Yo what? First it's made chiefly by a guy who I had mentally pigeonholed as A Dark Souls UA-camr and then you tell me someone who IS a youtuber did the soundtrack?
I don't know. I feel like he wanted to talk about aliens and colonialism while using the game as a way to do it. Most of what he talks about is something I already know. He doesn't really go too deep into the topic either, prefering a more surface level analysis. I mean, after watching the entire video, I still don't know much about the game.
Thor (the composer for the game) has a killer yt channel, probably one of my top 3 favourite He is so good Also his album positive yellow is great, too: with bangers like "king of the iron fuck"
@@L0LWTF1337 They didn't "fake it". They actually spent money on paranormal experiments because a lot of USSR higherups were into that shit. All will Sergueï Korolev, one of the most brilliant rocket scientists the world has ever known, was rotting in a gulag.
The military said they saw some weird shit they couldn't, or at least weren't willing to explain. It's easy to leap to fantastical conclusions like aliens but the real answer is probably going to be pretty mundane. The Roswell situation and by extension the entire UFO craze was started by a balloon.
For a different (and IMO, more mature) take on this game, Errant Signal just released a video on the game. It emphasizes the metaphors of the game instead of taking the alien invasion literally.
Love this video and love Umurangi Generation! I'm so stoked to hear your thoughts on it and really enjoyed your take! As I've gotten older I've noticed more messages in games like what Umurangi Generation is saying. I've been wondering if it's my tastes and biases leading me to media like this or if it's more and more people being fed up with the status quo. Regardless, I'm glad there is art being made that is unafraid to be political.
@@nsalegit9482 a lot less angry but I just played Alba: A Wildlife Adventure and it gave me a a similar vibe. Great game and great anti capitalist message
Well if you're in search for great underground art you'll rarely stumble upon some conservative bullshit. Most humans who feel the need to get out of their way to create something that expresses an idea.. do feel the need for some damn progress!
@@nsalegit9482 check out "Papers, Please" if you haven't already. And "Neocolonialism" is an interesting small board-type game that George recommended a couple of years ago also
How did they conflate "cargo cult" with slavery? The concept of a "cargo cult" was that remotely located people came up with explanations for technology they couldn't identify. They weren't enslaved by the makers of the technology.
to ur point about similarities between religious myths being due in part to the activity of colonization/imperialism of the great world-empires (from Akkad to America), i think you would like Kojin Karatani's Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy, which contextualizes the Socrates-Plato-Aristotle complex of athenian antiquity in their particular political forms. he contrasts the slave-owning, semi-aristocratic democracy of Athens to the Isonomia of the Ionian colonies, with the latter producing many of the great pre-Socratic philosophers. what emerges is that philosophy appears not out of an uncomplicated "wonder" or "love of Truth", but from war, hardship, inter-imperialist rivalry, and social crisis. i think Karatani over-idealizes certain historical moments (his analysis of the early american colonial township elides the fact that this social form was produced by brutal colonization of an already inhabited continent) but the basic premise seems worthwhile. he makes passing reference to the way the Babylonian exile brought about many of the revolutionary concepts and institutions of Second Temple Judaism, roughly contemporary with the birth of philosophy in golden age Athens, so ur comment made me think of this book. great video!
How in the hell is the view count on this video not in the millions? I've watched this a couple of times and I'm personally starting to feel this is your best video yet. Keep it up, George!
Bunnyhop, have you ever seem "Mobile Suit Gundam 00 the Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer"? The 'alien invasion' plot is more about 'humanity must get its shit together and evolve as a society so they can co-exist with the galaxy' and less 'humans are without fault and must band together against the evil aliens'. I think you would get a kick out of it.
Also that the aliens where a single cell organisms that required communication through the sixth sense super power that is seen in the Gundam series, making that movie a trope breaker of most of the Gundam formula
@@gregorythelazy8099 You can actually go blind, you will miss out on many character arcs but if the only thing you care is the thing I talked on the original post it will deliver to you. The series attached to the movie isn't flawless and the popular opinion is that the message gets muddled on the second season. It is a easy recommend if you are into Gundam though.
I was literally just thinking last night "Huh, it's been a while since the last Super Bunnyhop video, I wonder what he's up to..." and I gotta say I sure didn't expect this LOL but I love it this is exactly the kind of content I want!!!
The thing about the resource curve: We're already past it. I know Im not the first to say this, but scarcity in the modern world is a political problem not a technical one; it exists because a hierarchical elite feels that their ease and importance REQUIRES it to exist(because if other people aren't suffering, then how is their lack of suffering important? How will they control and influence us if they dont control our access to comfort?), and so they enforce it, as governmental policy, on the rest of us.
@@dylanpresidafonseca2545 That still isn't any kind of counterargument. The above guy has reasons to support his thesis and you have 'this is a stupid argument because I say it's stupid.' That's not anything, it's the rhetorical equivalent of 'no u'. If his argument was truly stupid and you had any idea why, you'd be able to 'muster a counterargument' to say *why* his statement is stupid.
Great video, I like that you kinda embraced the ambiguity of the UAPs and how revealing people's immediate responses to them are. I think on some level the smartest thing someone can do is recognize when they don't know something.
Great. Except it's not aliens. It appears to be completely mundane objects in odd situations with deceptive orientations. Birds look really fast when you're filming them from miles away at near mach 1. On a spherical earth the infrared exhaust signature of a jet exaust appears to crash into the ocean when it goes beyond the horizon. A triangular aperture with a shallow depth of field makes a commercial airliner look like a triangular light in the sky.
@@Tb0n3 I'm looking for credible sources which back your explanations, but have only been able to find good proof of the last one. Without it coming from a physicist/sensor tech, blaming everything on "deceptive orientations" feels like a cop out when there have been military officials who have claimed that's insufficient, even if historically that explanation is far more likely than the alternatives. My real point though was as an observer, it's ultimately pointless to speculate. You might be a sensor tech where actually being on top of (and being able to identify) phenomena like this is a crucial job skill, but if you're just a rando like me this is all a bit silly. I certainly don't have the credentials to speak definitively, and I don't even have the credentials to identify someone with the credentials.
