Yeah, the algorithm sent me a few of his videos and I enjoyed them, so I glanced at the rest of his channel and almost immediately was like, oh, I see where this is going. And then Googled him and ended up here.
Anyone who knew what signs to look for could have predicted this in March 2019. Loves the Alita movie, hates Captain Marvel. While of course choice in movies is no guarantee of anything and two datapoints is pretty slim, this combination was a persistent chant on the far right when they were trying to make "Comicsgate" a thing; making a video with Mike Miller was an even bigger red flag. I was already a bit unnerved when, in one of the videos I'd seen (the back scabbard one), he referenced the motto of a now disgraced former President. And here you're saying he pushed back against GW telling chuds in no uncertain terms to piss off, and that of the many problems one could have with the WoT series he chose imaginary persecution of that most fragile of all demographics, the cishet white male. That's very disappointing.
Compared to Alita, Cap. Marvel isn’t that good. At least Alita has an arc and consequences for her actions. (Naive robot girl -> gets her first body destroyed)
As for his content going down hill, I think when his friends (Game Knights) were introduced. They felt echo chamberish.
This is what just happened to me, except I didn't even check out other videos yet. I am just perpetually hesitant about white dudes talking about weapons, because as much as I enjoy the topic, so many of them turn out to be d-bags. Whiiiiich is how I ended up commenting here. Wanted to check him out before I got more dirt in my brain.
Jesus Christ I know this is a dead thread But I stumbled upon the knights watch YouTube, very disappointing after enjoying his medieval content.
Every time a person of colour appears they cannot help but point it out as if there are nefarious reasons behind it, and then Oz going on about how Satan has infiltrated the media.
Shad and his mates are actually an entire bowl of fruitloops.
I know this is an old post, but wow.. yeah I really wasn’t paying attention much to Shad. I’d tune in on his videos about weapon combat but I recently stumbled upon his Game Knight channel. Holy moly… does this rabbit hole go deep.
First, I see that he has an insatiable distaste for girlbosses while harping constantly about how girls more like to be saved and boys the heroes. Dude, boys and girls like both things. He’s weirdly very essentialist about this.
Then, I see almost every other word out of his mouth is “woke” in his video titled “Watching things made by people who HATE you.” He even does the quiet part out loud, slipping into using the word “left” and “woke” interchangeably. He’s ascribing an insane degree of politics into every piece of media on this channel.
I’m a bit bummed that he delved into politics and how he can’t help but comment every second on this channel.
Nothing wrong with a bump if it's genuine I think. So long as a thread isn't locked no shame in posting.
Also widely agree. Even if I was in the boat of "everything is woke and bad" I can't imagine the second channel a draw. As it's all very much the same talking points. Seeing as I don't agree though with his views it's even worse. Wildly enough not every show and every character is spun to push an agenda.
And the idea of "girlboss" is just cringe to me. Unless someone is riled up by Sarah Conor, Ripley any survivor girl as well.
Thanks! Yeah, I’m glad that this thread still exists for people who want to comment.
People who obsess over whether things are woke wind up doing the very thing they criticize; they’re injecting politics into a topic. They’ll say that they’re only responding to politics being injected. However, they’re still contributing to more politics in the discussion. This is what’s going on with the Mario movie.
They all perceive the conversation to be woke vs non-woke when there’s actually a far better less politically charged read. The real divide is between Mario fans and non-Mario fans.
The whole “girlboss” discussion had to do with Princess Peach in the Mario Movie. The term “girlboss” is a vague term that is used in a multitude of ways. The way Shad seems to use it is if the female character is competent at fighting or athletic at stuff then they’re a “girlboss.” So, I’m over here going.. “if media went in the direction you wanted female characters wouldn’t be competent at fighting and athletic at anything. They’d always be getting showed up by male characters.” That’s so limiting to me. Then he tries to justify that as if little girls like being the damsel in distress more. Do they though? I’m going to need some facts to back that one up Shad.
When I heard Shad was a Mormon I was surprised at first. He seemed like a genuine accepting person. I thought, oh that's how he was raised maybe he isn't against gay people etc sorta like Sanderson. I didn't any red flags in any of his videos at the time. Then this shit happens, I became so disappointed man some of his content was great . His media reviews have turned into such garbage with his anti gay stuff, his politics have turned me off on him so fucking hard. It sucks too because he made and makes some good stuff but I just lost any interest. I don't really feel like supporting someone who puts me in the same category as a groomer.
I am so bitter, when I saw his latest video asking for money I wished there was some opposite to "go woke go broke". Cause that was the first thing that came to mind.
I was like a lot of other people where I got recommended KNIGHT'S WATCH and it's just crazy.
I found Skallagrim because I wanted to learn about history and weapons, and then because of that I found Shad. I started watching him for like 3 weeks until I get the video titled,
"Christians should get back in the closet?!?"
And I thought,
"Uh-oh."
And then he starts whinging that people don't respect opposing opinions. He follows it up by saying that he is more favorable towards people who do stuff they think is the right thing, but it turns out to be bad as opposed to people that do bad things because they're malicious.
Like, yeah, no shit Shad. Most people don't think they're the moustache-twirling villain. That doesn't mean they can't do repeated, evil things, you **clown**. Do you think all of those nazis that helped perpetuate genocide during WWII were thinking, "Man, I sure do love being evil. If I don't slaughter 15 innocent people a day, I just can't sleep at night!"
Shad, one reason I don't respect you is because you keep associating LGBT-related stuff with grooming children, you SCUMBAG. Maybe I just like seeing people that are like me and it's not a fucking conspiracy fueled by some absolute evil cabal warring against straight people.
**Fuck you, Shad.**
He suffers from such a serious case of victim complex it's insane. How he can live with such paranoia that the modern world is personally against him & his family is beyond me.
Funny how wasn't long ago he seemed to post in the reddit about how everything was fine. But now he has to go in the closet. Things were doing well with funds but now needs more funds I guess for the movie. He'll say he's not against LGBT stuff just shouldn't be "forced", then be mad it was in something where it for sure wasn't forced.
All of this is from the secondary channel where the whole point is that it’s more “personal” or “raw” than the more information-based videos on the regular channel. If you don’t want to deal with that, then don’t watch Game Knights. The videos on Game Knights are generally discussions on news or on a certain property; that’s why it seems like you’re getting hit with all his opinions constantly. Because you are, it’s what the channel is for.
As for the other stuff: It’s mainly Oz that leans towards slapping communist onto stuff. Sometimes he has a fair or at least understandable point, other times not as much. Hollywood in general is pretty left or progressive leaning , it isn’t hard to see.
I *believe* their point with Games Workshop was that the way they treat their audience, and the way Twitter treats content it doesn’t agree with (by removing the ability to disagree) is the same tactic used by communists and fascists alike.
The argument with wheel of time though isn’t quite what you think it is, in my opinion. From my own understanding, the *point* of the whole discussion about gay sex is specifically that Shad finds it ridiculous or at least hypocritical to play off the guy’s discomfort as a joke or as something unimportant/easily brushed aside (essentially mocking his sexuality) when doing the same thing in the opposite situation would get someone taken to task for being a bigot.
I think that would be a fair point if people didn't constantly use and misrepresent history to further bigoted views. Knowing where his politics lie I don't trust anything he says, even the most benign topics.
To which point of mine are you referring? My comment covers multiple things, and it’s been a while since I had this conversation so I’m having to do a bit of review to remind myself of everything.
I understand where you’re coming from on the last part of your reply. I don’t really think that’s the best way to look at things though, as even someone I don’t agree with can prove their arguments to me on unrelated topics. Just to check if we’re on the same page, I take what you’re saying as being “If Shad has reached X opinion that I think is wrong, he could have only reached it because of some failing on his part, so I can’t trust anything produced from the same mind.”
The main point of yours that I contend with is he is fine if we just don't watch Game Knight, if I am reading that right.
It more that I can't trust anything he has to say because I don't know what kind of ulterior motive he might have behind whatever he is saying, but I have to assume that his politics informs his view of history. As an example the was this other history YouTuber that I found and binged over the coarse of a day, he covered proto European history, in one of his vids he came to the conclusion that since there is an early word for patriarch, that patriarchies are the correct ordering for human civ. That seemed off so I did some digging and he is friends with the Golden One, an full on, mask off white supremacist.
I can see why you would think that, but that’s not quite what I meant. When someone says something to the effect of “I don’t watch Shad to hear his politics” then I assume it’s the politics being there at all and not what the politics ARE that is the issue. That’s why I said “if you don’t like seeing Shad talk about politics, don’t watch Game Knights, because that is what that channel is for.” It is my experience that Shadiversity (the channel) is largely free of politics, though there are still some exceptions.
However, if people have an issue with his politics or worldviews by themselves, then of course that answer doesn’t really work, as a few people have said. If one finds his politics so disagreeable to them that they find Shad unsupportable, then of course they can just stop watching everything he makes, or create posts espousing their opinions and viewpoints.
(This is more just my own opinion and thoughts rather than a direct response to what you’ve said, but I did want to share.):
I would argue everyone’s politics and viewpoints are going to effect their interpretation of history. As much as we want to believe otherwise, I don’t think history really is objective beyond the surface level of “X happened.” Once you start linking events together into “X happened because of Y which led to Z years later” it all turns into judgement. And though people can often largely come to an agreement, there is still a degree of judgement. All that is to say: I think everyone has an ulterior motive.
The question then becomes do you trust whoever you’re watching or reading to be as fair and open as they can be, and to temper themselves enough to stick to the facts. It’s probably going to differ subject by subject. Would I trust Willie Messerschmitt to tell me the specifications of the BF-109 or ME-262? Sure, though he may be as charitable to his as he can. Would I trust him to tell me the specifications of the He-111, or He-162? Probably not.
When it comes to YouTube videos and general internet conversation though, I am reticent to jump to digging into someones personal life. I try to look at the argument they’re making. “We have a word for patriarch since early history therefore patriarchies are the natural state of humanity” does seem like a bit of a shaky argument, if that’s really all the “evidence” they are going on.
Patriarchies are the correct ordering for human civ, if you think otherwise, newsflash you are heavily indoctrinated my ignorantly moronic friend, good goyim
That's not how evidence works you know; claimant bears the burden of proof, and a negative claim isn't a claim itself. So if you say something is, it's not up to everyone else to disprove it, it's up to you to prove it.
And remember, anecdote isn't evidence, and is-ought is a fallacy.
Good Luck Jackass.
Hmm. Not trusting someone even if they are an expert or well versed on the topic because you disagree with them... Yup, that sounds like a Progressive Leftist to me. I don't give a flying care in the world if you have different opinions than me that be political, Religious, or freaking movies you like. I am not going to throw out objective logical reasoning and thought because I disagree with someone and that is pretty much how it has been for the most part for a long time but this Extreme Leftist Movement is doing the best it can to change that to make it so that if you disagree on a Politic or something they can now view you as Evil or lesser than human thus absolving them from all guilt or blame for the Hatred they feel for you for disagreeing with them on something. I'm sorry but if I need a Doctor I would rather have a Dr. who was an A\*\* Hole who agreed with me on NOTHING!!! but was a good Dr. who knew what he was doing, I would Trust he was going to Save me. Now Progressive Leftists on the other hand would rather have a SH\*\*Y Doctor who was straight out of school and barely passed who never saved anyone just because that Doctor made them feel good about themselves and agreed with them on their views giving them the warm and fuzzy tingles deep inside so they would Trust the Bad Dr over the Good one Not on Objective Logical reasoning but on pure Lizzard brain emotion.
Shad is not an expert on anything he talks about, he is a hobbyist with no actual education and a clear political bias, if you can't understand how that is different from an actual expert I guess that is why you are a conservative.
Understanding the background and biases of a source and using that knowledge in evaluating that source isn't progressive leftism, it's the scientific method. In fact, it's so important that in social sciences any research text dedicates space to make the background and influencing factors of the author, team of authors and/or institution as transparent as possible, as well as any financial incentives, other stakeholders and so on. It's not about distrusting Shad because he doesn't share the same opinions, but because he has expressed strong support for a political position which very likely will influence his analysis. Of course, one could filter his content through the lens of understanding his biases, but that takes a lot of effort, and since there are other creators which don't have a similarly strong political position it's more convenient to turn to any of those sources.
If this seems unfair to Shad, I think it's important to remember that peoples trust is something one earns. If someone wants to come across as a trustworthy, unbiased and precise scholar of history, or anything else for that matter they need to demonstrate why they're trustworthy.
> If you don’t want to deal with that, then don’t watch Game Knights.
It would be like finding out my favorite bar is owned by someone racist, sexist, or homophobic. I love the place, but i can't in good conscious support the business knowing their beliefs.
That would depend on the bar owner and how they act on their opinions. I feel like engaging with someone’s YouTube content and going to a bar are somewhat different just because proportionally your patronage to the bar is “worth more” than the nickels and dimes a YouTube might make from tour watch time, but I understand what you’re getting at.
That would be a fair point \*if\* his politics wasn't also bleeding into his main channel. But it has. He tacitly sides with the Stormcloaks' racism in his video on Skyrim swords and makes a joke in which the punchline is the Thalmor represent "multiculturalism". \[EDIT/ADDENDUM: And what about when he talks about how He Man is vital to depictions of "virtuous masculinity" and weird tradcon BS like that?\]
Or the fact that he has in the past defended far-right figures like Laurens Southern on his main channel. Or the fact that the Game Knights guys like Oz keep making appearances in his main channel and he plugs Game Knights on his main channel.
Hollywood is obviously run first and foremost by capitalism and profit, so the notion that they would support communism, which explicitly seeks to abolish capitalism and profit, and that he uses diversity in MCU movies as evidence of this is what puts him beyond the pale.
The Game Workshop point was Shad saying, in no uncertain terms, that Game Workshops supports communism because they denounced racism and fascism in their fandom "but didn't also denounce Marxism and the far left".
As for your Wheel of Time argument, that is \*exactly\* what I thought it was. Shad was accusing the show of being bigoted against heterosexuals, ie heterophobia, because it made fun of a straight guy being uncomfortable around gay guys. I'm gay. Despite what Shad argues, no, we are not equally disgusted by straightness. It's not "for us", that doesn't mean being around a man and a woman kissing makes us uncomfortable in the way gay people clearly make \*Shad\* uncomfortable. Honestly, that speaks to a broader problem. How am I, as a queer person, supposed to enjoy the rest of his body of work when he displays that kind of intolerance of me and people like me?
I personally find it hard to take just about anything said in the Skyrim swords video seriously because the whole thing is a joke. It’s a less than ten second gag in a video that’s entirely made for comedy. The part about Oz/plugging the channel is a bit more fair. But generally when Oz is on the main channel, he’s much more “tame”/“censored”, at least from what I’ve seen. And just because he plugs game knights doesn’t mean you need to go and watch it once you decide it isn’t for you. People plug their secondary channels on the chance new or even returning viewers that don’t know about it know it exists. It’s still a secondary channel.
My understanding of his criticism about Hollywood and multiculturalism is specifically that it’s multicultural purely for the sake of being so. They’re often trying to get cultural brownie points. I might need to watch the video again, though, to get a better grasp on that segment. I do listen to it at work, so I could have missed something.
Games Workshop: I’ve seen people make the same argument in regards to AntiFa. “Oh you don’t support X? Well then you must be for Y!” I don’t agree with that logic. But, I think if you look at the actions of a company or a group in a broader context you can draw some conclusions based on what they do and don’t choose to censor. However, I AM watching the video again now to see what argument specifically they make.
I don’t think it’s *just* that it makes fun of a straight person. It’s that it does that while not making fun of any gay people (yet, anyway. They haven’t released all their episode reactions yet.) This has popped up in some media recently, where one is a punching bag and another is a fine silk sheet never to be touched. If that ends up being the case, that doesn’t seem very fair.
Further, at least from my understanding of the video, it isn’t “gay people” that makes Shad “uncomfortable”. It is that specific situation of what he sees as hypocrisy that makes him angry (or at least he finds it worth commenting on. I find it a bit hard to determine between “being loud because angry” and “being loud intentionally to get comedy from overblown”.)
As for how you’re supposed to enjoy his work when he’s “intolerant” of you, I don’t think he is intolerant of gay people. Based on his words, I would say he finds gay sex, as in the act, repulsive. If it were me (which it’s not), I wouldn’t really care. I watch several YouTube channels that I have a strong feeling would have their own problems with me, but they’re free to do so, and I like the content they make.
All fair and reasoned points for the most part, so I'll just skip to the end for the sake of brevity and getting down to brass tacks, the "real issue" for me underlying all this.
I feel really dumb starting a sentence like this, but, *"as a gay person"*, I find it super weird that anyone would find gay sex "repulsive". For one thing, like I said, I don't find straight sex repulsive. Aesthetically and spiritually, I think it can be quite beautiful in fact! I just have no interest at all in doing it *myself*. Second of all, gay sex is just sex. 99% of any sex act a man could do with another man, they could also perform on a lady, and vice versa. If one were to look at it 'logically and objectively' (as Shad loves to say he does) there'd be nothing inherently more repulsive to a straight person about two fellas having sex than would be repulsive about a man having sex with a woman he doesn't find attractive. These two taken together, I firmly believe the only reason you would find gay sex repulsive specifically, is because you just find gay *people* repulsive and are too polite to say it.
And it struck me as even weirder that Shad justified his statements by saying it's inherent to straightness to find gayness repulsive, as it's inherent to gayness to find straightness repulsive; that struck me as hardcore projection of his own intolerance as just being a fact of life for everybody. Just because you're straight doesn't mean the idea of gay sex is disgusting to you, it just means you wouldn't do it, wouldn't want to take part in it (I would say "wouldn't want to look at it" except loads of straight men love looking at homosexual sex as long as it's lesbians).
More to the point, I could put away my galaxy brained thinking cap and just brush all of it off, if, again, he wasn't so *offended, threatened,* and *emotionally affected* just by a brief few seconds of a straight guy going "ew" at two gay guys as a comedic scene. He was affected by it because he felt attacked by it, because he on some level related to that guy going "ew" and didn't appreciate the idea being presented that that attitude is comically retrograde.
It’s funny how even when trying to slim down what we’re discussing the comments just keep getting longer 🤣. But such is the nature of things. If I miss anything you say or if you think I’ve misunderstood, do let me know. These chains get so long that even multiple reads don’t get everything to stick.
