How We Whitewashed The Classical Era 

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Important to note that a lot of statues also had gold elements and other metals, but unlike the paint that just naturally faded away, they were often stolen to be sold.

The reason painted statues look "cheap" today is because of changing technology and resources. In ancient Greece stone and marble was plentiful but paint was expensive and a way of showing wealth. Today stone and marble is more expensive compared to how cheap colorful plastic statues could be made.

If you skin is the color of white marble call an ambulance immediately assuming you're not dead already.

This is common knowledge here in Greece, don't know why foreigners are unaware of this.

Imagine in a few thousand years, a museum proudly displaying their collection of unpainted 40k minis as though it were the epitome of high art.

People often confuse aesthetics with familiarity. Fun facts: the ancient Greeks built their famous temples in a way they were familiar with, so they basically copied the shape of the older wooden shrines. A lot of what we consider today to be the highest form is based on replicating carpentry details (e.g., beam joints) that actually make no sense on a stone building.

The classical vandalism I’m saddest about is the neutering of the statues. We lost so much historical detail!

The classical era didnt look cold and disturbing, it was vibrant and full of colour

As someone who studied history and archaeology in a past life, I absolutely agree that we should be teaching the public about what ancient statues really would have looked like, i.e. that they were painted in bright colours rather than being plain and white. I think it can be very helpful for museums to show painted replicas alongside the originals, to give an impression of what they might have looked like when they were new. However, I don’t agree with simply repainting the ancient statues themselves, since (a.) no matter how well informed we think we are today, it’s just another layer of modern re-interpretation, and (b.) it might make it more difficult for future generations of scholars to study the works with technology and knowledge available to them (for example using scanning techniques that don’t exist yet). It’s the equivalent of the Victorians rebuilding ancient ruins like Knossos according to their own idealised image of them, and in the process destroying a lot of archaeological evidence that would have been very valuable to scholars today.

As mid as Assassin's Creed Odyssey was, the colouring on the buildings and statues was absolutely fantastic

The most frustrating discussion about the colors on statues I had was back in University. A bloody art student kept arguing they could not have been painted because they looked more ugly like that. That was his whole argument. He didn't like the look so it wasn't real. And he tried to convince someone studying late antiquity to early medieval European history with that....

The really fun thing is: We have known this for round about 130 years. The architect who built the Austrian parliament (his brother was an archaeologist and he himself spent a lot of time in Greece) even tried to make his classicist style parliament colourful. Remains of that attempt are still there.

I think a lot of the issues normal people have with colorful statues is that reconstructions don't have any shading which was probably there

"how many times do you want to re-make the same video Adam?" "YES"

One of my geology lecturers specialised in pigments and spent a lot of time researching Roman buildings. She said many Romans seem to love horrendous colour combinations: the gaudy the better. If they were around now their cars would've been bright green or orange with gold trim. If they were alive during the 90s they would have loved bright shell suits.

Hah! Us miniatures wargamers were right all along! You can't make the details pop or look interesting unless you put some paint on them.

I visited stirling castle in scotland recently, the main hall was restored to the original bright "kings gold" but then people got annoyed because they didnt like that it was bright rather than grey so historical scotland stopped the restoration. Really bugged me

Renaissance sculptors like Michelangelo, Cellini and Donatello made beautiful sculptures with plain marble far after the classical era. It's true that this was based upon a misunderstanding of classical art, but they belong to their own period of history and are beautiful in their own right.

I like the museums that keep the original plain white statues, then have a recreation beside it showing what it actually looked like at the time

Tbh I prefer the colored statues. They feel alot more natural. Like something a person of the Era would actually make

I’m a classical history PhD - this is not at all controversial. I don’t think that objects should be ‘restored’ without good objective information about the original though, but that’s just me being fussy about art conservation and restoration. But yeah the things glittered with colour wherever they could. There’s also evidence for statues being garlanded or dressed in materials (flowers, cloth etc) that certainly don’t survive. There’s also the issue of how the Romans of the Hellenistic period ‘received’ Greek culture - how they adapted it to their own ends, it wouldn’t surprise me if their decoration and display of imported & stolen statuary had significant differences to the Greek and near eastern cultures they adapted it from. And then how the Roman Empire in turn changed the cultures they conquered (a more well researched topic).

