I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun, touch on accessible topics, and have decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me
The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU
In it, he talks about a few techniques for how to take down “bad guy drones”, the problems with each, and then shows off the drone tech by Anduril as a solution.
Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.
In the video, the Anduril product is a heavy drone that uses kinetic energy to destroy other drones (by flying into them). Quoting the person in the video:
imagine a children’s bowling ball thrown at twice as fast as a major league baseball fastball, that’s what it’s like getting hit by Anvil
This technology is scary for obvious reasons, especially in the wrong hands. What I also don’t like is how Mark Rober’s content is aimed at children, and this video includes a large segment advertising the children’s products he is selling. Despite that, he is promoting military technology with serious ethical implications.
There’s even a section in the video where they show off the Roadrunner, compare it against the patriot missiles, and loosely tie it in to defending against drones. While the Anvil could be used to hurt people, at least it is designed for small flying drones. The Roadrunner is not:
The Roadrunner is a 6 ft (1.8 m)-long twin turbojet-powered delta-winged craft capable of high subsonic speeds and extreme maneuverability. Company officials describe it as somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile. The basic version can be fitted with modular payloads such as intelligence and reconnaissance sensors. The Roadrunner-M has an explosive warhead to intercept UAS, cruise missiles, and manned aircraft.
Rober’s always seemed a little off to me, like one of those who enjoys being famous more than the stuff that made him famous in the first place. Seems like he’s gotten worse, though. For instance, this video declares it “was not sponsored [by Zipline] in anyway nor did they pay for any of my travel or accommodations,” despite extolling their virtues over and over again by name, and lingering lovingly on their drones and logos like Michael Bay with a car company’s badge.
Smarter Everyday is also rather polished, and he’s even more in bed with the military industrial complex, but (as of a few months ago anyway) he comes off like he’s still actually enjoying the projects themselves and the information he’s sharing. It’s hard to exactly articulate the point where a content creator loses me, but I can feel it in my nerd-bones.
Destin works for defense contractors and he’s never been shy about his interest and involvement in weaponry. He has a bible quote at the end of his videos. I seriously doubt I would agree with him about pretty much any politics and definitely not his personal beliefs, but he keeps his channel pretty strongly focused on the episode’s subject without bringing his personal views into it. He seems to do the channel because he likes geeking out about nerdy stuff and wants to share that love with others.
I personally feel that the knowledge he’s sharing is more important than knowing we probably disagree on some things. If he starts including prayer time or turns his channel into military porn, I’m out. But his channel is a positive influence for now, IMO.
Rober is different. He acts like cool science bro that worked for NASA and wants you to think he’s Bill Nye or something. But he seems to be doing it for views and to push the stuff he’s selling. He doesn’t seem genuine. He’s at risk of turning into a prank bro channel if his quality goes downhill.
yeah I quite respect Destin despite being pretty opposite to him in ideology. he’s able to be fairly apolitical while being very clear on his views by way of his topics and minor Bible nod on his videos. the politics are never front and center tho and the dude is actually a real real engineer that is a great science educator. the dude just really loves farm and weapon tech.
Watch his video on when he was asked to interview Obama. It’s actually great. He also had a great vid on disinformation on the internet. He seems pretty rational after watching those.
I just opened two of his (Destin) newest videos and couldnt find any quote about it in the video and channel description.
Are you sure that’s up to date informationen?It’s just the book and verse number on screen, like “Psalms 3:10” or whatever. Along with a graphic of a mouse(?) in a hat.
Usually in the last 10 seconds or so of the video IIRC
Found what you mean.
Yeah it’s unobtrusive but the ones that should get the mesaage will receive it and the ones that do not, wont be bothered.Good way to do it.
Rober’s always seemed a little off to me, like one of those who enjoys being famous more than the stuff that made him famous in the first place.
It’s hard to exactly articulate the point where a content creator loses me, but I can feel it in my nerd-bones.
You’ve articulated my thoughts more clearly than I could myself. I’ve felt the same way for some time.
It’s a really good video about a great drone project that he obviously loves, I don’t get what your problem with it is? He wasn’t sponsored, but still said good things about people delivering blood in inhospitable regions using clever tech and organization?
I think most of us watch his videos because we’re interested in this sort of stuff
I’m saying he’s lying.
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Yeah I just watched it and it seemed off. Almost like the mrwhosetheboss touring a fucking prison a while back.
Almost like the mrwhosetheboss touring a fucking prison a while back.
