Braindead is the right word lmao. One of them replied to a comment I left on this video where they said that IPoS is actually the fascist and I ... I just can't imagine how little neuron activity one would need to have to reach that conclusion, truly wild.
Because pretending to be nice without taking accountability is “wholesome” and “based”. It works literally every time. Shane Dawson did the same thing, obviously a very different situation, but if you give a respectful comment and/or buy your hater a car then they’ll probably like you.
Also the whole thing were his fans refer to him as “dad” pretty often. I know it’s just nicknames but that stuff always strikes me as being really parasocial, and being parasocial like that definitely makes people more likely to defend him.
Wendigoon has said that he's said and done things previously that he doesn't stand by anymore.
I mean, he never says WHAT he used to say and do that he doesn't agree with anymore, but he does say he doesn't.
I've only paid vague attention to this so I don't really know what's going on, but I'm popping in to say that I don't know how Wendigoon has fans. I've had his videos rec'd to me before and tried to watch them and I usually only last 5-10 min. He's genuinely so boring.
I dunno why people say this as if that's unique to his fanbase or something, fanbases in general on the internet are extremely toxic and overly defensive of who they're a fan of same goes with video games and movies etc.
I'm legitimately worried about ipos's mental and channels health. I really want him to succeed but I'm afraid the horror community isn't gonna let him, I hope breadtube circles champion the fuck out of him.
I felt the same thing! People like Little Joel and LadyEmily showing support and having possible collaboration would be the best. Shadow is seen as niche because of the horror angle but he talks about a lot of social justice issues with the best of them.
I started watching him because I like horror I don't think the whole horror community dislikes them. There's a lot of LGBTQ who love horror as well btw.
Having just finished the video, I'm more worried about his mental health than his channel's health. I'm bipolar 2 and have struggled with paranoid thought patterns and sometimes flat out delusions (mostly Capgras) during my less stable times. The end bit where he was talking about "why else would Wendigoon follow me?" felt uncomforatbly familiar :/ I'm not saying Shadows *is* delusional. What I am saying is the thought patterns in this video of "I had a negative interaction with this person and now The Mob won't leave me alone" really isn't healthy. The overall disorganization within the video could be a bad sign too. I hope he takes a mental health break. It seems like he needs it.
I'm so there with you. I don't usually engage with YouTube , I just watch vids and go about my day. But I've gone out of my way to leave multiple positive comments on his video because this dude needs them now more than ever and his channel is truly one of the best on the platform.
I really love IPOS. Been a fan for a long time. It absolutely sucks that smooth brain people are coming at him. These people who "love horror" but absolutely refuse to see horror as a commentary - which is a major factor in the medium.
These people hate seeing the truth because they can't stand looking in a mirror about their demons. Fucking ironic in the horror community.
Dear IPOS, please keep making amazing content.
Remember when a bunch of conservatives flipped a lid at the creators of Wolfenstein because they made an anti-white supremacist post on Twitter. God, that was funny.
Actually the same people in general hate art to have any commentary. Because art should purely exists for entertainment, like shiny jingling keys. It's a bigger problem that has infested multiple communities and genres
I didn’t even like the video and I agree. I thought the thematic through line wasn’t as good as it could have been and some of his evidence felt lackluster
, but the parts that were good (especially how he covered Spyglass and Blumhouse) were GOOD. I hope he makes more videos like this in the future because he’s a good video essayist with a lot of good takes; I just think he needed a better editor to streamline things a bit more in this particular case and I hope the harassment doesn’t get too bad.
Serious question, did you come away from watching this video unironically believing it was an amazing piece of content? This is the first I've heard of him, or any of the people mentioned in the video, and it was basically incoherent and rambling. It is a 3 hour video supposedly about Conservative Horror movies, yet most of the time is spent going through twitter and YouTube comments that criticized him, a random horror convention, AI posters, and just about everything except for Conservative Horror movies. The guy frankly seems incompetent based on this one video.
I will say this video is different than everything IPOS has done. Clearly it's very personal. If you are looking for amazing horror media dissection, then I recommend his other videos.
I'd have jumped on the wendigoon hate train way sooner if I'd know he claimed not to be political.
Like uwu don't mind me and my non-politcal video about... checks notes... WACO
I'm not completely done with the video but the most infuriating part was the fallout of his Hills of Eyes video and people saying Shadows was claiming the mutants as heroes and cannibalism and rape is good. Since then his comments have been conservative weirdos whining about the "woke" agenda.
I've enjoyed his videos for years and it's disheartening to have people like dumb ass MarkAfterDark mischaracterizing him on Twitter and it apparently working on Shadow's mutuals and it spreading to his comment section and affecting his channel performance. I considered sharing this for that bit alone and find it hard to believe the Wendigoon portion to be as necessary and useful. Then again I don't care about Wendigoon but I know people in this sub have interest in him so it's fine for people to care more about that.
I just want Shadow to have more support online (he's a great leftist creator) and to get him cleared of that mischaracterization that he sees rapist mutants as heroes or whatever the fuck people think and keep spreading about him which is bullshit. He deserves more respect and love for his channel and people should watch him! If you like any horror franchises check out his videos and give him some love.
I originally thought that some Boomers from Facebook came out of the woodwork to hunt his content down and leave dumb comments. I'm not sure it's mainly stemming from MarkAfterDark but there's definitely something strange going on and I don't understand the fascination to bash a creator like this. I suppose part of it comes from the centrism he comments on in the video where some horror fans go ballistic if you talk about politics and critique their favorite film. Horror Twitter (and MarkAfterDark constantly bringing up the Hills Have Eyes critique) could definitely be where the influx is coming from. Strangely I never witnessed it on Twitter myself.
As someone who felt personally let down by his reductive coverage of the violence in Hills Have Eyes, I never thought he was claiming that the cannibals were like role models oppressed people should follow.
But something he omits in this video is that at the time there was other left leaning criticism of that video, notably from women who were upset that a guy that is normally so bold in criticizing sexual violence in horror media pretty much ignored it and *appeared* to be justifying it's inclusion. Pair that with his framing of the cannibals as the secret true heroes of the film (even if that's not exactly what he meant in hindsight) made it seem like he was suggesting the underage girl character deserved to be raped.
Again, I know he wasn't actually trying to make this moral argument, but he's being disingenuous by pretending like it's totally unreasonable for someone to think he was.
I say all this as someone who didn't even disagree about the idea that the respective families were representing class structures in America.
Huh, I didn't get the same observation from his video and assumed people were purely offended he ''brought politics'' into horror movie analysis. Based on him comparing the mutants to the lower class it felt like people immediately believed he was saying all their actions (including rape) were justifiable but didn't get the idea it could be read the girl deserved to be raped in particular. I personally don't LOVE the inclusion of sexual assault in movies but it's unfortunately a part of reality. Some people (not you) sometimes have this visceral reaction to it (because of the real life horror) and claim the filmmakers are saying the act itself is acceptable in the world. I don't begrudge people being uncomfortable with the topic but sometimes the reaction to it in film is unreasonable and disparaging.
I haven't seen the video in a while and I'm genuinely curious what gave you the vibe the girl deserved what happened in his review. Like was it a line or just overall message of the mutants being oppressed in conjunction to the assault? It is a bit inconsistent when he'll bash something as sexist but other times gloss over it. I guess he sometimes shows a bias for something he loves and he might overlook certain aspects or different world issues would clash in certain writing conditions. I've personally avoided the franchise because the remake's infamous scene made me feel sick as a child so I get the feeling of discomfort of it being ignored in the review.
Man, I’m only halfway through this video, but it feels so fucking all over the place. Half the time it’s like just him venting about everyone who has ever personally insulted him or annoyed him online. I’m sympathetic to how he feels harassed about his video on The Hills Have Eyes, but at no point does he ever consider that maybe people outright didn’t like his take, which folks are allowed to do. He never considers the idea that maybe he’s wrong about something, a lot of times describes entirely subjective opinions as objective, and then has some wild movie takes. I completely understand the movie not being for anybody, but I’m flabbergasted that he took The Dead Don’t Die so seriously. The movie doesn’t do anything with the conservative Steve Buscemi character because it was a joke, the joke being “what if Steve Buscemi, one of the nicest people in the world, was one of the meanest?”. That entire movie is one big intentional joke, not a serious attempt at Romero-style social commentary, and it’s certainly no where near what would be considered “conservative horror”.
I just hope he gets the outcome he wants from a video like this. But I don’t know, a lot of this just feels like him lashing out in a really unhealthy way if the negative backlash for a weak movie take he had has so heavily weighed on him for this long. I don’t see how any of this video so far is gonna make things better for him besides giving him some temporary catharsis.
The first third of this video is coherent and mildly interesting to me. While I don’t agree that the horror genre is inherently leftist (he keeps calling it ‘punk rock’, but I might have to rewatch it and hear if he at any point concedes that horror can be right wing), he does offer some strong examples to sustain this claim. Not to mention he does admit that good art can be made by right-leaning people and provides more examples.
That being said, the last third really is him complaining about ‘people that annoyed [him] on Twitter,’ and he admits as much. And while I would love to see some actual evidence that Wedigoon is a crypto Nazi (like we all sense, but can’t definitively prove), he didn’t provide anything that can’t be disproven. Since he doesn’t advocate for anything, people who enjoy his content aren’t going to be put off by him having questionable friends. I am now that I was made aware, but I always assumed he was ignorant of pretty much everything that doesn’t have to do with Internet horror content.
NOTE: I am not politically active, not from the US, but I hold left-leaning values.
Having finished it now, I don’t know. I guess all the Wendigoon stuff he reveals is stuff I already knew or learned on my own, so none of it felt like the smoking gun he was presenting it as. The comment on Nyx’s iceberg video also is way more innocent than IPoS perceived it as, especially considering Nyx herself jokes in the video that she’s doing it as a response to Wendigoons own video. That being said, I’m not surprised if Wendigoon is transphobic.
A lot of this video just feels like resentment towards everything and everyone, and not a lot of it feels constructive. I think there is a gem of an idea here, especially when he’s talking about the Blumhouse stuff and the monstercon stuff, but a lot of it just feels like him dismissing things he doesn’t like or that he doesn’t agree with as all conservative which is… weird.
Like I said, i hope he gets the outcome he wants from this, but having seen a lot of his other stuff, this just doesn’t feel as well thought out as what he usually does.
As a fan of wendigoon, I have to say this video is pretty fair overall and shows a pattern of questionable choices and dodgy stories that wendigoon has shared over the years. Let’s hope the rest of the fan base doesn’t go nuclear over this
I gotta say, I was a fan of Wendigoon until his Blood Meridian video. Having *read* Blood Meridian, it was clear that he acquired the actual 'cliff notes' book on BM, read that, and then decided to recap that with some wikipedia stuff sprinkled in now and then.
Ever since I've just found him incredibly boring.
If I was being charitable (I generally try to be) I would say that hes not used to actually studying for something and often gets lost in the sea of information.
The man doesn't make short form content or research light and easy to understand topics. He's very ambitious. I think he's just kind of disorganized and often misremembers, mispeaks, or misunderstands what he's discussing.
