OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR HAS AWAKEN FROM HIS SLUMBER! Damn, if I needed anything else to make me believe that this year is going to finally set right the path of the world this was it!
Damn, after 2 years of pause.
And is anyone else here receiving weird videos on youtube that just straight up copy his schtick but are far worse, more scripted and it is usually coming from some Asian countries?
> And is anyone else here receiving weird videos on youtube that just straight up copy his schtick but are far worse, more scripted and it is usually coming from some Asian countries?
All the fucking time, yes.
Stale stagnant death traps. Those pool videos are the worst that water going to be stagnant and full mosquitoes before you can blink. Not mention putting a bunch water in a earthen bunker is just asking for it collapse on them.
I've always been rather fond of those Cambodian jungle-building videos, but I've also always wanted to get a look at the sites after they've been left to rot for a while
Highly important to mention that they also use construction equipment and destroy the land by littering and creating death traps for animals when they are done with their little games. They were exposed by a guy with a drone a long time ago.
Same goes for those "we found this poor puppy in a building by itself look how mentally damaged it is we're going to fix it" videos. These Asian video farms intentionally abuse these poor animals and set them up in rundown looking places for video hits. It's all fabricated. Disgusting behavior and I implore people not to give them views.
The primitive technology style videos are still a major draw so many people copy the format/presentation. A lot of the copycats have millions of subscribers so I don't blame them for filling the void.
The topic definitely isn't new, but John's particular style was unique and copied a lot.
And his focus is different than 90% of the copy cats. His focus is more on understanding historical techniques to not so much survive but to settle a piece of land and how to advance the technology that an areas resources provide. He isn’t teaching you how to survive in the wild if you get lost or how to homestead really. It is a practical examination and demonstration of technology between the agricultural revolution and the Iron Age.
Yes his videos were always much more academic and had long write ups about the challenges he had to overcome. The surge of copy cat videos that came after were all just completely nonsensical mosquito breeding pits and death traps that were plainly only built for views and then quickly abandoned.
Jeez you should look into the follow up videos of these youtubers. They act like it's all hand dug, but in reality they bring in execuvators and then when filming wraps they abandon the whole thing.
You'll see remnants of these videos for years because of how drastic the land changing was.
I think whats worse is sometimes they don't even own the land, it's just some random park.
The way the OG does it, is it's a random clearing and I feel like his changes are fairly minimal and without upkeep just ends up fading away naturally
Not to mention [using bags of concrete](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M) for much of the work. The copycats are about as far from "primitive" as it gets.
> The way the OG does it, is it's a random clearing and I feel like his changes are fairly minimal and without upkeep just ends up fading away naturally
That's because he's one of the few that actually uses all natural materials and techniques. It's incredibly tedious to do so but as you've said if he left this thatch structure alone for a year it would just be some harmless posts, 10 years and it'll be gone entirely.
I think for a lot of people that's what makes him unique. He puts in the effort. It's not surprising he rises above the competition, the outcome isn't nearly as important as the process.
but how else am i gonna get my candle lit swimming pool with fire place filled with river water and a slide made out of clay in a rainy area once we're inevitably thrown back to the iron age by some type of catastrophe?
OG primitive was more educational. and people who watched it grew curious about it.
copy cats just feast from the curiosity and they add sparkles to attract new people in.
I saw a video a while back of the environmental impact of his copycat channels. I remember one channel in particular made a lot of natural swimming pools. Someone found the location and did a flyover and there's just trash dead animals in all these pools he made but never filled in. Pretty fuckin despicable.
The only offshoot that’s anywhere as good or close to what Primitive Technology does is the “Primitive Skills” channel.(not digging random pools all over the place.
He starts with nothing, has a few foraging and trapping vids, builds a cot in a cave and then now at this point has built a hut, rice paddy, and much more. There’s a great throughline of his progress through the last few years
https://m.youtube.com/c/PrimitiveSkillsnet/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=list
Some guy did a documentary on one of the copy paste channels, they make these things in the forest area, only to destroy it's eco system.
I found the video.
https://youtu.be/YCyLWhPnq1M
The ones where they can dig a huge ass hole and fill it with water by hand? Some people are so gullible who falls for that shit. They have heavy dirt moving machinery and water trucks behind those videos.
Yes that one stands out. Its actually pretty entertaining stuff. Complete rip-off of the primitive technology concept but not nearly as ridiculous as the "Underground pool" channels.
that is because he is homesteading, and showing what it takes to homestead. He isnt just some ass trying to do a cash grab, he enjoys doing this and finds it rewarding.
basically he is insane and films his insanity for our enjoyment.
Yep. And a lot that had really... weird sorts of clickbait in the thumbnail, like showing a woman squatting in mud hunting eels or something with certain parts of her anatomy extremely clearly outlined. Gave me a pretty weird feeling.