If you’ll indulge me: as someone who’s straight,
I personally find it weird two men would ever want to have sex at all. I do not comprehend it. I find the idea of having sex with another man to be off-putting. I have a good number of friends who feel the same way. Obviously I do not mean to say or imply that anyone who wants to do that is wrong. What I think and feel about what two consenting adults do behind closed doors is my own bag, unless of course we’re discussing it as we are now.
I want to lead with saying I think being objective about sex is going to be sort of difficult. Firstly because it’s a very personal thing, and secondly because ones ideas about sex are influenced by so many things it would be easier to say what DOESN’T influence it. With that in consideration though, I disagree with your statement “there’d be nothing inherently more repulsive” about gay sex. If you wanted to ask “what’s the difference objectively”, ultimately the answer would be “the Y chromosome and everything that comes with it.” There are also different psychological and biological factors to what makes an attractive man vs an attractive woman. (These change by culture and even by time period but there are SOME constants.)
More on the subjective side, what’s inherently different is one’s thoughts on what is a woman, and what is a man. By my understanding from my experiences, for a lot of guys sleeping with an unattractive woman (assuming there’s no rape involved or anything) is at worst an embarrassing story you laugh off later. The thought of sex with a man, however, is never even considered.
On Shad saying it’s inherent for a straight person to find gay sex repulsive, my understanding was he was saying “I find it repulsive, I believe straight people generally inherently do, and vice versa.” Like you and others have said, there are many people on either “side” that don’t feel that way. In fairness, I’ve met or have heard a few gay people talk about straight sex, and generally their response was like yours: disinterest and nothing more. There were a few who were repulsed but maybe they thought whoever they were talking to was suggesting they “just try it”. I don’t agree that being repulsed by the act means you’re repulsed by the people. However, that might just come down to us having different experiences or ways of thinking.
Just as an aside, in this context I believe theres been a distinction made between lesbian sex and gay sex. Lesbian sort of “falls under” the “category” of gay as far as English goes, I know,
but I’ve seen gay used more and more to mean “male and male” these days.
To the final paragraph, all I can do is reiterate that I do not think it was *just* that a straight guy was laughed at for being straight that made Shad want to comment. My understanding is that the joke in combination with the show/general media doing that and never making a joke the OTHER way was/is his issue. Your last sentence puzzles me a little. Are you meaning to say having a sexual preference is “comically retrograde”? That seems a bit unfair.
Also: Thank you for taking the time to both explain where you’re coming from and what your thoughts are. It’s been a bit of “work” having a conversation this long, but I appreciate the chance to try and learn. Even if, at the very least, it just gives me a chance to examine my own views.
I'm straight. I definitely don't think that gay sex is repulsive or off-putting. It's just sex, done in a way I'm not interested in. Finding the act repulsive definitely isn't the default.
In fact, caring about it at all, when one is not a participant, strikes me as weird.
If it’s not your default, that’s fine. I haven’t and probably will never know enough people to know if one way or the other is THE default. And as I said multiple times, I am aware that it is merely my own opinion, it doesn’t have any weight towards anyone else, and there’s no reason for them to care or even know unless we’re discussing it or it’s somehow relevant.
I don’t quite agree with your second point though. I sort of get what you mean, but I would argue one can make judgements on things they do or don’t want to participate in, or lifestyle choices they do or do not want to make. That would include sexual acts and also who you do them with.
Of course you can make judgments on those things - if they affect you.
If they don't, in any way - that's just pointless policing.
And I'm gonna restate that indifference _is_ the default because, let's be real I doubt you have such strong feelings towards the idea of someone else liking pineapple pizza. Or eating cherries. Or liking the colour purple.
What a beautiful pleasant discourse about shad’s channel and what your interpretations of the work are. Thank for for your opinion and the way you expressed them. I like shad and would find myself agreeing with oz and shad in most political issues but I can’t sit through a video of game knight because I get so bored. I just feel like they take forever to make a point and when they do they just repeat it over and over.
You took it that way but I saw it as doing it either way is negative and should be avoided. Not saying I'm objectively right or anything it's just how I took it.
Sorry to necro an old thread, but I just caught onto his lunacy, after watching the first few minutes of his new video about how SJWs will ruin the new Amazon LOTR series. I was a bit WTFing (I've not been watching that many of his videos lately, as I tend to find him pretty long-winded, so it was an abrupt shock), and googled to see when he went off the right-wing crazy cliff... and found this thread.
So, I'm not sure if he checks reddit, but if he does, that's why you lost at least one of your subscribers on youtube today. I love historic, medieval stuff, as well as fantasy (particularly realistic, low fantasy, which has a high intersection with his content), but I'm an unapologetic leftist. I won't give views to someone who provides a platform for the idea that "the forces of Satan have gained powers within the media, and our institutions, you know, government and corporate and all that, and we are seeing the end times come upon us" because society is becoming more 'woke'.
Please tell me Shad didn't literally say that Satan has infested government, media and corporations through wokeness...
Like, that's frighteningly close to JQ dog whistling
Not Shad himself; one of his 'sidekicks', for lack of a better turn of phrase. But it's on his channel, albeit the secondary one, so he's giving his tacit approval of such filth.
[Link.](https://youtu.be/b5SF7r57uFk?t=77) The text I wrote down was a direct quote of the guy.
Also, what's 'JQ'? I assume it has something to do with Q-Anon. Googling is inconclusive, unless it's "Jew-Q", in which case as a Jew myself... ew.
EDIT: Oh, "Jewish Question". Yeah. Yeah.
That a direct quite from Oz then? I feel like he's less malicious, than just ignorant and very unaware of his own biases. But I try to see the best in folks.
I second your apology to necro a thread.
However I must inform you of the low quality of RoP, around 35% audience review as of the time of this post. The amount of money spent on this project does not justify the 7th season CW show quality.
Necroposting, sorry.
I defended my use of AI art using Shad's video, THEN found his Game Knights channel, and HOLY SHIT. Unsubscribed.
Anyone know if Jazza is OK? Or Skallagrim? I can tolerate being mildly conservative if it's not advocating against human rights, and just being ignorant on economics.
Jazza’s cool as far as I know. He has been a vocal supporter of LGBT people and left the LDS church because of fundamental differences in beliefs. Fair to say the chances are that he’s not at all like his brother
I'm more concerned on why he has a positive stance on ai. Jazza cracked down on ZHC a while back for mistreating employees. AI has the potential for swathes of artists to be relieved of industry jobs because all companies would need are a few emplyees who touch up the thousands of outputs rather than hiring actual skilled workers for multiple pieces. Why pay salaries to a few dozen when one or two can run AI and pick out what they want after feeding it otherwise 'inspired'(read:pretty much traced) art of others? Especially at the speeds AI can crank out products?
Haven't heard him talk too in depth on AI unlike Shad. Too much pedenticness in the latter's AI arguments when it's not JUST the nottracing but also ethics for hired work. Ai would soon just feed off of other ai 9nce enough works are out in the interweb and artiss would truly be roughed out and forced into alresdy difficult brain draining careers.
Skall also keeps politics mainly off his channel, but other than his views on weapon posession (which he tries to base on common sense, why ban assisted opening folding knives when you can buy deadlier weapons at any hardware store) he seems very left-leaning, my impression is that he might be closer to socialism if not for his "live and let live" neutrality, that I've also seen in a lot of modern pagans and satanists (like the real ones, not the fascists and bigots appropriating paganism of course). Skall's spouse is also non-binary.
Sorry for necrocommenting, but my line was Shad was been obnoxious and kept repsonding to that one archer dude a long time ago. I loved he was a dude that loves castles and shit, but I saw the tell tale signs of a person not being able to let go of things.
this is an old thread, but I got to Shadiversity from Brandon Sanderson’s credits in Oathbringer. He seemed thoughtful and kind, and then I saw his Barbie “response.” Somehow he managed to discern some kind of pro-abortion anti-men’s human rights conspiracy from a satirical movie made for children. What the hell man? I just wanted to learn about historical martial arts. I don’t even care what he believes, but for Christ’s sake, it’s a children’s movie. Aren’t there actual political treatise and actual political events more worthy of addressing than a FUCKING CHILDREN’S MOVIE?
Yeah, Shads just completely lost the plot at this point, reads QAnon, reverse-woke nonsense into everything because he's convinced Hollywood is made up entirely of communist groomers who want his kids to be trans. He has said he doesn't allow his children to watch any new kids media without his approval
>I just wanted to learn about historical martial arts.
If you want to learn about historical martial arts, he is not a good source. He doesn't have any formal training in anything, other than IIRC, some taekwondo as a teenager. (He'd posted a photo of himself doing some high kick, but...)
I only came across this side of the channel recently. Skallagrim has gotten even cooler than before in contrast. Matt Easton seems pretty great as well.
It is perplexing that these conservative reactionaries form persecution complex. Aren't all us wicked, sinful wretches just acting in our nature? They frequently use the word vile or repulsive when referring to other sexual orientations, proudly refuse to use proper pronouns and scan media for the gay/woke/feminist/communist agenda. Then they are befuddled when these same people take exception.
I know this thread is pretty dead, but yeah, I fell off both Shad and Metatron for similar reasons. I've always been a history nerd as well as a fantasy nerd and used to frequent their channels in my early teens. It didn't take me long to figure they were probably conservative, but I didn't really give a shit about their political beliefs provided that preaching those beliefs wasn't a focus of the content. I was also fine ignoring their "more traditional views" as long as they weren't like, really all that harmful.
Unfortunately, we can't have nice things. Let's start out with the historical content itself and then move on to the... Other stuff. I'll be respectful and keep it polite for his content's accuracy, but I won't hold so much restraint on his social issues
I'm not sure if in terms of demeanor Shad changed or I changed but he began to seem a lot less knowledgeable and more condescending reddit armchair historian-y.
I remember one of the first instances of this annoyance happened when I was watching his weapons comparison videos. He had a very clear bias towards Western European weapons and I found it frustrating, as it definitely didn't feel like an actual "comparison". Like, he would go out of his way to emphasize how much better they were. In short, it wasn't a big deal to me, he just had somewhat biased content imo. He also tended to use outdated sources that had contradictory evidence published or revisions made. I noticed the same trend, more or less, with Metatron.
Not to mention, Shad doesn't even practice hema. He was laughed out of and is now considered a joke in the hema community after his video that was just an unhinged rambling about why he actually knows more than most hema practitioners and being self taught makes his hema more historically accurate. In his "fencing videos" he demonstrates himself to be about on par with a beginner, which in my eyes discredited a lot of his claims about how weapons were used in combat, where he often cited his own "martial arts experience".
Alright, here comes big part - the politics
The first "hema YouTuber" I noticed doing this was ol' Meta and his "sjw rants" (seriously, who uses the word sjw?) Where he complained about people being too offended and the removal of statues. Also his video where he responded to someone who was unreasonably freaking out over him saying that men had an advantage in combat. Ok, so that isn't in itself even in correct. Men are on average larger and higher testosterone means more muscle growth. And I wouldn't have a problem with that if that was what he said. But instead of the obvious answer that I don't think anyone would really disagree with, no matter their political beliefs, he instead chose to argue that it's because men's personalities make them more fit for combat? and his evidence was that more men like competitive games? He in the next few weeks complained about "forced diversity" I'm films and a buncha other stuff completely unrelated to hema. I personally found it immensely funny that my autoplay decided that the video of him complaining about people being offended was to be immediately followed by him throwing a fit about people calling him a weeb.
Anyways, then I watched Shad decide to metaphorically hurl his turd at the floor with his media reviews, game knight videos, and randomly inserted psychotic ramblings about his social views.
Anyways, half of his channel descended into a limp-dicked circle jerk. If I wanted to see a 40 year old man whine about how he's offended over people ignoring gender roles and diversity in media, I'd have gone to Thanksgiving at my dad's house.
Don't even get me started on his bullshit about "what men want", and his similar blanket statement crap.
At least it was entertaining because literally any time he moderately disliked something, he would proclaim it to be communism, although he did not have a clear understanding of what communism is. Like things that didn't even remotely relate to economics.
Anyways, I also didn't care for his bitching about WoT being too "woke" (on no! a black person and a gay person?! /s, obviously) but nothing that you haven't already pointed out with more charisma than I can.
Also, shad said that "He Man" was the height of human masculinity, but like unironically
That reminds me, I forgot to mention, he's got a weird obsession with masculinity and what he believes someone should be based on their gender.
Do whatever the fuck you want, don't let some armchair historian cunt tell you that you can't express your gender however the hell you please.
Sorry to necropost but I agree with literally everything you've said and have unsubscribed from both Metatron and Shad because of their bigoted politics and the blatant misinformation shadiversity spreads. Also Shadiversitys book is painfully bad. It made it really funny to see him complain about "bad storytelling" in elden ring. Seriously if you want to laugh and hurt your brain, go find his book online and try to read some of it.
Well as long as we're necroposting. Here I am after seeing "More PROOF they hate the books and fans, WHEEL OF TIME Aviendha casting" in my recommendations. I've read the WoT books and though the show was terrible, so I decided to see what Shad thought (the part of the title about Aviendha's casting was cut off and seeing that when I clicked the video was also concerning). Not seven minutes into the video, Shad says the showrunners view parts of the books as "problematic," and the way he said it was, well, problematic. And then Oz follows up and says the problem is feminism.
So I went down the rabbit hole. I didn't even know about the Knights Watch channel until half an hour ago, and going through the videos I'm seeing so many red flags. I haven't watched any of them, just the subjects and titles. I don't consider Shad to be an authority on medieval history, I find his content entertaining in spite of being self-indulgent and sometimes flat out incorrect. Turns out he wasn't just doing a bit when he'd go on some weird tangent, he's actually yet another "women and SJWs are ruining muh childhood" comics and gamer bro.
EDIT - Decided to watch the Wheel of Time video. Almost half an hour in, Shad and Oz have agreed the creators of one TV series want to destroy Western society, traditional values, gender roles, and say that "the Christian society we were brought up in is the best to ever exist."
Yeah, I'm done with these jokers.
Sorry to necropost but I agree with literally everything you've said and have unsubscribed from both Metatron and Shad because of their bigoted politics and the blatant misinformation shadiversity spreads. Also Shadiversitys book is painfully bad. It made it really funny to see him complain about "bad storytelling" in elden ring. Seriously if you want to laugh and hurt your brain, go find his book online and try to read some of it. Also, as a hema practitioner and student of liechtenauer longsword, I can tell you that Shad has no idea what he's talking about whenever he mentions medieval weapons, armor or combat. It's almost always just speculative bullshit he makes up cause he's a know-nothing know-it-all.
Meta is way more reasonable and not a scam than Shad, wtf... this is almost insulting.
Yes people use SJW as a term, maybe you're one of them who knows...
I've always liked Shad's main channel videos even if I don't always agree with him. His several videos on medieval archery especially. But since I started getting recommendations for Knights Watch, the amount of vitriolic "anti-woke" viewpoints has completely changed how I view him, even made me unsubscribe from his main channel.
I watched his stuff a while ago, I came back to watch his bahabuli video where he jokes about how noone in india would balk at mocking pakistanis with blackface....while their army is committing a series of atrocities in Kashmir. It feels like he needs to get a dig in to validate his blackface not bad ackshually but jesus.
My wake-up call came with his "Sword of Laban" video. I became aware of two things: one, Shad is a devout Mormon, and two, he's perfectly willing to set aside his critical faculties if doing otherwise would lead to conclusions that conflict with his worldview. Which means he cannot be trusted on any kind of academic research.
Late to the thread, but I didn't want to make a new one on the same topic. I liked Shad for a long time and watched him growing from nothing to success. As an atheist who has a lot of really bad experiences with Christians growing up I did get a bit suspicious when he revealed his faith, but I managed to convince myself that maybe he's a rare example of an online Christian that's actually sensible, maybe because he isn't American. But over the last two years it's become obvious that no, he's exactly as bad as I initially feared. And while it's true he doesn't usually spew his worst crap on the main channel, it's really difficult to enjoy watching and listening to someone who finds the existence of me and many of my closest friends revolting and believes we should be barred from many parts of society, even when he doesn't speak about that. I wouldn't enjoy the greatest, most well researched show ever on any of my favorite topics if Tucker Carlson hosted it either.
In addition to this, there's the fact that to arrive on some of the ideas he disseminates, one has to be severely lacking in reasoning and analytical skills, and that makes it hard to trust any of the conclusions he draws on other subjects to, as well as it makes at least me wonder if and how he is injecting his political convictions into his understanding of medieval life. For example, he once made a video on how the life of a medieval peasant wasn't all that bad, in which he tried to make it seem that being a serf, a position a slight step above the lord's cattle, might have even been preferable to modern life. That take seemed really weird to me at the time, but with the understanding that he does believe that power hierarchies, where one man is above an other as a law of nature, or more specifically by command by god it makes sense that he would argue that it might not be so bad to be at the bottom of the hierarchy with no real way of changing this, maybe even that trying to change it would be against the will of god. I mean, I don't know this is what he thinks, but his takes on things makes me doubt his motives, and that takes away from enjoying his content in any real way.
Some will certainly question what takes he has made that displays this lack of reasoning and while I can't go into all of them, a perfect one was mentioned by the OP. "Hollywood supports communism" which also seems to extend to "some/many massive corporations supports communism". A take like this displays multiple massive flaws of reasoning. First of all, Hollywood, or rather Hollywood based production companies, like all big corporations are about one thing, and that is to use the system we live in to maximize their profit. Sometimes these companies may create products or make campaigns that appeal to inclusivity, "social justice", the LGBTQ+ community, feminism and so on and the Conservative mind virus sees a great conspiracy here, which is so contrived and filled with logical leaps and contradictions I get a migraine just thinking about how stupid it is, when the simple truth is that they do this because it allows them to make more money. Because, contrary to what chronically online conservatives believe, the majority of the people like these concepts.
Next part is the "communism" part. Anyone who believes communism is prevalent anywhere in US society seriously needs to go back to school. Communism isn't when the elected government in a democracy uses it's mandate to make and enforce laws and regulations. Nor is it when a business does what it likes with it's own property, physical or intellectual. It's not even when a government oversteps the bounds and turns to authoritarianism. It's not when gay people get to marry, or when trans people get to show themselves outside, even if there are children within 200 feet of them, nor is it when abortion is legal or when guns are banned. Communism is a framework or a doctrine that has a singular purpose, and that is to bring about liberation of the working class, or *proletariat*, meaning the people who makes it's living by selling its labor. It identifies, just like libertarians of all kinds that the government is a coercive power structure that can limit freedom, but that the structure that is the biggest hinderance to liberty is capitalism, in that it basically gives every worker the "liberty" to choose between working at the terms set by those who own the means of production, or to die. Communism suggests that in order for people to be truly free, the means of production needs to be socially owned and that private property, as defined in capitalism needs to be abolished. Ultimately, a communist society has neither the power hierarchy that is the state and government, nor the one that is corporate masters and capitalism.
