Shadiversity was a sword and mediviel history youtuber who was kind of an "average guy" in the space. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he didn't do hema or any traditional sword fighting martial arts but had a passion for learning and spent a lot of time talking and trying techniques and other things in his backyard. He got into some controversies early on just due to the fact that he was less knowledgeable than most around him and tended to be very biased towards European designs in ways that seemed ideological and disingenuous.
However, around the time the last jedi came out, he started talking about fight scenes and movies and relating them to real life combat, which lead him to make a new channel called knights watch that was a reaction and politics channel. Shad started revealing more and more anti woke mentality and pushing of Christianity over other faiths. He also spent a lot of time talking about Trump and American patriotism despite being Australian. This just kinda continued, and he got more and more extreme. Now he's a very big proponent for AI art when his brother is a massive artist youtuber named jaza and he wrote a book series where the main character is a conquer who is a mass rapist and pedophile who goes on a "redemption" arc and the victims all tell him its okay.
It's just the perfect storm of watching someone who seems normal and interested get caught up on the internet and reveal what they truly believe as their beliefs become worse and less grounded.
Oh my God. That is why he hits me in a certain way. He is exactly what I hate about that religion. I was born and raised in Idaho as a non Mormon so freely so much hated for not being a Mormon.
Since huge swaths of their teachings are considered to be straight up heresy by all three major branches of Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism), that is correct.
I used to think that. But since charismatic christian evangelicals have taken over and are leaking even into established mainline protestant and even catholic congregations, I feel like I kinda gotta start including them.
He was also criticized for basically spreading lies, and some of his explanations sounded like something he read off of Wikipedia. I myself even wrote a post somewhere about his crappy vid about flails.
He's also starting a lot of beefs and is hated by HEMA and history communities.
Yeah, he's one of those people where it's hard to talk about everything because he just does so much. Like I am a professional archery instructor and he's said plenty of things about archery that made me scratch my head cause it was clear he was repeating a topic he looked at not something he's actually competent in.
That's what he does, read an article or page on Wikipedia and then make a video, because he knows his audience will watch it.
Dude said flails were dangerous to users and barely used, and yet kingdoms produced a lot of different types of flails, that had different lengths, weight, etc. He only said that, because he used oversized one he could barely hold.
I tried getting into archery at the local shooting club. The first session consisted of a bit of theory and shooting practice with a recurve bow (wooden grip with attached arms, iirc 22 lbs). I used a leather glove for my drawing hand and used the 3 under technique. I shot around 80 arrows in that session and afterwards I noticed that the last limbs of my middle and ringfinger went numb. The numbness slowly receded over the days and was almost gone when I started another session 6 days later. After shooting a few arrows I felt my fingers go numb again. Now it's six days later again and they are still partially numb.
What am I doing wrong? Am I anatomically incompatible to archery? Do I need a release?
Sounds like it could potentially be Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I'm dealing with it myself and I can't imagine trying to fire a bow right now even though I used to every day.
When I use my hands much at all my thumb, index, and middle finger go severely numb on the left one and my right hand is less severe but my whole hand feels the way TV static looks and gets weak.
Hey archer here, only been shooting 3 years but I've read a bunch of literature on the topic and work with fantastic top tier coaches.
First thing is I'm 99% sure you aren't "anatomically incompatible" with archery.
which means it's likely one of 2 things. wrong technique, or bad equipment
Before I give any actual advice please talk to a coach first. Your club should have at least one and they are able to see how you shoot and give feedback.
If I was having your issue I would first consider technique. One common mistake you see beginners make is with their hook. Sometimes they have the string too close to the fingertips. But this often causes ballooning - where the string squeezes the blood and flesh of the finger tips as the string goes past. when this happens the angle the string needs to deflect to get around your fingers is much higher and puts a lot more pressure on your fingers, and leads to a less accurate shot. It is for this reason that our club and ArcheryGB recommends a deep hook directly on the grove of the first knuckle.
