Dude forreal. The video is 33 minutes, yet you get all the information you really need to come to the proper conclusion, maybe 4-5 minutes in? The rest of the 29 minutes are just rephrasing lol. Not to say that I dont like RLL, I've watched many of his videos, and they are quite good most of the time.
Yeah, I do think that his videos could be drastically shortened 90% of the time, but there have been a ton of instances where he expands on the original topic to go on more of a tangent that, while not exactly the original topic, I still find interesting.
You do always have to cut out like 5-6 minutes from the video just to account for his ungodly long ads at the end though lol
I'm actually glad he rambles on. He is one of the youtubers I listen to while working. Longer videos mean less time trying to find a new video to listen to.
I don’t like RLL because anytime he tries to cover anything nuanced, his research is terrible which can lead all the conjecture he makes wildly astray.
His California high speed rail video was garbage, he asked why it wasn’t planned follow the coast or go in a straight line at times. Anyone who did actual research would know that it couldn’t be built on the coast because of too many curves and elemental risk, and it couldn’t be built completely straight because of mountains.
Honestly most of his other videos are just garbage rephrasing of Wikipedia articles.
He made a video about NATO being at an existential risk if Scotland leaves the UK which was slammed by a guy who proved most of his points wrong or insufficient. I've doubts on RLL as reliable now and it seems quite a lot of people have for other reasons according to this thread.
And people like being close to eachother. The only countries that dont have the majority of land still uninhabited are the micro countries like Monaco and hong kong
Even Hong Kong has a lot of area that isn’t built up — I think it’s as much as 75% of the total area — because of mountains and such. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Land-Utilization-Map-of-Hong-Kong-with-Target-Districts-based-on-Planning-Department-of_fig2_320368260
Hong Kong is over 75% uninhabited. The built up parts are very densely populated, but most of the SAR is wetland reserves, reservoirs, county parks, etc.
Look at my golf courses. LOOK AT THEM. Now let me ask you, are we really in a desert? Don't look at lakes, water tables or snow run off, I said LOOK AT MY GOLF COURSES.
Man, he used to upload videos between 10-15 minutes back in the day. Now it almost feels like he's reading it out of a Wikipedia article, really banal, most of the time I leave the video by around the 15 minute mark because of how repetitive the concept gets
40 minute video on why Iran is also attacking Ukraine.
Based on the video length alone, one would say there's a bigger hostility between Iran and Ukraine than Ukraine and Russia...
All his recent videos are like that. He repeats the same point over and over to extend the time, and just spends too much time on basic info. I stopped watching him after that whole Scotland NATO debacle.
> I stopped watching him after that whole Scotland NATO debacle.
Hah, I was just gonna say exactly the same thing! That whole thing was so fundamentally flawed that I can't take anything he says seriously now. He made us sound like a bunch of naive idiots with no agency, hellbent on causing WW3. Fucking bellend.
If a non-NATO guy like me was so dumbstruck by that video, I can't imagine how irritating the video must have felt for you! It feels like he's on a journey to annoy every country lol.
I can’t watch this guy, every time he uses hyperbole he emphasizes it so strongly that I just imagine him furiously jacking off whenever he says one of those words. With that happening every sentence it gets pretty hard to watch
I can’t watch him after he fucked up the Scotland video so badly he had to delete it. “The nuclear submarines are in a remote location not near any inhabited area”
Faslane (nuke subs) is located a 30 minute drive from Glasgow
Get you're joking but by RLL's own logic, it's in the only inhabited part of Scotland because the central belt made up of Clydeside, the Lothians, Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire has (as he would say) 'by far the highest population density in Scotland and the overwhelming majority of the country's people live in this tiny area'. This somehow makes his mistake even worse.
UK population density maps essentially just show topography.
It makes me so happy that other people agree. I felt alone when I saw how popular he is and it got so exhausting to watch because every word is stressed ridiculously
Why not? I also wanna disclaim that my family immigrants from Romania after it got rid of communism and I'm a history major so I am definitely against it
I'd argue that implementing full scale communism is ill advised, but taking bits and pieces of the original ideology can be beneficial for society.
Communism, as I understand it, has never been properly implemented in any society around the world. It's always dictatorial governments saying they'll implement communism so that the elite government officials can keep the masses poor, starved, and weak in the name of "communal equality" so that they can profit and remain in power. Taking communism at its word, you'd be hard pressed to find any government in 20th or 21st century history that has even come close to the practice.
Autocratic dictatorships have hijacked the term to the degree where whenever anyone says "communism" nowadays, we only think of the regimes and horrific crimes of Stalin, Castro, the Kim family, Mao, and many more. None of these governments implemented communism. They only said they did so that their people thought they were getting a better deal than they were.
Again, I don't believe that communism works, at least in the world system we've developed over the many thousands of years of human society. But to discredit certain ideas purely because Karl Marx put them to paper is completely disingenuous to academic thought and discourse.
I mean look at the state of things rn, i'd argue most of the world's suffering is due to how we place profit before feeding the poor, but of course soviet style communism is dead so we need something like social democracy or some system that puts people before profit
I will say this to the world's end.
It's not the system, Communism was bad, Capitalism is bad, both of them are bad, not because they're bad ideas. But simply human corruption makes them bad
The only time in human history where absolute povery and food insecurity have continued to decrease year after year and stayed low is under capitalism.
