Eric Ravenscraft
@LordRavenscraft
Followers
6,823
Following
1,506
Media
2,528
Statuses
21,072
Clearly fake name. Product Writer & Reviewer at @WIRED . I also do video essays. Bylines in @NYTimes , @ozm , @PCMag , etc. Formerly @Lifehacker .
Austin, TX
Joined August 2008
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Kroos
• 428521 Tweets
England
• 132219 Tweets
Reich
• 122861 Tweets
Boeing
• 61575 Tweets
#2024해피수호데이
• 60859 Tweets
#お迎え渋谷くん
• 52112 Tweets
招待コード
• 50234 Tweets
ソフトバンク
• 47675 Tweets
Rashford
• 46413 Tweets
Shadow of the Erdtree
• 45284 Tweets
Singapore Airlines
• 43541 Tweets
Modric
• 38373 Tweets
#メンテの日なのでssを貼る
• 33295 Tweets
Southgate
• 32690 Tweets
Starc
• 30521 Tweets
#KKRvsSRH
• 29158 Tweets
ROCKSTAR PRINCE SUHO DAY
• 28768 Tweets
Grealish
• 27690 Tweets
كروس
• 26516 Tweets
#日野下花帆生誕祭2024
• 25261 Tweets
GENTO AYAW PATALO
• 21501 Tweets
Iniesta
• 21458 Tweets
クロース
• 19554 Tweets
Shaw
• 18362 Tweets
花帆ちゃん
• 17155 Tweets
Hellblade 2
• 16743 Tweets
Vivian
• 15875 Tweets
Sancho
• 15807 Tweets
Tripathi
• 10506 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
IT'S VIDEO TIME
This one's about Knives Out.
More specifically, it's about the 20 seconds that Marta and Harlan play Go. Objectively, too few seconds to make a video about.
I did it anyway.
Huge thank to Ryan Li for the help on this one, btw!!!
8
15
66
unless this dude pops up with a Netflix special in six months, this might be the only known 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 case of a cultural event resulting in the cancellation of a man's whole career
Youtube video essayist James Somerton has removed all of the videos on his channel
124
307
8K
141
3K
39K
VFX artists are so good at their job that, when studios want to erase all the evidence in their behind the scenese footage that they used a ton of VFX, they turn to....VFX artists
16
3K
24K
this would be comical levels of absurdity if it wasn't so fucking evil
Amazon to ban the word "union" on its new worker chat app, per internal company documents leaked to me.
Other banned terms include "living wage," "slave labor," "harassment" and "restrooms"
1K
16K
52K
91
3K
14K
i had never heard of James Somerton before the recent hbomb video, and now my feed is full of people citing the incredible books/essays/videos he ripped off.
i'm getting more quality recs than years of algorithms
doesn't make it right, but damn that's a neat silver lining
13
615
8K
If you are (or were) one of the 3,000 people subscribed to James Somerton's Patreon, you will be charged at the end of the month if you do not cancel your pledge
As of right now, there is no post explaining this on his Patreon, which has been deactivated for most of this month
And true to his word, his Patreon is back up, scrubbed of all but two posts and 3,000 patrons still there, with tiers as large as $100 per month with annual options. If you were a patron of James, make sure you unsubscribe before the end of the month so he doesn't get your money
40
2K
10K
28
4K
7K
it's never stopped being funny to me that no business has ever figured out what the marvel model actually is, they just all think they need to do it
“We have done a reset. We’ve restructured the business where we’re going to focus, where there will be a team with a ten-year plan focusing just on DC. It’s very similar to the structure... at Disney.” - Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav |
404
525
5K
57
320
4K
Bobby Kotick's golden parachute was paid for with these people's livelihoods
BREAKING: Microsoft is laying off 1,900 people in its gaming division, including Activision Blizzard, just three months after closing its $69 billion acquisition. Story coming shortly (first reported by The Verge)
367
3K
16K
15
681
4K
The NYT, having learned absolutely nothing from its previous botched coverage of "metaverse real estate" is continuing to carry water for people who have a vested interest in making bogus tokens in dead video games seem like The Future.