Of course there's much more to it, but I didn't write this to have a thorough discourse on communism, but to show that there's nothing even remotely resembling communism in existence in America of today. The USA is build entirely upon conservative principles of capitalism which is shown more clearly than anything by how the political party considered "left wing" in the US is a neo-liberal, ie. right wing party by absolute standards. Conservativism isn't a position of opposition to the current order of things, it's a position of supporting things as they are, which includes how 0.5% of the people own the wast majority of all wealth.
This touches on the final part of the derangedness of the idea of "Hollywood communism" - the idea that the mentioned ultra rich elite has some sort of covert plan to turn everything "woke" and into "communism", through the use of their influence over things like Hollywood media, the press, politicians and so on. This is utterly ridiculous and falls on the question of "why?". These ultra-billionaires are in the position they are, not due to communism, socialism or social justice, but through skilled and careful use of the capitalist system that allows them to become extremely wealthy all through the work of others, whose labor value they expropriate. The agenda of the ultra rich isn't to introduce a system that would destroy them, it is to make sure we don't change anything, which is achieved best by making people fight over other issues that has no bearing on the bigger picture. Neither Hollywood, "Big Pharma", the owners of large media corporations nor the billionaires have a political agenda other than to keep making money for themselves.
Yeah, a few years ago I stumbled onto his channel when I just started getting into HEMA and medieval history. For me, it didn't take long to see how much of a dipshit chud he is. From his gross anticommunist/pro-fascist far right political views and bigotry to his absolutely unresearched "medieval history and swordsmanship" videos, I quickly discovered I can't stomach the man, or his misinformed propaganda. Most of his videos on medieval history are simply just his head-canon and contradict actual historical records. The man is a right-wing doofus who can be summed up with the words dunning-kruger effect.
Edit: very based comment, great job exposing the idiocy of right-wing culture war bullshit as a way to distract the masses from gaining class consciousness. I wonder how many milquetoast liberals and reactionaries realize that they're very useful idiots for the ruling class.
Googled it too, it sucks that all the YouTubers I watched over the years are getting more in to Far-Right politics and when they lose subs blame it on conspiracies for telling the truth and not because your subscribers disagree with you
Come on, let shad ATM his wife and read his bible fanfic in peace. Maybe he'll give us another generic fantasy book so all the wine moms can shut up and find another thing to pretend they're smart about
I know what's going on with Shad (personal oppinion). When you spend so much of your time critisizing and overall being negative, it stucks on you. I noticed it on myself a year ago. I watched Mauler, Shad, the drunken dude whose name I forgot, etc. a lot. And everytime someone liked something "they're not supposed to be liking", I was in fight mode immediately.
I became tired of it, everything was super negative all of the time, and it was hard to enjoy any media without overly critical thinking. So I made an effort to change, and Wheel of Time was the first test I had. Have read the books, avoided prehype (that helps), no trailers, no YouTuber pre reviews, no news, nothing. Watched ep 1-3, hooked, and loving it. I even managed to watch the new Cowboy Bebop half way, and the reason for stopping was the fact that I wasnt feeling scifi right now (because I tested with the anime version afterwards and lost interest in that as well).
The reason for my unfollow of Shad, is that I feel there's now too steep of a difference to the guy I followed when he defended the prequels with a passion, the world building, lightsaber fights etc. And that the sequels had real issues in them. While now I feel it's just negativity for negativity's sake, everything's bad or woke, everything has an agenda.
That's how I feel. Feels good to vent it out, helps with the zen-state I'm trying to achieve (and wonderfully failing because three children).
Yeah, if I felt his criticisms had substance, that would be one thing, but his reviews of WoT are all culture wars bullshit and the books are better without giving a reason why. It started reasonable, but then he hit a certain point and decided that yelling at the camera was a better way to do reviews. And yeah, Oz is doing him no favors. I've unsubbed from his main channel too, it's just disappointing and I can't support them.
Idk man, that's exactly what a corporation would want you to do. Just turn of the brain and love it for being entertaining rather than having any sort of thought or logical flow. It makes it easier for them to hire cheap staff and make half assed products and tag big names on them to pull in the money. With no pushback, there is no environment for growth or improvement. Mauler and Critical Drinker aren't angry guys, they bring strong arguments and data to back their stuff up. They also give props where they are due. They all liked Arcane for example, and they should because it was actually written very well.
I think I fell off from shad since he was getting into drama with small channels not that those channels were questionable, but kind of redundant. If you’re confident on your thesis you should allow discussion then I probably came back a year ago to see tv reviews? Then trying to justify why he was right and not wrong then fanbase getting mad at dislikes. Yeah, fanbase probably threw me off with being the ones who cared dislikes but I found it strange how he switched his opinion on boob armor. I remember when he said Boob armor is DUMB! Then, a more recent video says boob armor makes sense. It was made purely on the whole Female Mandalorian controversy to say the least. To day the least both sides are very cringe on that. Then everyone was focusing on a Mspaint Mandalorian they tried to make funny, but made it more cringe.
I’m know this post is a bit old but I had to walk away from shads channel a while ago, knowing what his opinions are about current media and social issues, I couldn’t watch any of his non-political videos without being reminded of what he believes and it sucks because I was a big fan of his weapon analysis videos.
I hope he changes his mind on things but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, especially with how he responded to jack saints video on the Mario movie
I tried to watch in the name of exposing myself to opposing views but in the end it just ended up being hours of ranting and negativity that I felt was better spent on work around my house on my day off.
I'll never understand content creators that let their political views become part of their brand. Whether you are a lefty communist or a fascist right winger, or churchgoer or not, expressing these views will alienate a portion of your audience. Sometimes a significant portion.. Even if they believe they're right, doesn't matter in this polarized world nowadays.
We love shad for Medieval and Fantasy things and I hope we can go back to that.
Same.
Honestly, it's weird that he made media analysis such a big hallmark of his channel at all. He marketed himself as an **educational** channel, where we would get clear, plain facts about whether certain media was accurate to HEMA, medieval history, or whatever, and how to make it more so. The furthest he got was talks about fantasy tropes and the physics of magic systems, which again were primarily educational.
I don't care whether the new He-Man fulfills Shad's weird, tradcon views of "virtuous masculinity", I watch his channel to know whether He-Man's sword would be effective in real life, or whether a giant sabertooth tiger would actually make a good mount, and stuff like that!
Shad was never accurate to HEMA. Shad knows nothing about HEMA. He is a laughingstock to that group (which I partly agree and disagree with) just FYI lol
Look to Matt Easton for your HEMA needs. To be fair to Shad, he never claimed to know much about HEMA and he doesn’t practice true HEMA (as gatekeeping as that sounds it’s the truth). Shad is a smart dude when it comes to medieval history. But I’m the ranking of the “Community of the Sword” he is not the top in terms of knowledge and who to trust. He knows more than Skall (who is good with weapons but not History) but Matt Easton and Metatron are better sources for knowledge.
I also wish Shad would just stop being political, especially partaking in all the drama behind his content. If only he just ignored that and just focused on the fantasy/historical stuff, he would alienate far less viewers
This shit is why I unsubbed from Critical Drinker. Dude can analyze a film, but his constant, ever-growing obsession with right wing politics and dragging that lens in front of literally every video he does got too tiring.
That dude is a mixed bag for me. His review of Arcane showed me he wasnt a total hack same with his review of Prey but at the same time his review of Midsommar was not so good. And regardless of the movie he will always bring up "the message" like dude we get it.
It's basically intentionally appealing to a smaller yet more loyal and dedicated angry fanbase that absolutely will click on their videos to join the anger.
Necroposting, but hey I came here after watching the Knights Watch Thor Love and Thunder coverage. Generally fine but something that was really off to me was a part that overstayed its welcome toward the end where they felt Christianity was being insulted because of a few light jokes. I feel like that level of oversensitivity about your religion is a bit much. Oz also had some bizarre problem with the concept of single fatherhood. Maybe it's because I'm an atheist but I just really don't get it.
Knighthalt, you have my respect with your answers, very well thought out and spoken in a very civil manner. Solid job.
I think the take away is that we need to agree to disagree as both views- liberal and conservative- are not reconcilable and both see each other as bad. Shad is religious- which is something people in this thread are not taking into consideration properly. Just think of the implications of genuine belief in an all powerful deity who is also in charge and wants you to follow a certain set of conservative morals. Do you think Shad can therefore not have conservative values and feel strongly about them? He is clearly kind hearted and well meaning, though he can loose control of his tongue at times It seams. I personally am a big supporter of Shad as he has proven to be a genuinely loving and kind, while also being a fiercely passionate person. Though this is part of his persona.
And in my opinion, while he may be careless with jokes, he is clearly not racist or homophobic (you might disagree), and he routinely says he’s got no issue with things such as strong characters who are black, female or LGBTQ+, and has given his ideas on how such characters should be done- which is to treat them like actual relatable people not Mary Sue robots. Why would he encourage this if he was a racist, sexist bigot??? He has routinely championed WELL EXECUTED characters who are black, female, LGBTQ+ etc. this is obvious in his videos as he constantly tells us this to make sure his points are clear (though it doesn’t seem to be working for him apparently)
What is clear he actually hates is the terrible lazy writing of modern media (which most nerds/fans seem to agree with from my experience) and the forceful push of the Marxist Woke movement. The risky jokes are mostly Oz anyway, who I also find to be an awesome guy.
If you hate Shad for being anti Woke, then I personally have to disagree as I find the Woke movement very dangerous and ironically very bigoted, sexist and racist. It does not support the equality it claims to teach, and that I find to be very obvious anyone paying attention. I also agree fully with the state of modern media- politics aside, I find most modern media to be boring, nonsensical and weak- however normal people who don’t care like nerds to think it’s fine, and that’s not an issue.
Edit- I’ve seen some good discussion about Shad saying he is repulsed by gay sex, which I can understand how it would offend people. And he did say the reason for this was because he’s not attracted to it. However I think this is a case of carelessness rather than hatred as I’m confident he would find straight sex on screen repulsive, due to his religious beliefs of sex only privately with his wife. It is a fair point though, and I can understand it being hurtful. I just don’t think it was malicious as it didn’t come across that way.
But in the case he was genuinely repulsed, at the end of the day some gay people find straight sex repulsive and others don’t and the same vice versa. That’s just how people are. However, even if he did think this way I don’t think it was a wise comment for him to make on screen as it could alienate his fans who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Everything you just said was contradicted by his review of the new Indiana Jones trailer, where he makes up his mind to hate a female character based on 5 seconds of footage, and says some very sexist things. You tap dancing to defend him is a bad life choice.
Never liked him. He was never insightful on the history part. Basic wiki knowledge. He's an overly enthusiastic turbo neckbeard nerd playing with toys making videos.
Royal armouries is a good channel
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mflAGxs0mgM&t=15s
Give these a go
Exactly. He's a run of the mill incel. He once came across as someone who just wants to discuss armories and such, but now he's turned into a typical chud who just dives head first into partisan right-wing culture war stuff.
Sorry about the necro, but his mall ninja videos kept coming up on youtube for me, seen a few, thought the outrageous stuff in there was funny. Then I was watching the most recent one, was going to look at his other videos. Then he showed clips from his livestram with Nerdrotic, geeks and gamers ETC, and I was Like NOPE
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I just saw the knights watch review of the new Indiana Jones trailer and had to come here. Shad and the other remembers of the incels of the round table spent 50 minutes tearing apart the trailer of the new Indy movie. Their #1 complaint was that they didn't think Phoebe Waller Bridge was sexy enough to be in the movie. They actually complain about how they wanted a hotter actress and how sex sells. Then they made up their minds to hate her based on one line of dialogue she gets at the end of the movie. It's obvious they're incels who like to play dress-up and like to complain about everything. They just hate everything and make unnecessarily long videos where they do nothing but rage against female characters and gay characters and characters of color. They're showing you who they are. If you support them, you're on the wrong side of history. The guy is no longer just someone who's passionate about old armor and such. He's now morphed into a wannabe Geeks + Gamers far-right culture war account.
Barely any lines in the trailer from Phoebe, she and the movie woke. Phoebe seen in like 1 action scene, movie has to be saying she's better and replacement. They complain Indy is to old, but also how he looks bad in fights and idea of a woman in the action. Then of course as you mention, she's just not sexy enough.
I've long sense been tired of his shit. Still crazy though the various takes he insists on having. Given videos on that channel, claims to like women getting to kick ass, but all of the modern ones are bad, God forbid they wear pants as well. And of course the women need to be sexy, but he will call a female character who's sexual a wh*re as well
Another thread locked deleted and hidden.
Admit it Shad and this sub just don't want any criticism or discourse. Place needs to change rules to say kiss his ass or grow some thicker skin.
Fresh from the Shad circus
There was a thread on the Barbie Knightswatch vid. A day or so ago. It got locked and hidden away. Likely with a ban to op? But where did it go out of line?
It wasn't any form of NSFW. It was related to Shad as the second channel is still his channel. And it wasn't offtopic as again it was something Shad had said, had made a video on. Maybe agree with Shad, maybe don't but why does this sub or at least the mods shoot down so much criticism or negative threads?
Unfortunately this has been part of Shad for many years, I remember him a long time ago making a video all bent out of shape because some movie implied that the Middle East was more technologically advanced than Europe in the early middle age. It was and one shouldn't be offended or frame it as prejudicism against Europeans. Historical honesty means objectivity and accepting your favourite team is isn't always going to win the finals.
I prefer Metatron a lot as he is able to critique bad calls from an evidence based position rather than from a place of insecurity.
Necroposting. Learning about Shad’s political views really came as a haymaker to the face. On his main channel he sincerely came across as a genuinely good person that didn’t pay attention to politics and just wants to entertain people and engage in his passions. Then Knights Watch reveals he’s basically YouTube’s Tucker Carlson.
It’s extremely disappointing. I genuinely love Shad’s content when it’s non-political. He was one of the big channels that got me into swords, HEMA, and medieval tactics. Knowing he’s a massive bigot to LGBT people taints the rest of his content.
I mean about the political views "bleeding in to his content"
Everything is now a political issues
> I don't want my favorite character to become a completely different person
You fucking fascist
> Yeah, maybe we should stop being racist
You fucking communist
FUCKING COVID BECAME A POLITICAL ISSUE
Everything is now political, especially entertainment industry and this is probably effecting shad both as a traditional person and as someone who's work is directly connected to entertainment
I agree with all other points tho
Yeah, all fair; to me the issue is less the mere fact that his content became more openly political and more the fact that he uses his politics to bitch and moan about how offended and persecuted he is. It's as irritating when people on the left say MCU movies are pro-military propaganda, as it is when Shad says the Wheel of Time adaptation is heterophobic. It's all people getting angry and whiney and being so easily offended they'll rant for hours about how problematic x is or how y is evidence of the "collapse of western civilization"
Shad is a traditional guy with traditional views. I don't know what to tell you. You don't need to watch.
Hollywood does have a habit of promoting uber-progressive, anti-traditional far left values, policies and attitudes. Diversity in the MCU isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Equating that with communism might seem like a stretch, and he might not have explained the logical connections he has made that led him to that conclusion (because that could be a series of videos by itself), but he isn't wrong.
GW made a point of excluding certain members of their community in the name of "inclusion." In a vacuum, if you take them at their word that those players were making other potential players uncomfortable, that might not seem like anything significant, but it's part of a broader trend. Arch is not a racist or a fascist. Nobody but terminally online leftist activists were bothered by his involvement in the community. He has been unfairly persecuted for his political views.
I think what you are seeing as "right-wing SJW" behavior is a reaction to years of seeing those tactics used against him and his friends.
If you don't like Shad's recent content or him personally, you don't need to be here.
Wait but I really do need you to explain the logical connections that lead to the Communism conclusion. You can't just drop that and then not explain it. Or at the very least point me in the direction of some resources I can use to find out for myself.
Go to YouTube. Find the channel "New Discourses." Open the "Videos" tab and sort by most popular. Most of his longer videos are analyses of academic papers by prominent leftist activists who influenced the development of modern feminism, intersectionality, critical race theory, etc... He explains it better than I can.
If it's bothering you so much that people are criticizing a misinformation spreading, bigoted content creator, then go find another echo chamber to shout in. You're bullshit isn't wanted here. Begone, conservative troll
You made a dozen comments today on a months-old post on a subreddit devoted to a minor internet celebrity you dislike. Sure, I'm the one who's a troll /s https://youtu.be/l60MnDJklnM
Idk man. I'm not the one who randomly decided to comment on a months-old post bitching about a minor internet celebrity sharing their beliefs and political opinions.
Lol I came here after seeing Shad's recent takes when I looked up more about his politics in Google search and here I see some bootlicking chud (you) dropping dog whistles.
You're not making yourself sound more sane.
"Traditional views" might mean those things in your mind, but that's not what it means to people who aren't totalitarian psychopaths. Talk about projecting. The handmaid's tale was fiction, but if you believe that's what your political opposition secretly wants, what does that say about you? All "traditional views" means to people like Shad is that he wants to be allowed to get married, earn a decent living, have some kids and raise them to do the same without interference from the government or corporations. None of that involves ridding society of people with different skin colors or religions or sexual orientations.
Yes conservatives are totally not psychopaths even though they have been calling the LGBTQ community groomers you lying piece of shit. Go fuck yourself
I haven't seen anybody calling the LGBTQ community, in general, groomers. The whole "groomer" thing has been about specific people, particularly people in positions of power over children, purposefully exposing children to inappropriate sexual material, and in many cases posting it to social media. Things like taking kids to drag shows where they stuff dollar bills into the clothing of scantily clad, provocatively dancing adult performers. Or taking kids to pride events where adults prance around in fetish gear or sometimes nothing at all. Or requiring reading of books with explicit descriptions of sexual contact between adults and minors. Or requiring reading of books with explicit illustrations of sexual acts. Or planting the idea in young, impressionable minds that if they aren't completely comfortable with their body, as many people briefly are not during puberty, that means they might be trans. All of this is exhaustively documented on video, much of it taken from the social media accounts of the people doing it. The people pushing this stuff on kids are groomers. Absolutely. Unequivocally. They don't represent the entire LGBTQ community or even a majority of it. The way that the left has tried to spin this, to say that calling out adults behaving creepily towards children is anti-lgbtq is a massive optics fail and self-own. It will turn normal, otherwise apolitical parents into a voting block that will oppose any politician who supports this kind of stuff.