Also, a lot of ancient statues were actually bronze with only their marble recreations surviving today, bronze was used for both its strength and because unpainted it looked like bronze tanned skin

Well, first thing I learned at my Greek art course that all the statues were polychromatic.

My credential: I'm Italian, and after studying art and art techniques for a decade, in my youth I've worked as an art conservationist. I specified my nationality because there is a never-ending battle between the Italian and the Anglo-Saxon approach to art restoration, and you can guess from which trench I'm shooting. Curiously, said skirmish happens to be extremely relevant to the matter discussed in this video. To avoid the TED Talk effect, suffice to say that whilst Anglo-Saxons strives to restore any art piece to its "original state" (as close as possible to the way it looked when created), Italians conservationists follows the "Brandi's Rules": Reversibility, Recognisability, and Historic Mindfulness. In other words, every "touch up" must be easily undone if needed, distinguishable from the original parts, and respectful of the history of the piece. Whilst the first two rules are pretty straightforward (You don't want to get stuck with something you can't undo in case newer and better technologies pops out, nor you want to create a forgery), the third rule is worth explaining. How Historic Mindfulness even looks like in a piece? Well, this part is the one that truly differ from the Anglo-Saxon approach, because it goes against the idea of "bringing back" a piece. Whilst from a purely technical standpoint trying to wind back a piece to the day it left the workshop could be problematic (for instance, it's well documented that most artists, especially during the Renaissance and the Baroque eras, used to mix their materials in such a way that only after decades the pigments would stabilise as the artist intended. It's called "patina", a very effective way to increase durability), the prickliest implications are historical. Every piece has its history, every alteration, every retouch, every sign of time, is part of that history, and is not the job of a conservationist to erase it (like those bunch of whitewashers did with the classical statues) but to preserve the mere matter of the piece in order to keep it standing as long as possible, in the best possible conditions. There really isn't an instance where glossing over something like Time is a good idea, and Art is not an exception. It isn't a mystery that ancient Greeks and Romans painted their sculptures and low reliefs, but what happened to many of those works is now part of them. Adam said in the video: "Those statues for most part are not contemporary art pieces, they are historical art pieces, and the primary reason we look at historical art pieces is not to look at beautiful things but to look at history". And you are looking at it, Adam. Should we try to restore the pieces who hasn't been scrubbed within an inch of their life? Absolutely. Should we create painted copy of the scrubbed statues for context? Absolutely. Should we gather as much information as possible about the nature and hues of the tiny specks of pigments left before embarking in a wild renderization of primal screaming colours that could be just as misleading as the whitewash? Abso-forking-lutely. As an Italian lucky enough to grow up under the same roof with grandparents who seriously struggled during WW2, I have quite the massive bone to pick with any sort of fascist. Especially with those who wobble in my area of expertise and try to plaster their stinky rhetoric over the products of a culture that has nothing to do with them. So, I'm seriously pissed that I have to take this stance in this discussion, but it's about Art. It's supposed to be above all this, it's suppose to be immortal, and record every milestone of our time on this Earth. Even the one we don't like. Shit, I did the TED-talk thing, didn't I?

"Mom, can we have classical antiquity?" "We have classical antiquity in classical antiquity." Classical antiquity in classical antiquity:

I remember being told as a boy by my father in the 1970s that classical sculptures were originally painted and colorful. This was also noted by my classics teachers and in a number of readings as I recall. Did I somehow shift to a parallel world were this wasn’t known? The world has become a pantomime of stupidity. WTF is the big deal?

"They're also strangely obsessed with height, and consider tall people to be inherently superior to short people" I give it ten, twenty years and we'll be there

Wait, isn't this a well-known fact? I heard about the classical statues being painted like 10 years ago. And it made perfect sense to me from the start.

This also happens to more recent history! There's a common misconception of Victorian fashion being dark and dreary, but look at fashion catalogues and fabric samples from the time and you can see they loved colour.

The high medieval era is indeed in need of a makeover in its popular depiction. The people and buildings were clean and colorful.

The Minoans would be horrified at the lack of color, tbh.

