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donoteat01: The Socialist YouTuber Using Cities: Skylines To Explain Politics

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Donoteat, who humorously self-describes as a "disgusting neckbearded STEMlord with a degree in civil engineering," counts himself as a socialist, and whose real name is Justin Roczniak, saw these kinds of Skylines videos and decided to do something different.

"Talking about the game itself or how you modded it to achieve the visuals you wanted is all well and good," he wrote in an email exchange with Kotaku, "but I thought maybe it would be more interesting to talk about how cities actually work while doing the video rather than just talk about how I'm painting a pretty picture."
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Roczniak's main Skylines series is centered on a city named Franklin. The videos are unflinching looks at how American history and politics have created its cities. The series approaches cities from a historical angle, beginning with the time before colonization in North America and then slowly building period-to-period from there. There is no blank slate from which cities emerge, the videos argue, but instead they are founded through mass displacement and control. The early videos are dominated by discussions of trade and mercantile systems because Roczniak is plainly claiming that thinking the American city without taking those things seriously means that you're not really addressing what cities are.
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After all, cities don't just appear. They are built at the intersection of many different complex systems that are often elided or ignored in city building video games. Roczniak specifically mentioned Paulo Pedercini's keynote at the International City-Gaming Conference from 2017 as a way of starting to think about his Cities: Skylines videos. As Roczniak explained, in city builder games "there's no towns or villages on the map, no indigenous populations that you kick out to build your 50th MegaCity 2000" and there's "no simulation of social, racial, or economic issues beyond a city budget."

Without these elements, Roczniak suggests, you're not really simulating much at all when it comes to cities. It means that telling a truer story requires some narrative work.
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I stumbled across donoteat01's videos a couple of months ago after seeing HBomberguy tweet about them. I ended up binging through all of them in a couple of days. The Franklin series is interesting not only because you see how a city is formed, but also how complex systems come together to help or hinder (mostly hinder) people. His other series, Power, Politics, and Planning, focuses on urban planning problems such as urban highways and gentrification and offers some solutions to help alleviate these problems.

He also made a couple of videos that go into the history of things such as Black Wall Street or the Killdozer incident (which revolves around shit). The latter is patreon only, though.





 
hateradio

hateradio

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Oct 28, 2017
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welcome, nowhere
That was pretty good.

The gentrification episode definitely reminded me of Silicon Valley, except no one there wants to build housing above 5 stories tall. And the "luxury" lofts, as he says, are new development not recycling old industrial spaces.
 
ZealousD

ZealousD

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I don't know what it is, but as a native Tulsan, when somebody calls Greenwood "Black Wall Street" I wince a little bit. He got a couple regionalisms wrong but otherwise his video on the Tulsa Race Massacre is probably one of the most detailed and informative I've seen on the subject, socialism commentary aside. Having the actual visual for what Greenwood probably looked like was also really cool. Also I totally got my degree from that OSU campus. Hooray?

Haven't watched his other stuff yet. I might come back and check it out.
 
OP
OP

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Messofanego said:
It's a super innovative idea for a channel. What's his shortest video?
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They're all at least 15 minutes long and most are half an hour

ZealousD said:
I don't know what it is, but as a native Tulsan, when somebody calls Greenwood "Black Wall Street" I wince a little bit. He got a couple regionalisms wrong but otherwise his video on the Tulsa Race Massacre is probably one of the most detailed and informative I've seen on the subject, socialism commentary aside. Having the actual visual for what Greenwood probably looked like was also really cool. Also I totally got my degree from that OSU campus. Hooray?

Haven't watched his other stuff yet. I might come back and check it out.
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I've only heard it called Black Wall Street
 
ZealousD

ZealousD

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Helio said:
I've only heard it called Black Wall Street
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In Tulsa, everybody calls it Greenwood. I only ever hear "Black Wall Street" when the event is referenced on the internet. So for me it creates a weird disconnect when people call it that, like they're almost referring to something else. I suppose it's easier for people outside of Tulsa to relate to Black Wall Street because Greenwood is a fairly generic name and they might have other places called Greenwood where they live, plus it highlights the relative wealth of the neighborhood.
 
Lonewolf

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ZealousD said:
In Tulsa, everybody calls it Greenwood. I only ever hear "Black Wall Street" when the event is referenced on the internet. So for me it creates a weird disconnect when people call it that, like they're almost referring to something else. I suppose it's easier for people outside of Tulsa to relate to Black Wall Street because Greenwood is a fairly generic name and they might have other places called Greenwood where they live, plus it highlights the relative wealth of the neighborhood.
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Could it be that it was a popular nickname for the area at the time period of the Massacre (the 1920s), that didn't carry over to the present day?
 
ZealousD

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Lonewolf said:
Could it be that it was a popular nickname for the area at the time period of the Massacre (the 1920s), that didn't carry over to the present day?
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Possibly, but considering the vernacular of the day, it would probably be called Negro Wall Street if anything. All I know is that we pretty much exclusively call it Greenwood these days.
 

