deathtokoalas
right.

so, a compressed audio file (an mp3) reduces it's size by throwing away information on the high and low end. running that through an eq that exaggerates the low and high end can compensate for this mildly. it's not as good as an uncompressed source through a flat eq, but it's better than a compressed file through a flat eq. but, when you put an uncompressed file through an eq designed to compensate for compression loss, it's going to sound absurd.

there's actually been a change in mixing philosophy recently, where producers in certain genres are mixing their records to sound optimally through compression, throwing all kinds of wrenches in the whole thing...

at the end of the day, you're right: there's an eq in foobar and there's probably an eq on your mp3 player, but not all eqs are created equally (the one in my sansa is kind of weak and was not able to boost the lows as powerfully as my bass boost headphones were).

ExpensiveGarbage
Soooo..... you're just sitting here having a conversation with yourself?

deathtokoalas
the truth is we're all really conversing with ourselves.

ExpensiveGarbage
Yes, this is I can agree with. 

ImActuallyABanana
well what you have to understand is that when an mp3 "throws away" information in the highs and lows, that information is gone. Beats audio exaggerating the lows and highs isnt exactly a good things. Beats audio is boosting the severed highs and lows... its not adding, its boosting.. so basically, your boosting highs and lows that sounds like crap.. you get me ?

deathtokoalas
if you look at the response on the phones, it actually cuts the lowest registers and boosts around 100. this is consistent with an "mp3 bass boost". i have a pair of sennheisers that does the same thing, but it's marketed as "bass boost for mp3 response".

what an mp3 throws away is mostly outside the audible range, but it sort of bleeds over into the audible range in various ways. i don't have the numbers off hand, but it's not going to cut at 100. it'll highpass around 20 or something and then slowly reduce the information up to around 50 iirc. so you want that cut down bottom to cut out the noise, and then the boost a little higher to exaggerate the lost lows.

so, no. you can't boost information that is gone. it's just gone. it's not boosting a "severed" high or low. what's lost is lost. what's is doing is exaggerating what still exists in order to compensate.

it's not some kind of magical de-mp3 uncompression algorithm or something, it's really essentially a trick. but if they're anything like my sennheisers, it's a trick that works.

stated another way, you can mangle the signal under 50 and boost at 100 and get the effect of reconstructed bass, even though it's not what's actually happening.

if you're listening to really deep bass, you'll possibly be able to tell. but the average bass range is simply not that low. you're getting overtones and murkiness on the bottom. the overtones are gone, they can't be reclaimed, but you can fudge it by boosting a little higher.

i doubt the phones have them, but a little reverb box might be able to reconstruct a bit of those overtones. you'd be fighting with purists, though. fuck, i'd fight with you over that...

ImActuallyABanana
thats mostly what i said.. if you ever listen to an mp3, you can clearly hear that isnt not just the unheard frequencies being gone.. if that was the case, then mp3s would sounds great.. but its not. mp3s sound like shit in general no matter what bitrate they are. they lose alot of the frequencies that matter as well and with those frequencies completley gone, boosting the highs and lows will do absolutley nothing for sound quality

deathtokoalas
obviously, you can't make an mp3 sound like a flac by using an eq. that's not what i was saying. but, you can make an mp3 sound "punchier" by boosting the bass, and it will sound better to most people.

you can try it yourself. find a wave editor. i still use a copy of cool edit i "found" somewhere back in about 1998, but i think the standard free tool to do this nowadays is audacity. rip a cd to wav. pick something that's not deep bass music. then, run it through a high pass filter around 20 hz. you'll immediately notice that the rumble is gone, but that the track doesn't sound particularly different. then put it through a parametric eq that slopes from -50% at 20 to +50% at 100 and then back down again to 0 around 150. you'll immediately notice that it's punchier than the file that's just cut at 20, even though it's missing the subbass.

it's not a perfect comparison because the mp3 is losing some information up to about 50 (iirc). but it gets the point across.

ImActuallyABanana
ive done this alot and i can honestly say that to me, being in audio for 6+ years, i have never heard an mp3 sound even slightly better with any type of eq... its like compressing distortion, no difference. in reality your just turning up Crap. Ive had to take mp3 samples of things and put them in a new song (24bit/44.1k) and when you blend in that mp3 well in there, thats when an mp3 is tolerable. but yes your right, to some people(meaning regular consumers), boosting those frequencies on an mp3 would sound better. to them. not to us of course. i just hate mp3s in reality.

Randy Parsons
The compression rate has a lot to do with it.  Unless you use a really bad compression  people simply can't tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed.  Even so called audiophiles.  They have done studies, although they are kinda hard to find with Google.  As for EQ.  EQ to the room or to your 10$ earbuds or whatever makes it sound good to you.  Beats certainly didn't invent the EQ.   Many cheap earbuds have pretty horrible bass.  I would always prefer to EQ myself instead of some 'preset' that Apple and Beats does.  Not sure if Apple still does this on their ipods.

deathtokoalas
for those that are curious, the highpass (sort of.) does occur after the fourier transform (for the lowest frequencies), but this isn't the right place to get into the mathematics of the issue and such a pedantic discussion does nothing to address my argument. if you want to look into this, though, understanding the way the waveform is split in encoding will help you understand why more information is lost at 40 hz than at 100 hz and why there's still enough of the signal around 100 hz to boost for the signal loss in the subbass. i don't think i implied that mp3s literally highpass, and i apologize if you've misread me in that way.

fwiw, i wrote the following piece of music using wavelet and fourier transforms in partial requirement of a graduate level course in mathematics on data compression algorithms:

i just want to ask if you did an a/b with compressed v uncompressed sources regarding the bass?

the reason is that mp3 compression kills the bass. some time in the middle of the last decade, i actually bought a pair of sennheisers with a bass boost (and they were advertised and marketed this way) that was purposefully designed to counteract the mp3 compression. if you tried to use them in the studio, the bass was totally muddy and washed out. but, if you plugged some studio phones into the mp3 player, the bass sounded thin - reflecting the source.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkVZwj4pZ7A

a discussion of “beats” headphones

deathtokoalas
but, just how bad are they? i've never heard them.

i'm not quite an audiophile. as a composer and heavy listener of complex music, i'm very concerned about quality, but i know most of the claims made by audiophiles are unable to pass double-blind tests and you usually want to take what they say carefully. i've been into high end sennheisers since i was in grade school, so i know what good and bad headphones sound like. i just can't think they're really that bad, not even with the understanding that they're mass marketed for profit rather than manufactured for audio purposes.

one of the things that's recently impressed me with my sennheisers is their ability to pick up the bow noise on a cello part. just excellent reproduction. but, is somebody listening to top 40 pop looking for that kind of response, or do they just want the bass to drown everything out? if your expectations are less (and dre's expectations may not have been high), you're going to test the phones in less stringent ways and ultimately not be able to tell.

there's going to be a cut-off point in terms of quality where virtually everybody says "this is shit", but that cut-off point is much lower for the consumer market than it is for the audiophile one.

so, how bad are they?

the other thing you have to keep in mind is that headphones nowadays are mostly bought for portable use, which means the source is probably compressed. are people really using flac? i doubt it. music that's....found...online is still generally compressed.

i was looking for a pair of sennheisers a few years ago for portable use and searched around a little and realized they're actually producing a completely different line of phones for it than their studio models, which are created specifically to compensate for the loss inherent in compression. i ended up going with a bass boost model. when i plugged my studio sennheisers into my mp3 player, i could hear the problems with the compression - on certain albums that i've heard hundreds of times and can play back in my head from start to finish. the bass boost alleviated that mildly (although it didn't help with the high end). conversely, i couldn't use the bass boost in the studio for obvious reasons, it just muddied everything.

i'm going to guess that the beats are probably a bit boomy, but it's a valid question as to whether that's a purposeful response to the compression and whether people are using wonky metrics.

but, i'm really just curious: how bad are they?

Stegmutt
Innerfidelity's review is a good place to start, although maybe a bit technical: http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/monster-beats-dr-dre-solo 

deathtokoalas
that wasn't very technical at all.

it's beginning to confirm my suspicion that these phones are made for compressed audio, though - exaggerated low end, and a rolled off high end, where it doesn't matter due to the compression killing it.

i again have to reiterate that high-end companies do this, but they market their products properly. the result sounds awful from a flat source, but really brings the compression back to life on the bottom.

i can't argue they're not overpriced (my bass boost sennheisers were $100 (canadian) not $350), but are these reviews using them to do what they were engineered to do....?