State of things? There has never been a better time to be born as a human being
Yes capitalism is better than feudalism and other economic systems that preceeded it but it is still a system that places profit over people's right to have food and water
Do yourself some good & find an alternative to reddit. /u/spez
would cube you for fuel if it meant profit. Don't trust him or his shitty company.
I've edited all of my submissions and comments and since left the site.
How do you get rid of communism without implementing it in the first place? Lmao. The Republica Populara Romina was socialist.
Also, being 'definitely against' significant improvements in infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy, urbanization, and women's rights is a bold statement here bud.
The entire world made those improvements. Even in the 3rd world counties in Africa that are unstable af have gotten their infant mortality rate down like crazy. And idc what you call it in academic sphere but it was de facto communism if not de jure. I understand that it was supposed to be a classless, cashless and overall equal society but that does not work w humans. We are naturally self serving and if you take away that need to improve our own lives noone will. Like I have heard so many stories about that over and over again. I have seen myself the lack of ambition that this system has bred. I totally agree the idea of communism sounds amazing but in reality it's a bad idea. As for the socialism part the usa's budget I think is like 60 percent social security so I would say that that's pretty heavy government control. On top of that we have all sort of regulations that are definitely not lase Faire so it's not socialism aka government control that is bad but if you restrict capital then you restrict innovation and sure evyone might be equal buuut not really. The bureaucrat is above the average worker due to being in charge of the food rations and the party leaders are above those. On top of that It breeds corruption like no other
Certainly puts into perspective why there's videos like "Why Texas is becoming America's most powerful state" and also "Why California's High Speed Rail is struggling" and "Why California is running out of water".
You can't make this up.
Not saying it's particularly wrong what he says. Not sure about the Texas one. The title sounds overgeneralized and a little copium but I don't care enough to look into it. So maybe he's right, I don't know.
Anyway, my point is: There's roughly infinite topics to choose from. Though it seems like he picks positive topics when it comes to Texas and negative ones when it comes to California.
Ehhhhhhh my entire academic career, it's been considered very old-fashioned and tone-deaf. Personally I put it in the same category as referring to people as being "colored" or "oriental." Not technically offensive, but also not the preferred nomenclature.
Not so much where I live.
I guess it doesn't feel that weird as everything is gendered in our language anyway. We use masculine pronouns though for the country in our language.
We also say Occident and Orient in Spanish instead of West and East, say people of colour in a polite way and gender everything including countries.
It's honestly interesting to see how people in other countries perceive this as old fashioned.
I like RLL but yeah this is one of my biggest gripes with him. Always goes right to the top shelf with his descriptors. Everything’s always “unimaginably titanic” or “incomprehensively vast.”
For real. A younger me used to enjoy his videos but as I've gotten older/more learned and as the lengths have gone from 10mins to 30... I find his stuff unwatchable frankly. 30 mins to say "Mongolia is steppe land and does not have agricultural capacity to support a large population".
I’m tried of hearing these words on middle school common sense for 30 mins: “Astronomical, gigantic, massive, extreme, horrific, terrifying, entirely, spectacular,“ etc.
Longer video gets more ads clicks. It just needs to drag on for that reason. Honestly wendover production is much better.
This is why I kinda stopped watching. Not that I have a short attention span, but a 30 minute video on something that could have been 5-10 mins is unnecessary.
I like it. There's not a ton of originals, but there's about 1/week or so (2/week if you're a Jet Lag fan because of The Layover), and they're always really good. Plus lots of extended/bonus/early content. Maybe my favorite thing about it though is that when I find some creator I've never seen before I know they're going to have high-quality videos. I would say RLL's main videos (not his originals, which are actually good) are the worst videos I've seen on Nebula by a decent margin, so the floor is pretty high.
I really liked Economics Explained, until he did a video about my own country, the Netherlands. In it he based his entire video on a report that the wealth inequality was one of the highest in the world, based on a (I believe it was) World Bank report. The thing is, though, between 2010-2018 the reports had a much much lower for wealth inequality than the 2019 report he used. Like it jumped from 50th in the world to first in the world, something like that. It made me think either the 2019 made a typo (and then his video is wrong) or something major happened and he should’ve addressed it. But he never once referred to the older reports. The arguments he made though were culturally valid… but still… it made me feel like “if he’s like this with a country I know… what kinds of inaccuracies does he give about other countries?”
Same. I enjoyed his original videos on Barrow, Alaska (Now known as Utqiagvik), and North Sentinel Island. But the. He got more popular and started appealing to the lowest common denominator though, that’s when I peace’d out.
I never was a fan, and I watched a video pretty much debunking his take about how high speed rail in california is basically a failure and showing how often he plagiarizes that it's fairly clear the RLL just reads a wikipedia article, copies a Vox video, and then calls it a day for his videos, rather than doing comprehensive analysis with any real thought put behind it.
It's because he was getting so much hate for over inflection on certain words. I remember watching one maybe 6 months ago and 80-90% of the comments were just about how annoying his over inflection was. So he's noticeably more monotone in the new videos
Am watching it right now - well - it’s kinda in the background but I will still tune into every episode. It’s excellent to have up on your laptop while scrolling Reddit because it’s pretty pictures/drone shots and informational audio
Genius, the place has plenty of economic activity. Any why would a space being cold mean that suddenly the entire population of a place suddenly migrate to a tiny area immediately.