That the statues and buildings were painted is basically basic knowledge now. Everybody remotely interested in ancient architecture and art knows that.

i've said this before, in museums and historical exhibition there should be 3 to 4 version of one exhibit that shows 1. the current and real specimen which is preserved to prevent even more wear, 2. a replica that shows how it might have looked like in it's hay day, 3. a modern replica that incorporate modern techniques to build upon the piece so we can show how far we've progressed and the optional 4. a replica of the specimen when it's first discovered so we could see how misunderstanding or mistakes could've been made from our predecessors that discovered it

these statues are so beautifully carved, I can't imagine that they didn't do proper shading because all the details from the stones would vanish. I always imagine these statues to be almost photorealistic.

Something similar happens with precolumbian ruins: we tend to think that Teotihuacan and Chichen Itzá, to say some, always were in stone naked and in darker colors when actually Mesoamerican people actually plastered their buildings and painted them with vivid colors, including the bigger monuments and temples.

This also happened with European plate armour from the medieval and renaissance period. It was typically painted or enamelled and highly colourful, but so much of it got wirebrushed to shiny bare steel in the 1800s and 1900s by antiquarians. Either because they thought it looked better or because they didn't want to upkeep the fading paint.

The far-right whenever people discover ancient civilizations had taste: "And I took that personally."

Adam Something has two moods: 1. Showing the pointlessness and tragedy of the war in Ukraine 2. Getting that sweet sponsorship from War Thunder Great video overall :D

It would be really nice if there was a citations list on your videos in case people (well.. me) want to learn more about the topic.

I had the same reaction I think many had seeing the recoloured statues and thinking it looked like a child had done it, but I thought about it for a while and realized that this is the work of people who are often times going off almost no reference material, trying to relearn artistic skills we’ve essentially lost over the course of 500-1000 years. The practice of making beautiful colorful lifelike statues isn’t a modern bastardization of classical art, it’s a movement to dig up and revive a whole school of artistic techniques that were purposely taken from us and *almost* successfully erased from our cultures

"And then they started getting death threats from the far-right" I feel like anyone who proposes any change can expect those at this point.

You can still appreciate an art style even if it wasn't the intent when the piece was made. A ruined church or a painting with a patina can become more beloved than the original. Obviously you should never intentionally damage historical artifacts, but I don't think it's wrong to also see the beauty in they way an object has been changed by the passage of time.

7:20 man, Cultural Tutor is probably the only good non-farright twitter account with an antique statue profile pic, and you just put him at the forefront as a farright personality. You just did him diiiirty

I like the exhibitions where they project the colour on the original statues using lights. The lights can be slowly brought up and down to show the difference. I think its an effective way to bring people over who are otherwise resistant because of the perceptions they've had since childhood.

the newer assassins creed games in egypt and greece had super nice painted statues and temples etc.

This also happened to dinosaurs, where we figured out that most of them had feathers. Thing is, you can still draw, imagine, and enjoy stories about naked dinosaurs, or white statues. Just know that it's not as correct as we once thought it was.

I always imagined that if our civilization were to "fall" and be rediscovered by a later civilization, that our skyscrapers would probably influence their architectural sensibilities. Maybe the ruined towers that survived to their time would give them the wrong impression, though. They might recreate the visual appearance of what was supposed to be a glass-covered facade but where all the glass has since been smashed and ground to dust and only empty window holes remain. Maybe they think having thin spikes jutting out from the top of a building makes it look impressive, where in reality that's just an imitation of rebar poking out of broken concrete. People imitating the architecture, (and art, and culture in general) of the ruins of their precursors and accidentally including the scars of ruination in their recreations is a whole aesthetic, honestly. It's kind of cool actually.

I like both styles. However, the bleached statues look good in a vacuum, while the painted ones look good with the appropriate context (so as intended, restored properly). I do like the "misunderstood" building styles too. I like toimagine what the capitol building would look like full of color 😂.

My man, love your videos, but can you please source your claims? My main issue with this one is that the Renaissance started as early as the 14th century, almost two centuries before Europeans found the Americas, and even longer before colonialism really took its foothold in it’s conscious. The nexus of Renaissance occurred in the central Mediterranean, significantly east of the Iberian nations which were colonialism’s earliest participants. “Eugenics” was not a concept let alone genes, and Phrenology was not developed until 1796. While the objective of your video is just, the narrative of your video is simply wrong, at least it seems that way to me. Rather, it is more accurate to say that during the renaissance, they interpreted ancient statues to be uncolored largely due to ignorance and finding them not to be so, and then coinciding with the rise of Imperialism and Nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, these beliefs were co-opted into developing racist ideologies. It’s important to get these things right, or the people this content tries to disqualify will point out the errors in this narrative and claim that it disproves the whole point.

