I posted this on my FB fan page, but I wanted to share it with those of you who may or may not be aware of this huge drama that exploded over the last several months on YouTube regarding one of the bigger names in gameplay-commentaries: Raw Instinct. No TL;DR for this one, sorry folks. If you have the attention span for it and read the whole thing, I'd like to offer you an invisible bro-fist in advance =P Here ya go.

 

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Before I release the details for my next video, I'd like to chime in on the drama on YouTube that has pretty much hit its end, that is the drama between iFlyILLINI and Raw Instinct.

 

For those of you who are, perchance, not familiar with what I am referring to, a then-obscure YouTuber named iFlyILLINI posted a lengthy 10-12 minute video in the format of an exposГ©, calling out Raw Instinct on accusations that the latter of the two stole iFly's content ideas, did not give him any credit, and build a massive subscriber base (at the time, one of the largest in the YouTube gameplay/commentary scene) on a world of lies and stolen thunder, mainly from TMartN, another popular YouTube gameplay commentator known for his brand of "tips and tricks" videos.

 

The video garnered over a million views and thrust iFlyILLINI into the spotlight, gifting him with a 5-figure subscriber base in just days from the 4k he had before he had posted his video.

 

Raw Instinct, under much pressure, abandoned his YouTube account and, 5 months later, announced he would be returning to the YouTube scene and offered a response to iFly's original video, bringing to light his own accusations that iFly was discovered to have been running a live webcast on an amateur gay pornographic website, where users put on webcast shows of them performing sex acts for the enjoyment of other viewers/users. These accusations were relatively baseless, with only a blurry video and associated pictures of notably similar lack of quality to support them.

 

As of several days ago, iFlyILLINI shut down his YouTube account, thus signalling what is presumably the end of this drama. I do not intend on taking sides here and arguing who I believe, in hindsight, was in the right, but what I believe BOTH of these two did to discredit themselves and, in iFlyILLINI's case, the US Air Force (more on that later).

 

As a relatively small YouTuber myself, I understand the frustration that iFlyILLINI felt when he realized that Raw Instinct was stealing his content ideas and those of TMartN as well. I would certainly be irate to find out that my hard work was being taken from me and redistributed to the benefit of a lazy thief, and for that, I fault Raw Instinct. Such behavior is shameful in and of itself, and is unbecoming, especially of someone who is now in college and ready to enter the adult world as it were (as per his most recent videos).

 

I also believe Raw Instinct's response video to iFlyILLINI's original exposГ© was even more immature. To hear him turn around in the face of being exposed as a thief and a petty crook of intellectual property and manage to spin it into the wild accusation that iFly broadcast himself performing self-fulfilling sexual acts on a queer-oriented pornographic website was, needless to say, shocking - both in its degree of immaturity and its lack of buoyancy as an argument at that in terms of evidence. The proper thing to do would have been to issue a formal apology and to allow time to mend wounds, as Benjamin Franklin would put it. However, Raw Instinct (or his real name Max by which I will refer to him from here on out) found it more profitable and sensible to publish his own scathing revelations of iFly's private life in a petty attempt to deflect attention away from his own wrongdoing. I will say this: he took to heart the words of Captain Price in Modern Warfare 2. "You want to put out an oil fire, Sir? You set off a bigger explosion right next to it. Sucks out the oxygen, snuffs the flame."

 

On iFly's end, I believe iFly committed MULTIPLE fouls of his own, which is why I would like to reiterate that I do not claim to take EITHER side of this debate, as I believe BOTH parties were guilty of the accusations they made against one another and vice versa.

 

iFly's biggest faux pas during the course of his original video, in my opinion, was his enormously overblown reference to his status as an airman in the United States Air Force. He said in his video, and I quote, that "I am a Second Lieutenant (2Lt.) in the US Air Force with over 100 flying hours. I would take more pride in breaking the sound barrier in the world's most expensive aircraft than running a semi-popular YouTube channel." As a Cadet Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force Auxiliary myself, this one sentence stuck with me in particular, as I do have friends in all branches of the military, especially the Air Force. I have friends that are making their way through the halls of the academy in Colorado, and are embarking on their own journeys of service to our country. And I believe iFly has done them all a DIS-service with his actions.

 

While the core values of the Air Force do differ from the Civil Air Patrol's core values ever so slightly (and vice versa), I do know the Air Force core values, and I would like to point out, in particular, what I felt iFly did to violate EACH and EVERY one of them. It should be noted that the Air Force core values are the guiding principles upon which the US Air Force is based.

 

The first core value of the US Air Force (and the Civil Air Patrol as well) is "Integrity First." To aptly quote Captain Picard from Star Trek, "The first duty of every ... officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth...you don't deserve to wear that uniform." No less can be said for the airmen of the US Air Force, and no more could iFly fail to exude such a core value. As a second lieutenant in the US Air Force, it is quite impossible for iFly to have accumulated ANY flight hours as of yet, let alone, the hundreds he wildly claimed to have recorded. When interviewed on podcasts and web shows after he posted his famous video, instead of clearing up what he said and dismissing the well-intented extentions of gratitude for what people mistakenly believed to be his service, iFly instead soaked up the praise in shameless fashion, despite the fact that he has never recorded flight hours and, furthermore, has never deployed. iFly paraded himself about as Eddie Rickenbacker re-incarnated in what I can only see as a failed attempt to overshadow the truth that iFly is just a butterbar (military slang for Second Lieutenant due to the gold bar insignia) that is months away from even receiving his first paycheck from the Air Force, and moreso from breaking Mach 2 in "the world's most expensive aircraft". Such a brazen display of lofty arrogance and outright untruthfulness is behavior that is, I'm sure needless to say, unbecoming, ESPECIALLY of an Air Force officer.