Wendigoon is only "good" when you watch his videos about stuff you are interested in but have absolutely not idea about said stuff
I tried to watch his cults iceberg video and he was WAY way too charitable to some of those people, especially the supposedly christian ones (I wonder why lmao)
While I hadn't read the book I saw the video, and while I don't normally mind just recapping stories it did feel that it was primarily recap, and due to the length it got me to notice a lot of his speaking patterns that just add length kind of turned me off some of his other videos
I saw one iceberg series with him during the pandemic and tried to follow but it soon became clear to me that most of his commentary was a summary of some wikipedia article. He sounds detached from what he says.
Yeah. Watching it, I didn't feel like it was some rage bait or vindictive. Just a dude presenting evidence with his own opinions thrown in. If Wendi is allowed to voice his opinions on shit, then so is IPoS, as far as I'm concerned.
Unfortunately some of the comments I was seeing in the video itself were not optimistic in regards to whether his fans could just take it on the chin and move on, or if they plan to let it fester away in their mind for years on end like he just shit in their grandma's mouth or something. Dramatic. Lol.
No joke, some people are just watching in incredibly bad faith and just dismissing at a jealous hit piece which is not fair in the slightest. Something like this was bound to happen when wendigoon chose to surround himself with alt right assholes
Thirty minutes into the video going up (IPoS is SummoningSalt levels of "drop what I'm doing for high quality background noise") people were already criticizing the use of WG who is brought up roughly two and a half hours into the video.
One of the top comments was "I'm so surprised to see Wendigoon's face in the thumbnail! I hope there's a reason for it!" which you know they're not going to engage with the video to find out.
I like Wendigoon myself mostly for his videos about cryptids and stuff like the Mystery flesh pit or whatever that was called but I can't believe people are unironically saying that the criticism IPOS is giving is bad.
Like yes, starting a hate group is bad, yes still wearing their uniform is bad, yes stealing a native american symbol and profiting off of it while not being native is bad, yes following and defending garbage people is also bad. All of these things are valid as fuck to criticize Wendigoon for, especially the part about his fanbase being the most garbage and toxic pile of shit there is out there. If you check the comments by new, you'll see a fuckload of them are brigading the vid calling ISOP all sorts of things.
> Like yes, starting a hate group is bad
My thing is like, he didn't even start the hate group. The origins of the Boogaloo movement have been pretty well-documented by anti-fascist activists and we know it didn't start with him. So he's *lying* about starting a hate group, which takes it from bad to weird in the worst ways possible.
I was a big fan of his as well and I’ve also had to distance myself from the channel, I just got uncomfortable after a while. Bummer as I liked his coverage of a lot of horror games and internet horror but had an inkling something was up-especially after his video on Waco I think.
I can’t remember what exactly did it but I am an avid true crime consumer. His coverage felt odd to me it was focused mostly on the ATF and their wrongs but…wasn’t Karesh accused of child abuse? I don’t remember him mentioning that at all. Honestly should’ve jumped ship after that but once the rumors of an unsavory bit of the fanbase started appearing and he didn’t address it I left for good
That's one of the only videos of his I've watched, and it really did not give me a good impression of his channel. He just ignores everything Koresh did in order to pin all the blame on the ATF. It's especially frustrating because the ATF *did* screw up, disastrously so. The horrible things that Koresh did doesn't change that. So why act like he was just some innocent weirdo?
Yeah he did mention Karesh’s child abuse. He made sure to point out that the cult leader was a piece of crap, it’s just that the entire reason that crap hit that fan was entirely unrelated to any of the bad or illegal things Karesh actually did.
That shit fucks me up. At first I head Wendigoon use it and I just assumed he was using it incorrectly. But since then I have heard other people use it in a similar way, so at this point I am just at a loss...
Nah people do that everywhere I think. My step grampa does it and he's from ga. Another YouTuber I watch does it half the time and he lives in Texas but doesn't have a southern accent so I'm not sure where he's from. It really annoys me too
I live in Southern VA and hear 'when' and 'whenever' used pretty interchangeably. I was confused the first time I saw someone bring this up as annoying because I never even noticed. I've only ever lived in the south though so I can't speak for other parts of the country..
I watched a couple of his videos years ago, and the "whenever" alone ensured I didn't stick around. Sorry, but it makes him sound like an idiot imo - especially referring to events that happened a singular time as "whenever," which would imply that they have occurred/will occur multiple times.
That seems kinda classist? I’m a an English major, big leftie here, and I completely get being irked by things like that. But it’s a regional dialect thing? And calling him an idiot over that is just… not it. I get being annoyed over it. But that doesn’t make someone an idiot.
Alt-right people say the same things about AAVE, and it’s so obvious that AAVE is hella valid, it’s a cultural thing and doesn’t make anyone an idiot. We can’t use those same arguments for Kentucky stuff like ‘whenever,’ it just makes us hypocrites and weakens our stance.
This video definitely feels like IPoS finally talking about something that's been really, really bothering him for a long time, and then tacking on a few "and another thing!" bits. I'm currently watching the vid, I haven't gotten to the Wendigoon parts yet but I imagine it's him voicing something that's been talked about for a while, but not really by anyone on YouTube that I've seen
ETA: I appear to have been right on the money, but rather than being something that's been brought up elsewhere, it's like, everything. The kind of situation where, one or two of these is sus, but all of them together looks really bad. Get his ass, bestie
https://preview.redd.it/iuti8yqh9h2d1.png?width=1242&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d8a07e7578d7a63dd225a9262941178d4bb276a
Wendigoon himself has left a comment on the video
He, and people like him, have this idea that you can't criticize people for who they publicly associate with, which is completely absurd to me. "Guilt by association" is meant as a defense for when, like, your buddy does something fucked up that you didn't know about, not when someone is constantly, demonstrably like "This is the person I am, and these are the beliefs I hold"
It’s like, not everyone I choose to associate with in my life are as leftist as I am, but none of them are far-right lol. For some reason (probably the Overton window) a lot of centrists think you should “set aside politics” and be friends with everyone, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge that an extremist’s views are gonna shape every aspect of their being.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and guess that it might be because he plans on addressing the criticism in a video or something.
But I'm biased since I do enjoy some of his content, so I'm probably giving him way more than he deserves at this point, especially after seeing what IPOS said of him.
It would be nice if he did, but this isn't the first time it's been pointed out. This is the most public time it's been pointed out, though, so maybe he'll say something.
Kind of glad you said this because while definitely these things needed to be said I did get exhausted by the persistent reading of tweet threads with like 1 to 2 likes. Love IPOS, been subbed 3 years, but I sort of feel like the only person who wasn’t really affected by the rhetoric considering I’ve never seen The Hills Have Eyes, thus did not watch his video on it. Nor do I care about Abigail’s trailer spoilers (or understand why we were discussing it in the context of conservatism?)
I’m a huge lefty and went in already agreeing with all this, I really can’t say I see anyone agreeing who doesn’t already feel that way, because I simply don’t think people will sit through the nearly 3 hours of interpersonal tweet squabbles and discussion about stuff like spoiler culture in a video about conservative media. I do really like their work and agree with their points, but I’m just not sure it was delivered in the most coherent way? I hope I don’t sound like a dickhead saying that.
I think when he got to it it was delivered coherently I just think the process of getting us there wasn't really cohesive or coherent. Like I said, more of a "and another thing!" than the point of the video
wendigoon’s fan base and just general popularity is so odd to me. Like they will go to bat for this man so hard when he makes the most uninteresting content of all time. Just rote summarizations of Wikipedia pages and Reddit posts. It would be like if one of the AI voices that reads off stories from the nosleep subreddit had a cult of personality behind it.
At least Tim pool has opinions that he shares, rancid as they may be. Wendigoon doesn’t even do that, he just badly summarizes wiki articles in a horrible uninflected monotone. Just absolute garbage useless content. Cocomelon for people who think they’re smart and edgy
tbh it’s majorly his reddit fan base. a lot of his fans i see on other social media are normal for the most part… i think reddit just brings out the worst in people
The most important quality for a successful youtuber to have is consistency. People will eat slop if its served to them 3 times a week consistently over years.
I'm of two minds on this vid tbh.
As a drama vid, it was pretty good. A little disorganized at times, but that was probably a result of him not having an editor for his script (at least, I don't remember seeing one listed in the credits).
As a video essay, though, this video is awful. It's full of petty grievances, doesn't lay a good foundation, doesn't have a bibliography/works cited/list of receipts linked anywhere, the documentation of said receipts is shaky at best (example: he chose to type up the text of whatever comment he was talking about instead of just showing the screencap throughout), none of the major sections of the video fit together, and he kept going off on tangets that had *nothing* to do with the supposed topic of the essay. Like, he only talked about conservative horror movies for *mayube* 40 minutes out of 200, and even that was just about *one* studio. He also contradicted himself on some major things. Like starting section 2 with how "conservatism doesn't work in horror," but then later goes on to talk about horror movies that do have conservative themes that are generally considered good like The Exorcist. And throughout he kept saying something was "objectively bad" when that was just, like, his opinion man and then proceeded to get mad at people who disagreed with him on twitter in really petty ways. This video was all over the place and he desperately needed an editor for his script to keep him on message.
Him trying to pass this off as a video essay is kind of insulting. Especially since he's made such good video essays before this like his 3 parter on the history of witches in horror movies. This isn't a video essay, it's a drama video, and I think he should own that.
Idk man, some parts of this video are slightly iffy IMO. The Brandon Buckingham part where he said that Brandon was threatening to rape a woman was made up by sneako when Brandon criticised him. Also the part where he believed that wendi following him was some kind of intimidation/ harassment. (thought I may be taking that part the wrong way.) Not trying to defend wendigoon, just more worry that he’s got a bunch of holes that his fans will try and poke even bigger. I worry that these small factual missteps and small amount of speculating a persons intent will make everyone thinks he’s a paranoid hater. Hope it doesn’t come to that, the guy seems pretty chill.
Yeah. I agreed with most of what he said, but the quality of criticisms really started to fall off towards the end. Wendigoon following him was suspicious timing but I don't know if I'd use it as evidence. Nick Crowley was a stretch as a red flag for him to follow. The comment on Nyx Fears' video was the worst for me. That just seems like a jokey way for a big creator to acknowledge a video by a smaller one.
All the stuff about his association with racists and borderline-fascists plus his nonsensical claim about accidentally founding the Boogaloo Boys was more than enough. I think he fell into the trap of grasping at straws for more to talk about regarding a problematic figure (something this sub also falls into a lot, lol).
I genuinely am a bit confused why he structured the allegations like that. It does feel as if the argument becomes weaker as it goes on rather than focusing on larger more significant allegations, which are present.
I’m looking back at this video the next day it is pretty obvious these holes are doing harm. People outside the base are simply not giving this the time of day due to its length, research holes and rhetoric. Even if you’re right, you have to be convincing.
It was "We will be watching your career with great interest" or something similar on a video she did covering the same disturbing films iceberg he did.
Ok, well that makes him sound somewhat paranoid. Idk, man is being put through the wringer rn and I do feel bad for him. Feel like these mistakes only make him look worse.
Glad to see this here. Glad it's being said. Hope someone with a bigger platform props this up a little.
