Danny Sapko discovers… (now including follow up vid that is worse!)

[Killerfridge]

8 hours ago, kwmlondon said:

That was a really good take. Enjoyed that. Cheers for sharing.

 

If you can stretch to a nearly 55 min video, Adam Neely's PhD thesis-level discussion of miming and authenticity is incredible. It also shows all the tricks of how you can knock up a faked video - it's an eye-opener. I knew about comping, that's been done since the first days of multi-track recording, but this is amazing:

 

It's good, but I think it misses some key points. Janek and his wife Chelsea address it very well here, especially around how "we have no evidence that fakery is bad for self esteem", except we have a litany of evidence in young women and facetuning:

 

 

 

[Doctor J]

I wonder did Janek pay to licence the Gran Turismo image.

[Cato]

Reading all this is an interesting exercise in how social media feeds off itself.

 

Okay the guy did wrong and got caught, but in doing so he seems to have provided enough material to launch a thousand reaction/ commentry clips by other creators.

 

It's an ill wind and all that...

 

 

[BabyBlueSound]

1 hour ago, Cato said:

Reading all this is an interesting exercise in how social media feeds off itself.

 

Okay the guy did wrong and got caught, but in doing so he seems to have provided enough material to launch a thousand reaction/ commentry clips by other creators.

 

It's an ill wind and all that...

 

 

 

Good. If the kids can't figure out the obviously fake, this is what is needed to open at least some eyes. I'm happy to give them my views and likes.

[Cato]

I just find the while 'outrage loop' phenomenon fascinating.

[Beedster]

1 minute ago, Cato said:

I just find the while 'outrage loop' phenomenon fascinating.

 

There's truth in @BabyBlueSound point re opening people's eyes to the fact that fakery is wrong, but the almost hysterical and fever-pitched responses from what is starting to feel like a baying mob are unedifying and I suspect in many cases are at least a little hypocritical. OK, the guy's a con artist, he's not the first in music and he won't be the last. Jeez imagine if the internet had been around when these guys were doing their thing......

 

  

[Beedster]

2 hours ago, Cato said:

Reading all this is an interesting exercise in how social media feeds off itself.

 

Okay the guy did wrong and got caught, but in doing so he seems to have provided enough material to launch a thousand reaction/ commentry clips by other creators.

 

It's an ill wind and all that...

 

 

 

There's a real sense that cancel culture has evolved into capitalise culture

[EBS_freak]

10 hours ago, Killerfridge said:

It's good, but I think it misses some key points. Janek and his wife Chelsea address it very well here, especially around how "we have no evidence that fakery is bad for self esteem", except we have a litany of evidence in young women and facetuning:

 

 

 

4 mins in and they’ve said nothing. Nup, not sitting through any more of that.

[BabyBlueSound]

If you have seen one of these, you have seen basically all, yes. BUT.

 

The point is, if some guy now wants to look up the sick licks of the faker on YouTube, they will likely stumble upon one of the many exposes, as they should.

 

The guy made sick money via STEALING. Let's not clutch our pearls that some of the wronged YouTubers and actual musicians are now making like £70 on the rageclicks. They deserve more.

[Leonard Smalls]

Charley's put up a vid too! 

 

 

[Beedster]

There will no doubt be a 'second wave' of accusations, cancellations, and people further capitalising on this. There'll already be hundreds if not thousands of people around the web digging for any evidence, no matter how tenuous, that one of the music influencers accusing this guy are guilty of the same thing. The desperate need to feed the machine to get attention drives fakery and plagiarism everywhere because it requires levels of creativity beyond nearly all normal people, so people become magpies, relying on the creativity of multiple other people to maintain status - I used to be an 'ideas man' in a science business, I'd open my mouth at a client meeting and two hours later there'd be a good chance that someone at the meeting had posted a 'Thought Leadership' piece on Linkedin along the lines 'So, I was talking to a guy this morning and it got me thinking.......' when it didn't 'get them thinking', they literally took my ideas word for word and presented them as their own. It happens in the arts, in science, in literature, in product design and manufacture, everywhere, it's rife and is being fuelled by what is to all intents the wild and lawless frontier of the internet about to be made infinitely worse by the indiscriminate use of AI by the type of muppets who would do that sort of thing........    

Edited 4 hours ago by Beedster

[Stub Mandrel]

It fascinates me to see this.

 

Social mediais awash with ripped off content, rarely with acknowledgement of the original creator beyond cynical and meaningless disclaimer statements.

 

What appears different here is not reposting someone's work, but studiously reproducing it and putting it out there as original.

 

Thevthing I don't get is the guy is clearly talented. Even if he doesn't reach Rick Beato's gold standard and relies on editing tricks, he can learn and play complex music well enough.