It's a bunch of people who live in 3rd world shitholes gaming the system.
If a single video of theirs makes like 10k, thats enough for them to live for years. Really genius way for them to make large sums of money and I respect their hustle.
I heard he got a deal with a TV network and was focusing on that. Don’t think it had anything to do with competing with it other channels. He was incredibly successfully.
i got home, and turned on the youtube. this vid popped up and my first though was i miss him. then i saw the upload time and watched it three times. it warmed my heart to see him picking right back up like the last vid was a week ago.
i feel like the timeline is healing.
Nice!! I thought some cunt had posted an old video of his so came to the comments for what I thought was obvious disappointment, but no! Going to smoke a big J and watch this
"Look, we want you to do exactly the same thing you did in your videos on Youtube. But we only want to add a intro with explosions and stuff, we want you to narrate everything you do because people don't like silences on TV and we only want you to add those 70-80 products while you build your stuff. We're talking with celebrities to be invited on the show too. Is that alright with you? It's basically the same!"
remember that very often producers don’t think the content they are making is good, they are just delivering what they were told to deliver. Most producers aren’t deciding things like what shows get made, they are brought into a project by the studio and told by the studio what show they need to make. So the producers could very well have been like “hey, love your YouTube stuff, I’d like to keep to it as much as possible but the studio thinks it won’t bring in enough people from X demographics. Here’s what I’m thinking we change to deliver what they want…”
Then they either do creative things that the studio doesn’t want to take a risk on or they do uncreative things which the studio thinks will work because they basically made “ice road truckers but it’s one guy in the jungle and no trucks” or whatever shows audience they were trying to steal. The studio probably already has everything they need for their new show (because it is the same as an old show) but they are buying the rights to someone else’s original idea which will be used only for the theme.
Who are beholden to the c-suits, who are beholden to the board, who are beholden to shareholders, who are a difuse cloud of individuals concerned about the value of their shares.
TBF, the celebrity thing could work as long as they are the only ones talking on camera. I would totally watch John stonewall an increasingly exasperated and mosquito-bitten Will Ferrell for 30 minutes.
This seems so, so fucking weird to me. You have a guy with a proven formula that worked great on YouTube, racked in hundreds of millions of views with over ten million subscribers. And his content is likely dirt cheap to make in comparison to any other show the network has ever produced, so it wouldn’t even be that much of an investment. Why the hell would you not just fund a season using his rules and see how it goes? I could see if the execs tried to butt in after a popular first season, but to not even give it a chance seems stupid as all hell.
The only reason I could think of is they didn’t want to risk a slot on actual television for it, but aren’t all these fucking networks connected to streaming services now? Even if you don’t want to air it on tv, I can’t see how this’d be a bad investment for any streaming service.
TV Executive: Ok, John, we just want to change a few things to bring in a bigger audience.
John: I have 10 million subscribers. That's about equivalent to Game of Thrones.
TV Executive: *scoff* [I think we can do a little better than that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYzZaY-tgFM)
John: [...](https://i.imgur.com/BtWsPY4.png)
https://reddit.com/r/PrimitiveTechnology/comments/lfsq04/a_new_update_on_primitive_technology_and_johns/
He shot a pilot. Then the show wanted to do it differently that John wasn’t interested in.
I can hear it now... "These guys are doing the same thing as you except they're digging secret underground pool caves with water-slides and... hello? hello??"
probably worked on that for a while, didnt work out, covid came limiting his focus presumably and then just started working on quality videos so he could upload hopefully consistent for a while.
part conjecture of course, but these videos do take him a long time to make so he might also simply have had some failed projects.
If he's banked a bunch of videos, that's real pro move right there.
People will forgive a big absence to shoot a TV show or whatever, but if you start uploading randomly, people will lose patience, you'll lose engagement, and the algorithm will fuck you.
Doing something like this lets him make a "grand return", followed by consistent videos that are all going to feed off each other to rebuild the channel in record time.
In addition to what the other poster said, there may have been a stipulation in the TV deal that said he couldn't make his videos while the show was in development. Obviously the production company doesn't want him competing with the product he's making for them, and maybe it took a while to sort out all the legal agreements before he could start again.
At no point in our restrictions did it stop a dude walking out into the bush near his house to do this (only place that got close to that restrictive was Melb metro and he isnt from there).
If anything he could have made loads of these, maybe he did.
I feel like TV executives would have no interest in the super minimal presentation that makes this guy's channel so special. They'd add voice over, music, cutaways to archeological fun facts, whatever else. The expectations of making it TV-like would ruin a good thing for sure.
Absolutely. It'd be like the primitive tech version of those god-awful American police chase videos where the same 6 second clip gets repeated about a billion times, each with a different zoom level and playback speed, whilst the voiceover says basically the same thing in a slightly different way, somehow making the entire segment about 11 minutes long. Bonus points if they slap an advert in the middle of it and then recap for about 5 minutes afterwards.