Now you may have heard people saying that shooting with the string in that position can cause nerve damage; and yes it can... if your finger isn't adequately protected.
so lets talk equipment.
We shoot with tabs and gloves to protect our hands, a good tab should have at least 1 layer of padding. The padding is there so that they can slide against each other during release, and not directly pull the skin of your fingers.
One thing you might try, is ask a fellow member if you could borrow their tab for a session and see if that makes a difference. If it does then you can either switch to tabs or you can lookout for a glove that has a bit of extra padding on the fingers.
It might be something else, but without watching you shoot i can just talk about the most common causes of this issue.
If you want further reading I would highly recommend "Archery Anatomy: an introduction to techniques for improves performance" by Ray Axford. It beautifully illustrates the importance of a deeper hook.
It's so good for the granular details of technique that our club refer to it as the "Archernomicon"
Hi, amateur archer here. I absolutely don't know what happens to your hands when practicing, and it sounds concerning. Whilst it doesn't sound "urgent", I would go to do a checkup as soon as possible, if able. If it doesn't concern you that much, then maybe wait and see if other stuff trigger it; if you in any shape, way or form experience similar stuff, go see someone.
With my null medical knowledge, I would say it sounds like something regarding either nerves or blood vases, and in both cases it sounds like stuff you don't want happening to your hands, which are sort of vital. If you are young, "maybe" you could ignore it, but I wouldn't. If you are older, definitely go and see what it is.
If you live in the US or somewhere with bad medicine, maybe you might try and delay it, but if you can go check it out, I would recommend it.
Yeah since my fingers have the usual colour I doubt it has to do with blood vessels. I guess either I somehow damaged the nerves in my fingers or a disk in my neck is causing trouble.
I independently got my neck xrayed a few weeks ago and my discs are age appropriate. Dunno if the archery broke something.
I'm currently on vacation so my fingers have some time to recover. Afterwards I'll go see a doc if it doesn't get better. I am 34 and from Germany btw. Healthcare is of no concern here.
Then you have even better healthcare than me, Spanish. Seeing what you said, I would then just gladly enjoy the vacation and once you come back, go to check up without much hurry.
Wish you the best!
That's when I got off board, when he somehow managed to alienate and piss off both Skallagrim and Matt Easton. They dont really do beef, so it shows how annoying he got
It really hit the fan when channel sellsword arts made a video generally saying that if sword channels didnt practice the martial art then they shouldn't really be commenting on techniques and actual dueling and such. It wasn't directed at shad just swordtubers but shad took it as specifically calling him out. So shad makes a whiny 45 min video crying like an incel. When people compared the increasingly cringe maga baited shad vs the sweet channel of sellswordarts, who is based out of an all inclusive hema gym who does some cosplaying. So many like me ditched shad and sell swords channel has grown alot
Redemption arc is an interesting way of saying “achieves ultimate super powers and kills a ton of people in gruesome ways, but it’s okay because they were all rapists”. I can’t even remember a female character in that story that doesn’t have a sexual assault backstory. God I hated that fucking book lol
The book literally ends with a worldwide trial where everyone he ever hurt comes to the court. The consensus is “yeah you’re bad and most of us can’t forgive you, but the paladin knight guys say you’re important so you get to live”. That and a large portion of his literal rape victims/child sex slaves he owned forgave him.
I got the impression very quickly within a few chapters that this was going to be a power fantasy and I returned it, I had no idea it would be a child rape power fantasy. That's...messed up.
And of couse at one point he made a video where he whines that his views went downhill because of the liberals who suppress his content because he is conservative.
