A monologue about watching YouTube videos from RedSkull, Greg Solomon, and Paper Lily before Paul's surprise birthday video. The speaker wrestles with what counts as real in the community, questioning whether Paul's expressions of love for his family have any empirical proof.
¡Hey Paul! I just watched your surprise video, um, and it bookended for me one of those real interesting days, YouTube days. I didn't spend a lot of time on YouTube today, I was doing some other things, um, but This morning, um, the first video I watched was RedSkull's video. Um, you know, the one where he talks about having been threatened and announcing his departure from YouTube. And then I watched Greg Solomon's video, you know, where he talked about you being a lousy poker player. Then I watched Paper Lily's video where she announced the winners to the unicorn, the wizard flying on the, on the on the rainbow in space contest. And then watching your video, I thought, you know, wow, what an interesting place this is. I wrote a blog about YouTube this morning too on my blog because, you know, a lot of people don't know what's really going on here and certainly don't know what's going on here in the kind of detail that a lot of us maniacs do, you know. And so I wanted to point out to people who don't understand that, you know, this is, this is a, this is, this is not just a, uh, you know, a little curiosity over here for many, many of us. It's something That's very important to a lot of people. And here you are talking about, you know, your, your birthday and your disappointment at not getting a surprise party on your birthday and then, you know, getting the surprise and then learning of your friend's son's death and just sharing that in the way that you shared it, which was very, I thought, really poignant and moving. But there are people who are going to think that's, you know, you're up to something. Because we're in relationships with one another here that are that are complex. And people are trying— we are trying to find our way in this community in really interesting ways. I made a video, I don't know, the other day— when was it? I don't know— about the different sides of ourselves that we show on YouTube and how interesting it is to see who shows what parts of themselves and how we want to be here with one another. And, you know, I just thought, you know, here you are involved in this controversy, this, I think, silly, but, you know, about proving whether or not Steve actually contacted you and, you know, Greg Solomons a wonderful foil kind of behavior with you that, you know, there is no reality, nothing is real unless I can touch it and have it be proved to the satisfaction of, you know, radical empiricism. And that's the only— those are the only things that are real. Nothing else is true. It's only, you know, believable. Well, you know, I think it's true that you love this woman. That you just described. Can you provide any empirical evidence for us, Paul, that you love this woman? Can you provide us any empirical evidence that you love your wife? Is that true that you love your wife? Um, do you love your children? I love my children, but I don't have any empirical evidence of that. I've done things, but those things can be viewed from a lot of different perspectives empirically. So all I'm saying is that for me, today was a really interesting YouTube day, and, um, your video, uh, was kind of a bookend to how I started. So, um, just a thought. So take it easy. Oh, I'm glad you got your surprise party. Bye-bye.