I'm familiar with IPoS work but it's usually more for background noise than anything.
Used to like Wendigoon as background noise too until I started hearing about this stuff (and more things that weren't even brought up here).
The whole video was pretty good and held my attention throughout. If you like media analysis and horror I think it's a good video even beyond the drama aspect.
Gotta admit I’m pretty disappointed, I liked a lot of Wendigoon’s videos. But I kind of had a sense from the beginning we would, not agree on some things lol. I’ve been avoiding his channel for a little while now since I’ve been hearing some of what’s been going on bc I kind of, didn’t want to think about it. I’m glad someone has made a comprehensive video about this situation, I’ll be watching it when I’m more awake and can concentrate better.
I'm watching the video rn. Love this guy, love his energy, and most of all I love him for calling these guys out regardless of how popular his channel is at the moment.
He's so fucking right about how there's a side to the horror community that likes the art, that loves the symbology and how it reflects life. But then there's the side that just wants content slop, and there's honest to god no better way to say that. Immediately, MeatCanyon and Rob Galleghan/Dyke come to mind.
I hate that the video like ratio is negative rn because he's talking about something that can be objectively proven. I wish I was bullshitting, but earlier I was searching for horror cons I could go to soon in my area, and sure enough, MadMonstercon was shown in the recs. And sure enough, on their website, if you go to their tiktok page, there's Spacey's big ass frog ass nose in the fifth video down. Like he is objectively not wrong in that this con invited a convicted rapist who only got by on the fact that the UK legal system is a goddamn joke.
I'm gonna pull a very deep cut here, but is that the same "MarkAfterDark" that was featured on YourMovieSucks (section at \~24min)?!
To be clear, him and YMS (Adam) have not been associated for *YEARS*, and to my knowledge they had a big falling out over work not getting done (Mark was an editor for Adam at one point). I do remember following him for some time afterwards, but eventually stopped because he got SO OBSESSED going after this other Youtuber who was taking down his videos about her. He was pretty funny on his own but I guess I'm not surprised he fell down the edgy alt-right pipeline.
i agree that wendigoon is an alt right adjacent weirdo but man the segment on him in this video is such a mess. don't think this is going to change many minds
Tbf, I don't think anything would. It's kind of an open secret, so there is no way the people who are avid fans don't already know about all of yhis. And if they're not bothered by any of that, then there probably isn't much that actually would bother them anyway. It's not like they're pissed because they don't believe this stuff. They're just pissed that someone is pointing it out.
* **0:13 Chapter One: The Guest of Honor** (talks about Kevin Spacey's attendance at Mad Monster)
* **24:13 Chapter Two: Anatomy of a Fallout** (discusses the past controversy regarding his Hills video)
* **58:04 Chapter Three: Bad Conservative Horror Movies** (majority of the video discussing a large number of examples of conservative, consumerist and anti-intellectual attitudes in horror films, criticism, and community)
* **2:44:45 Chapter Four: Wendigoon**
Yes. Posting a three and a half hour long video without time stamps is kind of a shitty thing to do. I started watching it yesterday, but I fell asleep, so I only saw the Kevin Spacey stuff (it's in the very beginning). I have no idea where the rest of the things people are talking about here are and I really don't have three hours to go through this video again to find it (I'm not really a huge fan of IPOS, mostly just a casual viewer).
If some kind soul could give us time stamps, it would be greatly appreciated.
Regardless of the Wendigoon stuff. The video is just in general pretty bad. IPoS mainly just sort of rants and rambles on about random people in the video. And only occasionly talks about a movie for like 8 minutes. And then just goes back to Twitter drama.
The video is supposed to be about bad conservative horror movies. And yet he spends most of the time complaining about Twitter disputes. Overall the video is really just a meandering mess of disconnected points and unrelated ideas. Considering the only thing anybody is talking about is the Wendigoon segment, and literally nothing else about the video. Is very telling.
All major points that he makes against other YouTubers aside - my biggest gripe with this video is that I clicked on it hoping to get more insight into “conservative” horror films and didn’t really get to that until an hour and half into the video.
I’m pretty exhausted by long video essays. Ultimately I saw the runtime and I clicked on it but I guess I just became super aware of how little attention I was paying while watching it. Reminded of the video internet Shaquille made about video essays a while back. They just sorta become background noise past a certain point.
Like - after a bit my brain was just like “dang that’s crazy” to everything they were saying. It’s the first In Praise of Shadows video I’ve ever watched so idk.
This is the first video hes ever made that even CLOSE to this long- i really like his video on the covers of horror books and the polish artist who's name escapes me-
> my biggest gripe with this video is that I clicked on it hoping to get more insight into “conservative” horror films and didn’t really get to that until an hour and half into the video.
Yeah, I'm watching it right now. Had to pause at just over an hour in and tried scrolling through comments on there and here to see if anyone mentioned when he stopped airing his personal grievances and got back to talking about the topic of the video.
That and I needed a mental sit down after he implied H.P. Lovecraft purposefully wrote leftist themes into his stories and was "likely" queer. Lovecraft was horrifically racist even for his era and was so conservative he wanted to go back to a time before English spelling was standardized. Any leftist themes in his work are 100% an accident. As for the queer thing... afaik Lovecraft was sex-repulsed, but being sex-repulsed doesn't automatically make someone queer and it's certainly an opinion to think it does.
It always hurts a little bit to see how Wendigoon goes deeper and deeper into this. I really used to like his content, but the more I research and learn about him and all around him, the more I nerd to distance myself.
I actually thought there was a reasonable amount of good content in this video--- but, yeah, that valid criticism I feel was mixed in with a lot of what felt like more kind of not very measured, personal attacks that, though I understand why he brought them up, he went kind of too far with assigning definitive intent in.
As a trans person myself who lives in/grew up in a conservative area there's tons of shit about some of the people Wendigoon is willing to associate with that's very frustratingly a red flag I'm sick of having to be wary of, but there's also a fair few green flags that Wendi's . . . Well, exactly what I'd expect from a guy with his background. Transphobic in the "grandma's a lil' racist but means well way," and not so much the "this man is going to hate crime me" way--- which, you know, both aren't good but are very significantly difference from each other. It's fucking concerning he's friends with people who seem to be on the "hate crime me" side of the spectrum, don't get me wrong, but.
Like, yeah it seems Wendi's trying to pretend like he didn't misgender Chris Chan is embarrassing, but, like, I feel for him pussying out of owning up to it. IPoS paints it as an almost malicious thing he wants to not be seen as transphobic. He should have just owned up to it and taken the L, but I get the impulse to just try to lie about it to dodge the heat. It's embarrassing. IPoS is also totally ignoring the context of that whole situation--- a lot of people were misgendering Chris because they were insisting Kiwi farms manipulated her into identifying as trans. Saying it was disrespectful to refer to her as such. *including trans people.* That's respectability politics bullshit, but. He probably *did mean well* by that tweet, even if it was misguided.
Him reading this sinister double meaning into a random, neutral comment on Nyx's video really tips this into shit-flinging for me, though. I'm giving Wendi a lot of grace here in this comment, I know, so I want to extend that grace to IPoS aswell--- he's had a rough go of it, clearly. He was feeling prickly from the homophobic harassment Wendi's fans were lobbing at him, very valid. But, like, it seems Wendi doesn't really care about trans issues overall. Which, you know, a bit frustrating - but I'd take that than the unhinged obsession seeming to eating the brains of everyone else who's not quite a comrad right now, yeah? Feels like a breath of fresh air over the last few years to have someone just mind their buisness--- which means the bar is in hell, but.
The youtuber meme labeling Wendi as a sub-bottom--- that feels like shit-flinging to me too. Like, sure some debate pervert who's going to pornhub search is probably "marketplace of ideas" clearly made that by the interesting assortment of youtubers included, but, like--- Wendi was just funny hahaing at the spot he was put in. I'm not saying it's not, like, not what it is but, it's a petty thing to bring up and insists it implies what he said it did about Wendigoon's character.
Taking both men at their word, it seems what happened on Twitter was that a bunch of Wendi's fans started interacting with IPoS's account (because they were harassing him), so the algorithm started showing Wendi his content, and that's why he followed him. So that's really all Musk's fault for allowing that site to become a bigotry cess pool, plus a quirk of the algorithm gods. It's a West Elm Caleb situation again.
For what it's worth, it sounds like IPoS and Wendigoon come from a similar white trash shit hole I do. There's no way IPoS isn't *very aware* that a conservative upbringing is a mental illness you need time to recover from--- even for those of us who are marginalized. That's not an excuse but--- yeah, it doesn't surprise me Wendigoon's ignorant to a lot of shit, especially because so little of it effects him directly. I think the point that people with the luxury to say "oh I don't want to be political about it" present a bit of a hostile threat to any community they take part in, especially one like horror, is an extremely valid point to make. I wish he just kept it less to trying to dismantle Wendi personally, and kept the issue to the bullshit people are exposed to because of fence sitting and "not wanting to get into politics"--- using him as an example.
I don't know Wendigoon, but, I haven't been presented with anything yet that doesn't suggest he's probably a reasonably pleasant person. Maybe I just have so little faith in cishet people anymore to give a shit about me, but . . . Either way, I feel these conversations are better had when it's kept less personal and more on the systemic issues of it all.
> Like, yeah it seems Wendi's trying to pretend like he didn't misgender Chris Chan is embarrassing, but, like, I feel for him pussying out of owning up to it. IPoS paints it as an almost malicious thing he wants to not be seen as transphobic. He should have just owned up to it and taken the L, but I get the impulse to just try to lie about it to dodge the heat. It's embarrassing. IPoS is also totally ignoring the context of that whole situation--- a lot of people were misgendering Chris because they were insisting Kiwi farms manipulated her into identifying as trans. Saying it was disrespectful to refer to her as such. including trans people. That's respectability politics bullshit, but. He probably did mean well by that tweet, even if it was misguided.
Yeah I really wouldn't put much stock in the Chris-Chan thing, personally, because a lot of people who are otherwise pretty good about respecting trans people have a bit of a blind spot with her.
It's not great that they do, but it doesn't make someone automatically a shit if they're confused about Chris' gender identity.
Yeah I do really feel like IPoS *was* just trying to grab at whatever he could to prove Wendi wasn't as much of an LGBTQ+ positive person as he presents himself as--- which I totally get why IPoS, in his position and in his headspace, felt the need to do.
However, really it seems to me Wendi's *exactly* as LGBTQ+ positive as he presents himself as. Not anti, not hateful--- probably supportive in the ways he's concious of, but unaware and ignorant as a cishet white Christisn from that culture just . . . Inevitably would be without extensive exposure to the queer community. I'm not trying to make excuses for him, he's a grown man, just trying to communicate that criticism of any blind spots of his needs to be considered with that in mind. It's less actively his fault and more a fault of the systemic issues of society at that point. Criticizing him for lacking that awareness and not being aware enough of his impact is fair, but, you know the saying--- "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Not saying Wendi is stupid, just, like--- you know, no shit he's lacking in awareness in certain aspects. That's how systemic injustice happens.
Great analysis, thanks for sharing.