Still, Cleopatra wasn't from the Bronx.

1.) Thank you for pointing out the middle ages also suffering from this. I cannot speak for the "medieval community" or however you want to call us, but I'm sure I'm not the only one appreciating a more well-known youtuber talking about this outside of the explicitly medieval historical niche of this site. 2. I think it's very good that you emphasised the last point about the "culture war". I find it very harmful how apparently anyone and anything needs to be openly politically biased to "the left" or "the right" nowadays. I continue to unintentionally get into political arguments when merely talking about history due it not fitting modern ideals, and it's very refreshing to see someone as public as you speak about this, especially considering the political nature of much of your content. I appreciate it very much.

"height guilt" had me rollin' 😆

My problem with the "why not do shading on these statues?" Is that many of these statues were meant to be put outside/naturally lit environments. The lighting would constantly change. It would look weird to anyone for a statue to be shaded as though it is 6:30 pm and view at any other time. I agree with the photorealism part, add texture, be ambitious, but photorealistic doesn't mean putting black in the creases.

If there is paint still on the statue that I think it needs to stay there, even if it's patchy. But if people are making educated guesses then I'd rather they leave it alone. A good compromise would be having a copy nearby with the assumed color work added and why we think that.

Painted or not, those statues mainly portay white/caucasian people. So I don't understand, what difference does it make to paint them or not from a cultural standpoint. Therefore I can't understand those who think that painting them or writing about them being painted, somehow is anti-white. But I also can't understand those who think not painting them is somehow whitewashing.

I’m sorry but that is a huge reach to say the reason classical statues and buildings are left white today is because of racism. There are so many flaws in this premise! 1) If Europeans during the renaissance period were opposed to classical art being coloured because of racism, then why did those same renaissance Europeans paint such vibrant artworks such as the Sistine Chapel and countless other works of art from the period? Why did people wear such vibrant colours at that time and not just white? British suits come from around this time, which are black. Armies were usually defined by their vibrantly coloured uniforms (British red, French blue, etc). And nobility often war all manner of colour, not to mention vibrant interiors. Why? Why was the renaissance art itself not white? The clothes not white? The interiors too? After all, those renaissance racists only respected on colour, and that’s white, right? 2) All the woke vs Red-pill stuff. While right wingers use classical statue imagery these days, and in the last few years or decades these have been hot topics, were they in Europe since that time? Since the renaissance? You provided zero evidence that the renaissance Europeans used this imagery in the same way, you merely conjectured it without evidence. And regarding race, while this was a topic in America and among some elite Europeans, and is of course a hot button topic today, do you think the average renaissance Europeans or even the likes of Leonardo and Michaelangelo really obsessed over this topic in the same way? Is there evidence of that? Finally, before anyone jumps to conclusions that for simply questioning the premise of the video that I must be a racist. Please note that I chose to live as a migrant in a non-white country, to learn the language and fully integrate, etc.

In antiquity there was the concept of the 'Horror vacuii', the fear of nothingness. And the colour white represented this absence of something. This resulted in white parts of the statue even being painted with a white paint, so that way there would be at least paint on it, even if it would not change the colour of it. The perception of the colour white as a symbol of cleanliness and purity only came to be with Christianity.

It is actually kinda funny how Age of Empires 1's colorful graphics meant to easily show whose units and buildings are which ended up being more historically accurate after Mark Abbe's discovery.

for me its like people getting angry at feathers on dinosaurs like .. bruh .. that's the animal

The LotR skit was pure brilliance.

Thank you for touching upon the horribly botched restorations. A point other content creators tend to skip when covering this topic. I personally do not want the statues lazily/incompetently painted over like that, because it hides the incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail. It is like having someone put ketchup on a Michelin dinner. We can make copies, put pain on those. EDIT: What I am saying is that surely the ancients spent a ton of energy on color grading or else there would have been zero point in the super detailed sculptures. Because without colour grading, you cannot see the effing detail and would be a waste of time.

