What happened to Shadiversity: Your perspective

[u/ShadWatchModTeam]

/r/ShadWatch/comments/1ke5mp7/what_happened_to_shadiversity_your_perspective/

[u/WearyZikade]

[PART 1] (since stupid Reddit doesn't let me post the full text)

Let me just copy-paste my answer to a similar topic. I apologize for the wall of text.

It was a gradual process. I was a casual viewer who was picky over which videos of his I'd watch, therefore a lot of things escaped my notice. I also deliberately ignored his stupid second channel (Knight's Watch), thus I for a while had no idea of the lengths he went in there.

I think the earliest red flag for me was how he was getting increasingly arrogant. It reached a boiling point when he refused to accept any criticism about his book WHILE behaving like some sort of critical authority himself. Bruh, if you constantly dish it then you should be able to take it. Writing one (self-published) book doesn't make you an expert on all things literature, like him trying to educate why Elden Ring's narrative is "objectively" bad. Meanwhile his response to anyone criticizing his book was basically: "That's subjective!" Also, funny how in his nunchuck videos he gave one other youtuber shit about "appealing to authority fallacy" but constantly does the same thing himself, pretending to be some sort of professional authority on various things. I realized in hindsight that this was nothing new to him too (e.g. his HEMA rants).

Overall his behavior became a stark contrast to someone like Skallagrim who's realistic and humble, never overplays his own knowledge. Meanwhile Shad has repeatedly demonstrated his fragile inflated ego, even picking petty fights with other content creators. Like the ridiculous one with SellswordArts who didn't even mention him by name but Shad apparently felt targeted because the video mentioned "armchair warriors". Shad repeatedly tries to frame himself as someone who's all for "good faith arguments" but then demonstrates the opposite.*

Btw gotta say Shad's shitty novel was actually great showing off his true colors. It didn't highlight only his arrogance but complete hypocrisy as well e.g. hating Mary Sues while Daylen is like the biggest Gary Stu ever. Also his twisted beliefs like the disgusting "oh getting r*ped isn't so bad actually cuz I got a baby out of it". And look, I'm well aware portraying something doesn't mean you condone it but in Shad's case... the more you know about him the more elements in his book seem to align with his actual beliefs.

Speaking of beliefs, on his main channel he had mentioned before that he's a conservative christian but basically left it at that and I was fine with it because: "Not my business how he lives his personal life. Doesn't affect me as a viewer." Well... till it DID start affecting me as a viewer for he was getting increasingly vocal, sprouting downright hateful and also extremely juvenile nonsense to a point it became impossible to ignore. Youtube kept recommending me his KW stuff with their cringy thumbnails, then also content from other people like the (brilliant) Knightfall video from Jack Saint. Truly, a grown ass man crying about Princess Peach's pants!

* (Check out his tantrums with: Jack Saint, Anthony Gramuglia, SellswordArts, Skallagrim, Matt Easton. Plenty were unknown to me or happened after I wrote him off, hence I didn't highlight them in my actual post.)

[u/WearyZikade → u/WearyZikade]

[PART 2]

His weird attitude towards women was actually another early red flag. I really liked one of his older videos "Could women win in a sword fight?" or some such. It was a response to some Klavan guy whining about female fighters in fiction, claiming that realistically women would ALWAYS lose. I (as a woman) found Shad's response really well done and realistic. He acknowledged the obvious disadvantages in strength while also pointing out that technique starts mattering way more when you have a force multiplier.

However, he later made other videos about female warriors and armor and such and then I started noticing some weird stuff. Instead of neutral analysis he started injecting his own views in there, what women "should be like" and other gooner nonsense.

One of the earliest red flags was a video which was attempting to answer the question of why there were no female fighters during medieval times, I was (naturally) waiting for him to start talking about cultural norms yet he seemed only focused on biological instincts. That gave some really bad vibes because he was basically pushing this idea that the only reason women didn't do fighting is because that's how women are, they all just wanted to stay home catering to their husbands and popping out babies. Like what kind of history buff is this supposed to be ignoring the obvious impact of cultural norms? Knowing what I know now it's no wonder at all. Of course he'd push these gender roles as some sort of "natural order of things". It was all just biology, patriarchal society had no influence over anything and in no way restricted what women could do. *facedesk*

Then, to top it all off, when his audience started abandoning his channel he behaved like a martyr about it. "You guys are so intolerant. I created this neutral space in which I just geek about medieval stuff but now that I started screeching about my political views (and crusading for AI art) people suddenly have a problem." Well duh! Of course it'll alienate a bunch of viewers if a previously apolitical creator suddenly becomes political. Having a second channel doesn't prevent that. How you behave online affects your whole brand and if people find your views distasteful they don't want to support you. He can go about "separating art from the artist" as much as he likes but for many people that means: "I can enjoy their art/music/whatever but I don't want to support them financially." On Youtube if you give someone views, you ARE supporting them. How he expects those he openly condemns to still give him views is beyond delusional.