Transcription

Almost every single primitive building channel is underpinned by countless different lies, and we've got tons of evidence to prove it. Now, we need to put an emphasis on the fact that this is at most primitive building channels, and certainly not all of them. After sifting through forum post upon forum post about the ways in which these primitive builders lie, in order to generate sometimes up to 500 million views per video, users continue to mention one name over and over, crediting him as legitimate amongst the sea of phonies. The 10.4 million subscriber channel, which is run by an Australian named John Plant, basically invented the primitive construction genre, all the way down to the sound design of silence mixed with rainforest noises, with primitive technology even stating in a Reddit AMA that originally it was out of laziness in not putting narration in the videos, but then the silent format became popular, so I kept it that way. When going back to the beginning of these silent relaxing videos, it becomes pretty obvious as to why they're credited as seeming pretty legit in terms of authenticity. Primitive technology cuts no corners in showing how each stage of the construction is completed legitimately. For example, when examining his very first video, he shows the axe head being sharpened, a log then being cut by the axe, then the logs being crafted together in a way that feels realistic. All of this is accompanied by specific captions explaining what's going on in that very moment, alongside a full description of the build, all the way down to how long the construction process took. His builds never include swimming pools or anything over the top, yet feel impressive as they seem to be on the cutting edge of what is and isn't possible to build by hand. The legitimacy of some of his more impressive builds, such as this brick hut, can be supported by YouTube comments such as this one which stated, I actually know John personally. He was a really good friend. We live in the same town, although I haven't seen him since he went viral. I have fond memories of him telling us that he was building huts out bush and had no idea they were so legit, before going on to credit him as a pretty authentic guy from a personal relationship standpoint. All of this is incredibly important to understand, as primitive technology's videos set a baseline for what should and shouldn't be achievable in a natural setting. Additionally, primitive technology has been kind enough to provide us with a statement which will be referred to as we look at the channels on the other end of the spectrum, also known as the fakers. The fundamental problem with the genre is that, with so much time between camera cuts, there's plenty of time to set things up illegitimately, and with primitive technology's very first video receiving over 44,000 Reddit upvotes and 30 million views, it's no surprise that copycats with less integrity began to pop up left, right and centre. On these channels, the buildings were taller, the slides were longer and the water was suspiciously more blue. Even more interestingly, almost all of these channels range from the exact same area, being Cambodia, Thailand or Vietnam, yet often geotag the United States, claim to be living in the United States and have their social blade country set to the United States. The overall production and build quality on these channels is arguably far more impressive than the OG primitive technology, to the point where you have to ask yourself, are they really creating these structures out of mud and sticks? Well, when you do a little bit of research, the answer to this question is most certainly no. The best evidence for this is found when looking at a 5 million subscriber channel called Primitive Technology Idea, whose failure to cover up the ways in which they fake their videos make them almost comical to watch. Take for example this episode titled Building Underground Water Maze Crocodile to the Secret Underground House and Swimming Pool, in which the first shot shows two men digging on the surface, then in the next frame they're in an 8 foot deep trench. Now, if they're digging this deep with sticks, how are they avoiding large rocks and potential tree roots from, you know, the massive line of trees seen just behind them? Are they being assisted by large machinery? Well, we'll get to that in a little bit, but first let's focus on the idea that it's only two people doing these impressively large primitive construction projects. If that's what they were attempting to portray, it probably would have been best not to include the clip where a guy in a white t-shirt can be seen working on the project in the background. Yet, if it were just these three guys, that still wouldn't be that bad. However, further evidence suggests that they are far more help than this. At the start of the week, a community post was made on this channel in the hope that someone who had worked with one of these primitive builders would be willing to share their experience in doing so. We received countless emails which were all super helpful, yet one email stood out as being incredibly unique. That email was, incredibly, from one of the cameramen who works for one of these larger Southeast Asian primitive building channels. His name and the channel he works for have both been blown out, as it'd be a little unfair for him to get in trouble for simply trying to help out, but the email began by stating, As you may have suspected, it's not as streamlined as the video would suggest. It is a large operation, as you may suspect, with a large team of us behind it. After he then offered to answer any questions we had about their channel, we attempted to figure out how many different people will work on the actual construction part of the project from start to finish, to which he would respond, It is depending on the scale of the project, but no less than one dozen or more, before going on to explain that within his team, there is a director for the acting done. There is also a height architect to obviously make sure the structure will not collapse, and will last long enough to film in, and obviously afterwards many editors are involved. In case an email from someone who works for one of these primitive builders isn't enough evidence, it's time to introduce a different channel called Photo Expression, who, incredibly, stumbled upon one of these primitive construction sites before capturing over 8 minutes of footage with a drone. We'll refer to different parts of this footage throughout our video, but for now, it can answer the question of how many people are really working on these sites. There's initially a clip where 8 different workers can be seen standing around a rectangular hole in the jungle, followed by another grainier clip from a far distance, where somewhere between 7 and 10 people can be seen building a swimming pool. If they were honest about how many people were working on each project, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it should