Berenizes Gutierrez
when it comes down to it beats are perfect for the average consumer that really doesn't care about being able to hear every aspect of a song

deathtokoalas
i'm really curious if somebody with a pair could test with compressed audio, specifically. that's not the way you're supposed to test audio equipment, but it's the consumer reality right now. it would maybe help if beats had specified, as sennheiser did. but, it's easy to draw the conclusion from the frequency response that that's what they're going for.

luwiigi427
Marques does explanation of what Beats is actually doing with the audio /watch?v=Cdbn_pmxFic

He also does a side-by-side comparison with the M50s /watch?v=et_PWifUd1w

The only thing he doesn't do (which is probably what you really want out of this) are legit audio tests/comparisons. To be fair, I'm pretty sure he doesn't have the equipment to actually do it.

deathtokoalas
right.

so, a compressed audio file (an mp3) reduces it's size by throwing away information on the high and low end. running that through an eq that exaggerates the low and high end can compensate for this mildly. it's not as good as an uncompressed source through a flat eq, but it's better than a compressed file through a flat eq. but, when you put an uncompressed file through an eq designed to compensate for compression loss, it's going to sound absurd.

there's actually been a change in mixing philosophy recently, where producers in certain genres are mixing their records to sound optimally through compression, throwing all kinds of wrenches in the whole thing...

at the end of the day, he's right: there's an eq in foobar and there's probably an eq on your mp3 player, but not all eqs are created equally (the one in my sansa is kind of weak and was not able to boost the lows as powerfully as my bass boost headphones were).

so, maybe they're overpriced.

but maybe it's a clever way to make up for sales lost to torrents, while making the pirated product sound better at the same time.

i mean, i'm not as big as dre. nobody's torrenting my work. right now, i'll argue that if you like it you should throw me some cash, 'cause i'm just getting by and it'll help me keep going.

but if i was dre, and i had some money in the bank, what would bother me most about torrenting would be that people aren't hearing the thing i spent hours and hours creating properly. i mean, i didn't spend all day tweaking the reverb so you could fucking compress the file afterwards and lose it. if i had to resign myself to compressed audio as the de facto standard, i'd be yelling at people to tweak their eqs properly...

it makes sense when you analyze it.

even if it's overpriced.

when you keep that in mind, the whole "as the artist meant it" thing does make sense - presuming you'd otherwise be listening to compressed audio on a flat eq. more accurate would be "closer to how the artist meant it to sound, considering you're BUTCHERING THE FUCKING SOURCE".

i think it was kef (a medium to high-end british speaker manufacturer) that initially came up with the "as it was meant to sound" line in relation to producing very flat speakers.

Stegmutt
I don't think the solo hd's were designed with compressed files in mind- they were just badly designed. From a manufacturing standpoint, it doesn't make sense to deliberately create an acute roll off spanning the lower two bass octaves and have a spike from 100 to 300hz. This probably has more to do with Monster's incompetence than any strategic design. But this is all in the past. By most accounts, the Solo 2's are excellent performers and a great value. Hopefully Beats bringing engineering in house has turned around their product line and they will offer good products at competitive prices.

deathtokoalas
but it does if you're trying to compensate heavy bass compression - which is just as applicable to xenakis as it is to dubstep.

somebody really ought to do the test.

Fabian
sincerly, they sound good :/

Stegmutt
No, from a manufacturing standpoint it doesn't make sense to have a roll off in the lower two octaves. It's not like they save money by having crappy response in the octaves most bassheads crave.

deathtokoalas
on a clean source, yes, but an mp3 is going to cut off so much from the lows that turning it up below 100 hz is just going to introduce noise. it's 100-300 where you can still reconstruct it. that's probably also why there's such a steep cut about 7500 - you're just going to get static on an mp3 if you boost it there.

fwiw, it's below 114 hz where mp3s start getting noisy.

Miguel
About 2 years ago. I had a friend who purchased Beats -- the ones that sit on the ear and not cover them. I tried them out and I was astonished how similar it sounded to my $40 sennheiser ear buds. Sure the bass was higher but it was missing a certain clarity to it. Sure my friend didn't have a dedicated amp or use flac or even a phone with a great sound chip. But this is the typical consumer. Buying "high end" headphones just for the brand and less for actual quality. But whatever. The sound was obviously not horrible but horrible due to the price. It'd be fine if they were $35.

deathtokoalas
and here's another question: was their ability to compensate for mp3s a part of the reason apple bought them and then changed the design?

one of the reasons i don't own an ipod is drm. now, i understand they've changed it a little. but i want a device i can put what i want on without proprietary software &etc.

if this pair of headphones shows up to make lossy audio sound better, it potentially hurts their product.

Stegmutt
I understand the concept of psycho acoustic compression, but once again, from a manufacturing standpoint, having a steep roll off spanning the lowest two octaves is bizarre. Sure, many consumers use lossy files, but it make no sense to deliberate manufacture poor response below 100hz. Or are you implying that beats assumes all their customers exclusively listen to 96kb mp3's that have no data below 100hz and then specifically designed their headphones to perform poorly in that range? That is a dubious assumption at best.

deathtokoalas
you don't have to go down to 96 to get bad low responses, you can hear it at 128-256, but the limitations of the technology are going to create weaker bass response even at 320.

i am explicitly stating that it seems like beats has assumed that their customers are listening to mp3s on their phone, and this is the reason they've created the frequency response that they have.

and they're mostly right.

and again: sennheiser did something similar with their "bass boost mp3 phones", which sound great through my sandisk that's sending out mp3s and horrific from my cd player.

MistahJuicyBoy
What bitrate are your MP3s? Lossless is a big difference, but it's not that drastic. Good headphones will always sound better, no matter what you're putting in

deathtokoalas
i rip to 320, but the stuff that i....find....is however i...found...it, which is often 256 or lower. 192 is probably most common.

in my view, you want your studio headphones flat. but flat phones will then reproduce the compression. just trust me when i say that that bass boost in the sennheisers (which i can confirm were engineered specifically for mp3 use) made a gigantic difference. but, as one would expect, it made higher quality sources sound muddy, as well.

Toxis
To be honest - they sound pretty nice, especially if you like deep bass, and as a person who listens to hardcore (gabber, not a punk one:) - they really really sound great - never owned them, too expensive, and I bet there are better headphones for the price (i.e. audio technica) but the beats do not sound crappy at all (again, I am not an audiophile, they sounded good for my taste) - the price is different beast - would I buy them - nope. would I use them if I had those - yes:)

heh, I do own scullcandy fix - and I never knew until this video they are same category as beats (the overpriced category:) - got these beacause my brainwavz died, like them a lot, especially because managed to get them for ~33$ - look awesome, sound awesome, fit awesome :)

energeez
hey smart lady , love your comments!  i own a pair of beats and use them for dubstep, club music, which i listen a lot to, but listen to everything, which i use other headphones for.  My theory for the freq.  is that they try to make them fun sounding (which i do find them fun), and how do you make something sound fun?  You cut off the sub bass, and increase the kick bass/ mid freq synth bass.  Thats my take.

disease research should be funded with progressive taxation. i mean, people are dying and you've gotta get people to do a stunt to raise money to fight it. it's barbaric.

\

they dance like elaine...

AmbiAnts
Ahh that's a refreshing simple melody, I'm so glad I came across this.

What an atrocity today's popular music is.  Corporate cancer milking teenagers for everything their parents can afford.  I used to think It was just me getting older but now, I think today's music actually does just suck.

Turn on popular radio and what do you hear nowadays? emotionless shit where the only thing that matters is that the bass sounds like a lawnmower raping a chainsaw and makes you feel physically sick.

The saddest thing is there are still wonderful artists out there, but they're not given the time of day because they don't fit into this perfect celebrity culture we have. It's a great SHAME.

deathtokoalas
so, you think this isn't emotionless shit? it's some white people appropriating some black music, watering it down as far as they can and turning a profit from it.

you're right about modern radio music being awful. what you're missing is that the radio music you grew up with was just as bad.

AmbiAnts
So you think that this band all got together one night and conspired to water down some black music and make a profit?