This again? There is no proof that the Ancient Greeks preferred poorly painted statues over not painted at all. I find it absurd that the Ancient Greeks would make statues with lifelike anatomy only to paint with the most basic of colours with no shading. Egyptian hieroglyphics aren't anatomically correct, they are SUPPOSED to be stylized, and the colour also adds to the readability. Meanwhile these poorly painted statues subtract from the readability due to the lack of any shading or detail.

i mean the pure white look is kinda cool

The fun part is that armour from medieval periods was also frequently painted, but was scrubbed and polished by folks in later centuries when the paint was worn (for decoration in mansions of course) so we see a lot of plain metal in the maintained examples.

9:45 As a German I always wondered why these medieval German architectures in movies were greyed out, always thought it was just an effect to sell the bleakness of the scene since living here you always see all those historical buildings in bright colors. The more you know.

I gotta be honest when studying or talking about history or any other scientific field it's bloody important to cite sources otherwise that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It's annoying that a very low percentage of "history" youtubers does that there is only a few good one that does it like atun shei films.

I think we shouldn't put new color on old statues, since that might fuck with them so to speak (if we find an old sword, which obviously had jewelry on it, we don't put jewelry on it). However, I think remakes, with full paint, should be pushed (as the remake of the sword, with jewelry, would be).

Like, first of all, WE did not whitewash anything, time literally did that. No one in Renaissance-era Italy could have, would have or should have known that the white sculptures they knew and saw scattered around were once colorfully painted a millennia or so ago. They saw them as being white, so white statues became a fad, but we thankfully grew and we know better now. People who cant cope with that fact today, on the other hand, are complete assholes. As are people who use it as some sort of critique of society and make it out to be full on planed and purposeful anti-colorism and anti-queer agenda. It just happened. Its a historical misunderstanding, and its a topic Left RU-vid had now done multiple times. Its been done ad nauseum. Like fine, we get it, classical statues were painted, and some demented right wing fan boys got upset over it. Its not a proof of a wide societal far right conspiracy, and the left seems to be the ones who actually crave to make it another culture war talking point. Chill out, its not that serious.

this is an aside, but, at 7:17; 'The Cultural Tutor' is definitely not a white supremacist page imo

Someone has already added sponsor block to this lol. Good work.

I don't usually play Ubisoft games but I got AC: Odyssey for free, and walking around ancient Greek cities with painted columns and statues was magical.

Ironically iirc there is a letter by a roman stereotyping light skin with weakness (by staying indoors) and "uncivilized rashness"

Ok, is Adam going to make video how much of this video is incorrect? Scholars already knew about the color of statues since the 19th century. And no, people weren't intentionally trying to scrub off the color in museums. No, we knew that plates weren't just in black and white. This is what happens when you don't based your information on scholarship and instead, of some article in media. Kinda disappointed in Adam here. Oh, and Renaissance happened in a different period than the Transatlantic slave trade and nothing to do with ancient sources. C'mon people.

Regarding the "I prefer white statues", you can add that there is plenty of white art inspired by our wrong perception of the classical era and it is okay to appreciate those pieces as white since it is their original color.

The painted statues look WAY better. And it's much more fun to imagine ancient Greece and Rome with all those colors. The only problem is, at least here in Canada, we only ever see painted statues in parks for children or McDonald's or whatever, so yes, by that association it makes them seem targeted at a less sophisticated audience, or "cheap". Most of our "statues for adults" are a monochrome green (oxidized bronze). I don't think I've seen a purely white statue outside of a museum.

Haven’t you talked about this before???

I think a nice compromise would be having a plaque with an image depicting what the sculpture would have looked like originally, in front of the sculpture. And perhaps when people warm up to the idea, we can paint only the ones that we ourselves removed the paint from, leaving the ones where the paint degraded over time and wasn't due to our whitewashing.

Funny how much of it comes down to the best stone on hand for carving happening to be white. Of course, it's also the best base color for painting other colors onto.

I think the original statues shouldn't be restored, because what we're seeing looks like just the base paint. It would probably be pretty easy tho to make replicas that you can paint in accordance to the pigment traces researchers have found, and ancient descriptions/ surviving art, but also add some shading on it, so that people get an idea of what it probably looked like. Just like they don't go around making new arms or heads on broken sculptures, because you couldn't replicate it well enough

You should definitely not 'restore' classical statues. The thing is that we have no idea how they were painted. Little to no physical evidence has survived and we don't have any detailed descriptions. So unfortunately it's impossible for us to restore these statues. You could make your best guess as to how they looked, but if we don't know for sure I think it would be a huge disservice to try and paint them. To me that would not be restoration, just guesswork. And no, I'm not a nazi.