The channel Boy Boy (I Did A Thing’s
brotherfriend) did a great response video to that one.Small correction: Boy Boy is Aleksa (I Did A Thing’s friend) and Alex (I Did A Thing), not his brother
I follow both and i am still not clear who’s gay, who is the 2nd boy, if they are married or not, for real or for other reasons.
Can you tell me which one is A Thing though?
Yeah that is how I know about this. I never watched the original video because I am not interested in prisons.
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Brother? Are you sure about that?
I always assumed they were brothers, idk why
They look nothing alike. Also Aleksa or at least his family is from the Balkans.
I’m sure it’s been implied by some joke they’ve made in one of their videos, but yeah fair enough that they look nothing alike.
He talks serbo-croatian to his grandpa and I also believe he mentions running from the balkans when he was a couple years old. Might have been in the north korea video
I know he mentioned being from the Balkans in the video where he interviews the American gun nut.
I had to stop watching his videos because I can’t stand his overly enthusiastic personality.
Yeah I also definitely stopped paying much attention to him. He just seems so over enthusiastic about everything and some of his videos are quite bad
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I also had this uneasy feeling watching the video. It certainly felt a bit like a cog in the military industrial machine. While the actual content of the video wasn’t exactly bad in my opinion, I don’t know how I feel about pitching anti-terror or war machines to children through the lens of, “Engineering is cool!” That said, there are many more examples of that pitch out in the world in other forms. I do think Mark could be more careful especially when he is directly promoting a company in the defense industry.
Unfortunately engineering and military have a huge overlap in the US. It’s kind of inescapable. I found out recently that Destin from Smarter Every Day also worked for a weapons manufacturer before starting YouTube. These people just don’t want to think about the fact that they probably have blood on their hands.
I am well aware of this overlap and it doesn’t come as a surprise. I perhaps wish more of these creators acknowledged the military industrial complex and addressed what it means for their content and for the world of engineering.
I don’t think Destin’s ever been real shy about his connections. Huntsville is basically nothing but NASA and missile companies, and he did a multi-part series where he lived on an active US Navy sub for two days.
There’s a difference between showing off a technological marvel like a nuclear submarine and not really focusing on its applications as a weapon, versus showing off a weapon and being like “it’s so cool to kill ‘bad guys’ with this stuff”
And yeah he probably hasn’t been shy about it, I don’t watch his videos religiously. I found out during his excellent talk on the Artemis program. IIRC, he mentioned he helped design missile countermeasures, which is pretty tame as military industrial complex goes, but it’s still participating in the amelioration of killing machines, which doesn’t sit right with me. And he talked about it so nonchalantly, like he hadn’t considered that the people at the end of the barrel of the weapons he was helping design obviously were the “bad guys”
I still have a ton of respect for the guy and his educational outreach work, and I don’t hold it against him, I just don’t get how someone could sleep at night knowing that they helped make weapons more efficient at killing people.
He worked for the military as a missile test engineer, even did an interview with a four star general. The general described the video he was making (the interview i mean) as a weapon
Damn, never saw that. At least the general was forthcoming about why they do that sort of outreach.
If you take a look into the fitness bubble on YouTube you will see military propaganda too. They’re often competing against real soldiers/SEALS/whatever to demonstrate how well prepared they’re are in the case of war. Back in the subject of engineering, William Osman was also sponsored by the Navy (I think) one time.
The US navy did a campaign a few years ago that paid a bunch of youtubers across a wide range of video genres.
Looking from outside the US, it appears pretty weird how deeply ingrained in America’s mindset the military is.
The US military spends a shitload of money to be deeply ingrained.
I don’t know how I feel about pitching anti-terror or war machines to children through the lens of, “Engineering is cool!” That said, there are many more examples of that pitch out in the world in other forms.
Kids have been sold military toys since forever. GI Joe, tin soldiers, toy guns, toy armor and swords, model kits of tanks and fighter aircraft…
Kids love to fight, adults realise there are better solutions.
The breathless enthusiasm for the military industrial complex while dropping scary descriptions of terrorism that hasn’t happened gave me exactly the same impression.
I hate this kind of content, especially from someone who seems like a pretty genuine person.
Please Mark: be a bit more critical.
Mark is not a genuine person he is a pretengineer. He can barely make a functional robot.
Backyard Scientist and Sripol however are the real deal.
Didn’t the guy work on the Mars Rover at nasa though?
Probably on some design stuff. If you look at his videos he never makes anything impressive. Just some mediocre junior tier engineering with good video production.
This video is no different. Backyard Scientist shows up with a functional shockwave blaster. Mark puts some elastics on rocket shaped foam and calls it a day.