I can't say for sure that didn't happen, but I think far more likely that they were just influenced and inspired by blues music. Not sure what you were getting at in your comment but if you're saying that this music is in the same slimey catagory as today's Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber then you're not playing with a full deck.

deathtokoalas
if you were around at the time (maybe five or six years earlier), you know the kind of segregation that existed. the whole movement of white musicians taking up black music was about picking up a style that was very successful in black markets, but that white radio stations wouldn't play because the musicians weren't white. by commodifying the product for a white audience, they were able to open up a whole new audience demographic. this isn't the only band that were doing that at the time, but it's one of the least creative examples.

the technology is different, but i don't hear anything more substantial in this than i do in a miley tune. sorry.

if anything, miley has way better producers.

it's a different target audience, but there's no greater artistic value here - in both cases, we're talking about breaking something artistic down to it's lowest level and mass marketing it as a commodity.

AmbiAnts
So what constitutes artistic value? evidently not a group of white guys singing a watered down black blues song, even though they wrote the song and played the instruments. That's just as artistic as somebody who has somebody else write their songs for them, and play the instruments for them?

deathtokoalas
i think you're being a little delusional in suggesting they wrote this song. it's a traditional blues jam.

Edohiguma
Fun fact:  the same "corporate cancer" milked the hippies, too. They even produced the hippie "uniform" that every hippie had to wear to show his "individualism" (hilarious, I know.) It was a big market. And all the popular records for the hippie generation didn't grow on trees either. Someone had to produce those too and production doesn't come free.

Ultimately it's always the "corporate cancer", the "evil capitalists" who produce things and bring innovation and progress, while those who rile against those imaginary evils have usually very little to show in terms of production, innovation and progress. The hippies are a great example. They were great at whining about the system and tearing things down, but they have not produced a single thing worth mentioning. Destruction is much easier than production.

deathtokoalas
the hippies created this. it's their fault. they can't step away from it, now, and say "i don't understand this". sure you do. i'll be damned if i'm going to sit here and let hippies claim they don't understand a culture that pushes sex & drugs as the sole purpose of existence...

see, this is why those zappa records are so historically important. he explains it all, with flair and musicianship.

awillypower
It's the same melody of Matchbox by Carl Perkins

deathtokoalas
and carl perkins was, of course, one of the first white rock musicians to get somewhere by stealing ideas from black music.

1894cossack
I eat trolls for breakfast, with my cherrios.

deathtokoalas
well, eat me then.

Jack Grattan
I just love politically correct historical revisionism. 

deathtokoalas
i don't see anything revisionist about it. just about anybody alive at the time will tell what i typed.

Jack Grattan
In his introduction to the Howlin' Wolf biography (a book I'M SURE you haven't read), B.B. King said "They said that Jimmie Rodgers (a white man) was the father of country music, but Wolf and I knew better. He was a BLUES singer, same as us, and a DAMNED GOOD one at that." Please notice that Mr. King said NOTHING about "the white man stealing our music." It's called CROSS- POLLINATION. You, of course, call it theft. Which makes you a politically correct historical revisionist. Case closed.

deathtokoalas
i hardly think that somebody that died in 1935 is relevant in the discussion of white musicians appropriating black music in the 1950s and 1960s, as that black form had barely even developed yet. if that's the best you can do, it's beyond being even a stretch - it's just irrelevant.

Jack Grattan
You know, if you said something about white (and black) BUSINESSMEN ripping off black (and white) musicians, I'd be in total agreement with you. Because that's what businessmen do. BUT NOOOO.....we get the ol' PC song and dance routine from you ONE MORE TIME. I'm sure that your delay in answering was because you had to look up who Jimmie Rodgers was. Now go back to your dorm, PC college boy robot. 

deathtokoalas
i'm not sure that you're clear about what segregation means. the idea of "cross pollination" largely erases the entire racial condition at the time. segregation means that whites and blacks did not attend school together, did not work together, did not go to church together, did not live in the same areas of the city and did not attend the same types of entertainment.

under segregation, a black man could not simply buy an opera ticket and watch the show. likewise, a white man could not just cross the railroad tracks and enjoy a blues performance.

it was out of these conditions that you had the mimicry that existed. there was a white audience for rock music, but segregation prevented it from being able to listen to it. the solution was for white musicians to perform the rock music for the white audience.

of course, this started easing in the north earlier than it did in the south, and the segregation was eventually abolished in law if not in culture. but it was a legal reality, enforced by people with guns. "cross-pollination", in the period, was a deathwish.

what's frustrating is not that there was a cultural interchange; it may have even been partly responsible for the civil rights movement. what's frustrating is how much open plagiarism occurred.

but, there's a reason why all the early white rock records were full of covers. young white americans would not have been allowed to listen to the original recordings.

Jack Grattan
I notice that you like Frank Zappa. You do realize that Henry Vestine, the lead guitarist on this "emotionless shit", was the original second guitarist of the Mothers of Invention. Oh, the irony! A little trivia goes a long way, doesn't it? 

deathtokoalas
by that logic, wings were brilliant.

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
i was about fifteen years too old to connect to mcr when it came out. i'm more in the cure/pumpkins generation. sorry.

Jack Grattan
Pretentious Post Punk Pontificator.

deathtokoalas
the pretentious part is really fairly inaccurate. i mean, i get it fairly regularly, but people don't seem to know what the word really means, which is sort of ironic. but i'll wear the other three readily enough.

Jack Grattan
How ironic. And pretentious.

Harry Sowerby
I'm 16 and couldn't agree more. I hate the fake and exploiting "talent shows" that air the same thing every year. What happened to talent? Seems that the industry only cares about how much you don't wear, and how easy you are to brainwash. I'm counting one another true music uprising again, and, thank god, I can see it happening. This is why I'm glad of proper bands being signed to an artist, such as Noel Gallagher; they've played in a band and understand how hard it is for talent to get you noticed. I still wish I was around the 1960s, at Woodstock or Haight Ashbury, listening to the sounds of the free and loving, peace man, I totally agree with you.

deathtokoalas
when you grow up, you'll realize that noel gallagher is a talentless douchebag.

Slightlydelic
At least the bands on the radio in the '60s actually played instruments.

deathtokoalas
actually, the 60s were dominated by session musicians - a lot of it uncredited. the rolling stones, for example, neither wrote nor performed the majority of their own songs. similarly with the beach boys.

Slightlydelic
I'm sure they mimed the instruments on the music videos, but they still played instruments live. If not, they did a good job of acting like they did.

deathtokoalas
there were very few music videos in the 60s. mtv launched in the 80s. a tv was still a luxury item. the 60s are still in the era of radio.

i don't know about live and think it would likely come down to a case-by-case thing. i mean, somebody like hendrix was obviously playing. i wouldn't be surprised to learn that the stones were often lip-synching, but i really have no idea. then, there's stuff like the monkees, who were in fact representative of the norm....

i meant in the studio. the rolling stones were actually noted for their use of talented session guitarists - a list that included people like jimmy page and john mclaughlin. these are the people that actually wrote the early stones classics.

the dominant songwriter and performer for the beach boys was a session musician named carol kaye. this was not known in the 60s. even paul mccartney thought brian wilson was the main songwriter.

it was in fact the beatles that broke this up, despite their own reliance on their own crutches (largely billy preston, george martin and eric clapton). before 1965, session musicians dominated the industry, which is something that traced back to the jazz era. after 1970, that was fairly rare.

and the situation held through the 70s and 80s before starting to turn back to the jazz model in the late 90s.

on that level, the 60s are actually the point in the past most similar to today, because of that shared sort of hybrid state.

Slightlydelic
Oh, I gotcha. thanks

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
i'm not trolling; i'm entirely serious, and entirely correct. please don't mistake your ignorance for disingenuity on my behalf.

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
i don't know even know what the second suggestion means, but i just clearly stated that i'm not trolling. now, you need to understand that.

Jack Grattan
The Stones wrote and played their own tunes. PERIOD. They AUGMENTED some songs with session pros like Ry Cooder and Nicky Hopkins. The Beach Boys WROTE their own tunes, and after '65 utilized The Wrecking Crew (LA session pros) on record. You are, AS USUAL, entirely INCORRECT. Don't they have one of those "History of Rock" courses at that junior college you attend?

deathtokoalas
i've already stated the reality of the situation, and have grown tired enough of gratton's vacuous trolling and badly presented disinformation to outright block him.

i will state again that the stones and beach boys both followed the industry standard of the time, which was to split the process into "writing" and "performing". up until the beatles changed this aspect of the industry, it was very rare for white musicians to write their own music and even rarer for successful black musicians to do so. pretty much the only people that performed their own music would have been unsigned black musicians. neither the stones nor the beach boys were exceptions to this rule.

fwiw, i'm 35 years old and graduated with a math degree from an accredited university in 2006.

