So I just got done watching the short and I feel there's a serious issue right now.
The problem can be summed up quite simply; Occ isn't skeptical at all - He's a condescending know-it-all.
In the very first scenes we see Occ speaking to the uneducated fools around him in some upper class British like accent, lamenting over the fact he has to put up with these idiots. Is this really how you see skeptics? Upper class, smarter people having to painfully put up with those around them who don't understand the world like they do?
This gets worse when the other caveman opens his mouth and starts speaking in a very obvious southern accent. I mean geez guys, could you make this any more obvious who this is targeted at? If this video is supposed to be getting people interested in skepticism, why are you going out of your way to make fun of the very people this video is targeted at? Why paint the very people who probably need skepticism in their community more (the very point of this video according to, I think it was, Bob at the end of the last episode) as not only complete idiots, but the apparent opposite of "Skeptical Occ"?
Occ continues to get more and more frustrated with the idiots around him while angrily trying to explain what seems to him to be common sense to him. He shouts, gets angry, loses his temper, trying to make these people realize how stupid they really are. How is any of this the image we want to paint of the skeptical community? Is this really how you see us speaking to non-skeptics? In your day to day life if someone says "So I got some great acupuncture over the weekend", do you really talk to them like Occ does? No? Why not? Is it because it would be a horribly mean way of getting your point across? If this isn't how you would hold yourself in day to day life, why paint Occ like this?
Now if Occ was just supposed to be a joke video for the skeptics community, I can understand that. But the whole point of this video (and possible series) is to reach people outside the skeptical community. If that's the case, right now Occ is the walking stereotype of everything people hate about sketpics - Their know-it-all attitude, their short tempers, their refusal to "see the other side", and so on.
The issue of all this is that from the very first scene, Occ comes across as being much smarter than the rest. He talks much better, he acts more “human”, he isn't a slovenly dumb caveman. The message that comes across is that smart people are what make skeptics (after all it is "Occ the skeptical caveman") and stupid people are destined to pee in fires and make fools of themselves. Yet this is the complete opposite of what people should be hearing - the truth is ANYONE can be a skeptic. ANYONE. Any single person anywhere can become a skeptic - It has nothing to do with being smart. It has nothing to do with having a bank of knowledge in your head others don't - It has to do with asking questions. If anything, Occ should be the most regular guy in the entire world. He doesn't need to be smarter, he doesn't need to be any different - He just needs to be the one who asks questions. At the risk of making writing suggestions, I'd much rather see Occ just be like every other caveman but be the worlds first skeptic. When they are all about to pee in the fire he's the only one who asks "Wait, what was this supposed to achieve?".
I think the reason this video rubs me the wrong way is it projects the exact image it took years of convincing friends of what skeptics are not. It's supposed to be a video making people want to look up more on the skeptic community – but is currently just making fun of those who are not “skeptical” or not as smart.
I like the concept of the series and there are some pretty good jokes in there, but I honestly could never send this to my friends who are on the fence about skeptisism.
I'd love to see if anyone else has any feedback on this.