As a model painter, I would love to see some speculative layers and details restored to a replica of these just so get a closer look at what they might have been like when recently painted, since sadly allot of it is lost. ps. love the Heroes of Might and Magic score.

Damn, how about a "receive far right death threat any % speedrun" aka. work in science

And still nobody asked the Greeks who are the owners of the classical era artworks. Literally it is common knowledge here that the statues were in colour and there are displays of classical statues in colour in museums, nobody in Greece cares too much about it, but somehow far right Americans and Europeans need to have an opinion about our culture

Both the Antiquitous Periods and Middle Ages get terribly misinterpreted due to Renaissance/Enlightenment perspectives and stereotypes. As someone who loves antiquity and is studying an MA in Medieval History, its always mind boggling hearing the stereotypes

There is a certain simplicity and tranquility to the completely white marble statue look. That said historically accurate painted statues can look gorgeous as well. (Though sometimes they do look kind of garish)

Let's hope the constant rewriting, upgrading and polishing of this video will become a yearly tradition on this channel.

One thing you did not mention is that Bronze statues do exist and have been known for centuries. They have been created both by ancient greeks and reinassance artists, and they are displayed in museums (for example, look up to the Riace Bronzes or the Donatello's David)

Wait a second this is just the same video you’ve made 2 times already

Identity politics really do be the worst modern concept

Some of the reconstructions with bright garish colours might be going too far the other way though. Like, they found a fleck of red paint residue on a torso and said 'yep, this entire torso was painted bright, solid red'

Whitewashed architecture was a thing in Medieval times as well. Where castles were whitewashed by the ones who made them, because a white castle is a striking visual that showed your wealth and influence to keep it clean as well. These are times way before the mass enslavement of Africans. So no, the origin of whitewashed architecture is not to justify slavery, it's a flex on your contemporaries. And as people continued to be wealthy into future eras, and new elites want to show that they are also among the elite, they just continued the whitewashed architecture.

A entire video dedicated to batshit insane reaches that make pike formations seem like toothpicks. Impressive.

is this a follow up or a repost? either way I am glad you are covering this important subject!

I like the unpainted statues, but that's because it feels less cheap than a plasticy looking painted one. But to the Romans and ancient Greeks, colors were symbols of wealth, which means a painted statue would symbolize wealth more to them than me.

You aren't completely wrong but I have some concerns about the timeline. Scientific racism was a thing, and Fascism does cling to idealized ancient Rome and Greece (while also misrepresentating them like by scrubbing Roman sexuality) , but IIRC best estimates put the start of the Atlantic slave trade around 1526 which is after the deaths of Leonardo and Raphael who are partly credited with the "high rennisance" in Italy where the whole revival began, because like, Rome. Even michalenglo was more into architecture at the time and was pretty much done with statues and paintings he took inspiration from. So while the end result is the same, how we got there is kind different, Italians were obsessed with the form and body structures of the statues more than the colours which was expressed more through paintings.

You’re commenting on costume and set inaccuracies in medieval-set films? This feels like an Adam-Bernadette/Karolina fusion and I love it! Lol

Now I want to play Age of Empires, and I don't know why......

I will never quite understand how either side likes to forget mediterranean people exist, Cleopatra wasn't black or white, nor was Julius Caesar or Alexander. Mediterranean peoples (Spain, Egypt, Libya, Greece, Turkey, Italy, etc) come in a huge variety of colors and shades; my own skin can go from pale olive or even greyish in winter to a bronze tan in the summer; from this alone and all the trade going around the antiquity would have been really quite colorful, and that's just skin. Far rights don't know that paint has been a thing for thousands of years? Hieroglyphs were painted, they just preserved a lot better indoors in a dry environment, what? the greeks didn't know how to make paint? Despite the many descriptions of color and heraldry in the epics? The wind and sun corroded the colors!

'We've been lied to' - by whom? Your clickbait title is irritating because you point out that the experts explain that the statues were painted (and they've been saying this for at least 20 years, btw). If people choose to listen to anyone else more fool them. This feels like a filler video so you can milk the sponsor than a video with much real content to it.