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
i did not remember that - it was quite some time go, and while my memory is quite good it tends to focus on things that aren't entirely irrelevant. i do a lot of posting on this site. that particular comment was rather snide, but consider the context; a few snarky comments does not a troll make.

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
sampling is a bit of a double-edged sword. it can be done terribly. but, it's not fair to attack the tool. i mean, at it's worst sampling isn't different than doing a cover. and, if you want to talk 60s music and covers - the reality is that all these "60s classics" are building on existing structures in a way that is no better or worse than the process of sampling is. i wouldn't give somebody like jimmy page any more credit than somebody like run dmc when it comes to actual creativity, it's just that they're stealing ideas in different ways.

i tend to avoid sampling music in my own work. in fact, i don't think i've ever sampled an existing song (although i've sampled sounds from films and video games, which is what "sampling" almost exclusively means in my liner credits. well, that and using a sampler to trigger notes, in which case i'll almost always provide my own samples. the closest i've come to sampling music is cutting out isolated drum snippets and using them to build larger drum loops.). but it can be done with a high degree of creativity. one of the better examples of somebody that used sampling creatively is an act called art of noise. despite their records being 20-30 years old, i think they remain the kind of primary example of what can be done with the form.

actually, that's not true. i have a track called about a squirrel that samples and loops about a second of the nirvana hit about a girl, but you wouldn't be able to tell by merely listening to it.

throughthefire
Too bad her she doesn't have actual talent that can grab attention more than antics that include dry humping 'Beatle Juice,' while trying, and failing miserably, to do an assless twerk. 

deathtokoalas
i take it you're referring to miley cyrus. i wasn't arguing that miley is talented - she isn't, i was arguing that she isn't less talented than a lot of the so-called classic rock musicians of the 60s and 70s. time will eventually sort this out, the boomers just need to die first...

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
it's a good point. bowie got paid for ice, ice baby. nobody ever sent robert johnson royalties for the dozens of riffs that page stole from him.

jake pace
look up Canned heats net worth and compare it to any mainstream musician today. That will tell you all you need to know about music then and business now! While some songs now still send a message and can be enjoyable to listen to 99.9% are in it for the money. Back in the day you were popular and broke long before you were famous. Now you are rich as soon as you are popular and famous. The music just doesnt have the soul its a business now, but honestly it can still be entertaining!

deathtokoalas
record contracts in the 60s were notoriously terrible. even the beatles got screwed. it's not like things are better now. while i don't know how many records they sold, i doubt they made any money off of it.

bands like this were primarily interested in the groupies, not the music.)

deathtokoalas
i'd say something about how this is overrated, but the truth is that nobody's ever really taken it seriously to begin with.

interesting stealth ad for the device.

it's not really virtual reality if the images are generated using gaming engines. several people pointed out that it looks fake - and it does. i know it's very computing intensive to integrate actual images, but they're not "there yet" until they do.

this should take this doofus down the rankings a little, which is a positive development for youtube.

"mr. barak, mr. barak....you're full of shit and you know it...mr. barak...just...everybody realizes you're lying, doesn't that upset you....mr. barak...."

so, is the porn supposed to sell the music, or is the music a launching pad for the porn star's career?

hrmmn. this song was kind of integral component of my childhood.

this is certainly dramatic. i don't want to say she didn't understand it - it's more that she's co-opted it. this is really downright creepy. remind me not to leave lorde alone in my kitchen....

it's consequently kind of pointless to compare.

deathtokoalas
i was four years old when this record came out, and it was my favourite thing ever until i heard of rem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZyGDiUnta4

royalnaz1
still better than rem   i think

deathtokoalas
rem is more....substantial.

Seleno Gómez
But TFF is more transcendental.

deathtokoalas
i have absolutely no idea what it is that you're trying to say.

Seleno Gómez
Neither do I, but sounds extremely cool. Isn't it music we're talking about? It has to sound cool.

deathtokoalas
i'm just befuddled by the ephemeral singularity of your ethereal pretension.

Seleno Gómez
Well, you should. I'm not your average YouTube Joe. My ontological approach to the roots of musical feeling has always left bowlegged those around me.

this isn't a binary discussion of choice v. biology, both of which appear to be wrong. at the very most, there may be a set of genes that can be triggered to produce homosexuality under certain environmental conditions but there aren't any convincing findings at this time.

the "i don't have a choice" thing began as a legal defence in certain backwards areas of the deep south (i think it was an area of texas) that were enforcing sodomy laws. the judge allowed the defence, the person avoided a sentence and it's become this thing ever since.

a large amount of biologists will tell you something like "homosexuality is probably genetic". what that actually means is "there may not be direct evidence of a genetic cause but, if it's not genetic, then i don't understand it. genetic is therefore my best guess.".

every little once in a while you'll see some headline that claims they found the gay gene, but the research is never solid. it tends to actually usually cycle around hormones, which probably does have a genetic basis, as it's something that's physiological. but finding a genetic cause for less masculine behaviour in cis-men (and less feminine behaviour in cis-women) has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation. those hormonal reactions may place people into social niches, and that may have something to do with it, but it's not direct - it does nothing to explain the gay jock or the femme lesbian. worse, these studies are often inapplicable to women altogether.

it's entirely possible that it is neither genetic nor a conscious choice.

by analogy, consider somebody that is very shy. that shyness is not genetic, it's a reaction to various life experiences - something traumatic, over parenting, social isolation and etc. but the shy person generally does not choose to be shy, it becomes deeply embedded within their nature. further, a shy person can overcome their shyness - if they want to, which some shy people might not.

i have a bit of an unusual anecdote that i usually avoid when i have this discussion. i'm transgendered - born a male and transitioned to being female. now, orientation and gender aren't the same thing. in fact, statistically speaking, most male-to-female transgendered people are attracted to people that define themselves effeminately, and often to cis-women. when i was first going through treatment, i was asked questions about orientation and while the truth was that i wasn't really interested in either gender, i did find myself more attracted to women. i had a lot of questions about how i was going to react to both men and women as a result of hormonal changes, so i decided to experiment with some pornography to try and determine if i had any real attraction to men - or if i would develop one over time. what i noticed was that, the more gay porn i watched, the more i responded to it - and i realized at that point how fluid orientation is.

now, i'm not suggesting this kid was brainwashed with gay porn, but there are other social cues that could lead somebody to homosexuality as a culmination of experiences within their environment. it's such a complex thing with so many variables that it would be virtually impossible to test for - as a hypothesis, this is really not falsifiable. but, that doesn't mean that it's wrong, it just means it would be virtually impossible to demonstrate.

now, i'll be honest with you - i'd rather see society accept it as a choice. i want to walk into a church and see a pastor stand on the pulpit and say "homosexuality is a choice, and we respect and welcome people who have made this decision because we respect the personal autonomy of individuals". but, in most cases i don't think it's that clear cut. the choice is in not rejecting the stimulus that's developed. i don't think god has much to do with it, but if you locked this kid in a room and made him watch and masturbate to heterosexual porn for a month, he's likely to come out fully bisexual. but, that approach wouldn't respect his rights as an individual - that is, it wouldn't respect his choice not to conform and we should be supporting choices not to conform when they are real...

ultimately, what this kid has to come to terms with is that he has to find his own path from his parents. it's something a lot of people go through due to disagreements over lifestyle, career choices and a thousand other things. sucks, but he's gotta move on and leave them behind.

yeah. i wanted some swanky psych guitar, but i don't think there's room for it or the choir. i was going to put a temp mix up, but i found myself nodding off when mixing the levels on the last synth, so i'm going to leave it for when i wake up. i'll be working on the bass over the weekend...

i was going to hit detroit tonight to see zorch, but it's a long ride to pontiac and i'm not really up for it. this is worth checking out though, in absence of my rough mix:

https://zorch.bandcamp.com/album/demo

so, what's obvious is that the orca pulled the trainer down and brought him back up before he drowned. i'm not buying that it's an accident. but, if the orca wanted to kill him, he'd be dead - he was brought back up to save his life. so, the orca's trying to get something across.