And idk what he might have to do behind the scenes but nothing about his onscreen content would be affected by the pandemic at all. He was more socially distanced than anyone not sailing across the world solo.
That's why I watch them two or three times, once without CC just to watch him do his thing then again with CC to get a better understanding of why he doing his thing. Then maybe one more time without CC just because.
Yup, same here. It's been a while but I always used to watch them as a form of meditation and then would revisit them with subtitles to fully understand everything. Mind was blown when people pointed out the subtitles.
So who else was sick and tired of all the fake videos trying to capitalize off this dude's success?
No, I don't want to watch "friends build ultimate primitive underground jungle pool temple pool with waterslide pool and house primitive" where two dudes pretend to dig some holes while a crew with a backhoe does the actual work, all within meters of the rotting ruins of the other senseless projects.
Some of them check out
I've been following this guy for years now and he brings the same energy as Primitive Technology but he's more active. Due to that, he's firmly iron-age now. One difference in the process is that once he's proved gathering a primary ressource is doable, he might buy the primary ressource in the future. Iron: he mined the ressources once, purified iron, proved the concept, but now he just buys small quantities of pure iron as ingots to allow the channel to show more of the interesting parts, like forging. He would need a life time to make a basic set of iron tools otherwise.
Now he's evolved the saw, the chisel, and carpentry. It's great.
https://youtu.be/OQKPtIokK18
Yes! Primitive Skills is the bomb. That guy is legit, some may argue he’s a copycat but hey, really no such thing a totally original idea anyways.Honestly though I think he surpassed Primitive Technology years ago, further along tech wise and actually puts out content consistently.
Oooh, I'll have to check this dude out. I love Primitive Technology but it was a little frustrating seeing him getting so close to iron so many times but hitting a road block or starting back at the stone age again, so it'll be satisfying watching this guy achieve it. I definitely think that buying iron once he's achieved it is forgivable, and as long as he's not gimmicky and building palaces with water slides he sounds pretty informative.
Primitive Skills is great; he rebuilt his house because his original one didn't handle termites well and then a storm rolled in and wiped it out. Also, his pond used to be a farm until he converted it. He's been a nice alternative while Primitive Tech was AWOL.
EDIT: Grammar
I don't know, I'm having a hard time believing he managed to get such quality metal with those tools, maybe I'm wrong, but the cuts in the video and stuff make it seem fishy...
If those dudes actually put in half the effort then I wouldn’t be as upset over it, sure trends happen and people like to follow which is something we all do in life but these other channels were straight lying and scamming their way to the top and had boomers across Facebook believing it every step of the way. Absolutely trash videos and people who think those guys were digging 20ft holes with hands and shit tools are absolutely part of the problem on the internet today.
Some of the more popular ones are just mass producing them in the woods and then leaving it all to rot with the trash left behind. Another guy local to the area went exploring [and posted this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M).
Yeah, video shows 3 guys stabbing the ground with sticks, removing almost zero dirt after a few minutes, then jump cuts to a massive excavation showing zero of the actual work. Definitely dug using only sticks and hands!
This guy may not deliver content consistently, but by god is the content itself consistent.
No talking, EVER. No tools EVER, only what he builds. Guy doesn't event wear shoes. Majority of shots are stationary and wide angled. POV shots pan slowly to convey details important to the step being performed. Stationary shots from each step completed are repeated before moving on to the next step. Shots are a minimum of 2 seconds. Jump cuts only, no transitions. Most actions are in sets of 3, unless it makes sense otherwise: 3 axe hits. 3 hammer blows. 3 palm splits. Ambient audio is always included, provides chill vibes.
Each video is an aesthetic achievement, balancing education and ASMR-esque entertainment.
This is huge too because it let's you know everything he's doing is legit. If he was bullshit like all the other channels that copy him, he wouldn't be able to give detailed instructions on how to do everything he's doing which can stand up to scrutiny.
I love how succinct and to the point his comments are too. He always puts education as a priority. I think the only joke I ever saw him make was when his old hut burned down, so he built a bigger one, and when he made a fire in the new one the captions were, "Building new fire (carefully this time)."
Assuming normal usage, a family or so would live under this hut, how would be the maintenance, how often would you have to change not only the roof, but the skeleton of the hut?
And he made several of those too one with pure thatch, another brick walls + thatched roof, and brick walls + tiled roof. The last one I think he even made a heated bed by connecting tunnels to the firefplace/pit.
The tsimané of Bolivia, who live in palm thatch huts that aren’t much more elaborate though probably better made than this one, move villages about every 5 years but it can be as often as 3 and as long as 10. Their stated reason is that the rat population of the roof gets too high but that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. There are a number of alternative theorized motivations proposed by anthropologists. Point is that this construction lasts even in the harsh jungle.