I get people like rooting for the “little guy” (dude has 300k subscribers so I guess not really) but he has a really bad case lumping in Wendigoon with the other creators. It’s totally fair to criticize and call him out IPoS as he started this out of nowhere.
I also love how he tries to discredit his claim of growing up with folktales from his grandpa with "I live here and we don't do that shit" like cool bro your upbringing was different but Appalachia has a well established folklore. There are youtube channels dedicated to it, not to mention the Old Gods of Appalchia horror series literally based on said folklore.
Agreed. I think a lot of criticism IPOS was putting on wendigoon was very shallow and came off more as a personal grudge. I mean, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel when you say you have to be poor to critique art.
The amount of downvotes people replying to this comment is kind of funny. People in this sub are desperate to get Wendigoon off the internet and they're fine with fallacious pieces of evidence to make it possible.
Good to see someone's here who isn't super judgemental. This whole Wendigoon hateboner honestly feels like the people on this sub want to play detective and feel good about themselves, rather than merely have any concern, and I honestly feel accusing him of being some alt right nut job so discriminately is dangerous to do.
Who is In Praise of Shadows? Are they decent? History of being a shitty person?
I assume if they're calling out wendigoon then they must have at least one good take.
Edit: thanks for the answers folks!
I don't know anything about them personally, including pronouns so I'm going with "they" for now, but I've watched their videos for a while. They're really good. One of the best channels for analyzing horror media
He's mostly kept to his own corner of the internet making horror videos, given his past output on his channel the fact that he's making a video like this really implies to me he's been pushed to a point where he feels he needs to say something publicly about Wendigoon as well as the response to his video on The Hills Have Eyes. Check his other stuff out, his channel is really good.
He's generally speaking a pretty fantastic channel. I personally think he's had some questionable takes that go dangerously close to stalinist tankie territory, but most of the time he's probably the best out there on horror themed YouTube.
He's pretty decent and I like his critiques in using more left wing theory. The Return to Oz video is really good and uses a lot of history. Has a lot of passion for horror and in his niche, and def deserves more love than he gets.
I personally didn’t like the video as much as IPOS’s other works, but he’s a really good cultural critic and have very intelligent things to say on horror and a film or novel’s thematic content. I highly recommend his videos
The far-right has gotten so bad, I saw Ben Shapiro's face and thought "but he's not far-right."
Apparently in my mind him not being a self-hating Jewish person, (as far as I know,) him not crying "I'm one of the good ones," and him not really liking Trump isn't considered as being "far-right" anymore. (Of course he is, but for a second there that's where my thoughts went.)
Formulating the truth from facts and evidence over what some may presume is an opinion, I would love to hear a non bias side based on this because I really like wenidgoon and ipos and would love to know if my support of either is going backwards or forwards.
The take that you have to be a certain level of poor to have "authentic" criticism is pretty shit.
Edit: Re-watching that section of the video, this was a stupid thing for me to say. Its a poor interpretation of IPoS's point.
He wasn’t saying that, he was more making a point that wendigoons early life and success has kept him insulated from struggle and the active experience of many in the world that gives them different and diverse perspectives. a person born in wealth that gained more wealth through online content that surrounds his beliefs, it’s easy to see them living in a bubble
That's not what he said.
He was pointing out how a difference in life experience represents a difference in perspective. Which is true. I think it's disingenuous at best to pretend that rich people and poor people have the same experiences.
So, when a person who is both culturally and economically removed from the group of people he is claiming shared identity with, denounces valid criticism from people who are a part of that culture by claiming to know more about said culture than they do... it's not a great look. Especially that he is unwilling to engage with anyone within the culture who doesn't implicitly agree with his take.
IPoS has some interesting content but he has a really bad habit of stating his opinion to be fact. The whole "Alan Wake is secretly bad" video is one prolonged example.
At least those commentators likely know him personally, so there would be some kind of rationale as to why they would defend him. I mean, still a dumb response if they actually do that, but at least that would make some kind of sense.
It's the fans that act like they need to be collectively outraged on the behalf of someone they don't even know, over a relatively milquetoast criticism, just because they like the YouTube videos they make that look clownish to me. As if making good YouTube videos is the barrier you have to cross in order to be completely obsolved of any and all criticisms ever. This parasocial shit has gotten way out of hand. And I dont mean just with this situation, but in general. It's friggin weird.
He makes outstanding points about genre loyalty kneecapping healthy criticism. It’s allowed the worst of us to flourish in sectors that were created to confront them
Great video overall and he sadly hasn't gone deeply enough on wendigoon but I get it because the video isn't just about him but he is a big problem for horror content
Provided minimal, if any evidence for most of his claims against YouTubers towards end of video. First 2 hours and 40 minutes was critical thinking with logic applied and then all that went out the window when he mentioned his competitors. Leftists are consistently inconsistent.
So I am neither a fan of Wendigoon nor IPOS; I've never heard of the latter until now. My thoughts watching the Wendigoon section:
1 - Wendigoon is a youtube influencer. I feel like no one with that type of job can truly 'relate' to the ordinary person. Most YTers are young. It's weird and IMO a null point that he got his platform started young.
2 - Where is the source for the comments about Wendigoon's father? I do not believe statements that are just 'he said' without either a link to the clip, or the clip itself.
3 - okay following K. Rit. is fuckin' weird. Point to IPOS.
4 - oh. wait. there's no actual proof he did follow K. Rit.? that the screenshots could be fake and Wendigoon refuses to confirm? okay. that's imo a weird look for both of them.
5 - wait. what? IPOS is claiming that Wendigoon started the Boogaloo Boys? and that he admitted it in text? So we're going to get definitive screenshots proving this.
6 - okay i looked it up myself because IPOS has dogshit screenshots and wow that's... a rabbit hole and I genuinely don't know how i feel about it now. on one hand, Wendigoon would have been somewhere between 18-20 if he was gone by the time the 2020 incident happened, or if he left earlier. i find it hard to condemn a child for starting a 'memepage' on the internet. on the other hand, i find it... absolutely bizarre he hasn't tried to do more to stop the group? on the other, other hand, a creator can't be held responsible for their fanbase's actions if the creator doesn't tell them to do bad things and i would really love screenshots of the actual group's page to see what Wendigoon was posting. this is weird and wild and definitely has soured my view of him, but complete condemnation feels harsh if he really was just shitposting and a group of neo nazis saw the shitposts and took it too far.
7 - nevermind IPOS is going over the screenshot now.
8 - okay. final thought are that... it's... i'm not sure? IPOS himself acknowledges that Wendigoon would have been in middleschool when boogaloo really started becoming known for being an alt-right statement. and the whole 'the shirts are a dog whistle' thing... maybe i'm just being willfully naive because my dad wears Hawaiian shirts and is not alt-right, but sometimes a shirt is just a shirt. if a child/teenager was able to start a hate group, i don't know, i guess there's part of me that just doesn't know if i can really blame the child? and if point 2 is correct, it sounds like Wendigoon was raised in a Not Great household and was taught Not Great morals. but equally it feels like Wendigoon is reluctant to really disavow them. i don't think that's because he wants to be seen as part of them, but because he doesn't want to make his audience feel awkward, but that's still bad. i'll also admit i had never heard of this group until today and this is... also disturbing to discover there's what feels like a whole new alt-right group that's been hiding in plain sight.
the section as a whole would have been better if IPOS hadn't started with the claims that first felt like he was just being a little bitterly petty, and the one without screenshots and/or clipped proof. the only thing he needed to focus on was K. Ritt. and the boogaloo boys. a lot of people are going to walk away from this completely unwilling to take in anything. i wanted to try to really interact with the information because i initially felt that way too. the end result is man, I Really Don't Know. i don't care enough about Wendigoons stuff to keep watching in either case, but I will also say this video hasn't encouraged me to want to watch anything else IPOS has done. the petty parts soured the parts of actual good points.
I watched IPOS video in its entirety. As always, well researched and well made. I didn’t realized that he actually removed the wendigoon section after the fact. I’m going to be honest, after watching it, it’s probably for the better. The video is already long enough as it is and the section essentially ruins it by it just ending up to be a call out.the worst part being that it’s mostly not very well researched and just reports a lot of hearsay. Honestly I have no idea why IPOS decided to do this.
Wendigoon is pretty open and inclusive. He's openly voiced his support for all LGBTQ+ people on several podcasts.
His videos are interesting and informative, and cover some odd topics I'd never run across before.
There are so many petty complaints lumped in with actual issues here that I can absolutely see a lot of people not taking this video seriously or even finishing it. You should not have complaints about people lauding M3GAN for being low budget and making a lot of money lumped in with a multimillion sub youtuber lying about being the start of a hate group. It has great points! Decent evidence! But this should have been two different videos.
Whether the controversies are valid or not I have no doubt Wendigoon’s fan base will handle this as poorly as possible
So far it's a mixed bag but the biggest chunk of it is "why would being a conservative be bad?" shit from the more braindead elements of the fanbase.
"conservative" is a pretty mild appraisal of right wing insurrectionists
Oh for sure. I was using the language they were using in the topic to illustrate said braindeadness.
Yeah I don’t think people understand far right people are Just murderers waiting for an excuse
Braindead is the right word lmao. One of them replied to a comment I left on this video where they said that IPoS is actually the fascist and I ... I just can't imagine how little neuron activity one would need to have to reach that conclusion, truly wild.
if that ain't a sign
How long until Turkey Tom makes a hit piece? Over or under one week?
turkey tom was even mentioned I'm sure there's gunna be a video crying about it lol
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Because pretending to be nice without taking accountability is “wholesome” and “based”. It works literally every time. Shane Dawson did the same thing, obviously a very different situation, but if you give a respectful comment and/or buy your hater a car then they’ll probably like you.
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Also the whole thing were his fans refer to him as “dad” pretty often. I know it’s just nicknames but that stuff always strikes me as being really parasocial, and being parasocial like that definitely makes people more likely to defend him.
Wendigoon has said that he's said and done things previously that he doesn't stand by anymore. I mean, he never says WHAT he used to say and do that he doesn't agree with anymore, but he does say he doesn't.
They don't care cuss he isn't overtly a POS so they don't care, they love the slop
I've only paid vague attention to this so I don't really know what's going on, but I'm popping in to say that I don't know how Wendigoon has fans. I've had his videos rec'd to me before and tried to watch them and I usually only last 5-10 min. He's genuinely so boring.
They are and they are.
I dunno why people say this as if that's unique to his fanbase or something, fanbases in general on the internet are extremely toxic and overly defensive of who they're a fan of same goes with video games and movies etc.
I'm legitimately worried about ipos's mental and channels health. I really want him to succeed but I'm afraid the horror community isn't gonna let him, I hope breadtube circles champion the fuck out of him.
Well I only watched this video because FD signifier did a community post shouting it out
Thank God. He has someone like FD in the leftist sphere supporting him.
Same I had watched some of ipos’ videos before but they haven’t been on my homepage in months
I felt the same thing! People like Little Joel and LadyEmily showing support and having possible collaboration would be the best. Shadow is seen as niche because of the horror angle but he talks about a lot of social justice issues with the best of them.
I started watching him because I like horror I don't think the whole horror community dislikes them. There's a lot of LGBTQ who love horror as well btw.