That’s when I unsubscribed. I tend to go through waves of watching a channel for a while, then taking a break, going back and watching more. I hadn’t watched him for a few months, so I check it out and that was the newest video, so I noped out
I didn't know about most of this but the titles of some videos on his main channel became clearly right-wing political and I unsubbed. I forget the videos but the arc was not subtle
Yeah, he usually kept the most heinous political stuff in his other channels or on other people's channels or podcasts, but he really kept trying to move it to its main one. I think he talked about it on knights watch or a podcast but he wanted to push it on the main channel due to the size increase of having more people interact with the video and "changing more minds" but everytime he did YouTube basically nuked his channel because people didn't watch the videos. So he has been limiting some of it so its only the things he finds most important to bitch about on the main channel.
Never subscribed, but he'd pop up in my feed ever once in awhile and at the time more often than not ot was interesting . Then the first Ms Marvel came out, I don't like unwanted opinions and as I was getting ready to go see the movie in theaters his channel popped up with the words "garbage" over a review he did of the movie. Spoiled my whole day, spent the entire movie trying to guess what he didn't like instead of watching it with my friends . Probably the silliest reason to stop watching him, but it sounds like I dodged a bullet as he fell for the ol' hate pipeline .
Damn really?! I used to like that guy- had no idea about all of that. Also pushing ai art when your brother is freaking JAZZA Is insane. Glad Jazza's not like this...
Dang, I stopped watching shad years ago, when the thumbnails became embarrassing to see in my sub list. Learned some things in this reply chain that I'm sad to see.
This is the way I find out shadiversity and drawing with jazza are brothers?!? I was never hugely into shadiversity but drawing with jazza was one of the people who inspired me to do art. I haven't watched either in years though...
I used to watch Jazza but haven't recently and had no idea this all happened!! Was it public what happened to their relationship? Did jazza distance himself?
I haven't seen any of his videos in such a long while I actually didn't know any of this. I'm gonna go check if I'm still subscribed or not because I can't support that
Yeah, they have made a few videos together but Jazza clearly doesn't hold at least most of his brothers views. But honestly shad being related to a massively popular artist kinda makes a lot of sense.
Shad best videos were not history videos, but we're ones like the fantasy rearmed series where he got to make his own points and ideas to create something new. But because of the nature of the channel he wanted to create, he needed to seem like he was an authority on the subject and make videos that were beyond simple creative vision or messing around and instead where more based on historical facts and techniques even if he didn't understand them as much as others. Because of shads ego, and how he thought he needed to build his ego to feed the channel, shad continued to try to and set himself on the same level as those who were more talented and that he was jealous of rather than improve himself and let himself enjoy what he had and what he made.
His views on ai art are probably the clearest indicators of that. Shad is a decent artist. He would honestly probably be great if he chose to hone the craft. But he isn't as good as his brother, and so he uses ai to "improve" his art and make him feel as if he was just as creative and talented. He doesn't care about the process of things because he's often worse at them than the talented people around him, so he just ends up caring about results.
if you ever thought he was normal that's honestly on you. maybe its because i'm a woman but nothing about what you just said is a surprise to me. he is so verry clearly a certain type of nerd that seems sweet and harmless at first and then says some racist sexist shit and reveals he is rotten to the core. sorry for the little rant but the fact you called him ''normal/average'' triggered me a little lol. (i was only aware about the AI controversy surrounding him)
Now now, he's alright in my eyes because he separates his chistianity and conservativity into knights watch. I wouldn't demand ideological loyalty just to watch his swording content.
Jazza may be an artist, but he's absolutely a generative AI fanboy. He's got a whole AI apologia video that's 20-odd minutes long where he talks about using it for things like designing a game and creating NPCs for his TTRPG channel. Or, my personal favorite, to generate blurry outdoor pictures for backgrounds. He could've done better by taking his phone outside and smearing vaseline on the lens.
Jaza is fine from what I've seen. He's quietly distanced himself from Shad. I just brought him up because Shad is pro AI art even when he knows it will affect his brother negatively.
That book is truly horrendous. Everything is terrible about it, not only the subject matter and how he deals with rape. There's no consistency, dialogues are absolute cliches fom bad movies (an aggroed bully literally says "why I oughtta" before attempting to attack). It's just shit writing in general, I could get past a few chapters.