it's interesting to contemplate what the orca may have been thinking. it could be punishment, for some other behaviour - but it's clear that it was meant to teach a lesson, not to create actual harm. is it possible that he may have accidentally blocked the orca's breathing hole and the orca is responding tit-for-tat?

maybe it's more likely that it's a display of dominance, with the orca trying to show the trainer who the boss is and produce a level of submission. cetaceans are often friendly towards humans, but they're very dominant animals.

a more intriguing possibility is that the orca may have been doing an experiment. does the orca understand it's being studied? might it be curious as to just how long a human can hold it's breath or what happens when it gets submerged?

it may also have cetaceanomorphized the human. could it have dragged the human under wanting to interact in the water, thinking the human can hold it's breath for long periods, and at the last minute realized the human is struggling and needs to breathe, and so brought him back up?

all interesting questions.

but it's quite obvious that the orca very consciously pulled this guy down, and very carefully brought him back up so he wouldn't drown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EhqM7Q82sw

well, why do humans save lions?

it's not that hard to understand, you just need to drop the arrogance.

deathtokoalas
sharks have existed for a long time with very few predators, but cetaceans have been evolving to steal their niche for millions of years and will most likely eventually drive them to extinction - or at least into much smaller sizes. it's a bit of a reminder that, while we're naming eras after ourselves, we're actually still in the ongoing phase of continuing mammal diversification and dominance and that we will continue to see them replace other life forms for some time into the future. i'm looking at you, birds.

there's some consequences to derive from this in terms of how we understand cetaceans or how we may be able to build relationships with them in the future. is intelligence selected? relatively. that is, cetaceans are smarter than sharks, and it's going to give them an advantage in the fight over that niche that sharks will be unlikely to overcome.

but, as the cetaceans move further and further into this niche, and become more and more vicious, they become further removed from us as possible allies. it's hard to consider bridging a gap with a species that is evolving into an apex predator that will only ever see us as food.

i really think we ought to focus on elephants.

evolution doesn't work in one direction. there's no reason to think an intelligent species wouldn't evolve into a less intelligent one, if other traits end up being more selected. it's not a process of arriving at a point of perfection, but largely driven by chaotic forces. it's about pure survival and reproduction, not some lofty human ideals. evolution often happens in ways that humans would readily perceive of as "backwards".

what is going to drive the direction that evolution takes is going to be the niche the animals move into. the environment shapes the organism more than the organism shapes the environment (and this is true of humans, too). sharks are not sharks because they decide to be sharks, or because something created them as sharks, but because the environment they live in will produce a shark out of any creature that attempts to be apex predator. cetaceans are not somehow immune to this, due to their intelligence.

i'd like to tell you to wait for it but neither of us will be alive to have this discussion in the future.

zyklon brad
Why the fuck would you have a name like deathtokoalas? They are nice!

deathtokoalas
the ever sickening koala cuteness cannot be allowed to survive, lest it perpetuate in the future. it is of the prime importance in the future of humanity that their cuteness be annihilated.

zyklon brad
Negative... let them be. Their cuteness is appreciated greatly by sappy people

deathtokoalas
the perverse influence that koalas produce is the reason they need to be annihilated. this simply cannot continue. no civilized society could permit it.

zyklon brad 
Geez you speak of them as if they are ISIS or something... or..even worse, Justin Trudeau.

deathtokoalas
there is no greater evil in this world than the cuteness of koalas, brad. it can only produce immeasurable harm. i plead with you not to trivialize the concern and take steps to eradicate it.

zyklon brad
I will try my absolute best. This is serious business.

deathtokoalas
i feel that you're merely humouring me. we are all at peril. we must declare a war against koalas.

Truth Seeker
While that's true Orcas rarely or rather never attack humans in the wild (there is just like 1 known case). They recognise as as top predators apparently. It's different when they are in captivity those have killed several humans, weather playing or angry, upset, whatever, but not in the wild.

deathtokoalas
you know, i don't really think there's any significant evidence that orcas tend to refrain from eating us out of some kind of level of respect or something. that sounds like human arrogance: putting ourselves at the top of the hierarchy and declaring all the other animals our companions. aristotle strikes again....the bastard....

the reality is that it's not like we're in contact with orcas on a day-to-day basis, and it's consequently reasonable for them to be curious and cautious about us. the reality may be as simple as that they don't know how to eat us.

i mean, a shark is going to eat just about anything, including rusty cans it can't even digest. you see this with, like, pelicans and stuff, too. they'll eat fucking razorblades out of the dump, then die of the complications as it rips through their stomach. they're just too fucking stupid to transcend their mechanics. orcas, as more advanced creatures, have more of a defined dinner menu. you really wouldn't expect them to just start munching. after all, they don't know if we're poisonous, or if the scuba gear is edible or whatever. and, maybe more important than that, they don't know how to hunt us.

the statistic is a little misleading. there have actually been plenty of circumstances where it seems like orcas are trying to get us, but then back off or give up. there are multiple documented reports where it seems like they're trying to tip over ice floes, or even flip over boats.

see, if you ask the experts, they'll tell you they've confused us for seals. which is blatantly just apologist bullshit. i mean, you're going to tell me that this creature that we think has a defined language is going to confuse a human for a seal? get real. these are situations where the orcas are experimenting with tactics to get us by using tactics they already know, not situations where they're confusing us for something else.

this is the scenario that we don't want to happen: suppose a pod of orcas flips a boat over, gets a bunch of us in the water and eats us. at that point, they've determined a successful tactic and will pass it on to their offspring. we'd have to slaughter the whole pod, really. but, even that would be delaying the inevitable.

i acknowledge i'm doing a lot of thinking, here, but i don't buy this idea that they see us as alpha. i think they just don't yet know how to approach us.

but, that's not really what i'm saying, here. what i'm saying is that once the orcas take over the niche sharks are in, they will become sharks. and when that happens, you'll probably see them start eating rusty cans, too.

seafood ad is brilliant.

dr. lori marino (it must be hard studying dolphins with that surname) has already pointed out the obvious, so i won't bother, i just want to point out two things.

1) if you look closely, you can see the kids were making faces at it - opening their mouths specifically. now, i do this on a lot of videos: to understand how a whale or dolphin may react to that kind of gesture in humans, you need to understand how they might react to another whale or dolphin making the gesture, because the whale or dolphin will cetaceanomorphize your behaviour - that is, it will assign your behaviour cetacean traits, just as so many of you are assigning "play" behaviour to a clear act of aggression. the kids might not have been meaning to be aggressive, but if that behaviour is thought of as aggressive in the cetacean universe then it will interpret it as aggressive and respond accordingly. as the more intelligent species, this is something humans need to get a proper grasp on to better facilitate inter-species communication with those species that may have the ability to communicate back.

2) cetaceans are sketchy. if you're mean to an elephant or a gorilla, it might very well kill you in response but it won't ever prey on you. with cetaceans, it's less clear because they're predatory species. we might not be their normal or usual diet, but predators are generally opportunistic and it's consequently somewhat foolish to suggest you're not on the menu. it's going to depend on a wide variety of factors.

i think most of us get this with dogs and cats. most people know not to stare in a dog's eye, because it might interpret it as a sign of extreme aggression. i think most of us know not to turn our backs to our cats, because they'll think you're rejecting them. with dolphins, you don't open your mouth like that....

if you look at the path of cetacean evolution, they seem to be evolving into - and competing with - sharks.
i'm just not convinced they're the best choice to get somewhere with a viable inter-species relationship. my money's on elephants...

contemplating travelling into michigan to see zorch

hrmmn. gotta give this a good listen, as they're hitting detroit tomorrow. well, a suburb of detroit. i really liked their demo back when it was doing the rounds, like a lot a lot, but i haven't heard this yet. if i could walk across the street, it wouldn't be a decision, but it's a two hour bus ride through detroit and it's going to mean i won't be able to get back across the border until the morning....

i'm a little concerned it's less psych and more pop. when i'm done mixing this string section...few hours...

yeah. it's a shame they decided to sound indistinguishable from the animal collective (i'm not a fan, too sappy/kitschy). that demo was really good, though. too far from downtown...

actually, it seems to have picked up starting about ten minutes in....

i guess it's sort of expected that they'd put that townshend-goes-kraut lizard song on here.

they should have cut the first ten minutes off, it's really just giving people the wrong idea.

this is a step down from the demos (two of the four substantial tracks were already released before the record was, and i really prefer the more experimental material they discarded on their demos to the trendy pop songs they tossed on to here), but there's just so much potential that i'd feel like i'm missing something if i don't go.

