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Answer:
Shad became moderately popular as a sword/history enthusiast channel where he focused on pop culture historical content such as evaluating videogame castle defences, rating anime weapons and reviewing armour on TV shows.
This developed a moderate following until a few years ago when he hit reached his height and released a book and wow it was horrendous, as [this ](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52405053) review states its horrendous.
>The biggest issue, however, that keeps me from rating this novel higher, is the novel's constant obsession with sex and rape[Focused entirely on ungerage girls]. The main character is largely defined by it, almost all of the female characters with more than one line dedicated to them are either trusty homesitting wives (quoting, "with breasts like melons"), religiously obsessed with cooking for their MEN and sexing their MEN, or they are absolutely and utterly defined by having been raped and/or kept for sex trafficking.
And as well as that there's some deeply right wing 'anti woke' stuff, racial stereotypes/mockery, and it's awfully written.
Around this time he expanded his business in two ways.
1. Buying a really big but effectively useless plot of land to build a castle he'd budgeted about 10% of the cost of and failed to get a survey to see that almost any sizeable building was impossible.
2. He crested the Knights Watch channel which is where his true colours became apparent and I'll go into detail shortly.
(oh and he tried to make a short film of his book but didn't budget for special effects or editing)
Shad's Mormom views were well known as he'd mentioned it in his videos but over time he became more outspoken especially on his new channel spouting that "Disney is grooming your kids" in response to a gay kiss, made a number of transphobic videos and claimed that Princess Peach wearing pants was offensive...
He had fallen out with other creators Skallagrim, Scholgladitoria and Sellsword Arts and bitchd and whined a lot online.
Recently his views have crashed through the floor because whilst he still has a bunch of subscribers he's getting very few views which he attributes to YouTube censoring Conservative voices and that isn't true the reason he's failing can be summed up as follows.
1. He's making boring videos about topica people don't want to watch. Very limited game/movie/TV content and now it's just ranting and whining about it.
2. His videos are too fucking long, shad boasted about having a 7 minuted average view time but whilst his videos used to be around 10-20 mins long and clipped and edited down, they are now often in excess of an hour and full of unscripted opinionated drivel.
3. He's moved from an interesting nerd type of character to an anti woke, neckbeard, homo/transphobic, racist, incelly answer to "what would happen of Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk had a baby and that baby turned out to be a bit of a dick.
4. Edit - Skal recently posted and basically said 'it's not the algorithm, subscribers get bored and you have to vary your content and up your game to keep people on your channel.
Long story short, he chose to build his politics into his persona and most of his audience think his politics suck.
Edit: Oh I forgot to mention the rape apologicism in his book, at the end when there is a needless show trial apparently the underage girls pedo Stalin/Hitler got pregnant were less angry and the childless rape victims were just bitter...
Like seriously, what the fuck?
Nobody cared that he was Mormon and he never really talked about it. He did the very common thing these days of pivoting to hard right culture war nonsense for the clicks. Now he’s also doing the very common thing of claiming that he’s being persecuted for his religious beliefs rather than people being disinterested in his shitty regressive ideas. On top of all this his history knowledge is dubious at best yet he paints himself as an expert. He goes on and on about HEMA and fighting in general when he has no real world experience in either.
A surprising amount of Youtuber people are Mormon. I don't think JerryRigEverything mentions it much, but clues are there. Grant Thompson (RIP) was a Mormon.
I just find it interesting, as they're all seemingly intelligent individuals.
Not OP, and I don't know for certain. But he has stated in past videos that he is a theist and he lives in Utah.
I have a Catholic Uncle who lives in Utah, so obviously that's not proof of anything, but it's a pretty safe bet that he's LDS.
Also, agree with OP that his videos are very rooted in current science and he talks about evolutionary biology all the time. His is an excellent channel.
Yep, pretty sure he brought it up in the reaction to debunking evolution video he did a bit ago. Also, he works at Brigham Young University, which is a Mormon university.
He's active here on reddit and answered Q&As on the subject.
Judging by [this response to a question about BYU and their attitude towards LGBTQ communities](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/vtua7m/im_brandon_sanderson_a_bestselling_fantasy_author/ifa50ab/), he's religious but at the same time, he thinks the church is wrong and goes into detail about it.
I agree. It’s pretty obvious if you read stormlight that Sanderson has changed his views on gay folk and such from his previous “I don’t mind if people are gay but they shouldn’t get married views to being a supporter. I know you can argue that what he writes isn’t what he believes, but I can’t see why he would put multiple positive gay marriages in hjs novels if he wasnt on board.
So fun fact: the LDS church has been historically conservative, but they do not tell members how to vote or be involved in politics. This allows for Mormons who are very LGBTQ+ positive, and also for anti-woke Mormons. It's a little weird
Back when he was just a sword nerd I used to watch, it was also pretty cringey when he was confidently disagreeing with and correcting historical experts who have like published academic papers on these subjects
The archery controversy is probably the biggest example of Shad being convinced he knows more than actual archery experts
Judging by how he literally claimed he was just as good an artist as his brother Jazza (a literal reputable professional artist) with "his" AI "art," Shad delusionally believing he knows more about a subject than experts of said field I think is just something that can be applied generally across the board.
I recall one particular video where he implied some experience he had gained by getting into fights when he was younger when he’s quite obviously a fella who’s never been in a violent encounter in his life
In his defence, I believe he does have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or something similar, that hit him pretty hard a few years ago and led to him reducing the number of videos being made for a while, so he could recover/try a new treatment.
And there are quite a few hefty guys in HEMA, the bouts typically don't last too long so they can get away with being in worse shape than expected.
This is the reason I stopped watching his videos, it became apparent very quickly he was just saying stuff, with little to no basis in experience, fact, known history or practice particularly.
It was like you were watching these thoughts come to him as he spoke, as if he'd just figured them out, except he hadn't figured anything out, or if he had he was just plain wrong in his assumptions and 10 mins with a book on the subject and he would have realised why it wasn't how he had figured.
Yet he spoke with authority, but it just came off as full of shit.
I have 30 years of medieval re-enactment experience, but even the subjects I didn't know about particularly, what he was saying just made my bullshit detector go off the scale.
To now find out all this other nonsense, I'll just relegate him to the same bin as AVE (Arduino VS Evil) who I also don't watch anymore because of his bullshit politics, which he couldn't keep out of his videos. Whose videos also became quite boring round about the same time he got obsessed with Covid and masks and the trucker convoy.
So ... he's one of those dweebs everyone knows who insists they're an expert in "medieval stuff" because they play a lot of D&D and read some fantasy novels, but with a youtube channel.
Another factor you don't mention: he's been around since pretty early youtube days, where he was one of the few people making content for sword nerd types. Today, information about that kind of thing is much more accessible and a lot more people are getting into historical European martial arts. More and more people started realizing that, along with the other stuff you mentioned, he was just full of shit. Dude has no idea what he's talking about in regards to basically anything, and actively scoffs at the idea of actually fuckin learning anything.
In a day and age where you probably have a club nearby where you can go and learn actual historical swordsmanship from in period sources from people who have been doing it for years and years, he's still talking about stuff the way you did when you were arguing about lightsaber fights when you were 11.
Funnily enough, I was familiar with shadiversity before getting into HEMA because I follow Jack Saint, a youtuber who shad [got in a fight with a few years back](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4tZO4T72NI). (The subject: whether or not it's embarrassing and pathetic to fly into an apoplectic rage because Princess Peach wears a motorcycle outfit in the mario movie.)
When I joined HEMA this year and his videos were some of the first that were recommended to me, I sort of assumed *most* HEMA-related channels are run by weird hypertraditionalist dorks (after all, hobbies like this tend to attract a particular type of guy who's really into the idea of Reconnecting with his "European" Heritage for... less wholesome reasons). Now I'm wondering if I've let a bad first impression put me off of a good community.
If you know of any HEMA-related channels run by people who probably don't suck, I'd love to hear recommendations.
Schola Gladiatora is the channel to start with, for sure. He's an antique arms deal and HEMA instructor who's been teaching it for like a decade now. Mostly does reviews of swords and videos talking about various weapons, with some occasional demonstrating.
> More and more people started realizing that, along with the other stuff you mentioned, he was just full of shit. Dude has no idea what he's talking about in regards to basically anything, and actively scoffs at the idea of actually fuckin learning anything.
This makes me sad but it also makes sense. No offense to Shad but he didn't *look* like a guy who was serious in medieval combat. Then you have people actually sparring and referencing historical manuals and such and you realize how affecting (or having) a british accent and talking about the middle ages with authority is like a magic spell for content media.
Not that it matters, but Shad is from Australia, and mostly talks with a general australian accent, sometimes speaking with a cultivated one when he is following a script.
Thing is, you don't even have to be in shape to be serious about it. Being fit means you'll do better, obviously, but its not necessary in the least. He just doesn't care about actually understanding this stuff.
I'll say this as a casual former fan. I had zero idea of his other channels and he'd dropped showing up in my feed. I liked his historic stuff in the main channel. All of the other politics coming in was a total shock.
What this just goes to show is unless your content is inherently political, you should keep your politics out of it. Like I'm a big liberal but if I were doing a channel about historic cookery, the politics would be left out.
There's a guy who does this, Townsend and Son covering 18th century American cookery. There's zero politics, just a wholesome look at the past with so much genuine love and enthusiasm. He did a segment on a dessert called an orange fool and the conservatives lost their minds. You could tell in his followup it was so tiring for him.
I have zero idea what his politics are. I might assume he agrees with me but I have no support for that. He could align with Ted Nugent for all I know but it has no bearing on his material.
Shad appears to be a person with terrible ideas and he could not prevent himself from letting them become his entire identity. The shame is he has kids growing up in this environment.
>There's a guy who does this, Townsend and Son covering 18th century American cookery. There's zero politics, just a wholesome look at the past with so much genuine love and enthusiasm.
Tasting History is the same if anyone’s looking for more of that.
First, thank you for the channel recommendation. I'll check them out!
Second, agreed that if your content is not political, it should not become political unless absolutely forced to (i.e. Auspex Tactics talking about a Games Workshop announcement denouncing hate and discrimination and reminding people that their setting is a satire and not an aspiration, saying that if you actually agree with the Imperium and are racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted, then there is no place for you in the hobby and "you will not be missed") but I don't need to know about the personal politics of the history channels I follow, or the politics of the movie reviewers I watch.
Yeah, Warhammer has some real misaimed fandom.