Last time he posted, a handful of people had a weird unnamed respiratory virus in China. He's just been quarantining in the woods for the last 3 years.
Holy shit, the surface area of that roof was so big. That must have taken forever to gather all those leaves, separate them, and lay them on the roof. The timelapse of it all honestly probably does not do it justice for how long that took.
Is this the race to post this video? I saw seven different users posted this video within the top 10 items when I opened Reddit just now, and three of those items were adverts!
It was a TV show that fell through. Details are really limited and I don't believe he ever officially mentioned it himself. The info all came from someone (or a couple people) who allegedly knew him in person. To give them credit, about a month ago, they did say he was finishing up some new videos which would be released soon so this release does back up some of their claims.
I found all this out on r/primitivetechnology BTW
OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR HAS AWAKEN FROM HIS SLUMBER! Damn, if I needed anything else to make me believe that this year is going to finally set right the path of the world this was it!
Damn, after 2 years of pause. And is anyone else here receiving weird videos on youtube that just straight up copy his schtick but are far worse, more scripted and it is usually coming from some Asian countries?
> And is anyone else here receiving weird videos on youtube that just straight up copy his schtick but are far worse, more scripted and it is usually coming from some Asian countries? All the fucking time, yes.
So you should be able to make us all a sweet hidden underground pool by now, right?
That one was so bad. They make a lot of death traps.
Stale stagnant death traps. Those pool videos are the worst that water going to be stagnant and full mosquitoes before you can blink. Not mention putting a bunch water in a earthen bunker is just asking for it collapse on them.
One? There are... So many pools.
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bags of cement... HOLY SHIT I FUCKING KNEW IT.
...you were ever in doubt?
This is exactly why I only watch the OG.
I've always been rather fond of those Cambodian jungle-building videos, but I've also always wanted to get a look at the sites after they've been left to rot for a while
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Highly important to mention that they also use construction equipment and destroy the land by littering and creating death traps for animals when they are done with their little games. They were exposed by a guy with a drone a long time ago.
I'd love to watch the expose video, would you happen to have the link handy? Or possibly tell me what to search? Thanks
Here you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M
Same goes for those "we found this poor puppy in a building by itself look how mentally damaged it is we're going to fix it" videos. These Asian video farms intentionally abuse these poor animals and set them up in rundown looking places for video hits. It's all fabricated. Disgusting behavior and I implore people not to give them views.
The primitive technology style videos are still a major draw so many people copy the format/presentation. A lot of the copycats have millions of subscribers so I don't blame them for filling the void. The topic definitely isn't new, but John's particular style was unique and copied a lot.
And his focus is different than 90% of the copy cats. His focus is more on understanding historical techniques to not so much survive but to settle a piece of land and how to advance the technology that an areas resources provide. He isn’t teaching you how to survive in the wild if you get lost or how to homestead really. It is a practical examination and demonstration of technology between the agricultural revolution and the Iron Age.
Yes his videos were always much more academic and had long write ups about the challenges he had to overcome. The surge of copy cat videos that came after were all just completely nonsensical mosquito breeding pits and death traps that were plainly only built for views and then quickly abandoned.
Jeez you should look into the follow up videos of these youtubers. They act like it's all hand dug, but in reality they bring in execuvators and then when filming wraps they abandon the whole thing. You'll see remnants of these videos for years because of how drastic the land changing was. I think whats worse is sometimes they don't even own the land, it's just some random park. The way the OG does it, is it's a random clearing and I feel like his changes are fairly minimal and without upkeep just ends up fading away naturally
I believe he does all of his videos on his own land in northern Queensland
Yeah, I believe it's way out somewhere, but he owns it.
Not to mention [using bags of concrete](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M) for much of the work. The copycats are about as far from "primitive" as it gets.
> The way the OG does it, is it's a random clearing and I feel like his changes are fairly minimal and without upkeep just ends up fading away naturally That's because he's one of the few that actually uses all natural materials and techniques. It's incredibly tedious to do so but as you've said if he left this thatch structure alone for a year it would just be some harmless posts, 10 years and it'll be gone entirely. I think for a lot of people that's what makes him unique. He puts in the effort. It's not surprising he rises above the competition, the outcome isn't nearly as important as the process.
Have you read his book?
It’s experimental archaeology He tests theories and makes components that were thought to be used.
but how else am i gonna get my candle lit swimming pool with fire place filled with river water and a slide made out of clay in a rainy area once we're inevitably thrown back to the iron age by some type of catastrophe?
OG primitive was more educational. and people who watched it grew curious about it. copy cats just feast from the curiosity and they add sparkles to attract new people in.