and i guess the band they're touring with is worth staying for.

i've actually never been that deep into michigan, the ride has it's up sides.

and, actually, it seems like those extra tracks are included in this file.

deathtokoalas
see, i don't think this is an argument to ban guns. rather, i think it's a demonstration of natural selection. so, stop pretending that banning weapons is going to make any difference (i hate guns. but i know better.) and give this man the darwin award that he earned fair and square through his astonishing stupidity.

but, no, you shouldn't give guns to children.

you shouldn't give them alcohol, let them operate a motor vehicle, administer a nuclear power plant or run for president, either.

youpumpertube
LOLOLOL - Awesome!

geddoe316
and what of the parents?

deathtokoalas
i don't think they made a smart choice, and it's going to badly affect her for probably the rest of her life, but i don't think they ought to face legal consequences. buddy put the gun in her hands and stood there entirely out of his own free will. he had every right to refuse.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i'd love to be rid of guns, but in order to be rid of guns what we need to be rid of is gun culture. a lot of people are asking how the fuck a 9 year-old ended up holding a loaded uzi, and i think that's a valid question but it leads to questions about the place that americans hold weapons in their culture, not to laws restricting behaviour.

banning things just doesn't work. if i thought it would work, i'd be all for it. and i do recognize that the tool has some valid uses. i mean, i'd like to get rid of religion, too - that didn't work out so well in the soviet union, where the church is now basically running the country. how's the ban on drugs working out? prostitution?

it's just a really dumb approach to dealing with social issues. you need to get to the root of the various problems, not ban the consequences of those problems. with religion, there's some evidence it may actually be something worked into our dna that may be impossible to eliminate without changing our species designation. with drugs, the solution is probably legalizing less harmful drugs and treating more harmful ones as a health problem. with prostitution, you need to separate into prostitution that's done out of free will and prostitution that's done out of social inequalities, let the prostitution that is free happen and deal with the social inequalities underlying the stuff that's done out of necessity. and, with guns there needs to be a shift in culture.

so, it's a part of a general worldview that stands with the anti-gun activists in intent but rejects their solutions as ineffective.

Mckessa
You don't see this in civilized countries, truly astounding.

Derek
oh no its the the guns fault at all, im sure that little girl could kill that soldier/di with her fists or a knife by accident, fucking moron.

deathtokoalas
but, who gave her the gun, derek?

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i'm not going to suggest you're psychotic, but you've gotta keep in mind that part of the problem of having guns lying around is that you don't really know where they're going to end up or who's going to use them. another thing you've got to keep in mind is that humans are very emotional creatures that are very easily driven over tipping points - it doesn't take a lot to temporarily tip an otherwise rational human into madness, and it only takes a few seconds to pick one up and pull the trigger.

my understanding is that most of the gun deaths you see from otherwise law abiding gun owners are either accidents or the result of being lost in a moment that evaporates as soon as the trigger is pulled, and then it's "oh my god, what have i done".

what i would advocate is aggressively marketing a shift in social attitudes that shifts the dominant cultural narrative from "owning guns is our constitutional right" to "having one in the house is not worth the risk". that's a gigantic shift in culture that would fundamentally alter what america is. it's maybe a little presumptuous for me to sit up in canada and say it, but i'm rooting for that side of the debate to win out...

it has to be a debate, though, and it has to be done consensually in a process of mass understanding.

a full ban on guns would create a black market. you'd have gun buyers going to neighbourhood gun pushers that would buy from gun cartels connected to organized crime (and quietly getting supplies from the big corporations). it would not reduce gun ownership or gun violence, it would just restrict oversight and ultimately result in easier access and less regulation.

Derek
Well because, from your perspective it had nothing to do with the fact that it was a gun. How was it not the guns fault? Do you think a 9 year old could accidentally kill someone participating in a legal activity any other way? You think while she is eating breakfast her spoon is going to fly out of her hand and kill someone? Its because it was a gun that this little girls life is turned upside down and she will probably have psychological issues now, maybe depression who knows? If that little girl never held a GUN, not a spoon, knife, toy sword, toothbrush.. a GUN she would have never murdered a human being. That's why it was the gun, yes it was a culmination of negligence on the instructors part, her parents part... etc. But whoever s fault it was doesn't change the fact that it was because she was holding a gun that he is dead. I happen to think it was completely his fault for letting her shoot once then goin OH HOT DAMN FULL AUTO FIRE AWAY. But it doesn't change what caused this mans death at the end of the day. He could have been negligent as fuck if she was holding a spoon, her parents wouldn't even have to watch but she was holding a gun and the bullet from the chamber of that gun killed the man. She didn't attempt to kill him intentionally aim it at him he died because it was a gun... fucking moron.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
irresponsible or not, i don't think most gun owners have their guns locked in a safe. i mean, i agree that if you must have one, that's where it ought to be - i just don't think that's where they usually actually are. they're hiding under beds, in cabinets, in drawers, etc.

i don't have a desire to shoot a gun. my stepmother's father was a retired military officer and had a shooting range in his basement. i was over a few times when i was around ten, and refused to even enter the basement. that's the closest i've ever been to a firearm, and the closest i'd like to get to a firearm.

what i'm expressing is a fairly common attitude in canada, and this is the reason our per capita deaths from guns are so much lower, not authoritarian laws.

MACK DRE.
we start banning guns its going to be the same as banning beer.  ppl find ways to get it. right Now guns are in our streets,from gang-banging kids, to drug-dealers. and non of those are licensed guns nor licensed ppl to owen a gun. and  .. blaming it on untrained, being the reason of that mans death is point less. him as an instructor should have been behind the gun not in front.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i'm glad you're a responsible gun owner, zachary. but i think the logic running through most people's heads is "it's of no use to me in case of break-in if it's locked in a safe". bluntly - there's clearly an issue, which means people aren't following these precautions. but that's just another example of a law that isn't working.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i need to comment that i feel your comment is somewhat sexist, but there's a kernel of truth to it as it applies specifically to petite women. however, that logic would also apply to men of smaller stature, and not apply to muscular women.

it's the muscle strength that is important, not the gender.

Plethman Channel
They have laws to say how old you must be to drive a car, funny there are no laws on how old you can operate a gun.  That little girl could hardly hold that weapon.  That weapon weighs 10 pounds with a full clip. The instructor did not worn her what was about to happen. Your argument has zero merit.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
natural selection isn't guided or logical, it's a mostly random process and i'm fully aware that i'm not using it entirely correctly. i'm getting a point across.

the darwin awards themselves have been (correctly) criticized for this, but there's a certain amount of artistic interpretation in the process.

ApEaZed
bullshit. You can't expect everyone to be cautious. Americans are humans and humans make mistake. Ban guns and this won't happen. Period.

deathtokoalas
which is exactly why banning drugs took all the heroin off the streets, right?

LilGreenBuddy
you have a good mind and will be great wisdom to your peer group

deathtokoalas
nah, nobody listens to me.

MyQueen1994
If it makes you feel better I wouldn't listen to you either because I'm a Murican. Our only job is be lazy and ignorant. We don't understand resson and if you think differently then instead of having possible benefits we well politely ask you to leave in the most rude way possible. Muricah, bitches!

deathtokoalas
canadians are a little bit more polite about it, and maybe a bit more idealistic - they tend to just ignore me as a sort of a buzzkill, smashing through their idealizations with realism.

Jose Roman
I  hope the young girl understands that this is100% the "instructors" fault. He stands in front of a kid with a loaded Uzi, let's her fire once, switches to auto, then tries to adjust her stance and show her how to stand while she holds a loaded gun and then he let's her go to town. He didn't let her load the weapon or teach her how to safe the weapon and then stands right next to her, literally by the barrel while she shoots.

MyQueen1994
Whoa. You said about five to ten words I can't read or understand but I have a bigger pickup truck than you so I instantly win any argument. Muricah!

Wait, there are heroin instructors? Why was I not informed of this?

deathtokoalas
most people call them "musicians".

MyQueen1994
I don't understand metaphors and if you're asking why I would give that statement I'm response to your reply then. ....ummm...uhhhh... Muricah! My jeans are blue and my guns are big.

deathtokoalas
don't forget about your bible...

MyQueen1994
I'm a Murican I don't read it but I will quote and enforce it.

deathtokoalas
*misquote

MyQueen1994
Is it misquoting if I only get specific lines and rearrange them in any order to benefit myself?