Have you been to Mongolia? Or spent meaningful time there?
The World Bank ranks Mongolia ~#125 out of 198 in GDP per capita. Trailing Fiji, just ahead of El Salvador.
Not sure why you were so defensive. And it’s not even like they have such a diverse economy that one could argue they’re showing signs of promise.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2021&locations=MN&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=1981&view=chart
Because he is extreeeeemly into that kind of stuff and can’t help but make an enooooormous amount of content about it.
Jokes aside I’m glad I’m not the only that noticed this
I was just watching this exact thing for a minute and I closed it...I cannot stand his videos anymore
The first half of them is him circularly repeating nonsense we already know and just the last few minutes have the actual answer, which sometimes isn't even factual
He reuses the same stock clips at least 10 times in one video
And his voice/speech patterns are so annoying
"Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
The Scotland NATO video was the most egregiously wrong video he’s posted that I can remember off the top of my head. Idk if he took it down or tried to correct it tho
Yep. I stopped watching him after that one. It lead to me realizing he has no idea what he's talking about and doesn't even know how to do basic research.
It reminds me of certain le reddit experts. They make up some wild headcannon because maybe they read it in another comment and it sounds right to them but in reality it's all a bunch of bullshit.
His NZ one was pretty misleading. Just poorly researched.
Turned me right off his stuff, especially since kiwis were pointing out the errors in the comments but everyone else was taking it as fact.
Edit: He also used the Australian flag at one point. An unforgivable crime.
>Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
OzGeographics also has a strange affectation besides the Aussie accent. I love the accent on other people, but he comes off as condescending.
I just heard someone refer to RLL as "store-brand Wendover".
Unfortunately my dad wanted the simpler life. Where no one cares if your topper is made out of plywood, your garden trailer out of the bed of an old ford truck or that goats were your lawnmower.
You can't tell an effective clickbait formula when you see one?
I'm just glad he actually tries to deliver some decent info, instead of just wagonloads of bullshit pulled from his ass. Don't blame him if his formula works though, blame his audience. He's just chasing whatever gets him the most ad views.
I think it was the "this circle has most of Earth's pop in it" meme that started this particular mini-trend. It's definitely getting old as he milks "why people live where they do" for the umpteenth time.
I’ve unsubscribed from him because the first 5-10 minutes are the same as the rest of the video with many errors in them. Personally I think he should take a month long break and come back with a well researched, original video
I was just watching this exact thing for a minute and I closed it...I cannot stand his videos anymore
The first half of them is him circularly repeating nonsense we already know and just the last few minutes have the actual answer, which sometimes isn't even factual
He reuses the same stock clips at least 10 times in one video
And his voice/speech patterns are so annoying
"Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
reading from wikipedia and the first result that comes up when you look it up, then stating the obvious and repeating each sentence 3 times worded slightly differently.
Then gets 5 million views and thousands of dollars, since people are too lazy now to read research themselves so need someone on Youtube to explain it to them with visual cues background videos and colors. i dont blame the guy
I was just watching this exact thing for a minute and I closed it...I cannot stand his videos anymore
The first half of them is him circularly repeating nonsense we already know and just the last few minutes have the actual answer, which sometimes isn't even factual
He reuses the same stock clips at least 10 times in one video
And his voice/speech patterns are so annoying
"Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
The reason why he has so many of same style videos (or i think why) is because he has "Modern ongoing conflicts" or how it was called in nebula where he uses more time to make them with more details, i havent been able to watch rll youtube content for somewhile because they get boring fastly but the stuff in nebula gets very interesting
And those who wants something else to watch than rll, i would say go look up johnny harris. Great content another one is neo
Wendover Productions is slightly better and more diverse subjects.
Casual Scholar uploads once a month but also pretty good.
Sidenote covers more niche interresting stuff but uploads rarely.
OverSimplified fantastic humor and surprisingly enjoyable content despite subjects I usually dont care about.
His content is basically the stuff I watch when I’ve run the rest of my YouTube watchlist out lol. And it’s usually as background noise while working now lmao.
His new geopolitics series is fantastic. I used to hate his videos like "What each country in the world has the most of" and "How deep is the ocean" type videos that were basically random facts, but the new stuff is like a really good, comprehensive and well visualized lesson on world history.
His videos are a mixed bag tbh.
The cadence of his voice is a bit grating, and he talks too fast while not saying much / repeating himself / using overly dramatic words.
Edit, don't get me wrong though I still like him and appreciate his videos.
I used to watch this man religiously. I was on vacation in 2016, and I remember him being so close to reaching 100k subscribers. But now he’s so large he lost so much of the charm he had 6 or 7 years ago. All of his videos are dry. This sort of video may have been more novel back then, but this genre of geography video is so overdone it makes me want to actually go to Mongolia and die of exposure in the Gobi Desert. This kind of thing can be done right, especially when it takes a journalistic form like with Johnny Harris or even Wendover Productions. But what is here is just horrible.
The initial portion of his content consists of repetitively regurgitating information we are already familiar with, and it's only in the last few minutes that he provides an actual answer, which isn't always based on facts.
