Reviews WebVideo / Thunderf00t

I don't really have an opinion on the guy and I freely admit that what I'm about to say isn't a fair assessment at all, but... this bit?

"Thunderf00t is a nice guy you should not anger. He has a really mean hook, but it's always understandable when he's a jerk."

This sounds like 50% The Hulk and 50% a case of Domestic Abuse. And I honestly get that that's an incredibly ridiculous thing to say, but it just does. And the open admittance that his fanbase will vitriolically continue to hate anyone he criticizes, even if he accepts their apology, or apologizes himself, doesn't paint a great picture of the guy.

I mean, if you have twenty million fans, it's understandable if some of them are jerks. If you're someone on YouTube I've never heard of and yet your own fans will freely admit multiple times in their own reviews of you that you can be a real jerk and your fanbase will never forgive the people you criticize... well, you're probably doing something to attract those people.

The picture you're painting of this guy sounds to me like just another jackass on the internet who likes to pick fights. We already have more than enough of those.

(Just out of interest though, what did he do that could potentially save millions of lives?)

Any fanbase, no matter how big or small, will inevitably attract such people. Thunderf00t's fanbase has shown quite recently that they simply don't take crap from others, especially if it goes against human decency (it's my fault for not properly explaining that). But it's fallacious to assume that he's a jerk on principle, because I clearly wrote that he's a nice guy and nice guys shouldn't be angered (we have the Beware the Nice Ones trope for a reason). His mean hook being his eloquent way of saying how much someone else sucks and why. If that person also tries to indoctrinate others, ESPECIALLY when it comes to children, then that person pushed the wrong button of a lot of people. I find that rather normal, children can't exactly defend themselves obviously.

Well, what happened is well-explained here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5TMmxlsLN8 but I'll give the short form: crazy person accuses Thunderf00t of being a nazi, leading a hate-mob yadayada. Crazy person writes to local news, his employer and the police to get him fired and arrested because he critisized Anita Sarkeesian (a controversial figure in her own right) on what of her ideas don't make sense. Thunderf00t blows it off and laughs about it. Meanwhile crazy person gloats about how she got him fired (when that wasn't the case) and posts a video with herself pointing at her own email adress while gloating. Crazy person's email adress gets publicised by fans, then Thunderf00t himself, he does research and finds out she faked reviews on her own firm and also seems to have abused her own employees. Internet hate button gets pushed and justice is served.

As for the other thing, Thunderf00t is a scientist who worked on alkali metals and how they react in water (namely, they EXPLODE). Well, turns out that science has been wrong about the way they explode, the reasons why they explode and the results from the explosion for over 40 years at this point. So Thunderf00t found it out and even published a good paper in "Nature". As it so happens, alkali metals are processed in mass like everything else, but no one really knew just how incredibly powerful the reactions would potentially be and Thunderf00t found out that security standards are hence really lax. By making sure that these metals are handled with proper care and with new techniques, it can be ensured that factories across the globe become much safer, and that the millions of people working in them and the many others working with those first people can be safer, because so far there seem to be hundreds of such accidents every year due to improper handling and other reasons.

"Any fanbase, no matter how big or small, will inevitably attract such people."

Not really. That just sounds like an excuse someone would use if they were part of a fanbase that was predominantly represented with jerks.

"Thunderf00t's fanbase has shown quite recently that they simply don't take crap from others."

Again, sounds like justification for people being jerks. I mean, you don't hear stuff about the Bo Jack Horseman fanbase 'refusing to take crap from others', or things like Tetris 'inevitably attracting such people'.

"Crazy person's email adress gets publicised by fans, then Thunderf00t himself."

What I don't understand here is that if the crazy woman was digging her own grave, why does T-f00t need to be a complete ass and publish her address and workplace? She's doing all that herself. Why can't he just keep his mouth shut and retain the moral high ground, instead of directing his fans to spam hatred at her and her workplace - which by the way is the exact same thing you said she was trying to do to him, except it's much worse when he does it because he has 400,000 subscribers. It's very telling that you call her 'evil' for this, and yet when he does it, you call it 'awesome' and 'justice'.