====

dmac
That's it! I'm moving to Canada!

cowtipper99
canada has its fare share of idiots too, ever heard of this idiot named rob ford?

Solid Snek
Nice try but Canada has a shitload of guns too.

America
ill drive

purplemutantas
Some types of guns are easier to own legally in Canada than in the US. Short barrelled shotguns don't have any special restrictions in Canada like they do here. They have the same rules and regulations as any other shotgun.

Denise Dspain
Do you think one less whiner will hurt anyone?  LOL  Please do go by all means!!!

Solid Snek
Yeah people from here seem to be suprised at the sort of firepower you can own here. Most shotguns and rifles are perfectly legal here including the AR-15, M-14, Bushmaster ACR, IWI Tavor and the XCR to name a few. Hell even .50 cal rifles and armor plates are legal. That's better than Kommiefornia in some ways.

deathtokoalas
the reason canada has less gun violence per capita is not a consequence of our laws but a consequence of our culture. i wish you luck in escaping the wild west, i'd just request that you please be polite when you get here.

deathtokoalas
i don't think this is staged; i do think what you're seeing here is occurring all over the world.

this kid was cut off, probably because he was failing school.

"school is for losers. video games are cool."

there's millions of kids trapped in this industry, which turns them into consumerist slaves getting shots of dopamine from the technology.

we need to start holding them back in school.

if we do that then, in a few years, parents will get the hint.

Gizmo Gaming
Then again, it more or less depends on the person and the parents. The parents shouldn't be letting them play for 5 hours straight. >.<

deathtokoalas
when you're dealing with this kind of dopamine-driven addiction, it's not as easy as asking your kid to stop playing. and, that's what the problem is. i might find the idea of killing things distasteful, but i don't think it's really problematic in any kind of social way. it's the addiction that ruins them...

prague
I'm 27 and pretty much a video game addict.  The way you describe it as a "dopamine addiction" is pretty much spot on.  Although, as an adult I completely accept myself as an addict.  I was once an opiate addict and to get off of the pills I began playing video games.  I basically stopped one thing and picked up another.  I'd say that I'd rather be addicted to video games than hard drugs, but it still does take a lot out of my life and my bank account.  I barely want to do anything else.  I have lost friends because of my addiction.  It's funny too because I didn't become this until I was about 22-23.  The only thing I can say is that I'm glad I'm not a child going through this.  A child would not admit or even know what it means to be an addict.  When they hear that word, they think "drugs", not "technology".  Everyone, I believe, has an addiction though.  We all find something in our lives that we can't seem to go too long without.  Most people I know are either addicted to drinking, shopping, eating, sex, etc.  The ONLY thing I can say about video game addiction is that if one plays the right games it CAN be a good thing in many ways as long as that person does not become dependent on the games to feel complete as a person.  Let's take "Computer Chess" for example.  Chess can be a very strong stimulant for brain development.  It can teach problem solving skills, critical thinking, etc.  But the problem lies in the moment that person playing the game cannot go without it.  The kids in the video are playing Call of Duty.  I'm not going to say "Oh, Call of Duty is a POS game".  Looking closely, it CAN help develop the exact same things as Chess, but it's the socialization and culture behind it that is completely 180 degrees from something like Chess.  I strongly believe that all games in general, not just video games, can prevent certain diseases in some people's future.  Take Alzheimer disease.  I believe that playing games regularly can stimulate a part of the brain that keeps the gamer healthy in the mind which in turn MAY help prevent such a disease.  I'm not a scientist, nor a doctor, so this is all speculation, but the point of this is that there is a large portion of people out there that when they hear the words "video games" they think "nerd" or "loser" or something of that variety.  It may be the case for some, but there are video game players out there that AREN'T addicted and can maintain a healthy relationship with others AND themselves.  Me personally, I'm what I call a "mild-video game addict".  My house is clean.  I maintain a full time job.  I have a dog.  But I haven't had a relationship since I started playing games religiously.  I wake up in the morning and that's the first thing I want to do.  I make up stories and lie to get out of social situations like get-togethers and even just going to see my parents.  Stuff like that.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that video games get a bad rep because people think that it's the root of all evil and can transform people into doing things they wouldn't normally do, like for example killing people in real life because they played some game.  I have to say that that's not even close to the truth and has probably only happened a few times, but those people were already on that path and just happened to be playing certain games.  I play everything.  War games.  Puzzle games.  Adventure games.  To me it's like watching a movie, but you get to be the actor or at least control the actor.  In regards to your last comment, I think it IS more problematic in the social arena than anything else.  Look at the kid in the video.  He just lost two friends most likely because of his addiction.  He probably talks to his parents like he does to someone who isn't "playing the game right".  He ONLY wants to play games and not socialize, therefore it IS a social problem FOR HIM.  It's not for everyone, nor is it socially threatening for all game addicts.  In fact, it's HELPED my social confidence, but in turn it's KILLED my social desires.  I just don't ever want to go out on weekends, go to bars, etc.  In regards to your first comment, about the "consumerist slaves"...  I think that that's a bit lofty.  EVERYONE is a consumerist slave if you look at the big picture.  If you're not growing your own food on a farm; creating your own electricity from natural sources;  making your own clothes;  etc. etc. you are a consumerist slave to the system.  It's what our government wants.  They want us hopelessly dependent on their support.  It's NOT just video games.  It's EVERYTHING.  I agree with you on everything though, but it all has to be seen in perspective.  Have a nice day :D

deathtokoalas
what i meant is that i don't think the violence in the games is promoting violence in society, i think it's the other way around. i don't really get what attracts people to killing things, but i don't think it's causing school shootings. i do think it's preventing kids from living up to their potential.

the dopamine thing has been studied. cocaine temporarily boosts your dopamine level through chemistry, causing the high - as well as the crash and subsequent addiction. video games are constantly setting off your reward centers, making it more of a "natural high". but you get hooked on the same chemical basis - the more you play, the more dopamine your body releases. the result is something similar to how a monkey or even a rat gets addicted to pushing a button to get rewards. and, they'll sit there for hours. that's a little bit of a stronger level of slavery than we see in the general consumer culture because it's driven by that chemical response rather than pressure or status - although it's certainly a consequence of it.

what that also means, though, is that the games that integrate the most frequent "rewards" trigger the most dopamine and get you the most hooked. some of the simple strategy-type games on your phone are probably worse for this than shooter games, as they give you a shot every few seconds rather than when you kill something. chess? well, how many kids do you see playing chess? when a kid says "chess is boring. i'd rather play something else." what they mean is "chess isn't designed for constant rewards, and isn't getting me my fix.".

i played a lot of chess with my dad when i was young, but could never get into it over a computer (i tried) because there wasn't that human element to it. it's a battle of wits, not a dopamine release. well, i guess the dopamine release would get through after a good move, but it's too infrequent for the reinforcement - and not the aim of the struggle. it's a different thing altogether. i have no argument against kids playing chess...

i used to play civ2 when i was a kid, which is probably still the best example of a middle point between strategy-based and reward-based. but i couldn't get my friends into it. they'd be bored within twenty minutes. i suspect it just wasn't getting them that rush, because they'd built up a much stronger tolerance that i didn't have, from not playing more violent games.

you talked about moving from opiates to video games. i think that any kind of addiction is ultimately beaten by moving to a different habit. i was never a heavy gamer, but i haven't really played much of anything at all since the end of 1997, when i got a synthesizer and a 4-track recorder around christmas (i was 16). that's where all my excess energy went after that - into something creative.

at that age, the big problem is that it's arresting their development and preventing them from developing the skills necessary to succeed. i have friends in their early thirties that haven't migrated more than a foot from where they existed when they were eight years old - in their parent's basement, pushing those buttons for that hit. they have the same job they had when they were sixteen and the same life goals they had when they were seven - find money to buy games. it would be really remarkable to see a time lapse of them sitting on that floor, playing different controllers over the last few decades but ultimately occupying the exact same physical space.

Bradley 
No.. This is patrick

MyFutureDream
Imstopped being like that, i used to always play games ignore school, be popular, but now it's different, straight A's! In 7th grade. Thanks to my brother took my xbox one away. (Good thing) I started realizing I played too much.