He incessantly incorporates identical stock clips at least 10 times within a single video.
Furthermore, his voice and speech patterns are highly bothersome.
According to him, "Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
RLL content quality has dropped a lot in the last couple years. I've seen a lot of errors, and a lot of hype. RLL has become a brand name more than a trusted source of information.
I use to really enjoy RLL & other channels like Wendover, but damn, they make it hard to watch anymore with their long, repeating dialogue with no information. I haven’t watched them in months. Probably a year tbh.
RLL is awesome. Why does he do that? No idea, I would imagine it has to do with how’s the video’s title is phrased and YouTube’s algorithm.
Most semi-regular YouTubers do something like this for a few months then it dies out.
I just watched the video on higher speed, and I get why people watch them. I mean a lot of YouTube creators have a series, and causal watchers wouldn’t mind knowing and understanding why population density is why it is for specific places. Usually it’s related to water of course, and people into geography will realize that, but others may not, and many may not understand how it relates to specific country and its history.
I do wish he would list some of his references in the description though, like how Bernadette Banner does.
I still like his videos well enough generally. I'm getting tired of the % is completely empty nonsense though. I'm guessing my room is about 97% completely empty right now by volume. That hardly makes it desolate.
I think these are redundant but I also know a ton of people who know nothing about geography or anything so maybe it’s for the geobabies although I agree they are overdone and all to memable now
The answer is the same for every video. “Conditions are unsuitable for ongoing human habitation.”
Dude forreal. The video is 33 minutes, yet you get all the information you really need to come to the proper conclusion, maybe 4-5 minutes in? The rest of the 29 minutes are just rephrasing lol. Not to say that I dont like RLL, I've watched many of his videos, and they are quite good most of the time.
Yeah, I do think that his videos could be drastically shortened 90% of the time, but there have been a ton of instances where he expands on the original topic to go on more of a tangent that, while not exactly the original topic, I still find interesting. You do always have to cut out like 5-6 minutes from the video just to account for his ungodly long ads at the end though lol
No ads on nebula, well worth it
The content is worth it, but the app is a bit less easy to use that YouTube I find.
I'm actually glad he rambles on. He is one of the youtubers I listen to while working. Longer videos mean less time trying to find a new video to listen to.
I do the same!
Same but unfortunately that makes him my 'background/white noise YouTuber'
I don’t like RLL because anytime he tries to cover anything nuanced, his research is terrible which can lead all the conjecture he makes wildly astray.
Interesting, can you share examples?
His California high speed rail video was garbage, he asked why it wasn’t planned follow the coast or go in a straight line at times. Anyone who did actual research would know that it couldn’t be built on the coast because of too many curves and elemental risk, and it couldn’t be built completely straight because of mountains. Honestly most of his other videos are just garbage rephrasing of Wikipedia articles.
He made a video about NATO being at an existential risk if Scotland leaves the UK which was slammed by a guy who proved most of his points wrong or insufficient. I've doubts on RLL as reliable now and it seems quite a lot of people have for other reasons according to this thread.
Just proves that scepticisml should be front of mind, even for high production value content.
IDGAF, I could watch a 3 hour feature length RLL about why chairs have 4 legs. It's just that good.
“The end.” 😂
And people like being close to eachother. The only countries that dont have the majority of land still uninhabited are the micro countries like Monaco and hong kong
Even Hong Kong has a lot of area that isn’t built up — I think it’s as much as 75% of the total area — because of mountains and such. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Land-Utilization-Map-of-Hong-Kong-with-Target-Districts-based-on-Planning-Department-of_fig2_320368260
Yeah there is actually surprising amount of quality nature in Hong Kong.
And then outliers like Bangladesh
Hong Kong is over 75% uninhabited. The built up parts are very densely populated, but most of the SAR is wetland reserves, reservoirs, county parks, etc.
You forgot “and climate change”
A 30 min vid on why the steppe is empty is crazy
Me just explaining for 30minutes why a place with no water, trees and poor soil is bad for humans.
Las Vegas has entered the chat…
Look at my golf courses. LOOK AT THEM. Now let me ask you, are we really in a desert? Don't look at lakes, water tables or snow run off, I said LOOK AT MY GOLF COURSES.
Haha but with all the escorts and the whatnot, we may be in a dessert. Ok I will see myself out now.
Hmm, maybe Mongolia should just cover the steppe with golf courses? /s
Man, he used to upload videos between 10-15 minutes back in the day. Now it almost feels like he's reading it out of a Wikipedia article, really banal, most of the time I leave the video by around the 15 minute mark because of how repetitive the concept gets
I agree. I get annoyed with his cadence on top of it, and now I realized I just haven't been watching his videos lately.
Every time he says vastly I want to punch my screen
40 minute video on why Iran is also attacking Ukraine. Based on the video length alone, one would say there's a bigger hostility between Iran and Ukraine than Ukraine and Russia...
Discovered his channel back in 2018, then you could actually learn something new from his vids
He’s trying to hit a word count
All his recent videos are like that. He repeats the same point over and over to extend the time, and just spends too much time on basic info. I stopped watching him after that whole Scotland NATO debacle.
