The Internet [monday Dec 4 – sunday Dec 10, 2023] (week in review)

December 14, 2023 everybun

The big news on youtube this week was, an hbomb dropped: Plagiarism and You(Tube). It’s nearly 4 hours long and at time of writing has over 9 million views. Hasan did a react.

In a way I feel like, this crit is pedantic unless they’re fully word-for-word replicating someone else’s work the way, for example, Internet Historian did (people are legit being like “nooo he’s my dad” about that part). These people were always obvious enough for what they were, although Somerton’s a surprise…So much for the facade of high academic polish, turn in your turtlenecks in shame, comrade. (There’s a couple of his videos logged in these weekly roundups; earmarked for ETAs.) I don’t particularly like the youtubers named (very even-handed approach to crit people from three such different corners of the ecosystem) but I’ve also never been angry about seeing them on the digital landscape; I’m not doing it, im not “in competition” with them, maybe that’s why it’s not personal to me. They’re like AI. At the end of the day, so what if it’s easy and a cheap-out if it’s informative and accurate? Ultimately their writerly laziness wasn’t made untrackable, sources were found.

I think the attribution of the term is off: “The term was coined by Amber A’Lee Frost and is associated with her essay “The Necessity of Political Vulgarity”, published in Current Affairs in 2016 […] the essay does not directly use the term dirtbag left […]”

(Obviously, I coined it in 2016 during a breakup with a Torontonian Maoist)

Awesome watch.

Soooooo were you gonna build them a road or?

Very weirdly edited by the end, but, also cool af.

Relatable king.

Through the lens of harm reduction being normal and a good idea, this feels kind of (somewhat) polarizing and sensational but it could be a lot worse. People make worse all the time on YT. (Can we all get a grip on the fact that people don’t become street addicts unless they have some kind of massive trauma history; we should applaud them for not turning into buttoned-down hyperconventional-passing serial killers, and provide whatever medication/therapy they want, to be participatory in the social contract of mutual concern and care, because you never know.)

This vid said a mouthful. This one too.

Now the pedos really can say “childhood is a construct”; if they can consent to potentially injurious labor, dot dot dot; tracking from “kids should ~be allowed~ to do paid labor,” their consent either exists and is entirely valid regardless of age, or it doesn’t exist and they’re entirely undefended, which is worse.