The CGP Grey-VTH War on YT

[scooter]

This is blowing up: CGP Grey, whom I have talked about here before, has ventured into asshat territory by copyright striking two videos of the smaller channel Vlogging Through History, going directly to the nuclear option instead of claiming the money behind those particular videos - which he could have done - or just contacting VTH directly and asking them to take it down.

From his lone tweet on the subject, Grey clearly doesn't think VTH's reaction videos are Fair Use, even given that they're twice the length of Grey's referenced material.

Grey has also moved to limit any comments on his work after some critical commentary within the past year especially - though his proximate reason was to limit spambots.

It should be noted that Grey's making money hand over fist - he isn't hurting from his content being "misused", which is clearly isn't. And it's just as clear that this is punitive: VTH responded to the first strike with a challenge, meaning that Grey had to essentially ennumerate the exact content issue and be ready to press charges with it. Grey's response was to issue a second strike literally ten minutes later. (It isn't know whether he will follow through on prosecuting the strikes; there's been no word that Grey has gone to his lawyer.)

I bailed on Grey right at the start of the pandemic, and right about the same time I created this forum. Whereas I'd followed him before because I found his work entertaining and rather informative, though I didn't agree with him about some of his content (as an example, his oddly impassioned defense of the British monarchy, which featured some slightly dubious financial facts to back himself up and which he's never corrected). But that wasn't my reason for unfollowing - particularly when any content would have been welcome as we went into our pandemic hibernations...it was that his content was developing a tone of contempt for his viewers. It wasn't explicit, and still isn't, as best I can tell - but increasingly, he was putting out content from a sense of superiority rather than an effort towards education. For example, his misidentification of a missile base in one video prompted a several-minute follow-up mea culpa entitled "CGP Grey was WRONG", as if this was so rare and heinous that it was necessary to repurify his channel's content. (There was also an odd walk-back on the Electoral College, despite that being one of the times he got everything pretty much on point.)

It's easy to get wrapped up in that mode of thinking; I've probably been guilty a couple of times. But given that this behavior seems to be getting worse - he imperiously said that someone "eating lunch in the corner of my video" wasn't Fair Use in that tweet (true, but that's very clearly not what is happening), and his silencing of comments on a rather flimsy excuse - it's better that I don't follow Grey any more, and I'm of the opinion that no one else should until if and when he gets his act together.