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Tom Scott (YouTuber)

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Tom Scott
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of York
Occupation(s)Entertainer, Educator
Websitetomscott.com

Tom Scott (born 1984[citation needed]) is a British comedian, YouTuber[1] and formerly the presenter of Gadget Geeks on Sky One.[2] He lives in London and is originally from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.[3] He graduated from the University of York with a degree in linguistics.[4]

Timeline

In 2004, Scott produced a website parodying the British government's emergency response procedures and included a section explaining what to do in case of a zombie apocalypse. The Cabinet Office responded by demanding the site be taken down.[5][6]

In 2008, his University Radio York radio show, "The Technical Difficulties", won the Kevin Greening Award[7] at the Student Radio Awards. More recently, The Technical Difficulties has been relaunched as a podcast,[8] and as a series on Scott's YouTube channel.

In 2010, Scott captained the Hitchhikers in series 3 of BBC Four's Only Connect. They reached the semi-finals, but were knocked out by the Strategists.[citation needed]

In 2012, he was part of the Team in the Sky 1 series Gadget Geeks where he was responsible for the Software solutions.[2]

In 2013, Scott received widespread coverage for 'Actual Facebook Graph Searches', a Tumblr site which exposes potentially embarrassing or dangerous collation of public Facebook data using Facebook's Graph Search, such as showing men in Tehran who have said that they are "interested in men", or "Single women who live nearby and are interested in men and like getting drunk".[9][10]

Politics

2008 University of York

Scott was the UK organiser of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and successfully ran as "Mad Cap'n Tom" for student union president at the University of York.[11]

2010 UK general election

Main article: United Kingdom general election, 2010

In 2010, following his involvement in pirate-related humour, Scott ran for Parliament —again as "Mad Cap'n Tom"— in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency as a joke candidate. He lost a bet with a friend that the New Orleans Saints would lose the 2010 Super Bowl and said he would run for parliament if they won.[12]

As part of his bid, he promised to scrap taxes on rum, have schools offer courses in "swordsmanship and gunnery", and put a 50% tax on downloads of Cheryl Cole MP3s. He described his chances of winning in the safe Conservative seat of Westminster as "[s]omewhere 'twixt a snowball's chance in hell an' zero."[13] He received 84 votes, 0.2% of the total.[14]

YouTube

Scott also has a popular YouTube channel with over 804,000 subscribers and over 137 million video views as of May 2017.[15] He has regular series on Things You Might Not Know and Amazing Places as well as a comedy panelshow Citation Needed. He also produces explanations of computer security issues and linguistics, among other projects.[1]

At the end of 2015, Scott launched a collaborative YouTube channel with his colleague Matt Gray called Matt and Tom,[16] wherein the pair regularly sit on a park bench and discuss videos on Scott's other channel, occasions from their past, travels and stories related to their jobs.

Emojli

Scott along with Matt Gray co-founded Emojli in 2014. It was an emoji-only social network based on social networking application Yo. It was described by Salon as "an inside joke turned into reality".[17][18]

It closed in July 2015 after it became too expensive to maintain.[19]

Web apps

Other web-related humour Scott has created includes "Evil", a web app that revealed the phone numbers of Facebook users,[20][21] "Tweleted"—which allowed you to see posts deleted from Twitter,[22] and "What's Osama bin Watchin?", which mashes together an image of Osama bin Laden with Internet meme videos from YouTube.[23] In 2012, Scott released 'Klouchebag', a satire of the social media rankings site Klout.[24][25]

References

  1. ^ a b "Tom Scott". YouTube. Retrieved 8 October 2016.
  2. ^ a b Barnett, Emma (15 January 2012). "My life as one of Sky 1's Gadget Geeks". Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  3. ^ "North vs South -Youtube". Matt and Tom's Park Bench. 19 February 2016. Event occurs at 00:27. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
  4. ^ "Only Connect (3x10)". 3. 27 July 2013. Event occurs at 01:37. Retrieved 25 December 2016. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |episode= ignored (help)
  5. ^ Sherriff, Lucy (27 July 2004). "Emergency advice parody misses Gov UK funny bone". The Register. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  6. ^ "When zombies attack". The Guardian. 30 July 2004. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  7. ^ Barnard, Mike. "Student radio talent celebrated at the Student Radio Awards 2008". Milkround. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
  8. ^ "The Technical Difficulties - Podcast and Web Show". Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  9. ^ "Actual Facebook Graph Searches". actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
  10. ^ Garside, Juliette (23 January 2013). "Facebook's Graph Search tool causes increasing privacy concerns". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
  11. ^ Grimshaw, Gerran (10 March 2008). "'Pirate' becomes new student union president". York Press. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  12. ^ Scott, http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRUULstZRWS1lDvJBzHnkXA. "The Ballad of Mad Cap'n Tom, Part 2." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
  13. ^ McDermott, Kerry (29 April 2010). "England's fringe candidates fight for votes". BBC News. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  14. ^ "Election Results 2010: Cities of London and Westminster". BBC News. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  15. ^ "Tom Scott - YouTube". YouTube. Retrieved 9 April 2017. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  16. ^ "Matt and Tom". Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  17. ^ Gray, Sarah (2 July 2014). "An emoji-only social network: Ridiculous … or brilliant?". Slate. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  18. ^ Solon, Olivia (30 June 2014). "Emoji-only social network Emojli is the new Yo". Wired UK.
  19. ^ "Investors tried to throw cash at this startup that was actually just a joke". Retrieved 29 August 2016.
  20. ^ Butcher, Mike (24 May 2010). ""Evil" app shows how Facebook users make their mobile numbers public". TechCrunch. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  21. ^ Arthur, Charles (6 October 2010). "Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends'". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  22. ^ Fletcher, Dan (20 July 2009). "Tweleted: Making Mischief on Twitter". Time Business. Time Inc. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  23. ^ Gross, Doug (9 May 2011). "Make Osama watch 'Friday,' suffer other indignities". CNN Tech. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  24. ^ Pagels, Jim (27 April 2012). "Who Are the Real Klouchebags?". Slate. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  25. ^ Kosner, Anthony (30 April 2012). "Hate Klout? Tom Scott Mixes Meaningless Metrics with Feminine Hygiene in Response". Forbes.com. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
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