let's 🧵 this
64
679
4K
@NandovMovies
Honestly between this and Infinity Conez, I'd watch a half hour video essay about how Asgardians have turned to some really dark humor to cope with their many tragedies lol
6
31
3K
"he's still gonna own twitter and be in charge!"
shut the fuck up
everyone knows that
this is a rare opportunity to come together and tell the richest man in the world that he's a loser and can't sit with us
this poll WILL hurt his feelings
and that's all that matters
35
817
3K
my prediction—or at least my hope—is that the most powerful long-term effect of the WGA/SAG strikes of 2023 will be that they become a catalyst for a wave of VFX unionization
NEWS: Animators at Disney have just voted to unionize. The vote was 63-5.
10
167
918
2
439
3K
I didn't share my piece yesterday about information overload because...I was overwhelmed.
We're hitting a real limit on how much news we can process and COVID is making it worse.
101
942
3K
sigh
4
293
2K
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has a net worth of around $75M (as of 2017).
The average hourly pay for a Whole Foods employee is $15.69.
Mackey could personally "donate" a week of pay to all of his 91,000 employees for $57M.
feel like he won't tho
Whole Foods CEO suggests employees who are not sick "donate" their vacation time to employees who are sick:
4K
4K
9K
58
749
2K
the very first thing anyone will tell you in the online content bizzz is that if someone tells you that you have to pay money up front to earn the privilege of making money, you are being scammed
So in order to make ad-share money from Tweeting... you have to pay $8/mo... hmmmm so you have to pay.... to earn.... hmmmm....
105
380
4K
25
536
2K
I've been in Google's beta test for generative AI search results. I've also been playing Tears of the Kingdom.
I wanna talk about how this is a perfect example of how this new approach makes search results way, WAY worse.
And that's before we even get to the errors.
A 🧵
19
656
2K
The first trailer for this game came out in May of last year. The gameplay trailer three weeks ago.
Absolutely nothing here relies on the Steamboat Willie copyright and, as others have noted, games like Cuphead and Bendy and the Ink Machine have riffed on this style before
Now that Disney is losing the copyright on the early Mickey Mouse we will see an explosion of new things being made.
Like this game, MOUSE 🔥
First person shooter, that I’d love to play
127
1K
9K
7
220
2K
this is a universally good thing
no company should be allowed to dictate how their former employees get work
BREAKING: The FTC has proposed a sweeping new rule that would block all noncompete clauses in labor agreements. Companies would no longer be able to limit employees’ ability to work for rival employers.
65
3K
18K
3
323
2K
alright i was gonna ignore this, but real talk:
as a bi dude who's never felt queer enough and *definitely* never felt cool enough
hearing shit like this thread frequently, from everything from randos to my friends. has genuinely made me want to kill myself at times in the past
Bi women with straight boyfriends who feel like you as a couple aren’t welcome in queer spaces, I would simply encourage you to have a cooler boyfriend
188
3K
59K
26
178
1K
this might be one of the most infuriating things I've ever read any billionaire say for SO many reasons but chief among them:
a.) this implies that it takes billions of dumb people to make a tiny minority of smart people
and 2.) we ALREADY have a thousand mozarts
21
126
1K
when Hbomberguy highlighted the extent of James Somerton's plagiarism so hard that he disappeared off the face of the earth, half the examples were less blatant than this
6
102
1K
we will never recover, as a society, from the damage that the Iron Man movies did by making holographic interfaces look cool
16 pinches and 15 hand wiggles to ask your friend how it's going.
421
225
4K
6
40
1K
my feeds lately have been equal parts:
-- right wingers openly advocating for banning trans healthcare, education, and social acceptance
-- trans people rightly calling this an outright attack, and in some cases genocide
-- lefty-types staking a semantic debate on that last word
it’s chilling watching people call for the literal genocide of trans people. it’s even more chilling how few people care enough to say anything about it.
