History WebVideo / FoldingIdeas

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: [[invoked]] Briefly brought up in his video on the Nostalgia Critic's review of ''The Wall'', when discussing the film itself Dan notes that, after decades of other works that explored similar themes as ''The Wall'', or made use of similar aesthetics directly inspired by its imagery, it can look quite "juvenile" in its use of abstract symbolism by comparison.

* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: All over the place in "Nostalgia Critic and The Wall". Dan overall argument is that Doug Walker has failed to engage with the movie and the concepts within it with any degree of good faith, emotional honesty, or contextual information.
** In the case of "We Need More Victimization", Doug's parody of "Another Brick in the Wall", Doug criticizes the song as whiny and full of edgy teenager angst because it is about how school sucks. Dan argues that this is not really what the song is about, and that Doug is not taking in context the differences between Doug's own suburban education in 80/90s America compared to Roger Waters education in a post-WWII era England. He is also missing the argument Waters makes about who is in charge of education, it's not just that teachers suck, but that education is an institution that is heavily influenced by what industrialists want and that attempt to shape children into workers, rather than thinking human beings.

** The end of "This is Financial Advice" manages to be even ''bleaker,'' especially as Dan argues that as [[ConspiracyTheorist paranoid,]] [[EntitledBastard selfish,]] [[AwfulWeddedLife resentful,]] [[ConMan dishonest,]] [[TheGamblingAddict impulsive,]] and all-around [[TooDumbToLive foolish]] as Apes are, ''even they'' don't deserve to be exploited like this.
--->'''Dan:''' The grim irony of Ape culture is that it has the ''operative mechanisms'' of a gambling addiction... without actually gambling. See, if it were a gamble, if they were truly betting on something, [[WhamLine then there would be some actual odds of winning.]] Apes like to talk about [[DeathorGloryAttack "high risk, high reward"]] as a coping mechanism, as the mismanaged companies they're betting on continue to slide out of business, but all framing devices like that assume that the thing that you're betting on can actually ''happen.'' But the weakest team in the league can, theoretically, [[UnderdogsNeverLose pull out a dark-horse run and take the cup.]] ''That's'' a high-risk, high-reward bet. Apes, on the other hand, with their [[ApocalypseCult theories of MOASS,]] with their [[ThereAreNoCoincidences "Cohencidences"]] and Icahn secret reverse-triangle mergers, with their [[InsaneTrollLogic fundamental misunderstanding of how a short sale even works...]] they're sitting around a blackjack table convincing each other that there's a secret rule, that if you hit 31 the dealer has to give you their entire tray. So hit me! [[TragicMistake Hit me!]] [[DeathByMaterialism Hit me!]] [[MadnessMantra Hit me!]]

** The end of "This is Financial Advice" manages to be even ''bleaker,'' especially as Dan argues that as [[ConspiracyTheorist paranoid,]] [[EntitledBastard selfish,]] [[AwfulWeddedLife resentful,]] [[ConMan dishonest,]] [[GamblingAddict impulsive,]] and all-around [[TooDumbToLive foolish]] as Apes are, ''even they'' don't deserve to be exploited like this.

** In "The Line Goes Up - the problem with [=NFTs=]", he notes that Ethereum is a net improvement over Bitcoin, which he immediately clarifies is "not hard -- Bitcoin sucks".
** His "This is Financial Advice" video has him retroactively apply this to crypto enthusiasts compared to "Apes". While cryptocurrency enthusiasts will twist themselves into knots trying to explain why a company failing is [[FailureGambit actually a good thing]] (usually, that it strengthens the industry as a whole), they will at least acknowledge that the company ''is'' going bankrupt, whereas Apes will continue to insist that the company or its stock will rebound any moment now.

* ConfirmationBias: Discussed in regards to "Ape DD" (Due Diligence). He explains that Due Diligence is actually a in-depth, thorough study to check the possible pros and cons of an investment, it's meant to be as much an argument to buy something as it is to not buy; however, Apes have a vested interest in buying and convince others to buy GMS, so their Due Diligence is entirely a way to find new reasons to invest on [=GameStop=] while downplaying or outright ignoring reasons not to.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: He discusses this regularly in terms of crypto and blockchain advocates. In his view, understanding how crypto and the blockchain and the many adjacent technologies are supposed to work is quite difficult, and many people can struggle to get the full picture beyond the basics. However, this means that people who ''do'' understand crypto have a tendency to assume their intelligence there will transfer to intelligence everywhere else, since understanding a complicated thing must mean that presumably less complicated things are therefore child's play. This leads to a lot of advocates bragging about how the blockchain will solve any given problem, while demonstrating a lack of even basic knowledge regarding that problem--for instance, claiming that crypto is the perfect answer to fraud, since it's less susceptible to money being hacked out of your account, ignoring that this method of fraud already has layers of protection against it and isn't considered a real problem by banks [[HollywoodHacking outside of movies]].

** Dan points to the entire concept of the Metaverse as seen in ''Literature/SnowCrash'' and ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'' and other works as this in ''The Future is a Dead Mall'' - even when decoupled from how awful Decentraland's implementation of these concepts is. The idea of a contiguous virtual space that's mapping the internet like a physical space sounds cool in an abstract or as a literary device because plot devices don't need to consider the limitation and various complications real life use brings up. The more you think about it, the more you realize that such spaces are inherently worst at everything you'd want them to do than a webpage might be. From certain designs who by their very nature will block all line of sights from neighbors, the fact that humans can navigate a grid of items on a shopping site faster and more efficiently than physically navigate a virtual store filled with virtual goods or the fact that one can move between webpages faster than one can move across physical space.

