Your Fiverr story was especially interesting. Ever since I finished production of my video, I've had this nagging feeling that these issues are deeper than just a single series. It's dismaying to see that similar low-quality work is being produced on the cheap using freelance authors. I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for more examples of this type of "content." Unfortunately, I feel like we may just be scratching the surface.
"It's just for kids, it doesn't matter." is an "argument" I absolutely hate. It takes extra care to be able to reach kids, enriching thir imagination, imparting important lessons. Some children books are true work of art. There's that book by Anthony Browne (the monkey guy) that tells the same story from 4 different perspective, for example. Or anything Claude Ponti did. Or that one about the Blue Dog of course. Children books aren't some knock off versions of Adults Books, it's an entire genre in itself that deserves respect.
100% agreed. Also, the way we raise children is incredibly important to the future of our society. It's why we have so much conflict over what gets taught in schools.
@@maxthexpfarmer3957 Maybe not, but they still deserve better on principle. Also, there are kids nowadays whose first words are attempts to use their parents like voice assistants (e.g., alexa), and that's just fuckin' creepy. Bit of a tangent, I know.
As a kid, I loved the Frog and Toad books. If I have a child (if ever) I'll have the books lying around in reach, so that when they learn to read and find the books that they find some enjoyment.
As somebody whose childhood dream was to be a Minecraft scam artist, this offered closure to the arc of my life that was never completed (until now). Fantastic video (as per usual)!
i mean it's a tradition going back to das kapital to go from exploring basic phenomena and getting to the inevitable conclusion of "DEATH TO CAPITALISM"
_5,000 words for $30_ 🤬 Oh, Zoe. I was paid about $150 per 500-word news story as a freelancer (very briefly) back in the 90s. Yes, five _hundred_ words. I really hope the majority of the gig work these days isn't quite this exploitative anymore, but I guess there's no reason to expect them to have gotten any better, is there? Anyway, another great video. I especially loved what you did with putting yourself into the video game world for this one, and having some of it come out into yours.
It's unfortunate, isn't it? I do story commissions for friends and fans of my work at a rate of $25 for 1000 words. Takes me about an hour to write that much, so it's around $25 an hour. Not a bad rate personally, but not enough to live on unless you've got a ton of commissions coming in, so a professional gig better be paying higher than that!
@@mouhou9795 _The 90s. You must be old mister cerulean daydreamer._ 50 years and feeling even older every day, you young whippersnapper. (I bet you'll have to look that one up.) Now get off my lawn! Seriously though, it has given me the perspective of watching my parents -- actual, honest-to-gosh _boomers_ in the original sense -- build a middle-middle class life including home ownership on 1 white-collar plus 1 blue-collar income. This is just not possible in the US today. But it's not about owning things, or even about money itself. It's about the way capitalism has steadily stripped every _other_ value from our labor, and allowed the majority of the improvements reaped by that labor to be hoarded by such a tiny, undeserving minority. Even the meta-topic of this video, intellectual property, has been weaponized by the privileged against the non-privileged in the pursuit of capital (vaccine patent suspension so that cheap generics can protect the monetarily poorer nations in India and Africa).
@@Kane_the_Newschool_DM Twenty-five bucks an hour to write stories for friends? That's roughly half the money I used to make washing dishes eight-to-ten hours a day. I too wrote stories in my free time, and the job at the restaurant would give me something to talk about, and enough time to think about how to put it into words. (I'm in my thirties, mind you, not a million years old). Now I meet gamers who write about their life experience, when they are not dabbling into fiction and scribble the umpteenth remake of Tolkien/Narnia/Game Of Thrones. It doesn't even surprise me anymore that one of today's bestselling writers is someone like Sally Rooney.
I didn't expect it coming, and I literally laughed out loud. And when I say "literally" I mean it. It's like 1 AM in the morning, my girlfriend is in another room sleeping, I'm trying to be quiet, and I had to cover my mouth because it hit me so hard. This was a fun video, it's given me a lot to think about.
I looooove the natural minecraft day passing by in the background, and all the bees and flowers! That was one of my favorite things about the game: nature just carries on. Great video idea. I have wondered about those low-effort minecraft books I've seen... and it has pained me to see kids I know reading them.
Thank you! I had to figure out how to get the Optifine mod set up so I could have the pretty water and sky, but I am SO happy with how it turned out! :)
@@zoe_bee So neat! From a game dev perspective, imo, the sky and water makes a HUGE difference in games with simple graphics so that was good, good thinkin :D
It pains me to know i also read them at a point as well. At least some of what i read had some passion in it, one was written by a dad for his kid... I really hope that one was actually good but i don't have much hope. There was a few others i read that had no effort whatsoever.
I really like it when people talk about another creator's work, and then they contribute a quote read. It's a nice sign that the creator communicated with them about the topic. I particularly like that it's only a weak endorsement.
Wait, 30 dollars was not a rate, but your *entire* fee for 5000 words of writing?! Holy crap, this is bonkers! Though being on the translation side of the industry, I know this is the kind of approach to paying their freelancers that companies handling translations for TV and film use, preying on first-year university students and the like who aren't great at that work to begin with, but don't know how much money to ask even if they aren't great, and realy want (or have) to earn a little.
@@Grinalbi I don't do writing professionally or live in North America, but as a translator, knowing how fast I write in general, I'd ask for at least 10-15 times that amount for something that won't require me do any significant research and can be invented on the spot.
@@emperorspock3506 That makes sense. I dunno how professional writing works but as an artist, a lot of us have the same problem of massively undervaluing our work. Sucks that that problem isn't unique to any one field.
I like to think there's an alternate universe version of this video with a Jacob Geller esque title around the lines of, "Minecraft Bootlegs, Anti-Capitalism, and My Part In It"
Great video! One of the things I love about Minecraft is that I can, and do, play it with my kids (unironically - I enjoy building stuff with them!). Because I'm also immersed in the game with them, we share the media and I'm able to help guide their ability to tell stuff that's worthwhile from stuff that's trash...or, at least toxic trash...some trash is fun, in which case I can help put into context for them. It's not a perfect system, but it's an imperfect world and playing with my kids is fun.
Hi, I am also one of the 11 people who bought a Wii U. I was between degrees and had a decent job as a secretary, and could just barely justify getting that Wind Waker edition console. No regrets! I still love my Wii U!
Omg, the usage of the game as the background is _adorable._ It's lined up perfectly as well; I am both enamored and impressed by this choice. EDIT: Holy shit, I wasn't expecting to see Grian's avatar. I am now even more invested.
I work at a library and in the past year or two I've noticed that unofficial Minecraft novelizations (usually following the "Diary of a ___" formula) are really popular in the kids' section. I'd always been kind of amused by their existence and passively wondered whether or not they were legal or legit, but never enough to really look into it. Don't really have anything to add to your story, but it was kind of wild to hear you were involved in producing some of them!
I bought several of these unofficial minecraft book sets for my son. The first set was pretty good so I bought another set and the quality in writing was abysmal. I wondered why it was so terrible, I guess I know why now. The first set was bought in a physical bookstore where there must've been some quality control. The second set I bought off of Amazon.
YOU are what is wrong with the world right now. YOU Gen X parents did the absolute barest minimum requirement to get a human to 18. YOU should have checked yourself, you lazy degenerate.
There are some genuinely high quality unofficial Minecraft novels out there, written by real humans with care, thoughtfulness, and good intentions. But such books are less common than their junky counterparts, since they require more time, effort, and investment. In general, I've found that going to your local bookstore or library is the best way to discover high quality books (of any genre), because as you said, there are more quality control measures in place to make sure what goes out on the shelves is legal and non-crappy.