65
694
4K
6
162
857
How to Not Do Plagiarism, In Less Than 30 Seconds
6
66
887
it's a minor point but "i hope you never get early access to video games" as an imagined punishment shows a far more dire fracture in how people relate to games journalism than any actual or perceived problem with games journalism
4
122
854
also, it can't be overstated how dumb amazon thinks its workers are
most corporate environments treat adults like they're children who will do what you want if you give them a sticker, but the idea that you could ban words like "unfair" but still make everyone happy is lololol
7
71
795
@oscerbun
@TommoTheCabbit
just don't want the one part of the film industry that's not unionized to get any funny ideas like that their work is important or valuable, is all
1
17
818
Really important to note that when real tech revolutions happened (PCs, the internet, smartphones, etc.) the use cases were not only obvious, but the capabilities were demonstrable.
No one had to promise the internet would *eventually* work.
Everytime you read about the next leap in "AI" and it's always a bullshit engine that just generates stuff.
Sure sometimes it adds actual links, sometimes it scrapes stuff to look authentic and true but when you know about the subject you realize just how surface level it is
10
23
273
6
142
777
i cannot stress this enough
this is not how anyone wants to browse websites
20
37
749
Google's generative AI doesn't know what any of this means. It just knows that in real gaming guides, some words are likely to come after other words. So it stitches those words together.
Even when the information is accurate, it's taking up space from real human responses.
2
49
756
The gAI result (which I've often seen appear without being asked, btw), however, is more generic, useless, and pushes the helpful results down
Worse, they're often just rephrasing the exact sentences that the real guides wrote. It's fifth-grade book report level plagiarism.
4
51
737
"more women are center stage and certain fans aren't thrilled about it"
hmm which fans would those be
which ones, article?
which fans
20
109
699
yeah i'd say that sums up the core problem here pretty well
17
22
708
Also, catch that bit at the end?
"You can also buy Hinox Toenails from the following stores:
Black Hinox
Blue Hinox
Hinox"
in case you're not a Gamer™️...those aren't stores. those are the dudes you kill to get their toenails. the dudes i'm asking Google how to find.
4
24
699
Setting aside that this is just scraping sites' content and cutting them out of traffic, it's just not solving the same problem.
No one searching for "hinox toenail totk" needs to know they're an item that comes from defeating hinoxes. They need to know where to get them.
2
25
681
fully transparent: I make around $90k a year. i have a reliable staff job at an established media outlet doing hands-on testing of a wide variety of products that i'm expected to have expertise on
the idea someone is making nearly twice that by copying others work is sickening
somerton was making $170,000/yr on patreon apparently and continue to belabor this point but: that is more money annually than i have EVER made in my entire career. and he did it, in part, by ripping me off.
42
1K
11K
3
47
682
here's the thing
i believe Google when it says it's not technically plagiarizing. but only because real plagiarism would suck less
in order for these gAI search results to not be useless, they need to be plagiarism. that's really all there is to it.
@LordRavenscraft
But Google says "WeRe NoT pLaGiArIzInG" though.
Glad we rolled out a "helpful content" update only to crap out AI-generated unhelpful content instead.
1
1
41
1
83
677
I've encountered this more often than not with Google's gAI results
When they work, it's because they're literally copying the results they're pushing down the page.
When they don't, they're irrelevant and make it harder to find the info I actually need. Or worse, they're wrong
1
70
639
among other things, this is why games journalism is so important
the "metaverse" hype was obvious nonsense from the start, if you knew anything about video games, VR, or even MMOs
news outlets ignoring gaming facilitated this failure, leading to billions in real world impact
the scale of this ineptitude is simply staggering
entire sections of the economy pivoted towards something so bad that it was functionally dead before it even got started. our entire society rejected it like we had antibodies for it.
ceos should have lost their jobs for this!