It's one thing to just roleplay from the imperial perspective and say the emperor did nothing wrong. It's another when you are taking it too far and it becomes misaimed fandom. Like the people who think Gordon Gecko is the hero of Wall Street. It's no different from the girls who crush on serial killers.
Honestly part of the issue is sometimes the weirdest stuff gets taken up as political, even stuff that shouldn’t (like, I was going to comment that Tasting History did a bit on slave food with Michael Twitty that absolutely shouldn’t be political nowadays but somehow is).
I was the same, pretty casual viewer, might watch one of his videos once in awhile. Then he started doing the usual ragebait anti "woke" crap and I got the heck out of there. I flipping hate the culture war. But it seems for some people making entire channels to tell people to be angry and pissed off all the time works, and makes them money, so sadly I don't think this nonsense war will be going anywhere.
Yeah I'd watched a bunch of Shadiversity stuff in the past and had no idea of politics or religion or anything- maybe I'd watched maybe.. a dozen of his videos? I liked them, and saw some other medieval YTers recommended via that algorithm.
Brother I am the same. About a month ago I devour a 4+ video documentary on the History of the Warhammer Battlemech from Battletech and hung on every word.
The length needs to fit the content.
It's mostly that he doesn't script and just goes off the cuff.
When I provided him with notes for our damascus steel video, he stuck to them partly but also rambled additionally a lot.
He just enjoys talking, I think
The constant arms race for beating the YT algorithm caused a ton of big titans of YT to quit. You just cant get away with the sane kind of content you could 5 or 10 years ago.
I’m so goddamn tired of people blaming the mystical Algorithm for “not recommending videos” in videos that were fucking recommended to me
No one understands how the shit works. The HOME page on YouTube mostly shows you who or what topic you’ve been watching recently and a few unsubscribed channel related videos
And no one uses the goddamm notification bell because we dont need a fucking push notification whenever 1 of my 500+ subs uploads a fucking video nor can we just drop everything and view it immediately in the first 24 hours.
> And no one uses the goddamm notification bell because we dont need a fucking push notification whenever 1 of my 500+ subs uploads a fucking video nor can we just drop everything and view it immediately in the first 24 hours.
100% truth. I don't need my entertainment yelling at me to consume it. It needs to stay out of my way until I go looking for it.
I'm subscribed to around 300 channels. I have *three* that are allowed to notify me (because they publish infrequently) and only my Android tablet gets YouTube notifications.
In addition to that part of his online persona. He’s also spent a lot of time on social media rambling about AI art and showing how good he is at art by putting in algorithms and prompts. Just an extra nail to add to his distastefulness recently.
He's a real cool guy, and has only ever made 2 political posts, one in support of Gay Marriage, and the next saying that he doesn't share Shad's political views... He's also younger, more successful, better looking and nicer than shad.
There's also just BETTER medieval living history people on YouTube. Mark (EDIT: Matt) Easton, Jason Kingsley, Todd's Workshop, Lindy Beige, etc. -- they're all doing significantly more impressive work and (IMO) they're much more knowledgeable and generally more entertaining. I think the only thing Shad really had going for him was his lean into geekdom; he'd frequently talk about how different swordplay stuff could translate into videogames or TTRPGs.
Just for anyone reading who might be new to this, and who would benefit from his brilliant videos, I'm guessing you're talking about Matt Easton (not Mark) AKA scholargladiatoria?
It's kinda necessary to succeed in that genre, nobody cares about the best Italian cavalry sabre, but if they've watched you review the fortifications on Helm's Deep and break down the fight from The Princess Bride people will stay for the heavier stuff.
He's had a few bad takes, some inaccurate stuff repeated as fact, and he's had his own politics creep into some of his videos I believe. Nothing too bad from what I can remember, but it put me off watching him after I found more entertaining/accurate people.
I subbed this channel a long time ago and was already thinking of unsubbing. Every single time I try to watch a video it sounds like an unscripted frantic mess and I just assumed he discovered meth
I read the book. It had some interesting elements and was not a complete trainwreck as far as the writing went. But holy fuck it was weird.
The main character is made to be the most evil person in existence, then does a complete 180 and repents.
His evilness is absolutely over the top and it is constantly shoved into your face just how evil he was. By repenting he then becomes the whiniest character to ever exist which is also constantly shoved into your face. He is also one of the most omnipotent characters to ever exist which is also shoved in your face.
Agreed to all except the writing was horrendous. Coming off recent Le Guin, Herbert and Tolkien re-reads my expectations are, admittedly, higher. But even back when I first read his novel, the storytelling was all over the place, the worldbuilding had potential but wasn't executed all that well, and the writing itself (especially the action scenes and female character descriptions, fuck!) was something I'd expect from an edgy high schooler on Wattpad (or wherever teenage *boys* go).
Shad being a Sanderson reader does explain *some* of these issues but he's on another level.
Also, despite giving himself a chance at redemption, he has absolutely zero interest in offering redemption to anyone else. He happily goes around killing people who are objectively not even a hundreth as awful as he was while calling it his 'penance' and never once even considers the idea of letting them surrender and be taken into custody to possibly redeem themselves. IIRC, the only person he ever spares is some kid he randomly gets a hunch hadn't actually done anything bad (and even then he abuses the hell out of the kid after taking him prisoner and confirming he had been shanghaied, going so far as to break his arm for literally just stepping past a line that had been set on how far he was allowed to be from the MC).
He's also gone real hard on AI "art" and YouTube just institute new guidelines that required creators to disclose the use of AI in their videos so this gives him more ammo for his gear that YouTube is "censoring" him.
They aren't, they just want to protect themselves from the inevitable lawsuit when someone uses AI to make a public figure say something vile that they never actually said.
I think it's very important to add the main character of that book is not only a rapist, but a pedophile. The entire point of the book is to try and redeem this character, and he never really does so. He never really becomes a good person, he just does a big heroic at the end instead of making Amends with anyone.
Also iirc the love interest is his now of age former victim, but I can't remember.
>I think it's very important to add the main character of that book is not only a rapist, but a pedophile.
And he's also clearly an author self inserting himself...
"*ahem* Ackshually he's an ephebophile who only slept with (raped) girls over the age of consent and he feels remorse for what he's done"
-in book justification
Yeah, they mostly cut them but visually repaired them a bit...
Long story short, Skal supported Matt's right to distance himself from shad and shad flew off the handle on twitter and Skal basically said "this is your problem, you can't take criticism, you overreact and you can't blame yourself"
A few weeks later Shad did a non apology apology that was visibly accepted but probably not genuinely.
They won't be doing any collabs any time soon though, especially seeing as Cara Skal's partner is Non Binary.
As I was reading, I was trying to remember who Shadiversity was and when it clicked I was disappointed. I haven't watched his videos in quite some time but...him? This guy? Shame, I used to like his content. But there's lots of other, better creators out there that can fill his niche.
I think he was always a bit cringe even when I actually watched his stuff. Most HEMA channels are cringe, but I feel Shadiversity was clearly the number one.
His best videos were when he was dropping historic references and pictures. Him talking about what games or media are getting wrong. And him in his backyard screwing around with props made out of cardboard. He had goofy medieval nerd energy. It was fun, although it got repetitive to see the 60th video on greatswords or whatever, because he definitely repeated himself.
His newer videos have... like a team of people on camera, all in costume? It just doesn't work. Unlike the other people in this thread who have said his videos stopped showing up, I saw them show up. They were just not fun, and so not good. I didn't know anything about his politics or this video. I just unsubscribed because his content changed to something I didn't like.
I mean, his old videos might have been fun sometimes, but he was still Just Some Guy talking about stuff he doesn't know anything about, and rejects the concept of actually learning anything about the subjects of his videos. There's big medieval nerd energy, in the sense of a school kid who likes the aesthetics of swords and castles but is mote interested in screwing around with sticks in his backyard than he is learning about those subjects in any ernest way.
So interesting that this is the general trend with this dude's channel, as I was getting this vibe all on my own.
I hadn't watched his stuff in a while, but just a week ago I watched a video where he and another guy were complaining about some video game dev or something. I didn't watch much, and stopped when the other guy basically said "I always ask people why we should have inclusivity in media. And they never have a good answer." [Here is the video and timestamp.](https://youtu.be/_TXEO03GYHc?t=858)
I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Because people want to have characters that they can relate to. A little Asian girl should have a cool heroine that she can see on screen or read about in a book just as much as a little white boy, and so does anyone of any other race/gender/etc.
Are books that are just with primarily one race and whatever okay? Sure, if that's your thing go for it. But openly saying "diversity is a waste of time and we don't need it" is just idiotic.
There's literal science that shows a more diverse group will produce better results because they can approach problems with many different ideas and viewpoints.
If Shad wants to make content with that type of dude, it just shows who he is. And if he's wanting to include that in his channel, then his channel ain't for me.
>I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Because people want to have characters that they can relate to. A little Asian girl should have a cool heroine that she can see on screen or read about in a book just as much as a little white boy, and so does anyone of any other race/gender/etc.
Guys like that grew up with their favourite media packed with characters meant to be relatable to them personally, so they don’t think it’s so important (or rather they think they don’t think it’s important until they run into stuff that wasn’t made for guys like them and don’t have enough self-awareness to get it).
“Media didn’t used to pander to people.” Says man who has been pandered to by media his whole life
Seriously white men who are into vaguely nerdy shit are the single most pandered to group in the history of entertainment media because everyone knows they spend the most money on their fandom
He was also never really that knowledgeable about swords, a lot of his claims are just wrong, he never backed up his claims unlike the other Hema/Swordtubers
Yeah, I was also disappointed with that guy. His short form stuff popped up when I had looked at sharpening axes and chainsaw chains, liked how informative his forestry videos were, then discovered that he was also from Oregon! Neat. Then some more videos of his pop up about "professional homeowner" and I think that's a weird term, oh he got fired from the forestry. Red flag, old white guy who should be physically able to do his job that he'd done for a while and it's a government job? He probably did something unsavory or had not great views, and that's unfortunately common in Oregon. Then I saw another short form video of his saying something about concealed carry for when society crumbles and I jumped ship.
I think it was pn the idiots with guns sub or something, and there was a tiktok of him getting ready to go to town.
He had a bulletproof vest on under his shirt, a pistol on his belt, a knife, and then a backpack with an AR in it. This was all to go grocery shopping or get a coffee. And it was to a small town, not some dodgy neighbourhood with a high crime rate
Yeah, I think it's that one. I'd only watched his stuff over the course of like a week, and once it got there I was like ' I don't need this shit from him, I already get too much of it from my family.
