The Awesome Videos Thread (with Extra Sauce!)

Do youtube videos load incredibly slowly for anyone else? My internet speeds are the same as they've always been, and my isp doesn't seem to be throttling flash video, yet youtube videos, which used to load instantly in high def, take forever to buffer now.
Same here. I think Youtube changed how videos load now. They never load up all the way anymore.
I found a good explanation of why this is the case, and a work-around if you have Chrome. I'll try to remember to find and post it when I get home.
 
I found a good explanation of why this is the case, and a work-around if you have Chrome. I'll try to remember to find and post it when I get home.
I'd like to see this work around. Something is certainly going on, youtube is unwatchable for me now. I just can't tell if it's youtube itself doing the throttling, or if my isp is being a jackass.
 
I'd like to see this work around. Something is certainly going on, youtube is unwatchable for me now. I just can't tell if it's youtube itself doing the throttling, or if my isp is being a jackass.
It's YouTube. Or at least, in part. I'm not going to rule out IPs as jackasses. That seems reasonable.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Another one of those funny heineken commercials... this time... Several randomly selected men could win two tickets to the UEFA Champions League final in London this Saturday if they can convince their girlfriends to let them buy a set of $2,899 (£1,899) plastic stadium seats. Oh, and they can't mention the tickets or they're disqualified.

 

GasBandit

Staff member
The latest lonely island video: Semicolon.

While listening, I was preparing the rant I was going to write here about improper semicolon use... but then the end redeemed it.

 
On YouTube, chose "I'm feeling lucky" without any search criteria. It returns a list of 10 random videos. First one's a Korean Starcraft II ad - kinda funny, kinda meh.
The second one?



Qualifies as awesome in my book.



*edit* Apparently it doesn't return random videos from all over the net by some sort of matching algorithm or whatever - unless there's something weird going on, considering I got 4 videos I recognized from my history dive earlier today. However, for the life of me I can't remember when I was listening to this much Miles Davis - I got another video of over an hour of him. Can't say I mind, though, and it blends well with the 45 minutes of Chopin I got too. Rammstein, Celtic Woman, Madonna, and some Dutch "wrong" classics filled out the list. I'm actually mostly okay with that random grouping :p

 

GasBandit

Staff member
I add this entry as further evidence that russians are insane and cannot be trusted with so much as a shopping cart before they turn to slaughtering each other.

 
I tried to watch that video on YouTube, but it told me the video was age-restricted. Like I haven't seen a car crash before.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
At last, a way for you to have public, metered acknowledgement of how not racist you are!



I just wish they didn't co-opt the Halforums Bro-fist.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Damsel in Distress: Part 2 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games


Hopefully this video will stay up and viewable. It's already been taken off of Youtube once due to malicious abuse of the reporting system.
 
Damsel in Distress: Part 2 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games


Hopefully this video will stay up and viewable. It's already been taken off of Youtube once due to malicious abuse of the reporting system.

I don't disagree with her premise, it's no secret that the writing of female characters in games is very often incredibly immature. Hell, pop fiction in general, really. But some of her examples feel very weak. Off the top of my head, implying that ICO is sexist and that the character of Yorda is there to act as a damsel in distress to fulfill a male power fantasy is rather short sighted, especially when, instead of a powerful male hero, the protagonist is a young boy that's just as scared.

Angel in Borderlands 2 is another weak example. Yes, she fulfills the trope in that she's held against her will and has to be killed 'for her own good,' but that game is full of powerful female characters that are just as capable as any of the men. In fact, the player character could very well be one of those, so that scene doesn't always play out with a man having to kill her.
 