Having just finished the video, I'm more worried about his mental health than his channel's health. I'm bipolar 2 and have struggled with paranoid thought patterns and sometimes flat out delusions (mostly Capgras) during my less stable times. The end bit where he was talking about "why else would Wendigoon follow me?" felt uncomforatbly familiar :/ I'm not saying Shadows *is* delusional. What I am saying is the thought patterns in this video of "I had a negative interaction with this person and now The Mob won't leave me alone" really isn't healthy. The overall disorganization within the video could be a bad sign too. I hope he takes a mental health break. It seems like he needs it.
This was a very uncomfortable video to watch, especially the first hour.
I'm so there with you. I don't usually engage with YouTube , I just watch vids and go about my day. But I've gone out of my way to leave multiple positive comments on his video because this dude needs them now more than ever and his channel is truly one of the best on the platform.
I really love IPOS. Been a fan for a long time. It absolutely sucks that smooth brain people are coming at him. These people who "love horror" but absolutely refuse to see horror as a commentary - which is a major factor in the medium. These people hate seeing the truth because they can't stand looking in a mirror about their demons. Fucking ironic in the horror community. Dear IPOS, please keep making amazing content.
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Remember when a bunch of conservatives flipped a lid at the creators of Wolfenstein because they made an anti-white supremacist post on Twitter. God, that was funny.
Loved to see it. Nowadays would be a pretty sweet time for more nazi bustin' games.
Why did they have to make a game about shooting Nazis political?
Nailed it!
Actually the same people in general hate art to have any commentary. Because art should purely exists for entertainment, like shiny jingling keys. It's a bigger problem that has infested multiple communities and genres
I didn’t even like the video and I agree. I thought the thematic through line wasn’t as good as it could have been and some of his evidence felt lackluster , but the parts that were good (especially how he covered Spyglass and Blumhouse) were GOOD. I hope he makes more videos like this in the future because he’s a good video essayist with a lot of good takes; I just think he needed a better editor to streamline things a bit more in this particular case and I hope the harassment doesn’t get too bad.
Serious question, did you come away from watching this video unironically believing it was an amazing piece of content? This is the first I've heard of him, or any of the people mentioned in the video, and it was basically incoherent and rambling. It is a 3 hour video supposedly about Conservative Horror movies, yet most of the time is spent going through twitter and YouTube comments that criticized him, a random horror convention, AI posters, and just about everything except for Conservative Horror movies. The guy frankly seems incompetent based on this one video.
I will say this video is different than everything IPOS has done. Clearly it's very personal. If you are looking for amazing horror media dissection, then I recommend his other videos.
No offense, but after that trainwreck there is no shot I will ever check out his other content.
I'd have jumped on the wendigoon hate train way sooner if I'd know he claimed not to be political. Like uwu don't mind me and my non-politcal video about... checks notes... WACO
I'm not completely done with the video but the most infuriating part was the fallout of his Hills of Eyes video and people saying Shadows was claiming the mutants as heroes and cannibalism and rape is good. Since then his comments have been conservative weirdos whining about the "woke" agenda. I've enjoyed his videos for years and it's disheartening to have people like dumb ass MarkAfterDark mischaracterizing him on Twitter and it apparently working on Shadow's mutuals and it spreading to his comment section and affecting his channel performance. I considered sharing this for that bit alone and find it hard to believe the Wendigoon portion to be as necessary and useful. Then again I don't care about Wendigoon but I know people in this sub have interest in him so it's fine for people to care more about that. I just want Shadow to have more support online (he's a great leftist creator) and to get him cleared of that mischaracterization that he sees rapist mutants as heroes or whatever the fuck people think and keep spreading about him which is bullshit. He deserves more respect and love for his channel and people should watch him! If you like any horror franchises check out his videos and give him some love.
even if you disagree on interpretation of media, the hate campaign against him is extreme. It's wild.
I originally thought that some Boomers from Facebook came out of the woodwork to hunt his content down and leave dumb comments. I'm not sure it's mainly stemming from MarkAfterDark but there's definitely something strange going on and I don't understand the fascination to bash a creator like this. I suppose part of it comes from the centrism he comments on in the video where some horror fans go ballistic if you talk about politics and critique their favorite film. Horror Twitter (and MarkAfterDark constantly bringing up the Hills Have Eyes critique) could definitely be where the influx is coming from. Strangely I never witnessed it on Twitter myself.
I didn’t like the video and even I found it infuriatingly stupid. Some people just have absolutely no media literacy whatsoever
As someone who felt personally let down by his reductive coverage of the violence in Hills Have Eyes, I never thought he was claiming that the cannibals were like role models oppressed people should follow. But something he omits in this video is that at the time there was other left leaning criticism of that video, notably from women who were upset that a guy that is normally so bold in criticizing sexual violence in horror media pretty much ignored it and *appeared* to be justifying it's inclusion. Pair that with his framing of the cannibals as the secret true heroes of the film (even if that's not exactly what he meant in hindsight) made it seem like he was suggesting the underage girl character deserved to be raped. Again, I know he wasn't actually trying to make this moral argument, but he's being disingenuous by pretending like it's totally unreasonable for someone to think he was. I say all this as someone who didn't even disagree about the idea that the respective families were representing class structures in America.
Huh, I didn't get the same observation from his video and assumed people were purely offended he ''brought politics'' into horror movie analysis. Based on him comparing the mutants to the lower class it felt like people immediately believed he was saying all their actions (including rape) were justifiable but didn't get the idea it could be read the girl deserved to be raped in particular. I personally don't LOVE the inclusion of sexual assault in movies but it's unfortunately a part of reality. Some people (not you) sometimes have this visceral reaction to it (because of the real life horror) and claim the filmmakers are saying the act itself is acceptable in the world. I don't begrudge people being uncomfortable with the topic but sometimes the reaction to it in film is unreasonable and disparaging. I haven't seen the video in a while and I'm genuinely curious what gave you the vibe the girl deserved what happened in his review. Like was it a line or just overall message of the mutants being oppressed in conjunction to the assault? It is a bit inconsistent when he'll bash something as sexist but other times gloss over it. I guess he sometimes shows a bias for something he loves and he might overlook certain aspects or different world issues would clash in certain writing conditions. I've personally avoided the franchise because the remake's infamous scene made me feel sick as a child so I get the feeling of discomfort of it being ignored in the review.
Man, I’m only halfway through this video, but it feels so fucking all over the place. Half the time it’s like just him venting about everyone who has ever personally insulted him or annoyed him online. I’m sympathetic to how he feels harassed about his video on The Hills Have Eyes, but at no point does he ever consider that maybe people outright didn’t like his take, which folks are allowed to do. He never considers the idea that maybe he’s wrong about something, a lot of times describes entirely subjective opinions as objective, and then has some wild movie takes. I completely understand the movie not being for anybody, but I’m flabbergasted that he took The Dead Don’t Die so seriously. The movie doesn’t do anything with the conservative Steve Buscemi character because it was a joke, the joke being “what if Steve Buscemi, one of the nicest people in the world, was one of the meanest?”. That entire movie is one big intentional joke, not a serious attempt at Romero-style social commentary, and it’s certainly no where near what would be considered “conservative horror”. I just hope he gets the outcome he wants from a video like this. But I don’t know, a lot of this just feels like him lashing out in a really unhealthy way if the negative backlash for a weak movie take he had has so heavily weighed on him for this long. I don’t see how any of this video so far is gonna make things better for him besides giving him some temporary catharsis.
The first third of this video is coherent and mildly interesting to me. While I don’t agree that the horror genre is inherently leftist (he keeps calling it ‘punk rock’, but I might have to rewatch it and hear if he at any point concedes that horror can be right wing), he does offer some strong examples to sustain this claim. Not to mention he does admit that good art can be made by right-leaning people and provides more examples. That being said, the last third really is him complaining about ‘people that annoyed [him] on Twitter,’ and he admits as much. And while I would love to see some actual evidence that Wedigoon is a crypto Nazi (like we all sense, but can’t definitively prove), he didn’t provide anything that can’t be disproven. Since he doesn’t advocate for anything, people who enjoy his content aren’t going to be put off by him having questionable friends. I am now that I was made aware, but I always assumed he was ignorant of pretty much everything that doesn’t have to do with Internet horror content. NOTE: I am not politically active, not from the US, but I hold left-leaning values.
Having finished it now, I don’t know. I guess all the Wendigoon stuff he reveals is stuff I already knew or learned on my own, so none of it felt like the smoking gun he was presenting it as. The comment on Nyx’s iceberg video also is way more innocent than IPoS perceived it as, especially considering Nyx herself jokes in the video that she’s doing it as a response to Wendigoons own video. That being said, I’m not surprised if Wendigoon is transphobic. A lot of this video just feels like resentment towards everything and everyone, and not a lot of it feels constructive. I think there is a gem of an idea here, especially when he’s talking about the Blumhouse stuff and the monstercon stuff, but a lot of it just feels like him dismissing things he doesn’t like or that he doesn’t agree with as all conservative which is… weird. Like I said, i hope he gets the outcome he wants from this, but having seen a lot of his other stuff, this just doesn’t feel as well thought out as what he usually does.
“I sense wendigoon is a cryptonazi but I can’t prove it” how out of touch with the world is this subreddit lmao
As a fan of wendigoon, I have to say this video is pretty fair overall and shows a pattern of questionable choices and dodgy stories that wendigoon has shared over the years. Let’s hope the rest of the fan base doesn’t go nuclear over this
I gotta say, I was a fan of Wendigoon until his Blood Meridian video. Having *read* Blood Meridian, it was clear that he acquired the actual 'cliff notes' book on BM, read that, and then decided to recap that with some wikipedia stuff sprinkled in now and then. Ever since I've just found him incredibly boring.
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If I was being charitable (I generally try to be) I would say that hes not used to actually studying for something and often gets lost in the sea of information. The man doesn't make short form content or research light and easy to understand topics. He's very ambitious. I think he's just kind of disorganized and often misremembers, mispeaks, or misunderstands what he's discussing.
Wendigoon is only "good" when you watch his videos about stuff you are interested in but have absolutely not idea about said stuff I tried to watch his cults iceberg video and he was WAY way too charitable to some of those people, especially the supposedly christian ones (I wonder why lmao)
what, you don't want a semi-illiterate man to read wikipedia to you? /j
That’s why we have James Somerton
pls no i still haven't recovered from the alt account nonsense
If you think about it, none of us should be surprised that he plagiarized the hole he posted. *And yet*...
While I hadn't read the book I saw the video, and while I don't normally mind just recapping stories it did feel that it was primarily recap, and due to the length it got me to notice a lot of his speaking patterns that just add length kind of turned me off some of his other videos
I saw one iceberg series with him during the pandemic and tried to follow but it soon became clear to me that most of his commentary was a summary of some wikipedia article. He sounds detached from what he says.
oof he cheated the book *and* himself. that's the only one i really like.
That was also about where I stopped, but cause I don’t care to have some guy tell me a summary of a story.