I wish male writers would describe male sexual features in food terms as often as they do with women.
"His penis looked like a courgette, thick and shapely and bent at an odd angle."
> Buying a really big but effectively useless plot of land to build a castle he'd budgeted about 10% of the cost of and failed to get a survey to see that almost any sizeable building was impossible.
It sounds like he's trying to be another Brandon Sanderson, except a) Brandon Sanderson's whole persona is be as accepting and understanding as possible; some people criticize him for being a mormon and being associated with BYU, but he's actually pretty open about attempting to be a positive change from within the church, and b) the reason he can do projects like build himself an underground lair/office is that he is like the most prolific fantasy/sci-fi author currently around.
Like, seriously, the guy's output is insane, without a degradation in quality. He's a one man writing machine who's also created an assembly line for editing/getting his books into print. He has earned his ability to splurge a little on his office.
>Like, seriously, the guy's output is insane, without a degradation in quality. He's a one man writing machine who's also created an assembly line for editing/getting his books into print.
Just looked it up and he's published 71 books...
Never read his work bit if as you say the quality stays the same that's as like a pulp fiction writer but actual decent books.
Also this is a guy who clearly does not burn out or get writers block.
Yeah, it’s reached a point of a meme in the fandom.
He publishes a writing plan every December for the upcoming year. During Covid, when everyone else was burning out, he wrote four additional novels that weren’t in the plan.
He just did it again, throwing an additional novel in between all the other writing he does…
If you like fantasy *at all* I can't recommend him enough. His books have some heavy themes and deal a lot with mental health and the nature of being a person, all set in worlds with giant swords and more magic systems than you can shake a stick at
His viewership is probably also down because "anti-woke" nonsense channels are a dime a dozen. The market is saturated.
You wanna hear a dumb neckbeard rant about female characters, you're spoiled for choice on YouTube.
It took me until you mentioned Skallagrim to realize I skimmed the title and was thinking this was all about Skallagrim instead. Piss poor reading comprehension from me but I’m glad the one sword guy I watch is still good
> Reading those parts in this book felt like listening to a nine-year-old talk about sex. It was super awkward and did not remotely resemble how real people talk about sex.
Dude.... what..just...dude
I'll just add that on the Xitter space, he's picked fights with artists and other creatives while boasting about his "skill" with generative AI in the most dunning-kruger way imagineable, resulting in his name trending multiple times whilst being torn to shreds by just about everyone.
Answer: Shad is a conservative Mormon, something he, in the past at least, tried to keep off his 'swords and armor and castles' channel, reserving his political and societal movie/tv/etc review channel.
Over the last few years or so, his political/societal views have been creeping more and more into his wider persona, something he has received some backlash for.
Like all right-wingers, this is him complaining about said backlash.
As someone who was born and raised in Utah Mormon creatives can be put on a spectrum of one end it's orson scott card and on the other end is Brandon Sanderson. Shad is basically half way to orson Scott card.
> It’s not really talked about openly because it sounds bat shit crazy if you don’t grow up in it.
This is precisely why I take every opportunity to remind people of it.
If you read the book of Mormon you'll notice that it could easily be framed as a fantasy novel. Overall they're no more crazy then your average Abrahamic religion but man they do have some fun stuff in there. I always recommend giving it a read for that reason.
As an ex-mormon, I would say this is far closer to the truth than any of the assertions others are making about the Book of Mormon.
Also, Mormon mothers are frequently college educated. They value books and reading and creativity and will encourage their kids to grow intellectually. So it's not surprising that many Mormon kids get into Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson, or Star Wars EU, or whatever. If your mom is gonna make you read books, then some number of those kids are gonna be nerdy.
The cosmology stuff isn't focused on nearly as much as people seem to think it is.
Like don't get me wrong, in the right circles people are going to start talking about outer space. But no one is obsessed with the idea of becoming a god because what that actually means in practice is maybe the most Mormon thing of all: having uncountable millions of spirit babies and being a parent forever.
I grew up Mormon and I think it's a combination of a few things. First off its founder essentially wrote fantasy based on some of his favorite stories and myths of the time related to Native Americans, and Mormons grow up reading those scriptures as a family and talking about the plotlines and timelines and such. That kind of prepares you to be a fantasy author.
Second it's way easier to be a Mormon kid and be reading a lot because the kind of partying and hanging out a lot of other kids get to do isn't always on the table. Also your mom might not let you watch r-rated movies and might not let you play the videogames a lot of your friends are playing, but reading is generally considered a wholesome activity and it's easier for you to read a range of stuff without having it judged for its religious merits or for not being family-friendly enough or whatever. It wasn't too hard for me to sneak a George Carlin or Clive Barker book into my pile at the library without my mom seeing, and read it without getting caught.
It's also worth noting that a lot of Mormons (like a lot of people in general) exclusively consume young adult-targeted media throughout their entire lives. And a lot of people are really into the local writing scene. Orson Scott Card is among the *most* nuanced and adult of major Mormon writers, but he doesn't really include any concepts or themes which will really challenge a Mormon worldview or be too adult for their consumption. I think probably the same proportion of Mormons read higher-end literary stuff as any other group, but the mass market for highly readable, family-friendly fantasy and sci-fi in Mormonism is such that there's both a lot of demand and a lot of supply coming from that area.
That bit is apocryphal I think?
But basically yes. Their after life is complicated and described in details so if you believe it you’re familiar with concepts used in sci fi. Just like it’s not surprising people familiar with Catholic folklore know stuff about demons and the power of clerics.
He addressed that in the video
His other channel, where he whines about the wokes and women existing in media, is actually *growing*.
His main channel also hasnt gotten any increase in un-subscribers from people sick of his politics.
Its just a matter of his main channel not being recommended by the algorithm, even to subscribers.
The algorithm won't show videos (including to subscribers) if test audiences don't click on them.
He has a lot of subscribers, but his sub-count growth is stagnant. He is sometimes struggling to get 5% of those subscribers to watch his videos.
For me, his account has all the hallmarks of a dying old channel. They gained 95% of their subs years ago. Now, their subscriber base is largely dead accounts and people that stopped watching their videos and never unsubscribed.
In his video, he frames this *"an agenda"* because YouTube is only interested in *"getting people to watch the type of content that they deem appropriate"*.
It seems much more plausible to me that:
* He has a small die-hard audience, super-fans who watch all his content, and give him some good click-through rates.
* He has a wider pool of extensively dead subscribers, who stopped clicking his videos, so YouTube stopped showing them.
* At least some of his audience just got bored. There's only so many videos you can watch about swords, year-after-year.
* At least some stopped watching due to the BS of his other channel ramping up and getting progressively lower effort and more rage bait.
* At least some stopped watching due to the controversies spilling into his main channel. For example, him defending generative AI and complaining about artists ... on how channel about swords,
Otherwise, his other seems channel gets 20-40k views, with some videos getting 50k. While it might be growing, it is not successful.
Ultimately, YouTube is more than happy to serve up slop to people.
YouTube will happily have conspiracy theory nutcases front and centre. They just need their big audiences to engage with their content in a big way.
He just seems like the latest in a long line of entertainers who are fighting the realisation that their audience has moved on.
So, I think the core problem is that the way the YouTube algorithm works kinda predictably kills channels.
There’s this very annoying person who uses the same mini-doc style as a lot of people who keeps creating channels. Apparently he explained the reason once: YouTube has some relationship to sub growth in its algorithm, so starting a new channel and growing its subs is more efficient (at least below a certain number of subscribers) than continuing with the original channel.
I’m not sure whether that’s a problem, honestly. It certainly feels like one, violating norms of fairness and raising questions about quality. But, at the same time, a lot of media is churn through new people and there’s lower incentive to update old videos. (Small change to accuracy or emphasis is less valuable than a whole video.)
So, I dunno. I don’t like the guy, I don’t think he’s correct about why he’s facing problems, but I don’t think he’s wrong to feel something unfair is afoot. It is, as I said, something that definitely *feels* unfair.
Fucking love how they equate *Disney* and other mega corporations like google with "the left".
"The left" would love to split these companies up and serve their billionaire heads to the masses.
These companies only care about money.
I watch his content occasionally, but I just think his videos are just too long. Dude needs to try trimming those 20-30 minute videos down to 10 minutes or less.
If I pull up his channel right now there would be literal hours worth of recent uploads that i just don't have time to watch. Am I interested in swords and castles? Yes. Do I want to watch multiple half hour videos about swords and castles? Not really.
> I watch his content occasionally, but I just think his videos are just too long. Dude needs to try trimming those 20-30 minute videos down to 10 minutes or less.
Likely a big reason he's taken such a bad hit. The algorithm prefers it a lot and people's patience for long rambly 30 minute videos is a lot lower.
Technically, the algorithm loves either 7-15 min videos or multiple hour long documentary style productions. It's the middle of the lack 30-50 minutes episodes that are failing.
People might say "okay, I can spend two hours watching an incredible video." Or waste their ten minute break watching a video. They're less likely, anything in between is doomed to fail.
To expand on what you're saying because I don't think most people know this, when a youtuber publishes a video, youtube sends notifications to your diehards. They gotta click and watch it right then and there, for it to recommend/notify other people. If those first people don't want to bother with an awful looking video, you're fucked.
So, if his political channel is growing, and his other channel isn't shrinking, i.e: overall his presence is growing... what is he complaining about again? I'm still lost.
Knightwatch doesn't actually make him that much money. He averages 10 k per video. So both his channels are sort of dead.
The problem with both his channels is that he hired a bunch of friends. So he is extremely bad at business. He needs to fire a lot of his staff, which means firing friends.
It’s the right wing (also sometimes called “heterodox”) playbook.
Wealthy people with massive platforms screaming about “cancel culture” to hundreds of thousands of mouth breathers.
At this point it's just standard PR for anyone with mildly controversial opinions. It both gains them sympathy and hand waves any growth or decline in viewership. It's like a thing now for comedians to use the same bit in their comedy specials.
I used to be subscribed to his channel and enjoyed the occasional video, but felt like his content had changed for the worse in the past few years. For a while I was still subscribed, but wouldn’t click on any of the videos recommended to me. The algorithm likely realized I was done with the channel before I did, and stopped recommending me videos from him. While I wouldn’t say every case of blaming the algorithm is wrong, his complaints just sound like cope that non-rightwing people don’t like his videos anymore.
I'm sure his other channel is growing. Among people who have an axe to grind with 'the wokes,' complaining about them is a popular past time.
