History WebVideo / FoldingIdeas

** He discusses the idea when talking about the works of Creator/DougWalker. Calling him Youtube's Creator/NeilBreen and Creator/TommyWiseau, saying that like the later two, Doug has the same "heady mix of incompetence and ego that is absolutely intoxicating to talk about". He also discusses it more specifically about the infamous "The Wall" review:

* GreenwashedVillainy: In "About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary", he discusses this trope when the documentary turns to the subject of the Reefton Mine Restoration Project: a project to turn an empty open-pit gold mine into an actual livable space. He notes that, despite all appearances, the project is ''not'' this trope, as it's dealing with a very important environmental problem, and by all accounts, it's doing a great job at it. However, to acknowledge the problem that Reefton Mine is dealing with would mean admitting that most of the time, open-pit gold mines turn into absolute hotbeds of toxic runoff that threaten everything in the vicinity, and the company simply runs off and leaves the local governments holding the bag the moment the mine runs dry, and the fact that Reefton ''isn't'' doing that is exceptional. Since this would make the industry look bad, the documentary weirdly skates around the issue of what Reefton is doing and why it's so important in favor of just talking about how it planted a bunch of trees and made the place look nice, making it look like greenwashing when it really isn't.

* GreenwashedVillainy: In "About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary", he discusses this trope when the documentary turns to the subject of the Reefton Mine Restoration Project: a project to turn an empty open-pit gold mine into an actual livable space. He notes that, despite all appearances, the project is ''not'' this trope, as it's dealing with a very important environmental problem, and by all accounts, it's doing a great job at it. However, to acknowledge that Reefton Mine is dealing with a very real problem would mean admitting that most of the time, open-pit gold mines turn into absolute hotbeds of toxic runoff that threaten everything in the vicinity, and the company simply runs off and leaves the local governments holding the bag the moment the mine runs dry, and the fact that Reefton ''isn't'' doing that is exceptional. Since this would make the industry look bad, the documentary weirdly skates around the issue of what Reefton is doing and why it's so important in favor of just talking about how it planted a bunch of trees and made the place look nice, making it look like greenwashing when it really isn't.

** In "The Future is a Dead Mall", this is the overarching thesis regarding much of the Metaverse and Decentraland communities, ranging from the adopt-a-pet program to the governance structure to the concept itself:

-->That's not to say that they don't believe the Metaverse could or should exist, just that most have not considered if it would actually be any good. That part they take as a given, because it's always super cool in stories, so why even bother considering that the end result might be boring, inconvenient, and disappointing?

* ConfirmationBias: Discussed in regards to "Ape DD" (Due Diligence). Dan explains that real Due Diligence is a thorough investigation to check the possible pros and cons of an investment: it's supposed to be as much an argument for why you ''shouldn't'' buy the asset as it is an argument why you should. But Apes have a vested interest in buying GME and convincing other people to buy it too, so their self-proclaimed "Due Diligence" is entirely a way to come up with new reasons to buy and hold [=GameStop=] while downplaying or outright ignoring reasons not to.

* InsultToRocks: A couple of times in ''This is financial advice'', Dan notes that Apes are managing to lose money to "the random noise" of Wall Street. And at another, he points out that making money on the stock market isn't that difficult, since [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USKD3vPD6ZA a goldfish is able to do it]].

* InformedAttribute: One of his main issues with ''Film/TheBookOfHenry''. He notes that the creators describe Henry as a kid with a lot of emotional intelligence, more than just being a TVGenius, even though Henry is an almost textbook example of that very thing: far from emotionally intelligent, he spends most of the film as a classic InsufferableGenius, and he doesn't seem to have any friends. Furthermore, when he does have to show his intelligence beyond offscreen feats like managing the stock market, it's in his plan, which makes no sense--it seems to assume that a gun store would allow a young boy to purchase a high-powered rifle, and that a shallow creek would be enough to sweep away a grown man's body. On the other hand, his mother, whom the film treats as a highly neglectful and lazy parent, seems to have no deeper flaws than enjoying video games and taking time out for herself on occasion.

** "This is Financial Advice" discusses the tendency among meme stock investors to put together long and inaccurate "informational" posts about how the stock market actually works, usually from people who will ''openly admit in the posts'' that they don't know much about the stock market, but nevertheless think they're helping the community by attempting to parse a complicated topic for them. In particular, he singles out an overreliance on analogy and decoding techniques; essentially, Apes reading anything complex about securities trading will tend to find something, ''anything'' that they can understand, and will attempt to use that as a Rosetta Stone to parse the rest of the material.

** He makes a similar remark about Doug's song "comfortably dumb", saying that while Doug means it to be about the film's pacing, Dan notes most if it applies literally to Doug's relationship with media general and his unwillingness to engage properly with it. He calls it the most honest song in the review, almost entirely by mistake.

* GoneHorriblyRight: In ''This Is Financial Advice'' Dan covers the story of Keith Gill, aka [=DeepFuckingValue=], a man who wanted to be a financial social media influencer. Keith began by making potentially reasonable predictions that [=GameStop=] had more value than the market thought it did and that there were lots of ways [=GameStop=] could fix their decline. Then January 2021 happened and [=GameStop=]'s stock exploded. Keith made millions off of it, but the Apes also rallied around him as some sort of messianic figure. Keith had to go before Congress to prove he didn't do anything wrong (which Dan believes he genuinely didn't), after which he had to confront the fact that the Apes had begun to interpret anything he said or did as coded messages to their movement. This proved to be both a legal risk to his newfound wealth (as he could be accused of market manipulation if something he said caused the Apes to act en masse) and a physical risk to him and his family (Apes aren't the most stable of people and a lot of them like to talk about how they own guns), so Keith deleted all his social media accounts and walked off into the sunset.

