time accusations of inappropriate conduct with children have occurred in recent years, it's just the first one that's gotten him arrested.
So now we're back to comment wars across channels associated with the farm, with people blindly and rabidly defending Dave no matter what. Some of them even completely dismiss what he did, selfishly arguing that people need to leave it alone so that he can keep making Youtube videos. Meanwhile, another Youtuber who essentially got his own start by being in Dave's videos, has now officially distanced himself from Dave and the farm. And this is a guy who's nice to everybody, not to mention keeps a trailer out on the farm for the summer, so I think that has some bearing on fan opinions. Another Youtuber, who had been the one accused of theft by Dave, pretty much put up an "I told you so" video about the news article of Dave's arrest, which is where I learned the news to begin with.
I've always been a bit torn on this issue myself, because I did take a lot away from Dave's earlier videos, and it's really a shame that this is how it all turned out. I know I'm not the only one to have learned from his videos, either. But that doesn't mean I can simply ignore what's going on. I personally believe many of the experts when they say pedophilia can't be cured, only treated. And you can't treat a problem when you don't acknowledge you have one, especially while continuing to put yourself into situations in which you can feed the compulsion. He may have done his time for his past actions, but in this case, obviously his past wasn't left in the past. You don't reform from pedophilia with simply jail time.
There is so much more to this story that I haven't mentioned, mostly because I knew this would be long (and hence why I never finished writing about this topic before). But I just thought that this was all worth mentioning because it reinforces something I've talked about before, and that's the fanboy plight. Whether it's Shaycarl, Katers, Cory, Olga, Charles and Alli, or anyone else on the planet with a fanbase, there will always be blind loyalty, even in the face of blatant hypocrisy or wrongdoing. This particular situation proves that even if you film and piddle your own kids, you'll still have quite a number of people who will aggressively defend you, thanks to the magical mental distortion field of internet anonymity.
You see, I used to be a big fan of this Youtube channel called Dave's Farm. Primarily there were lots of car stunts and stuff out on his farm full of dirt roads and hills, which honestly wasn't really my cup of tea. But he also had mechanical repair and building videos, including some specifically devoted to explaining how something worked. He'd cover topics from refrigerators, to microwaves, to car transmissions. Plus he'd put together some crazy mechanical contraptions. I'd never really had a lot of mechanical interest beforehand, and I learned a lot by watching these things, to which I honestly have to credit him with improving my knowledge and confidence enough in this stuff to be a catalyst in eventually learning what I know today. Combined with my existing electronics knowledge, I do most of my own car and lawn equipment repairs now, and am able to help friends and family at times as well. Money has definitely been saved.
Then eventually I came to find out that Dave himself is a convicted pedophile, involving his own children. It had happened years beforehand, but the revelation kind of exploded across Youtubers who knew him or knew of him. I was pretty shocked myself. A news article came out in a Canadian newspaper about it, since by that point Dave was kind of a local name where he lived I guess, making lots of money and views from Youtube by that point. The fan base fractured, with some believing Dave's side of the story, that he simply was suffering from untreated manic depression and supposedly wasn't really a pedophile. Others totally shunned him, unsubscribing and/or bringing down negative attention on him when possible. Then you had the third group of people who didn't necessarily like what he did, but wanted to watch his videos anyway. But this led to lots of arguing in the comments.
Well, regardless of why people still watched, it didn't last for long. His ex-wives had gotten together with some of his "hater group" to push Youtube to close his channel, citing that he was using it to attract young boys to his farm. And they weren't really wrong, because people visited him all the time, including kids, so it was rather easy for one to make the accusation. Dave himself admitted that his target audience was teen males. So his channel got shut down. Then it came back, and got shut down again. I can't remember how many times it happened, to the point that eventually he was trying to get everyone to come to a different video site altogether. Then he essentially disappeared for a while.
Well, sometime later, a news program interviewed him, doing the story in a negative light. Dave came out in defense mode over it, making new videos to respond to everything he felt was wrong about the report, and I think threatening a lawsuit. Shortly following that, Dave cooperated for a documentary about himself, by a guy who actually turned out to just be an opportunistic creep. He let Dave think he was on his side to get the gig, then turned it around on him and dumped a bunch of dirt, some related to Dave's father potentially molesting him as a boy. It was just a big debacle, with that guy raging at people who torrented the documentary and everything. I think Dave compared the whole situation to blackmail, but he's been known to exaggerate, so. I can't remember if lawsuits were involved with this or not.
Regardless, Dave is back on Youtube these days. He doesn't post videos too often, and he's not part of the partner program anymore I don't believe (meaning probably no money is involved), but he's there. More drama crept back into his videos related to accusations of theft against someone who had been going to the farm for years, which split the fan base a bit further. Blind loyalty to Dave continued, with many wholeheartedly believing all of his accusations against the other guy. This was spilling over into this guy's Youtube channel and everything, and resparked the pedophile debate over and over.
