General GunTuber thread

[Blasterisk]

Yes, that promotion snippet was embarrassing.

A pal of mine got his Chinese Warlord Pistol book and the reprinted Arming the Dragon and I've got a chance to skim them. Let me say Ian is lucky to have a fuckhuge Internet presence (and a good deal of fanboys that will buy by default any books he kickstarts) because the end result is.... mediocre? I can pardon Arming the Dragon being essentially a useless pamphlet done on a random imported batch of rifles with no research at all and some fuddlore thrown in, but after the french rifles book (that was kinda on the same level of good Osprey Weapon series books) even the chink pistol book reads like a undergrad-with-tons-of-resources work.

Hopefully we'll get more professional writers/historians on board (and not more Ian memery), after Collector's Grade died that would be welcome.

The trouble is that Stable Diffusion came out about the same time as Pistols of the Warlords and now everybody with a Nvidia card can generate infinite images of insane guns that don't work.

 

[quaawaa]

Yes, that promotion snippet was embarrassing.

A pal of mine got his Chinese Warlord Pistol book and the reprinted Arming the Dragon and I've got a chance to skim them. Let me say Ian is lucky to have a fuckhuge Internet presence (and a good deal of fanboys that will buy by default any books he kickstarts) because the end result is.... mediocre? I can pardon Arming the Dragon being essentially a useless pamphlet done on a random imported batch of rifles with no research at all and some fuddlore thrown in, but after the french rifles book (that was kinda on the same level of good Osprey Weapon series books) even the chink pistol book reads like a undergrad-with-tons-of-resources work.

Hopefully we'll get more professional writers/historians on board (and not more Ian memery), after Collector's Grade died that would be welcome.

His new book’s Kickstarter, which is written by a team of academics, is moving a lot slower than the old ones. A shame because the topic looks interesting, but he raised prices on a luxury good in a bad economy. It probably also doesn’t help that the Chinese Pistols book took forever to deliver thanks to his braindead choice of initially choosing a Chinese printer which has to comply with CCP censorship requests, which Ian thankfully was unwilling to compromise on.

Also, while Ian himself probably doesn’t believe this, I and many others view his books as “coffee table books”, that is, books that look very pretty and are meant to be skimmed, not read. His main “competitor” is the Vickers Guide series (in quotes because his photographer/business partner is also Larry’s photographer/business partner), but Vickers is honest about his books being for the coffee table.

 

[RhodieRhodes]

His new book’s Kickstarter, which is written by a team of academics, is moving a lot slower than the old ones. A shame because the topic looks interesting, but he raised prices on a luxury good in a bad economy. It probably also doesn’t help that the Chinese Pistols book took forever to deliver thanks to his braindead choice of initially choosing a Chinese printer which has to comply with CCP censorship requests, which Ian thankfully was unwilling to compromise on.

Also, while Ian himself probably doesn’t believe this, I and many others view his books as “coffee table books”, that is, books that look very pretty and are meant to be skimmed, not read. His main “competitor” is the Vickers Guide series (in quotes because his photographer/business partner is also Larry’s photographer/business partner), but Vickers is honest about his books being for the coffee table.

Ian really is huffing his own farts and doesn't at all realize how out of touch he is from regular people or even most of his american audience. I stopped watching years ago but was informed that he recently shot a stage at a match buck ass naked and had the audacity to upload it to youtube as though that was a completely normal thing that the viewer shouldn't be surprised about.

He's basically a european at this point and should be derided as such.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Also, while Ian himself probably doesn’t believe this, I and many others view his books as “coffee table books”,

Reddit ≠ many.

that is, books that look very pretty and are meant to be skimmed, not read. His main “competitor” is the Vickers Guide series (in quotes because his photographer/business partner is also Larry’s photographer/business partner), but Vickers is honest about his books being for the coffee table.