4
46
367
4
105
638
i think about this anecdote at least once a month. bezos fundamentally believes humans are lazy
and therefore the company spends millions of dollars to prevent thousands of workers fighting to get basic benefits at the jobs they want to keep
just galaxy brain shit
6
68
593
Like, I just can't stress enough: no, WoW and Fortnite and every other game have not been "diced" into "parcels" for sale.
That's not a thing! It's not even a thing anyone would confuse for being a thing! No one even wants that to be a thing! Why does NYT think this is a thing?
6
20
610
I say it a lot, but if you like the art of film, and hate the idea of studios exploiting and erasing the people who make your movies
...stop treating CGI like it's inherently bad and lazy. or should only be used "when necessary"
these lies are for you
@LordRavenscraft
This is fucking insane, they're so anti- the idea of cgi, they're using cgi to cover up their use of cgi. I don't know where this inane meme goes, whether we just realize it's stupid to be anti-cgi, or this kind of coverup just collapses in on itself in a preposterous controversy
0
5
76
3
37
598
this is obviously the fault of lawyers relying on ChatGPT without double-checking the work
but I also wanna warn my fellow tech journalists here
this is the kind of thing that happens when you uncritically cover tech and its capabilities to audiences that don't know better
4
139
582
@wright96d
i'm not here to litigate who is or isn't a VFX artist, and i definitely don't want to denigrate someone's work
but i like the headcanon that deliberately bad matte lines in BTS shots are the VFX artist version of sending out an SOS
0
4
556
okay but real talk, and i'm saying this to everyone who reviews everything, not just disney stuff:
if you don't have a threshold over which you say "I don't care how much money you have, this is not worth it" then you are not doing reviews, you're doing advertisements
Disney influencer tasting $5000 star wars cocktail: "While I admit it IS expensive, if you HAVE the money it IS yummy"
236
2K
63K
4
24
544
i'm not exaggerating, i mean that literally
i don't perform "queer" very well. so the assumption most of the time is that i'm a straight dude
and sometimes? the way people around me respond to that makes me feel like i literally don't belong anywhere
4
36
529
employers would rather believe that the only competent people in the world are either in a 20 mile radius of their office, or on another continent, before they accept that maybe people are good at their job even if they're not watching you do it
Controversial take? Most don't have enough self-discipline to work from home.
This was NOT controversial before COVID.
I'd rather pay someone in India, the Philippines, or South America to work from home, at least I'll be getting what I pay for at 1/3-1/2 the labor cost.
31
3
180
4
82
543
it's good to withhold this guy's name but also if I got fired for telling a billionaire to his face that he is, mathematically, deeply unpopular, that anecdote would be my entire resume for the rest of my life
5
145
536
Apropos of nothing, Amazon recently admitted to handing over Ring camera footage to cops, without a warrant or the user's consent.
But sure they suddenly care about privacy when a union is involved.
LEAKED AUDIO: Amazon is stoking fears about privacy to turn workers against the union drive in Albany, NY.
Amazon falsely claims the union is selling personal information of workers who sign union cards.
Meanwhile, Amazon has routinely violated customers’ and workers’ privacy.
21
481
1K
3
312
519
"it's like...when you tease movies for ten years, right?"
"yeah yeah, that's something marvel does!"
"okay, what else. what else. whaaaaat eeeelse"
"...sequel teases?"
"DIRK, YOU'RE A GENIUS"
1
13
470
I'll again note, this is something tech and gaming reporters would know to look and test for. A company's promise is not the same as an end product.
NYT, on the other hand, doesn't seem to do basic testing. No one who tested this would think this is how people will buy homes.