@@triggthediscovery Thunderf00t has done many videos on these. His explanations satisfy my skepticism well enough. On top of that, the likelihood of evidence being misinterpreted is much more likely than aliens.
I know absolutely nothing about this game except that the expansion's ost is done by UA-camr Thorhighheels who is an insanely talented human being who deserves love and kisses
I have never been able to come to a satisfactory motive for an alien invasion by any intelligence capable of travelling between stars (even at sub-light speeds).
Without having to come up with alien reasons (like the Combine in Half-Life who absorb other species into their "society," or an AI with a rogue directive), just the human dream of space colonization is that we find a pre-existing biosphere we can live on. Sure dust balls and gas giants will be the majority of a space faring race's holdings, but I imagine a pre-built planet that doesn't need generations of geoengineering will be pretty desirable for any colonists - as long as some pesky sentient beings don't interfere.
I first heard about Umurangi Generation from Curio and I'm really happy it's getting out there. Thank you for talking about it and giving your unique perspective!
Man, let your script breath a bit. My brain is tapping out when you glue the next sentence that close to the previous one, I'm in the middle of processing what you said and you're already talking about something else.
A little weird how you never mention the Beyond Good & Evil, a game that's a bit more positive about the theme of people being confronted by an alien invasion and a journalistic photographer's place in dealing with that. Of course, Hillys seems like a pretty cosmopolitan place that probably already has some interplanetary cultural influences before the DomZ start their invasion.
@@Solinaru You sneak into secret bases to take pictures of the stuff that's going on, and then as a side job you have to catalog all the species on the planet
Fantastic vid George! As someone from an ex-colony, I've struggled with forming my own identity many times. I never made the connection of Alien 'abduction' theories being seen from our human lense and so we project what we think aliens may do to us.
Carl Sagan said that the Romans didn't develop steam power despite having a steam engine because slaves were just cheaper. Carl Sagan was very wrong on that one. The Romans didn't have the metallurgy to develop anything remotely close to a useful steam engine. The Aeolipile was hilariously inefficient and little more than a toy, a neat trick to make some temple's doors move by themselves. It was a technological dead-end, and building actually useful steam engines would take many, many centuries of incremental progress to even have good enough steel for it. And that's even before worrying about where they would have found enough fuel for large-scale steam engine use, as wood wouldn't have been nearly enough and they didn't know about much fossil fuel deposits. To be fair to Carl Sagan, he didn't live in a world where this can be found with a few hours of Internet research at most, and the "ancient people were just dumb unlike us enlightened modernites" fallacy has always had an irresistible allure.
You misunderstood the message. The message wasn't that "ancient people were just dumb", quite the opposite, that ancient people were in fact pretty smart and they had a good grasp on the science of the things we use today, but the material conditions weren't lined up for the kind of development we have today.
What a fever dream of a video this was. Thanks! Also, if anybody wants to read somebody who makes Philip K. Dick stories feel mundane, then read Stanislaw Lem. And if you saw this damn Hollywood version of Solaris and thought it was lame, then know it is like comparing the Hobbit movie and book.
Fantastic stuff. Always delighted to see where your videos go. This time I was happy to hear you state something I've been seeing for years: if space aliens can defy the laws of physics to surpass the incomprehensible vastness of space, then they have no material reason to invade or conquer earth.
If I had a dollar for everytime parts of Māori and pacific culture were taken and removed from their context to justify a monomyth about the origins of humanity, I'd have two dollars. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
@@AstralPhnx Yea, 'mana' (the videogame blue magic juice) was inspired by early racist anthropology where the concept of mana (the complex Māori and pacific term that roughly translates to 'authority') was thought to be a sort of pre-religion that would eventually turn into Christianity. Since such a wide variety of groups shared this concept. They thought that mana was like, the essence of God that was worshipped before a culture became 'developed' enough to create a monotheistic religion. This assumption was also partially because they saw pacific peoples as not advanced enough to travel, trade, and interact with groups all across the ocean. So they assumed that all these groups independently came up with a concept called 'mana' which was similar across cultures.
So the first 7 minutes are fine. Then Bunny just hits the pause button on the video game discussion to spend 9 minutes discussing UFO conspiracies, post-truth, culture clash, and potential extraterrestrial alien behaviors (and at no point in that timeframe do they tie these things directly back to the game). I get the initial premise of "this video game tells a different kind of story than what I'm used to and it focuses on colonialism" but going off on ET aliens really felt like the wrong tact to take. Bunny never manages to close the loop and bring back this wild journey to the discussion of the game. They kind of try with "well you see even though we're so far apart we actually have extremely similar interests and memes because of a shared language and culture on the internet" and that's a result of colonialism. I just don't think it connects back. The game and this comparison they're trying to make never get tied together in convincing fashion in my opinion. Either we needed a more in-depth look at the game, or the comparison needed to be much more direct. Or maybe both. I think this is one of the weaker videos of this channel.
Mission-based, you take pictures of your surroundings to complete objectives - kinda like a Tony Hawk game but with photos instead of skateboarding. Each mission unlocks a new piece of kit, and doing all the bonus objectives in a mission unlocks a secret piece of kit. It's easier played then explained.
Very interesting video! The only thing I would point out is that the motor of imperialism is not simple resource scarcity, but rather class societies' drive for expansion. Class societies have one or more big working classes that provide for the needs of one or more small ruling classes. The ruling classes fund their luxuries through the extraction of surplus labor: making the workers produce more than what they themselves consume, and appropriating the surplus product. The slaves may collectively produce 20 tons of crops but only be fed 10, leaving the other 10 for the slave holder (to eat, sell in the market, pay taxes, recruit an army, buy more slaves, etc.) In this arrangement, the ruling classes can increase their own standard of living by increasing the amount of surplus product appropriated. This can be achieved by forcing the workers to produce more for the same compensation, lowering compensation for the same work, raising productivity while raising compensation by less than the productivity increase, or by increasing the size of the working class. By expanding and conquering new territories, the ruling classes expand the size of the working class, the total amount of people from which they can extract surplus, and thus, the total amount of surplus that they may enjoy for themselves. This is the motor force of imperialism, from Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire to Great Britain and the United States.