HopeDoesGaming Second Channel
I agree, the addiction to games are hard to get rid of, but they aren't easy getting into either. People say they played the game for 6 hours when they honestly hated it, we should NOT stop video games and tech for good! People NEED breaks every once in a while, but do you think playing it 24/7 (Without taking 1 little movement) is healthy for your brain, eventually a kid is going to smash his ps3d tv because it look so real. Who would think that the ring of fire on the xbox360, when your dad says the ring of fire, you STICK A HOSE IN THE CONSOLE, that's crazy talk! All of those who don't want to get off the game the games when yo mom tells you to, I FEEL YOU! The game messes with your brain, especially violent ones, the violent games have inappropriate crap that makes your brain think it's the right thing to do in life, ITS FAKE! So take 5 minutes right now after reading this and put down the mouse, or controller, step outside, and breath! I am a huge gamer myself, but do NOT stay on it 24/7 or you will pick up bad habits, play sports, study for a school test, run around! Idc what you do as long as you make the right choice which is taking a break from technology! Please like if you agree with me! Also, make sure to check out me youtube. There is not many videos lately because I'm punished but thanks for your time :)

YourCasualNintendoPlayer
I definitely agree.

ZombiecoHQ
I'm 13, most likely addicted to PC haha. Play all day :P I'm not like the idiot in the video though. I do homework, go to school, get good grades etc. I can also control anger unlike the fatass in the video. Idk is this even considered an addiction?

deathtokoalas
when i was 13, i got perfect grades without studying. the little bit of "homework" that was assigned was mostly finished at school during busy work periods. in fact, i often had time to do my friends' homework, too (which i regret, it didn't help them in the long run). they don't really expect a lot out of young kids in north america (as compared to some other places in the world); you're given a lot of time to "be a kid", and if you happen to be a relatively smart and lucky one it could result in what seems like total freedom. i'm going to guess the kid in the video is more like 15 or 16, and there is a pretty big difference in terms of what the school system expects of you jumping from grade 6 or 7 to grade 10 or 11. i'm sure you've been informed of that by teachers and older friends or siblings.

you're going to have a choice regarding how you spend your time in the next few years.

like anything else that's addictive, it's going to affect people differently. you might stop playing to spend more time doing other things, or you might find it's increasingly eating into your productivity.

but, yes, it's an addiction, in terms of how it chemically affects your brain.

try this experiment: stop playing for a week and tell me how you feel.

ZombiecoHQ
I've stopped for weeks in the past (being grounded, going on vacation, etc.) and I just have to forget about it and focus on something else. When I'm really bored though, I can't stop thinking about the glorious thing that CSGO is :D

Andrew Conti
i may not play video games a lot,  but fuck school, its fucking useless ESPECIALLY  history

deathtokoalas
history class is very important in understanding how things came to be. i know they may test you on silly things like dates, but if you understand the way things work together then the dates fit in naturally.

for example, there's war in syria and iraq right now. if you want to understand that, you need to understand the history. and if you want to understand america's reaction, you have to understand it's history, too.

the future frightens me.

deathtokoalas
bad acting.

good idea, though.

and it is a good idea. he can buy his games back with the money he makes working... in the mean time, hopefully he finds something better to do.

Владимир Путин 
Yeah,and the way to make him do that,is to destroy something he has a psychological connection with. All the people in this video would make great parents,apparently

deathtokoalas
awww. he has a psychological connection with de video games and mean daddy took them away. awww.

maybe he could try building a connection with something that doesn't involve murdering people?

Gergely
what if the guy streams gaming, plays competitively or makes gameplay videos earning money? nowadays lots of people make a living gaming and entertainment connected to gaming

deathtokoalas
that would be a job, which he clearly does not have.

DamnPanda
well not anymore hahaha...

Ivory11
tough love. kids like that when they get WAAAAAYY too into their games, the only things that can break them out of it is some tough love.

and that's what this dad did, he loves his son too much to let him waste his life away sitting on the couch playing games 24/7, he's clearly tried everything but nothing else has worked, so the only thing he can do is to take the thing that his son has wasted months and years away on, and outright destroy them.

at least then the son would have motivation to go out and get a job, even if it's just to get enough money to buy back those games.

karatekid
As you say kids i assume you are an adult. Have you ever played a good game or read a good book or watched a good movie? You like some characters in them I am sure and if you spent more time with that character (from you favourite book for example) you get attached. My point is that's not a phenomenon restricted on games. And as long as it's not a unhealthy relationship I don't think it's something you have to "break out" someone.

When his dad loves him so much why would he take something that his son loves away? And waste is such a hard word. I mean where is the point in working if you have everything you want? When you have everything you want you would to what you like and in his case it's gaming. (May that be something else for everyone.) I think it is counterproductive destroying games so he gets a job to buy them again. He probably should work for his food and stuff but that money he can do with games.

James
I agree, it's definitely acting. So he wouldn't actually mow the real fkn games hahaha, he's probably mowing over empty discs.

Sir TurtleNipz
no dude i believe it hell my mom through my Xbox down the stairs what the hell do you think my dad would do cause he made me hammer my own lap top

James
yeah but the cameraman's supposed "reaction" to the kid screaming was obviously fake. He knew to look at the whiteboard straight away and see the message. Then the argument between the Dad and the son is just horrificly bad acting.

deathtokoalas
there's a different physical and psychological response with gaming, as it hits different reward centers. if you approach it naively, it might seem like it's like reading a book, but if you study the way your body reacts to it, it's more like smoking crack.

if daddy had mowed his crack pipe, this wouldn't be controversial. the difference is that video game addiction is more socially accepted. but, give it time and society will treat video games the way we now treat smoking - as something that is unhealthy, anti-social and should be avoided.

you'll see video game addicts come up with all kinds of absurd reactions...

but have you ever seen a survey on smokers, asking them to answer the question of if they think smoking causes cancer? the results are consistently astonishing.

Mark
"maybe he could try building a connection with something that doesn't involve murdering people?" Like playing Mario kart? Not every game involves murder...

But without kidding it doesn't look like the dad is a good father either... You should never let it come this far. Even if it is acted.

deathtokoalas
believe it or not, there was actually a time in the 80s and early 90s when the gamers were actually the smart kids. but, they were playing fantasy-based role playing games. it was an extension of dungeons and dragons, really. the industry today is not what it was then.

as for the father, it's hard nowadays, with the strength of the industry stealing your kids' brains and turning them into consumerist slaves of technology. yes, this is staged - but the premise is believable. and there's plenty of videos of actual kids absolutely freaking out when you try and take away their dopamine rush.

when you're dealing with a heroin addict that refuses treatment, one of the tactics is to lock them in a room and destroy the narcotics. this is entirely analogous, and just as justifiable.

i think this is a demonstration of excellent parenting, and i'd like to throw out a call to action for real-life parents to be equally harsh on their addicted children.

whatever their age.

Mark
Being a Nintendo gamer I'm stil kinda stuck in the 90's :P. There are still games that doesn't only involve murder. Zelda is an example. But in my eyes you failed as parent if your children react like this on HIS age. If it was a 5 year old kid I would understand but he should be atleast 18 years old? Atleast I have never saw such an extreme case.

And no I wouldn't call this excellent parenting. You should atleast have a conversation with him first... You know, with words, the old way? Without violence.

deathtokoalas
i'm assuming everything was attempted and this was a last resort, but there's not enough context. i don't think it's fair to think this was the father's first attempt...

i think the point you're trying to make is that he will relapse back into his addiction if he doesn't make the choice to stop. i agree with this. but, some addictions are too strong for reasoning - they require physical restraint for a period of days or weeks to allow the addicted person to clear their heads and come down.

Mark
I agree and sorry for my bad english. It isn't my first language :(. We don't know enough context indeed to make the conclusion this was his first attempt.

karatekid
Your first thesis seems very interesting. But I can not go that far that smoking crack and playing games have the same effects. (I would be happy if you have prove though.) I agree that there are addictions that arn't as socialy accepted as others but that had nothing to do with the video. ^^

deathtokoalas
the information is out there.

i'm ok with providing information if something is obscure, but we have an internet now (and you're on it), thereby shifting the responsibility on to you to look it up, rather than on to me to do it for you.

karatekid
Well normaly i would say yes to that. But thats not how discussions work. If you put an argument you have to support it and not let others do the work for you.

deathtokoalas
that's how things used to work before the internet. i'm making it a principle to enforce the fact that things have changed, now.

here's my source:
google.com

try searching for video games and dopamine.