I still consider Chassepot & Thorneycroft-to-SA88 as reference books; they just look like a Vickers's coffee-table book for the exact reason you stated, because he used the same photographer & page formats. But that doesn't mean the reference data isn't there, as both contain still huge amounts of useful information.

Or at least, those two particular volumes still have far more information about those families of rifles than any other coffee-table firearms book I've seen in the past 20+ years; except for those written about Lugers, Mausers, 1911s, etc. And those exist simply because of the amount of information easily available to anyone who wants to print a fanboy vanity book.

But so what if they are pretty enough to be coffee-table books, or do you just have a problem with too many pictures?

 

[quaawaa]

Reddit ≠ many.

I disagree; I still consider Chassepot & Thorneycroft-to-SA88 as reference books. They just look like a Vickers's coffee-table book for the exact reason you stated; because he used the same photographer & page formats. But that doesn't mean the reference data isn't there, as both contain still huge amounts of useful information,l.

Or at least, those two particular volumes still have far more information about those families of rifles than any other coffee-table firearms book I've seen in the past 20+ years; except for those written about Lugers, Mausers, 1911s, etc. And those exist simply because of the amount of information easily available to anyone who wants to print a fanboy vanity book.

But so what if they are pretty enough to be coffee-table books, or do you just have a problem with too many pictures?

I own all of them, I don't have a problem with them. I was just commenting that most people buy them because they are books filled with pretty pictures of guns, not because they want to read reference material and therefore the quality of the writing isn't that important. The Vickers Guide books also have a fair amount of information in them.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

I own all of them, I don't have a problem with them. I was just commenting that most people buy them because they are books filled with pretty pictures of guns, not because they want to read reference material and therefore the quality of the writing isn't that important. The Vickers Guide books also have a fair amount of information in them.

Again with the "most people" fallacy.

Sure, they have pretty pictures; but at least I've found the information in Chassepot & SA88 books still more useful for active collecting & researching, rather than just reprinting data for firearms few will ever see outside of museums or Vicker's personal collection.

 

[HumptiDouji]

A pal of mine got his Chinese Warlord Pistol book and the reprinted Arming the Dragon and I've got a chance to skim them. Let me say Ian is lucky to have a fuckhuge Internet presence (and a good deal of fanboys that will buy by default any books he kickstarts) because the end result is.... mediocre?

How much academic research can you really do on a wide variety of cargo cult-ish craft guns from a giant civil war? The fact that it's largely a picture book seemed inevitable, there's no factory records or journals by designers to go by, no technical specifications were defined or adhered to for the majority of these pistols, and records of their use being about as sparse. All you really can do is examine individual examples to describe their characteristics and then classify them by their apparent trends, with pictures to go.

There's no other way to make a book about this subject without a time machine, whatever records or testimonies might have existed would be lost to time by now, if the Cultural Revolution didn't destroy them first.

I stopped watching years ago but was informed that he recently shot a stage at a match buck ass naked and had the audacity to upload it to youtube as though that was a completely normal thing that the viewer shouldn't be surprised about.

Fucking excuse me, what did I miss?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Fucking excuse me, what did I miss?

This one. Some of the Finnish competitors did that sauna stage buck-naked, and he went native along with them.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

doesn't at all realize how out of touch he is from regular people or even most of his american audience

Is it just me or does it seem like FW has a mostly Euro audience these days? From where I'm sitting it's seemed like that for years but I figure I'll bring it up now and float the question.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

Is it just me or does it seem like FW has a mostly Euro audience these days? From where I'm sitting it's seemed like that for years but I figure I'll bring it up now and float the question.

Maybe not mostly, but he's picked up a lot of Euro views for sure, if only because he's kind of exhausted available US content & had to move on to Euro-specific stuff; all while the algorithms are pushing things towards continentals.

There being a fairly large happening over there might have something to do with it as well, and all the old Russian weapons that've been showing up in the mix.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Losing access to one of the big auction houses also put a dent on what he can find in the US. That aside, we might love our guns, but there are a lot more weird-and-wonderful unknown and/or developmental guns in Europe than here.