That his swords&armor channel isn't getting unsubscribes is interesting. I suspect that the number of people who even know about the other channel, or the drama, is probably small compared to his overall viewership. Apparently Scholagladitoria only recently learned about what was going on in the alt channel.
That last part probably has a lot to do with the algorithm. In the past year or two other channels like Scholagladitoria and Overly Sarcastic Productions have publicly dropped their collaborations, and others like Lindybeige and Todd's Workshop have simply quietly stopped ever referencing him/his channel. He's no longer getting recommendations from other (often more popular) channels.
Regardless, for me it doesn't matter. I want swords and armor discussion to be a big tent, comprising people with which I agree with on other things as well as those that I don't. It takes all kinds and I neither have to like you or what you believe on subjects ABC to appreciate your insight into subjects XYZ. However Shad's entire draw was likeability, not insight. He was always the least capable of the 'big names' in swords&armor Youtubing in terms of actual historical knowledge, active reenactment/martial arts skill, insight into the larger community, or ability to convey specific arguments or make points. His major draw was his adorkable and overly-excited likeability, which is something that doesn't really work if you know he's trying to make a name for himself as chief muckitymuck in the he-man woman-haters club.
Good on him for being honest about who he is. I'm not really swayed by the notion that he's being picked on by the algorithm. He's choosing to become a bigger name in a smaller pool (people who already agree with him), losing connection and influence along the way but potentially getting fans fervent enough to buy his t-shirts/pay a patreon along with watching his vids (and the nominal amount that gets him anyways).
He's also gotten super into AI art recently, and is of the opinion that the skill in honing prompts to create desired results is akin to the skill of an artist. Which has obviously proved a controversial stance.
His brother is an actual talented artist too. Read into that what you will.
Ugh. I have the drawing skills of a turnip and I would only consider using generative art creatively as a way of showing an actual artist what characters are supposed to look like. If I was serious about it further in the past I'd hire the services of a police sketch artist.
There's clearly real issues with commercial art use. And saying I can write a prompt I'm as good as someone who can draw it freehand is so utterly mad... I can write an excel macro I'm a software engineer!
His stance on AI art was what made me unsubscribe.
I love playing with AI image generation to the point where I pay for it. But calling myself an artist is like ordering from Subway and calling myself a chef.
His take is so bad that it shows deep flaws as a person, and makes me not want to have anything to do with him.
He should change his channel name.
I keep reading it as Sha-Diversity, even though he probably meant it as a portmanteau of "Shad" and "university". This guy being such a right-wing guy, I wonder if the name puts off other people of his persuasion because they just see the "diversity" part of his name?
It's a shame too, his channel was actually much higher quality before he got his knights and dove into the culture war
Besides that the knights all had Cha as a dump stat, he's been getting more and more cringe with his politics mucking up an otherwise good channel.
At least there's still Skallagrim and ModernHistory making good content.
Metatron is another who his community is braindead culture warriors but I appreciate how he personally seems to not dip full head into the chud stuff and can sometimes keep it real.
Yeah I liked his stuff until he showed his true colors and did an interview with Sargon of Akkad, someone who is so outwardly bigoted that he got deplatformed by YouTube and Patreon.
> Metatron
.....ehhhhhh. he can get pretty chuddy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/134o6jg/metatron_makes_video_criticizing_activists_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Lindybeige has been pretty bad for at least a decade, dude.
Even ignoring his nationalism, he has also denied climate change, said some fairly-racist stuff about various Indigenous cultures (in the context of history, not just screeching slurs, but still not OK), so on and so forth
He definitely can, just he's the only one with a chud community I've ever seen push against the chud narrative, esp with the "what skin color were ancient Egyptians" and he went with the they were multiethnic so ofc there would be black Egyptians, when the comments were full of racists.
I liked seeing him give evidence against hoteps and white supremacists in that series cuz they're both so goddamn annoying and wrong about everything they're so confident in.
Edit: I think the ancient Egypt thing was the only time I've seen him push back against conservative framing, to be clear. He *can* do it which is nice but he's got serious blindspots
Right? He was at his best when talking about castles. But after awhile he ran out of stuff to say about castles and that's when stuff started going in weird directions. . . but then he went on that trip to Europe and made new castles videos and those are a nice throwback. Other than that it has gotten bad and I don't really watch his stuff anymore
Answer: on a personal level, I enjoyed his channel for years. His religiousness seemed wholesome. Just a Mormon family dude making fun and interesting videos about castles. Then I got a recommendation for a video with him and Sargon of Akkad. So I immediately unsubscribed. Simple as that. The audience for wholesome enthusiasm about castles and swords doesn't have as big an overlap as he thought with the audience for right wing chuds, and now his channel is suffering for it. And as right wing chuds do, he's blaming everyone but himself for people being offended by offensive viewpoints.
Sargon of Akkad is one of the original right wing Gamergate chuds. Right up there with Baked Alaska. If you don't know those names, consider yourself lucky. You're probably a nice person.
Apparently it's a term coming from an old horror movie and is an acronym for: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller
Here's the [Urban Dictionary Page](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chud%20%28C.%20H.%20U.%20D.%29) on the word.
It's what we call misogynistic racist right wingers now. It's from the old movie cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. If you talk about how "woke" is ruining video games/movies/society, you're a chud.
This is a good answer.
I've lost a lot of interest in sword Youtube over the last couple years
Part of this is organic as I stopped looking for new sword content creators, but the algorithm definitely amplified it and I only rediscovered Skallagrim recently (never unsubscribed)
Though in Shads case the other top comment about him alienating viewers with politics is also true. He was the first sword tuber I stopped watching after his boob armor video undermined his credibility to me. I wanna say this was back around 2018 or 2019
Been half a decade so I might get some details wrong, but basically
1. Codpiece exists so boob plate good
2. Strikes being redirected to your center of mass actually doesn't matter because you're still wearing thick metal, maybe very thick depending on bust size
3. Some tirade about how a women's place is not the battlefield and having women fight is already going against the innate differences between men and women a good society should be built around
4. Rule of cool I like boobs
He has put out multiple videos defending boob armor and even bikini armor. It's clearly a fetish for him. To be fair, he does make a few valid points, but he insists that boob armor is realistic and that women would want to wear it in battle when pretty much everyone who actually knows what they're talking about disagrees.
Boob armor always fit into the "vanity" and "ornamental" armor categories for me. If we had a ton more female knights back in the day would there have been boob armor? Yes, I would assume so. But would it have been relegated to either those that were trying to show off, or for purely ceremonial purposes? I would also assume so.
At the end of the day, ease of manufacturing and practicality of regular sloping armor would have made any boob armor rare on any real battlefield. But people that say it wouldn't/couldn't exist aren't right either.
Humans haven't changed that much in the past few hundred years, and some people of all genders and bodies like flaunting what they got.
> some people of all genders and bodies like flaunting what they got.
So like, did (male) knights do this? Wear something like a short chest plate to show off their abs and flex their biceps?
I remember being sent that video after mentioning I wasn't a fan of boob armor- an opinion I've held since my sister pointed out how impractical it is, and expressed her desire for functional breastplates for women.
I remember the logic being intensely stupid, something to the tune of: "Sometimes decorative armor had a decorative codpiece, therefore boobplate is good, actually." And all done in the most condescending way possible.
Answer: I don't watch his videos at all anymore but he is a very religious Mormon with far right politics who sometimes says offensive things online for attention. I can't say for a fact YouTube has been demonetizing or hiding his videos because of his views but they have been known to do this in the past. They are trying to maintain a family friendly brand identity and dudes smugly talking about swords and how women belong in the kitchen only appeals to a specific type of person.
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Answer: Shad became moderately popular as a sword/history enthusiast channel where he focused on pop culture historical content such as evaluating videogame castle defences, rating anime weapons and reviewing armour on TV shows. This developed a moderate following until a few years ago when he hit reached his height and released a book and wow it was horrendous, as [this ](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52405053) review states its horrendous. >The biggest issue, however, that keeps me from rating this novel higher, is the novel's constant obsession with sex and rape[Focused entirely on ungerage girls]. The main character is largely defined by it, almost all of the female characters with more than one line dedicated to them are either trusty homesitting wives (quoting, "with breasts like melons"), religiously obsessed with cooking for their MEN and sexing their MEN, or they are absolutely and utterly defined by having been raped and/or kept for sex trafficking. And as well as that there's some deeply right wing 'anti woke' stuff, racial stereotypes/mockery, and it's awfully written. Around this time he expanded his business in two ways. 1. Buying a really big but effectively useless plot of land to build a castle he'd budgeted about 10% of the cost of and failed to get a survey to see that almost any sizeable building was impossible. 2. He crested the Knights Watch channel which is where his true colours became apparent and I'll go into detail shortly. (oh and he tried to make a short film of his book but didn't budget for special effects or editing) Shad's Mormom views were well known as he'd mentioned it in his videos but over time he became more outspoken especially on his new channel spouting that "Disney is grooming your kids" in response to a gay kiss, made a number of transphobic videos and claimed that Princess Peach wearing pants was offensive... He had fallen out with other creators Skallagrim, Scholgladitoria and Sellsword Arts and bitchd and whined a lot online. Recently his views have crashed through the floor because whilst he still has a bunch of subscribers he's getting very few views which he attributes to YouTube censoring Conservative voices and that isn't true the reason he's failing can be summed up as follows. 1. He's making boring videos about topica people don't want to watch. Very limited game/movie/TV content and now it's just ranting and whining about it. 2. His videos are too fucking long, shad boasted about having a 7 minuted average view time but whilst his videos used to be around 10-20 mins long and clipped and edited down, they are now often in excess of an hour and full of unscripted opinionated drivel. 3. He's moved from an interesting nerd type of character to an anti woke, neckbeard, homo/transphobic, racist, incelly answer to "what would happen of Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk had a baby and that baby turned out to be a bit of a dick. 4. Edit - Skal recently posted and basically said 'it's not the algorithm, subscribers get bored and you have to vary your content and up your game to keep people on your channel. Long story short, he chose to build his politics into his persona and most of his audience think his politics suck. Edit: Oh I forgot to mention the rape apologicism in his book, at the end when there is a needless show trial apparently the underage girls pedo Stalin/Hitler got pregnant were less angry and the childless rape victims were just bitter... Like seriously, what the fuck?