* OverlyLongGag: Done ''twice'' in "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g Line Goes Up: The Problem With NFTs]]", where Dan spends the best part of an entire minute rattling off a colossal list of the procedurally-generated mascot [=NFT=] projects that spammed him on Discord, and again later with a list of various cryptocurrencies/blockchains, scarcely pausing for breath while smattering the screen with examples or logos for ''every single one''.

* CuteKitten: Dan has a cat named Amy who often features in the credits of his videos, sometimes with a link to an unlisted video solely containing footage of her. She also occasionally pops up in vlogs, where Dan is prone to succumb to CutenessProximity around her.

* ClickbaitGag[[invoked]]: Nearly every major video since late 2016 has had an alternate "Clickbait title" in the description. Just for one example, "[[TheProblemWithLicensedGames An American Tail: Fievel Goes to Video Game Hell]]" has "THE WORST VIDEO GAME EVER!? [gone wild] [prank][TWIST ENDING] [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Frozen Elsa]] [[YouTubeKidsChannel Spider-Man]]"

* LiesDamnedLiesAndStatistics: Parodied in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0UgPfKnUBo his vlog review of]] ''Film/PokemonDetectivePikachu'', where he forms a rubric to "objectively" score a movie from 0-100 based on four factors rated from 0-5 and weighting them each for a total sum. "Laughs" is scaled by x0.6, "adventure" is scaled by x0.6, "feels" is scaled by x0.8, while [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers "Haunter"]] (a Pokémon who isn't even in the movie) is scaled by '''x18'''.

* JokeAndReceive: In the video "Ludonarrative Dissonance", Dan brings up a clip of WebVideo/ErrantSignal dismissing the concept of [[GameplayAndStorySegregation ludonarrative dissonance]] as incoherent by comparing it to film criticism, where [[AppealToObscurity nobody ever speaks of "cinemanarrative dissonance"]]. Dan responds that Errant has [[StrawmanHasAPoint inadvertently invented a legitimately useful critical concept]][[invoked]], and proceeds to discuss ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' as an example of "cinemanarrative dissonance".

** He discusses [[Film/{{Transformers}} Sam Witwicky]] and the implications of WomenAreWiser combined with MaleGaze, more specifically how a lot of movies and shows enforce the idea that this is how men see themselves and how they're supposed to see people like Sam as relatable.

** In ''This is Financial Advice'', he raises the point that the Apes' plan is clearly not fully thought through. If MOASS starts looking like it could be happening, then Apes would have collectively conspired to crash the global economy, which would be getting them in trouble with the government way before they see any of the actual earnings promised:

** Really, every version of MOASS (from the same video) is this. If it happened, apes would (in theory) get crazy money for their gamestop shares; enough to seriously impact or straight-up destroy the economy. They not only think the U.S Government will just hand that money over, they think life will be peachy living in a devastated economy.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: {{Discussed|Trope}} in his video on "Ludonarrative Dissonance", in which he defends the term as a tool for proper descriptive criticism. He also goes into detail as to how video games in particular tend to have its elements compartmentalized rather than being treated as a whole, unlike other media (citing WebVideo/ErrantSignal's video of how "cinemanarrative dissonance" between story and cinematography in film isn't really considered a thing), and discusses the implications and potential discussions it brings for all of them.

** "''Film/TriumphOfTheWill'' and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda" is a discussion of the eponymous propaganda film, the somewhat contradictory philosophy that drives it, and the artistic methods used that made it so iconic... a fact that itself was an actual product of propaganda intended to manipulate its audiences to show the supposed grandeur and power of the [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Nazi party]]. In other words, how modern audiences view it today.

** Discussed in "About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary" as being one of the primary failings of the film. Dan argues that gold and its impact on culture across the world is a subject that is interesting and expansive enough to warrant a documentary. Because ''Gold: A Journey With Idris Elba'' is (by The World Gold's Council's own admission) a propaganda piece made to attract and please investors, it's unwilling to actually engage with any one topic in-depth out of fear that addressing some of the more unsavory aspects of the gold industry (Gold being a significant part of India's unlawful dowry system, pit lakes and the impact gold mining has on the environment, etc) might make their product unappealing to potential buyers. What is left is ultimately a painfully boring slog that exists primarily to sell a product, rather than say anything insightful about its subject matter.

* [[invoked]] PropagandaPiece: "''Film/TriumphOfTheWill'' and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda" is a discussion of the eponymous propaganda film, the somewhat contradictory philosophy that drives it, and the artistic methods used that made it so iconic... a fact that itself was an actual product of propaganda intended to manipulate its audiences to show the supposed grandeur and power of the [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Nazi party]]. In other words, how modern audiences view it today.

* PropagandaPiece: Discussed in ''About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary'' as being one of the primary failings of the film. Dan argues that gold and its impact on culture across the world is a subject that is interesting enough to warrant a documentary. Because ''Gold: A Journey With Idris Elba'' is (by The World Gold's Council's own admission) a propaganda piece made to attract potential investors and please stockholders, it's unwilling to actually engage with any one topic in-depth out of fear of addressing some of the more unsavory aspects of the gold industry (Gold being a significant part of India's unlawful dowry system, pit lakes and the impact gold mining has on the environment, etc). What is left is ultimately a painfully boring slog that exists primarily to sell a product, rather than say anything insightful about its subject matter.