I think the overblown, unwieldy and distracted organization of topics all mixed together under the vague banner of 'colonialism bad' is the video essay that finally made me dump video essays entirely.
Playing Devil's Advocate, do you know how many unique cultures that were wiped out before the invention of written language? The history of humanity is the history of colonialism. Even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, show a particularly proclivity towards conquering and violence. I'd suggest reading up on Lawrence H. Keeley’s seminal work _War Before Civilization_ if anyone’s interested in diving deeper into the subject.
Did you know a Maori explorer visited England before an english person ever visited New Zealand? Maori history is more like an adventurer went to another galaxy and traded with them for advanced technology which he then went back to earth and became king of the world. The aliens then came 20 years later and took over .
Remember the Soul Calibur video where he digressed on the subject of the slave trade but never mentioned the Arabian slave trade? Its always been there, he just doesn't bother being subtle about it now.
Why are you treating radicalism like it's a virtue? Radical thinkers of all stripes are usually ideological morons who very often dangerous and self destructive. It's just pathetic
This video is awesome! Thank you so much for the recs and all the hard work! Love the deconstructive, post-modern, speed take, strategic deep-dive, dispersed energy vibe you got. Reminds me of reading Mark Fisher's 'Ghosts of my Life'. I also love the quiet shouting at the wildly rambling speakers that reminds me of a Potholer debunk! Really loved this one.
15:24 "There is no better way to learn how mythology spreads than to observe paranormal conspiracies now" Literally the point of The Demon Haunted World, while we're on the subject of Sagan
Hey George good video, but it has a big problem your thesis is wrong. Even tho the genre of Alien invasion's was created from a nationalistic fear from foreigners. I would say that is unfair that it is the basis to interpret the genre, it would be like saying that the basis of the zombie movie is a narrative about the persecution of black Americans. And your point of comparison of the extermination that humanity would find in an alien invasion scenario whit the colonization period showed your lack of knowledge about the period. The majority of the deaths of the indigenous people in the American continent was because of the virus that were brought by the Europeans, and even tho they are responsible is unfair to say that this was there intention, but the big problem whit your point is to apply your North American interpretation of you fact in the global escale. The Spanish empire was almost kicked out o from Mexico, they conquer the Astecs using the political instability of the region in their favor, very much like the USA would use to instal military dictatoships in Latin america. In Brazil the colonization was made along side the Tupi tribe, that alied whit the Portuguese to destroy their regional rivals, and in India the multiple revolts against the East Indie Company rule. To say that resistance is futile and that the evil Europeans conquer the world whit their superior thecnology is reductive and misleading, you can criticize the events of your past, but to reduce the world to fit your interpretation is very deplorable. The negative reception that you are receiving in this video might look like shallow criticism of the political beliefs that you showed, a form of denounce of your political opinions that you had not show in this channel until now, but i would say that they denounce the change in your analysis, by talking about controversial topics as if you were the voice of reason , and weirdly bringing points that have nothing to do whit the discussion like the comparison to conspirace theories or Fox news just because they fit your narrative. Im not saying that you should leave politics out of video games or this kinda of ideocracy, but i would recommend you to not pretend that you know about thing that are outside of your knowledge, and stop whit the white guilt is pathetic and weird to every one, reducing history to the last 300 years is foolish and egomaniac. Sorry for the bad English and have a good day
I appreciate you covering this Kiwi developed game and giving it the attention it deserves but I can't help but cringe a little at some of the Maori pronunciation here and there haha. To be fair though, it is kinda hard to pronounce. Either way, great video!
The dad and sons podcast made me interested in the game. But in this video I find it hard to follow what the connection between the game and the video actually is.
Ok I'm editing this bc by the end I had woken up a little (I was watching this after waking up at 2am in like a dream state, unable to go back to sleep, and couldn't really follow wtf he was saying), and I _fully_ agree with everything he's saying. Humans make *EVERYTHING* about them- er, _we_ make everything about _us._ The existence of these UAPs is irrelevant, the only thing the people that talk about them are concerned with is how it's going to benefit *THEIR* lives, and the only thing the collective human species is concerned about is passing the blame to another, external species for 1,000s of years of behavior so atrocious, that we can't even fathom it (despite being the cause of it, albeit indirectly). Excellent video, LOVE this channel now, game looks great, props to the developer for turning a terrible situation into a positive by using a creative outlet to process it and then pass it on to others. I can imagine there are some people who were moved by this game, while others write Reviews trashing it for "looking like PS2 grafix" and "havin no gunz"... *“WHILE THESE TIMES ARE DEATH TIMES, HOLD ON - PROTECT THE LIGHT”*
The line about Romans rejecting steam trains because of slaves is false. We still had colonisation and exploited labour when we invented steam engines. The industrial revolution and slavery were concurrent
@@xcmledder3420 I don't believe that. They embraced other technology they discovered. Steam power enabled British factories to surpass those in other countries with vast access to low cost labour.
This is genuinely one of my favourite video on youtube, ever. Any reading recommendations on similar topics (aliens, colonialism, alien colonialism)? I wanna get knee-er deeper in this shit
@@joaoppagnan 'Class struggle' doesn't just mean 'acknowledging that workers have historically been exploited to various degrees and that this can be remedied to some extent by giving them stronger legal protections', just like calling yourself an anti-racist doesn't just mean that you're actively against racism. It's a particular grand narrative that reduces history to a master-slave dialectic along class lines. And it's a "Kampfbegriff", meant to radicalize workers, make them recognize that they're 'all on the same team' and rise up against their oppressors in a bloody revolution. "Class struggle" is a deliberately milquetoast translation of "Klassenkampf", which is closer to Class fight/battle/war. TL;DR: If you're using these terms without knowing what they mean, stop being a useful idiot. if you do know what they mean, ... well.