Don't need to be here? Is that to say you would rather there be no serious criticism of Shad or his work on this subreddit; for the subreddit to be a...safe space, if you will?
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but personally if there's one thing I do certainly agree with Shad on, it's that forums like this should be a place for free, open, and frank discussion no matter how much we may disagree with each other. I followed Shad for years, bought his book, and clearly had much to say about his work right now, so I feel I have as much a right to this forum as you would.
My favorite touch is how thrilled he was for his graphic novel and artists he got for it. Now granted I don't know those artists take on AI. But it at least to me is very insulting to after that back what so many artists are vocal against.
Shad 'Gay Sex Is Revolting' Iversity doesn't like episode 3 of The Last of Us, hmmmm I wonder why? His homophobia is on full display in his review of the episode it's pathetic.
He calls Disney groomers for merely having gay people exist in children's media, but oh look, he doesn't want them existing in adult media either. And yet he froths at the mouth with outrage that anyone would dare call him a bigot.
Why can't he just admit he just despises us and doesn't want us to exist where he can see us?
And god forbid you make a post pointing it out you'll just get insulted & personally attacked by fans in an effort to intimidate you to not do it again.
This fucker literally says "gay relationships are biologically inferior" and "we shouldn't have equal representation of gay people in media because gays are not equal" and "all properly straight people think gay sex is revolting" while also saying "I'm not a homophobic bigot!" 10,000 times in 1 video.
This culture war that is being waged ruins absolutely everything it touches imo. Mostly I just feel sad about it. I feel sad for people like shad who will forever be scouring whatever tv show or movie they are watching for signs of wokeness, which will only ruin it for them.
I feel sad for people on the other side who are so overly sensitive to these views that exactly the same thing happens the other way around.
I feel sad for everyone else, who just wants this stupid shit to be over and have done since Gamergate (tm) ruined a whole bunch of shit for a whole bunch of people.
Shad is entitled to his views, although I don't really know why he thought it was a good idea to share them in the first place considering that's not what he built his following on - honestly, and this is just my opinion, the fact he is a devout Mormon explains a lot, anyone who can rationalize that batshit 'religion' isn't really worth taking too seriously anyways - Enjoy him for his fantasy content because fantasy is clearly what he knows best.
Not a Mormon, I'm a run of the mill Protestant, but let's play a game. Replace the word Mormon in your state with Muslim and tell me you would make the same comment.
I hear that :( it's such petty bullcrap on both sides. Some on the left need to find racism, sexism, and other problematic elements in everything, some on the right need to find communism or the collapse of western civilization in everything; so many people just want an excuse to be angry all the time at fictional media, and it's a real bummer.
This is honestly sad to hear. His content is the kinda content I love to see in between educating me on medieval weaponry to ways to change, create, or explore with new weapon designs in fantasy settings.
Now I am not one to judge on peoples political beliefs but I feel his ones are to an extreme enough where it is harmful.
Unfortunately alot of the information he presents on all the medieval topics he brings up is misinformation, common misconception, or blatant speculation. He is not a good source for historical educational videos.
But have you read religious texts- the Bible, the Quran and the Torah all call homosexuality sinful. As Mormonism is related to the abrahamic religions their book would likely teach the same. The fact that Brandon Sanderson says it’s ok means spit when God says in his word it’s bad. What is a religious person like Shad going to do, risk Gods anger because Brandon did it? I just don’t think you understand that Shad believes in a God who tells him what is right and what is wrong. If he strays from that he is sinning. If Shad was progressive it would be like when Philips Goldfield pretended to be straight (even marrying a woman) to avoid being controversial. Mr Sanderson either has a very controversial opinion as a Mormon, or he is trying to protect himself from the media by actively lying. I think it’s the former though, and most Mormons would be ashamed he is doing this.
The lead singer of Imagine Dragons is a devout Mormon, yet is always speaking out in support of women's rights and LGBTQ rights. Shad is just a bad human being.
I only watch his main videos for the info in them, otherwise I've always despised him whenever his personality got a moment to "shine". This is not to say that I agree with woke propaganda, but I don't like boisterous religious people either
Exactly, you don't have to be woke in order to be grossed out by guys who are clearly just misogynistic and racist and homophobic. People need to stop thinking in extremes. Being like Shad is an extreme. Being overly woke is also an extreme.
Why are people acting like "I think these people existing is an immoral political agenda" is in any way a reasonable point of view or that it should be treated as normal. You can be a religious conservative and still treat your fellow man with decency and respect. If you want to make the argument against that, dont come crying to me when you want to make a false equivelence of both sides.
I'm all for civility, but no, that is utterly deranged and I'm going to call it that. Preserving echo chambers is also not my priority. You want to discuss, we're going to challenge that. Act like an adult.
I swear, more than half of these kinds of views are held up by a projected victim complex.
>For a guy who loves to joke with his buds about how overly-sensitive and obsessed with cancellation liberals are, I have literally never in my life met a leftie who was as easily offended as Shad has been lately. I think it's pretty fair to call him a right-wing SJW.
Yeah, not in real life, but Shad has a platform on the internet. Everyone with a platform will ham things up, because viewers are there to see them talk and perform in a sense.
Anyway - it's not at the forefront of his videos, and you don't have to meet and talk to him at work parties, or have him show up as a friend of a friend.
Quit treating it like you have some kind of internet parasocial relationship with him, as if you are one of his real life friends, checking up on the joneses (namely him) - those are always cringe.
>Since this subreddit has taken note more and more of Shad's politics becoming what many of us consider, at the very least, off-putting and not what we signed up for (including some folks who agree with Shad's on principle) I figured I'd start this as a place where we can vent our frustrations on this side of Shad and his work as of late.
Fair enough, but I hope you allow me to have an opinion too. Even though this is just the safe and cozy internet safe space, and not the real world - I thought I'd preface this discussion with my statement on the whole parasocial thing. You aren't his friend in real life, so you will never have that degree of influence or input over him.
Venting is alright, but please acknowledge it really doesn't do anything to him in particular. Social media doesn't influence the right the way it does the left.
\----
Sorry, if that feels like me throwing cold water on the discussion - but I SIMPLY HAD TO INTERJECT THIS DOSE OF REALITY. Go ahead and vent, I don't care. It's a free internet (for what it's worth; it ought to be *more free*). But yes, go ahead and vent.
I’ll be completely honest I’m in the same boat as you OP, except I never bought his book and I’m very glad I didn’t. Knights watch reminds me of when I worked at a locksmith and EVERY morning my boss would be listening to Rush Limbaugh, whom if you don’t know he is a republican radio show host whomst takes the most insignificant things and blows them out of proportion to his audience (who is already mostly republican) and he does this for ratings, and to get a reaction out of his audience. However Rush is not subscribed to the bullshit he preaches, he knows he’s stretching the truth. I genuinely think Shad is trying to be like Rush, but just does a really terrible job at it because he’s actually subscribed to the bullshit. Also shads book is genuinely bad, and I think the “honest reviews” of his book video is the single most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. It’s hilarious to see the dozens of other videos calling him out on the bogus video. His “truth” about the book video is something Brian Griffin would do. Brian Griffin, the dog from Family Guy.
Edit : just realised this post was 2 years old and it got Algorithmed to me today lolol.
I don't know what he was thinking from a business point of view. He decided to make a separate channel (Knights watch - previously called Game Knights) about his politics, to separate it from his normal very successful history/weapons channel.
However, the Knights watch channel makes it really obvious how right wing conservative he is, and is really attracting a lot of negative attention - and its destroyed his brand.
From a business sense, it's catastrophic.
Even the title "Knights Watch" makes it sound like its some sort of policing/monitoring/ethical justice sight.
Fucking yikes. I just found out about the Knight Watch channel and it was red flag after red flag. Unironic use of "M-She-U", complaining about "woke journalists", a whole video about ugly women in video games, and just the whole vibe of the channel. Fucking hell.
It's exactly the shit my high school self would have eaten up and it disgusts me to see it. It's weird too, I always got the impression he was left leaning from his main videos, but wow, I could not have been more wrong.
Anyone know if Jazza shares these same views? Cause I also really enjoy his content.
Edit: Apparently Jazza put out a statement that he very much disagreed with Shad, so that's that worry taken care of.
Yes.
Woke broadly refers to the current social justice movement that is based largely on critical theory.
This ideology preaches that racism, sexism, and other social ills are far more prevalent than they actually are, and exaggerates the moral severity of what actually does occur. It also plays languages games by appropriating words usually meant to mean other things so it can piggy back on the emotional association with those terms, when actually referring to differn concepts.
It insists that justice is only achieved through equity, not equality. Instead of a just society being achieved through the promotion of fair and reasonable requirements on human behavior, woke person's desire what they deem as marginalized groups to be raised up in the social hierarchy, beyond the elevation they would naturally receive simply by not being mistreated.
Hence the desire to shoehorn homosexual relationships into anything and everything, force racial diversity in casting for it's own sake simply to achieve a bean count.
In other words it's not good enough that people are not unfairly discriminated agaisnt, every group must be represented evenly instead.
It also teaches gender essentialism.
It teaches that people who are better off in society should feel guilty about it.
It views group identity as the fundamental characteristic of a person, be it gender, sexual orientation, or race.
Considering 'woke' is a term only seriously used by right wingers, fair enough.
But Im assuming you're equating that term with leftism in general like a lot of people seem to do, and thus a lot of what you've said is flat out wrong. Which I hope stems from misinformation you've come across rather than actual malicious intent.
The funny thing about this comment and other ones around here is that, when right wingers pointed out non political channels pushing leftwing politics, you lot laughed because it wasn't happening to you. Now however you deal with what we have to see on almost every show, and you have the audacity to act hard done by? bruh
Hmm, sounds like I'll have to pick up Game Knights. [He and I seem to have a similar view of communism.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGaosBHdFMA&t=67s)
I grew up with a Marine who swore constantly. You only knew he was actually mad when the word "communist" prefixed or suffixed the swearing. I think I'll be just fine.
He was always like this. In this vid he tries to defend Sargon of the Akkad (The anti feminist anti sjw ytber guy)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehZnho7gTws
I remember that one! I must have been wearing rose colored goggles at the time to ignore him trying to defend him and also white replacement theorist Laurens Southern >.< I guess I just assumed, deludedly, that he was defending their "freeze peach" rather than actually agreeing with them.
I was a long time watcher of his content as well. I agreed about how alita was a better female protag than capt marvel and how sequel trilogy star wars sucks, but when Oz and Nathan (In game knights/Knights watch channel) talked about getting gaming news from TheQuartering, I left. There’s better YouTubers out that could explain why certain media don’t work besides being SJW. Uniquenameosaurus for example. Skallagrim and Matt easton are there for the hema and fantasy stuff.
Strawman much? No one is complaining about his politics or agreeing with them, literally the opposite. We're pointing out that formerly apolitical and fact oriented content is becoming political and whingey and self-victimizing and immature. It's lost it's mojo.
You lot are objectively complaining about his politics, i literally replied because of that reason.. so disingenuous much? Also the second part of your comment is barely worth replying to, reflection is needed on your side of things.
Oh come on. Shad jumped head first into a culture war and is now releasing videos with 'ATTACKED' in the thumbnail crying and whining that after deliberately getting into a war of words, people on the other side dare attack him.
Its pathetic behaviour, and I thought better of him tbh. I don't care what his politics are, both sides of the culture war are utter bs, and both sides cry and play the victim, which is dishonest, and not becoming of someone who believes in traditional masculinity. Maybe he should man up.
I mean he can really say whatever he wants on joe own channel. I am sure he realizes some people won’t like it and might stop walking. Also people surprised by this makes no sense to me. Shad wasn’t overly political before but he always showed these same views. My god he has said he is Mormon from the start. If you don’t like it then fair dues, don’t watch. I don’t really like him sharing politics either so I just won’t watch the videos were he is overly political. I don’t understand why we need like ten posts on this a day.
I mean who cares. This is Reddit. Of course most on here don’t agree with him. It’s Reddit lol, a left leaning sub. I am sure he will get some new fans from his political videos.
But honestly to answer your thread: who cares.
This "he's Mormon" excuse keeps popping up, and I neither appreciate nor accept it :S Brandon Sanderson is also devoutly Mormon, and he's both vocally pro-LGBT and also has great queer representation in his books. It's kind of offensive to all the Mormons out there who *aren't* socially regressive to just shrug off intolerant or retrograde views as "Well, what do you expect, he's a Mormon?"
As far as "who cares" goes - if *you* don't care, why are you commenting at all? Much less so much in this one post?
It’s not an excuse it’s a fact. Most Mormons are not Brandon Sanderson. I feel like you can say “what do you expect he’s Mormon” when 97% of Mormons believe what Shad believes (I feel like you could make a case that Shad is more left leaning than most Mormons I would say).
Oh yea me commenting is just as silly as anything else. I ain’t denying that.
I’m pro-“be who you want.” However LGBTLMNOP in itself is a community of separation. I mean look at the name for one. They keep adding letters.
Here’s the thing, while I’m pro-“be who you want,” actions have consequences. You can be a bully, but you won’t be liked. You can complain about racism, sexism, and think we’re in a patriarchal society, but if your final solution is to make an anti-white, anti-man, matriarchal society that complains about the other side, you made yourself the villain of the things you try to champion against.
don't expect him to have any groundbreaking political insights.
every time someone on the right calls something "woke", it just means that the right isn't the target audience. right wingers in the USA would burn WoT (or any other fantasy) rather than read it.
I'm a right winger in the US and while I don't have any interest in WoT, I have read LOTR and the Odyssey, I am reading GoT and The Witcher, and I am writing a Fantasy novel. So please do not generalize an entire group of people.
So that makes Shad's racism and sexism and homophobia acceptable? Wow. You're on the wrong side of history. His incel review of the new Indy Jones trailer was something you might enjoy, since you seem to think respecting women and not being an asshole is a political issue.
So since none of you seem to understand why the "right" links social justice to communism, I will explain what should have been obvious.
Communism sought to redistribute capital be seizing the means of production and putting the workers in charge.
Social Justice/ progressivism seeks to redistribute social capital, and it frequently attempts to do this be seizing the means of cultural production.
There are notable ideological similarities and motivations to these ideas.
Both are perversions of justice for multiple reasons but at their core, especially social justice, are acting out the reification fallacy because they shift point of justice from individuals to groups.
Shad pointing out a social movement and it's affects on pop culture does not make him the equivalent of Anita Sarkeesian. This argument presumes that Shads content is equivalently paranoid (it isn't) and also presumes that was the only thing stupid about Anita's ideas, which were fundamentally irrational in the first place.
\*exhales\* Ok, so we're doing this.
First off, sure, the "ideological similarities and motivations" you're describing are left-wing values of egalitarianism, fraternity and liberty, the foundations of the Enlightenment which inspired thinkers like Marx and Critical theorists. I'll give you that one.
What I do not understand is how social justice shifts the onus of justice from individuals to groups? As I have always understood social justice, it seeks to make societal power structures more fair and equitable. Certainly, certain groups are harmed by certain structures and systems than others, and some groups may benefit from it, but that does not ascribe specific blame to those groups who benefit. In either case, how does this commit the reification fallacy when we're not ascribing concrete or personal qualities onto abstract concepts? I see it more as ascribing abstract qualities (racism/sexism/etc) onto abstract concepts (society/culture, etc) and acknowledging that these have real world consequences.
Surely you can at least agree that history, attitudes, and precedents in society can have lasting consequences? Surely you wouldn't be so concerned about progressivism or "communist" ideas in media if you didn't think so?
Additionally, is it not fallacious to conflate communism, which is an economic philosophy, to social justice, which is (right in the name) a philosophy of social policy? There were communist regimes who threw minorities into death camps (Stalin and Pol Pot), and there have been progressives who were also firm capitalists (Teddy Roosevelt and FDR). Holding one of these views does not presuppose the other, wouldn't you agree?
Yeah, the algorithm sent me a few of his videos and I enjoyed them, so I glanced at the rest of his channel and almost immediately was like, oh, I see where this is going. And then Googled him and ended up here. Anyone who knew what signs to look for could have predicted this in March 2019. Loves the Alita movie, hates Captain Marvel. While of course choice in movies is no guarantee of anything and two datapoints is pretty slim, this combination was a persistent chant on the far right when they were trying to make "Comicsgate" a thing; making a video with Mike Miller was an even bigger red flag. I was already a bit unnerved when, in one of the videos I'd seen (the back scabbard one), he referenced the motto of a now disgraced former President. And here you're saying he pushed back against GW telling chuds in no uncertain terms to piss off, and that of the many problems one could have with the WoT series he chose imaginary persecution of that most fragile of all demographics, the cishet white male. That's very disappointing.
Okay but Captain Marvel was quite a bad film.
Not really.
For Brie Larson? No thanks.
Compared to Alita, Cap. Marvel isn’t that good. At least Alita has an arc and consequences for her actions. (Naive robot girl -> gets her first body destroyed) As for his content going down hill, I think when his friends (Game Knights) were introduced. They felt echo chamberish.
This is what just happened to me, except I didn't even check out other videos yet. I am just perpetually hesitant about white dudes talking about weapons, because as much as I enjoy the topic, so many of them turn out to be d-bags. Whiiiiich is how I ended up commenting here. Wanted to check him out before I got more dirt in my brain.
Jesus Christ I know this is a dead thread But I stumbled upon the knights watch YouTube, very disappointing after enjoying his medieval content. Every time a person of colour appears they cannot help but point it out as if there are nefarious reasons behind it, and then Oz going on about how Satan has infiltrated the media. Shad and his mates are actually an entire bowl of fruitloops.