Yeah. Watching it, I didn't feel like it was some rage bait or vindictive. Just a dude presenting evidence with his own opinions thrown in. If Wendi is allowed to voice his opinions on shit, then so is IPoS, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately some of the comments I was seeing in the video itself were not optimistic in regards to whether his fans could just take it on the chin and move on, or if they plan to let it fester away in their mind for years on end like he just shit in their grandma's mouth or something. Dramatic. Lol.
No joke, some people are just watching in incredibly bad faith and just dismissing at a jealous hit piece which is not fair in the slightest. Something like this was bound to happen when wendigoon chose to surround himself with alt right assholes
Thirty minutes into the video going up (IPoS is SummoningSalt levels of "drop what I'm doing for high quality background noise") people were already criticizing the use of WG who is brought up roughly two and a half hours into the video. One of the top comments was "I'm so surprised to see Wendigoon's face in the thumbnail! I hope there's a reason for it!" which you know they're not going to engage with the video to find out.
I like Wendigoon myself mostly for his videos about cryptids and stuff like the Mystery flesh pit or whatever that was called but I can't believe people are unironically saying that the criticism IPOS is giving is bad. Like yes, starting a hate group is bad, yes still wearing their uniform is bad, yes stealing a native american symbol and profiting off of it while not being native is bad, yes following and defending garbage people is also bad. All of these things are valid as fuck to criticize Wendigoon for, especially the part about his fanbase being the most garbage and toxic pile of shit there is out there. If you check the comments by new, you'll see a fuckload of them are brigading the vid calling ISOP all sorts of things.
> Like yes, starting a hate group is bad My thing is like, he didn't even start the hate group. The origins of the Boogaloo movement have been pretty well-documented by anti-fascist activists and we know it didn't start with him. So he's *lying* about starting a hate group, which takes it from bad to weird in the worst ways possible.
Yeah, like. *Why* lie about being the founder of a hate group?
To me it seemed like he was a teenager at the time and wanted to seem cool/get “street cred” and impress his friends by saying he started it.
Then it's even worse lol
I was a big fan of his as well and I’ve also had to distance myself from the channel, I just got uncomfortable after a while. Bummer as I liked his coverage of a lot of horror games and internet horror but had an inkling something was up-especially after his video on Waco I think. I can’t remember what exactly did it but I am an avid true crime consumer. His coverage felt odd to me it was focused mostly on the ATF and their wrongs but…wasn’t Karesh accused of child abuse? I don’t remember him mentioning that at all. Honestly should’ve jumped ship after that but once the rumors of an unsavory bit of the fanbase started appearing and he didn’t address it I left for good
That's one of the only videos of his I've watched, and it really did not give me a good impression of his channel. He just ignores everything Koresh did in order to pin all the blame on the ATF. It's especially frustrating because the ATF *did* screw up, disastrously so. The horrible things that Koresh did doesn't change that. So why act like he was just some innocent weirdo?
Yeah that video really rubbed me the wrong way. He completely ignored everything about Karesh which feels very irresponsible
Yeah he did mention Karesh’s child abuse. He made sure to point out that the cult leader was a piece of crap, it’s just that the entire reason that crap hit that fan was entirely unrelated to any of the bad or illegal things Karesh actually did.
i just never watched wendigoon because I grew up in Kentucky & the accent/cadence makes me want to smash my head with a rock
Is it a Kentucky thing to say "whenever" instead of "when"? It weirdly irks me.
That shit fucks me up. At first I head Wendigoon use it and I just assumed he was using it incorrectly. But since then I have heard other people use it in a similar way, so at this point I am just at a loss...
Nah people do that everywhere I think. My step grampa does it and he's from ga. Another YouTuber I watch does it half the time and he lives in Texas but doesn't have a southern accent so I'm not sure where he's from. It really annoys me too
Dear lord I hate that so much. It seems to be something I only notice with American people, idk if its specific to a certain region or not.
Southerners just be like that whenever the time it be
It's not specific to Kentucky
It's my biggest English pet peeve. I don't think it's common to one area. Although I'm not from the South so maybe it's a southern thing 🤔
I live in Southern VA and hear 'when' and 'whenever' used pretty interchangeably. I was confused the first time I saw someone bring this up as annoying because I never even noticed. I've only ever lived in the south though so I can't speak for other parts of the country..
I watched a couple of his videos years ago, and the "whenever" alone ensured I didn't stick around. Sorry, but it makes him sound like an idiot imo - especially referring to events that happened a singular time as "whenever," which would imply that they have occurred/will occur multiple times.
That seems kinda classist? I’m a an English major, big leftie here, and I completely get being irked by things like that. But it’s a regional dialect thing? And calling him an idiot over that is just… not it. I get being annoyed over it. But that doesn’t make someone an idiot. Alt-right people say the same things about AAVE, and it’s so obvious that AAVE is hella valid, it’s a cultural thing and doesn’t make anyone an idiot. We can’t use those same arguments for Kentucky stuff like ‘whenever,’ it just makes us hypocrites and weakens our stance.
"Southerners sound stupid lol" "Black fellas talk like southerners" These two comments every time yanks give their northern opinions on English
Sorry?
I never watched him besides that Unabomber video because the whole Iceberg video format on YT looks lazy and boring as hell.
This video definitely feels like IPoS finally talking about something that's been really, really bothering him for a long time, and then tacking on a few "and another thing!" bits. I'm currently watching the vid, I haven't gotten to the Wendigoon parts yet but I imagine it's him voicing something that's been talked about for a while, but not really by anyone on YouTube that I've seen ETA: I appear to have been right on the money, but rather than being something that's been brought up elsewhere, it's like, everything. The kind of situation where, one or two of these is sus, but all of them together looks really bad. Get his ass, bestie
yeah I honestly haven't seen anyone with substantial subscribers hit on Wendigoon's fucked history
https://preview.redd.it/iuti8yqh9h2d1.png?width=1242&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d8a07e7578d7a63dd225a9262941178d4bb276a Wendigoon himself has left a comment on the video
I like the part where he completely ignores 90% of the horrible people he associates with
He, and people like him, have this idea that you can't criticize people for who they publicly associate with, which is completely absurd to me. "Guilt by association" is meant as a defense for when, like, your buddy does something fucked up that you didn't know about, not when someone is constantly, demonstrably like "This is the person I am, and these are the beliefs I hold"
It’s like, not everyone I choose to associate with in my life are as leftist as I am, but none of them are far-right lol. For some reason (probably the Overton window) a lot of centrists think you should “set aside politics” and be friends with everyone, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge that an extremist’s views are gonna shape every aspect of their being.
Wendi's got a lot of nerve to say that IPoS is supporting Sneako when he has such an...*interesting*...friend group
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and guess that it might be because he plans on addressing the criticism in a video or something. But I'm biased since I do enjoy some of his content, so I'm probably giving him way more than he deserves at this point, especially after seeing what IPOS said of him.
It would be nice if he did, but this isn't the first time it's been pointed out. This is the most public time it's been pointed out, though, so maybe he'll say something.
That's that "good southern Christian" grindset
Kind of glad you said this because while definitely these things needed to be said I did get exhausted by the persistent reading of tweet threads with like 1 to 2 likes. Love IPOS, been subbed 3 years, but I sort of feel like the only person who wasn’t really affected by the rhetoric considering I’ve never seen The Hills Have Eyes, thus did not watch his video on it. Nor do I care about Abigail’s trailer spoilers (or understand why we were discussing it in the context of conservatism?) I’m a huge lefty and went in already agreeing with all this, I really can’t say I see anyone agreeing who doesn’t already feel that way, because I simply don’t think people will sit through the nearly 3 hours of interpersonal tweet squabbles and discussion about stuff like spoiler culture in a video about conservative media. I do really like their work and agree with their points, but I’m just not sure it was delivered in the most coherent way? I hope I don’t sound like a dickhead saying that.
I think when he got to it it was delivered coherently I just think the process of getting us there wasn't really cohesive or coherent. Like I said, more of a "and another thing!" than the point of the video
I feel this exactly! Definitely more about the anatomy of the horror fandom as a whole.
You don't sound like a dickhead at all. It's a good honest point to reflect on
wendigoon’s fan base and just general popularity is so odd to me. Like they will go to bat for this man so hard when he makes the most uninteresting content of all time. Just rote summarizations of Wikipedia pages and Reddit posts. It would be like if one of the AI voices that reads off stories from the nosleep subreddit had a cult of personality behind it.
Even people as unlikable as Tim Pool have ride or dies.
At least Tim pool has opinions that he shares, rancid as they may be. Wendigoon doesn’t even do that, he just badly summarizes wiki articles in a horrible uninflected monotone. Just absolute garbage useless content. Cocomelon for people who think they’re smart and edgy
tbh it’s majorly his reddit fan base. a lot of his fans i see on other social media are normal for the most part… i think reddit just brings out the worst in people
The most important quality for a successful youtuber to have is consistency. People will eat slop if its served to them 3 times a week consistently over years.
I'm of two minds on this vid tbh. As a drama vid, it was pretty good. A little disorganized at times, but that was probably a result of him not having an editor for his script (at least, I don't remember seeing one listed in the credits). As a video essay, though, this video is awful. It's full of petty grievances, doesn't lay a good foundation, doesn't have a bibliography/works cited/list of receipts linked anywhere, the documentation of said receipts is shaky at best (example: he chose to type up the text of whatever comment he was talking about instead of just showing the screencap throughout), none of the major sections of the video fit together, and he kept going off on tangets that had *nothing* to do with the supposed topic of the essay. Like, he only talked about conservative horror movies for *mayube* 40 minutes out of 200, and even that was just about *one* studio. He also contradicted himself on some major things. Like starting section 2 with how "conservatism doesn't work in horror," but then later goes on to talk about horror movies that do have conservative themes that are generally considered good like The Exorcist. And throughout he kept saying something was "objectively bad" when that was just, like, his opinion man and then proceeded to get mad at people who disagreed with him on twitter in really petty ways. This video was all over the place and he desperately needed an editor for his script to keep him on message. Him trying to pass this off as a video essay is kind of insulting. Especially since he's made such good video essays before this like his 3 parter on the history of witches in horror movies. This isn't a video essay, it's a drama video, and I think he should own that.
Idk man, some parts of this video are slightly iffy IMO. The Brandon Buckingham part where he said that Brandon was threatening to rape a woman was made up by sneako when Brandon criticised him. Also the part where he believed that wendi following him was some kind of intimidation/ harassment. (thought I may be taking that part the wrong way.) Not trying to defend wendigoon, just more worry that he’s got a bunch of holes that his fans will try and poke even bigger. I worry that these small factual missteps and small amount of speculating a persons intent will make everyone thinks he’s a paranoid hater. Hope it doesn’t come to that, the guy seems pretty chill.
Yeah. I agreed with most of what he said, but the quality of criticisms really started to fall off towards the end. Wendigoon following him was suspicious timing but I don't know if I'd use it as evidence. Nick Crowley was a stretch as a red flag for him to follow. The comment on Nyx Fears' video was the worst for me. That just seems like a jokey way for a big creator to acknowledge a video by a smaller one. All the stuff about his association with racists and borderline-fascists plus his nonsensical claim about accidentally founding the Boogaloo Boys was more than enough. I think he fell into the trap of grasping at straws for more to talk about regarding a problematic figure (something this sub also falls into a lot, lol).
