Month: January 2023

I was trying to remember how I did a fake sketch effect in Photoshop, and I remembered that somewhere along the way I had written up a tutorial and put it on this site. So I did what any disorganized person would do: searched for “fake sketch ga2so” on Google. I found the link, but I also found a link to a reddit post that led to an essay on YouTube about David Manning.

You probably have a couple of questions, like “Who is David Manning?” and “What does that have to do with you?”

Well, about twenty years ago, Sony made up a fake reviewer named David Manning and used his quotes in their ad campaigns. I thought it was hilarious, so I fired up Paint Shop Pro and a bootleg copy of Dreamweaver and made David Manning- The Last Honst Critic. Then last year Brickwall Pictures decided to do a video detailing the history of David Manning. He ended up spending almost a third of the video trying to figure out why someone would go through all the trouble of making the site.

I’ll tell you why: I was a goofball with a very slightly popular personal web site at a time when people who wanted to share a goofy idea on the internet couldn’t just post it on a giant social network, and I thought it was funny. I have a vague memory of trying to get the buttons on the site to resemble Apple’s house look of the time taking more time than writing all of the terrible copy on the page.

So I posted a comment on the video explaining who I was, why I made the page, and what I was doing now. I even mentioned that my recent Criterion Collection boxes were sort of a spiritual successor to David Manning. I also thanked him for making me feel like it was worth it to leave a dumb joke up for 20 years. I thought I’d either get some sort of “that explains it” response, or (more likely) no response at all. What I didn’t expect was that he’d delete not just my comment, but any comment anyone made referring to my page. Really odd. Maybe he’s planning a secret followup video and doesn’t want to give away the ending. Maybe he visited my Youtube channel and decided he didn’t like my goofy bike videos. Whatever. It’s his channel. He can do what he likes with it.

Me, I’m going to go watch David Manning’s “Best Film of 2022”: Morbius.

UPDATE: He wasn’t deleting comments. It was Youtube’s spam filter going a little hard.