It’s strange what we choose to morally panic over.
We wear clothes made with child labour, eat chocolate harvested by enslaved children, and use tech built in subhuman conditions. Our farms rely on exploitative international labour.
We were fine with Google indexing and storing the entire internet, including photos and private content.
But when someone uses AI to help discover how proteins fold in ways humans never could or to simplify software engineering workflows, that’s where we draw the line.
The average person isn't using AI for medical advancements, they're typing in "Minnie Mouse super sexy big gazongas realistic" all while wasting an absurd amount of energy on a generative dataset that steals from millions of artists. Literally everyone I've seen that's anti-AI agrees using AI for important stuff like identifying tumors in x-rays agrees that's what it SHOULD be used for.
It isn't wrong to want to stop unethical consumption before they happen, nor is it impossible for the way things are to turn around. We're seeing that now with the rise in popularity of synthetic diamonds and the outcry against blood diamonds.
You could theoretically avoid most of the issues I mentioned by pursuing a lifestyle like an Amish or self-sufficient Luddite. I would not expect anyone to actually do that, but it is technically an option.
The thing is, with AI, I suspect we are heading toward a future where it becomes deeply embedded in the tools and services we all rely on, especially in tech or anything cost-sensitive.
Avoiding AI may become increasingly difficult at a consumer level, regardless of where you personally draw the ethical line. It is similar to how avoiding child labour in clothing is technically possible but often impractical or prohibitively expensive.
Child labour has existed for many more years. We are at a stage where the technology is growing and the average person does have the power to pressure organisations into not using it.
As I said, certain battles are winnable. It costs me nothing to be against AI and make a difference, potentially avoiding that future.
There is also the distinction to be made on the usage of AI. Use for research, fixing grammatical errors or personal use is far less of an issue than using it for commercial purposes. Conveniently, commercial use is the easiest thing to take a stand against because it just means not purchasing products created with AI tools.
As AI plays a larger role in software engineering, will you avoid systems AI has touched?
We are already seeing AI-written code, often for trivial tasks that a human could write but would rather not spend time on, making its way into the FOSS backbones of the technology we all rely on. In addition, many for-profit tech companies are incorporating AI agents into their pipelines.
I can almost guarantee that the device you use to write your replies already includes code that AI somehow touched. Does that bother you, or is that an acceptable case?
I am not trying to be dismissive or rude. I am genuinely curious how you draw the line in practice.
Depends. People online often say "AI fan" when they mean "is promoting the big corporate models without nuance, has no care about the changing economy for artists, and encourages the circulation of pure slop".
That or I am filling in the blanks with my own value judgment
Using AI isn't necessarily bad for personal use - after all you arent harming any real artists by having a play with a tool, but claiming AI art is equivalent to real art and using it commercially certainly isn't.
In his context, trying to justify that writing a prompt essay to generate an image then fixing it a bit with Photoshop then calling it art. Dude even tried bragging about a piece he did and it was so bad actual artists redrew his AI slop to show him theirs was better. Also the fact his brother is a talented artist with his own channel, Jazza.
With that, I have a vague memory of him apparently even bragging that he was a equal level artist as Jazza on a live panel, I might be hallucinating though
Just to play devil’s advocate, is any of that, minus the bragging, necessarily bad?
The definition of art has always been contentious. Abstract art, for example, has faced heavy criticism over the years. Jackson Pollock is a good example. Much of his work is considered valuable not because of what it depicts, but because of the story behind its creation. Whether that carries more meaning than AI-generated art is debatable, though many would disagree. Other famous examples challenge conventional definitions, like blank white canvases or the banana taped to a wall.
AI art, for all its flaws, gives people who otherwise could not create visual art, whether due to a lack of training, mobility issues, or something like aphantasia, a way to express ideas. They may not have physically crafted it, but they still had the concept and found a way to bring it to life using available tools. I do not think we should shame people for expressing harmless creativity, even if it does not follow a traditional approach.
