In recent years, I've watched a good amount of Geopolitical and Historical YouTube Channels. Over time, I've come to realize that all channels are definitely not created equal.
This channel is the first time I really began to take note of the problems facing the informational landscape when it comes to YouTube content in the abovementioned fields. This channel is heavily promoted by YouTube. The operator, Johnny Harris, is a former Vox contributor. When I sit down to look at a channel, I am fairly neutral going into it, as my main intention with viewing these videos is to simply learn something new. The first video I watched was on Chinese input methods involving using QWERTY to select Hanzi characters, which Harris claims revolutionized computing in a uniquely Chinese way. This shocked me. You see, I have for over a decade been a computing historian, and my research has shown me that the innovations Harris was attributing to China were not Chinese at all, they were Japanese.
Kanji characters in Japanese are essentially Chinese Hanzi characters. Japan, an early innovater of modern computing, long faced problems with writing their language correctly using mechanical means. Japanese typewriters were complex and slow, and impractical, having a rotating drum for selecting Kanji characters. Computers offered new opportunities for the Japanese to write with machines; in particular NEC was early to innovate in this regard, and later an IME called ATOK made its way to the PC-9800 computers that dominated Japan in the 80s and 90s. The benefit of the PC-98, Japan's leading computer platform, was that its firmware contained every single Kanji or Hanzi character, so writing full Japanese accurately became viable. Users would feed their input into an IME and select a Kanji Character using the Katakana-QWERTY keyboard of the PC-98. An early widely used word processor at this time was Itchitaro.
PC-98 was created in response to a need for a fully Japanese-capable personal computer. The ripple effects of the technologies pioneered on the platform inspired the Chinese innovations regarding the writing of their own language on computers. In-fact, NEC even exported PC-9801FC systems to the People's Republic to further this end. Johnny Harris' video is, by definition, inaccurate, and the lack of research is truly shocking. Further videos demonstrate an even deeper lack of research, such as the video Harris made rationalizing Russia's War against Ukraine as being the result of NATO expansionism; in actuality, the war is a calculated event meant to forward Putin's domestic power consolidation and control over the oligarchs.
Johnny Harris's factually corrupt videos are heavily promoted by youtube, and their flashy 3D models and editing draws in people. But the effects of conducting journalism and producing documentaries in this way are profoud, because they misrepresent history to the largest amount of people possible. As TV has been replaced by the Internet in recent decades, many people derive the MAJORITY of their worldview and news from YouTube videos, so a poorly made video can lead to mistaken actions by the public as a result of widespread misinformation becoming perceived as truth. Harris is far from the only pundit on YouTube like this, but his channel is the first I outright walked away from in shock, realizing that, in a field I know much about, he was inaccurate. How many videos on topics I am not fully educated on are out there misrepresenting information? That is the scary part.