I think it’s because Mark wants to interest a young audience rather than building some very complicated stuff little kids wouldn’t be able to do.
Not necessarily. Making a great product would only attract a younger audience more and make the videos far cooler. But that takes a ton of time. Way more than just painting a large cannon and strapping some elastics to it
Mark clearly tries to only deliver a minimum viable product for a single shot rather than an actually functional product.
He falls under the “shittyrobots” engineers that don’t just make shitty robots for fun, but because they can’t actually make non shitty robots which accomplish the desired goal of their video well. Some people such as “I Did A Thing” don’t try to hide it and make it part of the content. Mark is in the twilight zone of pretending he’s engineering complex stuff while not actually doing that.
Dude was a nasa engineer. Just because he doesn’t do the complicated stuff on yt doesn’t mean he’s not capable of doing so. I do wish he did complex stuff though.
I just checked his Wikipedia page for his credentials. Worked for 9 years at NASA, of which 7 working on the Curiosity rover (yeah, the one that’s on Mars now).
I’d say that’s credentialed enough.
I too wish he did more complex stuff.
Dude was a NASA engineer. This also says more about how low the bar is for NASA engineers than about Mark, as we can clearly see Mark is incapable of good engineering.
As people above have pointed out there are plenty of real engineers making real cool stuff and get views with it. It is not necessary to make a bad robot whatsoever. Hell there’s a reason Backyard Scientist got featured on the thumbnail.
Stuff made here. Tom Stanton. Peter Sripol. Backyard Scientist, James Bruton, Collin Furze, and many more. These people make amazing videos about prototypes that are actually functional and accomplish the goals they set out.
Mark does not meet the list of people who make amazing inventions for their videos that actually work. He makes painted trash that falls apart when touched. He makes shitty robots not because he wants to, but because he can’t make good ones. If any more people need to be triggered, Micheal Reeves also doesn’t meet this list.
If you want a real engineer, watch “stuff made here” perhaps the most competent engineer on YouTube.
If you want to watch top quality unbiased science content, there’s “smarter every day”, “veritasium” and “3blue1brown”. They’re all great, I highly recommend them all.
If you want a good combo of engineering and science, and probably the smartest person on YouTube, “the thought emporium” will blow your mind. The projects they come up with… I never knew any of that was possible.
If you want to watch top quality unbiased science content, there’s “smarter every day”, “veritasium” and “3blue1brown”. They’re all great, I highly recommend them all.
Add to that any and all of Brady Haran’s channels: Numberphile (maths), Periodic Videos (chemistry), Sixty Symbols (physics), Deep Sky Videos (astronomy)…
Integzas pretty great too, Lots of on screen trial and error and explaining thought processes.
Also a 5mn ad break to sell his kit felt much too long.
It’s like 1/3 of the video.
That’s his videos now. Get you to watch them to hype Crunch Labs.
This, I think, is more a symptom of YouTube no longer supporting creators. Most every big channel is looking to alternate income sources. YouTube ad revenue and sponsor inserts aren’t good enough.
Thing is, I wouldn’t mind it if channels could self-fund by things like this, but it’s being done on top of all the ads, not replacing them.
It does seem interesting though. I was thinking of getting one for my sister but I believe the price deterred me.
sponsor block would like to introduce itself
I think these are not blocked by default by sponsor block because it’s an ad for the creator’s products.
But anyway it’s far too long.
Felt like a LTT video…
Yeah, I recently learned you could enable blocking self-sponsorships too and it cut out like a third of this video.
Ive turned this shit off after 30s. Fucking military industrial complex propaganda. Remember, they’re gonna bomb your stadiums from drones (maybe) so forget about all other problems of our society and masturbate to our defensive abilities (that we would never ever use to kill innocent kids in the middle east).
Such a weird take, I just watched a program about education resources, was that bad because they didn’t also cover all other problems our society faces?
I think it’s more the dual-use nature of defense technology. It is very realistic to assume the tech that defends you here, is also going to be used in armed conflict (which historically for the US, involves in many civilian deaths). To present the technology without that critical examination, especially to a young audience like Rober’s, is irresponsible. It can help form the view that this technology is inherently good, by leaving the adverse consequences under-examined and out of view to children watching this video.
Not that we need to suddenly start exposing kids to reporting on civilian collateral damage, wedding bombings, war crimes, etc… But if those are inherently part of this technology then leaving them out overlooks a crucial outcome of developing these tools. Maybe we just shouldn’t advertise defense tech in kids media?