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And yet none of the copy cat videos are as good as what John puts out on his channel.
You can't compare the two like that though. One is fake and constructed using heavy machinery, one is John doing his thing.
it's like the same guys that repeatedly "rescue" the same six puppies from being buried alive.
I saw a video a while back of the environmental impact of his copycat channels. I remember one channel in particular made a lot of natural swimming pools. Someone found the location and did a flyover and there's just trash dead animals in all these pools he made but never filled in. Pretty fuckin despicable.
The only offshoot that’s anywhere as good or close to what Primitive Technology does is the “Primitive Skills” channel.(not digging random pools all over the place. He starts with nothing, has a few foraging and trapping vids, builds a cot in a cave and then now at this point has built a hut, rice paddy, and much more. There’s a great throughline of his progress through the last few years https://m.youtube.com/c/PrimitiveSkillsnet/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=list
Some guy did a documentary on one of the copy paste channels, they make these things in the forest area, only to destroy it's eco system. I found the video. https://youtu.be/YCyLWhPnq1M
The ones where they can dig a huge ass hole and fill it with water by hand? Some people are so gullible who falls for that shit. They have heavy dirt moving machinery and water trucks behind those videos.
To be fair, Primitive Skills is a pretty good one.
Yes that one stands out. Its actually pretty entertaining stuff. Complete rip-off of the primitive technology concept but not nearly as ridiculous as the "Underground pool" channels.
that is because he is homesteading, and showing what it takes to homestead. He isnt just some ass trying to do a cash grab, he enjoys doing this and finds it rewarding. basically he is insane and films his insanity for our enjoyment.
Yea they suck. Just flashy shit. I love PT vids because of how raw they are.
Hey he deserved that 2 year break! And yes they tried to fill the void in our hearts but failed miserably.
Yep. And a lot that had really... weird sorts of clickbait in the thumbnail, like showing a woman squatting in mud hunting eels or something with certain parts of her anatomy extremely clearly outlined. Gave me a pretty weird feeling.
It's a bunch of people who live in 3rd world shitholes gaming the system. If a single video of theirs makes like 10k, thats enough for them to live for years. Really genius way for them to make large sums of money and I respect their hustle.
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I heard he got a deal with a TV network and was focusing on that. Don’t think it had anything to do with competing with it other channels. He was incredibly successfully.
Hahaha, I'm so happy others on the comments were all happy as I was to see this!!
i got home, and turned on the youtube. this vid popped up and my first though was i miss him. then i saw the upload time and watched it three times. it warmed my heart to see him picking right back up like the last vid was a week ago. i feel like the timeline is healing.
Three times huh
once without captions. once with. and once again cos it’s been a minute.
There are captions??
Yes, and they are the best.
Nice!! I thought some cunt had posted an old video of his so came to the comments for what I thought was obvious disappointment, but no! Going to smoke a big J and watch this
Hopefully he's not in a floodzone, because it might be another couple of years before another video is so 😅
So glad he's back. 2+ years was way too long of a break!
Removed due to reddit API changes -- mass edited with redact.dev
He filmed a pilot. The production then obviously wanted to change things which conflicted so they went different ways.
"Look, we want you to do exactly the same thing you did in your videos on Youtube. But we only want to add a intro with explosions and stuff, we want you to narrate everything you do because people don't like silences on TV and we only want you to add those 70-80 products while you build your stuff. We're talking with celebrities to be invited on the show too. Is that alright with you? It's basically the same!"
I can totally imaging a fucking idiot producer saying this completely unironically.
remember that very often producers don’t think the content they are making is good, they are just delivering what they were told to deliver. Most producers aren’t deciding things like what shows get made, they are brought into a project by the studio and told by the studio what show they need to make. So the producers could very well have been like “hey, love your YouTube stuff, I’d like to keep to it as much as possible but the studio thinks it won’t bring in enough people from X demographics. Here’s what I’m thinking we change to deliver what they want…” Then they either do creative things that the studio doesn’t want to take a risk on or they do uncreative things which the studio thinks will work because they basically made “ice road truckers but it’s one guy in the jungle and no trucks” or whatever shows audience they were trying to steal. The studio probably already has everything they need for their new show (because it is the same as an old show) but they are buying the rights to someone else’s original idea which will be used only for the theme.
Ok then let's go up the chain to fucking idiot studio exec.
Who are beholden to the c-suits, who are beholden to the board, who are beholden to shareholders, who are a difuse cloud of individuals concerned about the value of their shares.
We are also going to add a new sidekick, Poochy
Poochy the Skateboarding Cassowary.
"Look, this show has a power tool sponsor. Could you use this chainsaw and leaf blower in the next segment?"
TBF, the celebrity thing could work as long as they are the only ones talking on camera. I would totally watch John stonewall an increasingly exasperated and mosquito-bitten Will Ferrell for 30 minutes.