 

It seems he struggles to improvise or create at even a relatively basic level (even the level we do).

 

It's reminiscent of the phenomenon known as the 'idiot savant' - ability without understanding (I'm not saying he's an idiot, though he may be a fool).

 

There are hints of other psychological issues around disregard for others or lack of consideration. Presumably his instagram started small, and its growth may be driven more by his personal needs rather than base greed.

 

He may be dealing with a range of issues that don't excuse what he's done but provide an explanation.

Edited 3 hours ago by Stub Mandrel

[BabyBlueSound]

In my opinion accusations aren't enough in this case, I hope someone will take it further, or the victims band together, or something.

 

If you can still sell your stolen gear and continue getting the Instagram money, what's the deterrence for the next up and coming thief?

 

One of these videos (can't even keep up anymore myself) made the point that the penalties need to be BIGGER than the profits, otherwise it's just a low-risk gamble to continue stealing and MAYBE if you get caught, then you get nothing but don't lose anything either. While if you don't get caught, you're a "winner".

 

No. They need to lose, and lose A LOT.

[Beedster]

4 minutes ago, BabyBlueSound said:

the penalties need to be BIGGER than the profits

 

Show me where else the same is true - certainly not in banking fraud, tax avoidance etc - and also tell me who would enforce it?

[BabyBlueSound]

4 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

Show me where else the same is true - certainly not in banking fraud, tax avoidance etc - and also tell me who would enforce it?

 

Oh, I'm just an idealist, I don't think it will ever happen to anyone who has stolen above a certain threshold 😁

 

But the above actually happened in US courts, it was a real life example. It just doesn't happen enough, and we're certainly not even going in the right direction.

[Beedster]

10 hours ago, Doctor J said:

I wonder did Janek pay to licence the Gran Turismo image.

 

I missed that first time around  

[Supernaut]

Not sure why there are people upset that this guy was caught stealing music and profiting from it. Guilty of the same thing? 
 

EDIT: The people upset are those defending him. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Supernaut

[TimR]

25 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Not sure why there are people upset that this guy was caught stealing music and profiting from it. Guilty of the same thing? 

 

I think he's miming to unknown artists work and passing it off as his own. 

 

That's not the same as playing cover versions in a pub, where the original artist is known and is probably getting performing rights payments. 

 

Nor is it the same as Mini Vanilli, miming to a bunch of recordings someone else wrote and played, and was paid for knowing that would happen.

 

Not to mention countless musicians who were sneaked in the back door while the band were having a break, to ghost play on recordings, and not even the band realised it wasn't them on the record and probably still don't know to this day.

[TimR]

52 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

Show me where else the same is true - certainly not in banking fraud, tax avoidance etc - and also tell me who would enforce it?

 

The procedes of crime are quite often (if not usually) confiscated. 

 

 

[Cato]

29 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

Not sure why there are people upset that this guy was caught stealing music and profiting from it. Guilty of the same thing? 

 

I don't think any has said that he didn't do anything wrong.

 

I'm just not sure the situation requires every music adjacent youtuber and tik tokker in the world to make their own video on how absolutely awful what he did is.

 

It all seems rather performative, like being seen to be outraged has become more important than the original crime.

[peteb]

7 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

The procedes of crime are quite often (if not usually) confiscated. 

 

 

 

That rarely happens for white collar crimes, especially in finance and related fields. 

 

[TimR]

Just now, Cato said:

 

I don't think any has said that he didn't do anything wrong.

 

I'm just not sure the situation requires every music adjacent youtuber and tik tokker in the world to make their own video on how absolutely awful what he did is.

 

It all seems rather performative, like being seen to be outraged has become more important than the original crime.

 

It's just jumping on the latest trend.

 

Beato wasn't going to do anything until loads of people hassled him. 

 

A lot of the YouTubers had interviewed him and been taken in by him, so guess they do have a personal axe to grind. 

[jonnybass]

9 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

The procedes of crime are quite often (if not usually) confiscated. 

 

 

What crime has been committed? Pretending to play guitar isnt illegal.  

 

Jonny

[TimR]

1 minute ago, peteb said:

 

That rarely happens for white collar crimes, especially in finance and related fields. 

 

 

Often it will be the cost and likelihood of recovery vs the amount recovered.

 

No one is going to pay thousands of pounds to recover a few YouTube royalties.

 

[TimR]

2 minutes ago, jonnybass said:

What crime has been committed? Pretending to play guitar isnt illegal.  

 

Jonny

 

Technically its fraud if people are paying you money to do it. He's not just "pretending to play guitar". 

 

But, I was just commenting on the fact that proceeds are often recovered.