Johnny Harris’s Russia Ukraine Video is Disappointing…

It’s more than a little absurd that I have to comment on another YouTuber’s work to get videos watched on the platform. But after the success of the Kraut and Whatifalthist critique videos, my best and 2nd best performing videos of the year, I think it’s a pretty unavoidable conclusion. Luckily this month one of the biggest news and politics YouTubers, Johhnny Harris has weighed in on Russia and Ukraine, and I have a few quibbles with his approach. So with today’s video I manage to smack two birds with one stone, hopefully satisfying the algorithm, while commenting on most US coverage of Russia by proxy, through Johnny Harris. Going forward I think it probably makes sense to try to do one of these “YouTube Drama” videos a month. I hope you find them worthwhile. The Whatifalthist video uploaded two weeks ago has brought me back to traffic numbers I haven’t seen in two years. I hope to use the numbers to hit the audience with some Yemen coverage soon…

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Whatifalthist Explained

A number of months back I ran a poll asking which of a selection of geopolitics YouTubers I should do a review of. I was surprised to see Whatifalthist win the poll dramatically. The few videos of his I had watched had struck me as inoffensive and vaguely amusing. Having now done a deeper dive, it’s clear I was missing a lot. This kid, and I do mean kid, I think he’s like 22, does delightfully nerdy deep dives on European history, but his takes on countries and events outside of “Western Civilization” are sometimes… problematic. As I looked into it further, I was surprised to find that he has a lot of the same educational gaps and right wing ideological hang-ups that I did when I was 22. It’s an odd artifact of our age that he is working out his ideas with an audience in the hundreds of thousands. I don’t think he should be pilloried for it. This was an interesting video to write. If I were criticizing someone with serious institutional backing, or over the age of 25, I think I would have been a lot harsher. But this kid literally seems to have grown up on-line, starting a YouTube channel half his lifetime ago to answer fun nerd questions. I’m not sure I got the balance right. Let me know what you think.

If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click here to support this project through Patreon. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.

Video Transcript after the jump…

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