SerpentZA and Other Vloggers

[Cale1953]

So Gweilo's constant propagandizing pays off with his own 15 minutes of fame on Nanning TV. Too bad there is no translation, but the video is well done and much better than his own videos. He comes off much more mellow and less strident and hectoring. Maybe that is the real Kirk. We get to see him not talk Mandarin, drink beer and walk along filming himself, just like in his vids, only from another perspective.

 

I wonder if he will go back to Canada for his wife's surgery? It probably would have been okay, as Vancouver Island has not had many covid cases.

[Randy W]

So Gweilo's constant propagandizing pays off with his own 15 minutes of fame on Nanning TV. Too bad there is no translation, but the video is well done and much better than his own videos. He comes off much more mellow and less strident and hectoring. Maybe that is the real Kirk. We get to see him not talk Mandarin, drink beer and walk along filming himself, just like in his vids, only from another perspective.

 

I wonder if he will go back to Canada for his wife's surgery? It probably would have been okay, as Vancouver Island has not had many covid cases.

 

 

I don't think they have any more surgery planned for the time being, do they?

 

His style is to simply talk, with very little editing required. That saves a lot of time and trouble, relative to finding and piecing together snippets from several different sessions into a cohesive video.

 

I figure that talking in front of his camera is therapeutic.

 

Good for him.

[Martin B]

Overall a good video, but this guy is experiencing major delusions of grandeur if he thinks he's "influencing people on how they think about China".

 

Like most of these other clowns, he had a relatively small following until he went full on CPC/anti-west. Does he seriously think his surge in subscribers are westerners wanting to see a drunk Canadian bash their home country while not saying a single negative thing about China? Get real. The subscribers are wumao, bots, and Chinese with VPNs.

 

And I think he did a lot of good when he was just showing his life in Nanning and the positive things about living in China. His videos were original and engaging, basically trying to win people over in a "soft power" type of way, if that makes sense. And even his rants (e.g. the west being too politically correct) were legitimate and even funny.

 

I think his current videos are doing the exact opposite - he's pissed off all but a tiny minority of westerners, while letting his Chinese viewers hear what they want to hear. His rants are angry. His video about the "California Clowns" was probably the absolute nadir of his channel. He literally ends the video by threatening some 30 year-old nobody Youtuber in Taiwan - seriously what grown 60 year old man does that?

[Randy W]

Oh, give him a break already. Watch something else.

 

Things I've found especially cringe-worthy include referring to Taiwan as "the Taiwan province of China" (6 of those syllables are completely unnecessary), his defending the Xinjiang "re-education camps", and, yes, that entire California clowns video.

 

I also cringe at the hour+ long chat sessions they're holding now every week. No thanks.

 

He's reverting to his old form a little, though, with his trip to the Vietnam border.

 

His nonstop monologue I'm sure makes it very easy to churn out these videos.

[Cale1953]

 

So Gweilo's constant propagandizing pays off with his own 15 minutes of fame on Nanning TV. Too bad there is no translation, but the video is well done and much better than his own videos. He comes off much more mellow and less strident and hectoring. Maybe that is the real Kirk. We get to see him not talk Mandarin, drink beer and walk along filming himself, just like in his vids, only from another perspective.

 

I wonder if he will go back to Canada for his wife's surgery? It probably would have been okay, as Vancouver Island has not had many covid cases.

 

 

I don't think they have any more surgery planned for the time being, do they?

 

His style is to simply talk, with very little editing required. That saves a lot of time and trouble, relative to finding and piecing together snippets from several different sessions into a cohesive video.

 

I figure that talking in front of his camera is therapeutic.

 

Good for him.

 

They were planning to go back this summer as his wife needed reconstructive surgery. Despite his lavish praise for all aspects of China, he didn't want her to get her surgery there. Don't know why.

 

It just shows the difference between a professionally produced video and some dude just ranting at the camera. I would be interested in a translation of Weifang's comments.

[Cale1953]

Overall a good video, but this guy is experiencing major delusions of grandeur if he thinks he's "influencing people on how they think about China".

 

Like most of these other clowns, he had a relatively small following until he went full on CPC/anti-west. Does he seriously think his surge in subscribers are westerners wanting to see a drunk Canadian bash their home country while not saying a single negative thing about China? Get real. The subscribers are wumao, bots, and Chinese with VPNs.