And so now we finally come to present day. Despite Dave's repeated attempts to convince everyone he's not a pedophile, he was arrested on charges of child pornography a few days ago. We've heard no word out of Dave about the incident other than what the news article said, where he defended himself by claiming the content they found was simply nudist videos (since yes, Dave is a nudist, as it turned out). But come on. This is a guy who has already been in trouble with the law for recording children; does he really not have enough sense to not be present around naked children, and sure as hell not be filming them? And this isn't even the first time accusations of inappropriate conduct with children have occurred in recent years, it's just the first one that's gotten him arrested.
So now we're back to comment wars across channels associated with the farm, with people blindly and rabidly defending Dave no matter what. Some of them even completely dismiss what he did, selfishly arguing that people need to leave it alone so that he can keep making Youtube videos. Meanwhile, another Youtuber who essentially got his own start by being in Dave's videos, has now officially distanced himself from Dave and the farm. And this is a guy who's nice to everybody, not to mention keeps a trailer out on the farm for the summer, so I think that has some bearing on fan opinions. Another Youtuber, who had been the one accused of theft by Dave, pretty much put up an "I told you so" video about the news article of Dave's arrest, which is where I learned the news to begin with.
I've always been a bit torn on this issue myself, because I did take a lot away from Dave's earlier videos, and it's really a shame that this is how it all turned out. I know I'm not the only one to have learned from his videos, either. But that doesn't mean I can simply ignore what's going on. I personally believe many of the experts when they say pedophilia can't be cured, only treated. And you can't treat a problem when you don't acknowledge you have one, especially while continuing to put yourself into situations in which you can feed the compulsion. He may have done his time for his past actions, but in this case, obviously his past wasn't left in the past. You don't reform from pedophilia with simply jail time.
There is so much more to this story that I haven't mentioned, mostly because I knew this would be long (and hence why I never finished writing about this topic before). But I just thought that this was all worth mentioning because it reinforces something I've talked about before, and that's the fanboy plight. Whether it's Shaycarl, Katers, Cory, Olga, Charles and Alli, or anyone else on the planet with a fanbase, there will always be blind loyalty, even in the face of blatant hypocrisy or wrongdoing. This particular situation proves that even if you film and piddle your own kids, you'll still have quite a number of people who will aggressively defend you, thanks to the magical mental distortion field of internet anonymity.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Charity Choosy
Hey look, the world still exists, and hundreds of thousands of people who actually thought something bad would happen are facing the revelation that they're completely gullible instead of dead!
I was going to write a different post, related to some Youtube drama, but I realized it would be long, so maybe next time. I haven't watched the last three Katers videos, either, so there might be something to talk about in those as well.
I mostly wanted to touch on something I mentioned last time, which I received a comment about. That would be Project for Awesome. I don't want to imply that it's a bad thing, because it's a charity, and charities usually help somebody somehow. Helping people is good. But the question is, who do you want to help, and how do you want to help them?
To me, P4A just comes across as a gimmick, particularly in being a way for Youtubers to self-promote by getting to the top of the charity video list. I honestly don't think some of the participants even care about their charities, they just want the extra views/likes/publicity that come with doing it. Think about it; they not only make money from the views on the video itself, but bring in potential new viewers in the process. Why would an established or even aspiring Youtuber NOT be part of it?
Something else important to keep in mind is that while P4A gives 100% of your money to the charities (minus the cost to make the promotional items you might buy), that doesn't mean the charities themselves use 100% of your money to help anyone. Being a non-profit agency does not mean it's run purely by volunteers. Most of these people make money, particularly the management. Always look into a charity before you toss them money, because there just might be a better one.
This is particularly a problem given that some 'tubers start selecting weird lesser-known charities just to avoid having the same one as someone else. What if one Youtuber wants to promote the American Cancer Society, but makes a less good video than someone else, someone with potentially with a bigger subscriber base as well, who promotes Jim & Bob's Hair Loss Prevention? What if the top five videos, which get the split of all the money donated, are all charities which you aren't totally satisfied with?
Last year, for example, one of the charities was to get prom dresses to girls who can't afford them. And sure, that's a fine thing. But is it more important than a cancer patient, or Alzheimer's? And this year, another charity is the One Laptop Per Child thing. And don't even get me started on that, because I could do an entire article on why that's a waste of money. But come on, at the end of the day, these are first-world problems. Cancer and debilitating conditions aside, plenty of kids need winter jackets or clothes without holes in'em, too. Adopt an angel from the Angel Tree and I guarantee you'll make some kid happy, right in your own home town.
Point is, charity is still charity, and if you want to donate to P4A, then more power to you. I just have my own issues with it, and I would prefer to give my money to causes I personally care about. I don't need popular Youtubers to decide that for me, especially if their intentions are potentially of the less charitable nature. So that's why I just skip most of the P4A videos altogether, that way nobody gets my "vote."
I was going to write a different post, related to some Youtube drama, but I realized it would be long, so maybe next time. I haven't watched the last three Katers videos, either, so there might be something to talk about in those as well.
I mostly wanted to touch on something I mentioned last time, which I received a comment about. That would be Project for Awesome. I don't want to imply that it's a bad thing, because it's a charity, and charities usually help somebody somehow. Helping people is good. But the question is, who do you want to help, and how do you want to help them?
