I'm reading "He Was a Top Lawn Care Influencer on YouTube. Then Everything Went Haywire.
Many people think Greg Chism is a freak — or worse. He says he was just following the incentives of the platform" (NYT gift link).
Read the whole amazing story of a man ruined by YouTube. It's adapted from a new book called "The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men" (commission earned). The author is Jon Ronson.
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Hortatweekerist?
There is a lot to unpack in that story (I read the entire thing). Mixed bag. Honestly, I don't know what I think yet.
I am considering buying the book.
If you want to briefly capture what's wrong in current-day America, "Lawn Care Influencer" would certainly fit the bill.
People will see me and cry (Fame)
““I was destined to be at one. But in my lifetime, all but one of the factories closed. My father lost his longtime job making car frames and hot-water heaters when the plant moved to Mexico.” Like many men of his generation, Greg was left adrift, with few of the structures that guided his parents and grandparents.”
Trump is trying to bring manufacturing back to the US, but for that effort “he’s a threat to democracy.”
So much schlock...
His content. The nyt article. The Bronson boy milking recycled baby grrl content for a buck. Allegedly educated old grrls like annie lapping it up -- and promoting it! -- in their pensioned leisure...
How far America has fallen in the 21st century. Will we indeed welcome our overlords??
The You Tube algorithm definitely hooked me. In my search for meaning in the universe, I got into particle physics. You Tube kept feeding me videos of how to understand quantum physics. SPOILER ALERT: You can't.......Anyway it's my understanding that observing a particle changes the very nature of that particle. Something like that seems to be going on with You Tube influencers. There was one woman who posted videos about particle physics. She was kind of attractive and, as her videos progressed, she became blonder and more attractive. I think there was more decolletage but that may have been my fevered imagination..........From my research, it seems to me that the cosmos and quantum physics just exists and we are never really going to understand very much about it and that existential dread is more palatable when enunciated by attractive females.
Doesn’t Meade qualify as a lawn care influencer?
For that matter, the Prof is a law care influencer….CC, JSM
Breaking! YouTube has become a cistern of AI slop —Most people don't know this.
"Anyway it's my understanding that observing a particle changes the very nature of that particle"
It's easier to understand when you know the definition if a "measurement." Basically every time a particle interacts with another particle, the result of that interaction "measures" it. So measurements are going on by the googolplex, even in remote and completely uninhabited galaxies. Use of the term "observation" introduces the confusion that the measurement must be observed by a conscious being. Although it's only a measurement if the state change lasts beyond the interaction and can be "observed" outside the system in question, once again, don't assign the need for consciousness to the term "observed," it's just the possibility of another quantum "measurement" as defined above.
As for the rest of quantum theory, you are on your own, but the biggest hurdle is reasoning by analogy from our world, So in our world, Shrodinger's cat is alive or dead before you open the box, for example, but this "obvious" reasoning doesn't work in the quantum world, so you have to abandon the logic that applies in this world that has worked for you your whole life.
As a lawn care influencer I highly recommend electric lawn mowers. They are super light and easy to start. You can use the same batteries for the weed eater.
I hated small engine repair. Now that is no longer a problem.
William said...
The You Tube algorithm definitely hooked me. In my search for meaning in the universe, I got into particle physics.
Be very careful of anything youtube physics in the last year.
People are using AI to make videos of famous people in Physics to put out some egregiously wrong material that sounds good.
"For that matter, the Prof is a law care influencer"
My approach to lawn care — at least in the shady backyard — was to watch what happened and to think about why it is good.
All is for the best in the best of all possible backyards.
There was an era when violets took over and I believed that was for the best.
I remember when I encountered a dead crow. I just stayed out of the backyard, perhaps for years. It was never seen again. Not by me, not by anyone.
Dave Begley said...
Trump is trying to bring manufacturing back to the US,
Yeas but not quite, David. He is SUCCEEDING in bringing manufacturing back to the US. Here are some projects in 2026 (There were others in 25). Here are a few per Claude. There is probably over a Trillion there and that is just the 25 biggest. :
# Company Investment Location Focus
1 Apple $600B Texas & nationwide AI-server manufacturing, R&D, supplier program, manufacturing academy
2 TSMC $265B Arizona 10 semiconductor fabs + 2 advanced packaging facilities + R&D center
3 Micron Technology $260B Idaho, Virginia, New York Memory fabs, advanced packaging, R&D labs, innovation campus
4 IBM $150B Nationwide Computing leadership, mainframe/quantum R&D
5 Texas Instruments $60B Texas & Utah Seven chip fabs and expansions
6 Johnson & Johnson $55-58B NC, PA, FL + other sites Four new manufacturing plants & R&D
7 AstraZeneca $50-54.5B Virginia + 5 other states R&D, biologics, cell therapy manufacturing
8 Roche $50B Multiple U.S. sites Manufacturing, diagnostics, distribution
9 Bristol Myers Squibb $40B United States Biologics/small-molecule/ADC manufacturing (incl. $2.3B Houston campus)
10 Eli Lilly $31.5B VA, AL, IN, PA, TX + others Multiple new API/pharma manufacturing sites
11 Hyundai Motor Group $21B Nationwide Automotive, EV, and steel manufacturing (incl. $5.8B Louisiana steel plant)
12 Merck ~$20B Durham, NC + nationwide Vaccine manufacturing + R&D ($12B committed, $8B more planned by 2028)