.Angel in Borderlands 2 is another weak example. Yes, she fulfills the trope in that she's held against her will and has to be killed 'for her own good,' but that game is full of powerful female characters that are just as capable as any of the men. In fact, the player character could very well be one of those, so that scene doesn't always play out with a man having to kill her.
lets see, strong female characters in bl2, Gaige and Maya for player characters. for NPC's we have Tina, Moxxi, and Lilith(yes she gets taken prisoner as a plot point but there is plenty of evidence its all a matter of convenience)
 

North_Ranger

Staff member
To me, the big problem is that Anita Sarkesian's style of argumentation seems to be a rehash of the old and debunked "violent video games make you kill people" argument. Okay, she throws in a half-ass admittance of that at the end, but she just frickin' spent the entire video arguing that video games make it okay for you to slap your girlfriend around for the bitch's own good.

Plus, I gotta say she seems to be of the mind that if anything, ANYTHING bad happens to a female character, it's automatically the Patriarchy puttin' a good woman down. It's almost like she wants women to be treated as untouchables in gaming.
 
Damsel in Distress: Part 2 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games


Hopefully this video will stay up and viewable. It's already been taken off of Youtube once due to malicious abuse of the reporting system.
Whoa, that was long-winded in order to say very little. I thought these were supposed to be indepth analysis videos? She literally spends the first 9/10s listing examples. I know idiots give her a ton of sexist shit (which really only arms her for her Ted Talks where she says very little) but she should be taking shit for how shallow her points are, when they exist.

Game developers are lazy and mostly male, surprise, same tropes get bandied about.
 
I can't remember if I posted this when her first episode went up, but here is a good rebuttal: http://www.filibustercartoons.com/i...ropes-vs-women-episode-1-damsels-in-distress/

Particularly his end point, which is that... does she have a point?
I personally don’t know if we need a feminist critique of Japanese video games released nearly 30 years ago. In her video, Sarkeesian certainly makes no effort to explain why I — or anyone else — should care, since her confused muddling of cultures, ignorance of context, and disinterest in impact results in a “critique” without a clear target or purpose.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Particularly his end point, which is that... does she have a point?
I thought the point was obvious, to bring attention to a common trope in video games and spark discussion over the social ramifications of that trope.

Off the top of my head, implying that ICO is sexist and that the character of Yorda is there to act as a damsel in distress to fulfill a male power fantasy is rather short sighted, especially when, instead of a powerful male hero, the protagonist is a young boy that's just as scared.
I haven't played ICO, but isn't the boy, however scared and young he may be, the only one who picks up a weapon and takes action? Seems like that still fulfills the trope. He may not be muscle-bound or grim'n'gritty, but he's still the one taking action to save a helpless damsel.

She made 160000 dollars on Kickstarter to make these videos. 160000 fucking dollars.
So what? People throw money at much less socially relevant things. That budget is for 12 topics (this is only part 2 of the first), a classroom curriculum, printing DVDs, etc. The Kickstarter funding completed nearly a year ago, and only two videos have come out thus far. I don't think it's fair to judge the entire series on less than 5% of the completed project. Depending on what's actually being done for the rest of these videos, $160,000 is either a lot of money, or only a drop in the bucket. If this is just funding one person to watch Let's Plays until they find the clips she needs, that's a cushy job for a few years. However, if there's actual sociology studies going on that will come to light later, $160,000 can be spent pretty darn fast.
 
I haven't played ICO, but isn't the boy, however scared and young he may be, the only one who picks up a weapon and takes action? Seems like that still fulfills the trope. He may not be muscle-bound or grim'n'gritty, but he's still the one taking action to save a helpless damsel.
Yorda is completely helpless in the game, but no Ico isn't sacred or any such thing. He's born with horns, which everyone in that world believes is a bad omen. He's locked away in fortress to be killed later. When he escapes his cell, he finds Yorda and they attempt to escape together.

I see your point. I just wanted to clarify that Ico isn't so special, he's very hated by people, even his own family.
 
So far it's been almost an hour of her listing examples. Nothing indepth. The shallowest of points made. It's been almost a year and this is all she has to show so far. It's lazy, like a lot of her videos often are. As lazy as the tropes she's rallying against.
 
Top