While, as you say, getting rid of these scams would require a profound change in our system that allows these things to flourish, I think there is at least one thing we can do to mitigate the worst part of it: being more responsible with our children and being more involved. I'm not a parent myself yet, but I've seen a lot of people for example using phones to keep their children busy and never check what they're doing. I'm not saying to be a control freak, don't get me wrong. But I think we should be more involved in what children consume. Your child likes Minecraft and wants a book about it? Read it first, take your time to check the reviews. Sit with them when they watch a show they like or a video. Talk about it with them. Show interest in their interests. I think that will make a Big difference.
I swear, I used to read so many of those weird Minecraft books when I was younger (honestly I might’ve read yours too). This video was so illuminating on such a weird part of my childhood.
so hyped for "How I Became a MineCrafting Scam Artist: Perfect for Minecrafters Kids and Adults, Top Builder Ideas, Guide Book, Graphic Novels" by Zoe Miner Bee
This doesn't make you, specifically, a scam artist. Scammers, big and small, always compartmentalize their operations so that "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing." How could you have know about the scope???
I feel like the internet as a whole has become unusable, like all the low-quality things on Amazon and the bot-generated pages in search engines. It's so easy to do
Wonderful video overall, your best one of the year so far in my opinion. Interesting backstory, solid points, wonderful dramatization by ThoughtSlime. I thought the editing was a lot tighter and more seamless, so bravo Charlie. I had really felt that the comments and little jokes or goofs edited into past videos were a little invasive, disrupting the flow of the video rather than adding to it, but this was a superb job.
Absolutely loved this video. I also love that you were a mercenary minecraft fanfic writer. Incredible Zoe Lore revelation. The same model that incentivizes the things in your video is also huge in the software and app development world right now too. You can hire programmers from Bangladesh and Ecuador and Pakistan and Estonia super easily and then turn around and sell what they make in the app store for big bucks. And I have nothing but respect for those programmers because they're just feeding their families. It's the whole system that encourages and rewards exploitation (as you said).
Having Mildew voice-act a capitalist in this video was genius on so many levels (also, amazing job Mildge!). Their video on Hermitcraft’s economy (easily one of my favorite videos on this whole platform) goes along with this video so well that I suspect lord Oculon and Zoe’s cat are pulling strings behind all of left tube, weaving a tapestry of cross connections that seed the next generation of class warriors. I’m on to you L.E.F.T. (Leftists Eviscerating Fascist Talking-points), and you’re not going to get away with this!
The world is basically already Black Mirror's second episode of the first season. Countless people are mostly confined to their rooms, consuming virtual content when they're not busy wasting away at a meaningless job that allows them to pay for this virtual content. Even when we have companionship, we still engage in consuming this virtual content, together. Something definitely needs to be done about this. You cannot buy truly meaningful experiences. You can buy entertainment, but your life should be more than entertainment.
oh god i almost picked up a similar gig to this on a different platform back in the day, but quickly realized the expected output was gonna vastly outstrip the pay they were offering, so i opted out. Not entirely surprised they've got what seems to be machines doing most of the work now instead.
I can't help but think of the crappy knock off toys we would get growing up. Either dollar store versions of popular toys or rip offs of popular characters but slightly askew. This sort of thing has been going on for a long time.
The intersection of this unholy trinity of gig economy, ad revenue and the literary equivalent of shovelware is a more ridiculous rabbit hole than I could have imagined.
I also wonder how this impacts kid creators. One of our kids has made videos for TH-cam made in earnest. Stuff like TH-cam poops. With the changes it has hit their channel. And we see similar dynamics as they make stuff for Roblox as well. On one hand it's exciting there are opportunities for kids to explore with their art but these factories and systems will also hurt their creation and opportunities if that is something possible for them. And I mean genuinely them doing out of passion not then being turned into little laborers
Wonderful video as always, Zoe! You've not only managed to turn something as weird and specific as Minecraft bootlegs into a fun and thought-provoking essay, but also included a beautiful message about life in the end! 🥰 P.S The backgrounds were simply awesome! I'd love to see more videos with you inside a fantasy realm. As long as the realm isn't The End, though. My shoulders were LITERALLY stiff for the entire duration of the semi-final part, because Enderman totally freak me out 😂
Honestly, I kinda want to read your minecraft books, I would love to see your take on the already existing but notably thin of the ground story of Minecraft
This reminds me of the "freebooting" problem. Where people would steal clips or interesting parts of youtube videos to post and monetize them on other platforms like twitter and facebook. Pretty awful to be a victim in this way.
I feel like "Minecraft: Story Mode" was an official example of this. I guess it's hard for them to turn down easy money. At least Microsoft's IP milking has avoided Java Edition
Telltale Games (the studio behind Minecraft: Story Mode) started out by making good games, but [thanks to the incentives inherent to our economy] soon evolved their business model to focus on mass-producing formulaic, low-effort games based on popular entertainment franchises, which were mostly marketed towards children.
That final statement hit me in the feels 😯. I agree that each and every one of us has something unique to bring to the world, I'm still figuring out what it is though.
I got my friend into the Witcher show and for my birthday they got me a cookbook 'based' on the dishes from the series. It's the most low effort list of recipes I've ever read. One of the recipes for baked apples says the following: "Apples are a part of the Witcher universe, and baked apples are a sweet treat." I do love this book but it's for all the wrong reasons.
WHAT YOU CAN RIGHT NOW?!?! Options are limited but there are these THREE things: 1) EDUCATE yourself. She didn't say it, but what Zoe's talking about is marxism. Learn about the labour theory of value to start. 2) COMMUNICATE class consciousness to the people in your life. Make sure they understand what class is and how it determines your opportunities, your liberties, and what your time is worth. 3) UNIONS. Unions empower workers through cooperation. Because workers are a majority in any corporate structure (and society as a whole) they have the power to dictate the terms of their labour, BUT ONLY IF they organise and coordinate their individual power together. Unions are the most important step right now toward organizing political representation of the working class, which is what can lead to the larger systemic changes Zoe alludes to. Thank you for reading, this has been a goshdarned political TH-cam comment.
24:30 The future was quite nice, Mineraft is still a fun game to play but mojang is getting critisised a lot at the moment because of not listening to the community anymore when making certain changes. Their trailer for the next live event where the new update is gonna be announced was very good tho. Also, enjoyed watching this, I'd never heard of this issue before and it was really interesting to hear how it all works.
What if there was a place where you could get curated quality kids' entertainment for free? Let's call it a library, it could even have people, librarians, who could help parents find the best stuff. I know it's utopic. Increase funding and marketing of libraries. Improve online and digital offerings so parents can easily click in and get better entertainment for their children and the artists would even get compensated. The infrastructure is already there.
it's not just kids who surround themselves with the same characters, the revival of comic book movies, star wars stuff, etc shows we just gobble up this stuff regardless of it's actual value or if it's well written, it's comforting. thanks for giving me a lot to think about!