13 Tesla/SpaceX/xAI $16.8B (Phase 1) Grimes County, TX AI-inference chip & orbital compute megafactory (total project could reach $55-119B)
14 AbbVie $10B+ Nationwide (incl. North Chicago, IL) API production, immunology/oncology manufacturing expansion
15 Lockheed Martin $9B Troy, AL + 20+ facilities New Munitions Production Center, THAAD interceptor capacity
16 General Motors $4B Orion Twp MI, Kansas City KS, Spring Hill TN EV and gas-powered vehicle production upgrades
17 GE Appliances $3B Multiple U.S. sites Manufacturing capacity expansion (3-year plan)
18 Octapharma $1.5B Rock Hill, SC First U.S. site — plasma-derived critical care therapeutics
19 Philip Morris International $1.2B (total) Aurora, CO Zyn nicotine-pouch manufacturing campus expansion
20 General Motors $888M Buffalo, NY Next-gen V-8 engine production upgrade
21 MP Materials, USA Rare Earth, Niron Magnetics, Vulcan Elements $5B+ (combined) Multiple sites Domestic rare-earth-magnet supply chain
22 GSK up to $800M Marietta, PA Drug-substance/drug-product manufacturing expansion
23 Hitachi Energy $457M Virginia Power transformer production — largest U.S. facility of its kind
24 Eli Lilly (Texas API plant) $6.5B Harris County, TX 1M sq ft active pharmaceutical ingredient facility (part of Lilly's broader $31.5B)
25 STERIS $600M Sanford, NC Formulated Chemistries manufacturing/distribution Center of Excellence
Ann,
I found this post bit misleading. The guy got investigated, yes, but not for anything having to do with lawncare. I wondered how that could be controversial.
You should have mentioned that he was investigated, and not found to be doing anything illegal, for videos he made with his children.
I tried to read the article in NYT but could not access it without subscribing. For a while, I could click on your links and read the full article without subscribing. I assume that was the NYT and they went back to the old way. I mention it on the off chance there is something you can do to offer actual gift links without subscription.
John Henry
Greg has to learn that the comments aren't about him but about the people who make them. The commenters are trying desperately to prove they exist and make a connection with the outside world.
Is "lawn care influencer" a thing? I go online and there are people telling me how to put shelves together or what to do when the AC is out. I wouldn't call them "influencers."
"You should have mentioned that...."
You've got the Times's own headline and I told you "Read the whole amazing story of a man ruined by YouTube."
It's too complicated to begin to explain the sequence of events.
I gave you a gift link. I'm not doing more than that. Try copying the link and asking AI if you can't bring yourself to give the NYT your email address or whatever it is they asked for. Or just accept that there's something you can't understand.
The idea that I "should have" explained more... I totally reject that.
@ John Henry: If you copy and paste the url from Ann’s gift link into https://archive.ph (or a number of similar sites), you can read the entire article. It usually works for NYT articles even without a gift link.
I'm sort of wondering what happened between age 18 when he was diagnosed with A-fib, and age 39 when his wife divorced him and left him with two kids under 2. The story tells us that these things are very important, but leaves out the rest.
John Henry--one of the top comments on the NYT confidently asserts that this is all the result of "capitalism." Which might be true, but so is the fact that the commenter can express his or her opinion on the NYT site.
As a moderately talented home handyman and very amateur auto mechanic, YouTube is a yuge blessing and I would be lost without it.
Yeah, you can spend hours watching a lot of stupid stuff. Or you can not spend hours watching stupid stuff. Even kids know this, believe it or not.
“ I'm sort of wondering what happened between age 18 when he was diagnosed with A-fib, and age 39 when his wife divorced him and left him with two kids under 2.….”
The full length book treatment will be out soon. This article is an adaptation of that book.
Sorry, Ann
I reread the whole post. Nothing at all in it to indicate that his YouTube adventures were anything other than lawncare.
Claude gave me a pretty good summary of his misadventures.
John Henry
Boatbuilder you are right about YouTube being a great place for learning. A couple months ago Ann had recommended Stewart Brand's book Maintenance of everything.
You know what is even better? Calude (and probably Grok, CoPilot and other AIs)
A couple months ago a client asked me to develop a manufacturing dashboard to pull data from several sources (Excel, SQL) and display it in real time.
He wanted it in PowerBI, and MS program for organizing and didplaying data. I have a number of clients who use it so I watched a YT tutorial a year or so back so I could appear a bit less than completely ignorant when it came up in conversation.
I accepted the project, loaded PowerBI and the databases and asked Claude to walk me through how to do it. Someone who knows would have taken 30-50% of the time it took me but I did produce a dashboard that the client likes. And, more importantly, paid for.
Claude explained every step of the way and, at the end, generated a 15 page manual that I can use to do something similar at other clients. I also have a pretty fair knowledge of PBI and could develop other projects using it. Great learning experience.
John Henry
1. Lawnman got custody of the children which is all I want to know about his back story. And the story of his vlogs carries a warning: Beware of internet fame. So - a good NYT article.
2. You have to go through 5 web pages to get to a NYT article from a giftlink article and you have to remember to look for the small print at the bottom of the pages. But that's NYT marketing. Or, really, it's the internet. To get to free stuff, you usually have to go through 3 or more pages and look at long ads. These delays are an opportunity to think through small lists: do I need lemons? limes?
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