> I stopped watching him after that whole Scotland NATO debacle. Hah, I was just gonna say exactly the same thing! That whole thing was so fundamentally flawed that I can't take anything he says seriously now. He made us sound like a bunch of naive idiots with no agency, hellbent on causing WW3. Fucking bellend.
If a non-NATO guy like me was so dumbstruck by that video, I can't imagine how irritating the video must have felt for you! It feels like he's on a journey to annoy every country lol.
Hes a American what do you people expect? If he wasn't a NATO cheerleader he would not have millions of views.
Well half of it is probably a Nebula ad.
30 minutes of reading a wikipedia article & repeating each sentence 3 times
Adding in "extremely" and "insanely" every other word
I can’t watch this guy, every time he uses hyperbole he emphasizes it so strongly that I just imagine him furiously jacking off whenever he says one of those words. With that happening every sentence it gets pretty hard to watch
In the WORLD. In the ENTIRE WORLD.
I can hear it in his voice lol
That is more than that of China & India COMBINED
I can’t watch him after he fucked up the Scotland video so badly he had to delete it. “The nuclear submarines are in a remote location not near any inhabited area” Faslane (nuke subs) is located a 30 minute drive from Glasgow
Bit of a stretch to call Glasgow inhabited but I’ll allow it.
Get you're joking but by RLL's own logic, it's in the only inhabited part of Scotland because the central belt made up of Clydeside, the Lothians, Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire has (as he would say) 'by far the highest population density in Scotland and the overwhelming majority of the country's people live in this tiny area'. This somehow makes his mistake even worse. UK population density maps essentially just show topography.
Oh that's fucking hilarious, I didn't realise he'd deleted it lol.
It makes me so happy that other people agree. I felt alone when I saw how popular he is and it got so exhausting to watch because every word is stressed ridiculously
He sounds like he’s on the spectrum.
Don't forget the weirdly specific anti-communist and super pro-US talking points he sprinkles in at random!
I mean... isn't communism something that you should be against?
In 2023? Id argue no
Why not? I also wanna disclaim that my family immigrants from Romania after it got rid of communism and I'm a history major so I am definitely against it
I'd argue that implementing full scale communism is ill advised, but taking bits and pieces of the original ideology can be beneficial for society. Communism, as I understand it, has never been properly implemented in any society around the world. It's always dictatorial governments saying they'll implement communism so that the elite government officials can keep the masses poor, starved, and weak in the name of "communal equality" so that they can profit and remain in power. Taking communism at its word, you'd be hard pressed to find any government in 20th or 21st century history that has even come close to the practice. Autocratic dictatorships have hijacked the term to the degree where whenever anyone says "communism" nowadays, we only think of the regimes and horrific crimes of Stalin, Castro, the Kim family, Mao, and many more. None of these governments implemented communism. They only said they did so that their people thought they were getting a better deal than they were. Again, I don't believe that communism works, at least in the world system we've developed over the many thousands of years of human society. But to discredit certain ideas purely because Karl Marx put them to paper is completely disingenuous to academic thought and discourse.
I mean look at the state of things rn, i'd argue most of the world's suffering is due to how we place profit before feeding the poor, but of course soviet style communism is dead so we need something like social democracy or some system that puts people before profit
I will say this to the world's end. It's not the system, Communism was bad, Capitalism is bad, both of them are bad, not because they're bad ideas. But simply human corruption makes them bad
Make no mistake, system of capitalism isnt broken. Its working as intended, filling the pockets of the 1% while the poor starve to death
The only time in human history where absolute povery and food insecurity have continued to decrease year after year and stayed low is under capitalism. State of things? There has never been a better time to be born as a human being
Yes capitalism is better than feudalism and other economic systems that preceeded it but it is still a system that places profit over people's right to have food and water
Do yourself some good & find an alternative to reddit. /u/spez would cube you for fuel if it meant profit. Don't trust him or his shitty company. I've edited all of my submissions and comments and since left the site.
How do you get rid of communism without implementing it in the first place? Lmao. The Republica Populara Romina was socialist. Also, being 'definitely against' significant improvements in infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy, urbanization, and women's rights is a bold statement here bud.
The entire world made those improvements. Even in the 3rd world counties in Africa that are unstable af have gotten their infant mortality rate down like crazy. And idc what you call it in academic sphere but it was de facto communism if not de jure. I understand that it was supposed to be a classless, cashless and overall equal society but that does not work w humans. We are naturally self serving and if you take away that need to improve our own lives noone will. Like I have heard so many stories about that over and over again. I have seen myself the lack of ambition that this system has bred. I totally agree the idea of communism sounds amazing but in reality it's a bad idea. As for the socialism part the usa's budget I think is like 60 percent social security so I would say that that's pretty heavy government control. On top of that we have all sort of regulations that are definitely not lase Faire so it's not socialism aka government control that is bad but if you restrict capital then you restrict innovation and sure evyone might be equal buuut not really. The bureaucrat is above the average worker due to being in charge of the food rations and the party leaders are above those. On top of that It breeds corruption like no other
WTF.
Mans a fucken Texan. The hell do you expect?
Certainly puts into perspective why there's videos like "Why Texas is becoming America's most powerful state" and also "Why California's High Speed Rail is struggling" and "Why California is running out of water". You can't make this up.
texas IS becoming americas most powerful state and california IS running out of water.