It’s cool to see 2 of leftie content creators spear in the same video it makes me do a double take on weather I finally lost the thread and went insane
the end bit means a lot to me. im an artist who struggles a lot with numbers and i cant help but feel demotivated whenever my art doesnt get a lot of attention. but the thing you daid about creating was exactly what i needed to hear :)
Thanks Zoe. This was an intriguing discussion to me as an instructor of elementary-school aged children. I don't want to imply that any solutions are silver bullets or that I know enough to be comprehensive about the available options, but I will say that the most reliable strategy for cultivating informed artistic engagement seems to me like it's media education. Children engage in dialogue with the media they consume just like anyone else, so I think the most powerful thing we can do for them is participate in that dialogue, in earnest, alongside them. We can ask them what they look for in their stories and their culture. We can share what we look for ourselves. We can seek common points of interest and use our expanded experience relative to young humans to provide examples of meaningful narratives that have engaged those interests for us. We can listen to the meaningful examples children provide as well. But most importantly, we can encourage children to create their own work. Encourage them to bring their own art and/or craft into the world, as said in the video, in earnest. Because the best agency is when the children can control the narrative themselves, and maybe they can therefore get the resulting sense of safety without relying on the repetition of someone else's artistic excrement.
I think creating quality content that reaches kids to replace the garbage content is one part of the solution. The other is to educate people and parents about these things and tell them about how they can avoid these things and provide better content for their kids. On a more general societal level, I think making society less focused on money, both culturally and financially, would help. An uncondictional basic income that would provide everyone with their needs would encourage people to do things without the need for profit. A lot less writers desperate work means a lot less people able to exploit them.
As an aside, I can't help but think that the only reason the new guidelines for kids' videos were introduced on TH-cam was because advertisers felt that ads being shown to literal toddlers wasn't really getting their money's worth
the way you can go from “these children books are bad” to “revolt, my fellow revolutionaries! as we must make a land in which all workers are equal and free from our proletariat overlords!” is great. keep it up!
TH-camr The Click released a popular plush on MakeShip: Mango the land shark (I got one) that was apparently so successful that they will be doing another run of the plush soon (as Makeship plushes are time limited, after a month of pre-orders they are made and shipped) Apparently this silly Reddit TH-camr's mascot plush was so popular that there are bootleg slightly off model Mango plushes all over Ali Express
This scam also preys not only on children in general, but particularly children with unattentive parents. If you have your organic wooden toys middle class Montessori school parents, they will look through any book before giving it to their child. But if you have parents who are unable to do that, because they are stressed and/or not well educated themselves, then the child will get that trash and will be pushed further down into the not-well-educated hole.
Can I also just note down how machines making books and videos for children instead of people could be harmful for children. People learn language and social interactions from people and not from computers, so children could learn some weird ass behavior if they're left alone an hour a day watching. "elsa frozzen pregnant sipderman minecraft minecraft school funny" Too much
Thank you so much! I tried to replicate my usual setup, but in Minecraft. ...and I had to have the super pretty water and sky visible through a window, so that was a plus, lol
I personally couldn't ever come up with a full solution, but I feel like part of it would probably involve the parents. Kids these days (god, I sound old) are being raised not just on, but by TH-cam and social media. When little Timmy starts crying, it's easier on moms and dads to just give him the iPad where the algorithm will feed him Frozen Elsa Pregnant Colors Superheroes Spiderman Hulk Vs Venom Joker Fidget Spinners Colors For Kid videos than actually sit down and yknow, be a parent. Part of that also stems from the systemic issues of parents, especially single parents, not being able to make a livable wage for them and their kids, the horrible encroachment of side hussle culture which normalizes working more than one job, both symptoms of the world's fetishistic adoration of capitalism in its current form. If parents could work less and therefore had more time to spend with their kids, or were simply more aware of the content their child is consuming, that would go a long way to solving the symptomatic problems such as these made for kids cash grabs.
Speaking as the uncle of some kids who I am reasonably certain have some of those books, if not yours, the cousins of them, and someone who has a degree in media studies and teaches, my general advice is thus: Like the kids. Like the kids enough to engage with what interests them. Look at the things the kids want and check it out with them and talk to them about it and see what it is they're connecting to. There are a lot of parents who out of sheer lack of emotional energy or interest treat the stuff they get their kids as silo'd off material that they don't have to think about and that doesn't matter to them, and that makes it incomprehensible. In much the same way that male comedians making jokes about 'women, eh' is a way to stop thinking about and understanding women, the vision of child's media as separate and meaningless is a way to ensure the kid will not be being given media that you are sharing with them but is instead being made as a separated space away from you. This means that yeah you'll probably buy a few Legendary Endermans books or whatever, but over time you'll be able to understand why they like what they like and help guide them to wholesome, quality alternatives. And i don't mean 'I, a millenial loved Batman TAS and therefore my nephews will too,' I mean, literally understand your kids as people and try to treat their interests that way. Try to find the good stuff they'll respond to that you can share. This is obviously a ton of work and nobody can do it for everyone.
You could probably find at least one in the kids section of a local library. I found a lot of these kinds of books in my school library when I was younger but that might just have been my school
Someone should buy them and lets say put a link to them here in the comments. If just for the fun of it. Dont help the exploiters but exploit the exploiters.
In regard to the YT vid theft books, odds are, most of the work is being done by AI/scripts, and then "cleansers" (actual people) go in, do a little editing, remove references to original sources, etc. This is perhaps one of those dangers of AI that Elon Musk ironically talks about. People providing trash content are obviously targeting anybody willing to come and see. Of course, when it comes to books and items for sale, they are banking on kids whose parents will bend to their whims or simply don't care about what content their kids are exposed to. I have to wonder if the persons or organizations involved in such crap are likely tied to the same folks overseas who do scam calls that riddle our phones constantly. Thanks for sharing this, it's not something I personally knew about, although having seen enough of other dark aspects of society, this isn't too surprising.
i love the timing on the section w/pigstep underlying it. something about the turn into the subject combined with the song's hook is really cool. overall the whole video is also very good but the pigstep thing scratched an itch in my brain
This reminds me of the research of People Make Games about the scam of Roblox, but in there, it's not just the audience who are children, it's the children who are being exploited for creating games. They're entering pyramid schemes and receiving bad paids for work that they're doing. The system that values production over anything it's degrading our society at levels that we don't want to see. It's scary. I have to say that little things like this video, make me have some little hope about change, maybe we don't know the way, but some people are seeing the problems and trying to have some action in these problems. Thanks Zoe
This video was a really funny intersection of my YT subscriptions since I watch Dan and Thought Slime as well as Grian and other Minecraft creators whos videos were used to make these ebooks.
i have a lot of similar feelings when i see anti-scammer videos on yt. while emotionally, it might feel good to see phishers and scammers get a taste of their own medicine, i struggle with the idea that they "deserve" it. a lot of them are from poor and developing countries, and frankly i cannot blame them for trying to scam rich americans so they can feed their family. it's the global system of capitalism that is at fault
James Bridle, the person who popularized the TH-cam for Kids story and author of the quote at 20:46, is one of my favorite artist/writers. He writes so effectively on how hidden systems penetrate and effect our existence and our navigation of the world. A lot of their work has been looking at the visible failure points of networks to break our conceptions of what those systems actually do. I would highly recommend checking them out. Some quotes from their book New Dark Age, if you're interested: "This is what content production looks like in the age of algorithmic discovery: even if you're a human, you end up impersonating the machine" (223). "Empire has mostly rescinded territory, only to continue its operation at the level of infrastructure, maintaining its power in the form of the network. Data-driven regimes repeat the racist, sexist, and oppressive policies of their antecedents because these biases and attitudes have been encoded into them at the root" (247). "Technology does not emerge from a vacuum. Rather, it is the reification of a particular set of beliefs and desires: the congruent, if unconscious dispositions of its creators... To continue to assert an objective schism between technology and the world is nonsense; but it has very real outcomes" (142). "Belief is not a delusion if it is held by a person's 'culture or subculture'. But the network has changed how we establish and shape cultures: people in distant locales can gather online to share their experiences and beliefs and form cultures on their own" (208).
