It's annoying when people complain that my content is "too eurocentric". And after making my Shinjuku station video a lot of people are saying that "finally" there's some "non-eurocentric" content. 🙄
I make videos about MY experiences in cities. I don't summarize a bunch of facts you could easily find on Wikipedia, Twitter, or news articles, and then lazily recite it over stock footage.
I actually GO to places, experience them in person, and over 90% of my videos is footage I filmed myself.
I live in Europe. I experience Europe. I go back to Canada once a year to see family.
That's not "eurocentric", those are my regular lived experiences.
I am not going to travel out of Europe (and Canada) regularly.
That's not not a realistic thing financially, but it's also completely irresponsible from a climate perspective, and wouldn't be fair to my family either.
And it bugs me because these comments show absolutely no respect for me, or the creative process behind my videos.
Anyway, if you're ever curious as to why I hate comments, it should be clear by now. 😁
Unfortunately it's basically impossible for me to avoid reading any comments about my videos, because they show up in the most unlikely places (like under completely unrelated articles on all kinds of websites).
I'd have to avoid reading anything on the Internet at all.
Actually, now that I think about it, that might not be such a bad idea. 🤔
@notjustbikes I’m happy you don’t get discouraged by extremists, even those that message you privately to show you the finest car infested part of Japan … Me? No … only once 😅
@notjustbikes I watched your video today on Shinjuku and it was entertaining and insightful 😊
A lot of urbanist content on YouTube tends to really focus on North America. So some European balance is not necessarily a bad thing on tgat front.
Especially given that even some of the most car-centric cities in Europe tend to perform well against some of the best in North America.
And yes, there should be more videos on YouTube about HSR in China, or the excellent rail and metro systems in cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.
But they should be made by people living in those cities!
Your videos have singlehandedly inspired people in countless cities to advocate for Dutch-style protected bike lanes.
Keep up the great work! It's definitely appreciated! 😊
I agree that these videos should be made by people in those countries.
I never lived in Japan, but I've been there about a dozen times for business trips, which is why I think my Shinjuku video was so accurate and well-recieved by people who actually live there.
Unfortunately almost all urbanist YouTubers are Americans, and there are various socioeconomic and cultural explanations for that.
I link to international content often but sadly there's not a lot of it out there
@notjustbikes Notjustbikes was the site that piqued my interest in urbanism. As a Canadian with strong European connections, you managed to put into words what I feel every time I go to Europe and return to Canada. Through you, I have discovered other great sites like Strong Towns, City Beautiful, etc. keep up the great work and don’t let the bastards bring you down.
@notjustbikes you have entered the next stage of the CGPGrey pipeline, detaching yourself from the internet more and more, until one day you just… ✨disappear✨
@notjustbikes How dare you not travel to a new country every month to report back to us for free? You haven't even covered Fiji or Ittoqqortoormiit, not to mention you haven't talked about bike lanes in the Galápagos Islands. Unforgivable!
(we appreciate you and your content ❤️ as a European living in Montreal, you always hit the mark as far as I'm aware).
@notjustbikes I find your videos insightful and I like watching them. In many cases, I put them in my bibliography to later link them in posts, as they are way better than my abilities to express the same thing in text.
@notjustbikes I’m slowly building up a custom uBlock Origin filter list which aims to remove all comment section from the Internet. I’m not even a creator but as a trans person I find life much more bearable now that I don’t have to stumble into people wanting me dead under any random news article or YouTube video. I don’t miss anything.
@notjustbikes it could be a business model, let people pay before you read their comment. 10 cents per word to read it and 1 euro per word as answer. But there should be vetting process to make sure only new comments get through, not a duplicate of a previously answered one.
@notjustbikes You summed it up perfectly, these dumbasses don’t care.
As a European, (French), I can tell that you truly opened my mind! Not that I was a car centric person, but I really did not know much about urbanism, let alone the diversity of solutions, the past (I’m 24, I’ve never known Paris and Dunkirk full of tramways and pedestrians, and barely heard of it).
I've been consciously trying to avoid American content online for a few years now and it's not easy. But my recommendations are so much better as a result.
Tangentially, I am so fed up with Americans who expect me to make videos telling them how to fix US cities.
Like, almost all urbanist content online is about the US already, and you want ME to make MORE of it? A Canadian who lives in Europe? Don't ask me! Go bug the >95% of urbanist creators who are American! 🤣
I should move every six months so that people consuming free content on the Internet don't have to take the trouble of having to find a video from another channel about a location that they prefer.