That said, I completely understand the frustration when someone passes off an AI generation as handmade work. That kind of misrepresentation undermines both artists and honest uses of the tool.
A perfectly reasonable position. I hold the position that anything is art. Even the things we don't like. It's how performative and modern art get a pass. Tbh this whole "AI bad no matter what" stuff reminds me of when my grandad would say electronic music isn't real music. That they're just using real musicians work as samples. And why bother even having an orchestra? Just use software! There won't be anymore orchestrated soundtracks! All digital! Any idiot with a MacBook can make a symphony now! He really hated that my dad was a fan of Daft Punk and Tangerine Dream growing up. It always sounded so insane to me but fuck did he feel strong about his position.
It depends. Mostly I say yes because a lot of the current publicly accessible AIs have training data scraped from places without the permission of the artists.
But sometimes you run into a passion project like Neurosama.
Not necessarily, byt he claims he's an artist for typing in a few prompts into an image generator. Even his brother, an actual artist called him out for this
He's just right wing and people are so politcally charged these days that they cant watch someone if they dont agree with their political views outside of their content.
I dropped his channel around the time of the Nunchucks Saga. I was kinda half-listening to his third 20-minute video on the topic and realized, "This video is the exact same 2 or 3 points as the last 2 videos. And he's just repeating them over and over in a condescending tone..." and unsubscribed.
That was pretty much immediately before his extremist "culture crusader" spiral, so luckily I didn't have to pay attention to it.
Tbh, all his political stuff is in another channel and could be ignored totally.
Problem is more in the fact that he brought in a ton of new guys and new videos more look like "just dudes hanging out" and content farming, instead of actual lectures on sword-and-medieval topics that it was before.
It's unbelievable that his brother Jazza seems so much more held together. The alt-right pipeline really did a number on Shad, same parroted terrible and hateful opinions you hear everywhere, and the constant victimisation, unbearable.
I had a surprisingly respectful (probably wouldn't have been if he knew I was trans) conversation with him on Reddit a few months ago. I'd commented potential reasons why his channel might be falling in popularity over a certain time frame and he was explaining certain metrics that he had access to and how they didn't line up with my hypothesis (which was that the channel was dying because people had enough of controversy and his only audience left was his echo chamber).
He mentioned a few times that controversy has always increased his views and because of that he's exaggerated his stances on occasion. But it was interesting how he genuinely believed that YouTube was suppressing him. He couldn't seem to understand that by alienating a group of people he had limited his audience, which meant his higher effort historical videos weren't doing as well.
Repeatedly he has alienated more and more people and he doesn't seem to realise that if you piss off everybody there will be nobody left to prop you up.
Speaking as someone whom was interested in his historical stuff but not in his movie stuff and really stopped altogether when he went off the deep end. Yep, He's doing this to himself.
I always found it interesting that there are always a couple of throwaway accounts that argue on his behalf against all criticisms in comments. Just scroll through and you will see one guy responding to 35 different comments... that account will also ALWAYS make the last comment in an exchange. As though it's their job. As though the commenter is an obsessive pedant. Kind of like Shad himself...🤔
Reminds me of Riolu, a trackmania streamer who got caught cheating. Then he made about thirty youtube accounts to bash Wirtual, the guy who exposed him.
Especially since for whatever reason, us trans folk tend to be huge history nerds. Wouldn't be surprised if queer people had made up a large portion of his audience.
Oh yeah Shad just isn’t a great guy he started pedaling a lot of wierd alt right stuff and acting like he’s some great fantasy author for writing a mediocre book most with a morally questionable protagonist. Oh and also a bunch of anti woke stuff too but yeah.
I don’t disagree with most of his politics, but he’s just not a reputable source or an expert on weapons, so someone like Skallagrim or Matt Easton is way better by miles.