At least he's been consorting with the Finns instead of, say, the Swedes. The Finns are alright.

 

[Trig.Point]

His new book’s Kickstarter, which is written by a team of academics, is moving a lot slower than the old ones. A shame because the topic looks interesting, but he raised prices on a luxury good in a bad economy. It probably also doesn’t help that the Chinese Pistols book took forever to deliver thanks to his braindead choice of initially choosing a Chinese printer which has to comply with CCP censorship requests, which Ian thankfully was unwilling to compromise on.

That is still baffling to me, considering he had a US printer for Chassepot to FAMAS. I'm sure there were dozens of different problems with getting that book printed but at the end of the day customers seemed happy with the quality, and they even facilitated Ian in coming to the facility to sign the unfinished sheets before binding.

Most likely some US print 'broker' got involved and was going to take care of everything, until he wasn't. There's a few of them in the UK usually trying to dig up work for printers in central and eastern Europe.

I have this impression that Ian might be a wee bit difficult to work with, and is someone that gets his back up relatively easily.

How much academic research can you really do on a wide variety of cargo cult-ish craft guns from a giant civil war? The fact that it's largely a picture book seemed inevitable, there's no factory records or journals by designers to go by, no technical specifications were defined or adhered to for the majority of these pistols, and records of their use being about as sparse. All you really can do is examine individual examples to describe their characteristics and then classify them by their apparent trends, with pictures to go.

I bet you there's stuff in the colonial archives in the UK, they would have been keeping track of what was happening outside of Hong Kong Shanghai etc at the time, also maybe Germany.

 

[Molokroid]

Losing access to one of the big auction houses also put a dent on what he can find in the US.

Explanation?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Explanation?

Ian isn't doing videos at Rock Island Auction House anymore. That was a big source of content for him.

 

[likeacrackado]

This one. Some of the Finnish competitors did that sauna stage buck-naked, and he went native along with them.

This piqued my interest so I went back to a couple of the other American guntubers who attended Finnish Brutality:

Bonus Ziga:

They all wore shorts/underwear. Ian also ran around in a kilt, so he may not have had underwear on all day.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

I'll be honest with you guys here. The fact that he doesn't feel uncomfortable to run around in his birthday suit really doesn't bother me at all, particularly when it's in a country where dudes being naked in front of other dudes is the norm.

 

[Smoke Manmuscle]

Ian isn't doing videos at Rock Island Auction House anymore. That was a big source of content for him.

Has there been any details behind why the split happened.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I'll be honest with you guys here. The fact that he doesn't feel uncomfortable to run around in his birthday suit really doesn't bother me at all, particularly when it's in a country where dudes being naked in front of other dudes is the norm.

Same here. Naked man firing guns? It's funny. He was clearly doing it for shits and giggles, and he had the courtesy to use a big opaque circle for censorship.

Has there been any details behind why the split happened.

Nope. We speculated on it at the time but to my knowledge nobody has said anything about it. My personal theory is that RIA thought their own social media presence was good enough during the coof lockdown and decided having Ian around wasn't useful anymore.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

Nope. We speculated on it at the time but to my knowledge nobody has said anything about it. My personal theory is that RIA thought their own social media presence was good enough during the coof lockdown and decided having Ian around wasn't useful anymore.

I think the other theory that was floated was that some of RIA's regular buyers were slightly upset about anything Ian touched there suddenly doubling or tripling in price. The types of people who buy at those premier auctions are cheap and petty enough to be upset over that.

 

[White Devil]

I think the other theory that was floated was that some of RIA's regular buyers were slightly upset about anything Ian touched there suddenly doubling or tripling in price. The types of people who buy at those premier auctions are cheap and petty enough to be upset over that.

Everyone is fucking upset over that. Prices triple whenever Ian's horde of retard groupies go after something he did a video about. He should be drawn and quartered for that alone.