@notjustbikes From another angle, it means you're respected as a world-class authority to the point where people just assume you're an international team!
@Craigp lol. Yeah, these people, plus the conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves that I only talk about this stuff because of the fat cheques I recieve from the WEF and George Soros.
@notjustbikes making a generous reading, maybe the very professional presentation of your channel leads to a certain detachment from you as an individual? your videos are very well produced and you rarely (never?) appear in them yourself visually, so people see them produced more by a company than by a person, as just educational content and not also a recounting of your own experiences. if a company were producing the same content as you then an accusation of eurocentrism would make more sense.
And it bugs me because these comments show absolutely no respect for me, or the creative process behind my videos.
That's unavoidable with open comment sections on the internet. There will always be idiots, there will always be people who are missing the context or the point. It's a waste of energy to worry about it.
Appreciate the useful comments and ignore the irrelevant ones.
@notjustbikes Flying places is just dumb anyway. Good on you for not doing that.
There's this guitarist on YT who flew from Nashville, Tennessee to Guildford, England just to try some other dead dude's guitar, back in 2020. Promptly got COVID, ended up in a hospital, and then his wife cried about it on Twitter. Fastest unsubscribe ever.
@notjustbikes i like how your videos are curiouscentric. I feel like we can learn so much from the video from Japan. Pro/con privatization was the huge takeaway for ME…
@publixpace it's legitimately hilarious how I still get comments (and even emails!) from people who feel the need to "correct" me on my flags in my "winter cycling" video.
As if I wouldn't know the flags of Belgium and the Netherlands when I've lived in both countries.
Or how I could somehow use the wrong flag from Wikipedia when the country name is literally in the filename.
The best part is that they only ever notice one and don't realise that the other one is wrong, too. 🤣
@notjustbikes your videos are great. I don't understand the complaints. I like your lived experience videos. Perhaps when you get a big TV network contract and can afford to jet around the world with a film crew they'll be happy.
@notjustbikes I’m sure you got (partially) immune to the critic but it’s nice to have a video artisan. Listing video ideas for myself, I realized they are so much topics anyone can cover. It shows on the Shinjuku video, It was packed with information and the video was long already.
Shinjuku is well done. And the new passage (with all the TV with commercials) is helping a lot. Definitely the new south with the deck is a great addition.
@notjustbikes How is the Shinjuku video "non-eurocentric"? You approach it from the exact same North Atlantic (for want of a better word) perspective as all your other content.
@notjustbikes I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like outside of Europe and specific parts of Asia, there's not really a whole lot of non-carcentric infrastructure. If I'm right then it literally wouldn't be your fault even if you had unlimited time and money to see every single city in the world.
@notjustbikes I for one really appreciate that the content you make is based from your POV where you live and travel in continental Europe. Otherwise, a large amount of content is otherwise available in the native local language (which I likely don't understand) or if it is in English, it is US focused and might as well be from another planet, lol.
@notjustbikes Oh, the "eurocentric" sayers, who should not be allowed near any ballot box in the first place.
Those people declare that "X is eurocentric" all over the place, be it the general declaration of human rights, that we should treat everybody equal, that there are human needs which are shared by all members of humanity, #Esperanto or any idea which ever touched european soil.
I begin to see a pattern here. Maybe this phrase is a psyop to discredit any progressive idea.
@notjustbikes I need to do something that's a stereotype but, well, come visit Brazil. My city's planning is horrible, the BRT line construction never finishes, but it's a huge country, there is a lot to see, maybe there is something good to find.
@notjustbikes
One thing I always appreciated about your channel is that you never pretend to be an expert in urban planning, which you are not (there are other channels for that). Instead, you formulate the daily experiences so many of us have into a more cohesive story than most of us ever could.
@notjustbikes and that is why your videos are so successful. Plus the fact that what to claim is always backdrop up by proper research. Thank you for all videos, past, present and future.😘
Many years ago I was one of the many people who suggested to Robert Llewellyn's fully charged show that partnering with other presenters in other countries was worth a punt. They seemed to take that on board.
It's a open source mindset to decentralise.
BUT; I don't see your channel the same, it's more personal and your opinions and thoughts are valuable without having to be a worldwide empire.
@notjustbikes
I'll throw out some suggestions of non-eurocentric urbanist or adjacent video creators that I have enjoyed, and would love other suggestions: