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Barges into Youtube
Uploads interesting videos weekly for a decade
Refuses to elaborate further
Heads off into the sunset
Image of Tom Scott flying under a helicopter in a harness
only British person I respect
Map Men slander.
I might have teared up during the montage.
It's like the end of an age. But as he literally said it's not.
I've almost never been this conflicted in my life.
I had to turn it off when that started. Noped out of there and the nieces and nephews came in from outside asking me what's wrong.
Gonna try again during a later, more private moment.
It feels like a bit of 'old internet' died with him, where he's always been an internet optimist and someone who has lived through basically all of it. He stuck to his principles through all of it. And I guess that has become a rarified breed.
Him taking a step back feels like a bit of that old internet of the curiosity, community and creativity of the early days of the internet go with him. Mind you he's not going anywhere except the people he cares about and I completely understand the choice he made, and I only wish the best for him, so this is just me attempting to explain why it feels so confronting and kind of sad. For me it goes beyond 'oh there just won't be anymore of those videos then', which I can live with although it would be sad to see those go. It's his personality that has, through the entire history of youtube and the many, many changes it went through, stuck to the principles of its first ever users. Be curious, be authentic, and generally just try shit out and see if it works.
I'm sure that core of the personality he showed on screen will never really go away, other people will carry that torch. But it's ok to be a little sad to see someone wave off like this. It shows us all how much we enjoyed it all these years.
Also as a MINOR sidenote on the meme, he never refused to explain, you couldn't stop this man from explaining if you tried lol
The old Internet and its ideals where great.
I actually felt at the time it was mankinds glorious future. Something worth dying for, people have died standing for less.
But it just wasn't to be. Humanity isn't worth saving because they refuse to save themselves.
They?
Large corporations took over, and it was shit :(
For the past decade I've been waking up to a new Tom Scott video every Monday. The positivity and curiosity helped me start my week. I'm really going to miss it.
I remember someone telling a suuuuper dumb joke and then linking "two drums and a cymbal" several years after he made the video, and I'd see vids occasionally.
It wasn't until "Danger: Humans" that I went through all his "things you might not know" he had at the time, and subscribed.
I'll just have to binge the channel some more.
I love that two drums and a cymbal video. It's amazing how perfect it turned out.
An absolute national treasure. People have been given MBEs or even OBEs for far lesser achievements.
I was thinking about this earlier. I'm not sure the OBE would consider his achievements to be noteworthy. If you look at other notable recipients, they all had careers spanning many decades, and the ones in entertainment all have backgrounds in more "classy" vocations (theater, film, music). I'm not sure they'd consider "some guy posting videos on the Internet" (from their perspective) to be of sufficient pedigree. That, and occasionally poking fun at the government and royalty probably hasn't put him very high on the list.
However, i think that even if he was offered knighthood, he'd probably decline it, either because he thinks he doesn't deserve it or because he would be too nervous or embarrassed to accept it.
Brady Haran (numberphile etc.) was made an OAM, the Australian equivalent of an OBE, largely for his YouTube work. So it's not impossible.
I'd argue that isn't quite the same thing.
For starters, OAM doesn't confer the title of "Sir" or "Dame" for some reason despite the award still coming from the Monarch of Australia (i.e. the Monarch of the United Kingdom). It seems to me that this was a deliberate choice to not to "dilute" the title when they created the award, suggesting OAM doesn't carry quite the same intended prestige as OBE.
Secondly, Brady Haran's tenure on YouTube is 6 years longer than Tom's (2008 vs 2014), if we're talking about regularly posting videos vs just uploading random projects, and Brady's videos directly promote higher education and academic research through his collaboration with the University of Nottingham. He also worked for the BBC as a journalist for six years before that. This isn't to diminish Tom's work, but I think objectively speaking he's not quite as prolific.
Thirdly, I believe Australian citizens can still receive OBEs as citizens of a Commonwealth realm, so Brady may still receive one down the road, especially if he sticks with it. But if he hasn't gotten one yet, I doubt that Tom would at this point in time.
All valid but OAMs and OBEs are exactly equivalent, both are the lowest honour and neither confer a title. Only much higher ranks from each honour system KBE/DBE or AK/AD make you a Knight/Dame
He's never been the same since the xnopyt incident...
Which is..?
I'm not sure, the video doesn't seem that controversial.
In case internet sarcasm is sneaking past, the entire thing is a joke centered on the fact that Tom yells out after saying xnopyt. In the original video this is just to say the second word but people typically make edits and jokes that somehow it's some pain or fear caused by saying xnopyt.