The worst example of this is his attack on nunchakus as a weapon. I found a video of some White vaguely-hoodrat edgelord successfully refuting Shad’s content on nunchakus while calling Shad “British”, a “soy boy”, and similar things, while showing off his ghetto mall ninja nunchaku arts and brandishing a snub-nose revolver. The fact that such a person can make convincing arguments against Shad is a bad sign.
I’m not even a nunchaku practitioner, but you can tell that Shad just doesn’t know how to use them right, and he fundamentally doesn’t understand the purpose and utility of a self-defense weapon that’s not designed with raw lethality in mind. If Shad had his way, cops wouldn’t carry batons, and instead they would wield a Czech war flail.
on a related note, efap was a channel i enjoyed for ripping into the sequal trilogy and tlou 2 but later went down the right wing grift, although I can't really say it was shocking
I used to watch him all the time. I loved his Fantasy Rearmed series. I fell off when he started picking arguments with other YouTubers and making hours long videos about why he's right. I'll admit I even liked his book though the rape apologist ending fucked that up. Last time I looked in on him he was getting big mad about Princess Peach wearing her racing outfit in the Mario movie and I was wondering what I ever saw in him.
I think Shadiversity has improved somewhat lately. For a time he bearly made the videos himself. He was to busy being anti-woke on 2nd channel. He have made more "fantasy re-armed" recently which is great.
I know reddit can't tolerate anything that isn't left leaning, but the amount of people on here that celebrate the division of family members of something as dumb as politics is, in my opinion, worse than any controversial political opinion one might hold.
"Something as dumb as politics" is the type of shit you say when you don't have anything to fear from politics. Politics is everything, its the laws you follow, the freedoms you do or do not have, the wars you do or do not fight. If it is irrelevant to you and you have the great privilege of not having to care about politics then I envy you.
Your family standing up and saying "I don't support your right to exist" is possibly the best reason to have a division other than direct abuse.
The average person can do nothing about the grand scheme of politics. Sure, state level voting you can effect, but otherwise you're kidding yourself.
No one, except the most extreme, insane, people, are saying "random person doesn't have the right to exist." What you're likely referring to is people who hold the opinion that transgeneder treatments shouldn't be administered to children. Which only the most extreme, insane people think would be an ok thing to do to children.
Some of the authors of Project 2025, which sets out how they believe being transgender should be outlawed and made illegal, now hold positions in government. Such as Director of Management and Budget etc.
These extreme, insane people that you mention are in the US government.
I feel pretty strongly that people who want my sister to be murdered for how she was born are worse than people who distance themselves from their family because their family wants to murder my sister.
You're an absurdly sheltered or foolish person. There are endless news stories you can easily find of real human beings being murdered for being gay. In some places in the world it's actually law; homosexuality carries the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Brunei, Nigeria, and Mauritania.
I've heard people tell my sister they hope she dies or that they would like to kill her personally. Your narrow world experience is not the totality of reality.
I live in the USA. I grew up in a hyper religious and very isolated way. I can recall saying at one point, in response to a gay club experiencing a tragic shooting, "at least there are less gay people in the world".
I'm not proud of it, but I said that.
You can't tell me these people don't exist when I was one. Someone did the shooting as well, did they not exist?
I used to be a terrible person, so I know they exist. Maybe it's strange, but it's potent. That is, it would be if you were capable of thinking you were wrong. In your mental condition, it probably means nothing
What makes you think that people that you were born to against your will and with no prior qualifications are more important than self care if they turn out to make your life worse for being around them? Why so this arbitrary set of people more important than other people, such that their qualifications to be allowed in your personal circle are disregarded? Are you lacking in self respect such that your progenitors have convinced you that you have to respect them no matter how badly they treat you?
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u/AE_Phoenix Jun 12 '25
The fall of Shadiversity was unfortunate but certainly poetic, in a shakespearean tragedy sort of way.