Hey there! Been a while since I put something here, on good old Xadara, and I feel terrible for that. This site is my baby, and is supposed to be basically the central repository for my online activities, but for the past month and a half all my efforts have been put into YouTube… and Guild Wars 2.
I wrote a bit ago about doing some videos on Kent Hovind — the reality denying cult leader I’ve written some pieces about previously. These videos were started on a whim, and in the past month and a half I’ve done, geeze, probably 10 videos, mostly long one-take real time off the cuff ramblings, with a few shorter ones, to quite nice reception from the odd subculture that comment on Hovind.
Of course, it isn’t just him that’s the subject — this is a young Earth creationist we’re dealing with, so along with his rejection of actual reality and him being a pretty terrible person on a whole comes the religious aspect.
Let’s not mince words here — I’m an Atheist. I’m also Anti Theist, and while I allow plenty of leeway for personal beliefs that don’t cause any gross harm, I have an extreme dislike of religion as one generally thinks of it, especially when organized into an entity which causes harm to people, either in an explicit way or in less tangible method.
That isn’t the subject of this article, but it should be understood that’s the stance I hold — I will eventually write a piece on that when the time is right, but it sets the scope of the content I’ve been making — a far cry from the gaming and tech content of yesteryear.
There are a multitude of reasons for me to have changed gears, so to speak, but it suffices to say there is no personal fulfillment to be had in continuing to share my thoughts about those other interests of mine on YouTube. It’s a flooded market of people who only want one kind of thing, and that isn’t the type of media I would want to create. I have always tried to make content I would want to watch, but that doesn’t fit what gaming and tech viewers want. It is what it is.
Atheist content, however, especially dealing with Hovind, has a smaller, more close knit community of people who just happen to enjoy long form, slightly rambling riffs and the like. Usually they are done as live streams by others, but I personally choose to do long form “off the cuff” recordings and then upload those — they at least allow me a chance to “abort” the recording if I feel the need to, rather than have to commit to a livestream that doesn’t have the right feeling anymore.
This, however, takes time. Usually an hour and a half to react to a 30 minute video. Beyond the psychological stress of hearing the nasally broken record that is Kent Hovind’s voice, It’s irritating to hear him say the same garbage from his script over and over, as if it all hasn’t been factually beaten to death by dozens of other people over the past few decades.
Still, I have done the videos I have for the hell of it, and had fun in the process. They just take time to create, be it live reactions or pre-planned scripted content. There is “no winning” with video content save for the fact that you actually can get views on such, while it’s a hell of a fight to get someone to read a post here, regardless of how hard I may work to share it. Such is the way of the internet.
I am certainly going to, after the past month of almost constant content creation, take a step back for a while, if only to make time for my home here at Xadara. Video work can be rewarding, and this recent foray into video work has been fun, but I need to make time for my other hobbies, and interests.
Maybe I’ll be able to work my way back into other video production down the line — maybe more commentaries, since people seem to like my takes, or maybe I’ll feel the urge to jump back into some gaming and tech stuff, if only as a means to an end. What end? I don’t know, but hey, as long as I’m enjoying the process, right?