My latest video:
Graham: Astounding! Great work!
I had no idea who Larken Rose was until I looked at the video behind yours. Here’s another awesome video by him (someone needs to update it):
Clayton -
Graham. Your video was amazing! So many great topics were discussed, and I see room for tons more development.
Once again, this video is fantastic! Superb!
Thanks guys. I am thinking of doing a sequel, where the human says “But we need government to do X, Y, Z” and the alien knocks him down by explaining how X, Y, Z gets done on his planet. If you want to put ideas forward or even draft a script, add them here or send me a private message.
Here’s another great Larken Rose video:
Graham: Not to criticise, but I think that would be easily dismissed… so what you can imagine an alien world where roads are privately maintained?
What is definitely needed are more criticisms of democracy as a justification of government aggression.
Check this video out for the public choice/utilitarian aspect of the argument:
Plus, I’m always a big proponent of the moral argument, as well. So, you could do something like the Larken Rose anti-Constitution video above but instead of “I’m Allowed to Rob You” make it more extreme… “I’m Allowed to Kill You” and when they object rather than pointing to the Constitution, say, “let’s put it to a vote.” It doesn’t really matter how the vote will turn out; the whole idea of even putting such a thing to vote is absurd on its face. Putting a fundamentally immoral act to vote cannot make it moral.
Or, another way to illustrate the problem is with the lone dissenter. Let’s say you have a nation of religious (but democratic) fanatics. One day, someone proposes Universal Self-Flaggelation. You don’t like the idea and do not want to have to whip yourself. However, everyone else is fanatical and is happy to whip themselves. When you raise an objection saying that you don’t consent to having to whip yourself, the group says “let’s put it to a vote!” They vote and - no surprise - the outcome is that Universal Self-Flaggelation is required for everyone, including dissenters. So, you must whip yourself whether you like it or not. But the vote doesn’t really change anything… the fact that everyone else is OK with whipping themselves doesn’t make it OK for them to force the same behavior onto you over your objections. The analogy to taxation should be clear.
You could combine the two above arguments by choosing an immigrant (say, a solitary black man who has immigrated to a racist white country that wants to pass a law “all blacks will be put to death”) or a castaway on an island of democratic cannibals. I don’t think that anyone has really captured in a YT vid the absurdity of justifying a fundamentally immoral act by putting it to vote.
What you did with xtranormal + dubbing your own narration is briliant. You got the goodness of an automated visual plus your very listener-friendly narration (immensely better than the xtranormal robot voices).
Clayton -
I like the idea. I’m not too keen on those examples. I’ll have to think about this some more, but it might be better if instead of being something horrific and shocking, the example is something mundane and trivial. Like why it is immoral to force everyone to wear a silly hat, even when the majority support the wearing of silly hats.
Like how they use egg-cracking as the example in Liliputian Liberty:
@Graham: Good point about the horrific/shocking thing… I think people tire quickly of Nazi-esque arguments… kind of the Godwin’s Law effect.
Funny hats would be a good one - perhaps you could do it along the lines of George Ought to Help. Brainstorming:
Someone hands the main character (let’s call him George) a funny hat: “You have to wear this hat.” George tries it on, looks in a mirror, and doesn’t like it.
Someone: “What’s wrong with the hat?”
George: “I just don’t like how it looks on me. Doesn’t suit me.”
Someone: “But you have to wear it.”
George: “I won’t wear it.”
Someone: “OK, then” [looking to the crowd] “let’s put it to a vote.”
George: “But I don’t want to vote about it, I just don’t want to wear it.”
Someone: “Yes, but if we all agree by democratic vote that the wearing of a funny hat is the law, then you must wear a funny hat on pain of a fine or even jail.”
George looks puzzled
A vote is taken, funny-hat-wearing is declared to be the law by majority vote and George is forced to wear the funny-hat. Video closes with George looking forlorn with his funny hat.
Clayton -
That’s a good start, but even a simple scene like that could not be done in Xtranormal. You can’t have objects like hats that characters can interact with. And you couldn’t have a crowd shot because you can only have a limited number of characters. To animate something like that, I’d have to revert to a technique I’ve used before (i.e. PowerPoint or Prezi or Flash), and then it wouldn’t look as good, or find some new technique.
What I really need is someone who knows how to do animations as good or nearly as good as those in George Ought To Help who would be willing to help me. It would only need a few movement shots to sell it; the rest would be dialogue.
@Graham: No doubt, the animation in George Ought To Help is very slick but must have been a lot of work. I’ll brainstorm some more on an xtranormal-compatible, anti-democracy dialogue which could get the point across.
Clayton -
I’m overwhelmed at the response to this video. Over 50,000 views in just one week!
Thank you so much to everyone who liked, commented, shared, etc!
This is really good, Graham. Really good.
I would love to see the sequel. This is getting sent right away. (I also noticed I’m not the only one…as this has got to be the fastest growing viewcounter for any of your videos…)
It sounds like that’s a similar direction bitbutter is going with his new project.
As far as the funny hats go, this is kind of done here, but from a different angle:
Aha, instead of God’s forgiveness predicated on Jesus’s death, the good news could be that you have been given a vote.
“The government in our nation is very enlightened and does not believe in tyrannical dictates. So, you’ve been given a say. Along with 100 million other people, you’ve been given a vote! If you’d like to , you can vote on it and you can elect representatives to vote on it for you! Isn’t that great news?!”
Clayton -
Yes, I thought that when I saw it. Exciting.
That video is interesting for it’s style. Crude still images. If Xtranormal is out, how do you think that style compares to the crude Flash animations in my LwG part 1? Is the extra time spent trying to get smooth character movements worth it?