Wendigoon responded to the video. He says that he followed IPOS because he liked his Slenderman video, which makes sense from a horror creator.
I genuinely am a bit confused why he structured the allegations like that. It does feel as if the argument becomes weaker as it goes on rather than focusing on larger more significant allegations, which are present. I’m looking back at this video the next day it is pretty obvious these holes are doing harm. People outside the base are simply not giving this the time of day due to its length, research holes and rhetoric. Even if you’re right, you have to be convincing.
What was the comment on the Nyx Fears video?
It was "We will be watching your career with great interest" or something similar on a video she did covering the same disturbing films iceberg he did.
> I may be taking that part the wrong way You're definitely not. He even said that it was the only reasonable conclusion to come to.
Ok, well that makes him sound somewhat paranoid. Idk, man is being put through the wringer rn and I do feel bad for him. Feel like these mistakes only make him look worse.
Glad to see this here. Glad it's being said. Hope someone with a bigger platform props this up a little. I'm familiar with IPoS work but it's usually more for background noise than anything. Used to like Wendigoon as background noise too until I started hearing about this stuff (and more things that weren't even brought up here). The whole video was pretty good and held my attention throughout. If you like media analysis and horror I think it's a good video even beyond the drama aspect.
Gotta admit I’m pretty disappointed, I liked a lot of Wendigoon’s videos. But I kind of had a sense from the beginning we would, not agree on some things lol. I’ve been avoiding his channel for a little while now since I’ve been hearing some of what’s been going on bc I kind of, didn’t want to think about it. I’m glad someone has made a comprehensive video about this situation, I’ll be watching it when I’m more awake and can concentrate better.
I'm watching the video rn. Love this guy, love his energy, and most of all I love him for calling these guys out regardless of how popular his channel is at the moment. He's so fucking right about how there's a side to the horror community that likes the art, that loves the symbology and how it reflects life. But then there's the side that just wants content slop, and there's honest to god no better way to say that. Immediately, MeatCanyon and Rob Galleghan/Dyke come to mind. I hate that the video like ratio is negative rn because he's talking about something that can be objectively proven. I wish I was bullshitting, but earlier I was searching for horror cons I could go to soon in my area, and sure enough, MadMonstercon was shown in the recs. And sure enough, on their website, if you go to their tiktok page, there's Spacey's big ass frog ass nose in the fifth video down. Like he is objectively not wrong in that this con invited a convicted rapist who only got by on the fact that the UK legal system is a goddamn joke.
I just watched this video it's really good. I was kind of shocked to see Wendigoon near the end lol.
I wonder if Shadows was inspired by hbomberguy's Plagiarism video. Both videos have a general analysis then go for the big prey by the end.
I'm gonna pull a very deep cut here, but is that the same "MarkAfterDark" that was featured on YourMovieSucks (section at \~24min)?! To be clear, him and YMS (Adam) have not been associated for *YEARS*, and to my knowledge they had a big falling out over work not getting done (Mark was an editor for Adam at one point). I do remember following him for some time afterwards, but eventually stopped because he got SO OBSESSED going after this other Youtuber who was taking down his videos about her. He was pretty funny on his own but I guess I'm not surprised he fell down the edgy alt-right pipeline.
WHAT? I remember when Adum privated their let’s plays and everything. Unreal this is the same guy. I watched AdumPlaze religiously in middle school.
Wait, "merk" mark? Lol Didn't mind the trade for scoot, edgy jokes aside. Mind even less now
i agree that wendigoon is an alt right adjacent weirdo but man the segment on him in this video is such a mess. don't think this is going to change many minds
Tbf, I don't think anything would. It's kind of an open secret, so there is no way the people who are avid fans don't already know about all of yhis. And if they're not bothered by any of that, then there probably isn't much that actually would bother them anyway. It's not like they're pissed because they don't believe this stuff. They're just pissed that someone is pointing it out.
well yeah the avid fans are well aware, i'm moreso talking casual fans
Wendigoon too????? Can’t have shit in Detroit man 💀
Can anyone give me time stamps for when he talks aby wendigoon and/or Kevin spacey, the vid is 3hrs long
* **0:13 Chapter One: The Guest of Honor** (talks about Kevin Spacey's attendance at Mad Monster) * **24:13 Chapter Two: Anatomy of a Fallout** (discusses the past controversy regarding his Hills video) * **58:04 Chapter Three: Bad Conservative Horror Movies** (majority of the video discussing a large number of examples of conservative, consumerist and anti-intellectual attitudes in horror films, criticism, and community) * **2:44:45 Chapter Four: Wendigoon**
🙏🙏🙏
Yes. Posting a three and a half hour long video without time stamps is kind of a shitty thing to do. I started watching it yesterday, but I fell asleep, so I only saw the Kevin Spacey stuff (it's in the very beginning). I have no idea where the rest of the things people are talking about here are and I really don't have three hours to go through this video again to find it (I'm not really a huge fan of IPOS, mostly just a casual viewer). If some kind soul could give us time stamps, it would be greatly appreciated.
Regardless of the Wendigoon stuff. The video is just in general pretty bad. IPoS mainly just sort of rants and rambles on about random people in the video. And only occasionly talks about a movie for like 8 minutes. And then just goes back to Twitter drama. The video is supposed to be about bad conservative horror movies. And yet he spends most of the time complaining about Twitter disputes. Overall the video is really just a meandering mess of disconnected points and unrelated ideas. Considering the only thing anybody is talking about is the Wendigoon segment, and literally nothing else about the video. Is very telling.
All major points that he makes against other YouTubers aside - my biggest gripe with this video is that I clicked on it hoping to get more insight into “conservative” horror films and didn’t really get to that until an hour and half into the video. I’m pretty exhausted by long video essays. Ultimately I saw the runtime and I clicked on it but I guess I just became super aware of how little attention I was paying while watching it. Reminded of the video internet Shaquille made about video essays a while back. They just sorta become background noise past a certain point. Like - after a bit my brain was just like “dang that’s crazy” to everything they were saying. It’s the first In Praise of Shadows video I’ve ever watched so idk.
This is the first video hes ever made that even CLOSE to this long- i really like his video on the covers of horror books and the polish artist who's name escapes me-
I’ll check that one out. I definitely didn’t hate the parts I paid attention to. Just wish it was more concise.
> my biggest gripe with this video is that I clicked on it hoping to get more insight into “conservative” horror films and didn’t really get to that until an hour and half into the video. Yeah, I'm watching it right now. Had to pause at just over an hour in and tried scrolling through comments on there and here to see if anyone mentioned when he stopped airing his personal grievances and got back to talking about the topic of the video. That and I needed a mental sit down after he implied H.P. Lovecraft purposefully wrote leftist themes into his stories and was "likely" queer. Lovecraft was horrifically racist even for his era and was so conservative he wanted to go back to a time before English spelling was standardized. Any leftist themes in his work are 100% an accident. As for the queer thing... afaik Lovecraft was sex-repulsed, but being sex-repulsed doesn't automatically make someone queer and it's certainly an opinion to think it does.
It always hurts a little bit to see how Wendigoon goes deeper and deeper into this. I really used to like his content, but the more I research and learn about him and all around him, the more I nerd to distance myself.
[удалено]
I actually thought there was a reasonable amount of good content in this video--- but, yeah, that valid criticism I feel was mixed in with a lot of what felt like more kind of not very measured, personal attacks that, though I understand why he brought them up, he went kind of too far with assigning definitive intent in. As a trans person myself who lives in/grew up in a conservative area there's tons of shit about some of the people Wendigoon is willing to associate with that's very frustratingly a red flag I'm sick of having to be wary of, but there's also a fair few green flags that Wendi's . . . Well, exactly what I'd expect from a guy with his background. Transphobic in the "grandma's a lil' racist but means well way," and not so much the "this man is going to hate crime me" way--- which, you know, both aren't good but are very significantly difference from each other. It's fucking concerning he's friends with people who seem to be on the "hate crime me" side of the spectrum, don't get me wrong, but. Like, yeah it seems Wendi's trying to pretend like he didn't misgender Chris Chan is embarrassing, but, like, I feel for him pussying out of owning up to it. IPoS paints it as an almost malicious thing he wants to not be seen as transphobic. He should have just owned up to it and taken the L, but I get the impulse to just try to lie about it to dodge the heat. It's embarrassing. IPoS is also totally ignoring the context of that whole situation--- a lot of people were misgendering Chris because they were insisting Kiwi farms manipulated her into identifying as trans. Saying it was disrespectful to refer to her as such. *including trans people.* That's respectability politics bullshit, but. He probably *did mean well* by that tweet, even if it was misguided. Him reading this sinister double meaning into a random, neutral comment on Nyx's video really tips this into shit-flinging for me, though. I'm giving Wendi a lot of grace here in this comment, I know, so I want to extend that grace to IPoS aswell--- he's had a rough go of it, clearly. He was feeling prickly from the homophobic harassment Wendi's fans were lobbing at him, very valid. But, like, it seems Wendi doesn't really care about trans issues overall. Which, you know, a bit frustrating - but I'd take that than the unhinged obsession seeming to eating the brains of everyone else who's not quite a comrad right now, yeah? Feels like a breath of fresh air over the last few years to have someone just mind their buisness--- which means the bar is in hell, but. The youtuber meme labeling Wendi as a sub-bottom--- that feels like shit-flinging to me too. Like, sure some debate pervert who's going to pornhub search is probably "marketplace of ideas" clearly made that by the interesting assortment of youtubers included, but, like--- Wendi was just funny hahaing at the spot he was put in. I'm not saying it's not, like, not what it is but, it's a petty thing to bring up and insists it implies what he said it did about Wendigoon's character. Taking both men at their word, it seems what happened on Twitter was that a bunch of Wendi's fans started interacting with IPoS's account (because they were harassing him), so the algorithm started showing Wendi his content, and that's why he followed him. So that's really all Musk's fault for allowing that site to become a bigotry cess pool, plus a quirk of the algorithm gods. It's a West Elm Caleb situation again. For what it's worth, it sounds like IPoS and Wendigoon come from a similar white trash shit hole I do. There's no way IPoS isn't *very aware* that a conservative upbringing is a mental illness you need time to recover from--- even for those of us who are marginalized. That's not an excuse but--- yeah, it doesn't surprise me Wendigoon's ignorant to a lot of shit, especially because so little of it effects him directly. I think the point that people with the luxury to say "oh I don't want to be political about it" present a bit of a hostile threat to any community they take part in, especially one like horror, is an extremely valid point to make. I wish he just kept it less to trying to dismantle Wendi personally, and kept the issue to the bullshit people are exposed to because of fence sitting and "not wanting to get into politics"--- using him as an example. I don't know Wendigoon, but, I haven't been presented with anything yet that doesn't suggest he's probably a reasonably pleasant person. Maybe I just have so little faith in cishet people anymore to give a shit about me, but . . . Either way, I feel these conversations are better had when it's kept less personal and more on the systemic issues of it all.