''Folding Ideas'' is a Website/YouTube media analysis show hosted and written by Dan Olson (aka Foldable Human). His style is relatively analytical among other internet {{review}}ers, mostly observing works within their cultural context rather than from a fan's point of view. Originally, Dan used 'Foldy,' a puppet talking box, to serve as the host of the show, with Foldy acting as the channel's icon. Over time Dan began filming himself in front of the camera more and more, to the point where it became the standard and Foldy was more a curious historical note. Similarly the channel's focus also evolved from relatively short videos using individual media to discuss various elements of filmaking, fandom, or pop culture, to long form videos on various topics such as internet cooking videos, conspiracy theories, [=NFTs=], internet gifts, among others.

** In "Line Goes Up", Dan begins by talking about the 2008 financial crisis, explaining it in detail. This allows the viewer, through the video to realize how much of Crypto, and NFT in particular, mirrors what lead to the crisis, despite much of Crypto being born as a supposed answer to the crisis - without Dan needing to actually point it out. One example is how much of the crisis was built out of companies creating dummy, valueless morgages they could then package into bonds to sell to make the line go up. Dan later mirrors this when mentioning how the original "valuable" [=NFTs=] of stuff like original reddit memes and actual high effort art were in finite supply, so crypto fans had to turn to something else to make the line go up, leading to the stuff like the Apes and other worthless procedurally generated art NFT that became the face of the concept.

* 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 rather accurate predictions that [=GameStop=] had more value that the market though 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.

* 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. He began by making rather accurate predictions that [=GameStop=] had more value that the market though 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) and then realized that he was now in a position where he could say or do anything without Apes reacting to his every word. 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.

* TechnologyMarchesOn[[invoked]]: Discussed towards the end of "Bakshi and the Ring", where Dan makes the case that Ralph Bakshi's adaptation of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is like a 2010s blockbuster movie made with 1970s resources; all these years later, countless effects-heavy movies paint over live actors and place their performances in an animated world.

** At one point in ''Line Goes Up'', Dan refers to cryptocurrency as "the hobbyhorse of a few thousand gambling addicts", and later, he discusses an attempt to make a crypto funded casino, whose whit epaper proudly opens "Welcome to the white paper, fellow gamblers!"
** In ''The Future Is A Dead Mall'', Dan observes that the only part of Decentraland to get any amount of regular traffic is a single poker table at a casino, and then points out that the rest of the many, many casinos therein were similarly well occupied before all the games were shut down due to a combination of [[GameBreakingBug bugs that made them regularly eat inputs]] and falling afoul of real world gambling laws.

* 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. He began by making rather accurate predictions that [=GameStop=] had more value that the market though 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) and then realized that he was not in a position where he could say or do anything without Apes reacting to his every word. 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.

* AssholeVictim: Defied in ''This is Financial Advice''. He admits that the Apes don't seem like good people and lists reasons why so (they're conspiratorially minded to the point of verging into antisemitism, they're planning to crash the global economy with no thought about what will be the damages normal people might suffer, and regularly confess to lying to their spouses and families about the state of their shared finances due to a gambling addiction), that being said, he argues that nobody deserves to be so grifted and brainwashed that the only way forward is to become a grifter themselves.

-->''"The US government wrote off the GME squeeze as a one-off viral event and let everyone off the hook, but if the Apes get their wish and really do deliberately risk collapsing the US or global economy after several years of organising - yeah I think the US federal government would sooner make that RICO filing then give u/hoplias literally billions of dollars for his shares in GameStop."''

'''Dan:''' ''[[VomitDiscretionShot [vomits into a bag]]]''\\

* {{Flanderization}}: In his character analysis of [[Franchise/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]], he talks about how Homer inverted the StandardFiftiesFather archetype. Homer became more unsympathetic, but still likable, which led to later live-action sitcoms featuring {{BumblingDad}}s in imitation of him. The writers of ''The Simpsons'' then satirized the {{Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist}}s they helped create by making him even more unsympathetic.

** 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.

* AssholeVictim: Refuted in ''This is Financial Advice''. He admits that the Apes don't seem like good people and lists reasons why so (they're conspiratorially minded to the point of verging into antisemitism, they're planning to crash the global economy with no thought about what will be the damages normal people might suffer, and regularly confess to lying to their spouses and families about the state of their shared finances due to a gambling addiction), that being said, he argues that nobody deserves to be so grifted and brainwashed that the only way forward is to become a grifter themselves.

** His "This is Financial Advice" video has him retroactively apply this to crypto enthusiasts compared to "Apes". While cryptocurrency enthusiasts will twist themselves into knots trying to explain why a company failing is [[FailureGambit actually a good thing]] (usually, that it [[AdaptiveAbility strengthens the industry as a whole]]), they will at least acknowledge that the company ''is'' going bankrupt, whereas Apes will continue to insist that the company or its stock will rebound any moment now.

** His "This is Financial Advice" video has him retroactively apply this to crypto enthusiasts compared to "Apes". While cryptocurrency enthusiasts will twist themselves into knots trying to explain why a company failing is [[FailureGambit actually a good thing]], they will at least acknowledge that the company ''is'' going bankrupt, whereas Apes will continue to insist that the company or its stock will rebound any moment now.