Video essays are dangerous, because a good one is convincing - it is, after all, the job. A good video essayist WILL convince you. Whether it's something consequential like politics, or inconsequential like a movie review. I remember really disliking a movie, only to watch it again and realize I never watched it, just watched someone else explain why it was bad.

I remember the first time I became REALLY aware of it. Someone in some random thread I stumbled in on r/all was explaining details about years old drama in Magic: The Gathering, a subject I know way too much about. They were super confidently explaining the drama wrong, misusing game terms, and gave off the overall vibe that they started playing like last week. And it had thousands of upvoted and some gildings, because if you hadn't thrown your life away to the cardboard crack like me it would seem very correct.

Kind of opened my eyes to the danger of unearned confidence. Confidence is, after all, what puts the con in conmen.