I mean they’re have been drone attacks already. Like it has already killed people, with Ukrainian forces uses them and the Houthis attacks in the Red Sea.
I mean its like they are comparing SciFi tech for warfare, though some people like that too shrug
yea, thats about how far i got. Last thing we need is more fear of something that likley wont happen…
Why have a drone drop something off, when you could bring in something much larger in a backpack
Gee, I don’t know, because you can fly a drone (or multiple drones) around security?
This is a common pattern in content creators. As they grow their goals shift into running a production machine that maximizes earnings, throwing away any values or standards they started with.
Just look at LTT/LMG. It’s not gonna get better, so you could watch someone else who still values things other than money.
Weird topic for a channel aimed at children
While I’m not linking to an external article, I’m hoping that my write-up within the post can still fit with the intent of this community :)
Maybe I’ve watched too much Black Mirror, but this video felt too similar to the tech demos at the start of a sci-fi thriller. In fact, it made me think of the Slaughterbots short film from 2017.
Two relevant points from that video:
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The person in the tech demo for the drones also uses language such as “bad guys”
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The address at the end:
This short film is more than just speculation. It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technologies that we already have. I’m Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley. I’ve worked in AI for more than 35 years. It’s potential to benefit humanity is enormous, even in defense. But allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom. Thousands of my fellow researchers agree we have an opportunity to prevent the future you just saw, but the window to act is closing fast.
I made a nightmare after watching this short.
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I mean what’s being shown here is effectively “how do you stop something like a slaughter bot or a ‘terrorist bomb bot’?”
I thought it was a neat video … We need people thinking about these problems.
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I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a great interest in war when I was a boy. Now as an adult, I’d rather have Mark explaining things to kids than anyone else they might seek out.
Sure, and I went through the video looking for some nuanced explanation of the technology, the risks, and what safeguards were being put in place. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any, and the cheerful music throughout the video seems to be promoting the content more than anything else.
I find that there are other engineering channels that discuss technologies while focussing on the technology itself, both the good and the bad. I’m not opposed to such content being accessible to children, but the way this video goes about it did not sit right with me
If it’s military tech, then the finer details are likely not part of the public domain. Anything that could be used to understand or develop a way to counteract the weapon more effectively, or sometimes even just understand its precise capabilities, would be secret.
It’s understandable that it does not sit well, I think that’s healthy. War is hell.
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I stopped watching his content after his ableist campaign with NEXT For Autism (another shitty autism “charity” like Autism Speaks) and his subsequent removal of comments and banning of users who criticised his campaign or attempted to inform him of the dangers of the organisation.
It’s good to see that his morals and ethics are still, to this day, not exactly heartwarming. /s
Given that his own kid is on the autism spectrum, I’d like to think any involvement he has with autism related organizations comes from a genuine desire to do good by autistic people.
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Mark has always been icky for me. I watch these kinds of videos almost excellently - the science-tech ones; yet I avoid him like the plague.
Remember when he faked his first fart bomb video because he used his friends to play the part of the porch pirates? That was years ago.
Edit: My memory was a little fuzzy on exactly the nature of the incident was. See my follow up comment for a link to an article that explains what actually happened.
I’m sorry to be that guy but I’m genuinely curious. Source?
My memory of this was a little off, but here’s the source: Engadget
You should probably amend your original comment to clarify that the fake part of the video was done by one of the people who volunteered to put the package on their porch, which Mark at least claims he had no knowledge of. Also worth pointing out that the known fake part of the video has been removed.
Also worth pointing out that the known fake part of the video has been removed.
Removing the fake part of my video after its attracted enough views to get monetized and I realize I might actually get in trouble for it. Because I’m a stand up guy.
The whole “Porch Piracy Revenge” craze always felt like a guerrilla marketing campaign for Nextdoor and Ring. A mix of crime-wave hysteria and suburban sadism I haven’t seen since “Cops” became FOX’s most watched TV show.
Nice to see yet another layer in which it was painfully contrived.
I mean, one should assume every single “real” video that features “random strangers” is staged until presented with evidence of the contrary.
Such a nice name wasted. Same as Palantir
I do wonder what’s up with fascist nerds and Tolkien names.
Fascist nerds get way too excited about the worst aspects of any fiction.
See: Starship Troopers, Helldivers 2, and so on.
I watched it with my kids and felt uncomfortable. This sort of video is not the same as elephants toothpaste.
I don’t suffer through rober videos so my kids can now worry people want to drop bombs on them at a stadium.
Thanks mark.
