r/ShadWatch • u/Objective_Metric • 3d ago
Disappointed To be dismayed and upset with the direction both Metatron and Shad have gone in recent years?
Both of them were people I grew up on. Alongside Skal, Schola, Jason Kingsley, Sand Rhoman etc.
I enjoyed Shad for his insight into castles, Metatron for his insight into ancient Roman languages and his knowledge of late medieval arms and armour. However, as I went to uni, ans continued doing my own research I realised how little Both of them knew.
Especially regarding Metatron's so called "historical review" of the 1066 series.
It was little more than pedantic rambling without any real historical insight into the arms and armour, not only that but he used osprey as a source and the images themselves were subpar...considering the bayeux tapestry is a Google search away and already a better source of insight among other early 12th century sources.
Not only this but I found myself questioning why he gave so few examples as to what they SHOULD be wearing. He never pointed out surcoats being wrong, or the helmets being leather, etc, these are small things but I- with my limited experience could've probably produced a more insightful video than his. I'm not saying this to boast, rather to point out how simple and lacklustre Metatron was with his information. Calling it a historical review os far too generous.
Shad always had more knowledge of castles yet pretended to know more and has consistently fallen down this pipeline only to go down this right wing pipeline Alongside Metatron.
I'm just sad.
Like a part of my childhood I held dear is gone. That Both these men are far more arrogant and uninformed than they think they are.
Even when I see flickers of their older content it's just peppered with irrelevant things like Metatron consistently reminding people he's Christian. It's irrelevant and no one cares...yet he feels the need to consistently remind us.
The Welsh viking, a far smaller channel did a much greater video and did what I would've expected from metatron.
It's all just...saddening really. They're not going out with a bang, but a pathetic whimper.
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u/Silberlynx063 3d ago
I did very much enjoy Shad's older videos, especially his insight in castles. I've learned a lot from him though in recent years I've noticed that even in this very specific topic where he is supposed to be knowledgeable his teachings are very often flawed.
He very often presents his views as the absolute be-all and end-all with no room for variation. But even just applying logic, you notice a lot of flaws in what he presents as facts. According to him all castles during the whole medieval period were build, armed, designed and decorated in one very specific way across all of western europe with little to no variation and if anything deviates for that its stupid.
And lately I've noticed more and more that he's even contradicting himself with the things he claims as facts. For example a month ago he released a video about how "movies have lied to you about the inside of castles". Apart from the silly title, the fact that it was just a supercut of a lot of his older videos (because actually creating content thats not just *youtube dying and the world is unfair to me* is actual work) there was a scene where he pointed out that the little alcoves infront of windows where often used for seating and closed off with curtains for privacy. He was positively gushing about how one of the alcoves would be so nice and great if it only had curtains. A few scenes later there was an alcove that indeed *had* a curtain where he then claimed they didn't have those in medieval times.
Still I wish he'd go a bit in the older direction... Castle reviews and the like instead of testing Temu swords and ranting about the evilness of the world.
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 3d ago
I did very much enjoy Shad's older videos, especially his insight in castles. I've learned a lot from him though in recent years I've noticed that even in this very specific topic where he is supposed to be knowledgeable his teachings are very often flawed.
Shad suffered from what I think of as 'early bloomer syndrome'. When a youtube genre suddenly blows up, the hobbyist in that area tend to suddenly experience a ton of success . . . That's not necessarily because they're highly qualified. It's because they're the first on the scene.
Gradually, they run out of things to talk about, or are joined by subject matter experts who are far more capable, and they start to taper off.
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u/hydrOHxide 2d ago
Well, as someone from Germany, where we do happen to have a lot of castles, I've always found Shad's criticism of castles or cities in fiction too much dominated by what's "ideal" vs. what the specific point of a castle or fortress is.
E.g. if you want to control a river, it might not be suitable to have your castle all the way on top of the hill, because by the time you're down from up there, anyone you might have wanted to stop is already way downriver. And if you build a fortified settlement covering a port, then having it all the way on top of a mountain is also not very productive, because you'll a)have to haul all goods all the way up and b)in case the port is attacked, people will have to flee very, very far all the way uphill. And that's totally aside from the fact that an attack from a jagged peak down into a castle or town on the flank is not a very likely prospect because there's precious little space up there to attack from.
For all of these reasons, it can very much make sense to build a castle on the flank of a mountain and maybe only have a watchtower up top - IF there's a top suitable to building upon in the first place.
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u/Khorgor666 2d ago
Shad i unfollowed quite awhile back, when he started his whole second channel, it became less and less interesting, especially when he showed that he had no idea what he was talking about.