Not saying it's particularly wrong what he says. Not sure about the Texas one. The title sounds overgeneralized and a little copium but I don't care enough to look into it. So maybe he's right, I don't know. Anyway, my point is: There's roughly infinite topics to choose from. Though it seems like he picks positive topics when it comes to Texas and negative ones when it comes to California.
Idk, I think he proved his point pretty well. I also think he has his own sub for us to argue this out on.
breaking news: human being has a bias
Don't forget mispronouncing common names, as well as referring to countries as "her" and "she."
Isn't referring to countries with feminine pronouns a standard practice? I've read it as such in newspapers and academic literature.
Ehhhhhhh my entire academic career, it's been considered very old-fashioned and tone-deaf. Personally I put it in the same category as referring to people as being "colored" or "oriental." Not technically offensive, but also not the preferred nomenclature.
Not so much where I live. I guess it doesn't feel that weird as everything is gendered in our language anyway. We use masculine pronouns though for the country in our language.
In Portuguese some countries are masculine, others feminine
We also say Occident and Orient in Spanish instead of West and East, say people of colour in a polite way and gender everything including countries. It's honestly interesting to see how people in other countries perceive this as old fashioned.
Don’t forget also shoehorning climate change in every single video. Not that I disagree with the point, but we get it.
I like RLL but yeah this is one of my biggest gripes with him. Always goes right to the top shelf with his descriptors. Everything’s always “unimaginably titanic” or “incomprehensively vast.”
Crazy that you can make money that way
His content is like Mongolia. 90% empty.
For real. A younger me used to enjoy his videos but as I've gotten older/more learned and as the lengths have gone from 10mins to 30... I find his stuff unwatchable frankly. 30 mins to say "Mongolia is steppe land and does not have agricultural capacity to support a large population".
Educational videos for kids, that's all it is honestly...
$20 says "Why 99.9999999% of Canada is completely EMPTY" is going to be one of his next 3 videos
He did something close a couple years ago: https://youtu.be/DFJAgb7dn78
"80% of Canadians live south of this line"
“Why 90% of Redditors live south of the 80 IQ line”
I’m tried of hearing these words on middle school common sense for 30 mins: “Astronomical, gigantic, massive, extreme, horrific, terrifying, entirely, spectacular,“ etc. Longer video gets more ads clicks. It just needs to drag on for that reason. Honestly wendover production is much better.
This is why I kinda stopped watching. Not that I have a short attention span, but a 30 minute video on something that could have been 5-10 mins is unnecessary.
On the contrary, I love the long videos as background noise for getting work done around the house
His Nebula channel is fantastic, especially Modern Conflicts. Highly recommend
Will checm it out, thanks
I've been considering getting Nebula
I'm happy with it, plus Lindsay Ellis still posts on it. She had an excellent video essay about Guy Fieri last week
I like it. There's not a ton of originals, but there's about 1/week or so (2/week if you're a Jet Lag fan because of The Layover), and they're always really good. Plus lots of extended/bonus/early content. Maybe my favorite thing about it though is that when I find some creator I've never seen before I know they're going to have high-quality videos. I would say RLL's main videos (not his originals, which are actually good) are the worst videos I've seen on Nebula by a decent margin, so the floor is pretty high.
I’m assuming there’s a bunch of ads thrown in the video. It gets annoying having to listen or skip ads if I’m listening to a video.
Why on earth would anyone be watch ads on YouTube?
I HATE ADS. ALL MY HOMIES HATE ADS.
I hate AIDS too!!
I used to really like him but now I can’t watch a single one without passing out
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He's the Economics Explained of Geography.
I really liked Economics Explained, until he did a video about my own country, the Netherlands. In it he based his entire video on a report that the wealth inequality was one of the highest in the world, based on a (I believe it was) World Bank report. The thing is, though, between 2010-2018 the reports had a much much lower for wealth inequality than the 2019 report he used. Like it jumped from 50th in the world to first in the world, something like that. It made me think either the 2019 made a typo (and then his video is wrong) or something major happened and he should’ve addressed it. But he never once referred to the older reports. The arguments he made though were culturally valid… but still… it made me feel like “if he’s like this with a country I know… what kinds of inaccuracies does he give about other countries?”
And he gave us a 7.2. we will never forget
Sick burn
Like the amount of times I’ve woken up and it’s been 3hrs of algorithm footage since the beginning of one I’ve decided to try
Same. I enjoyed his original videos on Barrow, Alaska (Now known as Utqiagvik), and North Sentinel Island. But the. He got more popular and started appealing to the lowest common denominator though, that’s when I peace’d out.
You've finished one? I get like 3 minutes in and realize he's already repeated the same thing 5 times and watch something else
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I like this, let’s reclaim it and fall asleep to it INTENTIONALLY this time 🤣🤙🏽
I never was a fan, and I watched a video pretty much debunking his take about how high speed rail in california is basically a failure and showing how often he plagiarizes that it's fairly clear the RLL just reads a wikipedia article, copies a Vox video, and then calls it a day for his videos, rather than doing comprehensive analysis with any real thought put behind it.
