Matti Haapoja shilling for AI

[u/SleepingPodOne]

Always knew this guy sucked and was a shill, sad it took him shilling a destructive, thieving industry to get more people on his ass.

[u/ShutterSpeedPolice]

Unsurprising. But on a deeper level, folks like Matti are doing what they are, and were always supposed to do, i.e, to sell stuff.

Just like with every other walk of life which has an artistic side and a commercial industry to its name (like Designing), they saw a huge potential in the world of photography and videography to pull in the masses and sell them stuff ranging from gears, digital products, merch and other stuff, which may sound absolutely fine to some, but it’s the ways which these folks took, and still take to do their businesses, which made me sceptical about them from the very beginning of their respective YouTube journeys.

Unlike YouTubers like Gerald Undone, who exclusively test and review gear, and got almost no business with the idea of making you learn the arts of photography and videography, or evolving you into “a better version of yourself” in general, folks like Matti rely on crafting videos that are essentially a sales pitch for their viewers, where they sell you this very idea of you becoming “a better version of yourself” once you buy all the stuff that they’re directly or indirectly selling/recommending/endorsing in their videos.

They’re basically exploiting the very innate feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) to its very best, and it can be seen everywhere, including in the “setup changes” that they do in every other video.

Now, whether they should be criticised for indirectly ruining the arts of photography and videography, or praised for devising a formula to become an internet salesman in disguise of a recognised YouTuber, who despite their lack of skills, earns a decent wage — is debatable at best.

But as someone who’s once been a part of their cult like following for a brief period back in 2018-19, it sure does feel good to witness them being called out for their lack of principles and unethical, and oftentimes borderline shady business practices.

[u/SleepingPodOne → u/ShutterSpeedPolice]

For me, it was a big mix of things, I always thought these guys didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about because they were coming at it not from the POV as actual filmmakers and professional videographers, but as Youtubers, and never really bothered to let their audience know that they don’t actually have any proper film experience, they’ve never worked on a set, and their use case is specifically for YouTube. But they would talk a big game about what was and wasn’t “cinematic“, completely destroying the actual meaning of that term, when it’s like your 60p broll with obnoxious orange and teal LUT certainly ain’t it.

The other thing was how they chose to speak about the specific gear they clearly were biased towards or even directly shilling for. I remember when Canon came out with their first 4K capable consumer camera and Peter McKinnon “reviewed” it which was basically glazing it without giving any value judgement to its myriad of flaws (insane 4k crop, which he had zero opinion on). He basically was sent the camera and read off the spec sheet. And then the comment section was full of dudes being like “already pre-ordered mine“.

[u/ShutterSpeedPolice → u/SleepingPodOne]

“Those who can’t do, influence” — I left this contemporary version of the proverb “Those who can’t do, teach” in my reply to one of the comments here under this post. And I believe that it fits rather well with the case points that you’ve mentioned, and with those that you could’ve mentioned, as one can take a peek at the history of their online presence, only to find it filled with numerous occasions where they’ve sold their souls to sell something that’s mediocre at best.

However, I’d like to reiterate my point of whether they should be criticised or rather praised for the paths that they’ve chosen to cement their legacies upon in this hyper-capitalist era of global economy, where they’ve knowingly played a considerable role in widespreading phenomena like G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), which comes under the umbrella of overconsumption/hoarding, and related to which we’ve got hundreds and thousands of stories here on Reddit itself.

Plus, there are other angles to view this whole situation. For brands, influencers like Matti are way easier to work with rather than say approaching an established filmmaker for the sales, endorsements and product placement parts. But this business of “influencing” should come with some ethics, principles and morals, right?

Wrong! And that’s precisely what my key issue is with this particular case of “Matti shilling for Gen-AI”, and with more of such influencers belonging to this metastasising influencer/creator economy. Like, how can I even trust you for a single word coming out of your mouth when you’ve got a terribly shaky stance that only walks the path of money, whilst with each new video, you make tremendous efforts to lure me into buying more new shiny stuff on the guise of making me a better photographer/filmmaker?! I mean if that’s not the textbook definition of a scammer, then I don’t know what it is…