I don't buy the thesis of this video. The people who are alive today are no more colonizers than they are responsible for some ancient ancestors taking a bite of fruit that God told them not to eat. Looking at the world's history of conquest, slavery and atrocity and saying that the west is solely responsible is just as ignorant as saying it never happened. No matter the color of a person's skin, no matter where their ancestors lived, go back far enough on anyone's family tree and you will find people who did things that are downright despicable to our modern sensibilities. You might have woken up, George, but you've still got sleep in your eye
Ironically the one group of "victims" he mentions in the video, the Maori, was a group who had not only been systemically exterminating the native Polynesians of New Zealand and the islands around it, European colonialism literally put a stop to an active then ongoing genocide they where perpetrating. This is similar to the Zulu genocide against the native South African tribes that the British put an end to, and in both New Zealand and South Africa today talk of indigenous issues almost never involves said indigenous tribes but rather two groups who colonised the countries taking up both sides of the discussion. It would be funny if not so tragic.
@@ZontarDow that's just how the world is. There is never a civilization that are pure victims: every society has committed atrocities, and all we can do is try to make the society we live in better than what it was
@@jacobogarcia8111 No, I actually meant that aristotle talked about the five acts structure, and that how it stayed for a long time. But actually that's also not true. Now I checked in wikipedia and it says aristo splits play into two (complication and unravelling) and it was Horace (Horatius Flaccus) who came out with 5.
As a Māori from Aotearoa, I am always delightfully surprised to have my people mentioned.
Cooler name than New Zealand thats for sure, might visit sometime.
I also love hearing people having a go at using te teo Māori. Like, ka pai on the attempt ehoa
Always nice to have a yank talk about us without it being about lord of the rings that's for sure
@@veselekov that's the cutest mfuckin thing
@@tardwrangler1019 is it the inbreeding that makes you guys like this or is it the bland food
That's the game Thor HighHeels made the soundtrack for :D
I had no idea! I watch his channel and have played this game but never connected the two!
SuperBunnyHeels
Yo what? First it's made chiefly by a guy who I had mentally pigeonholed as A Dark Souls UA-camr and then you tell me someone who IS a youtuber did the soundtrack?
His music is so good, and his videos are great too. I hope he gets more attention online and does well.
@@nolankanski9116 I keep wondering how he did not have a blow up yet. His videos feel so unique and their quality is so high.
"The primary bullet points of reference are Neon Genesis Evangelion and Jet Set Radio" got my hairs standing up on my skin
AND THE PRIMARY CULTURAL REFERENCE IS COLONIALISM
Yeah, that's why my favorite alien story is Roadside Picnic
Get out of here, STALKER.
Aliens are both the least important and most important part of that story. It's great.
Hell yeah brother! I need to read that book again
Roadside Picnic is sooo good man
Happiness for all and nobody goes away unsatisfied
"They make shows for the history channel" and that alone is enough reason not to take them seriously.
“History Channel: where the truth, is history.”
-South Park
@@GGchannel1025 Lmao, sometimes Soth Parks satire is spot on
Once again, George tricks me in to learning through the lens of a "game review". Great work!
I love how this is a gaming channel that just goes into whatever George feels like talking about
As it should be.
George is fascinating, i thought it's impossible to make 20min game review yet say almost nothing about the game.
And thats why his views are plummeted
@Shin Shaman you seem unpleasant
I don't know. I feel like he wanted to talk about aliens and colonialism while using the game as a way to do it. Most of what he talks about is something I already know. He doesn't really go too deep into the topic either, prefering a more surface level analysis. I mean, after watching the entire video, I still don't know much about the game.
I love the ethical dilemma of balancing your cash flow versus doing the right thing. It's like an evolution of Papers, Please.
Thor (the composer for the game) has a killer yt channel, probably one of my top 3 favourite
He is so good
Also his album positive yellow is great, too: with bangers like "king of the iron fuck"
Link? When I search it's not showing up, too much marvel stuff
@@fakename105 ThorHighHeels loveee his stuff
My damn hero he is!
Love his aesthetics and video topics, but his diction gets so annoying sometimes with the shifts between mumbling and loud clear talking
This video gives me that feel of Dad getting back with a pack of cigarettes.
and a bowl of noodles
Nah he was just in the UFO rabbit hole. And the hole goes deep
It's amazing he could find he's way back up
@@junior1388666 I believe it was the Coast to Coast AM interview when he snap out of it.
Don't know that feel
I have no idea what that means.
"b-but the military says they seen alienz" yeah the military was tricked by a bunch of magicians to think you could bend spoons with your mind.
10/10 comment
The soviets actually faked a bunch of telekinesis experiments in the hope that the USA would waste money in investigating the supernatural.
@@L0LWTF1337 They didn't "fake it". They actually spent money on paranormal experiments because a lot of USSR higherups were into that shit. All will Sergueï Korolev, one of the most brilliant rocket scientists the world has ever known, was rotting in a gulag.
The military said they saw some weird shit they couldn't, or at least weren't willing to explain. It's easy to leap to fantastical conclusions like aliens but the real answer is probably going to be pretty mundane. The Roswell situation and by extension the entire UFO craze was started by a balloon.
@@polycultural-capital-enjoyer where is my daily dose of socialism old man
The best first contact story and really how weird it's gonna be if it ever happened is Blindsight by Peter Watts
It's about time someone talked about Umurangi Generation. I bought it on a whim a while back and it's one of my favourite games now.
For a different (and IMO, more mature) take on this game, Errant Signal just released a video on the game. It emphasizes the metaphors of the game instead of taking the alien invasion literally.
Amazing hearing your perspective on this thing George!
Love this video and love Umurangi Generation! I'm so stoked to hear your thoughts on it and really enjoyed your take!
As I've gotten older I've noticed more messages in games like what Umurangi Generation is saying. I've been wondering if it's my tastes and biases leading me to media like this or if it's more and more people being fed up with the status quo. Regardless, I'm glad there is art being made that is unafraid to be political.
What are some other games like umarangi? I'm always looking to support counter hegemonic art.
@@nsalegit9482 a lot less angry but I just played Alba: A Wildlife Adventure and it gave me a a similar vibe. Great game and great anti capitalist message
@@blasegg2396 thanks!
Well if you're in search for great underground art you'll rarely stumble upon some conservative bullshit. Most humans who feel the need to get out of their way to create something that expresses an idea.. do feel the need for some damn progress!