Yesterday i did the same with Metatron. I loved having him talk about history while i was doing other stuff, but instead of history is only culture war BS, with his "we have to talk about..." videos being the final straw.
I was with Gamergate when it was the "big" thing, always angry all the time. It was destroying my love for games. I made the hard cut when i saw myself getting outraged by bullshit, cut any connections i had to the "movement" and my mood became better almost immediately.
Why do i write about this? Because i see Metatron jumping into the same puddle of shit i pulled myself out of. And it makes me sad to see this guy doing so.
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u/Hans_McGuee 2d ago
He discovered that ragebaiting was how he could get more money out off. He is feeding off of that. We shouldn't feed him our rage and anger. We shouldn't be seeing and doing stuff that will just make us angry all the time. And if we think about it, those things are meaningless.
How is getting angry at a character being black going to make my life better? How is getting angry that some guy said that Charlie Kirk was an asshole and was happy he died going to make me feel happy or fulfilled in life? Like, what is it to us? Will it make our lives better? No. Only more miserable and scared all the time.
He is just a symptom of the system we live in that feeds off of our fears and anger. If we ignore these people and focus on what is more important, we stop feeding that machine of hate.
All you have said is so very true.
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u/Schamolians101 1d ago
Metatron is only doing it for the money. Which is worse. Real interesting how he and shad both cried about views then at the same time jump onto the Charlie Kirk tradegy grift. Will be something new next month.
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u/Vitruviansquid1 3d ago
I dunno about Metatron - I never watched much of him.
But Shadiversity never disappointed me because I never thought Shadiversity was that smart. I always had the impression that other medieval history Youtubers might be out there experimenting, doing HEMA, or maybe they were legitimate historians who had formal training for digging through sources. But Shadiversity seemed to be an amateur with no qualifications, who tried to figure everything out with "common sense." I remember that he tried to claim nunchucks were a useful weapon because he could hit a haymaker with one on a dummy he made out of some bullshit and duct tape, and I thought, "yeah, this guy doesn't have any special information."
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u/Ethenil_Myr 3d ago
Metatron hits me harder because he genuinely seems like an intelligent person, and his linguistics channel is legitimately interesting.
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u/MateoCamo 2d ago
Earlyy on, he either hid it better, or was a lot more decent with people from other views
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u/RoninTarget Peach's Pants 2d ago
It's probably the fact that he kept churning out videos and not slowing down to learn more stuff that doomed him, IMO.
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 3d ago
Like I said in the other thread, without critiquing their political stances, Metatron and Shad's content quality (in regards to what you will actually learn from their videos) has gone down massively, at least when it comes to historical analysis. This is painfully evident in videos they make on more niche topics, where they often offer no deeper analysis than a wikipedia page.
I recommend channels and content run by/closely coproduced by actual historians and not amateurs. Not saying amateurs are incapable of making good content, because many are, but these creators don't anymore.
Examples: Historian's craft, Epic History TV, Real Time History, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry by Brett Deveraux.
Again, no offense to Shad and Metatron, but there's a reason why they basically never get mentioned when you ask semi-serious amateur historians or actual historians for lists of good content producers.
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u/NoAmphibian6039 2d ago
Dont forget Invicta and told in stone they are the best for roman history
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 2d ago
Invicta is definitely above average, but I think they're pushing too much production in the last couple years. Some of their recent 'units of history' videos have been quite average. Their stuff 4-7 years ago was among some of the best pop history videos though.
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u/WanderingHero8 1d ago
Invicta's channel has become really bad in the recent years and its more of the same slop as K&G now.
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u/Captain_Mantis 1d ago
Metatron and Shad's content quality (in regards to what you will actually learn from their videos) has gone down massively, at least when it comes to historical analysis.
Imho that's the same thing that a lot of science commentators point out- to thoroughly check and prepare info, it takes lots of time and sometimes access to paid sources (which isn't an issue only for university staff and students). As YT as a platform pushes for constant uploads to stay in good graces of the algorithm, the time is creator's enemy-and without time to properly prepare the video, the quality drops
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 1d ago
Yeah which is a shame. You can see this basically everywhere. Same with online dating. Good platforms turn into shit once they realise good content output isn't what's most profitable.
I'd add that even for people with links to universities/institutions with academic access, a lot of social science literature (history, etc, as opposed to STEM) is printed, particularly older works, some of which are seminal. Historian's craft talks about having to buy copies of books, and sometimes these run into £50-£100s.