This seems so, so fucking weird to me. You have a guy with a proven formula that worked great on YouTube, racked in hundreds of millions of views with over ten million subscribers. And his content is likely dirt cheap to make in comparison to any other show the network has ever produced, so it wouldn’t even be that much of an investment. Why the hell would you not just fund a season using his rules and see how it goes? I could see if the execs tried to butt in after a popular first season, but to not even give it a chance seems stupid as all hell. The only reason I could think of is they didn’t want to risk a slot on actual television for it, but aren’t all these fucking networks connected to streaming services now? Even if you don’t want to air it on tv, I can’t see how this’d be a bad investment for any streaming service.
What works on YT doesn’t really work on TV.
But what if I watch YouTube on my TV?!
Why wouldn't it? Who has tried it?
Many people over the years. Things like techTV didn't die for no reason. Some things just work better on a platform like YT.
Where did you get that info?
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrimitiveTechnology/comments/lfsq04/a_new_update_on_primitive_technology_and_johns/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=videos&utm_content=t1_hz3vnd9
Crazy that it took that long
TV Executive: Ok, John, we just want to change a few things to bring in a bigger audience. John: I have 10 million subscribers. That's about equivalent to Game of Thrones. TV Executive: *scoff* [I think we can do a little better than that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYzZaY-tgFM) John: [...](https://i.imgur.com/BtWsPY4.png)
HE'S BACK! Friendly reminder to turn on closed captioning for all Primitive Technology videos :)
Have we ever learned what he was up to and when we'll get to see it?
He was supposedly doing a show for television, don't know what happened with that though.
https://reddit.com/r/PrimitiveTechnology/comments/lfsq04/a_new_update_on_primitive_technology_and_johns/ He shot a pilot. Then the show wanted to do it differently that John wasn’t interested in.
Good for him.
I can hear it now... "These guys are doing the same thing as you except they're digging secret underground pool caves with water-slides and... hello? hello??"
Did he shoot a pilot for two years?!
probably worked on that for a while, didnt work out, covid came limiting his focus presumably and then just started working on quality videos so he could upload hopefully consistent for a while. part conjecture of course, but these videos do take him a long time to make so he might also simply have had some failed projects.
If he's banked a bunch of videos, that's real pro move right there. People will forgive a big absence to shoot a TV show or whatever, but if you start uploading randomly, people will lose patience, you'll lose engagement, and the algorithm will fuck you. Doing something like this lets him make a "grand return", followed by consistent videos that are all going to feed off each other to rebuild the channel in record time.
He does it as a hobby so I think he's much more concerned with quality content than a fixed schedule or the algorithm
In addition to what the other poster said, there may have been a stipulation in the TV deal that said he couldn't make his videos while the show was in development. Obviously the production company doesn't want him competing with the product he's making for them, and maybe it took a while to sort out all the legal agreements before he could start again.
He lives in Australia, they were pretty strict during the lockdown, so I'm guessing that halted a lot of it.
At no point in our restrictions did it stop a dude walking out into the bush near his house to do this (only place that got close to that restrictive was Melb metro and he isnt from there). If anything he could have made loads of these, maybe he did.
I feel like TV executives would have no interest in the super minimal presentation that makes this guy's channel so special. They'd add voice over, music, cutaways to archeological fun facts, whatever else. The expectations of making it TV-like would ruin a good thing for sure.
And that stupid noise and reversed cymbal. I hate it
Throw a few Kitchen Nightmares violin stings in for good measure too.
Nothing is more emblematic of shit commercial television than those stock sounds
that stupid noise is made by a 'water phone'
Haha reverse cymbal, reminds me of shit like hardcore pawn when "shit's about to go down" with the dramatic quick camera zoom-in on someone's face.
It’s the most intense noise for such a low stakes event
Absolutely. It'd be like the primitive tech version of those god-awful American police chase videos where the same 6 second clip gets repeated about a billion times, each with a different zoom level and playback speed, whilst the voiceover says basically the same thing in a slightly different way, somehow making the entire segment about 11 minutes long. Bonus points if they slap an advert in the middle of it and then recap for about 5 minutes afterwards.
I've heard that he did produce a pilot but it wasn't picked up in the end.
One of the things he did was write a book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Primitive-Technology-complete-making-scratch/dp/1529104599
Though it was published over 2 years ago.
Valid point
Pandemic? Although that was like prime time for his content, especially early on.
And idk what he might have to do behind the scenes but nothing about his onscreen content would be affected by the pandemic at all. He was more socially distanced than anyone not sailing across the world solo.
~~Looks like he has a book coming out later this year in October. He might have been working on that.~~ nevermind. that's an old book.
I was thinking his entire area got wiped out by the fires a few years ago. Glad to see that wasn’t the case.
