hey what's up happy anniversary, belated anniversary look I'm glad you're
here, today to celebrate a year of me
making these videos I want to turn the
Antoine in the Apocalypse analysis inward. we're gonna look at all these
videos I've uploaded and see if we can
answer one simple question. what was all
that about? what's the point of all this?
and that's a weird question to ask and
it was a weird video to write and it's
probably gonna be a weird video to watch
because I can answer our central
question right now. I did all of this I
can tell you the point right? right
but that's lame and this provides us with
the opportunity to look back at where
we've been and recap what we covered, and
I think that will put us in a good
position to finally decipher why this
channel exists at all...it's a birthday
(oof) it's a birthday it's a anniversary
it's a celebration.
Antoine in the Apocalypse consists of
a little over 30 videos of which they are
a couple secret videos and 23 publicly
published videos. of those 23 public
videos there are 12 main videos. you
could call them video essays I'd rather
not. regardless the 12 main videos seem
to form the backbone of the channel.
they're all significantly similar in
that they feature me examining some
particular work or slice of life and
seeing what logical conclusions follow
thereafter. all the other videos are
either outtakes of or footnotes to the
main videos or maybe a compilation of
zelda clips. anyway
they seem to be supplementary to
whatever purpose the main videos serve
so we'll mostly ignore them going
forward. now I went ahead in summarized
our main videos from the electoral
college to logic. Summarize is maybe not
the best word for what I did here. I
went off on tangents pretty liberally
as I thought about the videos and their
themes and their findings so it's not
all super coherent but it is a lot of
fun so here it is. wherever here is I'm
not good at
knowing where the frame of the camera is
at any given-- so if you want to screencap
zoom in read my manifestos its
whatever do you but otherwise we're
gonna move on. from there I've identified
some common / recurring themes and we're
gonna talk about them just-- just loud as shit fuck it. I have in the the script
that I'm supposed to cup my hands over my mouth and shout feminism but that's a lot
considering I'm in a classroom and there
are cleaning ladies around. maybe
they'll shout too-- yeah I don't want to toot
my own horn here which considering the
nature of this video is gonna be
something that's hard to avoid. but there
have been a number of times on this
channel where we have studied prioritize
or otherwise consider the world view and
lived experiences of women. a theme I'm
going to loosely call feminism. video
3 was all about the Combahee River
collective which is a black feminist
group and how they went about stating
their purpose. in video 11 the horizon
zero dawn video we looked at themes like
the recklessness of powerful intelligent
egotistical men and the roles that women
play in fostering and protecting
humanity. in video 6 we looked at how
dolly parton tells the story of Jolene
and how she makes her man a tertiary
character in all this emotional turmoil.
in a video 5 we fixate on the Real
Housewives of Atlanta 's reunions and
how they force the women to confront
their own behavior or misbehavior. now
not all of these are explicitly feminist
themes or ideals but they're still
significant enough to warrant mention here.
so here they are mentioned here. we're
gonna move on. chance
acid rapper soccer hackey sacker cocky
khaki jacket jacker slap-happy boowok
all right
chance video - the first video I
properly wrote was all about chance's
music and how chronicles is his life. then
in video 10 we
visit chance to talk about his begging
twitter for a kidney for his aunt. further
in video 8 we examine chance's song
everybody something.
despite the chance connection these
videos really have almost nothing in
common. one is almost entirely chance
propaganda. in another I'm a strict
critic of his behavior. so the idea that
this channel is in any way supposed to
forward any one thesis about chance
isn't well-founded. we can move on to the
next one. okay quick what do videos 2 8
11 and 12 have in common. this is
actually a hard one you'd be excused if
you didn't know the answer immediately.