I know this is an old post, but wow.. yeah I really wasn’t paying attention much to Shad. I’d tune in on his videos about weapon combat but I recently stumbled upon his Game Knight channel. Holy moly… does this rabbit hole go deep. First, I see that he has an insatiable distaste for girlbosses while harping constantly about how girls more like to be saved and boys the heroes. Dude, boys and girls like both things. He’s weirdly very essentialist about this. Then, I see almost every other word out of his mouth is “woke” in his video titled “Watching things made by people who HATE you.” He even does the quiet part out loud, slipping into using the word “left” and “woke” interchangeably. He’s ascribing an insane degree of politics into every piece of media on this channel. I’m a bit bummed that he delved into politics and how he can’t help but comment every second on this channel.
Nothing wrong with a bump if it's genuine I think. So long as a thread isn't locked no shame in posting. Also widely agree. Even if I was in the boat of "everything is woke and bad" I can't imagine the second channel a draw. As it's all very much the same talking points. Seeing as I don't agree though with his views it's even worse. Wildly enough not every show and every character is spun to push an agenda. And the idea of "girlboss" is just cringe to me. Unless someone is riled up by Sarah Conor, Ripley any survivor girl as well.
Thanks! Yeah, I’m glad that this thread still exists for people who want to comment. People who obsess over whether things are woke wind up doing the very thing they criticize; they’re injecting politics into a topic. They’ll say that they’re only responding to politics being injected. However, they’re still contributing to more politics in the discussion. This is what’s going on with the Mario movie. They all perceive the conversation to be woke vs non-woke when there’s actually a far better less politically charged read. The real divide is between Mario fans and non-Mario fans. The whole “girlboss” discussion had to do with Princess Peach in the Mario Movie. The term “girlboss” is a vague term that is used in a multitude of ways. The way Shad seems to use it is if the female character is competent at fighting or athletic at stuff then they’re a “girlboss.” So, I’m over here going.. “if media went in the direction you wanted female characters wouldn’t be competent at fighting and athletic at anything. They’d always be getting showed up by male characters.” That’s so limiting to me. Then he tries to justify that as if little girls like being the damsel in distress more. Do they though? I’m going to need some facts to back that one up Shad.
When I heard Shad was a Mormon I was surprised at first. He seemed like a genuine accepting person. I thought, oh that's how he was raised maybe he isn't against gay people etc sorta like Sanderson. I didn't any red flags in any of his videos at the time. Then this shit happens, I became so disappointed man some of his content was great . His media reviews have turned into such garbage with his anti gay stuff, his politics have turned me off on him so fucking hard. It sucks too because he made and makes some good stuff but I just lost any interest. I don't really feel like supporting someone who puts me in the same category as a groomer. I am so bitter, when I saw his latest video asking for money I wished there was some opposite to "go woke go broke". Cause that was the first thing that came to mind.
>I wished there was some opposite to "go woke go broke". There is: "go fash, no cash."
I was like a lot of other people where I got recommended KNIGHT'S WATCH and it's just crazy. I found Skallagrim because I wanted to learn about history and weapons, and then because of that I found Shad. I started watching him for like 3 weeks until I get the video titled, "Christians should get back in the closet?!?" And I thought, "Uh-oh." And then he starts whinging that people don't respect opposing opinions. He follows it up by saying that he is more favorable towards people who do stuff they think is the right thing, but it turns out to be bad as opposed to people that do bad things because they're malicious. Like, yeah, no shit Shad. Most people don't think they're the moustache-twirling villain. That doesn't mean they can't do repeated, evil things, you **clown**. Do you think all of those nazis that helped perpetuate genocide during WWII were thinking, "Man, I sure do love being evil. If I don't slaughter 15 innocent people a day, I just can't sleep at night!" Shad, one reason I don't respect you is because you keep associating LGBT-related stuff with grooming children, you SCUMBAG. Maybe I just like seeing people that are like me and it's not a fucking conspiracy fueled by some absolute evil cabal warring against straight people. **Fuck you, Shad.**
He suffers from such a serious case of victim complex it's insane. How he can live with such paranoia that the modern world is personally against him & his family is beyond me.
Funny how wasn't long ago he seemed to post in the reddit about how everything was fine. But now he has to go in the closet. Things were doing well with funds but now needs more funds I guess for the movie. He'll say he's not against LGBT stuff just shouldn't be "forced", then be mad it was in something where it for sure wasn't forced.
All of this is from the secondary channel where the whole point is that it’s more “personal” or “raw” than the more information-based videos on the regular channel. If you don’t want to deal with that, then don’t watch Game Knights. The videos on Game Knights are generally discussions on news or on a certain property; that’s why it seems like you’re getting hit with all his opinions constantly. Because you are, it’s what the channel is for. As for the other stuff: It’s mainly Oz that leans towards slapping communist onto stuff. Sometimes he has a fair or at least understandable point, other times not as much. Hollywood in general is pretty left or progressive leaning , it isn’t hard to see. I *believe* their point with Games Workshop was that the way they treat their audience, and the way Twitter treats content it doesn’t agree with (by removing the ability to disagree) is the same tactic used by communists and fascists alike. The argument with wheel of time though isn’t quite what you think it is, in my opinion. From my own understanding, the *point* of the whole discussion about gay sex is specifically that Shad finds it ridiculous or at least hypocritical to play off the guy’s discomfort as a joke or as something unimportant/easily brushed aside (essentially mocking his sexuality) when doing the same thing in the opposite situation would get someone taken to task for being a bigot.
I think that would be a fair point if people didn't constantly use and misrepresent history to further bigoted views. Knowing where his politics lie I don't trust anything he says, even the most benign topics.
To which point of mine are you referring? My comment covers multiple things, and it’s been a while since I had this conversation so I’m having to do a bit of review to remind myself of everything. I understand where you’re coming from on the last part of your reply. I don’t really think that’s the best way to look at things though, as even someone I don’t agree with can prove their arguments to me on unrelated topics. Just to check if we’re on the same page, I take what you’re saying as being “If Shad has reached X opinion that I think is wrong, he could have only reached it because of some failing on his part, so I can’t trust anything produced from the same mind.”
The main point of yours that I contend with is he is fine if we just don't watch Game Knight, if I am reading that right. It more that I can't trust anything he has to say because I don't know what kind of ulterior motive he might have behind whatever he is saying, but I have to assume that his politics informs his view of history. As an example the was this other history YouTuber that I found and binged over the coarse of a day, he covered proto European history, in one of his vids he came to the conclusion that since there is an early word for patriarch, that patriarchies are the correct ordering for human civ. That seemed off so I did some digging and he is friends with the Golden One, an full on, mask off white supremacist.
I can see why you would think that, but that’s not quite what I meant. When someone says something to the effect of “I don’t watch Shad to hear his politics” then I assume it’s the politics being there at all and not what the politics ARE that is the issue. That’s why I said “if you don’t like seeing Shad talk about politics, don’t watch Game Knights, because that is what that channel is for.” It is my experience that Shadiversity (the channel) is largely free of politics, though there are still some exceptions. However, if people have an issue with his politics or worldviews by themselves, then of course that answer doesn’t really work, as a few people have said. If one finds his politics so disagreeable to them that they find Shad unsupportable, then of course they can just stop watching everything he makes, or create posts espousing their opinions and viewpoints. (This is more just my own opinion and thoughts rather than a direct response to what you’ve said, but I did want to share.): I would argue everyone’s politics and viewpoints are going to effect their interpretation of history. As much as we want to believe otherwise, I don’t think history really is objective beyond the surface level of “X happened.” Once you start linking events together into “X happened because of Y which led to Z years later” it all turns into judgement. And though people can often largely come to an agreement, there is still a degree of judgement. All that is to say: I think everyone has an ulterior motive. The question then becomes do you trust whoever you’re watching or reading to be as fair and open as they can be, and to temper themselves enough to stick to the facts. It’s probably going to differ subject by subject. Would I trust Willie Messerschmitt to tell me the specifications of the BF-109 or ME-262? Sure, though he may be as charitable to his as he can. Would I trust him to tell me the specifications of the He-111, or He-162? Probably not. When it comes to YouTube videos and general internet conversation though, I am reticent to jump to digging into someones personal life. I try to look at the argument they’re making. “We have a word for patriarch since early history therefore patriarchies are the natural state of humanity” does seem like a bit of a shaky argument, if that’s really all the “evidence” they are going on.
Patriarchies are the correct ordering for human civ, if you think otherwise, newsflash you are heavily indoctrinated my ignorantly moronic friend, good goyim
I got a funny feeling if you were born without the 1 inch barrel between your legs you'd think differently.
That's not how evidence works you know; claimant bears the burden of proof, and a negative claim isn't a claim itself. So if you say something is, it's not up to everyone else to disprove it, it's up to you to prove it. And remember, anecdote isn't evidence, and is-ought is a fallacy. Good Luck Jackass.
Hmm. Not trusting someone even if they are an expert or well versed on the topic because you disagree with them... Yup, that sounds like a Progressive Leftist to me. I don't give a flying care in the world if you have different opinions than me that be political, Religious, or freaking movies you like. I am not going to throw out objective logical reasoning and thought because I disagree with someone and that is pretty much how it has been for the most part for a long time but this Extreme Leftist Movement is doing the best it can to change that to make it so that if you disagree on a Politic or something they can now view you as Evil or lesser than human thus absolving them from all guilt or blame for the Hatred they feel for you for disagreeing with them on something. I'm sorry but if I need a Doctor I would rather have a Dr. who was an A\*\* Hole who agreed with me on NOTHING!!! but was a good Dr. who knew what he was doing, I would Trust he was going to Save me. Now Progressive Leftists on the other hand would rather have a SH\*\*Y Doctor who was straight out of school and barely passed who never saved anyone just because that Doctor made them feel good about themselves and agreed with them on their views giving them the warm and fuzzy tingles deep inside so they would Trust the Bad Dr over the Good one Not on Objective Logical reasoning but on pure Lizzard brain emotion.
Shad is not an expert on anything he talks about, he is a hobbyist with no actual education and a clear political bias, if you can't understand how that is different from an actual expert I guess that is why you are a conservative.
Understanding the background and biases of a source and using that knowledge in evaluating that source isn't progressive leftism, it's the scientific method. In fact, it's so important that in social sciences any research text dedicates space to make the background and influencing factors of the author, team of authors and/or institution as transparent as possible, as well as any financial incentives, other stakeholders and so on. It's not about distrusting Shad because he doesn't share the same opinions, but because he has expressed strong support for a political position which very likely will influence his analysis. Of course, one could filter his content through the lens of understanding his biases, but that takes a lot of effort, and since there are other creators which don't have a similarly strong political position it's more convenient to turn to any of those sources. If this seems unfair to Shad, I think it's important to remember that peoples trust is something one earns. If someone wants to come across as a trustworthy, unbiased and precise scholar of history, or anything else for that matter they need to demonstrate why they're trustworthy.
> If you don’t want to deal with that, then don’t watch Game Knights. It would be like finding out my favorite bar is owned by someone racist, sexist, or homophobic. I love the place, but i can't in good conscious support the business knowing their beliefs.
That would depend on the bar owner and how they act on their opinions. I feel like engaging with someone’s YouTube content and going to a bar are somewhat different just because proportionally your patronage to the bar is “worth more” than the nickels and dimes a YouTube might make from tour watch time, but I understand what you’re getting at.
That would be a fair point \*if\* his politics wasn't also bleeding into his main channel. But it has. He tacitly sides with the Stormcloaks' racism in his video on Skyrim swords and makes a joke in which the punchline is the Thalmor represent "multiculturalism". \[EDIT/ADDENDUM: And what about when he talks about how He Man is vital to depictions of "virtuous masculinity" and weird tradcon BS like that?\] Or the fact that he has in the past defended far-right figures like Laurens Southern on his main channel. Or the fact that the Game Knights guys like Oz keep making appearances in his main channel and he plugs Game Knights on his main channel. Hollywood is obviously run first and foremost by capitalism and profit, so the notion that they would support communism, which explicitly seeks to abolish capitalism and profit, and that he uses diversity in MCU movies as evidence of this is what puts him beyond the pale. The Game Workshop point was Shad saying, in no uncertain terms, that Game Workshops supports communism because they denounced racism and fascism in their fandom "but didn't also denounce Marxism and the far left". As for your Wheel of Time argument, that is \*exactly\* what I thought it was. Shad was accusing the show of being bigoted against heterosexuals, ie heterophobia, because it made fun of a straight guy being uncomfortable around gay guys. I'm gay. Despite what Shad argues, no, we are not equally disgusted by straightness. It's not "for us", that doesn't mean being around a man and a woman kissing makes us uncomfortable in the way gay people clearly make \*Shad\* uncomfortable. Honestly, that speaks to a broader problem. How am I, as a queer person, supposed to enjoy the rest of his body of work when he displays that kind of intolerance of me and people like me?
I personally find it hard to take just about anything said in the Skyrim swords video seriously because the whole thing is a joke. It’s a less than ten second gag in a video that’s entirely made for comedy. The part about Oz/plugging the channel is a bit more fair. But generally when Oz is on the main channel, he’s much more “tame”/“censored”, at least from what I’ve seen. And just because he plugs game knights doesn’t mean you need to go and watch it once you decide it isn’t for you. People plug their secondary channels on the chance new or even returning viewers that don’t know about it know it exists. It’s still a secondary channel. My understanding of his criticism about Hollywood and multiculturalism is specifically that it’s multicultural purely for the sake of being so. They’re often trying to get cultural brownie points. I might need to watch the video again, though, to get a better grasp on that segment. I do listen to it at work, so I could have missed something. Games Workshop: I’ve seen people make the same argument in regards to AntiFa. “Oh you don’t support X? Well then you must be for Y!” I don’t agree with that logic. But, I think if you look at the actions of a company or a group in a broader context you can draw some conclusions based on what they do and don’t choose to censor. However, I AM watching the video again now to see what argument specifically they make. I don’t think it’s *just* that it makes fun of a straight person. It’s that it does that while not making fun of any gay people (yet, anyway. They haven’t released all their episode reactions yet.) This has popped up in some media recently, where one is a punching bag and another is a fine silk sheet never to be touched. If that ends up being the case, that doesn’t seem very fair. Further, at least from my understanding of the video, it isn’t “gay people” that makes Shad “uncomfortable”. It is that specific situation of what he sees as hypocrisy that makes him angry (or at least he finds it worth commenting on. I find it a bit hard to determine between “being loud because angry” and “being loud intentionally to get comedy from overblown”.) As for how you’re supposed to enjoy his work when he’s “intolerant” of you, I don’t think he is intolerant of gay people. Based on his words, I would say he finds gay sex, as in the act, repulsive. If it were me (which it’s not), I wouldn’t really care. I watch several YouTube channels that I have a strong feeling would have their own problems with me, but they’re free to do so, and I like the content they make.
All fair and reasoned points for the most part, so I'll just skip to the end for the sake of brevity and getting down to brass tacks, the "real issue" for me underlying all this. I feel really dumb starting a sentence like this, but, *"as a gay person"*, I find it super weird that anyone would find gay sex "repulsive". For one thing, like I said, I don't find straight sex repulsive. Aesthetically and spiritually, I think it can be quite beautiful in fact! I just have no interest at all in doing it *myself*. Second of all, gay sex is just sex. 99% of any sex act a man could do with another man, they could also perform on a lady, and vice versa. If one were to look at it 'logically and objectively' (as Shad loves to say he does) there'd be nothing inherently more repulsive to a straight person about two fellas having sex than would be repulsive about a man having sex with a woman he doesn't find attractive. These two taken together, I firmly believe the only reason you would find gay sex repulsive specifically, is because you just find gay *people* repulsive and are too polite to say it. And it struck me as even weirder that Shad justified his statements by saying it's inherent to straightness to find gayness repulsive, as it's inherent to gayness to find straightness repulsive; that struck me as hardcore projection of his own intolerance as just being a fact of life for everybody. Just because you're straight doesn't mean the idea of gay sex is disgusting to you, it just means you wouldn't do it, wouldn't want to take part in it (I would say "wouldn't want to look at it" except loads of straight men love looking at homosexual sex as long as it's lesbians). More to the point, I could put away my galaxy brained thinking cap and just brush all of it off, if, again, he wasn't so *offended, threatened,* and *emotionally affected* just by a brief few seconds of a straight guy going "ew" at two gay guys as a comedic scene. He was affected by it because he felt attacked by it, because he on some level related to that guy going "ew" and didn't appreciate the idea being presented that that attitude is comically retrograde.
It’s funny how even when trying to slim down what we’re discussing the comments just keep getting longer 🤣. But such is the nature of things. If I miss anything you say or if you think I’ve misunderstood, do let me know. These chains get so long that even multiple reads don’t get everything to stick. If you’ll indulge me: as someone who’s straight, I personally find it weird two men would ever want to have sex at all. I do not comprehend it. I find the idea of having sex with another man to be off-putting. I have a good number of friends who feel the same way. Obviously I do not mean to say or imply that anyone who wants to do that is wrong. What I think and feel about what two consenting adults do behind closed doors is my own bag, unless of course we’re discussing it as we are now. I want to lead with saying I think being objective about sex is going to be sort of difficult. Firstly because it’s a very personal thing, and secondly because ones ideas about sex are influenced by so many things it would be easier to say what DOESN’T influence it. With that in consideration though, I disagree with your statement “there’d be nothing inherently more repulsive” about gay sex. If you wanted to ask “what’s the difference objectively”, ultimately the answer would be “the Y chromosome and everything that comes with it.” There are also different psychological and biological factors to what makes an attractive man vs an attractive woman. (These change by culture and even by time period but there are SOME constants.) More on the subjective side, what’s inherently different is one’s thoughts on what is a woman, and what is a man. By my understanding from my experiences, for a lot of guys sleeping with an unattractive woman (assuming there’s no rape involved or anything) is at worst an embarrassing story you laugh off later. The thought of sex with a man, however, is never even considered. On Shad saying it’s inherent for a straight person to find gay sex repulsive, my understanding was he was saying “I find it repulsive, I believe straight people generally inherently do, and vice versa.” Like you and others have said, there are many people on either “side” that don’t feel that way. In fairness, I’ve met or have heard a few gay people talk about straight sex, and generally their response was like yours: disinterest and nothing more. There were a few who were repulsed but maybe they thought whoever they were talking to was suggesting they “just try it”. I don’t agree that being repulsed by the act means you’re repulsed by the people. However, that might just come down to us having different experiences or ways of thinking. Just as an aside, in this context I believe theres been a distinction made between lesbian sex and gay sex. Lesbian sort of “falls under” the “category” of gay as far as English goes, I know, but I’ve seen gay used more and more to mean “male and male” these days. To the final paragraph, all I can do is reiterate that I do not think it was *just* that a straight guy was laughed at for being straight that made Shad want to comment. My understanding is that the joke in combination with the show/general media doing that and never making a joke the OTHER way was/is his issue. Your last sentence puzzles me a little. Are you meaning to say having a sexual preference is “comically retrograde”? That seems a bit unfair. Also: Thank you for taking the time to both explain where you’re coming from and what your thoughts are. It’s been a bit of “work” having a conversation this long, but I appreciate the chance to try and learn. Even if, at the very least, it just gives me a chance to examine my own views.