so, this vid showed up on my feed at an interesting time, because I recently decided I was gonna make a "Garbage" game for the app store that only had one banner add away from where the action would be, and maybe a full screen add when you died, but instead of making a garbage game I am putting my all into it, because it's game devlopment, which I enjoy with every part of me, so, even though I started trying to make something I could make in an after noon, I am now actually trying to like a kinda fun game. (it's an infinte runner where you are a car avoiding things)
I think it's extremely difficult to change the whole system, no matter how badly we need it. However, what you said in the end is quite interesting and I think it's the way to go: do what we do as best as we can, but also denounce and boycott the garbage we're being fed every day, whether it be books, videos, or any shit manufactured items or services. I'm an architect and it's absolutely horrifying to see that what you describe can also be applied to our built environment: the pursuit of the most profit with the least effort no matter the consequences. It can seem harmless when it comes to a book, but a building? Entire cities? Fucking scary, this. Anyways, great video as always, I really liked it, thanks!
Anyone but me want to find those Heroic Steve books? Any way to get them without funding scam artists? I'd buy the book but I'd feel the same way about that that I would going to see a JK Rowlings story based movie. Nah, I think I can get my entertainment somewhere else. (If he still has them, I'm going going to tweet them at you. You should already know this.) Oh, and by the way. I checked. The books are still on Amazon and almost all of them have fake reviews. (You can tell. No avatars, they all over praise the books. And none mentions the spellchecks. I put a book on Amazon once and the spelling was everyone's first sentence in the reviews. You know how much easier that transcribing from videos can be? Adobe Premiere has a caption feature. It literally creates a text file the software reads from. What confuses me is how do they handle no talking scenes? I mean when I put on subtitle with and action movie, the words will say "scream" or "music plays" but never "cars plunge through rush hour traffic while the hero and villain shoot at each other." I'd love to see what the transcript for a Fast and Furious movie looks like. After this video, now I need that in my life.
@@killingtimeitself I think they are only sold digitally. Sending them to stores would increase overhead. Unless I am missing something, the only ways to read them without giving grifters money is to either stick to the free sample or sail the seven seas
When I watched Folding Ideas' video, I was reminded of some of Robert Miles' videos on computerphile about AI safety. I had sort of come to terms with the fact that there was a way to "game" the youtube revenue system, and wasn't totally suprised that some combination of Artificial Intelligences and geniune (albeit dubious) intelligences had figured out how to extract money from it. What didn't strike me until watching this video was the fact that they hadn't just figured out how to "game" TH-cam, but also the human beings watching it - The system doesn't fully work unless the poor kids watching don't switch to something else. Somehow, through the combination of a brightly lit screen, an internet connection, and a bunch of serves that anyone can put almost any video on, an AI was able to trick thousands or millions of humans to behave in a certain way. If that isn't the first step of the robot uprising, I don't know what is. Sitting here working on writing this comment, has made me realize that it isn't just the creepy kids' videos either. The amount of time I spend watching youtube is heavily conditional on the videos the algorithm chooses to show me. From the perspective of the algorithm choosing what videos to recommend to me, my watch time is just a means to move money around. I know it's not at the same level, but I'm still complicit in the system, and I don't think I like it. This train of thought, as well as "Mr. Fiverr's" disturbing voice and giant eyes, will keep me awake at night.
Regarding the audience, it's not only the children who want this media, but parents and grandparents who buy the books as gifts for the kids. I have received plenty of weird gifts like this from family members that knew nothing but the name of the hobby I had.... Adults are also getting scammed and may not realize that these are bad until it's too late
damn,... they did you dirty with the 30$ glad you're coming out with it, it helps to unfold the bigger picture on a sidenote: I like the glitter on your face xD
Your Fiverr story was especially interesting. Ever since I finished production of my video, I've had this nagging feeling that these issues are deeper than just a single series. It's dismaying to see that similar low-quality work is being produced on the cheap using freelance authors. I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for more examples of this type of "content." Unfortunately, I feel like we may just be scratching the surface.
RGN and Zoe Bee is the crossover I never expected, but never knew I needed
@@Wyattporter that was an original comment. where do you take your ideas from?
sadly
Especially the part about it being a freelance platform pewdiepie used to destroy his career. Did a spit take. lmao
As a freelance editor, I gotta say you have NO IDEA.
The Ender Dragon is capitalism.
Zoe???
@@SuperQGS_ Yes?
@@zoe_bee thumbnail made me do a double take but hey I’m on board!
I don't think a dragon can be capitalism, because dragons are cool and fun.
@@Medenmath Yeah, fair.
27:07
imagine being named Zoe Bee
and then having your editor be named Charlie Flowers
like what's next John Pollen?
Jimmy Honey?
Jack Hive
adam grub
Todd Comb
Wanda Wasp and Ben Beetle.
I even met Marilyn Moth yesterday in the Country Club.
I love these replies so much LOLLL
"i like your writing style"
5 mins later
"wait what happened in the diary i didn't read it"
"It's just for kids, it doesn't matter." is an "argument" I absolutely hate.
It takes extra care to be able to reach kids, enriching thir imagination, imparting important lessons. Some children books are true work of art.
There's that book by Anthony Browne (the monkey guy) that tells the same story from 4 different perspective, for example.
Or anything Claude Ponti did.
Or that one about the Blue Dog of course.
Children books aren't some knock off versions of Adults Books, it's an entire genre in itself that deserves respect.
100% agreed. Also, the way we raise children is incredibly important to the future of our society. It's why we have so much conflict over what gets taught in schools.
@@javi7636 This kind of stuff is not really going to affect what kids grow up to be like.
@@maxthexpfarmer3957 Maybe not, but they still deserve better on principle. Also, there are kids nowadays whose first words are attempts to use their parents like voice assistants (e.g., alexa), and that's just fuckin' creepy. Bit of a tangent, I know.
that's why those fake animal rescue videos are making all that money. You know, kids love fluffy puppies.
As a kid, I loved the Frog and Toad books. If I have a child (if ever) I'll have the books lying around in reach, so that when they learn to read and find the books that they find some enjoyment.
As somebody whose childhood dream was to be a Minecraft scam artist, this offered closure to the arc of my life that was never completed (until now). Fantastic video (as per usual)!
that's the real american dream i can stand behind
🤔🤔
Typical Zoomer. They just worship the Boomers as they burn the world.
I'm gonna be honest, going from "I kinda made some bad books" to *"DEATH TO CAPITALISM"* is a very odd line to ride, but hey, it works.
Hey, it's my MO.
@@zoe_bee it's a good MO and we appreciate it very much
@@zoe_bee I'm 100% here for it.
@@zoe_bee And, quite frankly, I love it.
i mean it's a tradition going back to das kapital to go from exploring basic phenomena and getting to the inevitable conclusion of "DEATH TO CAPITALISM"
finding out zoe not only bought a wii u but still has it and likes it gave me even more respect for her.
honestly the wii u was actually a good console, it's so underrated
_5,000 words for $30_
🤬
Oh, Zoe. I was paid about $150 per 500-word news story as a freelancer (very briefly) back in the 90s. Yes, five _hundred_ words. I really hope the majority of the gig work these days isn't quite this exploitative anymore, but I guess there's no reason to expect them to have gotten any better, is there?