To me, P4A just comes across as a gimmick, particularly in being a way for Youtubers to self-promote by getting to the top of the charity video list. I honestly don't think some of the participants even care about their charities, they just want the extra views/likes/publicity that come with doing it. Think about it; they not only make money from the views on the video itself, but bring in potential new viewers in the process. Why would an established or even aspiring Youtuber NOT be part of it?
Something else important to keep in mind is that while P4A gives 100% of your money to the charities (minus the cost to make the promotional items you might buy), that doesn't mean the charities themselves use 100% of your money to help anyone. Being a non-profit agency does not mean it's run purely by volunteers. Most of these people make money, particularly the management. Always look into a charity before you toss them money, because there just might be a better one.
This is particularly a problem given that some 'tubers start selecting weird lesser-known charities just to avoid having the same one as someone else. What if one Youtuber wants to promote the American Cancer Society, but makes a less good video than someone else, someone with potentially with a bigger subscriber base as well, who promotes Jim & Bob's Hair Loss Prevention? What if the top five videos, which get the split of all the money donated, are all charities which you aren't totally satisfied with?
Last year, for example, one of the charities was to get prom dresses to girls who can't afford them. And sure, that's a fine thing. But is it more important than a cancer patient, or Alzheimer's? And this year, another charity is the One Laptop Per Child thing. And don't even get me started on that, because I could do an entire article on why that's a waste of money. But come on, at the end of the day, these are first-world problems. Cancer and debilitating conditions aside, plenty of kids need winter jackets or clothes without holes in'em, too. Adopt an angel from the Angel Tree and I guarantee you'll make some kid happy, right in your own home town.
Point is, charity is still charity, and if you want to donate to P4A, then more power to you. I just have my own issues with it, and I would prefer to give my money to causes I personally care about. I don't need popular Youtubers to decide that for me, especially if their intentions are potentially of the less charitable nature. So that's why I just skip most of the P4A videos altogether, that way nobody gets my "vote."
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Vlog Overflow Error
I've gotten busy lately, and suddenly I find myself with way too many Youtube videos to watch. But "Project for Awesome" has started, again, so that means we're going to have lots of Youtubers rambling on about that for their entire video(s), which I can simply skip!
And hey, what a surprise, I'm already facepalming at these Katers videos. Not only am I tired of every other scene of these videos being about that dog or of her obsessing over getting back home to the thing, but now this dog is her excuse for why her video production quality is going to suffer. She spent a fortune on this mini pet factory animal and associated items, and now she can't even afford to fix her camera. You know, the thing which makes her her living. And if that wasn't stupid enough by itself, what does Cory do? He takes the camera from her and violently shakes it around trying to be funny. And emphasis on "trying" because his antics really aren't amusing me anymore.
Speaking of Cory, what happened with that huge thing he was working on with leaving Youtube? Seems his excitement has suddenly fizzled out, pretty much as I already predicted in a previous post.
And Christ, in this next video, Cory has his hand stuck inside some glass head.
Two or three more Katers videos skipped through in less than a minute. Now we're to one where Cory said he hasn't finished Christmas shopping for Kate because he's going to wait till after the 21st in case the world ends. Please let him have been kidding, because the amount of facepalming here is at critical levels.
On the bright side, this same video has them out shopping and doing things away from the house and the dog for most of the video for a change. Cory was a bit loopy, throwing things and all as usual, but at least this one was a bit entertaining again. But then the video concludes with him dropping the camera Kate can't afford to fix from the upstairs.
Wow I didn't expect to tear through so many videos so quickly. So much for this being an interesting post! All that was left was some electrical and automotive channels, some Wheezy Waiter, some Boogie, etc. Nothing to really talk about. Oh well!
And hey, what a surprise, I'm already facepalming at these Katers videos. Not only am I tired of every other scene of these videos being about that dog or of her obsessing over getting back home to the thing, but now this dog is her excuse for why her video production quality is going to suffer. She spent a fortune on this mini pet factory animal and associated items, and now she can't even afford to fix her camera. You know, the thing which makes her her living. And if that wasn't stupid enough by itself, what does Cory do? He takes the camera from her and violently shakes it around trying to be funny. And emphasis on "trying" because his antics really aren't amusing me anymore.
Speaking of Cory, what happened with that huge thing he was working on with leaving Youtube? Seems his excitement has suddenly fizzled out, pretty much as I already predicted in a previous post.
And Christ, in this next video, Cory has his hand stuck inside some glass head.
Two or three more Katers videos skipped through in less than a minute. Now we're to one where Cory said he hasn't finished Christmas shopping for Kate because he's going to wait till after the 21st in case the world ends. Please let him have been kidding, because the amount of facepalming here is at critical levels.
On the bright side, this same video has them out shopping and doing things away from the house and the dog for most of the video for a change. Cory was a bit loopy, throwing things and all as usual, but at least this one was a bit entertaining again. But then the video concludes with him dropping the camera Kate can't afford to fix from the upstairs.
Wow I didn't expect to tear through so many videos so quickly. So much for this being an interesting post! All that was left was some electrical and automotive channels, some Wheezy Waiter, some Boogie, etc. Nothing to really talk about. Oh well!
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