Funny / Philosophy Tube

• While her video The Politics of Antifa is still pretty dry, she does describe the idea that "anyone who wears a mask in public is bad" as the J. Jonah Jameson approach to political critique.
  "Also, here's a completely unrelated picture of some riot police." (show photo of riot police wearing face-hiding gas masks)
• "Elon Musk":
  • Abi decides to give a practical demonstration of the labour theory of value by attempting to create a wooden chair without the use of labour... Walking into the woods and tossing money at a tree while screaming "investment!" at it.
  • Abi's video ends on the note that, as YouTube expands and making their biggest channels both rich and famous, a lot of the currently left-wing or liberal channels fall into the very real risk of becoming Elon Musk-style counterculture icons of liberal communism, disavowing the harm they may cause in the pursuit of profit but still pursuing it, or even ending up vehicles of counterculture backlash.
    Hank Green, in the comments: *clears throat, tugs at collar*
• "Suic!de and Ment@l He@lth" is for the most part really dark, but has a few lighter moments:
  • The episode opens with Abigail as Hamlet delivering his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, only to cut to...
    Dr. Rozencrantz: So, Prince Hamlet... When the ghost of your father instructed you to take revenge on your uncle, who murdered him, and married your mother, and seized the throne of Denmark... How much did that event impede your normal functioning, on a scale from 1 to 4?
  • The Gallows Humor moment when Abi reveals the knife she used to cut herself was part of a Swiss army knife-type cutlery set-up that also includes a knife and fork, which she laughingly explains is a pretty funny metaphor for the self-cannibalism she was performing on herself as masochistic epistemology.
• "Witchcraft, Gender, & Marxism":
  • Abi prefaces one of her statements with "at the risk of attracting the wrong kind of internet audience: In fairness, Karl Marx wasn't 100% right about everything". The video is promptly interrupted by Abi being called up by Ben Shapiro (who Abi has apparently saved on her contacts list) wanting to donate a large amount to her Patreon.
  • The same gag is repeated later when Abi uses the same preface about postmodernism, only to be promptly called and invited to dinner by Jordan Peterson. He is apparently listed in her contacts as "The Jeepster," and the photo used is that of a lobster. By its third invocation, Abi's preface about Marxist feminism gets her called by Sargon of Akkad. Abi simply stares at her phone while an ominous bass hums in the background, before giving an Aside Glance and refusing the call.
• "Reform or Revolution: An ASMR Guided Meditation" is very close to shit-posting, given the clash between format and content:
  Abi: As you sink deeper and deeper into this relaxed state of awareness, you may begin to notice the position of your body. The surfaces you are in contact with. The temperature of the room. And you may also notice your body's position in the system of global capitalism. And the air continues to flow. Becoming even more relaxed, even more aware. Now, in this relaxed state, we are ready to consider the revolution.
• Much of the No Fourth Wall nature of "YouTube: Art or Reality?" is pretty funny, including:
  • Abi asks if DS Ellis has to chew so loud; DI Strucci responds he's not chewing at all, it's just a sound effect added in post.
  • As Abi's first citation appear on screen, DI Strucci asks if she's doing that, Abi says, yes, it's her citation. Strucci looks to DS Ellis, who shrugs, and a citation appears: DS Ellis, "Whatever".
  • When DS Ellis swears for the first time, it's bleeped out. His response: ""Don't you ***ing censor me, you fuck!"
• The first half of "Why Does Britain Still Have A Queen" has Abi repeatedly refer to the prestige of the royal family as "wanting to *** the Queen", to the point where she begins taking the metaphor a little too literally...
  (about anti-monarchist Jeremy Corbyn) Why won't you *** the Queen, Jeremy? Why won't you just... get in there, and give it to her with your socialist penis? [cut] In all fairness, since then, the leader of the Labour Party has said that he probably would *** the Queen if a majority of British people wanted him to, but he would still be reluctant to come inside.
  • She then claims that the Queen is "the British State Waifu".
  • The scene where she pours HP Sauce over her face. H.Bomberguy comes in wearing a mask to ask a question, sees her, and immediately leaves.
    • Gets a Call-Back in Charles Darwin Vs Karl Marx when she drinks HP Sauce in the woods.
• "Steve Bannon: Or Why Do We Build the Wall?":
  • As the Firefighter, she declares that she hates fire; in fact, you might say that she's anti-fire.
  • Doctor Foppington's Entertainingly Wrong conclusions about Abi's 10,000 year old skull, especially describing it as belonging to "an alpha buck who slayed mad puss on the reg" who was probably "so chad, he shared a border with Cameroon". The skit then ends with reconstruction technology revealing the owner must have looked like Dan Olson.