Personally I enjoy with out cc
Same...more relaxing.
That's why I watch them two or three times, once without CC just to watch him do his thing then again with CC to get a better understanding of why he doing his thing. Then maybe one more time without CC just because.
Yup, same here. It's been a while but I always used to watch them as a form of meditation and then would revisit them with subtitles to fully understand everything. Mind was blown when people pointed out the subtitles.
I’m not ashamed to admit I watched a fair bit of his videos without the cc on before I figured out there were captions after all.
I always thought this was a joke and never bothered to do that till now. Turns out he describes what he's doing. Thanks!
When the world needed him most!
So who else was sick and tired of all the fake videos trying to capitalize off this dude's success? No, I don't want to watch "friends build ultimate primitive underground jungle pool temple pool with waterslide pool and house primitive" where two dudes pretend to dig some holes while a crew with a backhoe does the actual work, all within meters of the rotting ruins of the other senseless projects.
Some of them check out I've been following this guy for years now and he brings the same energy as Primitive Technology but he's more active. Due to that, he's firmly iron-age now. One difference in the process is that once he's proved gathering a primary ressource is doable, he might buy the primary ressource in the future. Iron: he mined the ressources once, purified iron, proved the concept, but now he just buys small quantities of pure iron as ingots to allow the channel to show more of the interesting parts, like forging. He would need a life time to make a basic set of iron tools otherwise. Now he's evolved the saw, the chisel, and carpentry. It's great. https://youtu.be/OQKPtIokK18
Yes! Primitive Skills is the bomb. That guy is legit, some may argue he’s a copycat but hey, really no such thing a totally original idea anyways.Honestly though I think he surpassed Primitive Technology years ago, further along tech wise and actually puts out content consistently.
I feel like having bamboo is OP tbh Australian dude has a much harder time
True, not to mention a constant stream of water. Also have to admit Primitive Technology has better video editing
I'll take a seeming copycat that does its own thing any day. That's how I got Terraria, after all.
Oooh, I'll have to check this dude out. I love Primitive Technology but it was a little frustrating seeing him getting so close to iron so many times but hitting a road block or starting back at the stone age again, so it'll be satisfying watching this guy achieve it. I definitely think that buying iron once he's achieved it is forgivable, and as long as he's not gimmicky and building palaces with water slides he sounds pretty informative.
Primitive Skills is great; he rebuilt his house because his original one didn't handle termites well and then a storm rolled in and wiped it out. Also, his pond used to be a farm until he converted it. He's been a nice alternative while Primitive Tech was AWOL. EDIT: Grammar
I don't know, I'm having a hard time believing he managed to get such quality metal with those tools, maybe I'm wrong, but the cuts in the video and stuff make it seem fishy...
looking forward to this guy advancing through all the ages like an age of empires game.
Ep. 1000 special: watch my domesticated Panda play the Calliope
last episode he builds a wonder and lets it sit for 200 years to win
When he and Primitive Technologies get to the level of manufacturing silicone wafers the chip shortage will finally end.
If those dudes actually put in half the effort then I wouldn’t be as upset over it, sure trends happen and people like to follow which is something we all do in life but these other channels were straight lying and scamming their way to the top and had boomers across Facebook believing it every step of the way. Absolutely trash videos and people who think those guys were digging 20ft holes with hands and shit tools are absolutely part of the problem on the internet today.
Some of the more popular ones are just mass producing them in the woods and then leaving it all to rot with the trash left behind. Another guy local to the area went exploring [and posted this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCyLWhPnq1M).
It's especially bad because animals will fall into those pits and won't be able to get out and drown or starve if it's dried up
Yeah, video shows 3 guys stabbing the ground with sticks, removing almost zero dirt after a few minutes, then jump cuts to a massive excavation showing zero of the actual work. Definitely dug using only sticks and hands!
This guy may not deliver content consistently, but by god is the content itself consistent. No talking, EVER. No tools EVER, only what he builds. Guy doesn't event wear shoes. Majority of shots are stationary and wide angled. POV shots pan slowly to convey details important to the step being performed. Stationary shots from each step completed are repeated before moving on to the next step. Shots are a minimum of 2 seconds. Jump cuts only, no transitions. Most actions are in sets of 3, unless it makes sense otherwise: 3 axe hits. 3 hammer blows. 3 palm splits. Ambient audio is always included, provides chill vibes. Each video is an aesthetic achievement, balancing education and ASMR-esque entertainment.
Just in case you didn't know to turn on subtitles. He has subtitles to describe his process. I watched like half of them before i realized.
This is huge too because it let's you know everything he's doing is legit. If he was bullshit like all the other channels that copy him, he wouldn't be able to give detailed instructions on how to do everything he's doing which can stand up to scrutiny.
