EAO wrote:I knew not to click on it! I told myself not to click on it! I clicked on it! For a few seconds there, I could actually feel my teeth trying to chew through my skull to devour my brain! Brutal! I would rather castrate myself with a rusty piece of tin than listen to even a millisecond of that again!
Roy, (may I call you Roy?), please heed Jim's advice! Sleep will not come easy tonight my friends!
Thoroughly distressed,
Eric.
You may indeed, Eric.
As a footnote- 'Roy' is, of course, the anglicised version of the Gaelic 'Ruadh'- meaning 'red' (that would be linked to the ginger gene, and not a political leaning
Thus the famed Rob Roy MacGregor was actually 'Red Robert'...
).
I'm afraid many young folk, and now their elders (especially broadcasters in the US, and now in the UK), have adopted this excruciating form of vocalised torture. God knows what the long-term effects will be on the larynx. Once you hear it, however, it's practically impossible to 'un-hear' it.
They all sound like Geiger counters, stretched balloons, or belching bullfrogs.
Anyway, re: Felton's productions. I wasn't aware of any claims of plagiarism, although I did wonder how he produced so many (albeit short) videos in rapid succession.
I see that a contributor to the worthy website Missing-Lynx, Dan Lauritsen, wrote an article on the post-war Danish mine clearances, and maintains that Felton took 85% of his material from that short article- without crediting the source, for a video on the fraught mine clearance events. Not to exhume that disagreement (and not having seen Felton's video), all I can say is that since Dan wasn't an eyewitness to these events,
he must have used primary sources himself or articles by other researchers; but, like Felton,
he doesn't reference them.
So where did he get the info for his article? Felton does actually cite sources for some of his videos, at least the ones where I've bothered to read the description section. I would suggest,though, that unless you're history-obsessed it's best to take these productions as short accounts of the less well-known aspects of the war (and that's their appeal). The photos and videos they contain can't be claimed by
anyone living, as they belong to the ghosts of my Dad's generation, and the precious few who remain.
When I started school in the early 1950s,
all of my teachers, cousins, and most teenagers had been actively involved in, or lived through, the War. ( My Mum lived through bombing raids on Glasgow- but never talked about it). Here's the thing; perhaps they all had PTSD, and that's why the War wasn't a popular topic around the dinner table. Yet many towns still had large tracts of bombed-out buildings- you could hardly miss the consequences. We also had ID cards and rationing. Imagine the riots these would cause today!.
Where modern generations- particularly millennials and generation -Z, seem afflicted by 'hypersensitivity', social media angst, extreme vanity (selfie culture), and 'stresses' brought on by modern living, even claiming PTSD- the stoic wartime generation faced unimaginable horrors, and rarely moaned about them. More importantly, they rarely revealed their experiences, nor committed them to paper.
For this reason, most eyewitness accounts of the war are missing, and will remain so. Thus, the popular accounts we
do have access to are mostly second or third hand.
However, there are some good sources of 'primary' filmed material on Youtube. Chronos-media and Pathe, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/user/chronoshistory
https://www.youtube.com/c/britishpathe . They do have a slant, of course.
One of the best, and most dispassionate, accounts (IMO) comes from wartime cameraman, Jack Lieb. I've posted it before, but it's worth posting again for those who might have missed it.
Primary sources from WW2, would be officially archived material (photos, films, and papers), regimental diaries, personal accounts from war correspondents and combatants (often subjective by nature), and official reports. In the UK, some material is
still inaccessible, because of the Official Secrets 100-year rule.
Thus, unless a contributor to Youtube, or even Missing-lynx, has access to actual primary sources, whatever they produce is always going to be second, or even third-hand. Personally, I've better things to do than worry about what sources are used, so long as I'm entertained. (especially by the film clips and photos) At my age...time is limited.
Apologies, Lenny, for abducting your thread.