@@nsalegit9482 check out "Papers, Please" if you haven't already. And "Neocolonialism" is an interesting small board-type game that George recommended a couple of years ago also
How did they conflate "cargo cult" with slavery? The concept of a "cargo cult" was that remotely located people came up with explanations for technology they couldn't identify. They weren't enslaved by the makers of the technology.
to ur point about similarities between religious myths being due in part to the activity of colonization/imperialism of the great world-empires (from Akkad to America), i think you would like Kojin Karatani's Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy, which contextualizes the Socrates-Plato-Aristotle complex of athenian antiquity in their particular political forms. he contrasts the slave-owning, semi-aristocratic democracy of Athens to the Isonomia of the Ionian colonies, with the latter producing many of the great pre-Socratic philosophers. what emerges is that philosophy appears not out of an uncomplicated "wonder" or "love of Truth", but from war, hardship, inter-imperialist rivalry, and social crisis. i think Karatani over-idealizes certain historical moments (his analysis of the early american colonial township elides the fact that this social form was produced by brutal colonization of an already inhabited continent) but the basic premise seems worthwhile. he makes passing reference to the way the Babylonian exile brought about many of the revolutionary concepts and institutions of Second Temple Judaism, roughly contemporary with the birth of philosophy in golden age Athens, so ur comment made me think of this book. great video!
I missed these. Glad you're back!
How in the hell is the view count on this video not in the millions? I've watched this a couple of times and I'm personally starting to feel this is your best video yet. Keep it up, George!
Watch Errant Signal take.
I haven't watched a Super Bunnyhop or ThorHigheels video in months and now I'm getting both at once
Bunnyhop, have you ever seem "Mobile Suit Gundam 00 the Movie: A Wakening of the Trailblazer"?
The 'alien invasion' plot is more about 'humanity must get its shit together and evolve as a society so they can co-exist with the galaxy' and less 'humans are without fault and must band together against the evil aliens'. I think you would get a kick out of it.
Also that the aliens where a single cell organisms that required communication through the sixth sense super power that is seen in the Gundam series, making that movie a trope breaker of most of the Gundam formula
This sounds good, should I watch all of the series before, or can I just go into the movie blind?
@@gregorythelazy8099 You can actually go blind, you will miss out on many character arcs but if the only thing you care is the thing I talked on the original post it will deliver to you.
The series attached to the movie isn't flawless and the popular opinion is that the message gets muddled on the second season.
It is a easy recommend if you are into Gundam though.
@@AKImeru sweet thanks I'll go for the movie first and go back for the series if I'm craving more
@@gregorythelazy8099 👌👌 gundam nice
I was literally just thinking last night "Huh, it's been a while since the last Super Bunnyhop video, I wonder what he's up to..." and I gotta say I sure didn't expect this LOL but I love it this is exactly the kind of content I want!!!
The thing about the resource curve: We're already past it. I know Im not the first to say this, but scarcity in the modern world is a political problem not a technical one; it exists because a hierarchical elite feels that their ease and importance REQUIRES it to exist(because if other people aren't suffering, then how is their lack of suffering important? How will they control and influence us if they dont control our access to comfort?), and so they enforce it, as governmental policy, on the rest of us.
Well that's not true.
@@dylanpresidafonseca2545 Nice rebuttal. Literally no argument, just 'no'.
@@Mordrevious it's such a stupid argument that I can't even muster a counterargument.
@@dylanpresidafonseca2545 That still isn't any kind of counterargument. The above guy has reasons to support his thesis and you have 'this is a stupid argument because I say it's stupid.' That's not anything, it's the rhetorical equivalent of 'no u'. If his argument was truly stupid and you had any idea why, you'd be able to 'muster a counterargument' to say *why* his statement is stupid.
@@Mordrevious I mean he has no real evidence, just conjecture.
I remember watching some of Veselekov's darksouls stuff a long time ago, wild.
i remembered watching them the other day when he uploaded a video saying they were deleted forever.
Great video, I like that you kinda embraced the ambiguity of the UAPs and how revealing people's immediate responses to them are. I think on some level the smartest thing someone can do is recognize when they don't know something.
Great. Except it's not aliens. It appears to be completely mundane objects in odd situations with deceptive orientations. Birds look really fast when you're filming them from miles away at near mach 1. On a spherical earth the infrared exhaust signature of a jet exaust appears to crash into the ocean when it goes beyond the horizon. A triangular aperture with a shallow depth of field makes a commercial airliner look like a triangular light in the sky.
@@Tb0n3 I'm looking for credible sources which back your explanations, but have only been able to find good proof of the last one. Without it coming from a physicist/sensor tech, blaming everything on "deceptive orientations" feels like a cop out when there have been military officials who have claimed that's insufficient, even if historically that explanation is far more likely than the alternatives.
My real point though was as an observer, it's ultimately pointless to speculate. You might be a sensor tech where actually being on top of (and being able to identify) phenomena like this is a crucial job skill, but if you're just a rando like me this is all a bit silly. I certainly don't have the credentials to speak definitively, and I don't even have the credentials to identify someone with the credentials.
@@triggthediscovery Thunderf00t has done many videos on these. His explanations satisfy my skepticism well enough. On top of that, the likelihood of evidence being misinterpreted is much more likely than aliens.
Absolutely stellar piece. Something only found on this channel. Bravo.
I came here to learn about Umurangi Generation and I have learned very little about Umurangi Generation.
I know absolutely nothing about this game except that the expansion's ost is done by UA-camr Thorhighheels who is an insanely talented human being who deserves love and kisses
I second that notion. He's amazing and has introduced me to so much interesting stuff, and made me appreciate games in a whole new way.
thor did the whole soundtrack! expansion included
I just love how instead of nit picking, he just looks at games for what they are, rather than what they could be.
@@SleepyMatt-zzz yeah he really is so refreshing
I have never been able to come to a satisfactory motive for an alien invasion by any intelligence capable of travelling between stars (even at sub-light speeds).
Academic purposes?
Why do people go to the middle of the jungle to study chimps of we are so much more advanced than they are?