Anyway, another great video. I especially loved what you did with putting yourself into the video game world for this one, and having some of it come out into yours.
It's unfortunate, isn't it? I do story commissions for friends and fans of my work at a rate of $25 for 1000 words. Takes me about an hour to write that much, so it's around $25 an hour. Not a bad rate personally, but not enough to live on unless you've got a ton of commissions coming in, so a professional gig better be paying higher than that!
The 90s.
You must be old mister cerulean daydreamer.
Writing and spelling is kind of hard.
People should be payed more for it I agree.
@@mouhou9795 _The 90s.
You must be old mister cerulean daydreamer._
50 years and feeling even older every day, you young whippersnapper. (I bet you'll have to look that one up.) Now get off my lawn!
Seriously though, it has given me the perspective of watching my parents -- actual, honest-to-gosh _boomers_ in the original sense -- build a middle-middle class life including home ownership on 1 white-collar plus 1 blue-collar income. This is just not possible in the US today.
But it's not about owning things, or even about money itself. It's about the way capitalism has steadily stripped every _other_ value from our labor, and allowed the majority of the improvements reaped by that labor to be hoarded by such a tiny, undeserving minority. Even the meta-topic of this video, intellectual property, has been weaponized by the privileged against the non-privileged in the pursuit of capital (vaccine patent suspension so that cheap generics can protect the monetarily poorer nations in India and Africa).
The 90s was the decade where the term 'new media' was coined, signaling the beginning of the end of journalism as we know it
@@Kane_the_Newschool_DM Twenty-five bucks an hour to write stories for friends? That's roughly half the money I used to make washing dishes eight-to-ten hours a day. I too wrote stories in my free time, and the job at the restaurant would give me something to talk about, and enough time to think about how to put it into words. (I'm in my thirties, mind you, not a million years old). Now I meet gamers who write about their life experience, when they are not dabbling into fiction and scribble the umpteenth remake of Tolkien/Narnia/Game Of Thrones. It doesn't even surprise me anymore that one of today's bestselling writers is someone like Sally Rooney.
I know it’s not the point of the video, but damn that is a nice background. Props to the editor!
Thank you so much! I'll pass along the compliment :)
Mildred is honestly THE BEST when it comes to voice-acting off-putting capitalist weirdos.
i bet they could do an amazing impression of the graybles guy from Adventure Time
'Coz it's all about DA MONEY
I didn't expect it coming, and I literally laughed out loud. And when I say "literally" I mean it. It's like 1 AM in the morning, my girlfriend is in another room sleeping, I'm trying to be quiet, and I had to cover my mouth because it hit me so hard.
This was a fun video, it's given me a lot to think about.
I looooove the natural minecraft day passing by in the background, and all the bees and flowers!
That was one of my favorite things about the game: nature just carries on.
Great video idea. I have wondered about those low-effort minecraft books I've seen... and it has pained me to see kids I know reading them.
Thank you! I had to figure out how to get the Optifine mod set up so I could have the pretty water and sky, but I am SO happy with how it turned out! :)
@@zoe_bee So neat! From a game dev perspective, imo, the sky and water makes a HUGE difference in games with simple graphics so that was good, good thinkin :D
My cat also really loved it
It pains me to know i also read them at a point as well. At least some of what i read had some passion in it, one was written by a dad for his kid... I really hope that one was actually good but i don't have much hope. There was a few others i read that had no effort whatsoever.
@@zoe_bee what shader did you use 👀 the fluffy clouds and glowy foreground are pretty
I really like it when people talk about another creator's work, and then they contribute a quote read. It's a nice sign that the creator communicated with them about the topic. I particularly like that it's only a weak endorsement.
The funny part is that I was already reminded of Folding Ideas video before it came up.
Wait, 30 dollars was not a rate, but your *entire* fee for 5000 words of writing?! Holy crap, this is bonkers! Though being on the translation side of the industry, I know this is the kind of approach to paying their freelancers that companies handling translations for TV and film use, preying on first-year university students and the like who aren't great at that work to begin with, but don't know how much money to ask even if they aren't great, and realy want (or have) to earn a little.
Out of curiosity - what would be the proper average price for that amount of writing? Does it vary by genre/topic?
@@Grinalbi I don't do writing professionally or live in North America, but as a translator, knowing how fast I write in general, I'd ask for at least 10-15 times that amount for something that won't require me do any significant research and can be invented on the spot.
@@emperorspock3506 That makes sense. I dunno how professional writing works but as an artist, a lot of us have the same problem of massively undervaluing our work. Sucks that that problem isn't unique to any one field.
"as an artist", "as a professional writer": good god, american kids these days.
@@MaximTendu Uh, okay? Don't you have anything better to do other than leave snide remarks about common phrases in a TH-cam comments section...?
I like to think there's an alternate universe version of this video with a Jacob Geller esque title around the lines of, "Minecraft Bootlegs, Anti-Capitalism, and My Part In It"
Great video! One of the things I love about Minecraft is that I can, and do, play it with my kids (unironically - I enjoy building stuff with them!). Because I'm also immersed in the game with them, we share the media and I'm able to help guide their ability to tell stuff that's worthwhile from stuff that's trash...or, at least toxic trash...some trash is fun, in which case I can help put into context for them. It's not a perfect system, but it's an imperfect world and playing with my kids is fun.
Minecraft is genuinely such a positive, wholesome game. And it sounds like your kids have an awesome parent :)
aww, that's so wholesome
Damn, we really did just go from "this literature is exploitative" to "UPROOT THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM!" and I am absolutely here for it.
Holy shit, when Mildred broke character and I could hear their voice, I full-on jumped
🤣 I didn't recognize 'em until then, either! That was hilarious.
I recognized Mildred's vocal patterns, and that worries me a little.
yeah I was like "oh shit it's thought slime!"
What is this reference I clearly don't understand XD
Oh wait LOL me assuming Mildred was a girl, hello! Don't mind me :)
Repetition legitimizes. And not just for kids.
Adam Neely has entered the chat.
BASS
DEFGECD
Hi, I am also one of the 11 people who bought a Wii U. I was between degrees and had a decent job as a secretary, and could just barely justify getting that Wind Waker edition console. No regrets! I still love my Wii U!
Omg, the usage of the game as the background is _adorable._ It's lined up perfectly as well; I am both enamored and impressed by this choice.
EDIT: Holy shit, I wasn't expecting to see Grian's avatar. I am now even more invested.
This is the craziest video idea I've ever seen and I'm all here for it
"Confessions of a Minecraft Scam Artist: The Unofficial Minecraft Memoir"
I work at a library and in the past year or two I've noticed that unofficial Minecraft novelizations (usually following the "Diary of a ___" formula) are really popular in the kids' section. I'd always been kind of amused by their existence and passively wondered whether or not they were legal or legit, but never enough to really look into it. Don't really have anything to add to your story, but it was kind of wild to hear you were involved in producing some of them!
I bought several of these unofficial minecraft book sets for my son. The first set was pretty good so I bought another set and the quality in writing was abysmal. I wondered why it was so terrible, I guess I know why now. The first set was bought in a physical bookstore where there must've been some quality control. The second set I bought off of Amazon.
YOU are what is wrong with the world right now. YOU Gen X parents did the absolute barest minimum requirement to get a human to 18. YOU should have checked yourself, you lazy degenerate.