 

And I think he did a lot of good when he was just showing his life in Nanning and the positive things about living in China. His videos were original and engaging, basically trying to win people over in a "soft power" type of way, if that makes sense. And even his rants (e.g. the west being too politically correct) were legitimate and even funny.

 

I think his current videos are doing the exact opposite - he's pissed off all but a tiny minority of westerners, while letting his Chinese viewers hear what they want to hear. His rants are angry. His video about the "California Clowns" was probably the absolute nadir of his channel. He literally ends the video by threatening some 30 year-old nobody Youtuber in Taiwan - seriously what grown 60 year old man does that?

I generally agree with you, but what would we talk about if we didn't have people like him?

[Cale1953]

Oh, give him a break already. Watch something else.

 

Things I've found especially cringe-worthy include referring to Taiwan as "the Taiwan province of China" (6 of those syllables are completely unnecessary), his defending the Xinjiang "re-education camps", and, yes, that entire California clowns video.

 

I also cringe at the hour+ long chat sessions they're holding now every week. No thanks.

 

He's reverting to his old form a little, though, with his trip to the Vietnam border.

 

His nonstop monologue I'm sure makes it very easy to churn out these videos.

I'm not interested in the hour long chat sessions on China and I wonder what kind of audience they are getting. They are not archiving them and there is some kind of subscription needed to view, which seems like a goofy business model to me, but hey maybe it works.

[Martin B]

 

Oh, give him a break already. Watch something else.

 

Things I've found especially cringe-worthy include referring to Taiwan as "the Taiwan province of China" (6 of those syllables are completely unnecessary), his defending the Xinjiang "re-education camps", and, yes, that entire California clowns video.

 

I also cringe at the hour+ long chat sessions they're holding now every week. No thanks.

 

He's reverting to his old form a little, though, with his trip to the Vietnam border.

 

His nonstop monologue I'm sure makes it very easy to churn out these videos.

I'm not interested in the hour long chat sessions on China and I wonder what kind of audience they are getting. They are not archiving them and there is some kind of subscription needed to view, which seems like a goofy business model to me, but hey maybe it works.

 

 

I only caught 20 minutes of one of the live streams a few weeks back - not much to see there. It's just like watching a less scripted version of the individual YouTubers. The topics are obviously softballs like "why the world hates China" or "China infrastructure is awesome"... Not exactly what I want to be doing on a Friday evening. I think they put the stream recordings up on Patreon for their subscribers.

 

If they brought on some people with differing views it'd be a lot more interesting. My guess is it that will never happen as it's pretty clear their channels are for displaying China in a positive light only - look at what happened with Gweilo when he ranted about the first quarantine hotel.

 

I watch the occasional Gweilo video during my workouts as long as it's not another "China vs the rest of the world" type of video.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Barfus (see edit history)

[Cale1953]

I watched a few minutes of the "Lets talk China" livestream, there were 60 people viewing, and it seemed technically confused, you could watch on anybody's channel but one dude signed off and when I tried to switch to another channel it didn't work. I don't think they are making a big impact on westener's views of China.

 

I note that youtube will delete comments with "wumao" in them , I wonder about "quisling" ?

[Cale1953]

Again, I watched a few minutes of "Lets talk China" the topic was 'China vs US, a new cold war?'

Which could have been interesting if you didnt have such morons discussing it. A viewer question was " If a hot war erupted, would you fight for US or China?"

You can imagine the blithering and obfuscations that ensued. I wanted to hear Gweilo's response, but I couldn't endure it for that long.

800 people viewing, which isn't too bad considering.

[Martin B]

I actually unsubscribed from almost every China YouTuber last week. It was a bittersweet moment as I've been following some of these guys for 8+ years. I just can't stand the current state of China vlogging. It's either a bunch of have-beens whose content now sucks like SerpentZA/Laowhy86 --- or pathetic, disgusting, borderline-traitorous CPC chills like Gweilo60/Barrett/JaYoe.

[amberjack1234]

I did the exact same thing several years ago but on occasion, I have clicked on one here.

[Cale1953]

What will we talk about?

[Randy W]

Flying a drone in China. Spoiler alert - he didn't (get arrested)

 

[Martin B]

Flying a drone in China. Spoiler alert - he didn't (get arrested)

 

 

I feel sad to see this guy stoop so low. And to think he was THE #1 vlogger in China as recent as a few years ago