be noted that some of these videos specifically state in the description that, I'd been working hard with my two friends about 100 days to completely build, when in reality, it's a whole team working for only 3-10 days depending on the project, as mentioned in the email response from the cameraman. So, if they're being untruthful about the time period as well as how many people are working on each project, what else are they lying about? Well, how about the incredible fire pits that they seem to create effortlessly? Going back to the statement made to us by Primitive Technology, he seemed to imply that maybe the fire making in their videos was fake. It's oddly surprising that he brought this up, as when you compare his meticulous method of creating fire in the wild, to the fire making of these South East Asian primitive channels, as mentioned previously, it becomes comical. They slap a couple of rocks together, before beginning an explosive fire on large logs, with no kindling whatsoever. Jon went on to state that, if they're fake simpler things, then they're most certainly faking more complicated ones, which turns out to be true, as when looking at another video by Primitive Technology Idea, it becomes obvious that, not only are these guys faking simple things such as fire, these guys are also faking the most labor intensive exercise of all, the digging process itself. This video with over 63 million views begins as most do. A shirtless guy draws a big circle and begins to dig it out, only in the next frame, suddenly there's spray paint on the ground that they forgot to rub out. Additionally, on the wall of the hole, these long smooth cuts can be seen which are completely incomparable to the cuts being made by the stick. Well, there's a reason for this. Turns out spray paint marks weren't the only thing that they forgot to rub out, as in the minutes that follow, excavator tracks can be seen here, here, here and here. In a different video by the same channel, the same person can be seen working very hard digging out a similar hole, which to their credit contains no excavator tracks around it. One mistake they did make however, was that they forgot to take the actual excavator out of the top right hand corner. According to the email sent to us by the cameraman in one of these channels, approximately 70% of the digging is completed by machinery, whilst 30% is completed by hand, given how much of the work lies in simply digging. But men still do plenty of digging, as you may guess in small underground spaces, it is impossible to fit a skid-steer loader in the hole. Most of the actual construction is done by a high team of specialized builders from my understanding, and they work with only intrinsic tools. The dirt is removed by skid-steer loaders and offloaded elsewhere, and skid-steer loaders are used in the initial boring process, whilst incrementally we film the builders doing superficial works on the hole. The video in which the excavator can be seen in plain sight, then goes on to strangely display the collection of concrete from a river, which is the exact same clip reused from the previous video. Now, why would they reuse the same clip twice in two different videos? Well, it's because collecting concrete from a river is completely and utterly bogus. Concrete doesn't grow in a river, according to a civil engineer who commented on one of these videos. Earth cement, this is incredibly fake. Cement requires a precise combination of different raw materials, and then receives considerable heat treatment in order to make the powder we all know and love slash hate. What's even funnier is that every single one of these channels has their own unique method for creating natural concrete. This channel's concrete is simply a mix of dirt and water, which, if you think about it for two seconds, doesn't create concrete and rather creates muddy water or mud, which is just dirt after the water dries. This other channel gets a little bit more creative with it by taking a chunk out of a termite nest, grinding it down into powder, mixing it with water, then concreting an entire pool with this small chunk of termite nest. Yet, neither of these compare to the fakest channel of them all, Primitive Technology Life, which decides to just skip the concrete altogether and go with good old rocks and dirt. However, that's not the only suspicious thing about this shot. You'll notice when looking at the bamboo that each branch has a suspiciously clean cut on the end. Compare this to Primitive Technology, the legitimate channel from Australia, who in one video displays what the end of a log should actually look like, and you'll notice pretty quickly that these pieces of bamboo weren't naturally cut on sight. These pieces of bamboo weren't either, which, as displayed in the video, were attached together then used to siphon water from a river to the pool. Only, there was no river. Photo Expression found the exact site of this pool, then stated in his video that in reality, the closest water source was more than 6km away. Instead, he found a bunch of blue plastic piping attached to a tap in the ground. Going back to the email from the cameraman, the water for their channel just comes in cubic containers that is transported there. A very funny part is any scene where you see them sourcing water from some magnificent waterfall or lake, they're actually going somewhere perhaps hundreds of kilometers away and pretending to take it back. The video in which Photo Expression had stumbled upon various completed primitive builds also showed that after these channels are finished building, the sites are simply left to rot. This video doesn't speak for every Southeast Asian primitive building channel, but in this particular case, rubbish was left everywhere, including, as you might guess, cement bags. The fact that the videos are fake isn't the most concerning, it's the destruction of the land that's concerning. Now, if this was public rainforest, you could probably consider this a pretty big deal, but according to the cameraman's email, at least on their channel, every build is done on privately owned land, which is leased for the purposes of the video. If this is the case, maybe Photo Expression is in the wrong for snooping around and filming on someone else's property. We're kidding, of course, but if the builds are being completed on privately owned land, it's a little narcissistic to comment on what they should and shouldn't do with it. Primitive Technology, the original legitimate Australian channel, put it best in his email to us when he said, My advice to people who really want to know if the techniques on display are legitimate is to put them into practice and see. If you can follow the steps and get a similar result, then it's probably legit. He added that these corner-cutting channels are motivated by money and status alone, rather than a true interest in primitive technology. But wanting to stay out of internet drama will leave it up to the discerning viewer to decide what's real and what's not.