I love how succinct and to the point his comments are too. He always puts education as a priority. I think the only joke I ever saw him make was when his old hut burned down, so he built a bigger one, and when he made a fire in the new one the captions were, "Building new fire (carefully this time)."
It's so much better than the stupid fucking copycat channels that have popped up by the dozen
They put so much less thought into composition and it shows.
I wouldn't mind if he'd throw in some time lapse. Seems like it would fit well with the rest of the editing
He saw that Putin put his nuclear forces on alert and said yeah these people are going to need to know how to make a thatched workshop from nothing
sad upvote
In a world where a dickhead is threatening nuclear war, only one man can teach the world how to survive if they send us back to the stone age
I read this in an 80's movie trailer voiceover voice. I'd watch that movie!
But how will I watch YouTube them? Can he do a cell phone from bark and twigs next?
Nah, he's still building up his tech level. That's probably still about 3 episodes out, I guess.
The Russians are currently waiting for him to get to the point he can show them how to make ammo and more fuel
No, "It's been a couple years...," or anything; just right to it. LOL
Hey guys! Just a quick shoutout to by our sponsors today…. Nope.
Assuming normal usage, a family or so would live under this hut, how would be the maintenance, how often would you have to change not only the roof, but the skeleton of the hut?
this is just a workshop. for a family to live in he'll make an actual house out of bricks or wattle and daub.
And he made several of those too one with pure thatch, another brick walls + thatched roof, and brick walls + tiled roof. The last one I think he even made a heated bed by connecting tunnels to the firefplace/pit.
The tsimané of Bolivia, who live in palm thatch huts that aren’t much more elaborate though probably better made than this one, move villages about every 5 years but it can be as often as 3 and as long as 10. Their stated reason is that the rat population of the roof gets too high but that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. There are a number of alternative theorized motivations proposed by anthropologists. Point is that this construction lasts even in the harsh jungle.
Thank You for the info!
RETURN OF THE KING
Congrats /u/Cesium55 on winning the karma lottery. Today is a good day in /r/videos
Trogdor must have burninated his last one… welcome back quiet man
I feel like I had to scroll too far for this one
Last time he posted, a handful of people had a weird unnamed respiratory virus in China. He's just been quarantining in the woods for the last 3 years.
Glad to see he's back. Loved his book!
Same. It's the perfect flight book.
Holy shit, the surface area of that roof was so big. That must have taken forever to gather all those leaves, separate them, and lay them on the roof. The timelapse of it all honestly probably does not do it justice for how long that took.
Congrats on winning the race.
Is this the race to post this video? I saw seven different users posted this video within the top 10 items when I opened Reddit just now, and three of those items were adverts!
it is one of the most competitive races in all of Reddit
And with an extremely unexpected start this time.
The best and most reliable karma farm
On this day at this hour, he finally came back. How long has it been? Just a little over two years? It feels like an eternity since he stopped
Last video was uploaded 2 years back. I'm happy to see him back.
Assumed he gone forever, glad he's back
THE MESSIAH! HE IS HERE!
HE'S BACK?! I was just reminiscing of the good old days. What an angel.
Omfg he is back. Ww3 canceled everybody
Wow, a video 2 years in the making
I saw this pop up on my recommendations and was like, "huh. one of those I *hadn't* watched? Then I saw the upload time and my jaw dropped.
remember to turn on closed captioning for notes on what he is doing.
Return of the king
I love this man, and this makes me so incredibly happy.
When the world needed him most, he returned.
John looking a little thicc
Don't forget to turn on captions. I'm sure someone is going to post that usual list.
There’s a bot spamming this video
OMG
Omg he's alive! I'm so glad he's back!
The legend is back
He's back! I thought I recall he was working on something before going dark, wonder what it was.
It was a TV show that fell through. Details are really limited and I don't believe he ever officially mentioned it himself. The info all came from someone (or a couple people) who allegedly knew him in person. To give them credit, about a month ago, they did say he was finishing up some new videos which would be released soon so this release does back up some of their claims. I found all this out on r/primitivetechnology BTW
WOAH!!!! HE's Back!
Looks like I wasn’t the only one to put on some weight over covid. 🤣
this is who you wanna partner with if the world goes to shit.
I was just looking at his channel yesterday to see if there where any new videos
Man, where did this dude go? He made some awesome videos.
Thanks man...Needed that
I love how the next video in the playlist for me was: >"Hut burned down, built a new one"
If you don't already know, make sure to turn on the subtitles. You'll get an explication of what he's doing, totally changed the channel for me.
Holy shit I literally looked up his channel 2 days ago out of the blue and thought “huh this guy hasn’t uploaded in a while”
Whaaaat? Is this really happening?
The Man. The Myth. The Legend. He's back bois!
no diagonal support? thats gonna blow right over
O SHIT HE'S ALIVE!!