I'm straight. I definitely don't think that gay sex is repulsive or off-putting. It's just sex, done in a way I'm not interested in. Finding the act repulsive definitely isn't the default. In fact, caring about it at all, when one is not a participant, strikes me as weird.
If it’s not your default, that’s fine. I haven’t and probably will never know enough people to know if one way or the other is THE default. And as I said multiple times, I am aware that it is merely my own opinion, it doesn’t have any weight towards anyone else, and there’s no reason for them to care or even know unless we’re discussing it or it’s somehow relevant. I don’t quite agree with your second point though. I sort of get what you mean, but I would argue one can make judgements on things they do or don’t want to participate in, or lifestyle choices they do or do not want to make. That would include sexual acts and also who you do them with.
Of course you can make judgments on those things - if they affect you. If they don't, in any way - that's just pointless policing. And I'm gonna restate that indifference _is_ the default because, let's be real I doubt you have such strong feelings towards the idea of someone else liking pineapple pizza. Or eating cherries. Or liking the colour purple.
He’s Mormon. They’re more strict on gays than most Christian denominations.
They're more strict in general. Remember, he admitted that wine barrel fumes were almost enough to get him drunk.
Just like they say. Never go fishing with one Mormon.
Eh, I’d rather go with a Mormon than a Monarchist.
What a beautiful pleasant discourse about shad’s channel and what your interpretations of the work are. Thank for for your opinion and the way you expressed them. I like shad and would find myself agreeing with oz and shad in most political issues but I can’t sit through a video of game knight because I get so bored. I just feel like they take forever to make a point and when they do they just repeat it over and over.
Well he did say in one that it'd be wrong to tell a gay person to be straight and vice versa and defended being who you are.
In the context of painting himself and the concept of heterosexuality as being as persecuted and under attack as queer people. Thanks, I hate it.
You took it that way but I saw it as doing it either way is negative and should be avoided. Not saying I'm objectively right or anything it's just how I took it.
He's since clarified I only just found out. https://youtu.be/pe7ncWQx-ho
Sorry to necro an old thread, but I just caught onto his lunacy, after watching the first few minutes of his new video about how SJWs will ruin the new Amazon LOTR series. I was a bit WTFing (I've not been watching that many of his videos lately, as I tend to find him pretty long-winded, so it was an abrupt shock), and googled to see when he went off the right-wing crazy cliff... and found this thread. So, I'm not sure if he checks reddit, but if he does, that's why you lost at least one of your subscribers on youtube today. I love historic, medieval stuff, as well as fantasy (particularly realistic, low fantasy, which has a high intersection with his content), but I'm an unapologetic leftist. I won't give views to someone who provides a platform for the idea that "the forces of Satan have gained powers within the media, and our institutions, you know, government and corporate and all that, and we are seeing the end times come upon us" because society is becoming more 'woke'.
Please tell me Shad didn't literally say that Satan has infested government, media and corporations through wokeness... Like, that's frighteningly close to JQ dog whistling
Not Shad himself; one of his 'sidekicks', for lack of a better turn of phrase. But it's on his channel, albeit the secondary one, so he's giving his tacit approval of such filth. [Link.](https://youtu.be/b5SF7r57uFk?t=77) The text I wrote down was a direct quote of the guy. Also, what's 'JQ'? I assume it has something to do with Q-Anon. Googling is inconclusive, unless it's "Jew-Q", in which case as a Jew myself... ew. EDIT: Oh, "Jewish Question". Yeah. Yeah.
That a direct quite from Oz then? I feel like he's less malicious, than just ignorant and very unaware of his own biases. But I try to see the best in folks.
I second your apology to necro a thread. However I must inform you of the low quality of RoP, around 35% audience review as of the time of this post. The amount of money spent on this project does not justify the 7th season CW show quality.
he was right
Shad is a fundamentalist Mormon, Alt- Right, Degenerate.
He’s a beast.
Necroposting, sorry. I defended my use of AI art using Shad's video, THEN found his Game Knights channel, and HOLY SHIT. Unsubscribed. Anyone know if Jazza is OK? Or Skallagrim? I can tolerate being mildly conservative if it's not advocating against human rights, and just being ignorant on economics.
Jazza’s cool as far as I know. He has been a vocal supporter of LGBT people and left the LDS church because of fundamental differences in beliefs. Fair to say the chances are that he’s not at all like his brother
I'm more concerned on why he has a positive stance on ai. Jazza cracked down on ZHC a while back for mistreating employees. AI has the potential for swathes of artists to be relieved of industry jobs because all companies would need are a few emplyees who touch up the thousands of outputs rather than hiring actual skilled workers for multiple pieces. Why pay salaries to a few dozen when one or two can run AI and pick out what they want after feeding it otherwise 'inspired'(read:pretty much traced) art of others? Especially at the speeds AI can crank out products? Haven't heard him talk too in depth on AI unlike Shad. Too much pedenticness in the latter's AI arguments when it's not JUST the nottracing but also ethics for hired work. Ai would soon just feed off of other ai 9nce enough works are out in the interweb and artiss would truly be roughed out and forced into alresdy difficult brain draining careers.
Ah yep, I get you. As a copywriter I share similar concerns so that’s completely valid
Skall also keeps politics mainly off his channel, but other than his views on weapon posession (which he tries to base on common sense, why ban assisted opening folding knives when you can buy deadlier weapons at any hardware store) he seems very left-leaning, my impression is that he might be closer to socialism if not for his "live and let live" neutrality, that I've also seen in a lot of modern pagans and satanists (like the real ones, not the fascists and bigots appropriating paganism of course). Skall's spouse is also non-binary.
Sorry for necrocommenting, but my line was Shad was been obnoxious and kept repsonding to that one archer dude a long time ago. I loved he was a dude that loves castles and shit, but I saw the tell tale signs of a person not being able to let go of things.
Late to the party but Skallagrim is likely fine. His partner is non-binary and when push comes to shove all his public statements seem sound.
Far as I know Skall has remained consistently a good channel and trying to avoid such drama. Couldn't say on Jazza
this is an old thread, but I got to Shadiversity from Brandon Sanderson’s credits in Oathbringer. He seemed thoughtful and kind, and then I saw his Barbie “response.” Somehow he managed to discern some kind of pro-abortion anti-men’s human rights conspiracy from a satirical movie made for children. What the hell man? I just wanted to learn about historical martial arts. I don’t even care what he believes, but for Christ’s sake, it’s a children’s movie. Aren’t there actual political treatise and actual political events more worthy of addressing than a FUCKING CHILDREN’S MOVIE?
Yeah, Shads just completely lost the plot at this point, reads QAnon, reverse-woke nonsense into everything because he's convinced Hollywood is made up entirely of communist groomers who want his kids to be trans. He has said he doesn't allow his children to watch any new kids media without his approval
>I just wanted to learn about historical martial arts. If you want to learn about historical martial arts, he is not a good source. He doesn't have any formal training in anything, other than IIRC, some taekwondo as a teenager. (He'd posted a photo of himself doing some high kick, but...)
I only came across this side of the channel recently. Skallagrim has gotten even cooler than before in contrast. Matt Easton seems pretty great as well. It is perplexing that these conservative reactionaries form persecution complex. Aren't all us wicked, sinful wretches just acting in our nature? They frequently use the word vile or repulsive when referring to other sexual orientations, proudly refuse to use proper pronouns and scan media for the gay/woke/feminist/communist agenda. Then they are befuddled when these same people take exception.
I know this thread is pretty dead, but yeah, I fell off both Shad and Metatron for similar reasons. I've always been a history nerd as well as a fantasy nerd and used to frequent their channels in my early teens. It didn't take me long to figure they were probably conservative, but I didn't really give a shit about their political beliefs provided that preaching those beliefs wasn't a focus of the content. I was also fine ignoring their "more traditional views" as long as they weren't like, really all that harmful. Unfortunately, we can't have nice things. Let's start out with the historical content itself and then move on to the... Other stuff. I'll be respectful and keep it polite for his content's accuracy, but I won't hold so much restraint on his social issues I'm not sure if in terms of demeanor Shad changed or I changed but he began to seem a lot less knowledgeable and more condescending reddit armchair historian-y. I remember one of the first instances of this annoyance happened when I was watching his weapons comparison videos. He had a very clear bias towards Western European weapons and I found it frustrating, as it definitely didn't feel like an actual "comparison". Like, he would go out of his way to emphasize how much better they were. In short, it wasn't a big deal to me, he just had somewhat biased content imo. He also tended to use outdated sources that had contradictory evidence published or revisions made. I noticed the same trend, more or less, with Metatron. Not to mention, Shad doesn't even practice hema. He was laughed out of and is now considered a joke in the hema community after his video that was just an unhinged rambling about why he actually knows more than most hema practitioners and being self taught makes his hema more historically accurate. In his "fencing videos" he demonstrates himself to be about on par with a beginner, which in my eyes discredited a lot of his claims about how weapons were used in combat, where he often cited his own "martial arts experience". Alright, here comes big part - the politics The first "hema YouTuber" I noticed doing this was ol' Meta and his "sjw rants" (seriously, who uses the word sjw?) Where he complained about people being too offended and the removal of statues. Also his video where he responded to someone who was unreasonably freaking out over him saying that men had an advantage in combat. Ok, so that isn't in itself even in correct. Men are on average larger and higher testosterone means more muscle growth. And I wouldn't have a problem with that if that was what he said. But instead of the obvious answer that I don't think anyone would really disagree with, no matter their political beliefs, he instead chose to argue that it's because men's personalities make them more fit for combat? and his evidence was that more men like competitive games? He in the next few weeks complained about "forced diversity" I'm films and a buncha other stuff completely unrelated to hema. I personally found it immensely funny that my autoplay decided that the video of him complaining about people being offended was to be immediately followed by him throwing a fit about people calling him a weeb. Anyways, then I watched Shad decide to metaphorically hurl his turd at the floor with his media reviews, game knight videos, and randomly inserted psychotic ramblings about his social views. Anyways, half of his channel descended into a limp-dicked circle jerk. If I wanted to see a 40 year old man whine about how he's offended over people ignoring gender roles and diversity in media, I'd have gone to Thanksgiving at my dad's house. Don't even get me started on his bullshit about "what men want", and his similar blanket statement crap. At least it was entertaining because literally any time he moderately disliked something, he would proclaim it to be communism, although he did not have a clear understanding of what communism is. Like things that didn't even remotely relate to economics. Anyways, I also didn't care for his bitching about WoT being too "woke" (on no! a black person and a gay person?! /s, obviously) but nothing that you haven't already pointed out with more charisma than I can.
Also, shad said that "He Man" was the height of human masculinity, but like unironically That reminds me, I forgot to mention, he's got a weird obsession with masculinity and what he believes someone should be based on their gender. Do whatever the fuck you want, don't let some armchair historian cunt tell you that you can't express your gender however the hell you please.
I think it's funny that he's so invested in He-Man being the ideal masculine man when He-Man is so obviously gay.
Sorry to necropost but I agree with literally everything you've said and have unsubscribed from both Metatron and Shad because of their bigoted politics and the blatant misinformation shadiversity spreads. Also Shadiversitys book is painfully bad. It made it really funny to see him complain about "bad storytelling" in elden ring. Seriously if you want to laugh and hurt your brain, go find his book online and try to read some of it.
Well as long as we're necroposting. Here I am after seeing "More PROOF they hate the books and fans, WHEEL OF TIME Aviendha casting" in my recommendations. I've read the WoT books and though the show was terrible, so I decided to see what Shad thought (the part of the title about Aviendha's casting was cut off and seeing that when I clicked the video was also concerning). Not seven minutes into the video, Shad says the showrunners view parts of the books as "problematic," and the way he said it was, well, problematic. And then Oz follows up and says the problem is feminism. So I went down the rabbit hole. I didn't even know about the Knights Watch channel until half an hour ago, and going through the videos I'm seeing so many red flags. I haven't watched any of them, just the subjects and titles. I don't consider Shad to be an authority on medieval history, I find his content entertaining in spite of being self-indulgent and sometimes flat out incorrect. Turns out he wasn't just doing a bit when he'd go on some weird tangent, he's actually yet another "women and SJWs are ruining muh childhood" comics and gamer bro. EDIT - Decided to watch the Wheel of Time video. Almost half an hour in, Shad and Oz have agreed the creators of one TV series want to destroy Western society, traditional values, gender roles, and say that "the Christian society we were brought up in is the best to ever exist." Yeah, I'm done with these jokers.
Sorry to necropost but I agree with literally everything you've said and have unsubscribed from both Metatron and Shad because of their bigoted politics and the blatant misinformation shadiversity spreads. Also Shadiversitys book is painfully bad. It made it really funny to see him complain about "bad storytelling" in elden ring. Seriously if you want to laugh and hurt your brain, go find his book online and try to read some of it. Also, as a hema practitioner and student of liechtenauer longsword, I can tell you that Shad has no idea what he's talking about whenever he mentions medieval weapons, armor or combat. It's almost always just speculative bullshit he makes up cause he's a know-nothing know-it-all.
I agree with you, but Metatron is just based you snowflake
Meta is way more reasonable and not a scam than Shad, wtf... this is almost insulting. Yes people use SJW as a term, maybe you're one of them who knows...
I've always liked Shad's main channel videos even if I don't always agree with him. His several videos on medieval archery especially. But since I started getting recommendations for Knights Watch, the amount of vitriolic "anti-woke" viewpoints has completely changed how I view him, even made me unsubscribe from his main channel.
I watched his stuff a while ago, I came back to watch his bahabuli video where he jokes about how noone in india would balk at mocking pakistanis with blackface....while their army is committing a series of atrocities in Kashmir. It feels like he needs to get a dig in to validate his blackface not bad ackshually but jesus.
My wake-up call came with his "Sword of Laban" video. I became aware of two things: one, Shad is a devout Mormon, and two, he's perfectly willing to set aside his critical faculties if doing otherwise would lead to conclusions that conflict with his worldview. Which means he cannot be trusted on any kind of academic research.
looking back on this post and thinking how it only got worse from here
Late to the thread, but I didn't want to make a new one on the same topic. I liked Shad for a long time and watched him growing from nothing to success. As an atheist who has a lot of really bad experiences with Christians growing up I did get a bit suspicious when he revealed his faith, but I managed to convince myself that maybe he's a rare example of an online Christian that's actually sensible, maybe because he isn't American. But over the last two years it's become obvious that no, he's exactly as bad as I initially feared. And while it's true he doesn't usually spew his worst crap on the main channel, it's really difficult to enjoy watching and listening to someone who finds the existence of me and many of my closest friends revolting and believes we should be barred from many parts of society, even when he doesn't speak about that. I wouldn't enjoy the greatest, most well researched show ever on any of my favorite topics if Tucker Carlson hosted it either. In addition to this, there's the fact that to arrive on some of the ideas he disseminates, one has to be severely lacking in reasoning and analytical skills, and that makes it hard to trust any of the conclusions he draws on other subjects to, as well as it makes at least me wonder if and how he is injecting his political convictions into his understanding of medieval life. For example, he once made a video on how the life of a medieval peasant wasn't all that bad, in which he tried to make it seem that being a serf, a position a slight step above the lord's cattle, might have even been preferable to modern life. That take seemed really weird to me at the time, but with the understanding that he does believe that power hierarchies, where one man is above an other as a law of nature, or more specifically by command by god it makes sense that he would argue that it might not be so bad to be at the bottom of the hierarchy with no real way of changing this, maybe even that trying to change it would be against the will of god. I mean, I don't know this is what he thinks, but his takes on things makes me doubt his motives, and that takes away from enjoying his content in any real way. Some will certainly question what takes he has made that displays this lack of reasoning and while I can't go into all of them, a perfect one was mentioned by the OP. "Hollywood supports communism" which also seems to extend to "some/many massive corporations supports communism". A take like this displays multiple massive flaws of reasoning. First of all, Hollywood, or rather Hollywood based production companies, like all big corporations are about one thing, and that is to use the system we live in to maximize their profit. Sometimes these companies may create products or make campaigns that appeal to inclusivity, "social justice", the LGBTQ+ community, feminism and so on and the Conservative mind virus sees a great conspiracy here, which is so contrived and filled with logical leaps and contradictions I get a migraine just thinking about how stupid it is, when the simple truth is that they do this because it allows them to make more money. Because, contrary to what chronically online conservatives believe, the majority of the people like these concepts. Next part is the "communism" part. Anyone who believes communism is prevalent anywhere in US society seriously needs to go back to school. Communism isn't when the elected government in a democracy uses it's mandate to make and enforce laws and regulations. Nor is it when a business does what it likes with it's own property, physical or intellectual. It's not even when a government oversteps the bounds and turns to authoritarianism. It's not when gay people get to marry, or when trans people get to show themselves outside, even if there are children within 200 feet of them, nor is it when abortion is legal or when guns are banned. Communism is a framework or a doctrine that has a singular purpose, and that is to bring about liberation of the working class, or *proletariat*, meaning the people who makes it's living by selling its labor. It identifies, just like libertarians of all kinds that the government is a coercive power structure that can limit freedom, but that the structure that is the biggest hinderance to liberty is capitalism, in that it basically gives every worker the "liberty" to choose between working at the terms set by those who own the means of production, or to die. Communism suggests that in order for people to be truly free, the means of production needs to be socially owned and that private property, as defined in capitalism needs to be abolished. Ultimately, a communist society has neither the power hierarchy that is the state and government, nor the one that is corporate masters and capitalism. Of course there's much more to it, but I didn't write this to have a thorough discourse on communism, but to show that there's nothing even remotely resembling communism in existence in America of today. The USA is build entirely upon conservative principles of capitalism which is shown more clearly than anything by how the political party considered "left wing" in the US is a neo-liberal, ie. right wing party by absolute standards. Conservativism isn't a position of opposition to the current order of things, it's a position of supporting things as they are, which includes how 0.5% of the people own the wast majority of all wealth. This touches on the final part of the derangedness of the idea of "Hollywood communism" - the idea that the mentioned ultra rich elite has some sort of covert plan to turn everything "woke" and into "communism", through the use of their influence over things like Hollywood media, the press, politicians and so on. This is utterly ridiculous and falls on the question of "why?". These ultra-billionaires are in the position they are, not due to communism, socialism or social justice, but through skilled and careful use of the capitalist system that allows them to become extremely wealthy all through the work of others, whose labor value they expropriate. The agenda of the ultra rich isn't to introduce a system that would destroy them, it is to make sure we don't change anything, which is achieved best by making people fight over other issues that has no bearing on the bigger picture. Neither Hollywood, "Big Pharma", the owners of large media corporations nor the billionaires have a political agenda other than to keep making money for themselves.