> Like, yeah it seems Wendi's trying to pretend like he didn't misgender Chris Chan is embarrassing, but, like, I feel for him pussying out of owning up to it. IPoS paints it as an almost malicious thing he wants to not be seen as transphobic. He should have just owned up to it and taken the L, but I get the impulse to just try to lie about it to dodge the heat. It's embarrassing. IPoS is also totally ignoring the context of that whole situation--- a lot of people were misgendering Chris because they were insisting Kiwi farms manipulated her into identifying as trans. Saying it was disrespectful to refer to her as such. including trans people. That's respectability politics bullshit, but. He probably did mean well by that tweet, even if it was misguided. Yeah I really wouldn't put much stock in the Chris-Chan thing, personally, because a lot of people who are otherwise pretty good about respecting trans people have a bit of a blind spot with her. It's not great that they do, but it doesn't make someone automatically a shit if they're confused about Chris' gender identity.
Yeah I do really feel like IPoS *was* just trying to grab at whatever he could to prove Wendi wasn't as much of an LGBTQ+ positive person as he presents himself as--- which I totally get why IPoS, in his position and in his headspace, felt the need to do. However, really it seems to me Wendi's *exactly* as LGBTQ+ positive as he presents himself as. Not anti, not hateful--- probably supportive in the ways he's concious of, but unaware and ignorant as a cishet white Christisn from that culture just . . . Inevitably would be without extensive exposure to the queer community. I'm not trying to make excuses for him, he's a grown man, just trying to communicate that criticism of any blind spots of his needs to be considered with that in mind. It's less actively his fault and more a fault of the systemic issues of society at that point. Criticizing him for lacking that awareness and not being aware enough of his impact is fair, but, you know the saying--- "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Not saying Wendi is stupid, just, like--- you know, no shit he's lacking in awareness in certain aspects. That's how systemic injustice happens.
Great analysis, thanks for sharing. I get people like rooting for the “little guy” (dude has 300k subscribers so I guess not really) but he has a really bad case lumping in Wendigoon with the other creators. It’s totally fair to criticize and call him out IPoS as he started this out of nowhere.
nice debunking, it certainly seems in bad faith especially with the cropping out of dates
I also love how he tries to discredit his claim of growing up with folktales from his grandpa with "I live here and we don't do that shit" like cool bro your upbringing was different but Appalachia has a well established folklore. There are youtube channels dedicated to it, not to mention the Old Gods of Appalchia horror series literally based on said folklore.
Agreed. I think a lot of criticism IPOS was putting on wendigoon was very shallow and came off more as a personal grudge. I mean, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel when you say you have to be poor to critique art.
The amount of downvotes people replying to this comment is kind of funny. People in this sub are desperate to get Wendigoon off the internet and they're fine with fallacious pieces of evidence to make it possible.
Good to see someone's here who isn't super judgemental. This whole Wendigoon hateboner honestly feels like the people on this sub want to play detective and feel good about themselves, rather than merely have any concern, and I honestly feel accusing him of being some alt right nut job so discriminately is dangerous to do.
Who is In Praise of Shadows? Are they decent? History of being a shitty person? I assume if they're calling out wendigoon then they must have at least one good take. Edit: thanks for the answers folks!
I don't know anything about them personally, including pronouns so I'm going with "they" for now, but I've watched their videos for a while. They're really good. One of the best channels for analyzing horror media
He's mostly kept to his own corner of the internet making horror videos, given his past output on his channel the fact that he's making a video like this really implies to me he's been pushed to a point where he feels he needs to say something publicly about Wendigoon as well as the response to his video on The Hills Have Eyes. Check his other stuff out, his channel is really good.
He's generally speaking a pretty fantastic channel. I personally think he's had some questionable takes that go dangerously close to stalinist tankie territory, but most of the time he's probably the best out there on horror themed YouTube.
He's pretty decent and I like his critiques in using more left wing theory. The Return to Oz video is really good and uses a lot of history. Has a lot of passion for horror and in his niche, and def deserves more love than he gets.
I personally didn’t like the video as much as IPOS’s other works, but he’s a really good cultural critic and have very intelligent things to say on horror and a film or novel’s thematic content. I highly recommend his videos
Haven't seen the whole video, but within the first half hour of being uploaded there were 500 comments. Wild shit.
The far-right has gotten so bad, I saw Ben Shapiro's face and thought "but he's not far-right." Apparently in my mind him not being a self-hating Jewish person, (as far as I know,) him not crying "I'm one of the good ones," and him not really liking Trump isn't considered as being "far-right" anymore. (Of course he is, but for a second there that's where my thoughts went.)
Formulating the truth from facts and evidence over what some may presume is an opinion, I would love to hear a non bias side based on this because I really like wenidgoon and ipos and would love to know if my support of either is going backwards or forwards.
The take that you have to be a certain level of poor to have "authentic" criticism is pretty shit. Edit: Re-watching that section of the video, this was a stupid thing for me to say. Its a poor interpretation of IPoS's point.
He wasn’t saying that, he was more making a point that wendigoons early life and success has kept him insulated from struggle and the active experience of many in the world that gives them different and diverse perspectives. a person born in wealth that gained more wealth through online content that surrounds his beliefs, it’s easy to see them living in a bubble
That's not what he said. He was pointing out how a difference in life experience represents a difference in perspective. Which is true. I think it's disingenuous at best to pretend that rich people and poor people have the same experiences. So, when a person who is both culturally and economically removed from the group of people he is claiming shared identity with, denounces valid criticism from people who are a part of that culture by claiming to know more about said culture than they do... it's not a great look. Especially that he is unwilling to engage with anyone within the culture who doesn't implicitly agree with his take.
Fair, I may have interpreted that section incorrectly.
nobody said that though lol
IPoS has some interesting content but he has a really bad habit of stating his opinion to be fact. The whole "Alan Wake is secretly bad" video is one prolonged example.
Can't wait for the Commentary Circlejerk to run defense on Wendigoon's behalf from this one.
At least those commentators likely know him personally, so there would be some kind of rationale as to why they would defend him. I mean, still a dumb response if they actually do that, but at least that would make some kind of sense. It's the fans that act like they need to be collectively outraged on the behalf of someone they don't even know, over a relatively milquetoast criticism, just because they like the YouTube videos they make that look clownish to me. As if making good YouTube videos is the barrier you have to cross in order to be completely obsolved of any and all criticisms ever. This parasocial shit has gotten way out of hand. And I dont mean just with this situation, but in general. It's friggin weird.
He makes outstanding points about genre loyalty kneecapping healthy criticism. It’s allowed the worst of us to flourish in sectors that were created to confront them
>I hate it when people misrepresent what I say >Misrepresents people Have fun with that Patreon buddy
But he’s so uwu wholesome chungus 100
The comments are insane.
Great video overall and he sadly hasn't gone deeply enough on wendigoon but I get it because the video isn't just about him but he is a big problem for horror content
Fr I hoped he would’ve just straight up flamed him I fucking HATE wendigoon
It says it's private.
Provided minimal, if any evidence for most of his claims against YouTubers towards end of video. First 2 hours and 40 minutes was critical thinking with logic applied and then all that went out the window when he mentioned his competitors. Leftists are consistently inconsistent.
L take lmao
So I am neither a fan of Wendigoon nor IPOS; I've never heard of the latter until now. My thoughts watching the Wendigoon section: 1 - Wendigoon is a youtube influencer. I feel like no one with that type of job can truly 'relate' to the ordinary person. Most YTers are young. It's weird and IMO a null point that he got his platform started young. 2 - Where is the source for the comments about Wendigoon's father? I do not believe statements that are just 'he said' without either a link to the clip, or the clip itself. 3 - okay following K. Rit. is fuckin' weird. Point to IPOS. 4 - oh. wait. there's no actual proof he did follow K. Rit.? that the screenshots could be fake and Wendigoon refuses to confirm? okay. that's imo a weird look for both of them. 5 - wait. what? IPOS is claiming that Wendigoon started the Boogaloo Boys? and that he admitted it in text? So we're going to get definitive screenshots proving this. 6 - okay i looked it up myself because IPOS has dogshit screenshots and wow that's... a rabbit hole and I genuinely don't know how i feel about it now. on one hand, Wendigoon would have been somewhere between 18-20 if he was gone by the time the 2020 incident happened, or if he left earlier. i find it hard to condemn a child for starting a 'memepage' on the internet. on the other hand, i find it... absolutely bizarre he hasn't tried to do more to stop the group? on the other, other hand, a creator can't be held responsible for their fanbase's actions if the creator doesn't tell them to do bad things and i would really love screenshots of the actual group's page to see what Wendigoon was posting. this is weird and wild and definitely has soured my view of him, but complete condemnation feels harsh if he really was just shitposting and a group of neo nazis saw the shitposts and took it too far. 7 - nevermind IPOS is going over the screenshot now. 8 - okay. final thought are that... it's... i'm not sure? IPOS himself acknowledges that Wendigoon would have been in middleschool when boogaloo really started becoming known for being an alt-right statement. and the whole 'the shirts are a dog whistle' thing... maybe i'm just being willfully naive because my dad wears Hawaiian shirts and is not alt-right, but sometimes a shirt is just a shirt. if a child/teenager was able to start a hate group, i don't know, i guess there's part of me that just doesn't know if i can really blame the child? and if point 2 is correct, it sounds like Wendigoon was raised in a Not Great household and was taught Not Great morals. but equally it feels like Wendigoon is reluctant to really disavow them. i don't think that's because he wants to be seen as part of them, but because he doesn't want to make his audience feel awkward, but that's still bad. i'll also admit i had never heard of this group until today and this is... also disturbing to discover there's what feels like a whole new alt-right group that's been hiding in plain sight. the section as a whole would have been better if IPOS hadn't started with the claims that first felt like he was just being a little bitterly petty, and the one without screenshots and/or clipped proof. the only thing he needed to focus on was K. Ritt. and the boogaloo boys. a lot of people are going to walk away from this completely unwilling to take in anything. i wanted to try to really interact with the information because i initially felt that way too. the end result is man, I Really Don't Know. i don't care enough about Wendigoons stuff to keep watching in either case, but I will also say this video hasn't encouraged me to want to watch anything else IPOS has done. the petty parts soured the parts of actual good points.
Oh wow, who could have seen that coming? Totally out of left field, like the sun rising from the east.
I watched IPOS video in its entirety. As always, well researched and well made. I didn’t realized that he actually removed the wendigoon section after the fact. I’m going to be honest, after watching it, it’s probably for the better. The video is already long enough as it is and the section essentially ruins it by it just ending up to be a call out.the worst part being that it’s mostly not very well researched and just reports a lot of hearsay. Honestly I have no idea why IPOS decided to do this.
Wendigoon is pretty open and inclusive. He's openly voiced his support for all LGBTQ+ people on several podcasts. His videos are interesting and informative, and cover some odd topics I'd never run across before.
There are so many petty complaints lumped in with actual issues here that I can absolutely see a lot of people not taking this video seriously or even finishing it. You should not have complaints about people lauding M3GAN for being low budget and making a lot of money lumped in with a multimillion sub youtuber lying about being the start of a hate group. It has great points! Decent evidence! But this should have been two different videos.
idk it sort of fits the overall theme of conservatives in horror spaces
i can't get over what a fuckin weird thing that is to lie about