There are some genuinely high quality unofficial Minecraft novels out there, written by real humans with care, thoughtfulness, and good intentions. But such books are less common than their junky counterparts, since they require more time, effort, and investment. In general, I've found that going to your local bookstore or library is the best way to discover high quality books (of any genre), because as you said, there are more quality control measures in place to make sure what goes out on the shelves is legal and non-crappy.
While, as you say, getting rid of these scams would require a profound change in our system that allows these things to flourish, I think there is at least one thing we can do to mitigate the worst part of it: being more responsible with our children and being more involved. I'm not a parent myself yet, but I've seen a lot of people for example using phones to keep their children busy and never check what they're doing. I'm not saying to be a control freak, don't get me wrong. But I think we should be more involved in what children consume. Your child likes Minecraft and wants a book about it? Read it first, take your time to check the reviews. Sit with them when they watch a show they like or a video. Talk about it with them. Show interest in their interests. I think that will make a Big difference.
I swear, I used to read so many of those weird Minecraft books when I was younger (honestly I might’ve read yours too). This video was so illuminating on such a weird part of my childhood.
TBF there were some that were actually well written. But those were few and far between.
so hyped for "How I Became a MineCrafting Scam Artist: Perfect for Minecrafters Kids and Adults, Top Builder Ideas, Guide Book, Graphic Novels" by Zoe Miner Bee
This doesn't make you, specifically, a scam artist. Scammers, big and small, always compartmentalize their operations so that "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing." How could you have know about the scope???
I feel like the internet as a whole has become unusable, like all the low-quality things on Amazon and the bot-generated pages in search engines. It's so easy to do
Check out the Dead Internet Theory if you aren't already aware of it
that's why forums with trustworthy people that need to agree are so helpful for any community nowadays
Wonderful video overall, your best one of the year so far in my opinion. Interesting backstory, solid points, wonderful dramatization by ThoughtSlime. I thought the editing was a lot tighter and more seamless, so bravo Charlie. I had really felt that the comments and little jokes or goofs edited into past videos were a little invasive, disrupting the flow of the video rather than adding to it, but this was a superb job.
Thank you so much! I'm really happy with how this one turned out, so I'm glad folks seem to feel the same!
Absolutely loved this video. I also love that you were a mercenary minecraft fanfic writer. Incredible Zoe Lore revelation. The same model that incentivizes the things in your video is also huge in the software and app development world right now too. You can hire programmers from Bangladesh and Ecuador and Pakistan and Estonia super easily and then turn around and sell what they make in the app store for big bucks. And I have nothing but respect for those programmers because they're just feeding their families. It's the whole system that encourages and rewards exploitation (as you said).
I listen to almost entirely video essays on TH-cam, but I must say, yours are some of the best.
Thank you so much!
Ey, what's The Monk doing here?
@@kinggoose1425 It's a picture of the Survivor in the end credits. It's mainly yellow because of the lighting.
@@lordecramox7394 ah
lmfao dipshit zoomer listens to brain washing thinkings its education
Having Mildew voice-act a capitalist in this video was genius on so many levels (also, amazing job Mildge!). Their video on Hermitcraft’s economy (easily one of my favorite videos on this whole platform) goes along with this video so well that I suspect lord Oculon and Zoe’s cat are pulling strings behind all of left tube, weaving a tapestry of cross connections that seed the next generation of class warriors. I’m on to you L.E.F.T. (Leftists Eviscerating Fascist Talking-points), and you’re not going to get away with this!
You forgot something else about repetition:
Repetition legitimizes, repetition legitimizes, repetition legitimizes.
The world is basically already Black Mirror's second episode of the first season. Countless people are mostly confined to their rooms, consuming virtual content when they're not busy wasting away at a meaningless job that allows them to pay for this virtual content. Even when we have companionship, we still engage in consuming this virtual content, together. Something definitely needs to be done about this. You cannot buy truly meaningful experiences. You can buy entertainment, but your life should be more than entertainment.
oh god i almost picked up a similar gig to this on a different platform back in the day, but quickly realized the expected output was gonna vastly outstrip the pay they were offering, so i opted out. Not entirely surprised they've got what seems to be machines doing most of the work now instead.
I can't help but think of the crappy knock off toys we would get growing up. Either dollar store versions of popular toys or rip offs of popular characters but slightly askew. This sort of thing has been going on for a long time.
The intersection of this unholy trinity of gig economy, ad revenue and the literary equivalent of shovelware is a more ridiculous rabbit hole than I could have imagined.
I also wonder how this impacts kid creators. One of our kids has made videos for TH-cam made in earnest. Stuff like TH-cam poops.
With the changes it has hit their channel. And we see similar dynamics as they make stuff for Roblox as well.
On one hand it's exciting there are opportunities for kids to explore with their art but these factories and systems will also hurt their creation and opportunities if that is something possible for them. And I mean genuinely them doing out of passion not then being turned into little laborers
I can't believe you're living my childhood dream:
Living in a minecraft house
Wonderful video as always, Zoe! You've not only managed to turn something as weird and specific as Minecraft bootlegs into a fun and thought-provoking essay, but also included a beautiful message about life in the end! 🥰
P.S The backgrounds were simply awesome! I'd love to see more videos with you inside a fantasy realm. As long as the realm isn't The End, though. My shoulders were LITERALLY stiff for the entire duration of the semi-final part, because Enderman totally freak me out 😂
They kept walking right up to the camera and staring. They’re so creepy, love em.
went from "i wrote a book lol" to "WE MUST SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION" in the span of like four seconds and i love it
Honestly, I kinda want to read your minecraft books, I would love to see your take on the already existing but notably thin of the ground story of Minecraft
This was two sides of my subscription feed I wasn't expecting to overlap!
Pigstep truly does fit everything
Mildo was a fantastic choice of voice for the Fiverr DMs. Their choice of affect was really unsettling in the best way.
I remember getting an “unofficial Minecraft novel!” Titled revenge of the skeletons when I was a kid.
The minecraft backgrounds were amazingly done.
This reminds me of the "freebooting" problem. Where people would steal clips or interesting parts of youtube videos to post and monetize them on other platforms like twitter and facebook. Pretty awful to be a victim in this way.
I feel like "Minecraft: Story Mode" was an official example of this. I guess it's hard for them to turn down easy money. At least Microsoft's IP milking has avoided Java Edition
Telltale Games (the studio behind Minecraft: Story Mode) started out by making good games, but [thanks to the incentives inherent to our economy] soon evolved their business model to focus on mass-producing formulaic, low-effort games based on popular entertainment franchises, which were mostly marketed towards children.
That final statement hit me in the feels 😯. I agree that each and every one of us has something unique to bring to the world, I'm still figuring out what it is though.
I got my friend into the Witcher show and for my birthday they got me a cookbook 'based' on the dishes from the series. It's the most low effort list of recipes I've ever read. One of the recipes for baked apples says the following: "Apples are a part of the Witcher universe, and baked apples are a sweet treat." I do love this book but it's for all the wrong reasons.
WHAT YOU CAN RIGHT NOW?!?!
Options are limited but there are these THREE things:
1) EDUCATE yourself. She didn't say it, but what Zoe's talking about is marxism. Learn about the labour theory of value to start.
2) COMMUNICATE class consciousness to the people in your life. Make sure they understand what class is and how it determines your opportunities, your liberties, and what your time is worth.
3) UNIONS. Unions empower workers through cooperation. Because workers are a majority in any corporate structure (and society as a whole) they have the power to dictate the terms of their labour, BUT ONLY IF they organise and coordinate their individual power together. Unions are the most important step right now toward organizing political representation of the working class, which is what can lead to the larger systemic changes Zoe alludes to.