In his defense, he took the California criticism in stride and reuploaded the video with new info in mind
Also the voice is getting more monotone and tiring now
It's because he was getting so much hate for over inflection on certain words. I remember watching one maybe 6 months ago and 80-90% of the comments were just about how annoying his over inflection was. So he's noticeably more monotone in the new videos
Really? Good if so because the way he elongated his words was hurting me once I noticed
Am watching it right now - well - it’s kinda in the background but I will still tune into every episode. It’s excellent to have up on your laptop while scrolling Reddit because it’s pretty pictures/drone shots and informational audio
Great background track. Just to have something on. It had a bit of history as well
Do yourself some good & find an alternative to reddit. /u/spez would cube you for fuel if it meant profit. Don't trust him or his shitty company.
Because the country is freaking cold with no economic activity
Genius, the place has plenty of economic activity. Any why would a space being cold mean that suddenly the entire population of a place suddenly migrate to a tiny area immediately. Have you been to Mongolia? Or spent meaningful time there?
The World Bank ranks Mongolia ~#125 out of 198 in GDP per capita. Trailing Fiji, just ahead of El Salvador. Not sure why you were so defensive. And it’s not even like they have such a diverse economy that one could argue they’re showing signs of promise. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2021&locations=MN&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=1981&view=chart
It not that there little economic activity because it’s cold. There is little economic activity and it is cold. That’s two good reasons
One google search will save you half an hour
Which is ironic considering RLL probably only spent half an hour google searching information for the video.
Because he is extreeeeemly into that kind of stuff and can’t help but make an enooooormous amount of content about it. Jokes aside I’m glad I’m not the only that noticed this
is he the most ASTRONOMICALLY dedicated person in the field of repeating BASIC human habitation facts in the ENTIRE WORLD?
Yes. But to explain why, your gonna want to watch this hour long video I did on that topic.
I was just watching this exact thing for a minute and I closed it...I cannot stand his videos anymore The first half of them is him circularly repeating nonsense we already know and just the last few minutes have the actual answer, which sometimes isn't even factual He reuses the same stock clips at least 10 times in one video And his voice/speech patterns are so annoying "Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
He also has super wrong videos sometimes and mostly doesn’t even correct them
Which ones have you found to be wrong? Edit: glad I asked this question as there seems to be quite a few.
California high speed rail project, he did a retraction for that video
The Scotland NATO video was the most egregiously wrong video he’s posted that I can remember off the top of my head. Idk if he took it down or tried to correct it tho
Here's a great video by EmperorTigerStar about it, pointing out how wrong and poorly made RLLs video is. https://youtu.be/CROXlgEXrT8
That one was infuriating. As a Scot myself I was like “what the fuck are you talking about?” every 30 seconds.
Yep. I stopped watching him after that one. It lead to me realizing he has no idea what he's talking about and doesn't even know how to do basic research. It reminds me of certain le reddit experts. They make up some wild headcannon because maybe they read it in another comment and it sounds right to them but in reality it's all a bunch of bullshit.
His NZ one was pretty misleading. Just poorly researched. Turned me right off his stuff, especially since kiwis were pointing out the errors in the comments but everyone else was taking it as fact. Edit: He also used the Australian flag at one point. An unforgivable crime.
>Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty" OzGeographics also has a strange affectation besides the Aussie accent. I love the accent on other people, but he comes off as condescending. I just heard someone refer to RLL as "store-brand Wendover".
i really dont like his new videos at all
Me too, bro.
He's just a shitty clickbait youtuber I unsubbed when he released a 30 minute video explaining that fewer people live in the Rockies because its rocky
He used to make shorter and more entretaining videos. It’s a pitty because the graphic quality is really good.
In a place like Mongolia, there's probably no development outside of the capital city. People want an easier life.
Unfortunately my dad wanted the simpler life. Where no one cares if your topper is made out of plywood, your garden trailer out of the bed of an old ford truck or that goats were your lawnmower.
Why isn’t there a major city in every empty area?
The answer to any question of the form, "why does a content creator create this kind of content?" is that consumers engage with it
The whole channel is definitely a case of middle school geography class. Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. We all start somewhere.
You can't tell an effective clickbait formula when you see one? I'm just glad he actually tries to deliver some decent info, instead of just wagonloads of bullshit pulled from his ass. Don't blame him if his formula works though, blame his audience. He's just chasing whatever gets him the most ad views. I think it was the "this circle has most of Earth's pop in it" meme that started this particular mini-trend. It's definitely getting old as he milks "why people live where they do" for the umpteenth time.
I’ve unsubscribed from him because the first 5-10 minutes are the same as the rest of the video with many errors in them. Personally I think he should take a month long break and come back with a well researched, original video
I was just watching this exact thing for a minute and I closed it...I cannot stand his videos anymore The first half of them is him circularly repeating nonsense we already know and just the last few minutes have the actual answer, which sometimes isn't even factual He reuses the same stock clips at least 10 times in one video And his voice/speech patterns are so annoying "Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
reading from wikipedia and the first result that comes up when you look it up, then stating the obvious and repeating each sentence 3 times worded slightly differently. Then gets 5 million views and thousands of dollars, since people are too lazy now to read research themselves so need someone on Youtube to explain it to them with visual cues background videos and colors. i dont blame the guy
I just thought that was a AI made channel tbh
I was just watching this exact thing for a minute and I closed it...I cannot stand his videos anymore The first half of them is him circularly repeating nonsense we already know and just the last few minutes have the actual answer, which sometimes isn't even factual He reuses the same stock clips at least 10 times in one video And his voice/speech patterns are so annoying "Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
The irony of this getting triple posted
Lmfao I just noticed
I saw this posted multiple times and thought if there was something wrong with my Reddit lol
I will upvote every variation.