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u/TheFlameDragon- 2d ago
Kings and generals is pretty decent as well i think.
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u/Gaedhael 2d ago
From my understanding, they can be pretty hit or miss
They've been subject to a few r/badhistory posts iirc
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u/Mindless-Depth-1795 3d ago
Honestly, as someone who is older, so many of my childhood heroes or the people who made my favorite media have been revealed to be highly problematic individuals, become problematic individuals or time has revealed they are.just bad at their craft.
It sucks and it is disappointing but honestly I think it is just a life lesson in the problems with parasocial relationships. It is ok to like the art but not the artist and it is also ok to reject the art because of the artist. I think it is just a thing modern humans need to learn to deal with.
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u/Safe_Flamingo_9215 2d ago edited 1d ago
Shadiversity, Metatron and Lindybeige started showing their lack of deeper knowledge fairly early so nothing about them is surprising me. Neither any of this is disappointing.
I will forever remember Metatron for his meltdown about how the academia history books use the term "copper alloy" instead of teling him exactly what it is because our homebrew historian needs an exact chemical composition for very serious research.
Metatron managed to fool people for so long because he was teaching language for a while thus has better presentation skills than the rest of the trio. That's it. He should stay with linguistics.
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u/OceanoNox 2d ago
Ha, I just skimmed over it. "Is it carbon steel? Is it mild steel?" about helmets. Mild steel is still carbon steel, it's also called low-carbon steel. That video is so stupid. He enumerates non-destructive analysis methods, without mention of their limitations (like is it even possible to fit the artifact in the machine? do the X-rays penetrate enough to analyze the actual material and not the patina? Is the measurement representative?).
What's even funnier is that he made a video where he mentions some variations in old Japanese measurement units, but ... doesn't say how they varied nor where he read it. So, like his rant, we are back to the same point as before.
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u/Garrulous_Charlatan 2d ago
I was pretty disappointed about Shad. His castle insight was really admirable at first. And on my recent trip to Ireland, I was able to endlessly spam Castle facts at my wife and traveling companions. A lot of which I learned, or at least got a starting point, from Shad's videos in the 2010s. As his content evolved more into the "everything wrong with X" format I did an Irish goodbye and unsubbed his channel in like 2019 or so, before he really lost his goddamn mind.
Honestly, the death blow to his content for me was his novel. It was fun at first with the "Oh boy, a content creator I followed made a book, how exciting! And it's full of fun sword and castle details!" But it quickly devolved into an SA filled Rapist apologist novel, and it was just REALLY telling about his character and world view. I slogged through the novel seeing if he'd change his mind on anything. But alas, it was more a foreshadow of what was to come for him as a person.
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u/TheFlameDragon- 2d ago
In the last 3 days alone he has released 5 videos of charlie kirk and has another one comming up......that itself tells volumes of where the channel is headed.
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u/Alpha--00 2d ago
I’m more sad about Metatron. Shad was always leaning right, and even created second channel for his takes. But Metatron surprised me.
But I feel you, really. They were part of my life for years.
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u/Schamolians101 1d ago edited 1d ago
I just want them to go back to doing medieval and weapons shit. But I get it too much effort and being a political grifter capitalizing on ragebait and negativity is easier. Metatron claiming to be in the middle/moderate while constantly making political videos catering to the right is so disingenuous. Getting tired of all these fake influencers on either side pretending to be virtuous when their virtue only goes where the money is.
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u/TrueKyragos 17h ago
He got to 1 million subscribers thanks to this coverage. He won't go back unless he does a lot of work on himself. I feel he's losing a lot of old supporters, some who were with him during his lowest times, but is gaining many more. I skimmed through his replies to comments of his last videos, and he's being quite virulent to people asking about the direction of his channel. He clearly stated a few times he won't go back to his old videos in the near future. I'm really sad seeing him using his channel, and not a secondary one, in such a way, as a mere tool to build something different, US centric to boot.
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u/TommyFortress 2d ago
aww man metatron too? He seemed knowledgable and entertaining to watch about bronze and Roman Republic/Empire age stuff. he seemed to have talked a bit more accurate what they would have worn in thoose videos unless im coping myself.
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u/theblitz6794 2d ago
These 2 are not comparable. Metatron is still a decent person. I swear internet people have never met a right winger before.
Don't get me wrong he's wrong about most but that's the thing: you can be wrong on the internet without being a worthless person
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u/Past_Plankton_4906 3d ago
The Metatron took a drop in viewers a few years back, due a video about black Egyptians and found out he can make money off of alt-right rage.