in video 2 we found similarities between
the real life of Chance the rapper and the
music he makes. thus his work this music
captures some aspect of his life and
we're allowed to engage with that. in
video 8 i said that i think our best
chance at understanding human
experiences like love is to study and
deconstruct how we depict these
experiences in the things we create, in
our media. in video 11 i related the main
themes of Horizon zero dawn a completely
fictional 100% artificial creation to
real life people and their real life
actions. in video 12 we looked at Logic's
rap lyrics and used them to reverse
engineer his worldview on race. in all of
these videos we took the themes
metaphors or analogies of fictional work
works that need not reflect reality at
all and extrapolated them into the real
world nonetheless. we find in these
videos that our analysis of media can
does and should bleed into analysis of
the real world around us. alright one
more. so for all the themes we talked about
so far I knew I was gonna find them
before I started looking but this last
one is one I didn't identify until after
I had wrote [sic] all those summaries I had
talked about before. so here it is
it's not this it's gonna be that.
you'll recall in video 4 that we talked
about the NFL and its treatment of its
players who are mostly black. we pushed
back on the blunt undercoat conclusion
that the NFL is n't slavery, and instead
found that NFL ownership of players
shares a lot of spooky similarities to
white people's ownership of slaves in
pre-civil war America. in the logic video
we touched on white supremacy and how
our society immediately contextualizes
the individual with their race. so this
last theme is by no means a new
discovery for me and probably for many
of you watching but it is fairly
incendiary and it has come up more than
once so here she is. the NFL shows us
that the long term health (and also
thoughts and opinions but) the long term
health of these black men who power
their operation and put money into their
pockets is not worth more to them than
the money that they put into their
pockets. these executives these owners
they're fine to see these men languish
in their old age while simultaneously
fighting back against criticism of their
business model and pushing outright
lies about the safety of the sport.
during our broader discussion of racism
in the logic video and it's description
essay. we recognize that black people
have at all times in the history of this
nation had to endure the unyielding
violence of white supremacy.
even if logics lyrics fail to underscore
the existence of this structural racism
racism inherent to society itself. is this
the point of Antoine in Apocalypse?
no. I mean a little bit but no. no I don't
think so
I mean we've covered a lot in the span
of the year like I kind of popped off
but there's no way that we can
synthesize all of these disparate themes
into one final ultimate point this
channel's reason for existing. these
themes: feminism the struggles of being
black chance the rapper these are all
personal interests of mine. in other
words the crop of videos featured on
Antoine in the Apocalypse are inherently
biased by what the author cares to write
about. so while this exercise can be
useful for understanding some of the
thinking that goes behind the
construction of these videos I don't
think we're gonna answer our central
question this way. each video seems to be
its own thing and they're only
tangentially related to others by broad
categorizations so maybe we should be
asking a different question. okay I'd
like to entertain an argument here for a
second: isn't this kind of weird? I mean
this kid records videos of himself
talking to his phone then he uploads
them to the internet and he tweets about
it
puts up an Instagram story. he wants us
to look at him a lot huh what if this
whole thing is just a --vanity project-- alright
let's look at what we have here. what
evidence is there to support the idea
that this channel is just an opportunity
for me to revel in my presentation of
myself on a screen on your screen? well I
am heavily featured in almost every
video there are some videos where my
face comprises like half of the shot for
like every successive shot its Antoine
all the way down. sometimes there's this:
this might be it for us. sometimes
there's this: a little piece of death the
computer program these men and more
importantly their hubris their self-pride...
sometimes there's a noticeable bump in
audience retention at this exact moment
in the video which is so funny.
#yikesoutnow. the point of this vanity argument
is that it's undeniable that I make
myself my human person a significant
component of the work. when you watch an Antoine in the Apocalypse video your eyes
are on me
for 10 to 20 minutes at a time-- and
you're also likely to be unsubscribed
because y'all don't love me. it's okay
though, I work for the people.-- could this
somehow be the point. we'd be ignoring
something though these videos are more
than just my appearance and presentation
on a screen. within the context of an
Antoine in the Apocalypse video. I'm always
there to tell or show you something.
we're never just looking at me. except
for maybe today but today is weird. so
aside the physical aspect of my
presentation in these videos there's
also an intellectual component. I'm here
to show you how smart I am.