2
31
489
when the onion switches from stun to kill, they don't miss
It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible
841
23K
88K
5
61
496
disney couldn't even figure out the marvel model for fucking star wars, but glhf
3
13
464
hey men, real quick
this is the kind of thing anyone with a uterus has to be thinking about right now.
just a heads up the next time you think supplying and using your own condoms is haaaarrrrd and you don't liiiike iiiiit
let's have some solidarity here.
11
114
480
legally, I don't think Google would technically be in the wrong if it stole a list of locations and thesaurus'd an "original" guide
but it would be self-destructive. because who's gonna keep writing those guides for the next Zelda game if Google's just gonna scrape your shit?
3
33
474
"it's over for egirls and onlyfans models because AI can generate sexy pictures"
bud, if the metric is there's a box you can type words into and see whatever lewd shit you want, that's been the search function on every porn site for decades
OF was invented *after* that
4
47
459
anyway i just checked, and i'm pretty sure this thread is the first time i've publicly, definitively, with no ambiguity, said that i'm bi
happy pride y'all
23
6
452
beginning to get the feeling this has nothing to do with helping anyone
1
38
432
It gets worse when I search for "Hinox toenail totk location"
I want to know where to find them. First Google's gAI tells me to search Hyrule Ridge, West Necluda, and East Necluda.
which is...all of this. So thanks, Google.
1
13
416
i have lived through countless tech industry delusions, but i don't think i've seen any so severe and so enduring as the denial of the existence of sinus cavities
This was the first frame from an Apple Vision Pro review that made me believe we’re all going to be using and leaning into spacial computing soon enough. It always comes back to timers.
566
256
4K
2
28
416
this dude sucks, but more importantly: this is exactly how studios will spin it if it actually comes to a strike
you saw how ruthlessly Disney went after one of its top stars over streaming money. just imagine when it’s all the studios/networks going after all the workers
2
167
405
But that's not a cool story.
NYT has repeatedly shown its uninterested in viewpoints critical of its coverage.
Carrying water for investors and grifters is apparently more important than accurately informing its readers, even with huge amounts of money potentially on the line.
7
37
408
"but you're bi! this is about straight men!"
i mean, first, pretty shitty way to treat the partner of someone you claim is welcome, but okay whatever
but the point is, you don't know. you have no idea.
you don't want to talk to someone? fine. but don't be an asshole.
2
12
404
this isn't anyone in particular's fault. and tbh my general perception is that most people need queer spaces way more than i do. after all! i'm a straight, white, cis man. what do i need--
wait hang on
that's how it goes in my brain. every single time. i just negate myself
1
12
397
This lack of institutional expertise also leads to absolutely baffling paragraphs like this one.
"most virtual gaming universes" here must exclude...uh...most gaming universes to make a claim like this!
5
13
401
This is a common trait in coverage like this. Talking up the selling points a company's PR team puts out, rather than testing something hands-on and seeing how it actually fares.
Also, customers are going to navigate through this to get to the demo? Really?
2
9
389
i've had partners *argue* with me, trying to get me to acknowledge i'm bi, because i just straight up can't internalize it
because i don't look like what a bi man is supposed to look like. i don't behave the way a bi man should.
so i get shunted into the "straight partner" role
2
10
372
and you know what happens when enough people treat you like something you're not—and treat you worse because of it?
you know what happens when you treat *yourself* like you're something you're not?
you just...don't want to be anymore.
3
16
371
for the 5 people not playing TotK, Hinox toenails are one of many materials you might need to farm
in the first example, the search results are all guides on how to farm these items. Sites that know this is what people are looking for have written guides for this exact purpose
1
10
371
this is, at least currently, the only tweet in this accounts' history that mentions sex work at all, ever
it is only the third tweet that even uses the word "sex"
someone got seriously spooked this week
Dear Sex Workers,
The OnlyFans community would not be what it is today without you.
The policy change was necessary to secure banking and payment services to support you.
We are working around the clock to come up with solutions.