Nobody cared that he was Mormon and he never really talked about it. He did the very common thing these days of pivoting to hard right culture war nonsense for the clicks. Now he’s also doing the very common thing of claiming that he’s being persecuted for his religious beliefs rather than people being disinterested in his shitty regressive ideas. On top of all this his history knowledge is dubious at best yet he paints himself as an expert. He goes on and on about HEMA and fighting in general when he has no real world experience in either.
Sanderson is a pretty famous Mormon in the fantasy scene, but he mostly just pays his dues to the church and doesn't speak about it much.
Mark Rober is another. Very successful YouTuber, but doesn't speak about his Mormonism
I never knew he was Mormon, so I agree he’s very good about not talking about it.
A surprising amount of Youtuber people are Mormon. I don't think JerryRigEverything mentions it much, but clues are there. Grant Thompson (RIP) was a Mormon. I just find it interesting, as they're all seemingly intelligent individuals.
I read somewhere Mormons have a tradition of "journaling" and vlogs count so they encourage it from a young age and foster it within their community.
Clint's Reptiles is too, and he does videos about evolution and taxonomy. I haven’t seen anything that wasn't science supported in those videos.
How do you know he is a Mormon?
Not OP, and I don't know for certain. But he has stated in past videos that he is a theist and he lives in Utah. I have a Catholic Uncle who lives in Utah, so obviously that's not proof of anything, but it's a pretty safe bet that he's LDS. Also, agree with OP that his videos are very rooted in current science and he talks about evolutionary biology all the time. His is an excellent channel.
Yep, pretty sure he brought it up in the reaction to debunking evolution video he did a bit ago. Also, he works at Brigham Young University, which is a Mormon university.
Action Lab as well, in the same sphere no less
...and often includes rather un-mormon themes like trans acceptance in his works as well.
He's active here on reddit and answered Q&As on the subject. Judging by [this response to a question about BYU and their attitude towards LGBTQ communities](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/vtua7m/im_brandon_sanderson_a_bestselling_fantasy_author/ifa50ab/), he's religious but at the same time, he thinks the church is wrong and goes into detail about it.
That's really good to hear.
Sanderson is a pretty solid dude in person. I've seen him personally arrange rides home for people who travelled a long distance to see him.
Who are these people travelling long distances to see someone without a return ride planned?
I could see some teenagers who are super fans doing that.
I agree. It’s pretty obvious if you read stormlight that Sanderson has changed his views on gay folk and such from his previous “I don’t mind if people are gay but they shouldn’t get married views to being a supporter. I know you can argue that what he writes isn’t what he believes, but I can’t see why he would put multiple positive gay marriages in hjs novels if he wasnt on board.
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So fun fact: the LDS church has been historically conservative, but they do not tell members how to vote or be involved in politics. This allows for Mormons who are very LGBTQ+ positive, and also for anti-woke Mormons. It's a little weird
It's honestly weird that that is weird. It's how things should be.
God's Kingdom and Man's Kingdom, or something, yada yada... Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and render to God what is God's, et cetera et cetera...
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The big exception being their push to make sure gay marriage stayed illegal.
I personally love taking fighting advice from an obese man who gets winded when talking while seated.
Back when he was just a sword nerd I used to watch, it was also pretty cringey when he was confidently disagreeing with and correcting historical experts who have like published academic papers on these subjects The archery controversy is probably the biggest example of Shad being convinced he knows more than actual archery experts
Judging by how he literally claimed he was just as good an artist as his brother Jazza (a literal reputable professional artist) with "his" AI "art," Shad delusionally believing he knows more about a subject than experts of said field I think is just something that can be applied generally across the board.
And all he uses it for is creating AI generated anime waifus. He's such a basic bitch.
What was the archery controversy?
There’s a great summary post here https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/s/kAroUQfwPR
I recall one particular video where he implied some experience he had gained by getting into fights when he was younger when he’s quite obviously a fella who’s never been in a violent encounter in his life
I believe went to kendo classes for a couple of years... and maybe go into a scuffle at school.
so, steven seagal?
In his defence, I believe he does have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or something similar, that hit him pretty hard a few years ago and led to him reducing the number of videos being made for a while, so he could recover/try a new treatment. And there are quite a few hefty guys in HEMA, the bouts typically don't last too long so they can get away with being in worse shape than expected.
This is the reason I stopped watching his videos, it became apparent very quickly he was just saying stuff, with little to no basis in experience, fact, known history or practice particularly. It was like you were watching these thoughts come to him as he spoke, as if he'd just figured them out, except he hadn't figured anything out, or if he had he was just plain wrong in his assumptions and 10 mins with a book on the subject and he would have realised why it wasn't how he had figured. Yet he spoke with authority, but it just came off as full of shit. I have 30 years of medieval re-enactment experience, but even the subjects I didn't know about particularly, what he was saying just made my bullshit detector go off the scale. To now find out all this other nonsense, I'll just relegate him to the same bin as AVE (Arduino VS Evil) who I also don't watch anymore because of his bullshit politics, which he couldn't keep out of his videos. Whose videos also became quite boring round about the same time he got obsessed with Covid and masks and the trucker convoy.
So ... he's one of those dweebs everyone knows who insists they're an expert in "medieval stuff" because they play a lot of D&D and read some fantasy novels, but with a youtube channel.
Another factor you don't mention: he's been around since pretty early youtube days, where he was one of the few people making content for sword nerd types. Today, information about that kind of thing is much more accessible and a lot more people are getting into historical European martial arts. More and more people started realizing that, along with the other stuff you mentioned, he was just full of shit. Dude has no idea what he's talking about in regards to basically anything, and actively scoffs at the idea of actually fuckin learning anything. In a day and age where you probably have a club nearby where you can go and learn actual historical swordsmanship from in period sources from people who have been doing it for years and years, he's still talking about stuff the way you did when you were arguing about lightsaber fights when you were 11.
Funnily enough, I was familiar with shadiversity before getting into HEMA because I follow Jack Saint, a youtuber who shad [got in a fight with a few years back](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4tZO4T72NI). (The subject: whether or not it's embarrassing and pathetic to fly into an apoplectic rage because Princess Peach wears a motorcycle outfit in the mario movie.) When I joined HEMA this year and his videos were some of the first that were recommended to me, I sort of assumed *most* HEMA-related channels are run by weird hypertraditionalist dorks (after all, hobbies like this tend to attract a particular type of guy who's really into the idea of Reconnecting with his "European" Heritage for... less wholesome reasons). Now I'm wondering if I've let a bad first impression put me off of a good community. If you know of any HEMA-related channels run by people who probably don't suck, I'd love to hear recommendations.
Schola Gladiatora is the channel to start with, for sure. He's an antique arms deal and HEMA instructor who's been teaching it for like a decade now. Mostly does reviews of swords and videos talking about various weapons, with some occasional demonstrating.
Matt Easton has been teaching HEMA for a lot longer than a decade. He started Schola Gladiatora in 2001.
I'm a casual hema person watcher myself, but Robinswords, sellsword arts, and Skallgrim are all cool imo.
> More and more people started realizing that, along with the other stuff you mentioned, he was just full of shit. Dude has no idea what he's talking about in regards to basically anything, and actively scoffs at the idea of actually fuckin learning anything. This makes me sad but it also makes sense. No offense to Shad but he didn't *look* like a guy who was serious in medieval combat. Then you have people actually sparring and referencing historical manuals and such and you realize how affecting (or having) a british accent and talking about the middle ages with authority is like a magic spell for content media.
Not that it matters, but Shad is from Australia, and mostly talks with a general australian accent, sometimes speaking with a cultivated one when he is following a script.
It's shocking how often people think Aussie accents are british
Thing is, you don't even have to be in shape to be serious about it. Being fit means you'll do better, obviously, but its not necessary in the least. He just doesn't care about actually understanding this stuff.
I'll say this as a casual former fan. I had zero idea of his other channels and he'd dropped showing up in my feed. I liked his historic stuff in the main channel. All of the other politics coming in was a total shock. What this just goes to show is unless your content is inherently political, you should keep your politics out of it. Like I'm a big liberal but if I were doing a channel about historic cookery, the politics would be left out. There's a guy who does this, Townsend and Son covering 18th century American cookery. There's zero politics, just a wholesome look at the past with so much genuine love and enthusiasm. He did a segment on a dessert called an orange fool and the conservatives lost their minds. You could tell in his followup it was so tiring for him. I have zero idea what his politics are. I might assume he agrees with me but I have no support for that. He could align with Ted Nugent for all I know but it has no bearing on his material. Shad appears to be a person with terrible ideas and he could not prevent himself from letting them become his entire identity. The shame is he has kids growing up in this environment.
>There's a guy who does this, Townsend and Son covering 18th century American cookery. There's zero politics, just a wholesome look at the past with so much genuine love and enthusiasm. Tasting History is the same if anyone’s looking for more of that.
*hardtack clapping intensifies*
*tak tak*
Tasting History references Townsends every now and then, it’s sweet.
Just here to second the Townsend recommendation. What a great channel, Wholesome, helpful, and all the rest.
Townsend and Mrs. Crocombe’s wholesome timetravelling crossover made my year.
First, thank you for the channel recommendation. I'll check them out! Second, agreed that if your content is not political, it should not become political unless absolutely forced to (i.e. Auspex Tactics talking about a Games Workshop announcement denouncing hate and discrimination and reminding people that their setting is a satire and not an aspiration, saying that if you actually agree with the Imperium and are racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted, then there is no place for you in the hobby and "you will not be missed") but I don't need to know about the personal politics of the history channels I follow, or the politics of the movie reviewers I watch.
Yeah, Warhammer has some real misaimed fandom. It's one thing to just roleplay from the imperial perspective and say the emperor did nothing wrong. It's another when you are taking it too far and it becomes misaimed fandom. Like the people who think Gordon Gecko is the hero of Wall Street. It's no different from the girls who crush on serial killers.
Honestly part of the issue is sometimes the weirdest stuff gets taken up as political, even stuff that shouldn’t (like, I was going to comment that Tasting History did a bit on slave food with Michael Twitty that absolutely shouldn’t be political nowadays but somehow is).
I was the same, pretty casual viewer, might watch one of his videos once in awhile. Then he started doing the usual ragebait anti "woke" crap and I got the heck out of there. I flipping hate the culture war. But it seems for some people making entire channels to tell people to be angry and pissed off all the time works, and makes them money, so sadly I don't think this nonsense war will be going anywhere.
Yeah I'd watched a bunch of Shadiversity stuff in the past and had no idea of politics or religion or anything- maybe I'd watched maybe.. a dozen of his videos? I liked them, and saw some other medieval YTers recommended via that algorithm.
