Youtube and the guy in the wilderness

On paper, the concept behind Youtube is utterly bananas.

“Let’s give anyone with access to a video camera and an internet connection the ability to upload a video on almost any topic they want,” I can imagine the pitch going.

While it sounds crazy, Youtube has become an incredibly big business with some of its biggest users earning more than millions of dollars a year off of agreements with Youtube involving advertising on their videos.

The ability to upload almost anything has resulted in a lot of strange and entertaining video channels being developed on the website. Simple travelogs are joined with a series devoted to cooking French food with a dog or a Revolutionary War re-enactor talk about soldiers’ lives during the war.

One of the more interesting channels I’ve come across is named Primitive Technology. There is something oddly entrancing about this Youtube channel. Primitive Technology features an Australian man in the wilderness demonstrating how to build huts and tools using only the most basic of materials.

The videos are very popular too, with many of them having between 5-10 million views.

All of these videos are done without any vocal narration; the only sounds recorded are the nearby birds calling, the wind blowing through the brush and the sounds of the man at work. Videos are subtitled, explaining the process involved with whatever he’s doing.

It’s impressive to watch someone build a clay hut with a shingled roof and heated floor, by himself, with nothing more than a stone axe, a hand-made kiln and his hands. Some of these projects, all done by a single person, take multiple days to complete and give an appreciation for how important cooperation amongst people in a hunter-gatherer tribe was.

It would likely be certain death for someone to strike out on their own, away from the group.

His ability doesn’t end at making shelters either, another video he posted features him making traps for fish and prawns out of some leaves and grasses. Oddly enough they work too, as he demonstrated boiling some prawns with fire-heated rocks.

Should the end of civilization occur or when President Trump starts World War III, I know exactly who I’m going to seek out.

 

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