For fun.
fun and study are valid reasons to visit, but not to invade
Without having to come up with alien reasons (like the Combine in Half-Life who absorb other species into their "society," or an AI with a rogue directive), just the human dream of space colonization is that we find a pre-existing biosphere we can live on. Sure dust balls and gas giants will be the majority of a space faring race's holdings, but I imagine a pre-built planet that doesn't need generations of geoengineering will be pretty desirable for any colonists - as long as some pesky sentient beings don't interfere.
@@CarrotConsumer they must have the time of their lives sticking probes up our asses
this title will confuse yt for rest of this year. thanks G
I first heard about Umurangi Generation from Curio and I'm really happy it's getting out there. Thank you for talking about it and giving your unique perspective!
Man, let your script breath a bit. My brain is tapping out when you glue the next sentence that close to the previous one, I'm in the middle of processing what you said and you're already talking about something else.
watch it again. get gud @ video essays scrub
A little weird how you never mention the Beyond Good & Evil, a game that's a bit more positive about the theme of people being confronted by an alien invasion and a journalistic photographer's place in dealing with that.
Of course, Hillys seems like a pretty cosmopolitan place that probably already has some interplanetary cultural influences before the DomZ start their invasion.
BGE is nice but what's the verbs in that game? The main character is a journalist, but their verbs/actions don't tie back to that trait. :(
@@Solinaru You sneak into secret bases to take pictures of the stuff that's going on, and then as a side job you have to catalog all the species on the planet
Ah, shame the video didn’t have any noodle clip in it though.
The Noodle is implied. It's always there.
It's basically worthless without it.
Yep... gotta report it 16 times in a row.. sigh
Fantastic vid George! As someone from an ex-colony, I've struggled with forming my own identity many times. I never made the connection of Alien 'abduction' theories being seen from our human lense and so we project what we think aliens may do to us.
The coast to coast yelling is beautiful
Carl Sagan said that the Romans didn't develop steam power despite having a steam engine because slaves were just cheaper.
Carl Sagan was very wrong on that one.
The Romans didn't have the metallurgy to develop anything remotely close to a useful steam engine. The Aeolipile was hilariously inefficient and little more than a toy, a neat trick to make some temple's doors move by themselves. It was a technological dead-end, and building actually useful steam engines would take many, many centuries of incremental progress to even have good enough steel for it. And that's even before worrying about where they would have found enough fuel for large-scale steam engine use, as wood wouldn't have been nearly enough and they didn't know about much fossil fuel deposits.
To be fair to Carl Sagan, he didn't live in a world where this can be found with a few hours of Internet research at most, and the "ancient people were just dumb unlike us enlightened modernites" fallacy has always had an irresistible allure.
You misunderstood the message. The message wasn't that "ancient people were just dumb", quite the opposite, that ancient people were in fact pretty smart and they had a good grasp on the science of the things we use today, but the material conditions weren't lined up for the kind of development we have today.
What a fever dream of a video this was. Thanks!
Also, if anybody wants to read somebody who makes Philip K. Dick stories feel mundane, then read Stanislaw Lem. And if you saw this damn Hollywood version of Solaris and thought it was lame, then know it is like comparing the Hobbit movie and book.
More people should read Stanislaw Lem, the Futurological Congress and Pirx the Pilot short stories are also great
Thanks for the upload Dad. We've missed you
Fantastic stuff. Always delighted to see where your videos go. This time I was happy to hear you state something I've been seeing for years: if space aliens can defy the laws of physics to surpass the incomprehensible vastness of space, then they have no material reason to invade or conquer earth.
Don't think they'd try conquering us, but study humanity and the other life forms on earth
They probably have as much curiosity as we do
If I had a dollar for everytime parts of Māori and pacific culture were taken and removed from their context to justify a monomyth about the origins of humanity, I'd have two dollars. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
Wait it happened TWICE?
@@AstralPhnx Yea, 'mana' (the videogame blue magic juice) was inspired by early racist anthropology where the concept of mana (the complex Māori and pacific term that roughly translates to 'authority') was thought to be a sort of pre-religion that would eventually turn into Christianity. Since such a wide variety of groups shared this concept. They thought that mana was like, the essence of God that was worshipped before a culture became 'developed' enough to create a monotheistic religion. This assumption was also partially because they saw pacific peoples as not advanced enough to travel, trade, and interact with groups all across the ocean. So they assumed that all these groups independently came up with a concept called 'mana' which was similar across cultures.
@@eamonntee That is... Extremely fucked up god I fucking hate colonialism
@@AstralPhnx What a stupid thing to say.
@@suuslime3908 you like colonialism?
14:56 - 15:30
This is a nice point, George. And well-phrased as well.
🤍
So the first 7 minutes are fine. Then Bunny just hits the pause button on the video game discussion to spend 9 minutes discussing UFO conspiracies, post-truth, culture clash, and potential extraterrestrial alien behaviors (and at no point in that timeframe do they tie these things directly back to the game).
I get the initial premise of "this video game tells a different kind of story than what I'm used to and it focuses on colonialism" but going off on ET aliens really felt like the wrong tact to take. Bunny never manages to close the loop and bring back this wild journey to the discussion of the game. They kind of try with "well you see even though we're so far apart we actually have extremely similar interests and memes because of a shared language and culture on the internet" and that's a result of colonialism. I just don't think it connects back. The game and this comparison they're trying to make never get tied together in convincing fashion in my opinion. Either we needed a more in-depth look at the game, or the comparison needed to be much more direct. Or maybe both.
I think this is one of the weaker videos of this channel.
yup, it's another Hades & the Gods-style "political rant that briefly starts as a game review"-video.
i too do not wish to traffic in abstracts. please explain every connection to me explicitly in great detail.
@@TheSoulHarvester Bringing non-sequiturs into a discourse is not the same as being abstract.
@@Valdonkis misusing ominous latin phrases is not the same as making a coherent point.
God dude this video is fantastic, everything is tied together so well, absolutely amazing work
It was a fun game and was nice to see you talk about all these topics.
This is great and all but I still don't understand what the game's supposed to be about.
Mission-based, you take pictures of your surroundings to complete objectives - kinda like a Tony Hawk game but with photos instead of skateboarding. Each mission unlocks a new piece of kit, and doing all the bonus objectives in a mission unlocks a secret piece of kit.