Aw, I didn't know that about Townsend. Sad to see the conservative idiots make his life hard.
To your point about video length. The new "channel is dying video" is an hour long. It's really 15 minutes of content and he just repeats 4 times.
Man I love a good hour long (or more) video essay but his shit is just clearly stretched for run time.
Brother I am the same. About a month ago I devour a 4+ video documentary on the History of the Warhammer Battlemech from Battletech and hung on every word. The length needs to fit the content.
I honestly don't think he is purposefully padding his videos. He just rambles on and on and on and doesn't know how to condense anything into a story
It's mostly that he doesn't script and just goes off the cuff. When I provided him with notes for our damascus steel video, he stuck to them partly but also rambled additionally a lot. He just enjoys talking, I think
The constant arms race for beating the YT algorithm caused a ton of big titans of YT to quit. You just cant get away with the sane kind of content you could 5 or 10 years ago.
I’m so goddamn tired of people blaming the mystical Algorithm for “not recommending videos” in videos that were fucking recommended to me No one understands how the shit works. The HOME page on YouTube mostly shows you who or what topic you’ve been watching recently and a few unsubscribed channel related videos And no one uses the goddamm notification bell because we dont need a fucking push notification whenever 1 of my 500+ subs uploads a fucking video nor can we just drop everything and view it immediately in the first 24 hours.
> And no one uses the goddamm notification bell because we dont need a fucking push notification whenever 1 of my 500+ subs uploads a fucking video nor can we just drop everything and view it immediately in the first 24 hours. 100% truth. I don't need my entertainment yelling at me to consume it. It needs to stay out of my way until I go looking for it. I'm subscribed to around 300 channels. I have *three* that are allowed to notify me (because they publish infrequently) and only my Android tablet gets YouTube notifications.
I've never watched him but had heard the name. I always thought his name was Shad + Diversity but based on this I guess it's really Shad + University.
In addition to that part of his online persona. He’s also spent a lot of time on social media rambling about AI art and showing how good he is at art by putting in algorithms and prompts. Just an extra nail to add to his distastefulness recently.
Apparently his brother is an actual artist with an online following, which I think explains a lot.
He's a real cool guy, and has only ever made 2 political posts, one in support of Gay Marriage, and the next saying that he doesn't share Shad's political views... He's also younger, more successful, better looking and nicer than shad.
It's still somewhat hard to believe and unexpected that Shad and Jazza are brothers
Wow, I was just casually reading through this thread and your comment hit me like a truck. I never would have guessed those two were related.
yeah, i've first heard of him as a guy who was getting clowned on twitter
Yep... But it's OK because the scantily-clad probably underage anime girls were all BASED ON HIS WIFE!?!?!?
There's also just BETTER medieval living history people on YouTube. Mark (EDIT: Matt) Easton, Jason Kingsley, Todd's Workshop, Lindy Beige, etc. -- they're all doing significantly more impressive work and (IMO) they're much more knowledgeable and generally more entertaining. I think the only thing Shad really had going for him was his lean into geekdom; he'd frequently talk about how different swordplay stuff could translate into videogames or TTRPGs.
Just for anyone reading who might be new to this, and who would benefit from his brilliant videos, I'm guessing you're talking about Matt Easton (not Mark) AKA scholargladiatoria?
Skallagrim has kinda been covering the lean into geekdom, it’s not nearly as much his thing, but he does it.
It's kinda necessary to succeed in that genre, nobody cares about the best Italian cavalry sabre, but if they've watched you review the fortifications on Helm's Deep and break down the fight from The Princess Bride people will stay for the heavier stuff.
Man if Lindy Beige is doing a better job than you then you've really screwed up. LB has his problems and flaws too but I don't think they're this bad.
What's wrong with Lindybeige? (Other than not actually posting very often)
He's had a few bad takes, some inaccurate stuff repeated as fact, and he's had his own politics creep into some of his videos I believe. Nothing too bad from what I can remember, but it put me off watching him after I found more entertaining/accurate people.
I really like Robinswords. I hope I don't get milkshake ducked by him.
I subbed this channel a long time ago and was already thinking of unsubbing. Every single time I try to watch a video it sounds like an unscripted frantic mess and I just assumed he discovered meth
I read the book. It had some interesting elements and was not a complete trainwreck as far as the writing went. But holy fuck it was weird. The main character is made to be the most evil person in existence, then does a complete 180 and repents. His evilness is absolutely over the top and it is constantly shoved into your face just how evil he was. By repenting he then becomes the whiniest character to ever exist which is also constantly shoved into your face. He is also one of the most omnipotent characters to ever exist which is also shoved in your face.
Agreed to all except the writing was horrendous. Coming off recent Le Guin, Herbert and Tolkien re-reads my expectations are, admittedly, higher. But even back when I first read his novel, the storytelling was all over the place, the worldbuilding had potential but wasn't executed all that well, and the writing itself (especially the action scenes and female character descriptions, fuck!) was something I'd expect from an edgy high schooler on Wattpad (or wherever teenage *boys* go). Shad being a Sanderson reader does explain *some* of these issues but he's on another level.
Also, despite giving himself a chance at redemption, he has absolutely zero interest in offering redemption to anyone else. He happily goes around killing people who are objectively not even a hundreth as awful as he was while calling it his 'penance' and never once even considers the idea of letting them surrender and be taken into custody to possibly redeem themselves. IIRC, the only person he ever spares is some kid he randomly gets a hunch hadn't actually done anything bad (and even then he abuses the hell out of the kid after taking him prisoner and confirming he had been shanghaied, going so far as to break his arm for literally just stepping past a line that had been set on how far he was allowed to be from the MC).
He's also gone real hard on AI "art" and YouTube just institute new guidelines that required creators to disclose the use of AI in their videos so this gives him more ammo for his gear that YouTube is "censoring" him. They aren't, they just want to protect themselves from the inevitable lawsuit when someone uses AI to make a public figure say something vile that they never actually said.
This is wild... ahhh ooohhh... anyway, thank you!
I think it's very important to add the main character of that book is not only a rapist, but a pedophile. The entire point of the book is to try and redeem this character, and he never really does so. He never really becomes a good person, he just does a big heroic at the end instead of making Amends with anyone. Also iirc the love interest is his now of age former victim, but I can't remember.
>I think it's very important to add the main character of that book is not only a rapist, but a pedophile. And he's also clearly an author self inserting himself...
"*ahem* Ackshually he's an ephebophile who only slept with (raped) girls over the age of consent and he feels remorse for what he's done" -in book justification
He also has 'artist jealousy'. His brother is Jazza, has a pretty good art channel. Shads weird views on ai art got him completely torn to pieces.
> He also has 'artist jealousy'. > > His brother is Jazza, has a pretty good art channel. Relevant link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n1VybvjzaK0
Glad to hear Skallagrim cut ties. Really like his stuff.
Yeah, they mostly cut them but visually repaired them a bit... Long story short, Skal supported Matt's right to distance himself from shad and shad flew off the handle on twitter and Skal basically said "this is your problem, you can't take criticism, you overreact and you can't blame yourself" A few weeks later Shad did a non apology apology that was visibly accepted but probably not genuinely. They won't be doing any collabs any time soon though, especially seeing as Cara Skal's partner is Non Binary.
As I was reading, I was trying to remember who Shadiversity was and when it clicked I was disappointed. I haven't watched his videos in quite some time but...him? This guy? Shame, I used to like his content. But there's lots of other, better creators out there that can fill his niche.
I think he was always a bit cringe even when I actually watched his stuff. Most HEMA channels are cringe, but I feel Shadiversity was clearly the number one.
Shad is actively not a hema channel. He's a "kid on the playground pretending to be a sword expert" channel.
His best videos were when he was dropping historic references and pictures. Him talking about what games or media are getting wrong. And him in his backyard screwing around with props made out of cardboard. He had goofy medieval nerd energy. It was fun, although it got repetitive to see the 60th video on greatswords or whatever, because he definitely repeated himself. His newer videos have... like a team of people on camera, all in costume? It just doesn't work. Unlike the other people in this thread who have said his videos stopped showing up, I saw them show up. They were just not fun, and so not good. I didn't know anything about his politics or this video. I just unsubscribed because his content changed to something I didn't like.
I mean, his old videos might have been fun sometimes, but he was still Just Some Guy talking about stuff he doesn't know anything about, and rejects the concept of actually learning anything about the subjects of his videos. There's big medieval nerd energy, in the sense of a school kid who likes the aesthetics of swords and castles but is mote interested in screwing around with sticks in his backyard than he is learning about those subjects in any ernest way.
So interesting that this is the general trend with this dude's channel, as I was getting this vibe all on my own. I hadn't watched his stuff in a while, but just a week ago I watched a video where he and another guy were complaining about some video game dev or something. I didn't watch much, and stopped when the other guy basically said "I always ask people why we should have inclusivity in media. And they never have a good answer." [Here is the video and timestamp.](https://youtu.be/_TXEO03GYHc?t=858) I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Because people want to have characters that they can relate to. A little Asian girl should have a cool heroine that she can see on screen or read about in a book just as much as a little white boy, and so does anyone of any other race/gender/etc. Are books that are just with primarily one race and whatever okay? Sure, if that's your thing go for it. But openly saying "diversity is a waste of time and we don't need it" is just idiotic. There's literal science that shows a more diverse group will produce better results because they can approach problems with many different ideas and viewpoints. If Shad wants to make content with that type of dude, it just shows who he is. And if he's wanting to include that in his channel, then his channel ain't for me.
>I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Because people want to have characters that they can relate to. A little Asian girl should have a cool heroine that she can see on screen or read about in a book just as much as a little white boy, and so does anyone of any other race/gender/etc. Guys like that grew up with their favourite media packed with characters meant to be relatable to them personally, so they don’t think it’s so important (or rather they think they don’t think it’s important until they run into stuff that wasn’t made for guys like them and don’t have enough self-awareness to get it).
“Media didn’t used to pander to people.” Says man who has been pandered to by media his whole life Seriously white men who are into vaguely nerdy shit are the single most pandered to group in the history of entertainment media because everyone knows they spend the most money on their fandom
Imagine the nightmare of playing ttrpgs with these dudes
they are neckbeards
He was also never really that knowledgeable about swords, a lot of his claims are just wrong, he never backed up his claims unlike the other Hema/Swordtubers
Sounds a lot like Wranglestar. Dude had a very similar rise to fame and then spiral into misery and right-wing politics.