  • Abi's absolute glee at Julius Evola's proclamation at his trial: "I'm not a fascist... I'm a super-fascist!" You can see her barely managing to keep herself from Corpsing.
    Abi: (going Super Saiyan, accompanied by "Final Flash") YOU'RE NOT DEALING WITH AN ORDINARY FASCIST ANYMORE, KAKAROT! I HAVE REALISED THE LEGEND! (breaks down laughing, with the music and effects cutting off)
• April 1st, 2019: Abi releases "The Philosophy of Anime", a twenty-minute talk by "Professor Gareth Venison" about the Hegelian dialectics and metaphysics behind Tenchi Muyo! set to the soundtrack of Koyaanisqatsi, in one take, without ever breaking character.
• "Jordan Peterson & The Meaning of Life"
  • A Running Gag of the episode is that Abi, having only two Peterson books to quote from, never openly explains which of the two books her quotes are from and instead giving them origins such as — Jordan Peterson, responding to his waitress' question: "Is Pepsi OK?".
  • Abi cites philosopher Richard Boyd, who had previously made philosophical inroads into the areas later studied by Sam Harris (and Peterson) in the nineteen-eighties... Unfortunately, whatever else his philosophical insights, the man was very fond of Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Abby takes the piss out of him for it by quoting him in full Motor Mouth mode, especially in a deleted scene during the blooper reel.
  • She also released a short blooper video, in which, among other things, Tigger (the bigger, stripey snake) really, really wants to climb her face, accidentally draping himself right over her mouth twice.
  Abi: Don't hiss at me!
• Ben Shapiro and Abortion:
  • The New York Times BLASPHEMOUSLY describe Shapiro as the "cool kids' philosopher". Cue the sad violins while Abi looks on.
  • Abi brings that if life really begins at conception, then a third of all people on earth must die every week. Then there’s a Gilligan Cut of someone pressing f on a keyboard.
    • Abi describing artificial insemination as extracting "spermatozoa (that’s the scientific word for jizz) through a complex, medical procedure known as wanking" and the traditional way as "holding hands with your wife and doing a special hug", which she says while topless and handcuffed. The B-Roll also shows Abi drenching chicken eggs in some white cream, with a caption "This educational clip fully compliant with Alabama Code Title 16 on Sexual Education".^note Title 16 is indeed the section of the Code of Alabama that regulates education. Chapter 40 is the part dealing with sex ed, which requires, among other things, an emphasis on sexual abstinence.
• "Climate Grief"
  • Abi claims that climate change is bad because a warmer climate will make it harder to have sex, leading to a CLimatic Incel Threshold where it will even be too hot to even jack off, leading to society collapsing.
  • Abi shows screenshots from three separate Last Week Tonight with John Oliver episodes about three separate issues, but says that they're really one single issue, which is shown by merging the images to get a triple-headed John Oliver on "Lastlastlalaslaslas with Johns Oliver".
    "[T]hese are actually one problem. A hyperproblem, which at the moment has no name, so I propose that we call it: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
    (actually the problem is called "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy")
• "HBO's Chernobyl & Personal Responsibility" is pretty grim for the most part, but opens with some great jokes:
  • While attempting to summarize the show, Abi feigns ignorance about its premise and assumes that it must be about German bakers, whose oven explodes while they were trying to bake cookies.
  • Comparing Professor Legasov's attempts at pointing out the magnitude of the catastrophe to Seymour Skinner's mother yelling about the house being on fire.
    Legasov: SEYMOUR! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!
    Scherbina: No, mother, it's just the northern lights.
  • "As the old saying goes, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is called a virtue signaler and a sightcuck".
  • In a wonderful bit of Black Comedy, during a shot when Anatoly Dyatlov graphically throws up, a Pip-Boy indicator appears, reading "Your radiation level has increased."
• Queer✨:
  • "Imagine being a philosopher and also questioning your sexuality. It's like, oh, how do I know if I'm really bisexual? Well never mind that, how do I really know anything?!"
  • She gives a small fashion show as how various different outfits appear straight or bisexual.
    Flannel shirt that I stole from my ex, straight.
    Flannel shirt that I stole from my ex with Bloomingdales cardigan, also straight.
    Flannel shirt that I stole from my ex, Bloomingdales cardigan and blue Ted Baker shorts with New Rock cowboy boots, bisexual. (caption reads "Vibe — Disaster")
    Complete nudity, could be anything. (huge censor bar labelled "NOPE")
    Calvin Klein black trunks with pink waistband, definitely bisexual. ("Video - Demonetised")
  • "The Wittgensteininan Theory of Dick"
• While the Anti-semitism video is mostly stone-cold serious by nature of the subject, she does have some fun when it comes to discussing Karl Marx and his Antisemitism. Namely, using recurring callout character Ian N. Drivel (The Drivelator) to discuss and mock Karl Marx as if he were a modern day Left-wing social media user. Bonus points for a fake twitter thread loaded with historical in-jokes.