Also, I mentioned this quandary to a friend of mine today and he said I should look into whether I could use a computer game (e.g. Skyrim) to create animations of the quality of Xtranormal but with more flexibility in that characters can interract with objects. It’s known as machinima, apparently. Anyone know anything about this? I don’t play those kinds of games…
Yeah, better aesthetics do quite a bit for a video. Your Flash animations are pretty good.
Yeah it sounds like just a matter of going into the game and moving the characters around the way you want them, all the while recording/capturing the screen. This was made really popular a number of years ago when some guys created an entire series of sitcom-type “episodes” just using the multi-player function in Halo. They actually wrote scripts and voiced dialog, and then just moved the characters around in the game for the visuals. It turned out quite well. (See Red vs. Blue)
One advantage they had though was that all the characters were in battle suits with helmets that covered their faces…meaning there were no mouth movements to deal with. I’m not familiar with this practice beyond that one project, so I’m not sure how translatable it would be to something like what you’d like to do. It’s not like those characters or the storylines were something random…the whole series centered around the actual game setting, so the warriors were actually supposed to be warriors, and they were actually supposed to have all the weapons, etc.
If you could find a “canvas” so-to-speak (i.e. game) that is versitile enough for your story elements, it may very well be a good option.
Another option might be Garry’s mod for the source engine. I know you can line up voice with the mouth in that, though Skyrim’s probably looks a hell of a lot better. Here is an example of a full length movie made with Garry’s mod. Skip around a bit to see what you can do with it. I have no idea how to do any of it though.
Great work Graham!
It reminded me of xtranormal, but didn’t make that connection because of your use of original dialogue recording–i agree with clayton that this is a huge improvement over the robo-voices.
Judging by the view count this looks to have been an extremely time/energy effective way of reaching people. I’m a little jealous that I havn’t been able to match this ‘virality’ with my take-ages-to-make vids!
On the subject of follow-ups I hope some unsolicited advise isn’t out of place: What I’ve been finding very useful with the scripts for the George Ought to Help series is to post early drafts online, not to be precious about them (the problem of actually getting people to look at a bunch of text should be much more more of a real concern than that leaking the text will somehow adversely effect the final release of the video–videos can go viral, as far as we know, essays don’t ;)).
The anacho-capitalist subreddit has been really helpful in particular in giving me feedback on early versions.
I love the machinima idea (game characters allowing for the manipulation of objects). Could be very simple to do–wouldn’t even require mouth movements to be compelling i think.
The only thing I would be worried about with machinima is (dun dun dun) copyright laws. I know everyone would obviously prefer to have all this work put into public domain (or at least a CC license), but even more important than that, you wouldn’t want it to be all for naught by having some gaming company shut it down.
Although I suppose the reason it works is because there’s so much wriggle room on something like that. It could be called a “parody”, or fair use…or whatever grey area fan films exist in.
Graham, after thinking about it I believe you are completely right that “if you were to replace the human statist with a human anarchist, you’d lose this sense of being able to relate to the character.”
I like your idea:
“Right now, I’m inclined to make a sequel with the same two characters where the human raises various common objections to the alien’s implication that government is a rather primitive notion. The alien asks more Socratic questions to explore each objection, which soon reveals the absurdity of them. Like “if we didn’t have government, who would take care of the poor” and “who would build the roads” and “who would make sure products are safe for consumers” and “the rich will rule” etc.”
Making it in XtraNormal again with just the same two character sounds like it would be easier than trying to use a video game or another form of animation. Also, viewers who also have seen the first video (or who might encounter the first video at a later date) would see the similarity if you keep it the same with XtraNormal. And I don’t really see any downside to using XtraNormal again either. Nobody has to carry any props for a dialogue like the one you suggest.
One thing to consider is do you want to focus on the practical side of anarchy, i.e. explaining how various public goods and similar things can be provided without government (“But we need government to do X, Y, Z” and the alien knocks him down by explaining how X, Y, Z gets done on his planet") or would it be better to focus on the ethical side of government by having the alien explain that the human’s reasons for why governments are allegedly justified are not correct.
“Government Explained” kind of already deals with this moral side, despite how the alien does not explicitly say that he thinks what the government doing is immoral. Rather, the way he talks about what the government is makes it sound like its a medieval institution that doesn’t belong in a civilized society. This is similar to calling it immoral/unjust, but not quite the same.
So perhaps focusing on the practical side of how the alien gets X, Y, and Z done on his planet would be better. Or perhaps if you’re feeling very ambitious you may want to consider making two sequels, one dealing with the human’s arguments that government is justified and the other dealing with the human’s fears that X, Y, and Z couldn’t get done in anarchy. Combining them together may be tough.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think people are shocked enough. People don’t seem to understand where different kinds of thinking can really lead. “Godwin’s Law” or not (I really don’t care), most Jews didn’t understand what the Nazis were really doing to them until they were inside the gas chambers dying from breathing Zyklon-B (they had been told they needed to undergo de-lousing).
Anyways, I like all the ideas you’ve presented in this thread. With this most recent one, I think the ante should be upped both with George’s resistance to wearing the funny hat and with what the crowd thinks it’s justified to do to George because the issue was put to a vote. For example, if George lowers the funny hat from his head only to face an enormous number of guns pointed at him.
I think the point of all this should be to show where the state wreaks havoc with people’s innate sense of morality. Nearly everyone would find it egregiously immoral to kill someone for refusing to wear a funny hat. They’d consider it murder (and I’d agree with them). But by endorsing the state, they implicitly endorse the systematic undertaking of such immoral actions. And the reality of that is not going to go away just because they refuse to face it.