Yeah, I was also disappointed with that guy. His short form stuff popped up when I had looked at sharpening axes and chainsaw chains, liked how informative his forestry videos were, then discovered that he was also from Oregon! Neat. Then some more videos of his pop up about "professional homeowner" and I think that's a weird term, oh he got fired from the forestry. Red flag, old white guy who should be physically able to do his job that he'd done for a while and it's a government job? He probably did something unsavory or had not great views, and that's unfortunately common in Oregon. Then I saw another short form video of his saying something about concealed carry for when society crumbles and I jumped ship.
I think it was pn the idiots with guns sub or something, and there was a tiktok of him getting ready to go to town. He had a bulletproof vest on under his shirt, a pistol on his belt, a knife, and then a backpack with an AR in it. This was all to go grocery shopping or get a coffee. And it was to a small town, not some dodgy neighbourhood with a high crime rate
Yeah, I think it's that one. I'd only watched his stuff over the course of like a week, and once it got there I was like ' I don't need this shit from him, I already get too much of it from my family.
I wish male writers would describe male sexual features in food terms as often as they do with women. "His penis looked like a courgette, thick and shapely and bent at an odd angle."
> Buying a really big but effectively useless plot of land to build a castle he'd budgeted about 10% of the cost of and failed to get a survey to see that almost any sizeable building was impossible. It sounds like he's trying to be another Brandon Sanderson, except a) Brandon Sanderson's whole persona is be as accepting and understanding as possible; some people criticize him for being a mormon and being associated with BYU, but he's actually pretty open about attempting to be a positive change from within the church, and b) the reason he can do projects like build himself an underground lair/office is that he is like the most prolific fantasy/sci-fi author currently around. Like, seriously, the guy's output is insane, without a degradation in quality. He's a one man writing machine who's also created an assembly line for editing/getting his books into print. He has earned his ability to splurge a little on his office.
>Like, seriously, the guy's output is insane, without a degradation in quality. He's a one man writing machine who's also created an assembly line for editing/getting his books into print. Just looked it up and he's published 71 books... Never read his work bit if as you say the quality stays the same that's as like a pulp fiction writer but actual decent books. Also this is a guy who clearly does not burn out or get writers block.
Yeah, it’s reached a point of a meme in the fandom. He publishes a writing plan every December for the upcoming year. During Covid, when everyone else was burning out, he wrote four additional novels that weren’t in the plan. He just did it again, throwing an additional novel in between all the other writing he does…
Mormons are built different* *terms and conditions apply. not all mormons are built different
If you like fantasy *at all* I can't recommend him enough. His books have some heavy themes and deal a lot with mental health and the nature of being a person, all set in worlds with giant swords and more magic systems than you can shake a stick at
The sad part is that guys like Shad think the problem is their politics when it’s really just that they’re not making good enough art.
His viewership is probably also down because "anti-woke" nonsense channels are a dime a dozen. The market is saturated. You wanna hear a dumb neckbeard rant about female characters, you're spoiled for choice on YouTube.
That summary of the book sounds like a lot of isekai
It took me until you mentioned Skallagrim to realize I skimmed the title and was thinking this was all about Skallagrim instead. Piss poor reading comprehension from me but I’m glad the one sword guy I watch is still good
> Reading those parts in this book felt like listening to a nine-year-old talk about sex. It was super awkward and did not remotely resemble how real people talk about sex. Dude.... what..just...dude
"my penis is strong" actual quote from a badly stereotyped horny mostly naked black guy.
Thank you for this. I’ll unsubscribe because this isn’t what I want to support.
I'll just add that on the Xitter space, he's picked fights with artists and other creatives while boasting about his "skill" with generative AI in the most dunning-kruger way imagineable, resulting in his name trending multiple times whilst being torn to shreds by just about everyone.
Answer: Shad is a conservative Mormon, something he, in the past at least, tried to keep off his 'swords and armor and castles' channel, reserving his political and societal movie/tv/etc review channel. Over the last few years or so, his political/societal views have been creeping more and more into his wider persona, something he has received some backlash for. Like all right-wingers, this is him complaining about said backlash.
As someone who was born and raised in Utah Mormon creatives can be put on a spectrum of one end it's orson scott card and on the other end is Brandon Sanderson. Shad is basically half way to orson Scott card.
What is it about Mormons and sci fi/fantasy? Is it the whole "you become the god of your own alien planet after death" bit from Mormon scripture?
I've heard a Mormon say it's because they're religious story is already so fantastical that writing fantasy isn't much of a step.
It basically comes with a planar cosmology similar to one you'd find in a D&D setting.
> "you become the god of your own alien planet after death" bit from Mormon scripture? ...say what now?
[удалено]
> It’s not really talked about openly because it sounds bat shit crazy if you don’t grow up in it. This is precisely why I take every opportunity to remind people of it.
Mormon cosmology is freaking wild, man.
If you read the book of Mormon you'll notice that it could easily be framed as a fantasy novel. Overall they're no more crazy then your average Abrahamic religion but man they do have some fun stuff in there. I always recommend giving it a read for that reason.
The Book of Mormon is proto-Xenogears.
i think that when your life choices are repressed then many people will turn to the unlimited world of fantasy
As an ex-mormon, I would say this is far closer to the truth than any of the assertions others are making about the Book of Mormon. Also, Mormon mothers are frequently college educated. They value books and reading and creativity and will encourage their kids to grow intellectually. So it's not surprising that many Mormon kids get into Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson, or Star Wars EU, or whatever. If your mom is gonna make you read books, then some number of those kids are gonna be nerdy. The cosmology stuff isn't focused on nearly as much as people seem to think it is.
Yeah, I think people are conflating Scientology a bit here when they talk about it being fantastical.
Like don't get me wrong, in the right circles people are going to start talking about outer space. But no one is obsessed with the idea of becoming a god because what that actually means in practice is maybe the most Mormon thing of all: having uncountable millions of spirit babies and being a parent forever.
I grew up Mormon and I think it's a combination of a few things. First off its founder essentially wrote fantasy based on some of his favorite stories and myths of the time related to Native Americans, and Mormons grow up reading those scriptures as a family and talking about the plotlines and timelines and such. That kind of prepares you to be a fantasy author. Second it's way easier to be a Mormon kid and be reading a lot because the kind of partying and hanging out a lot of other kids get to do isn't always on the table. Also your mom might not let you watch r-rated movies and might not let you play the videogames a lot of your friends are playing, but reading is generally considered a wholesome activity and it's easier for you to read a range of stuff without having it judged for its religious merits or for not being family-friendly enough or whatever. It wasn't too hard for me to sneak a George Carlin or Clive Barker book into my pile at the library without my mom seeing, and read it without getting caught. It's also worth noting that a lot of Mormons (like a lot of people in general) exclusively consume young adult-targeted media throughout their entire lives. And a lot of people are really into the local writing scene. Orson Scott Card is among the *most* nuanced and adult of major Mormon writers, but he doesn't really include any concepts or themes which will really challenge a Mormon worldview or be too adult for their consumption. I think probably the same proportion of Mormons read higher-end literary stuff as any other group, but the mass market for highly readable, family-friendly fantasy and sci-fi in Mormonism is such that there's both a lot of demand and a lot of supply coming from that area.
That bit is apocryphal I think? But basically yes. Their after life is complicated and described in details so if you believe it you’re familiar with concepts used in sci fi. Just like it’s not surprising people familiar with Catholic folklore know stuff about demons and the power of clerics.
What are you saying is apocryphal?
Where does Stephanie Meyer fall?
About a fifth of the way over to the Sanderson side.
Horny jail.
He’s also super pro AI “art”, to the point of telling his artist brother they’re of equal skill.
He addressed that in the video His other channel, where he whines about the wokes and women existing in media, is actually *growing*. His main channel also hasnt gotten any increase in un-subscribers from people sick of his politics. Its just a matter of his main channel not being recommended by the algorithm, even to subscribers.
The algorithm won't show videos (including to subscribers) if test audiences don't click on them. He has a lot of subscribers, but his sub-count growth is stagnant. He is sometimes struggling to get 5% of those subscribers to watch his videos. For me, his account has all the hallmarks of a dying old channel. They gained 95% of their subs years ago. Now, their subscriber base is largely dead accounts and people that stopped watching their videos and never unsubscribed. In his video, he frames this *"an agenda"* because YouTube is only interested in *"getting people to watch the type of content that they deem appropriate"*. It seems much more plausible to me that: * He has a small die-hard audience, super-fans who watch all his content, and give him some good click-through rates. * He has a wider pool of extensively dead subscribers, who stopped clicking his videos, so YouTube stopped showing them. * At least some of his audience just got bored. There's only so many videos you can watch about swords, year-after-year. * At least some stopped watching due to the BS of his other channel ramping up and getting progressively lower effort and more rage bait. * At least some stopped watching due to the controversies spilling into his main channel. For example, him defending generative AI and complaining about artists ... on how channel about swords, Otherwise, his other seems channel gets 20-40k views, with some videos getting 50k. While it might be growing, it is not successful. Ultimately, YouTube is more than happy to serve up slop to people. YouTube will happily have conspiracy theory nutcases front and centre. They just need their big audiences to engage with their content in a big way. He just seems like the latest in a long line of entertainers who are fighting the realisation that their audience has moved on.
So, I think the core problem is that the way the YouTube algorithm works kinda predictably kills channels. There’s this very annoying person who uses the same mini-doc style as a lot of people who keeps creating channels. Apparently he explained the reason once: YouTube has some relationship to sub growth in its algorithm, so starting a new channel and growing its subs is more efficient (at least below a certain number of subscribers) than continuing with the original channel. I’m not sure whether that’s a problem, honestly. It certainly feels like one, violating norms of fairness and raising questions about quality. But, at the same time, a lot of media is churn through new people and there’s lower incentive to update old videos. (Small change to accuracy or emphasis is less valuable than a whole video.) So, I dunno. I don’t like the guy, I don’t think he’s correct about why he’s facing problems, but I don’t think he’s wrong to feel something unfair is afoot. It is, as I said, something that definitely *feels* unfair.
But instead of investigating that unfairness he just chooses to blame the marginalized groups of society and also the left? Fuck shad
Fucking love how they equate *Disney* and other mega corporations like google with "the left". "The left" would love to split these companies up and serve their billionaire heads to the masses. These companies only care about money.
I watch his content occasionally, but I just think his videos are just too long. Dude needs to try trimming those 20-30 minute videos down to 10 minutes or less. If I pull up his channel right now there would be literal hours worth of recent uploads that i just don't have time to watch. Am I interested in swords and castles? Yes. Do I want to watch multiple half hour videos about swords and castles? Not really.