• Logic:
  • Abi gives a history lesson on the Second Catilinarian conspiracy, arriving at the point where Cicero asks the Senate what the fate of the captured conspirators should be. The senators reply by calling out for the blood of the conspirators, many of whom are fellow senators, wanting to summarily execute them all without a trial. To attempt to explain the gravity of this, Abi tries using an analogy of this happening in modern British politics. She says that it would basically be like Michael Gove trying to rally the British army to overthrow Boris Johnson, and Boris Johnson responding by standing up in Parliament, and declaring: "Okay, lads! Plan is: we're all gonna go 'round Michael Gove's gaff this afternoon and strangle him to death." This is accompanied by a photoshopped picture of a possible BBC report on this event:
    Headline: Boris Johnson: "Michael you're f***king dead mate."
    Byline: Prime Minister promises to make "significant cuts" to former education secretary's neck
• Who's Afraid of the Experts?:
  • Abi discusses the discovery of HIV, which scientists at the Pasteur Institute initially called "LAV (Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus)", but she struggles to pronounce what the acronym stands for, then just gives up and makes up a faux-French name.
    They called it LAV, which stands for lymphedema... which stood for lymphedemenen... which stood for "Le AIDS Virus".
• Confucius (or, What to Do When Elites Break The Rules):
  • Sir Nigel Piss, a caricature of elderly, ex-military British peers, pops up in recurring segments, claiming "The Chinese never had a secular enlightenment..." and that this is why some aspect of their culture is inferior to that of Britain, even though his description of whatever Britain does differently describes something far more peculiar or cruel than the thing he's complaining about.
  • Every time Sir Nigel Piss mentions Black Rod (a ceremonial official in the British parliament's House of Lords), the camera cuts to a close up of his face as he darkly intones the words "Black... Rod..." with ominous digeridoo sounds playing.
  • Abi repeatedly attempting to read the dictionary definition of a word, only to find her dictionary has been stolen and replaced with a ransom note demanding BitCoin for the return of her dictionary.
• "Amy Coney Barrett":
  • Abi brags that, because haggis is banned in the United States but she lives in Britain, she can eat all the haggis she wants. "Tastes like freedom!"
    "I'm not a Democrat. I don't like the Democrats and I don't like Obama either." (beat) "I like haggis!" (eats more haggis)
  • The cameo by Legal Eagle. "Thomas Washington? I think you're thinking of George Jefferson."
• Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story
  • Abigail's reaction when realizing she's now one of the most recognizable transgender faces of (the pretty transphobic) Britain.
    "Hooray, I'm the transgender princess of TERF Island."
• Capital Punishment (and Prison Abolition)
  • In a Black Comedy moment, she describes a thirteen-year-old who was hanged for stealing a spoon as "the Moriarty of tableware" while brandishing a comically oversized spoon.
  • When discussing that the execution of Ruth Ellis, and how some people wanted to make capital punishment illegal for women only, Abi is worried about transphobes that would be fine with reintroducing the death penalty, imagining the slogan "Women can be hanged, but they cannot be hung!"
  • Abi impersonates Werner Herzog: "Ze dirty dishes in ze sink. To me, zey represent mayhem, and death."
  • Abi describes the concept of retributivism by saying "You have done something bad, and you deserve to be punished" while giving an emphatic Finger Wag at the camera, then immediately breaks into a smirk and says "People are going to clip that out of context, aren't they?"
  • When Abi is talking about the UK cabinet position of Home Secretary, she notes that "our current Home Secretary is a lady named Priti Patel" and illustrates this with a photo of Emperor Palpatine.
• Jordan Peterson's Ideology:
  • The Running Gag of Abgail claiming a philosophical concept is incredibly simple before the complex description phrases pile on top of each other, set to the circus-style Ocarina of Time shooting gallery music and clucking. By the third time it just cuts straight to the music and chicken noises.
  • Abigail praises the second chapter of Peterson's latest book, in which he advises the reader to imagine who they could be and aim at that.
  "I did that ages ago, turns out I'm a woman, 10/10."
  • "If a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody there to hear it, what are its pronouns?"
  • Abigail tweeted that she'd intended for Adelaide's coat to ride up slightly and reveal the tops of her stockings when she kissed the Arsonist but had to crop the shot and ruin the gag because it rode up too high and flashed her underwear!
