I actually watched that video and it was like... Kinda annoying how he felt the need to keep repeating those "North Korea bad" talking points while literally at the same time disproving them. Like he mentions how there's an enormous amount of misinformation about North Korea due to media sensationalism, but also he takes a hoax comic at face value and then in the pinned comment had to say "this comic seems fake, actually". And he talks about different factions within the WPK and "loosening social control" and how North Koreans aren't all brainwashed and are in fact capable of thinking and acting for themselves and that a lot of the weeping for the deceased leaders was real just as a lot of North Koreans' smiles are real, but also, the Kims are totally like a monarchy with absolute control over everything somehow. And I swore he also presented North Korea as being oddly belligerent wrt nuclear weapons and missiles and stuff, despite also describing in plain terms why exactly the DPRK needs these weapons, and he disproved or questioned some other anti-DPRK narratives as well even though he was still by in large anti-DPRK himself.
The cherry on top is that in the pinned comment, in the end credits, and in the sources pastebin, Paper Will highlights DPRK Explained as a great YouTube channel for learning about North Korea. Which is an explicitly pro-DPRK channel.
As a whole I'd call the Paper Will video almost... cute? Like, it reminds me of when I was a teenager not yet a socialist, and I made a school presentation about Soviet VIAs, and I also made a YouTube video about the Soviet animated short film Poligon that I showed to my class. I repeated various nonsensical "gommunism bad" talking points, sure, yet at the same time I was repeatedly accidentally disproving those same talking points to myself, just by being genuinely inquisitive and open-minded and thinking that everything had to have a logical reason behind it. And so I had to concede that the USSR actually did have plenty of Ws and was "just as good if not in some ways better for artists and musicians than the West", and I had to somehow make that fit into my preconceptions and biases and "gommunism bad" worldview — and I'm sure we all know how that ultimately went.
Just as importantly, I was making the USSR simply less alien to myself, and I was seeing how widespread Soviet nostalgia was throughout the former Soviet Union. My mental prototype of "Soviet Union" was going from drab concrete slabs to colors and excitement just by taking even a passing interest in the USSR, and that alone made anti-Soviet propaganda way less effective.
It would honestly not surprise me if the Paper Will video about North Korean media actually ends up butterfly-effecting some people into becoming pro-DPRK. It repeats anti-DPRK talking points, sure, but it also sows some seeds of doubt, the talking points fall apart under scrutiny; and the video gives people a direction to go. Even if it's a bunch of lib shit, if there are people who have never before seen North Korean movies or shows or cartoons, or never heard North Korean music, et cetera, then there's a whole five hours here dedicated to namedropping various things. Paper Will actually speaks pretty positively of some of the things he mentions, meanwhile other things he mentions I could see my past self becoming curious about and willing to try just for the sake of it.
Edit: Actually, I can mention specifically, the lib friend who showed me this video in the first place — thanks to it he learned that socialist Czechoslovakia was actually a hugely important country in the history of animation! He didn't know that before, and now he does. He used to think that animation from socialist Eastern Europe was basically like "Worker and Parasite" from The Simpsons.
I actually watched that video and it was like... Kinda annoying how he felt the need to keep repeating those "North Korea bad" talking points while literally at the same time disproving them. Like he mentions how there's an enormous amount of misinformation about North Korea due to media sensationalism, but also he takes a hoax comic at face value and then in the pinned comment had to say "this comic seems fake, actually". And he talks about different factions within the WPK and "loosening social control" and how North Koreans aren't all brainwashed and are in fact capable of thinking and acting for themselves and that a lot of the weeping for the deceased leaders was real just as a lot of North Koreans' smiles are real, but also, the Kims are totally like a monarchy with absolute control over everything somehow. And I swore he also presented North Korea as being oddly belligerent wrt nuclear weapons and missiles and stuff, despite also describing in plain terms why exactly the DPRK needs these weapons, and he disproved or questioned some other anti-DPRK narratives as well even though he was still by in large anti-DPRK himself.
The cherry on top is that in the pinned comment, in the end credits, and in the sources pastebin, Paper Will highlights DPRK Explained as a great YouTube channel for learning about North Korea. Which is an explicitly pro-DPRK channel.
As a whole I'd call the Paper Will video almost... cute? Like, it reminds me of when I was a teenager not yet a socialist, and I made a school presentation about Soviet VIAs, and I also made a YouTube video about the Soviet animated short film Poligon that I showed to my class. I repeated various nonsensical "gommunism bad" talking points, sure, yet at the same time I was repeatedly accidentally disproving those same talking points to myself, just by being genuinely inquisitive and open-minded and thinking that everything had to have a logical reason behind it. And so I had to concede that the USSR actually did have plenty of Ws and was "just as good if not in some ways better for artists and musicians than the West", and I had to somehow make that fit into my preconceptions and biases and "gommunism bad" worldview — and I'm sure we all know how that ultimately went.
Just as importantly, I was making the USSR simply less alien to myself, and I was seeing how widespread Soviet nostalgia was throughout the former Soviet Union. My mental prototype of "Soviet Union" was going from drab concrete slabs to colors and excitement just by taking even a passing interest in the USSR, and that alone made anti-Soviet propaganda way less effective.
It would honestly not surprise me if the Paper Will video about North Korean media actually ends up butterfly-effecting some people into becoming pro-DPRK. It repeats anti-DPRK talking points, sure, but it also sows some seeds of doubt, the talking points fall apart under scrutiny; and the video gives people a direction to go. Even if it's a bunch of lib shit, if there are people who have never before seen North Korean movies or shows or cartoons, or never heard North Korean music, et cetera, then there's a whole five hours here dedicated to namedropping various things. Paper Will actually speaks pretty positively of some of the things he mentions, meanwhile other things he mentions I could see my past self becoming curious about and willing to try just for the sake of it.
Edit: Actually, I can mention specifically, the lib friend who showed me this video in the first place — thanks to it he learned that socialist Czechoslovakia was actually a hugely important country in the history of animation! He didn't know that before, and now he does. He used to think that animation from socialist Eastern Europe was basically like "Worker and Parasite" from The Simpsons.