BritMonkey is a YouTuber dedicated to making edutainment videos on a wide range of topics surrounding history, public policy, culture and philosophy.
His main channel can be found here
. He also has a second channel, KrautChimp, which is dedicated to shorter videos or ones he didn't deem good enough for the main channel.
Tropes featured:
- A World Half Full: A running theme through many of his videos is that no matter what hardship or issues humanity may face in the past or future, being alive and having human experiences is a fundamentally good thing. "Stop Being a Climate Change Doomer", "Willn't" (about the question of whether free will exists, with the conclusion that the answer isn't important), and "ENTER THE PLEASURE CUBE" (which argues against the idea of real world Lotus-Eater Machines) are all good showcases of this philosophy.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "aLTERNATE HISTORY OF EUROPE!!!! (2025-2040)" drops the subtlety at the end and features the narrator happily declaring a "based genocide of Muslims across the continent", fascist Europe taking over the world, and the abolition of homework (FUCK YOU MR WAZINSKI!!!).
- Balkanize Me: "aLTERNATE HISTORY OF EUROPE!!!! (2025-2040)" parodies the habit of alternate history works to arbitrarily split countries up by having the United Kingdom gradually lose its constituent nations at random intervals with nonsensical results; notably Northern Ireland becomes independent without unifying with the Republic of Ireland, with the latter having suddenly created the Celtic Union with Scotland.
- Bittersweet Ending: "The Graffiti That Changed a City". The relationship the graffiti started turned out poorly, and one half of the couple passed away young. The person who made the graffiti was screwed out of profiting on the graffiti's notoriety or receiving assistance from the property developers who used the graffiti to market the redevelopment of the area around it. However, the graffiti becoming a local cultural phenomenon did do a lot to revitalise Sheffield's cultural and public life.
- Capitalism Is Bad: Defied, as BritMonkey takes a pretty balanced perspective on the issue whenever it does arise,
- "Georgism 101" notes that the ideology has its proponents from just about every corner of the political spectrum, from free-market liberals to communists and anarchists, and presents this as a positive.
- The two "How to Make a Country Rich" videos (covering Botswana and Bangladesh) showcase how careful applications of a market economy can dramatically improve not just a country's wealth but also their living standards. The latter video goes a bit more in-depth about the poor working conditions that such rapidly developing countries can face, but also notes that the interplay between industry and labor movements are a lot more intertwined than you may expect.
- Green Aesop: "Stop Being a Climate Change Doomer" is mostly about the bigger trends of Global Warming and why there’s fundamentally optimism to be found in them, but the ending does offer a bit of advice for people looking to make a meaningful cut to their own carbon footprint: Avoiding meat, even if just for a day or two each week, is the single most effective way to do it.
- Homage: "Willn't" is a sendup of V Sauce. Similarly, "The Prime Minister Line of Succession" is inspired by CGP Grey.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The subject of "ENTER THE PLEASURE CUBE"; the titular pleasure cube referring to any device or system that can make a person feel happy with no stimuli required. The video is a Deconstruction of the trope as it applies to the real world, and ends with a plea to reject such a device should one ever become widely available.
- Take That!: "aLTERNATE HISTORY OF EUROPE!!!! (2025-2040)" is a takedown of poorly-researched Alternate History mapping videos, particularly ones which turn out to be blatant nationalist wish fulfilment.
- Violation of Common Sense: "Grown in Argentina, Packed in Thailand" is about a viral image of a packet of sliced pairs sold in the United States with the aforementioned production process. The video explains that, contrary to what your instinct would tell you, this worldwide production chain is sensible from both an economic and environmental standpoint.