#SexWorkIsWork
8K
3K
12K
4
68
357
there's a weird gray area here too because it's not like the location of Hinox's in TotK is some proprietary information. anyone can write that guide and no one will be plagiarizing anyone else because their lists look identical
but Google isn't writing anything.
2
9
365
NYT interviewed many people for this piece, and nearly all of them have a very obvious, vested interest in making crypto land look like a valuable investment, including investors and even one of the Sandbox's co-founders.
It's unconscionable to pretend otherwise.
3
18
364
i want to be extremely clear, my suicidal ideation in the past has *way more and bigger causes* than just this
but it fucking feels like shit when it feels like the policy at the table is that everyone is welcomed and loved...but you? you better perform or fuck you
1
8
357
aight fine, let's do this
This scene is great. And the angry reactions to it prove its point all the more.
Because the point here isn't about whose suffering is worse.
It's about the consequences of anger, and who experiences them.
And y'all I got THOUGHTS. 🧵
8
72
349
The only way to get this paragraph is to define "virtual gaming universes" exclusively as the crummy games that are built this way. Which is self-selecting. Every game built to sell fake land, sells fake land like this!
Not even Meta's Horizon Worlds operates like this.
1
3
357
this is, by a wide fucking margin, the funniest thing that has ever been tweeted on this site
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
371K
235K
574K
4
42
339
they're going to keep making this seem like it's about procedural things like not being invited to a zoom call or *suspicion* of leaking data
but there's a common thread here about who's allowed to speak up, and who *actually* gets silenced
1
156
343
For example, in the piece, NYT describes "cut[ting] the ribbon" on a KB Home exihibit. This implies a grand opening of a building.
The reality? A shoddy 3D tour (already extremely common in real estate).
1
5
351
IMPORTANT PSA: Everything Everywhere All at Once is on streaming services starting today
Theater-avoiders are officially out of excuses to not see this movie
12
65
345
The demo is, in fairness, the most elaborate thing I've ever seen in Decentraland.
It is also busted as hell.
At one point I got stuck inside a demo house, unable to leave without teleporting via the map. After getting out, the KB Home building failed to load.
7
6
346
being a bi man means accepting that you're going to gravitate towards queer spaces where there's a lot of, frankly, earned animosity towards the concept of men
and you can either perform being bi enough, or adopt the "respectful straight ally" identity. neither is easy.
1
17
342
No one really cares if someone steals Seth Green's monkey pic, but the NYT is casually implying that dropping $10k on a digital house will be normal, while also implying you don't need any ability to protect such a purchase.
It's just a laughably, obviously bad claim to make.
1
13
345
iconic "smart" people are almost always known because they had resources beyond intelligence
Einstein was a brilliant physicist. he also held positions at multiple giant universities over his life
Shakespeare was an amazing playwright. he was also an investor in early theaters
4
17
348
First off, as I've noted in the past, NYT continues to use IRL real estate language to obfuscate what's really happening. A basic familiarity with the video game industry would help contextualize what's going on.
(link to the piece: )
3
6
339
The piece then goes on to make even wilder claims.
Like that crypto "eliminates the need for a third party like a bank."
A bad claim for even buying jpegs, but ludicrous when talking about spending 5-7 figures on so-called "real estate"!
1
10
337
k but unironically, this is INCREDIBLE cgi for its time. the lighting on homer is perfectly accurate for the scene, the perspective is a dead on match, the model is expressive and conveys homer’s character brilliantly
this came out the same year as Toy Story
3
100
326
it's always funny watching crypto nerds accidentally discover what critics have been saying for forever (read: how math works)
4
49
326
Banks provide more than just transaction services. They also provide, say, fraud protection.
If someone gets the password to your crypto wallet containing the NFT for your house, who stops them from just stealing it?
No one can. But NYT doesn't seem concerned with that.
1
10
328
i don't want to take space from anyone else
i WANT to let the people who don't have the privileges i do take center stage, and 99% of the time i do
i'm sorry, but i just had to say it. just this once.
3
3
313