It's easier played then explained.
Very interesting video! The only thing I would point out is that the motor of imperialism is not simple resource scarcity, but rather class societies' drive for expansion.
Class societies have one or more big working classes that provide for the needs of one or more small ruling classes. The ruling classes fund their luxuries through the extraction of surplus labor: making the workers produce more than what they themselves consume, and appropriating the surplus product. The slaves may collectively produce 20 tons of crops but only be fed 10, leaving the other 10 for the slave holder (to eat, sell in the market, pay taxes, recruit an army, buy more slaves, etc.)
In this arrangement, the ruling classes can increase their own standard of living by increasing the amount of surplus product appropriated. This can be achieved by forcing the workers to produce more for the same compensation, lowering compensation for the same work, raising productivity while raising compensation by less than the productivity increase, or by increasing the size of the working class.
By expanding and conquering new territories, the ruling classes expand the size of the working class, the total amount of people from which they can extract surplus, and thus, the total amount of surplus that they may enjoy for themselves. This is the motor force of imperialism, from Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire to Great Britain and the United States.
I think the overblown, unwieldy and distracted organization of topics all mixed together under the vague banner of 'colonialism bad' is the video essay that finally made me dump video essays entirely.
Playing Devil's Advocate, do you know how many unique cultures that were wiped out before the invention of written language?
The history of humanity is the history of colonialism. Even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, show a particularly proclivity towards conquering and violence.
I'd suggest reading up on Lawrence H. Keeley’s seminal work _War Before Civilization_ if anyone’s interested in diving deeper into the subject.
Okay what’s your point exactly?
@@52thephotoshop That warmongering is deeply ingrained in our nature and it's not a byproduct of culture.
@@52thephotoshop that "colonialism = war," a lame effort to flatten an entire discourse so it can be dismissed.
Crazy that ThorHighHeels did the music for this game and Veselekov directed it, and now George Weedman is covering it.
Did you know a Maori explorer visited England before an english person ever visited New Zealand?
Maori history is more like an adventurer went to another galaxy and traded with them for advanced technology which he then went back to earth and became king of the world. The aliens then came 20 years later and took over .
*Adds to Wishlist*
It's a fun game, I think you'd like it!
I can't wait for you to talk about this game in eight years
@@veselekov Literally just bought it after this video, worth it. Will have to wait a few weeks to buy the DLC though
This has become a very special gaming channel. happy to accompany you on this voyage, curious where we go next
I'm playing Earth Defense Force 5 right now, so this video hits different. Another one of those camp stories you mentioned earlier in the video.
Urumangi generation is the first and only game to actually subvert my expectations.
Maybe I'm just tired but what this is the most entertaining video about I have no f'n clue what it's about I've seen in awhile.
I wonder, did Super Bunnyhop become more radicalized or was he there all the while and I only spot it after being more radicalized myself?
you can still go back and watch his old content, you know.
@@Y0UT0PIA I started watching because I loved his take on Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. didn't feel that overtly radical at the time.
@@Calintares 2016 increased polarization of American’s political stances
Remember the Soul Calibur video where he digressed on the subject of the slave trade but never mentioned the Arabian slave trade?
Its always been there, he just doesn't bother being subtle about it now.
Why are you treating radicalism like it's a virtue? Radical thinkers of all stripes are usually ideological morons who very often dangerous and self destructive. It's just pathetic
This video is awesome! Thank you so much for the recs and all the hard work! Love the deconstructive, post-modern, speed take, strategic deep-dive, dispersed energy vibe you got. Reminds me of reading Mark Fisher's 'Ghosts of my Life'. I also love the quiet shouting at the wildly rambling speakers that reminds me of a Potholer debunk! Really loved this one.
Damn, am glad i discovered your channel
I really wasn't expecting you to cover this great game, cool!
Check out the podcast episode they did with the developer!
Thanks for the vid. Always great.
I was literally just listening to Dad and Sons episode about this game. Perfect timing!
15:24 "There is no better way to learn how mythology spreads than to observe paranormal conspiracies now" Literally the point of The Demon Haunted World, while we're on the subject of Sagan
Hey George good video, but it has a big problem your thesis is wrong. Even tho the genre of Alien invasion's was created from a nationalistic fear from foreigners. I would say that is unfair that it is the basis to interpret the genre, it would be like saying that the basis of the zombie movie is a narrative about the persecution of black Americans. And your point of comparison of the extermination that humanity would find in an alien invasion scenario whit the colonization period showed your lack of knowledge about the period.
The majority of the deaths of the indigenous people in the American continent was because of the virus that were brought by the Europeans, and even tho they are responsible is unfair to say that this was there intention, but the big problem whit your point is to apply your North American interpretation of you fact in the global escale. The Spanish empire was almost kicked out o from Mexico, they conquer the Astecs using the political instability of the region in their favor, very much like the USA would use to instal military dictatoships in Latin america. In Brazil the colonization was made along side the Tupi tribe, that alied whit the Portuguese to destroy their regional rivals, and in India the multiple revolts against the East Indie Company rule. To say that resistance is futile and that the evil Europeans conquer the world whit their superior thecnology is reductive and misleading, you can criticize the events of your past, but to reduce the world to fit your interpretation is very deplorable.
The negative reception that you are receiving in this video might look like shallow criticism of the political beliefs that you showed, a form of denounce of your political opinions that you had not show in this channel until now, but i would say that they denounce the change in your analysis, by talking about controversial topics as if you were the voice of reason , and weirdly bringing points that have nothing to do whit the discussion like the comparison to conspirace theories or Fox news just because they fit your narrative.
Im not saying that you should leave politics out of video games or this kinda of ideocracy, but i would recommend you to not pretend that you know about thing that are outside of your knowledge, and stop whit the white guilt is pathetic and weird to every one, reducing history to the last 300 years is foolish and egomaniac.
Sorry for the bad English and have a good day
Damn good post.
Man, this was a great video. Thanks for making it, really this is great stuff
This was a fantastic video, thanks for making this Super Bunnyhop.
