Are you a white, mid 30s guy with a beard and a camera? Then Youtube might be the place for you! Seriously, it seems like every YouTube literally meets that requirement. And Johnny Harris is the worst of them, besides those idiots from Good Mystical Morning who seem to spend most of their time playing dumb games and eating food. GMM has 10 million subscribers and they most important thing they talk about is new fast food menu items or that time they both got vasectomies. Perhaps I will complain about them at length at another time. Let’s get back to Johnny Harris and his many sins.
Who is Johnny Harris?
For the uninitiated, Johnny Harris got his start in the Vox Media “Borders” project where he dashed around the world in his UNIQLO jacket and studied borders and their histories. Alright, that’s fine, but not exactly earth-shattering journalism. Vox decided to (wisely) dispense with his services and end the project and release him into the open wild. The rest of is have been suffering ever since from his YouTube “journalism.”
Johnny Harris is an ex-mormon who likes to hike, explore, and study things. In one video, we actually used a telescope to photograph the night sky. He even did a video about his infamous orange UNIQLO jacket. He still does a great deal of content with maps and other stuff similar to the Borders project. However, it has been pointed out that he does the job poorly.
Why Johnny Can’t Read?
Johnny Harris seems fairly benign on the outside. However, those with platforms, especially ones as big as his platform must be held to a higher standard. He seems like a nice enough guy but he just needs to improve the information he’s spreading. I don’t know if it’s a lack of research or simply spending too much time on production value but people can be easily misled on matters of history with modern implications by following his videos.
I found this video which does an excellent job of talking about his ignorant and false analysis of history by a real historian:
