almost every single primitive building
channel is underpinned by countless
different lies and we've got tons of
evidence to prove it
now we need to put an emphasis on the
fact that this is most primitive
building channels and certainly not all
of them after sifting through forum post
upon forum post about the ways in which
these primitive builders lie in order to
generate sometimes up to 500 million
views per video users continue to
mention one name over and over crediting
him as legitimate amongst the sea of
phonies primitive technology the 10.4
million subscriber channel which is run
by an australian named john plant
basically invented the primitive
construction genre all the way down to
the sound design of silence mixed with
rainforest noises with primitive
technology even stating in a reddit ama
that originally it was out of laziness
in not putting narration in the videos
but then the silent format became
popular so i kept it that way when going
back to the beginning of these silent
relaxing videos it becomes pretty
obvious as to why they're credited as
seeming pretty legit in terms of
authenticity primitive technology cuts
no corners in showing how each stage of
the construction is completed
legitimately for example when examining
his very first video he shows the axe
had been sharpened a long then being cut
by the axe then the logs being crafted
together in a way that feels realistic
all of this is accompanied by specific
captions explaining what's going on in
that very moment alongside a full
description of the build all the way
down to how long the construction
process took his builds never includes
swimming pools or anything over the top
yet feel impressive as they seem to be
on the cutting edge of what is and isn't
possible to build by hand the legitimacy
of some of his more impressive builds
such as this brick hut can be supported
by youtube comments such as this one
which stated i actually know john
personally he was a really good friend
we live in the same town although i
haven't seen him since he went viral i
have fond memories of him telling us
that he was building huts out bush and
had no idea they were so legit before
going on to credit him as a pretty
authentic guy from a personal
relationship standpoint all of this is
incredibly important to understand as
primitive technologies videos set a
baseline for what should and shouldn't
be achievable in a natural setting
additionally primitive technology has
been kind enough to provide us with a
statement which will be referred to as
we look at the channels on the other end
of the spectrum also known as the fakers
the fundamental problem with the genre
is that with so much time between camera
cuts there's plenty of time to set
things up illegitimately and with
primitive technology's very first video
receiving over 44 000 reddit upvotes and
30 million views it's no surprise that
copycats with less integrity began to
pop up left right and center on these
channels the buildings were taller the
slides were longer and the water was
suspiciously more blue and it's a weird
blue color why is it so blue probably
because it probably couldn't die or
something there's no reason for it to
look so blue like that even more
interestingly almost all of these
channels range from the exact same area
being cambodia thailand or vietnam yet
often geo-tagged the united states
claimed to be living in the united
states and have their social blade
country set to the united states the
overall production and build quality on
these channels is arguably far more
impressive than the og primitive
technology to the point where you have
to ask yourself are they really creating
these structures out of mud and sticks
well when you do a little bit of
research the answer to this question is
most certainly no the best evidence for
this is found when looking at a 5
million subscriber channel called
primitive technology idea whose failure
to cover up the ways in which they fake
their videos make them almost comical to
watch take for example this episode
titled building underground water maze
crocodile to the secret underground
house and swimming pool in which the
first shot shows two men digging on the
surface then in the next frame they're
in an eight foot deep trench now if
they're digging this deep with sticks
how are they avoiding large rocks and
potential tree roots from you know the
massive line of trees seen just behind
them are they being assisted by large
machinery well we'll get to that in a
little bit but first let's focus on the
idea that it's only two people doing
these impressively large primitive
construction projects if that's what
they were attempting to portray it
probably would have been best not to
include the clip where a guy in a white
t-shirt could be seen working on the
project in the background yet if it were
just these three guys that still
wouldn't be that bad however further
evidence suggests that they have far
more help than this at the start of the
week a community post was made on this
channel in the hope that someone who'd
worked with one of these primitive
builders would be willing to share their
experience in doing so we received
countless emails which were all super
helpful yet one email stood out as being
incredibly unique that email was
incredibly from one of the cameramen who
works for one of these larger south east
asian primitive building channels his
name and the channel he works for have
both been blurred out as it'd be a
little unfair for him to get in trouble
for simply trying to help out but the
email began by stating as you may have
suspected it's not as streamlined as the
video would suggest it is a large
operation as you may suspect with a
large team of us behind it after we then
offered to answer any questions we had
about their channel we attempted to
figure out how many different people
will work on the actual construction
part of the project from start to finish
to which he would respond it is
depending on the scale of the project
but no less than one dozen or more
before going on to explain that within
his team there is a director for the
acting done there is also a height
architect to obviously make sure the
structure will not collapse and will
last long enough to film in and
obviously afterwards many editors are
involved in case an email from someone
who works from one of these primitive
builders isn't enough evidence it's time
to introduce a different channel called
photo expression who incredibly stumbled
upon one of these primitive construction
sites before capturing over eight
minutes of footage with a drone we'll
refer to different parts of this footage
throughout our video but for now it can
answer the question of how many people
are really working on these sites
there's initially a clip where eight
different workers can be seen standing
around a rectangular hole in the jungle
followed by another grainier clip from a
far distance where somewhere between 7
and 10 people can be seen building a
swimming pool if they were honest about