Thank you for reading, this has been a goshdarned political TH-cam comment.
24:30 The future was quite nice, Mineraft is still a fun game to play but mojang is getting critisised a lot at the moment because of not listening to the community anymore when making certain changes. Their trailer for the next live event where the new update is gonna be announced was very good tho.
Also, enjoyed watching this, I'd never heard of this issue before and it was really interesting to hear how it all works.
What if there was a place where you could get curated quality kids' entertainment for free? Let's call it a library, it could even have people, librarians, who could help parents find the best stuff. I know it's utopic. Increase funding and marketing of libraries. Improve online and digital offerings so parents can easily click in and get better entertainment for their children and the artists would even get compensated. The infrastructure is already there.
The subject of this video is like an episode of "The X-Files". It's a mystery who's really behind it all, and the monster is greed.
it's not just kids who surround themselves with the same characters, the revival of comic book movies, star wars stuff, etc shows we just gobble up this stuff regardless of it's actual value or if it's well written, it's comforting. thanks for giving me a lot to think about!
It’s cool to see 2 of leftie content creators spear in the same video it makes me do a double take on weather I finally lost the thread and went insane
the end bit means a lot to me. im an artist who struggles a lot with numbers and i cant help but feel demotivated whenever my art doesnt get a lot of attention. but the thing you daid about creating was exactly what i needed to hear :)
Thanks Zoe. This was an intriguing discussion to me as an instructor of elementary-school aged children.
I don't want to imply that any solutions are silver bullets or that I know enough to be comprehensive about the available options, but I will say that the most reliable strategy for cultivating informed artistic engagement seems to me like it's media education. Children engage in dialogue with the media they consume just like anyone else, so I think the most powerful thing we can do for them is participate in that dialogue, in earnest, alongside them. We can ask them what they look for in their stories and their culture. We can share what we look for ourselves. We can seek common points of interest and use our expanded experience relative to young humans to provide examples of meaningful narratives that have engaged those interests for us. We can listen to the meaningful examples children provide as well. But most importantly, we can encourage children to create their own work. Encourage them to bring their own art and/or craft into the world, as said in the video, in earnest. Because the best agency is when the children can control the narrative themselves, and maybe they can therefore get the resulting sense of safety without relying on the repetition of someone else's artistic excrement.
That Billion-With-A-B-Bee was a great little detail, hats off for the craft on display all around. Great stuff!
Mildo's Fiverr voice was skin-crawlingly creepy. Nailed it.
I think creating quality content that reaches kids to replace the garbage content is one part of the solution. The other is to educate people and parents about these things and tell them about how they can avoid these things and provide better content for their kids. On a more general societal level, I think making society less focused on money, both culturally and financially, would help. An uncondictional basic income that would provide everyone with their needs would encourage people to do things without the need for profit. A lot less writers desperate work means a lot less people able to exploit them.
As an aside, I can't help but think that the only reason the new guidelines for kids' videos were introduced on TH-cam was because advertisers felt that ads being shown to literal toddlers wasn't really getting their money's worth
Can't wait for the upcoming video! I always love your takes, and your presence is so calming
I really like the background you made for this. It actually feels like it's lived in.
the way you can go from “these children books are bad” to “revolt, my fellow revolutionaries! as we must make a land in which all workers are equal and free from our proletariat overlords!” is great. keep it up!
TH-camr The Click released a popular plush on MakeShip: Mango the land shark (I got one) that was apparently so successful that they will be doing another run of the plush soon (as Makeship plushes are time limited, after a month of pre-orders they are made and shipped)
Apparently this silly Reddit TH-camr's mascot plush was so popular that there are bootleg slightly off model Mango plushes all over Ali Express
This scam also preys not only on children in general, but particularly children with unattentive parents.
If you have your organic wooden toys middle class Montessori school parents, they will look through any book before giving it to their child.
But if you have parents who are unable to do that, because they are stressed and/or not well educated themselves, then the child will get that trash and will be pushed further down into the not-well-educated hole.
"What? Zoe has become a Minecraft-TH-camr? Hell Yeah!" - "This Video is not about Minecraft" - "Aaw maaan..."
Can I also just note down how machines making books and videos for children instead of people could be harmful for children.
People learn language and social interactions from people and not from computers, so children could learn some weird ass behavior if they're left alone an hour a day watching.
"elsa frozzen pregnant sipderman minecraft minecraft school funny" Too much
Gen X ruined the world raising Boomers 2.0
@@foegettergames252 we must lock up all gen alphas in a box. Quarantine the mistakes.
Loved the Minecraft background and segue ways! They just fit perfectly, and very comfy :)
Thank you so much! I tried to replicate my usual setup, but in Minecraft. ...and I had to have the super pretty water and sky visible through a window, so that was a plus, lol
@@zoe_bee i know it isn't your normal thing but i'd love to see more stuff like this. Really pretty
I love theese kinds of videos where you just sit there enjoying it and waiting for the word *CAPITALISM* to drop
I personally couldn't ever come up with a full solution, but I feel like part of it would probably involve the parents. Kids these days (god, I sound old) are being raised not just on, but by TH-cam and social media. When little Timmy starts crying, it's easier on moms and dads to just give him the iPad where the algorithm will feed him Frozen Elsa Pregnant Colors Superheroes Spiderman Hulk Vs Venom Joker Fidget Spinners Colors For Kid videos than actually sit down and yknow, be a parent.
Part of that also stems from the systemic issues of parents, especially single parents, not being able to make a livable wage for them and their kids, the horrible encroachment of side hussle culture which normalizes working more than one job, both symptoms of the world's fetishistic adoration of capitalism in its current form. If parents could work less and therefore had more time to spend with their kids, or were simply more aware of the content their child is consuming, that would go a long way to solving the symptomatic problems such as these made for kids cash grabs.
Speaking as the uncle of some kids who I am reasonably certain have some of those books, if not yours, the cousins of them, and someone who has a degree in media studies and teaches, my general advice is thus:
Like the kids. Like the kids enough to engage with what interests them. Look at the things the kids want and check it out with them and talk to them about it and see what it is they're connecting to. There are a lot of parents who out of sheer lack of emotional energy or interest treat the stuff they get their kids as silo'd off material that they don't have to think about and that doesn't matter to them, and that makes it incomprehensible. In much the same way that male comedians making jokes about 'women, eh' is a way to stop thinking about and understanding women, the vision of child's media as separate and meaningless is a way to ensure the kid will not be being given media that you are sharing with them but is instead being made as a separated space away from you.
This means that yeah you'll probably buy a few Legendary Endermans books or whatever, but over time you'll be able to understand why they like what they like and help guide them to wholesome, quality alternatives. And i don't mean 'I, a millenial loved Batman TAS and therefore my nephews will too,' I mean, literally understand your kids as people and try to treat their interests that way. Try to find the good stuff they'll respond to that you can share.
This is obviously a ton of work and nobody can do it for everyone.
I have a growing desire to buy and read the Diary of a Legendary Enderman books. It goes against the point of this video. But I really want to.
You could probably find at least one in the kids section of a local library. I found a lot of these kinds of books in my school library when I was younger but that might just have been my school
Someone should buy them and lets say put a link to them here in the comments. If just for the fun of it. Dont help the exploiters but exploit the exploiters.