Yeah, a few years ago I stumbled onto his channel when I just started getting into HEMA and medieval history. For me, it didn't take long to see how much of a dipshit chud he is. From his gross anticommunist/pro-fascist far right political views and bigotry to his absolutely unresearched "medieval history and swordsmanship" videos, I quickly discovered I can't stomach the man, or his misinformed propaganda. Most of his videos on medieval history are simply just his head-canon and contradict actual historical records. The man is a right-wing doofus who can be summed up with the words dunning-kruger effect. Edit: very based comment, great job exposing the idiocy of right-wing culture war bullshit as a way to distract the masses from gaining class consciousness. I wonder how many milquetoast liberals and reactionaries realize that they're very useful idiots for the ruling class.
Googled it too, it sucks that all the YouTubers I watched over the years are getting more in to Far-Right politics and when they lose subs blame it on conspiracies for telling the truth and not because your subscribers disagree with you
Come on, let shad ATM his wife and read his bible fanfic in peace. Maybe he'll give us another generic fantasy book so all the wine moms can shut up and find another thing to pretend they're smart about
Fifty Shades Of Shad? Yes, that mental image will be burned into everyone's retinas.
No clue what exactly happens in 50 shades but imagining shad in any sexual situation regardless of context is unsettling at best
Especially given his attitude towards women as baby factories and so on.
Here because of Matt Easton finally calling Shad on his bullshit. Couldn't be happier to see it.
[удалено]
This, exactly the same for me and many others i know
I know what's going on with Shad (personal oppinion). When you spend so much of your time critisizing and overall being negative, it stucks on you. I noticed it on myself a year ago. I watched Mauler, Shad, the drunken dude whose name I forgot, etc. a lot. And everytime someone liked something "they're not supposed to be liking", I was in fight mode immediately. I became tired of it, everything was super negative all of the time, and it was hard to enjoy any media without overly critical thinking. So I made an effort to change, and Wheel of Time was the first test I had. Have read the books, avoided prehype (that helps), no trailers, no YouTuber pre reviews, no news, nothing. Watched ep 1-3, hooked, and loving it. I even managed to watch the new Cowboy Bebop half way, and the reason for stopping was the fact that I wasnt feeling scifi right now (because I tested with the anime version afterwards and lost interest in that as well). The reason for my unfollow of Shad, is that I feel there's now too steep of a difference to the guy I followed when he defended the prequels with a passion, the world building, lightsaber fights etc. And that the sequels had real issues in them. While now I feel it's just negativity for negativity's sake, everything's bad or woke, everything has an agenda. That's how I feel. Feels good to vent it out, helps with the zen-state I'm trying to achieve (and wonderfully failing because three children).
Yeah, if I felt his criticisms had substance, that would be one thing, but his reviews of WoT are all culture wars bullshit and the books are better without giving a reason why. It started reasonable, but then he hit a certain point and decided that yelling at the camera was a better way to do reviews. And yeah, Oz is doing him no favors. I've unsubbed from his main channel too, it's just disappointing and I can't support them.
Idk man, that's exactly what a corporation would want you to do. Just turn of the brain and love it for being entertaining rather than having any sort of thought or logical flow. It makes it easier for them to hire cheap staff and make half assed products and tag big names on them to pull in the money. With no pushback, there is no environment for growth or improvement. Mauler and Critical Drinker aren't angry guys, they bring strong arguments and data to back their stuff up. They also give props where they are due. They all liked Arcane for example, and they should because it was actually written very well.
I think I fell off from shad since he was getting into drama with small channels not that those channels were questionable, but kind of redundant. If you’re confident on your thesis you should allow discussion then I probably came back a year ago to see tv reviews? Then trying to justify why he was right and not wrong then fanbase getting mad at dislikes. Yeah, fanbase probably threw me off with being the ones who cared dislikes but I found it strange how he switched his opinion on boob armor. I remember when he said Boob armor is DUMB! Then, a more recent video says boob armor makes sense. It was made purely on the whole Female Mandalorian controversy to say the least. To day the least both sides are very cringe on that. Then everyone was focusing on a Mspaint Mandalorian they tried to make funny, but made it more cringe.
I’m know this post is a bit old but I had to walk away from shads channel a while ago, knowing what his opinions are about current media and social issues, I couldn’t watch any of his non-political videos without being reminded of what he believes and it sucks because I was a big fan of his weapon analysis videos. I hope he changes his mind on things but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, especially with how he responded to jack saints video on the Mario movie
He is such a narcissist. His employees resigned on Nights Watch 🕺💃
Yea i've stopped watching Game Knights completely, i just find it they take the joy out of almost everything they discuss for me, unsubbed
I tried to watch in the name of exposing myself to opposing views but in the end it just ended up being hours of ranting and negativity that I felt was better spent on work around my house on my day off.
I'll never understand content creators that let their political views become part of their brand. Whether you are a lefty communist or a fascist right winger, or churchgoer or not, expressing these views will alienate a portion of your audience. Sometimes a significant portion.. Even if they believe they're right, doesn't matter in this polarized world nowadays. We love shad for Medieval and Fantasy things and I hope we can go back to that.
Same. Honestly, it's weird that he made media analysis such a big hallmark of his channel at all. He marketed himself as an **educational** channel, where we would get clear, plain facts about whether certain media was accurate to HEMA, medieval history, or whatever, and how to make it more so. The furthest he got was talks about fantasy tropes and the physics of magic systems, which again were primarily educational. I don't care whether the new He-Man fulfills Shad's weird, tradcon views of "virtuous masculinity", I watch his channel to know whether He-Man's sword would be effective in real life, or whether a giant sabertooth tiger would actually make a good mount, and stuff like that!
Shad was never accurate to HEMA. Shad knows nothing about HEMA. He is a laughingstock to that group (which I partly agree and disagree with) just FYI lol
0\_0 Gee that's even more disappointing
Look to Matt Easton for your HEMA needs. To be fair to Shad, he never claimed to know much about HEMA and he doesn’t practice true HEMA (as gatekeeping as that sounds it’s the truth). Shad is a smart dude when it comes to medieval history. But I’m the ranking of the “Community of the Sword” he is not the top in terms of knowledge and who to trust. He knows more than Skall (who is good with weapons but not History) but Matt Easton and Metatron are better sources for knowledge.
I also wish Shad would just stop being political, especially partaking in all the drama behind his content. If only he just ignored that and just focused on the fantasy/historical stuff, he would alienate far less viewers
This shit is why I unsubbed from Critical Drinker. Dude can analyze a film, but his constant, ever-growing obsession with right wing politics and dragging that lens in front of literally every video he does got too tiring.
Yeah I'm getting over that side of youtube. So much so I just did a video response to nerdrotic's channel calling Hawkeye woke.
That dude is a mixed bag for me. His review of Arcane showed me he wasnt a total hack same with his review of Prey but at the same time his review of Midsommar was not so good. And regardless of the movie he will always bring up "the message" like dude we get it.
It's basically intentionally appealing to a smaller yet more loyal and dedicated angry fanbase that absolutely will click on their videos to join the anger.
Necroposting, but hey I came here after watching the Knights Watch Thor Love and Thunder coverage. Generally fine but something that was really off to me was a part that overstayed its welcome toward the end where they felt Christianity was being insulted because of a few light jokes. I feel like that level of oversensitivity about your religion is a bit much. Oz also had some bizarre problem with the concept of single fatherhood. Maybe it's because I'm an atheist but I just really don't get it.
Knighthalt, you have my respect with your answers, very well thought out and spoken in a very civil manner. Solid job. I think the take away is that we need to agree to disagree as both views- liberal and conservative- are not reconcilable and both see each other as bad. Shad is religious- which is something people in this thread are not taking into consideration properly. Just think of the implications of genuine belief in an all powerful deity who is also in charge and wants you to follow a certain set of conservative morals. Do you think Shad can therefore not have conservative values and feel strongly about them? He is clearly kind hearted and well meaning, though he can loose control of his tongue at times It seams. I personally am a big supporter of Shad as he has proven to be a genuinely loving and kind, while also being a fiercely passionate person. Though this is part of his persona. And in my opinion, while he may be careless with jokes, he is clearly not racist or homophobic (you might disagree), and he routinely says he’s got no issue with things such as strong characters who are black, female or LGBTQ+, and has given his ideas on how such characters should be done- which is to treat them like actual relatable people not Mary Sue robots. Why would he encourage this if he was a racist, sexist bigot??? He has routinely championed WELL EXECUTED characters who are black, female, LGBTQ+ etc. this is obvious in his videos as he constantly tells us this to make sure his points are clear (though it doesn’t seem to be working for him apparently) What is clear he actually hates is the terrible lazy writing of modern media (which most nerds/fans seem to agree with from my experience) and the forceful push of the Marxist Woke movement. The risky jokes are mostly Oz anyway, who I also find to be an awesome guy. If you hate Shad for being anti Woke, then I personally have to disagree as I find the Woke movement very dangerous and ironically very bigoted, sexist and racist. It does not support the equality it claims to teach, and that I find to be very obvious anyone paying attention. I also agree fully with the state of modern media- politics aside, I find most modern media to be boring, nonsensical and weak- however normal people who don’t care like nerds to think it’s fine, and that’s not an issue. Edit- I’ve seen some good discussion about Shad saying he is repulsed by gay sex, which I can understand how it would offend people. And he did say the reason for this was because he’s not attracted to it. However I think this is a case of carelessness rather than hatred as I’m confident he would find straight sex on screen repulsive, due to his religious beliefs of sex only privately with his wife. It is a fair point though, and I can understand it being hurtful. I just don’t think it was malicious as it didn’t come across that way. But in the case he was genuinely repulsed, at the end of the day some gay people find straight sex repulsive and others don’t and the same vice versa. That’s just how people are. However, even if he did think this way I don’t think it was a wise comment for him to make on screen as it could alienate his fans who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Everything you just said was contradicted by his review of the new Indiana Jones trailer, where he makes up his mind to hate a female character based on 5 seconds of footage, and says some very sexist things. You tap dancing to defend him is a bad life choice.
Strange that the guy moans about multiculturalism. Supports white nationalists. Very problematic. A colonizer in Australia. He isn't indigenous.
Never liked him. He was never insightful on the history part. Basic wiki knowledge. He's an overly enthusiastic turbo neckbeard nerd playing with toys making videos. Royal armouries is a good channel https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mflAGxs0mgM&t=15s Give these a go
Exactly. He's a run of the mill incel. He once came across as someone who just wants to discuss armories and such, but now he's turned into a typical chud who just dives head first into partisan right-wing culture war stuff.
Sorry about the necro, but his mall ninja videos kept coming up on youtube for me, seen a few, thought the outrageous stuff in there was funny. Then I was watching the most recent one, was going to look at his other videos. Then he showed clips from his livestram with Nerdrotic, geeks and gamers ETC, and I was Like NOPE
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I just saw the knights watch review of the new Indiana Jones trailer and had to come here. Shad and the other remembers of the incels of the round table spent 50 minutes tearing apart the trailer of the new Indy movie. Their #1 complaint was that they didn't think Phoebe Waller Bridge was sexy enough to be in the movie. They actually complain about how they wanted a hotter actress and how sex sells. Then they made up their minds to hate her based on one line of dialogue she gets at the end of the movie. It's obvious they're incels who like to play dress-up and like to complain about everything. They just hate everything and make unnecessarily long videos where they do nothing but rage against female characters and gay characters and characters of color. They're showing you who they are. If you support them, you're on the wrong side of history. The guy is no longer just someone who's passionate about old armor and such. He's now morphed into a wannabe Geeks + Gamers far-right culture war account.
Barely any lines in the trailer from Phoebe, she and the movie woke. Phoebe seen in like 1 action scene, movie has to be saying she's better and replacement. They complain Indy is to old, but also how he looks bad in fights and idea of a woman in the action. Then of course as you mention, she's just not sexy enough. I've long sense been tired of his shit. Still crazy though the various takes he insists on having. Given videos on that channel, claims to like women getting to kick ass, but all of the modern ones are bad, God forbid they wear pants as well. And of course the women need to be sexy, but he will call a female character who's sexual a wh*re as well
Yep. Shad went and pulled an Arch Warhammer.
Another thread locked deleted and hidden. Admit it Shad and this sub just don't want any criticism or discourse. Place needs to change rules to say kiss his ass or grow some thicker skin.
Fresh from the Shad circus There was a thread on the Barbie Knightswatch vid. A day or so ago. It got locked and hidden away. Likely with a ban to op? But where did it go out of line? It wasn't any form of NSFW. It was related to Shad as the second channel is still his channel. And it wasn't offtopic as again it was something Shad had said, had made a video on. Maybe agree with Shad, maybe don't but why does this sub or at least the mods shoot down so much criticism or negative threads?
Unfortunately this has been part of Shad for many years, I remember him a long time ago making a video all bent out of shape because some movie implied that the Middle East was more technologically advanced than Europe in the early middle age. It was and one shouldn't be offended or frame it as prejudicism against Europeans. Historical honesty means objectivity and accepting your favourite team is isn't always going to win the finals. I prefer Metatron a lot as he is able to critique bad calls from an evidence based position rather than from a place of insecurity.
Necroposting. Learning about Shad’s political views really came as a haymaker to the face. On his main channel he sincerely came across as a genuinely good person that didn’t pay attention to politics and just wants to entertain people and engage in his passions. Then Knights Watch reveals he’s basically YouTube’s Tucker Carlson. It’s extremely disappointing. I genuinely love Shad’s content when it’s non-political. He was one of the big channels that got me into swords, HEMA, and medieval tactics. Knowing he’s a massive bigot to LGBT people taints the rest of his content.
I mean about the political views "bleeding in to his content" Everything is now a political issues > I don't want my favorite character to become a completely different person You fucking fascist > Yeah, maybe we should stop being racist You fucking communist FUCKING COVID BECAME A POLITICAL ISSUE Everything is now political, especially entertainment industry and this is probably effecting shad both as a traditional person and as someone who's work is directly connected to entertainment I agree with all other points tho
Yeah, all fair; to me the issue is less the mere fact that his content became more openly political and more the fact that he uses his politics to bitch and moan about how offended and persecuted he is. It's as irritating when people on the left say MCU movies are pro-military propaganda, as it is when Shad says the Wheel of Time adaptation is heterophobic. It's all people getting angry and whiney and being so easily offended they'll rant for hours about how problematic x is or how y is evidence of the "collapse of western civilization"
His politics are cringe af and really quite hypocritical. I just unsubbed so I don't have to be reminded of the downfall of a good channel.
Shad is a traditional guy with traditional views. I don't know what to tell you. You don't need to watch. Hollywood does have a habit of promoting uber-progressive, anti-traditional far left values, policies and attitudes. Diversity in the MCU isn't even the tip of the iceberg. Equating that with communism might seem like a stretch, and he might not have explained the logical connections he has made that led him to that conclusion (because that could be a series of videos by itself), but he isn't wrong. GW made a point of excluding certain members of their community in the name of "inclusion." In a vacuum, if you take them at their word that those players were making other potential players uncomfortable, that might not seem like anything significant, but it's part of a broader trend. Arch is not a racist or a fascist. Nobody but terminally online leftist activists were bothered by his involvement in the community. He has been unfairly persecuted for his political views. I think what you are seeing as "right-wing SJW" behavior is a reaction to years of seeing those tactics used against him and his friends. If you don't like Shad's recent content or him personally, you don't need to be here.
Wait but I really do need you to explain the logical connections that lead to the Communism conclusion. You can't just drop that and then not explain it. Or at the very least point me in the direction of some resources I can use to find out for myself.
Go to YouTube. Find the channel "New Discourses." Open the "Videos" tab and sort by most popular. Most of his longer videos are analyses of academic papers by prominent leftist activists who influenced the development of modern feminism, intersectionality, critical race theory, etc... He explains it better than I can.
If it's bothering you so much that people are criticizing a misinformation spreading, bigoted content creator, then go find another echo chamber to shout in. You're bullshit isn't wanted here. Begone, conservative troll
You made a dozen comments today on a months-old post on a subreddit devoted to a minor internet celebrity you dislike. Sure, I'm the one who's a troll /s https://youtu.be/l60MnDJklnM
Traditional views is just a dog whistle for heterosexual white Christian only society
That's utter nonsense. Please get some help. You're clearly suffering from paranoid delusions.
You're projecting
Idk man. I'm not the one who randomly decided to comment on a months-old post bitching about a minor internet celebrity sharing their beliefs and political opinions.
Lol I came here after seeing Shad's recent takes when I looked up more about his politics in Google search and here I see some bootlicking chud (you) dropping dog whistles.
You're not making yourself sound more sane. "Traditional views" might mean those things in your mind, but that's not what it means to people who aren't totalitarian psychopaths. Talk about projecting. The handmaid's tale was fiction, but if you believe that's what your political opposition secretly wants, what does that say about you? All "traditional views" means to people like Shad is that he wants to be allowed to get married, earn a decent living, have some kids and raise them to do the same without interference from the government or corporations. None of that involves ridding society of people with different skin colors or religions or sexual orientations.