how many people were working on each
project it probably wouldn't be that big
of a deal but it should be noted that
some of these videos specifically state
in the description that i've been
working hard with my two friends about a
hundred days to completely build when in
reality it's a whole team working for
only three to ten days depending on the
project as mentioned in the email
response from the cameraman so if
they're being untruthful about the time
period as well as how many people are
working on each project what else are
they lying about well how about the
incredible fire pits that they seem to
create effortlessly going back to the
statement made to us by proven
technology he seemed to imply that maybe
the fire making in their videos was fake
it's hardly surprising that he brought
this up is when you compare his
meticulous method of creating fire in
the wild to the fire making of these
south east asian primitive channels as
mentioned previously it becomes comical
they slap a couple of rocks together
before beginning an explosive fire on
large logs with no kindling whatsoever
john went on to state that if they're
faked simpler things than they're most
certainly faking more complicated ones
which turns out to be true as when
looking at another video by primitive
technology idea it becomes obvious that
not only are these guys faking simple
things such as fire these guys are also
faking the most labor-intensive exercise
of all the digging process itself this
video with over 63 million views begins
as most do a shirtless guy draws a big
circle and begins to dig it out only in
the next frame suddenly there's spray
paint on the ground that they forgot to
rub out additionally on the wall of the
hole these long smooth cuts can be seen
which completely incomparable to the
cuts being made by the stick well
there's a reason for this turns out
spray paint marks weren't the only thing
that they forgot to rub out as in the
minutes that follow excavated tracks can
be seen here here here and here in a
different video by the same channel the
same person can be seen working very
hard digging out a similar hole which to
their credit contains no excavator
tracks around it one mistake they did
make however was that they forgot to
take the actual excavator out of the top
right hand corner according to the email
sent to us by the cameraman one of these
channels approximately 70 of the digging
is completed by machinery whilst 30 is
completed by hand given how much of the
work lies in simply digging but men
still do plenty of digging as you may
guess in small underground spaces it is
impossible to fit a skid steer loader in
the hole most of the actual construction
is done by a high team of specialized
builders from my understanding and they
work with only intrinsic tools the dirt
is removed by skid steer loaders and
offloaded elsewhere and skid steer
loaders are used in the initial boring
process whilst incrementally we filmed
the builders doing superficial works on
the whole the video in which the
excavator can be seen in plain sight
then goes on to strangely display the
collection of concrete from a river
which is the exact same clip we used
from the previous video now why would
they reuse the same clip twice in two
different videos well it's because
collecting concrete from a river is
completely and utterly bogus concrete
doesn't grow in a river according to a
civil engineer who had commented on one
of these videos earth cement this is
incredibly fake cement requires a
precise combination of different raw
materials and then receives considerable
heat treatment in order to make the
powder we all know and love slash hate
what's even funnier is that every single
one of these channels has their own
unique method for creating natural
concrete this channel's concrete is
simply a mix of dirt and water which if
you think about it for two seconds
doesn't create concrete and rather
creates muddy water or mud which is just
dirt after the water dries this other
channel gets a little bit more creative
with it by taking a chunk out of a
termite nest grinding it down into
powder mixing it with water then
concreting an entire pool with this
small chunk of termite nest yet neither
of these compared to the fakest channel
of them all primitive technology life
which decides to just skip the concrete
altogether and go with good old rocks
and dirt however that's not the only
suspicious thing about this shot you'll
notice when looking at the bamboo that
each branch has a suspiciously clean cut
on the end compare this to primitive
technology the legitimate channel from
australia when one video displays what
the end of a log should actually look
like and you'll notice pretty quickly
that these pieces of bamboo weren't
naturally cut on site these pieces of
bamboo won't either which as displayed
in the video were attached together then
used to siphon water from a river to the
pool only there was no river photo
expression found the exact site of this
pool then stated in his video that in
reality the closest water source was
more than six kilometers away instead he
found a bunch of blue plastic piping
attached to a tap in the ground going
back to the email from the cameraman the
water for their channel just comes in
cubic containers that is transported
there a very funny part is any scene
where you see them sourcing water from
some magnificent waterfall or lake
they're actually going somewhere perhaps
hundreds of kilometers away and
pretending to take it back the video in
which photo expression had stumbled upon
various completed primitive builds also
showed that after these channels are
finished building the sites are simply
left to rot this video doesn't speak for
every southeast asian primitive building
channel but in this particular case
rubbish was left everywhere including as
you might guess cement bags the fact
that the videos are fake isn't the most
concerning it's the destruction of the
land that's concerning now if this was
public rainforest you could probably
consider this a pretty big deal but
according to the cameraman's email at
least on their channel every build is
done on privately owned land which is
leased for the purposes of the video if
this is the case maybe photo expression
is in the wrong for snooping around and
filming on someone else's property we're
kidding of course but if the builds are
being completed on privately owned land
it's a little narcissistic to comment on
what they should and shouldn't do with
it primitive technology the original
legitimate australian channel put it
best in his email to us when he said my
advice to people who really want to know
if the techniques on display are
legitimate is to put them into practice
and see if you can follow the steps and
get a similar result then it's probably
legit he added that these corner cutting
channels are motivated by money and
status alone rather than a true interest
in primitive technology but wanting to
stay out of internet drama will leave it
up to the discerning viewer to decide
what's real and what's not