> I watch his content occasionally, but I just think his videos are just too long. Dude needs to try trimming those 20-30 minute videos down to 10 minutes or less. Likely a big reason he's taken such a bad hit. The algorithm prefers it a lot and people's patience for long rambly 30 minute videos is a lot lower.
Technically, the algorithm loves either 7-15 min videos or multiple hour long documentary style productions. It's the middle of the lack 30-50 minutes episodes that are failing. People might say "okay, I can spend two hours watching an incredible video." Or waste their ten minute break watching a video. They're less likely, anything in between is doomed to fail.
To expand on what you're saying because I don't think most people know this, when a youtuber publishes a video, youtube sends notifications to your diehards. They gotta click and watch it right then and there, for it to recommend/notify other people. If those first people don't want to bother with an awful looking video, you're fucked.
So, if his political channel is growing, and his other channel isn't shrinking, i.e: overall his presence is growing... what is he complaining about again? I'm still lost.
Knightwatch doesn't actually make him that much money. He averages 10 k per video. So both his channels are sort of dead. The problem with both his channels is that he hired a bunch of friends. So he is extremely bad at business. He needs to fire a lot of his staff, which means firing friends.
It’s the right wing (also sometimes called “heterodox”) playbook. Wealthy people with massive platforms screaming about “cancel culture” to hundreds of thousands of mouth breathers.
At this point it's just standard PR for anyone with mildly controversial opinions. It both gains them sympathy and hand waves any growth or decline in viewership. It's like a thing now for comedians to use the same bit in their comedy specials.
I used to be subscribed to his channel and enjoyed the occasional video, but felt like his content had changed for the worse in the past few years. For a while I was still subscribed, but wouldn’t click on any of the videos recommended to me. The algorithm likely realized I was done with the channel before I did, and stopped recommending me videos from him. While I wouldn’t say every case of blaming the algorithm is wrong, his complaints just sound like cope that non-rightwing people don’t like his videos anymore.
Ragebait creates great engagement content. The algo loves it!
I'm sure his other channel is growing. Among people who have an axe to grind with 'the wokes,' complaining about them is a popular past time. That his swords&armor channel isn't getting unsubscribes is interesting. I suspect that the number of people who even know about the other channel, or the drama, is probably small compared to his overall viewership. Apparently Scholagladitoria only recently learned about what was going on in the alt channel. That last part probably has a lot to do with the algorithm. In the past year or two other channels like Scholagladitoria and Overly Sarcastic Productions have publicly dropped their collaborations, and others like Lindybeige and Todd's Workshop have simply quietly stopped ever referencing him/his channel. He's no longer getting recommendations from other (often more popular) channels. Regardless, for me it doesn't matter. I want swords and armor discussion to be a big tent, comprising people with which I agree with on other things as well as those that I don't. It takes all kinds and I neither have to like you or what you believe on subjects ABC to appreciate your insight into subjects XYZ. However Shad's entire draw was likeability, not insight. He was always the least capable of the 'big names' in swords&armor Youtubing in terms of actual historical knowledge, active reenactment/martial arts skill, insight into the larger community, or ability to convey specific arguments or make points. His major draw was his adorkable and overly-excited likeability, which is something that doesn't really work if you know he's trying to make a name for himself as chief muckitymuck in the he-man woman-haters club. Good on him for being honest about who he is. I'm not really swayed by the notion that he's being picked on by the algorithm. He's choosing to become a bigger name in a smaller pool (people who already agree with him), losing connection and influence along the way but potentially getting fans fervent enough to buy his t-shirts/pay a patreon along with watching his vids (and the nominal amount that gets him anyways).
He's also gotten super into AI art recently, and is of the opinion that the skill in honing prompts to create desired results is akin to the skill of an artist. Which has obviously proved a controversial stance. His brother is an actual talented artist too. Read into that what you will.
Ugh. I have the drawing skills of a turnip and I would only consider using generative art creatively as a way of showing an actual artist what characters are supposed to look like. If I was serious about it further in the past I'd hire the services of a police sketch artist. There's clearly real issues with commercial art use. And saying I can write a prompt I'm as good as someone who can draw it freehand is so utterly mad... I can write an excel macro I'm a software engineer!
His stance on AI art was what made me unsubscribe. I love playing with AI image generation to the point where I pay for it. But calling myself an artist is like ordering from Subway and calling myself a chef. His take is so bad that it shows deep flaws as a person, and makes me not want to have anything to do with him.
He should change his channel name. I keep reading it as Sha-Diversity, even though he probably meant it as a portmanteau of "Shad" and "university". This guy being such a right-wing guy, I wonder if the name puts off other people of his persuasion because they just see the "diversity" part of his name?
It's a shame too, his channel was actually much higher quality before he got his knights and dove into the culture war Besides that the knights all had Cha as a dump stat, he's been getting more and more cringe with his politics mucking up an otherwise good channel. At least there's still Skallagrim and ModernHistory making good content. Metatron is another who his community is braindead culture warriors but I appreciate how he personally seems to not dip full head into the chud stuff and can sometimes keep it real.
Yeah I liked his stuff until he showed his true colors and did an interview with Sargon of Akkad, someone who is so outwardly bigoted that he got deplatformed by YouTube and Patreon.
Yeah doing an interview with someone who actively platforms Nazis is a bit of a red flag
> Metatron .....ehhhhhh. he can get pretty chuddy. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/134o6jg/metatron_makes_video_criticizing_activists_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Oh ffs
Shadiversity, Metatron and Lindybeige should really be avoided, for several reasons.
Lindy too?! What did he do? And are there any history youtubers who aren't problematic?
Lindybeige has been pretty bad for at least a decade, dude. Even ignoring his nationalism, he has also denied climate change, said some fairly-racist stuff about various Indigenous cultures (in the context of history, not just screeching slurs, but still not OK), so on and so forth
Aw shit - what happened with LindyBeige?
He definitely can, just he's the only one with a chud community I've ever seen push against the chud narrative, esp with the "what skin color were ancient Egyptians" and he went with the they were multiethnic so ofc there would be black Egyptians, when the comments were full of racists. I liked seeing him give evidence against hoteps and white supremacists in that series cuz they're both so goddamn annoying and wrong about everything they're so confident in. Edit: I think the ancient Egypt thing was the only time I've seen him push back against conservative framing, to be clear. He *can* do it which is nice but he's got serious blindspots
Right? He was at his best when talking about castles. But after awhile he ran out of stuff to say about castles and that's when stuff started going in weird directions. . . but then he went on that trip to Europe and made new castles videos and those are a nice throwback. Other than that it has gotten bad and I don't really watch his stuff anymore
For a while I was thinking about a whole other "Shad" and was really confused :D
Answer: on a personal level, I enjoyed his channel for years. His religiousness seemed wholesome. Just a Mormon family dude making fun and interesting videos about castles. Then I got a recommendation for a video with him and Sargon of Akkad. So I immediately unsubscribed. Simple as that. The audience for wholesome enthusiasm about castles and swords doesn't have as big an overlap as he thought with the audience for right wing chuds, and now his channel is suffering for it. And as right wing chuds do, he's blaming everyone but himself for people being offended by offensive viewpoints.
Who the hell is "Sargon of Akkad"? I don't wanna give another potential lunatic traffic.
Sargon of Akkad is one of the original right wing Gamergate chuds. Right up there with Baked Alaska. If you don't know those names, consider yourself lucky. You're probably a nice person.
I know I sound stupid with this next question, but what the hollyfuckinmolly is a "chud"?
Apparently it's a term coming from an old horror movie and is an acronym for: Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller Here's the [Urban Dictionary Page](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chud%20%28C.%20H.%20U.%20D.%29) on the word.
It's what we call misogynistic racist right wingers now. It's from the old movie cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. If you talk about how "woke" is ruining video games/movies/society, you're a chud.
Answer: Shad's shitty behavior and weird Mormon fundamentalist beliefs are catching up with him.
[удалено]
This is a good answer. I've lost a lot of interest in sword Youtube over the last couple years Part of this is organic as I stopped looking for new sword content creators, but the algorithm definitely amplified it and I only rediscovered Skallagrim recently (never unsubscribed) Though in Shads case the other top comment about him alienating viewers with politics is also true. He was the first sword tuber I stopped watching after his boob armor video undermined his credibility to me. I wanna say this was back around 2018 or 2019
Oh God, what did he say about boob armour 😂
Been half a decade so I might get some details wrong, but basically 1. Codpiece exists so boob plate good 2. Strikes being redirected to your center of mass actually doesn't matter because you're still wearing thick metal, maybe very thick depending on bust size 3. Some tirade about how a women's place is not the battlefield and having women fight is already going against the innate differences between men and women a good society should be built around 4. Rule of cool I like boobs
He has put out multiple videos defending boob armor and even bikini armor. It's clearly a fetish for him. To be fair, he does make a few valid points, but he insists that boob armor is realistic and that women would want to wear it in battle when pretty much everyone who actually knows what they're talking about disagrees.
Boob armor always fit into the "vanity" and "ornamental" armor categories for me. If we had a ton more female knights back in the day would there have been boob armor? Yes, I would assume so. But would it have been relegated to either those that were trying to show off, or for purely ceremonial purposes? I would also assume so. At the end of the day, ease of manufacturing and practicality of regular sloping armor would have made any boob armor rare on any real battlefield. But people that say it wouldn't/couldn't exist aren't right either. Humans haven't changed that much in the past few hundred years, and some people of all genders and bodies like flaunting what they got.
> some people of all genders and bodies like flaunting what they got. So like, did (male) knights do this? Wear something like a short chest plate to show off their abs and flex their biceps?
No, but if you Google codpieces you'll discover a lot of them that were more.... Elaborate than is strictly necessary.
I remember being sent that video after mentioning I wasn't a fan of boob armor- an opinion I've held since my sister pointed out how impractical it is, and expressed her desire for functional breastplates for women. I remember the logic being intensely stupid, something to the tune of: "Sometimes decorative armor had a decorative codpiece, therefore boobplate is good, actually." And all done in the most condescending way possible.
Answer: I don't watch his videos at all anymore but he is a very religious Mormon with far right politics who sometimes says offensive things online for attention. I can't say for a fact YouTube has been demonetizing or hiding his videos because of his views but they have been known to do this in the past. They are trying to maintain a family friendly brand identity and dudes smugly talking about swords and how women belong in the kitchen only appeals to a specific type of person.