In regard to the YT vid theft books, odds are, most of the work is being done by AI/scripts, and then "cleansers" (actual people) go in, do a little editing, remove references to original sources, etc. This is perhaps one of those dangers of AI that Elon Musk ironically talks about. People providing trash content are obviously targeting anybody willing to come and see. Of course, when it comes to books and items for sale, they are banking on kids whose parents will bend to their whims or simply don't care about what content their kids are exposed to. I have to wonder if the persons or organizations involved in such crap are likely tied to the same folks overseas who do scam calls that riddle our phones constantly. Thanks for sharing this, it's not something I personally knew about, although having seen enough of other dark aspects of society, this isn't too surprising.
How fantastically informative about something i had no idea or reference for. Just the kind of stuff I subscribe for. Great job!
i love the timing on the section w/pigstep underlying it. something about the turn into the subject combined with the song's hook is really cool. overall the whole video is also very good but the pigstep thing scratched an itch in my brain
Me, a ghostwriter, upon hearing about the Minecraft books: Ah, I know where this is going
This reminds me of the research of People Make Games about the scam of Roblox, but in there, it's not just the audience who are children, it's the children who are being exploited for creating games. They're entering pyramid schemes and receiving bad paids for work that they're doing.
The system that values production over anything it's degrading our society at levels that we don't want to see. It's scary.
I have to say that little things like this video, make me have some little hope about change, maybe we don't know the way, but some people are seeing the problems and trying to have some action in these problems. Thanks Zoe
This video was a really funny intersection of my YT subscriptions since I watch Dan and Thought Slime as well as Grian and other Minecraft creators whos videos were used to make these ebooks.
This is an amazing breakdown of the system that makes its point before the watcher can realize exactly what it’s about. Love this
i have a lot of similar feelings when i see anti-scammer videos on yt. while emotionally, it might feel good to see phishers and scammers get a taste of their own medicine, i struggle with the idea that they "deserve" it. a lot of them are from poor and developing countries, and frankly i cannot blame them for trying to scam rich americans so they can feed their family. it's the global system of capitalism that is at fault
Yo, that was a really powerful way of delivering a simple message.
Big props to Charlie the editor on this one! Loving the background and the Lena Raine soundtrack
I just wanted to say, I did not expect to be moved by that poetry at the end. Like, whoa.
James Bridle, the person who popularized the TH-cam for Kids story and author of the quote at 20:46, is one of my favorite artist/writers. He writes so effectively on how hidden systems penetrate and effect our existence and our navigation of the world. A lot of their work has been looking at the visible failure points of networks to break our conceptions of what those systems actually do. I would highly recommend checking them out.
Some quotes from their book New Dark Age, if you're interested:
"This is what content production looks like in the age of algorithmic discovery: even if you're a human, you end up impersonating the machine" (223).
"Empire has mostly rescinded territory, only to continue its operation at the level of infrastructure, maintaining its power in the form of the network. Data-driven regimes repeat the racist, sexist, and oppressive policies of their antecedents because these biases and attitudes have been encoded into them at the root" (247).
"Technology does not emerge from a vacuum. Rather, it is the reification of a particular set of beliefs and desires: the congruent, if unconscious dispositions of its creators... To continue to assert an objective schism between technology and the world is nonsense; but it has very real outcomes" (142).
"Belief is not a delusion if it is held by a person's 'culture or subculture'. But the network has changed how we establish and shape cultures: people in distant locales can gather online to share their experiences and beliefs and form cultures on their own" (208).
fantastic video Zoe!! it was really interesting to hear about your experiences writing & i really liked where you took it :))
so, this vid showed up on my feed at an interesting time, because I recently decided I was gonna make a "Garbage" game for the app store that only had one banner add away from where the action would be, and maybe a full screen add when you died, but instead of making a garbage game I am putting my all into it, because it's game devlopment, which I enjoy with every part of me, so, even though I started trying to make something I could make in an after noon, I am now actually trying to like a kinda fun game. (it's an infinte runner where you are a car avoiding things)
Your ending message of putting your heart into something and to keep creating really spoke to me
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
I think it's extremely difficult to change the whole system, no matter how badly we need it. However, what you said in the end is quite interesting and I think it's the way to go: do what we do as best as we can, but also denounce and boycott the garbage we're being fed every day, whether it be books, videos, or any shit manufactured items or services. I'm an architect and it's absolutely horrifying to see that what you describe can also be applied to our built environment: the pursuit of the most profit with the least effort no matter the consequences. It can seem harmless when it comes to a book, but a building? Entire cities? Fucking scary, this. Anyways, great video as always, I really liked it, thanks!
Anyone but me want to find those Heroic Steve books? Any way to get them without funding scam artists? I'd buy the book but I'd feel the same way about that that I would going to see a JK Rowlings story based movie. Nah, I think I can get my entertainment somewhere else. (If he still has them, I'm going going to tweet them at you. You should already know this.) Oh, and by the way. I checked. The books are still on Amazon and almost all of them have fake reviews. (You can tell. No avatars, they all over praise the books. And none mentions the spellchecks. I put a book on Amazon once and the spelling was everyone's first sentence in the reviews. You know how much easier that transcribing from videos can be? Adobe Premiere has a caption feature. It literally creates a text file the software reads from. What confuses me is how do they handle no talking scenes? I mean when I put on subtitle with and action movie, the words will say "scream" or "music plays" but never "cars plunge through rush hour traffic while the hero and villain shoot at each other." I'd love to see what the transcript for a Fast and Furious movie looks like. After this video, now I need that in my life.
see if you can find a used copy of them.
@@killingtimeitself I think they are only sold digitally. Sending them to stores would increase overhead. Unless I am missing something, the only ways to read them without giving grifters money is to either stick to the free sample or sail the seven seas
@@123phi123 yeah in that case just pirate it.
loved the editing charlie flowers, and greatly appreciate you covering this topic zoe :)
I had not heard about this before. This video was lovely. Thank you.
When I watched Folding Ideas' video, I was reminded of some of Robert Miles' videos on computerphile about AI safety. I had sort of come to terms with the fact that there was a way to "game" the youtube revenue system, and wasn't totally suprised that some combination of Artificial Intelligences and geniune (albeit dubious) intelligences had figured out how to extract money from it. What didn't strike me until watching this video was the fact that they hadn't just figured out how to "game" TH-cam, but also the human beings watching it - The system doesn't fully work unless the poor kids watching don't switch to something else. Somehow, through the combination of a brightly lit screen, an internet connection, and a bunch of serves that anyone can put almost any video on, an AI was able to trick thousands or millions of humans to behave in a certain way. If that isn't the first step of the robot uprising, I don't know what is.
Sitting here working on writing this comment, has made me realize that it isn't just the creepy kids' videos either. The amount of time I spend watching youtube is heavily conditional on the videos the algorithm chooses to show me. From the perspective of the algorithm choosing what videos to recommend to me, my watch time is just a means to move money around. I know it's not at the same level, but I'm still complicit in the system, and I don't think I like it.
This train of thought, as well as "Mr. Fiverr's" disturbing voice and giant eyes, will keep me awake at night.
Regarding the audience, it's not only the children who want this media, but parents and grandparents who buy the books as gifts for the kids. I have received plenty of weird gifts like this from family members that knew nothing but the name of the hobby I had....
Adults are also getting scammed and may not realize that these are bad until it's too late
damn,... they did you dirty with the 30$
glad you're coming out with it, it helps to unfold the bigger picture
on a sidenote: I like the glitter on your face xD
aww, ain't dat kewt.
she married, ya simp.
The instant you mentioned Fiverr I was like "oh no." So much scamming out there when not careful.