this Antoine in the Apocalypse is not so
much a manifestation of my physical
vanity as it is one of my intellectual
vanity. or as a critic might put it look
at this dumb kid with his stupid hot
takes further let's take a second to
think about the package in which this
work is delivered. with the video format
I am behind every facet of the video so
not only did I write the words that you
watch me say and not only did I perform
them in front of a camera but I also
compiled all the clips that you get to
see. I choose what you don't get to see. I
choose what we don't talk about. the work
that I do as editor isn't as immediately
obvious as the writing and the
performance but its effect on the
ultimate product is nonetheless
profound. and it can be argued that my
entire tenure as a YouTuber
has just been me seeking attention
or validation for my half-baked hot
takes. am I just in it for the likes? I
should take this opportunity to say that
I do want you to like this video. and I
also want you to subscribe. and also give
me all of your money. thank you. goodbye.
okay now that I've advanced the vanity
project theory I'd like to say I don't
think this works. the premise here is
that I want you to look at me and I want
you to listen to me speak and that I get
to curate exactly how I look and sound.
and like yeah I do want you to listen to
me but I don't resort to talking on
camera because I love your gaze but
because it's the easiest way for me to
run a video. and each video is constructed
around its central topic and really
nothing else which the vanity theory
doesn't explain at all. the vanity theory
doesn't hold up when we consider that
Editor Antoine with all of his power
explicitly edits to build to and
conclude on answering some main question.
not as the vanity theory would suggest
just having me onscreen talking as much
as possible. hell, I love talking as
little as possible because this shit is
a pain to put together, all the time, and
I have homework. so the vanity theory
doesn't work and it appears you've
stumbled on to another idea again: that
these videos because of the diversity of
the topics among them cannot simply be
lumped together and explained way with
any one theory. these videos appear to
each exist independently of one another
and I think this helps us frame our last
question: what incites a video? we've been
going on about this the wrong way all
along while trying to decipher the point
of Antoine in the Apocalypse we've been
looking at its end products when maybe
we should be looking at the inception of
these works. we've seen that these videos
are so different that they defy group
characterization but by looking at their
inception ideally
the root of their individuality we find
something remarkable and seemingly
paradoxical. Antoine in the Apocalypse
started when I ran into an obscure
argument defending the electoral college
while working on a research paper, and it
changed my thinking so much that I just
had to explain it and share it with the
world. and that underpins every video
there's some spark and something
captivates me. I'm lured into writing a
script recording some clips and
uploading a video, and sometimes it's not
that easy.
sometimes it takes work. sometimes I know
there's something interesting about what
I'm looking at even if I can't yet seem
to articulate it. and running into
and getting over those problems usually
yields a better video than I was ever
expecting...I'm moving on
if Antoine in the Apocalypse has any
point it's my way of communicating with
you something important. and that's
whoever you are whomever you may ever be.
and with that we stumble onto the second
dimension of this meaning my thoughts
and opinions fuel the content on this
channel and when people engage with it
they're necessarily engaging with me and
this channels reach extends well beyond
my physical personal environment. so no
matter where I am or what I'm doing
someone can watch something on this
channel and engage in some way with me
and my thinking. in a way where I can't
speak for myself
maybe these videos will I speak for me.
I think of Antoine in the apocalypse the same way
I think of papers I write for class; it's
something I made it's probably pretty
good and I probably stand by what I said
in it. in the end it's so simple as to
almost be anticlimactic it's just
another form of authorship. some
misguided attempt at immortality.
what's up this is the end of the video
you watched the whole video and so
sometimes I appear at the end of these
videos and I'm like thank you for
watching the video that was mad cool
of you and I'm gonna do it here
because you watched this whole ass
video it was something like 17 minutes I
don't I don't have the final count here
but it was 17 minutes and you watched it
and it was about me the whole time and
that's weird as hell I'm sorry I put you
guys through that but it's over now
and I'm gonna make videos about other
things and it's gonna be lit we're gonna
have a great time which is why-- this
brings me to my next point you should
SUBSCRIBE pls 🥺 because once I get a lot of
subscribers then I'm gonna get hyped. and
if I get hyped it's over. if I get
excited like if I'm if I'm LIT lit with
this YouTube shit it's over I'm shutting
everything down-- I got some wine so I'll calm down. I'm very calm now.
yeah but thank you for watching this
video. please subscribe for more. and I'll
see you later.