 

The second core value of the US Air Force is "service before self". While integrity may offer room for explanation, I believe this one to be entirely self-explanatory. And yet, the trivial simplicity of this core value which should make it all the easier to follow did not stop iFlyILLINI from breaking it without hesitation. If iFly had this core value within him, he would have allowed Raw Instinct to go about his admittedly wretched and distasteful behavior. He would not have started a now full-blown fanboy war over YouTube simply because of stolen intellectual property that, at the time, held little worth in terms of its popularity. Turning the other cheek, as it may be called, would have prevented all of this from happening. Nonetheless, iFly not only found it within his scope of duty to wage his own personal war against what he clearly believed to be Raw Instinct's shameless mass theft, but also to fight a proxy war on behalf of TMartN. As I stated earlier, TMartN is a huge YouTuber himself, and has been around the scene for eons. In fact, arguments over Raw Instinct and TMartN and which of the two was more original were a staple of the two fanbases long before iFly's introduction onto the scene. TMartN, if he felt wronged in any way, could have very well stood up for himself. Bringing TMartN into what was, heretofor, a personal vendetta only goes to show how iFly was not only REACTING to wrongdoing as he saw it, but proceeding to fan the flames and spread the fire WILLINGLY, as if he was SEEKING conflict. I can only assess, from such actions, that iFly INTENTED to become popular by going after a huge-time YouTuber, and he was willing to do whatever it took to bring him down so that he could build his own throne from the ashes themselves. Such antagonism over a relatively petty matter shows how iFly was willing to put himself and his own interests over what was better not only for himself, but for the image and reputation of the Air Force as a whole.

 

The last US Air Force core value is "excellence in all we do". I didn't find anything particularly excellent about iFly's original video, having watched it more than once in the interest of scrutiny. I didn't believe that his overly-dramatic use of Inception music in the background as if he were riding in on a white horse was anything excellent. I didn't think his expansion of a personal argument into a proxy war was excellent. I didn't think that seeking to elevate himself by harming those around him was excellent behavior. Need I go on?

 

In the end, I believe this entire dramatic incident serves to show how fragile the bonds that hold the YouTube community together are. We are too small a community, a community built upon too innocent a set of interests and ideas for us to become social cannibals, willing to do whatever it takes to elevate ourselves, whether it be by means of theft or by means of popularity "vampirism" as it may be called. While Raw Instinct should chose his next moves carefully and consider issuing a formal apology to the community not for his absence but instead for his true wrongdoing, iFly, who obviously now has plenty of time on his hands to consider this entire event in thorough detail, should take a good look in the mirror and make definitive moves towards improving both his own image and that of the Air Force itself and every airman within it in the wake of this fiasco. I believe that this event, or rather SERIES of events, has been a nightmare for all involved. Nobody is a true winner here. Raw Instinct lost credibility and a huge chunk of his fanbase, and iFly lost (willingly) his YouTube channel as a WHOLE. Everything he had worked for on YouTube, he felt the need to throw it away to cover his tracks. I think of this drama as a sad, sad mark of history upon the YouTube community, and one that I fear we may see repeated if we do not make good strides towards reverting back to what made Youtube gameplay/commentaries such an enjoyable endeavor in the first place: the sense of respectable, enjoyable community. And that is something that each and every one of us can contribute to. We have the choice to make whether to be part of the problem or the solution. I hope and pray that, as a group, we collectively choose to act in favor of the latter.

tl;dr opinion on old drama with addition of "I'll have you know.."

Dear Lord Almighty,

 

1. There is no such thing as "the YouTube community", there are entertainment networks and their employees who make money, it's a business. Mashitnima in particular are the worst.

/in your case, you are a hobbyist/

 

2. You've spent too much time thinking/writing about a closet faggot and a nobody

 

3. Air Force, Cpt. Picard, Star Trek

 

4. FDO isn't bound by money/popularity, FDO is NTA.

1. It's a business but businesses can create communities. Facebook is, by all intents and purposes, a business. Is it not? You can't possibly argue that Facebook itself is not a community. Obviously it's far too big to be considered "tightly knit" by any sense of the term, but you get my point.

 

2. I actually typed this up at random out of boredom and mild interest. I was actually leaning towards not saying a thing about it considering how I feel that the BOTH of them are idiots.

 

3. ?

 

4. I was referring to YouTube, not 4D1. The last thing that keeps me up at night is the worry that 4D1 is going to have some massive civil war and break apart. The only thing that can tear down the 4D1 community is the money-grubbing shitbags at Craptivision.

tl;dr opinion on old drama with addition of "I'll have you know.."

 

Note the disclaimer at the top. "No TL;DR version of this, sorry folks" :roll:

tl;dr opinion on old drama with addition of "I'll have you know.."

 

Note the disclaimer at the top. "No TL;DR version of this, sorry folks" :roll:

That's why I provided it for you.