The thing about alkali metals is very impressive, but 'It could save millions of lives!' is a very melodramatic exaggeration. I mean it's definitely something to be proud of, but you're over-stating it a little.

A million lives in the next 50 years, maybe - and even that's stretching it. It's still a pretty good catch, but "millions of lives" is a bit of an overexaggeration.

I'll agree that fanbases almost always attract crappy people, especially as they grow, but there are definitely fanbases that start off defensive and aggressive in the first place for whatever reason. Not to say that the Thunderf00t fanbase is one of those, how would I know - but regardless.

I can't give an opinion on him as a youtube personality, but I can say that your review doesn't make me want to watch the guy. I don't like personalities that fly off the hook, even if they're provoked, and I like fanbases that do so even less. Some phrasing, like "nice guys shouldn't be provoked" give me uncomfortable "nice guy culture" vibes, and it feels like you might be talking up his best points while downplaying his worst ones - i.e. "he acts like an asshole when he's provoked and when the provoker needs to be taught a lesson, but he's a scientist who made a life-saving breakthrough that can save millions of lives!".

From what I've seen here and elsewhere, this guy just gives me a whole bunch of uncomfortable vibes. Keep on truckin', I guess, I won't drag him through the mud for what little second hand info I've heard, nor will I challenge you for being a fan. But yeah, I don't think I want to get involved with this guy.

It is true that a lot of large fanbases do have bad apples. In most cases, however, those people are acknowledged as bad apples.

Taking pride in the fact that your fanbase is full of shitheads, however, is another matter entirely.

Also, "able to explain complex topics" is a crock of shit. He speaks on subjects where he's utterly clueless, like his "Teach them not to rape" video, wherein (and after, from the arguments he got into on Twitter) he makes absolutely no effort to understand very basic things about consent and what the feminists are actually saying, in favor of his overly simplistic analogies that do a good job of completely ignoring what people were arguing about. Because he wasn't given a reasoned and rational response to the subject; he was operating entirely off of a knee-jerk reaction.

It's rather telling that when many, many people came out and called him out on his staggering bullshit (gotta love that bit about the line between rape and "bad sex") the only thing he actually addressed in his follow-up video was Emma Watson, because she was the easiest to knock down. Of course, he mainly just whined about how "oh noes I've been misrepresented!" And proceeding to double-down on his clueless analogies.

As for the "One of Us" point, whoop-de-fucking do, he uses clips from popular science fiction movies and animated sitcoms. And mispronounces Tyrion Lannister's name. And uses a clip from a Halo game while mentioning the Playstation.

Sorry, my mistake; it wasn't Emma Watson, it was Rebecca Watson.

"he uses clips from popular science fiction movies and animated sitcoms. And mispronounces Tyrion Lannister's name. And uses a clip from a Halo game while mentioning the Playstation."

From now on, every time somebody mentions Thunderf00t, I will immediately think of the Third Rate Gamer.

Thund Foot Gamer.

General rule of thumb: if someone has a "really mean hook" and it is not part of a character/stage persona (i.e. James Rolfe with the Angry Video Game Nerd, George Carlin), they are not nice. They are an asshole who use the bullshit "I'm just telling it as is" card as an excuse to be an asshole.

This is basically how a Thunderf00t argument goes:

1. Start by going after easy targets (Young Earth Creationists). Once that wears itself out, start going after people your fanbase think are easy targets (Feminists).

2. Once it becomes obvious that they're not as easy a target as you initially thought; strawman your opponent and their arguments. Do this by taking highly selective and parsimonious clips of opponents and their positions taken completely out of context and then grasping straws and jumping to warped and ridiculous conclusions.

3. Once it's clear you're still getting pwned, deliver the we-need-to-unite-to-tackle-bigger-goals crap to avoid the issues.

4. As a last resort, diagnose people with mental illnesses you looked up in Wikipedia.

5. ignore all criticism presented to you. Instead, if you are faced with a lot of criticism, zero in on least substantial ones that are easiest to strawman and debunk

6. In the process of all this, to impress your fanbase with your knowledge of history and society by going on long-winded, melodramatic rants about western civilization and freedom of speech