Deleted member 23850

Oct 28, 2017
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I love that urban planning issues are becoming at the forefront of politics.
 

Deleted member 23850

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Helio said:
They really need to be. Gentrification is huge problem in major cities, even supposedly progressive ones. In my city, black and brown people are being pushed further and further out into the suburbs as the main city becomes too expensive to live in.
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Gentrification is one of the few issues that comes from crappy urban planning and design, too. Traffic, ugly strip malls, lack of mass transit, the list goes on.
 
ZealousD

ZealousD

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Okay, so I watched through to the gentrification episode. He made it clear that he was clearly in favor of RENT CONTROL but once he went to explain he was very brief and didn't really address the main counterpoints. Pretty weak defense.
 
OP
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ZealousD said:
Okay, so I watched through to the gentrification episode. He made it clear that he was clearly in favor of RENT CONTROL but once he went to explain he was very brief and didn't really address the main counterpoints. Pretty weak defense.
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Yeah, he kind of glosses over it.

Ingueferroque said:
Does he use any mods?
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He uses some. One of the reasons why he hasn't added any new videos to the Franklin series is because there was a new update that came out for Cities: Skylines that he calls the State Capitalism update that broke some of the mods he uses.
 
Accoun

Accoun

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Bump because after a large break and a few standalone videos, Franklin -the main series- is coming back!

 
Mesoian

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Oct 28, 2017
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Seems interesting...maybe I'll che...

::goes to videos, "ANITA SARKEESIAN AND THE PEOPLE WHO HATE HER"::

Alright, I'm gonna need reassurance, is this actually cool or is this a right wing shit spout in disguise?
 
Accoun

Accoun

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Mesoian said:
Alright, I'm gonna need reassurance, is this actually cool or is this a right wing shit spout in disguise?
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He's cool. That one is actually a mirror of Big Joel's video that was falsely reported by gators, because of course it's something they do. Multiple lefttube people mirrored it then.
 
Icemonk191

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Mesoian said:
Seems interesting...maybe I'll che...

::goes to videos, "ANITA SARKEESIAN AND THE PEOPLE WHO HATE HER"::

Alright, I'm gonna need reassurance, is this actually cool or is this a right wing shit spout in disguise?
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That was a re-upload of this video


because it was taken down for awhile by a false flag operation from Sargon goons. A bunch of leftist YouTubers uploaded the video in support. So the answer of question, yeah he's legit.
 
BossAttack

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The Legend has finally returned. He's continuing with his Public Housing topic, about damn time too.


Seriously, everyone needs to be watching his videos.

 
Gobias-Ind

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ZealousD said:
I don't know what it is, but as a native Tulsan, when somebody calls Greenwood "Black Wall Street" I wince a little bit.
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I know I'm pretty late but I'm also a Tulsan and surprised to see this? They memorialized the term at Reconciliation Park and it's part of the tour. I'm not familiar with the notion that it's rare. I'm also fairly certain I've seen it on the sidewalk plaques, but don't quote me on that. Either way, it's as official as any neighborhood/community nickname gets imo. It would be a bit awkward to say something like "I went to the Fat Guy's in Black Wall Street" in 2019 for sure, but I definitely feel like I've heard it referred to as BWS whenever it's discussed in the context of the massacre.




BossAttack said:
The Legend has finally returned. He's continuing with his Public Housing topic, about damn time too.


Seriously, everyone needs to be watching his videos.

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Nice, I'll check this one out tonight. Surprised I wasn't already subscribed to this guy.
 
Sunny

Sunny

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Oct 25, 2017
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He's take Elon's hyperloops completely changed how I look at transit and traffic in general. It's really good and worth watching.

Also. Fuck ICE.
 
ExpandedKang

ExpandedKang

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Oct 30, 2017
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I've been binging on his videos recently, this guy is one of my favourite youtubers. The "Well there's your problem" series is hilarious.
 
Jasup

Jasup

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Oct 25, 2017
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Oh, nice. The new WTYPP is about MS Estonia, a disaster close to my heart. I'll need to check it out later when I have time.
 

finfinfin

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Jul 26, 2018
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The Killdozer episode is extremely good, and he does repeatedly suggest that people who can't or don't want to support him on patreon (yet) can find the link pretty easily via google.

Fuck Killdozer guy. Small business owners are crazy. And fuck ICE.

Also, does anyone remember which episode has his Jimmy Hoffa story?
 
el jacko

el jacko

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Dec 12, 2017
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I haven't seen very many of these but his video on highway development hits very close to home. Very well done.

also his twitter feed is mostly hilarious
 
chirt

chirt

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Oct 25, 2017
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Oh wow, I started up Cities Skylines a few weeks ago with the plan making a socialist society if possible. Didn't know this channel existed.
Unfortunately I'm way too dumb for this game so I went back to Football Manager 2019.
 
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