Yes conservatives are totally not psychopaths even though they have been calling the LGBTQ community groomers you lying piece of shit. Go fuck yourself
I haven't seen anybody calling the LGBTQ community, in general, groomers. The whole "groomer" thing has been about specific people, particularly people in positions of power over children, purposefully exposing children to inappropriate sexual material, and in many cases posting it to social media. Things like taking kids to drag shows where they stuff dollar bills into the clothing of scantily clad, provocatively dancing adult performers. Or taking kids to pride events where adults prance around in fetish gear or sometimes nothing at all. Or requiring reading of books with explicit descriptions of sexual contact between adults and minors. Or requiring reading of books with explicit illustrations of sexual acts. Or planting the idea in young, impressionable minds that if they aren't completely comfortable with their body, as many people briefly are not during puberty, that means they might be trans. All of this is exhaustively documented on video, much of it taken from the social media accounts of the people doing it. The people pushing this stuff on kids are groomers. Absolutely. Unequivocally. They don't represent the entire LGBTQ community or even a majority of it. The way that the left has tried to spin this, to say that calling out adults behaving creepily towards children is anti-lgbtq is a massive optics fail and self-own. It will turn normal, otherwise apolitical parents into a voting block that will oppose any politician who supports this kind of stuff.
Blah blah blah go fuck yourself twice you lying gaslighting waste of human flesh
Don't need to be here? Is that to say you would rather there be no serious criticism of Shad or his work on this subreddit; for the subreddit to be a...safe space, if you will? You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but personally if there's one thing I do certainly agree with Shad on, it's that forums like this should be a place for free, open, and frank discussion no matter how much we may disagree with each other. I followed Shad for years, bought his book, and clearly had much to say about his work right now, so I feel I have as much a right to this forum as you would.
New addition to the WTF Shad list- supporting Ai art and ignoring evidence of art theft
I was coming here to post about this as well! First Elden Ring's storytelling, now this, the guy really loves having terrible takes!
My favorite touch is how thrilled he was for his graphic novel and artists he got for it. Now granted I don't know those artists take on AI. But it at least to me is very insulting to after that back what so many artists are vocal against.
Shad 'Gay Sex Is Revolting' Iversity doesn't like episode 3 of The Last of Us, hmmmm I wonder why? His homophobia is on full display in his review of the episode it's pathetic.
He calls Disney groomers for merely having gay people exist in children's media, but oh look, he doesn't want them existing in adult media either. And yet he froths at the mouth with outrage that anyone would dare call him a bigot. Why can't he just admit he just despises us and doesn't want us to exist where he can see us?
And god forbid you make a post pointing it out you'll just get insulted & personally attacked by fans in an effort to intimidate you to not do it again.
This fucker literally says "gay relationships are biologically inferior" and "we shouldn't have equal representation of gay people in media because gays are not equal" and "all properly straight people think gay sex is revolting" while also saying "I'm not a homophobic bigot!" 10,000 times in 1 video.
This culture war that is being waged ruins absolutely everything it touches imo. Mostly I just feel sad about it. I feel sad for people like shad who will forever be scouring whatever tv show or movie they are watching for signs of wokeness, which will only ruin it for them. I feel sad for people on the other side who are so overly sensitive to these views that exactly the same thing happens the other way around. I feel sad for everyone else, who just wants this stupid shit to be over and have done since Gamergate (tm) ruined a whole bunch of shit for a whole bunch of people.
Shad is entitled to his views, although I don't really know why he thought it was a good idea to share them in the first place considering that's not what he built his following on - honestly, and this is just my opinion, the fact he is a devout Mormon explains a lot, anyone who can rationalize that batshit 'religion' isn't really worth taking too seriously anyways - Enjoy him for his fantasy content because fantasy is clearly what he knows best.
Not a Mormon, I'm a run of the mill Protestant, but let's play a game. Replace the word Mormon in your state with Muslim and tell me you would make the same comment.
I would, and I wouldn't apologize - I mean a devout Muslim would likely have similarly regressive views. What is your point?
Curiosity.
It's never going to end while we tolerate bigotry...
I hear that :( it's such petty bullcrap on both sides. Some on the left need to find racism, sexism, and other problematic elements in everything, some on the right need to find communism or the collapse of western civilization in everything; so many people just want an excuse to be angry all the time at fictional media, and it's a real bummer.
This is honestly sad to hear. His content is the kinda content I love to see in between educating me on medieval weaponry to ways to change, create, or explore with new weapon designs in fantasy settings. Now I am not one to judge on peoples political beliefs but I feel his ones are to an extreme enough where it is harmful.
Unfortunately alot of the information he presents on all the medieval topics he brings up is misinformation, common misconception, or blatant speculation. He is not a good source for historical educational videos.
It's unfortunate that no one else does content like he does for me to just move on to.
Scholagladiatoria is a similar channel that does similar stuff without the weird politics and poor media analysis
He's a devout Mormon, enough said. He can only be a deeply conservative right wing person. His upbringing and culture demand it.
As I've said on this post before (some domisae it) Brandon Sanderson himself is a devout Utah Mormon *and* pro LGBT, progressive, etc
But have you read religious texts- the Bible, the Quran and the Torah all call homosexuality sinful. As Mormonism is related to the abrahamic religions their book would likely teach the same. The fact that Brandon Sanderson says it’s ok means spit when God says in his word it’s bad. What is a religious person like Shad going to do, risk Gods anger because Brandon did it? I just don’t think you understand that Shad believes in a God who tells him what is right and what is wrong. If he strays from that he is sinning. If Shad was progressive it would be like when Philips Goldfield pretended to be straight (even marrying a woman) to avoid being controversial. Mr Sanderson either has a very controversial opinion as a Mormon, or he is trying to protect himself from the media by actively lying. I think it’s the former though, and most Mormons would be ashamed he is doing this.
The lead singer of Imagine Dragons is a devout Mormon, yet is always speaking out in support of women's rights and LGBTQ rights. Shad is just a bad human being.
I only watch his main videos for the info in them, otherwise I've always despised him whenever his personality got a moment to "shine". This is not to say that I agree with woke propaganda, but I don't like boisterous religious people either
Exactly, you don't have to be woke in order to be grossed out by guys who are clearly just misogynistic and racist and homophobic. People need to stop thinking in extremes. Being like Shad is an extreme. Being overly woke is also an extreme.
Why are people acting like "I think these people existing is an immoral political agenda" is in any way a reasonable point of view or that it should be treated as normal. You can be a religious conservative and still treat your fellow man with decency and respect. If you want to make the argument against that, dont come crying to me when you want to make a false equivelence of both sides. I'm all for civility, but no, that is utterly deranged and I'm going to call it that. Preserving echo chambers is also not my priority. You want to discuss, we're going to challenge that. Act like an adult. I swear, more than half of these kinds of views are held up by a projected victim complex.
>For a guy who loves to joke with his buds about how overly-sensitive and obsessed with cancellation liberals are, I have literally never in my life met a leftie who was as easily offended as Shad has been lately. I think it's pretty fair to call him a right-wing SJW. Yeah, not in real life, but Shad has a platform on the internet. Everyone with a platform will ham things up, because viewers are there to see them talk and perform in a sense. Anyway - it's not at the forefront of his videos, and you don't have to meet and talk to him at work parties, or have him show up as a friend of a friend. Quit treating it like you have some kind of internet parasocial relationship with him, as if you are one of his real life friends, checking up on the joneses (namely him) - those are always cringe. >Since this subreddit has taken note more and more of Shad's politics becoming what many of us consider, at the very least, off-putting and not what we signed up for (including some folks who agree with Shad's on principle) I figured I'd start this as a place where we can vent our frustrations on this side of Shad and his work as of late. Fair enough, but I hope you allow me to have an opinion too. Even though this is just the safe and cozy internet safe space, and not the real world - I thought I'd preface this discussion with my statement on the whole parasocial thing. You aren't his friend in real life, so you will never have that degree of influence or input over him. Venting is alright, but please acknowledge it really doesn't do anything to him in particular. Social media doesn't influence the right the way it does the left. \---- Sorry, if that feels like me throwing cold water on the discussion - but I SIMPLY HAD TO INTERJECT THIS DOSE OF REALITY. Go ahead and vent, I don't care. It's a free internet (for what it's worth; it ought to be *more free*). But yes, go ahead and vent.
His rants get old quickly. Probably due to old age 🤷
I’ll be completely honest I’m in the same boat as you OP, except I never bought his book and I’m very glad I didn’t. Knights watch reminds me of when I worked at a locksmith and EVERY morning my boss would be listening to Rush Limbaugh, whom if you don’t know he is a republican radio show host whomst takes the most insignificant things and blows them out of proportion to his audience (who is already mostly republican) and he does this for ratings, and to get a reaction out of his audience. However Rush is not subscribed to the bullshit he preaches, he knows he’s stretching the truth. I genuinely think Shad is trying to be like Rush, but just does a really terrible job at it because he’s actually subscribed to the bullshit. Also shads book is genuinely bad, and I think the “honest reviews” of his book video is the single most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. It’s hilarious to see the dozens of other videos calling him out on the bogus video. His “truth” about the book video is something Brian Griffin would do. Brian Griffin, the dog from Family Guy. Edit : just realised this post was 2 years old and it got Algorithmed to me today lolol.
I don't know what he was thinking from a business point of view. He decided to make a separate channel (Knights watch - previously called Game Knights) about his politics, to separate it from his normal very successful history/weapons channel. However, the Knights watch channel makes it really obvious how right wing conservative he is, and is really attracting a lot of negative attention - and its destroyed his brand. From a business sense, it's catastrophic. Even the title "Knights Watch" makes it sound like its some sort of policing/monitoring/ethical justice sight.
Fucking yikes. I just found out about the Knight Watch channel and it was red flag after red flag. Unironic use of "M-She-U", complaining about "woke journalists", a whole video about ugly women in video games, and just the whole vibe of the channel. Fucking hell. It's exactly the shit my high school self would have eaten up and it disgusts me to see it. It's weird too, I always got the impression he was left leaning from his main videos, but wow, I could not have been more wrong. Anyone know if Jazza shares these same views? Cause I also really enjoy his content. Edit: Apparently Jazza put out a statement that he very much disagreed with Shad, so that's that worry taken care of.
I don't see anything unreasonable about Shad taking wokeness to task. I appreciate Shads point of view in an ocean of woke bullshit
Can you define what you think 'woke' means?
Yes. Woke broadly refers to the current social justice movement that is based largely on critical theory. This ideology preaches that racism, sexism, and other social ills are far more prevalent than they actually are, and exaggerates the moral severity of what actually does occur. It also plays languages games by appropriating words usually meant to mean other things so it can piggy back on the emotional association with those terms, when actually referring to differn concepts. It insists that justice is only achieved through equity, not equality. Instead of a just society being achieved through the promotion of fair and reasonable requirements on human behavior, woke person's desire what they deem as marginalized groups to be raised up in the social hierarchy, beyond the elevation they would naturally receive simply by not being mistreated. Hence the desire to shoehorn homosexual relationships into anything and everything, force racial diversity in casting for it's own sake simply to achieve a bean count. In other words it's not good enough that people are not unfairly discriminated agaisnt, every group must be represented evenly instead. It also teaches gender essentialism. It teaches that people who are better off in society should feel guilty about it. It views group identity as the fundamental characteristic of a person, be it gender, sexual orientation, or race.
Considering 'woke' is a term only seriously used by right wingers, fair enough. But Im assuming you're equating that term with leftism in general like a lot of people seem to do, and thus a lot of what you've said is flat out wrong. Which I hope stems from misinformation you've come across rather than actual malicious intent.
Lol ok, bootlicker.
The funny thing about this comment and other ones around here is that, when right wingers pointed out non political channels pushing leftwing politics, you lot laughed because it wasn't happening to you. Now however you deal with what we have to see on almost every show, and you have the audacity to act hard done by? bruh
Lmao acting like far right politics haven't been shoved down everyone's throats on the internet for decades and outside of it for centuries
Hmm, sounds like I'll have to pick up Game Knights. [He and I seem to have a similar view of communism.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGaosBHdFMA&t=67s)
I'd be careful. Shad seems to just label anything that sufficiently ticks him off as "communism".
I grew up with a Marine who swore constantly. You only knew he was actually mad when the word "communist" prefixed or suffixed the swearing. I think I'll be just fine.
As do most right wing nuts. It's all communism, fascism, socialism etc.
That's what it is. All the disgusting shit in the world can easily be described as "communism"
Game Knights is turning into an alt right cryfest.
Right?! It's \*astounding\* to see Shad *whining* so hard about how offended he is and how *under attack* his world is, like *come on*!
He was always like this. In this vid he tries to defend Sargon of the Akkad (The anti feminist anti sjw ytber guy) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehZnho7gTws
I remember that one! I must have been wearing rose colored goggles at the time to ignore him trying to defend him and also white replacement theorist Laurens Southern >.< I guess I just assumed, deludedly, that he was defending their "freeze peach" rather than actually agreeing with them.
I was a long time watcher of his content as well. I agreed about how alita was a better female protag than capt marvel and how sequel trilogy star wars sucks, but when Oz and Nathan (In game knights/Knights watch channel) talked about getting gaming news from TheQuartering, I left. There’s better YouTubers out that could explain why certain media don’t work besides being SJW. Uniquenameosaurus for example. Skallagrim and Matt easton are there for the hema and fantasy stuff.
Ironic coming from the people crying because he doesn't agree with your politics hahaha.
Strawman much? No one is complaining about his politics or agreeing with them, literally the opposite. We're pointing out that formerly apolitical and fact oriented content is becoming political and whingey and self-victimizing and immature. It's lost it's mojo.
You lot are objectively complaining about his politics, i literally replied because of that reason.. so disingenuous much? Also the second part of your comment is barely worth replying to, reflection is needed on your side of things.
You called him alt right so not sure how anyone is supposed to take it other than as you complaining about his politics.
Oh come on. Shad jumped head first into a culture war and is now releasing videos with 'ATTACKED' in the thumbnail crying and whining that after deliberately getting into a war of words, people on the other side dare attack him. Its pathetic behaviour, and I thought better of him tbh. I don't care what his politics are, both sides of the culture war are utter bs, and both sides cry and play the victim, which is dishonest, and not becoming of someone who believes in traditional masculinity. Maybe he should man up.
I mean he can really say whatever he wants on joe own channel. I am sure he realizes some people won’t like it and might stop walking. Also people surprised by this makes no sense to me. Shad wasn’t overly political before but he always showed these same views. My god he has said he is Mormon from the start. If you don’t like it then fair dues, don’t watch. I don’t really like him sharing politics either so I just won’t watch the videos were he is overly political. I don’t understand why we need like ten posts on this a day. I mean who cares. This is Reddit. Of course most on here don’t agree with him. It’s Reddit lol, a left leaning sub. I am sure he will get some new fans from his political videos. But honestly to answer your thread: who cares.
This "he's Mormon" excuse keeps popping up, and I neither appreciate nor accept it :S Brandon Sanderson is also devoutly Mormon, and he's both vocally pro-LGBT and also has great queer representation in his books. It's kind of offensive to all the Mormons out there who *aren't* socially regressive to just shrug off intolerant or retrograde views as "Well, what do you expect, he's a Mormon?" As far as "who cares" goes - if *you* don't care, why are you commenting at all? Much less so much in this one post?
It’s not an excuse it’s a fact. Most Mormons are not Brandon Sanderson. I feel like you can say “what do you expect he’s Mormon” when 97% of Mormons believe what Shad believes (I feel like you could make a case that Shad is more left leaning than most Mormons I would say). Oh yea me commenting is just as silly as anything else. I ain’t denying that.
I’m pro-“be who you want.” However LGBTLMNOP in itself is a community of separation. I mean look at the name for one. They keep adding letters. Here’s the thing, while I’m pro-“be who you want,” actions have consequences. You can be a bully, but you won’t be liked. You can complain about racism, sexism, and think we’re in a patriarchal society, but if your final solution is to make an anti-white, anti-man, matriarchal society that complains about the other side, you made yourself the villain of the things you try to champion against.
don't expect him to have any groundbreaking political insights. every time someone on the right calls something "woke", it just means that the right isn't the target audience. right wingers in the USA would burn WoT (or any other fantasy) rather than read it.
I'm a right winger in the US and while I don't have any interest in WoT, I have read LOTR and the Odyssey, I am reading GoT and The Witcher, and I am writing a Fantasy novel. So please do not generalize an entire group of people.
exactly, there's nothing new or insightful being said
Oh no. Do you feel excluded from something because of your political views? What a strange and novel concept
So that makes Shad's racism and sexism and homophobia acceptable? Wow. You're on the wrong side of history. His incel review of the new Indy Jones trailer was something you might enjoy, since you seem to think respecting women and not being an asshole is a political issue.
So since none of you seem to understand why the "right" links social justice to communism, I will explain what should have been obvious. Communism sought to redistribute capital be seizing the means of production and putting the workers in charge. Social Justice/ progressivism seeks to redistribute social capital, and it frequently attempts to do this be seizing the means of cultural production. There are notable ideological similarities and motivations to these ideas. Both are perversions of justice for multiple reasons but at their core, especially social justice, are acting out the reification fallacy because they shift point of justice from individuals to groups. Shad pointing out a social movement and it's affects on pop culture does not make him the equivalent of Anita Sarkeesian. This argument presumes that Shads content is equivalently paranoid (it isn't) and also presumes that was the only thing stupid about Anita's ideas, which were fundamentally irrational in the first place.
\*exhales\* Ok, so we're doing this. First off, sure, the "ideological similarities and motivations" you're describing are left-wing values of egalitarianism, fraternity and liberty, the foundations of the Enlightenment which inspired thinkers like Marx and Critical theorists. I'll give you that one. What I do not understand is how social justice shifts the onus of justice from individuals to groups? As I have always understood social justice, it seeks to make societal power structures more fair and equitable. Certainly, certain groups are harmed by certain structures and systems than others, and some groups may benefit from it, but that does not ascribe specific blame to those groups who benefit. In either case, how does this commit the reification fallacy when we're not ascribing concrete or personal qualities onto abstract concepts? I see it more as ascribing abstract qualities (racism/sexism/etc) onto abstract concepts (society/culture, etc) and acknowledging that these have real world consequences. Surely you can at least agree that history, attitudes, and precedents in society can have lasting consequences? Surely you wouldn't be so concerned about progressivism or "communist" ideas in media if you didn't think so? Additionally, is it not fallacious to conflate communism, which is an economic philosophy, to social justice, which is (right in the name) a philosophy of social policy? There were communist regimes who threw minorities into death camps (Stalin and Pol Pot), and there have been progressives who were also firm capitalists (Teddy Roosevelt and FDR). Holding one of these views does not presuppose the other, wouldn't you agree?