Hey man love your vids!
I appreciate you covering this Kiwi developed game and giving it the attention it deserves but I can't help but cringe a little at some of the Maori pronunciation here and there haha.
To be fair though, it is kinda hard to pronounce. Either way, great video!
Ao tea ora...
Despite the pronunciation, really love the fact that Umurangi Generation is getting more coverage.
@@eamonntee OH GOD YEAH THAT ONE IN PARTICULAR HAD ME CRINGING LMAO.
But good seeing more Umarangi yeah
My favorite UA-camr is back!
I adore the music in Umurangi Generation, the only game I bought the soundtrack for
Hey, how come you haven't been uploading as much?
too busy drinking himself death
Cool as hell to see you reviewing this game. I love it!
The dad and sons podcast made me interested in the game. But in this video I find it hard to follow what the connection between the game and the video actually is.
The experience of helplessly being conquered and colonized
Ok I'm editing this bc by the end I had woken up a little (I was watching this after waking up at 2am in like a dream state, unable to go back to sleep, and couldn't really follow wtf he was saying), and I _fully_ agree with everything he's saying. Humans make *EVERYTHING* about them- er, _we_ make everything about _us._
The existence of these UAPs is irrelevant, the only thing the people that talk about them are concerned with is how it's going to benefit *THEIR* lives, and the only thing the collective human species is concerned about is passing the blame to another, external species for 1,000s of years of behavior so atrocious, that we can't even fathom it (despite being the cause of it, albeit indirectly). Excellent video, LOVE this channel now, game looks great, props to the developer for turning a terrible situation into a positive by using a creative outlet to process it and then pass it on to others. I can imagine there are some people who were moved by this game, while others write Reviews trashing it for "looking like PS2 grafix" and "havin no gunz"...
*“WHILE THESE TIMES ARE DEATH TIMES, HOLD ON - PROTECT THE LIGHT”*
i just found this guys channel and I honestly never know whats going on its super interesting
I love when bunny hop thinks critically aloud.
wow that was incredible thank you
This felt incredibly rambly
I've had this on my steam wishlist for a little while, wondering if you'll convince me to take the plunge by the end of the video.
the dev was on dad and sons a few weeks ago
The line about Romans rejecting steam trains because of slaves is false. We still had colonisation and exploited labour when we invented steam engines. The industrial revolution and slavery were concurrent
It turns out wages or starvation are a better combination than wages or beatings
That doesn't disprove his point
@@xcmledder3420 But you can't replace a lot of the uses of steam engines with human labour, no matter how much of it you have.
@@xcmledder3420 I don't believe that. They embraced other technology they discovered. Steam power enabled British factories to surpass those in other countries with vast access to low cost labour.
@@xcmledder3420 Nobody actually invented it.
I was sold on the game maybe 4 minutes into the video, but god it also just sounds so terrifying.
Fucking loved the energy you brought to this one.
This is genuinely one of my favourite video on youtube, ever. Any reading recommendations on similar topics (aliens, colonialism, alien colonialism)? I wanna get knee-er deeper in this shit
Love your videos George. Keep up the good work!
I love how this channel never disappoints, and only gets better.
Give it a couple more years and George will start quoting Unabomber through the lens of video games.
This was so good, thank you.
This video smells like weed through the door cracks of a dorm
you should read the three body problem by cixin liu, you might find it interesting
George is back.
Is this related to that Mr Bean tweet you made
Just reading the title made my brain feel like it was having a seizure
Weak.
Rather than facing class war, these organisations want us to live in X Files.
I do find it easier to believe in aliens than in class struggle tbh.
@@Sphnxfr If you think that class struggle is a hoax, try living in Latin America or any third world country and see it happening daily on your life.
Welcome to humanity.
@@Sphnxfr Thank aliens for 8 hour work day.
@@joaoppagnan 'Class struggle' doesn't just mean 'acknowledging that workers have historically been exploited to various degrees and that this can be remedied to some extent by giving them stronger legal protections', just like calling yourself an anti-racist doesn't just mean that you're actively against racism.
It's a particular grand narrative that reduces history to a master-slave dialectic along class lines. And it's a "Kampfbegriff", meant to radicalize workers, make them recognize that they're 'all on the same team' and rise up against their oppressors in a bloody revolution. "Class struggle" is a deliberately milquetoast translation of "Klassenkampf", which is closer to Class fight/battle/war.
TL;DR: If you're using these terms without knowing what they mean, stop being a useful idiot. if you do know what they mean, ... well.
That's a wallop of a title right there.
I don't buy the thesis of this video. The people who are alive today are no more colonizers than they are responsible for some ancient ancestors taking a bite of fruit that God told them not to eat. Looking at the world's history of conquest, slavery and atrocity and saying that the west is solely responsible is just as ignorant as saying it never happened. No matter the color of a person's skin, no matter where their ancestors lived, go back far enough on anyone's family tree and you will find people who did things that are downright despicable to our modern sensibilities. You might have woken up, George, but you've still got sleep in your eye
Ironically the one group of "victims" he mentions in the video, the Maori, was a group who had not only been systemically exterminating the native Polynesians of New Zealand and the islands around it, European colonialism literally put a stop to an active then ongoing genocide they where perpetrating. This is similar to the Zulu genocide against the native South African tribes that the British put an end to, and in both New Zealand and South Africa today talk of indigenous issues almost never involves said indigenous tribes but rather two groups who colonised the countries taking up both sides of the discussion.
It would be funny if not so tragic.
@@ZontarDow that's just how the world is. There is never a civilization that are pure victims: every society has committed atrocities, and all we can do is try to make the society we live in better than what it was
Banger of a video
George are you ok?
I'm sure there's a professor somewhere that did say aristotle invented the three act structure.
I cringed so much with that. It's one thing to describe and another to invent.
@@jacobogarcia8111 No, I actually meant that aristotle talked about the five acts structure, and that how it stayed for a long time.
But actually that's also not true. Now I checked in wikipedia and it says aristo splits play into two (complication and unravelling) and it was Horace (Horatius Flaccus) who came out with 5.
Loved the first sections about war of the worlds never knew that but it makes a lot of sense.