• Ignorance & Censorship:
  • Abigail sets the video in Athena's magic library, which is full of all the knowledge in the world, including all of Abi's failed attempts at romance. Thus, repeatedly, when trying to cite books for terminology, Abigail instead finds herself reading out a person or people she had a bad romantic time with. Of particular note is this running gag's conclusion:
  "Hermeneutical means 'to do with interpreting.' It comes from the ancient Greek word hermeneutikos, which translates into English as, 'Three of my previous girlfriends turned out to be lesbians and I still didn't realize I was trans.'" [Stops for a moment, waylaid by this realisation]
  • She has to stop and clarify that a segment about tobacco companies hiding the dangers of smoking is meant to be literal and not part of the ongoing smoking=fascism symbolism several other videos use.
• Social Constructs
  • In her explanation on how describing a problem in different terms may change the solution to the problem, using taking a car to a shop after the airbags deploy. She first give the technical explanation of HOW the airbags deployed. As to WHY they deployed:
  Abigail (in a Geordie accent): "I had nine'een pints and crashed into a wall!"
• Food, Beauty, Mind
  • One through-line of the video is Abigail doing a Stepford Smiler cooking video with a cardboard cutout of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson that Abi treats as real. At one point, outside that character and talking more frankly about beauty standards' effect on her, Abi jokes that Nigella Lawson is an extremely unrealistic example for women since she's only 5 millimeters thick.
  • A Running Gag of the video is Abi noting when a philosopher puts forward an idea that another has already talked about: one of these is rather unlike the other, when she notes that Foucault put forth the idea that you are shaped by the society in which you live, for better or worse.
  Abigail: I'm giving Foucault credit for this idea, even though similar things were said earlier by the Joker.
  • When discussing the various factors that contribute to one's weight, Abi brings up hormones, and puts on the cooking-host patter again to joke about her transition.
  Cooking host Abi: You would be surprised how much a little hormone can change your body, though if you can't make your own, store-bought is fine! *Laugh Track*
• Islamophobia: An Analysis
  • Sir Nigel Piss returns as a character, though Abigail's approach to playing him now that she's transitioned makes little effort to alter her voice. On the one hand, this is done to communicate that the role is now to be seen by the audience as a drag character, with the returning dodgy costume helping that as well, but it also just makes the role funnier and the satire perhaps more effective when it feel like Abi's giving it less effort.
  • Natasha, a Russian spy embedded in Britain, is extremely offended that nobody is even trying to arrest her a little.
  You should be worried about me!
• Vaccines and Freedom
  • Abi makes a couple of wry references to some facial plastic surgery that transpired since her last video, like joking while taking off her face mask at the beginning that her face mask has been on so long that it altered the shape of her face, and referencing the phrase "your right to swing your arms around ends at the tip of my nose"...and notes that the tip of her nose is in a different place now.
  • When discussing how HPV (human papillomavirus) is a leading cause in cervical cancer, Abi explains the abbrevation, with a completely straight face, as standing for "Human Pussy Virus".
• Transhumanism
  • Abigail spends a lot of the video wearing a futuristic costume comprised of a latex bodysuit with visor shades. Her pinned comment on the video states that the costume was actually surprisingly comfortable.
• Is Art Meaningless?
  • At various points in the video, Abi trails off while rambling about past encounters with women, and text flashes up with "Ambiguous Lesbianism", "Unambiguous Lesbianism", and "Regretful Lesbianism", while dramatic music plays. Later on in the video her portrayal of Shakespeare gets one for "Historically Debated Bisexuality" to the tune of "Just My Type"
  • For bonus points, unlike her in depth videos the previous two times, this is how Abigail actually came out as a lesbian.
  • While discussing Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, in which a poet gets murdered and the novel is an edition of his poem with notes by an unreliable editor, Abigail brings up Roland Barthes and his concept of the "Death of the Author", noting that Barthes argued that readers should forget about the author and concentrate on the text. Which leads to this:
    Abigail: So, yes, John is dead, so I guess you got what you wanted there. [pause, thinks, looks suspicious] Roland Barthes, where were you on the night that John Shade was murdered?
• The Crisis In The British Healthcare System
  • While much of the video alternates between sad and rage-inducing, a moment of standout humor is when Abigail notes that there are regional inequalities in the NHS, and that even Sunderland, a town just one over from her hometown of Newcastle, might have very different standards for healthcare. Her next observation is one that she gets out through gritted teeth:
    Abigail: And that sucks, because... (slowly and grudgingly) As much as it pains me to say it...the people of Sunderland...do deserve to live. Obviously on the condition that they renounce their football team.
• Here's What Ethical AI Really Means
  • Abigail mentions that she has a small personal device that fits in the palm of her hand and is powered by lithium batteries... "and in addition to my vibrator, I've got a smart phone!"