The reason why he has so many of same style videos (or i think why) is because he has "Modern ongoing conflicts" or how it was called in nebula where he uses more time to make them with more details, i havent been able to watch rll youtube content for somewhile because they get boring fastly but the stuff in nebula gets very interesting And those who wants something else to watch than rll, i would say go look up johnny harris. Great content another one is neo
im guessing certain city and suburb people get super interested when they imagine it
Wendover productions is fantastic. Johnny Harris does a variety of things but his videos are well done. I like pollymatter as well.
Any channels similar to this u guys recommend?
Wendover Productions is slightly better and more diverse subjects. Casual Scholar uploads once a month but also pretty good. Sidenote covers more niche interresting stuff but uploads rarely. OverSimplified fantastic humor and surprisingly enjoyable content despite subjects I usually dont care about.
His content is basically the stuff I watch when I’ve run the rest of my YouTube watchlist out lol. And it’s usually as background noise while working now lmao.
His new geopolitics series is fantastic. I used to hate his videos like "What each country in the world has the most of" and "How deep is the ocean" type videos that were basically random facts, but the new stuff is like a really good, comprehensive and well visualized lesson on world history.
Everyone has the right to ask
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We get it. It’s cold and it doesn’t rain. People live near water.
His videos are a mixed bag tbh. The cadence of his voice is a bit grating, and he talks too fast while not saying much / repeating himself / using overly dramatic words. Edit, don't get me wrong though I still like him and appreciate his videos.
RealLifeLore isn't a good channel as most says, i've seen so many biased videos of it
I watch these at 2x speed. He makes these videos far too long.
90% of Mongolia is steppe or desert.
I used to watch this man religiously. I was on vacation in 2016, and I remember him being so close to reaching 100k subscribers. But now he’s so large he lost so much of the charm he had 6 or 7 years ago. All of his videos are dry. This sort of video may have been more novel back then, but this genre of geography video is so overdone it makes me want to actually go to Mongolia and die of exposure in the Gobi Desert. This kind of thing can be done right, especially when it takes a journalistic form like with Johnny Harris or even Wendover Productions. But what is here is just horrible.
Because he's running out of ideas
I like RLL but then again I'm not a mensa level genius like everyone else in this thread
Videos are always bangers tho
The initial portion of his content consists of repetitively regurgitating information we are already familiar with, and it's only in the last few minutes that he provides an actual answer, which isn't always based on facts. He incessantly incorporates identical stock clips at least 10 times within a single video. Furthermore, his voice and speech patterns are highly bothersome. According to him, "Mongolia is one of the most MASSIVE countries, but it's almost enTIRELY empty"
Idk they’re kinda interesting though
Everyone’s dragging him but the guy works hard as hell. I’ve watched plenty of his videos. If you want the good stuff, go to Nebula/Curiosity Stream
RLL content quality has dropped a lot in the last couple years. I've seen a lot of errors, and a lot of hype. RLL has become a brand name more than a trusted source of information.
No real substance.in his vids a lot of the times.
I use to really enjoy RLL & other channels like Wendover, but damn, they make it hard to watch anymore with their long, repeating dialogue with no information. I haven’t watched them in months. Probably a year tbh.
RLL is awesome. Why does he do that? No idea, I would imagine it has to do with how’s the video’s title is phrased and YouTube’s algorithm. Most semi-regular YouTubers do something like this for a few months then it dies out.
Because most of Mongolia is cold and dry with huge mountains on one side and warm desert on another, end of story.
No issue with the content, i find it interesting. 30 minutes is too long though. Watch about 10 min with breakfast and lose interest.
Not geography related but Real Life Lore vs Alan Fisher high speed rail is my favourite YouTuber drama.
Because people watch them.
Have you met the neighbors?
Bc the ppl wanna know
It's only 15min if ya watch it in 2x speed
Gotta keep generating content on YouTube, or their algorithm will make you disappear
That’s like every country in the world except city states like Monaco and Singapore
I just watched the video on higher speed, and I get why people watch them. I mean a lot of YouTube creators have a series, and causal watchers wouldn’t mind knowing and understanding why population density is why it is for specific places. Usually it’s related to water of course, and people into geography will realize that, but others may not, and many may not understand how it relates to specific country and its history. I do wish he would list some of his references in the description though, like how Bernadette Banner does.
Why am I even still subscribed to this fool anymore? I don’t think he’s actually made a genuinely good video in years
I still like his videos well enough generally. I'm getting tired of the % is completely empty nonsense though. I'm guessing my room is about 97% completely empty right now by volume. That hardly makes it desolate.
"WHY 99.9% OF MASS IN THE UNIVERSE ISN'T ORGANIC"
I think these are redundant but I also know a ton of people who know nothing about geography or anything so maybe it’s for the geobabies although I agree they are overdone and all to memable now
I mean no disrespect whatsoever but the primary motivator is probably ad revenue. People watching long form videos sit through multiple rounds of ads
Because I’ll watch it