YouTube War Expert

""I don't see what the big deal about these Navy SEALs is, they're holding their guns totally wrong!""

The YouTube War Expert is a particular kind of Internet know-it-all who claims to know all there is to know about weapons, tactics, and military history, often with few credentials beyond "I've read a lot of books about it." The name itself comes from that fact that it is almost impossible to post a military-related video on YouTube without the comment section being flooded with this persona decrying the weapon on display. Most YTWE debate will consist of comparing two or more weapons, with each party insisting that whatever feature or trait their candidate has over the others is the ONLY THING that matters in combat; the typical ones being-


 * Accuracy- "Y isn't worth anything when X can hit you between the eyes while you're trying to get close."
 * Cost- "Y may be good, but a hundred guys with X would beat one guy with Y."
 * Killing / Penetrating Power- "X could drop you with 1 shot / go straight through armor that would stop Y."
 * Range- "X could drop you from twice the distance Y can."
 * Reliability- "Lets see how well Y works after a month in a swamp. X would still work just fine."

These can and will be applied to anything from knives to pistols to helicopter gunships. And don't expect actual situations to be a good counter argument; if something won't work from 10k away fired one handed during a monsoon in the jungles of Borneo, it won't work in the safety of your air conditioned, dehumidified, synthetic-planted suburban home. The reverse is also true.

These debates tend to be fairly circular, as, oddly, no one who has ever been in combat agrees that what weapon you're using outweighs training, terrain, numbers, leadership, morale, and other hard to quantify assets in deciding success (shows how little they know;) leaving the debate to be based primarily on yelling, insults, and death threats.

YouTube War Experts usually come in one of several distinct breeds:


 * Fanboy- Obsessed with a particular weapon or set of weapons. With often shoehorn them into an discussion regardless of relevance- interrupting a debate on shotguns to tell everyone how they're all inferior to his beloved assault rifle, on account of its range.
 * Feature Freak- Obsessed with one of the common debate factors listed above, crusading tirelessly to declare that that particular trait is the be-all and end-all of warfare.
 * Nationalist- Obsessed constantly defend a particular nation's military establishment, while belittling all others over the fact they would certainly lose an actually war because their favorite nation has the best at everything, even when their claims are contradictory.
 * Anti-Nationalist- The equal and opposite counterpart of the Nationalist; obsessed with constantly tearing down one other particular nation at all costs. Typical based on 50+ year old rivalries- US attacking Chinese and Warsaw Pact, British attack their former colonies (especially America and India,) Japan attacking Korea and China, Germany and France attacking each other.
 * Arms Master- Obsessed not with modern weapons, but with medieval ones. This is an easy specialty, since there's almost no chance of an actual conflict providing hard data against your claim, so the argument can be decided purely on sophistry and CAPSLOCK use. Usual overlaps with one of the other categories-
 * Fanboy- Try to convince a Pole-arm fan that there was an situation, including assassinations and tunnel fighting, that there wasn't a glaive variant that was the indisputably best weapon always everywhere forever amen.
 * Nationalist- a good percentage of Arms Masters insist that Renaissance era Switzerland could have conquered the whole world all in one go if they had felt like it.
 * Anti-Nationalist- Mention katanas just about anywhere, and watch the doctorate-thesis grade rants on how Japanese weapons couldn't have scratched even the worst of European armor, while even the worst European weapons would go through any Japanese armor like a chainsaw through warm butter roll in.
 * Internet Tough Guy- These two personas are a common crossover. ITGs will obsess over the biggest, studliest weapons in a category- 12-gauge shotguns, napalm bombs, big stonking two-handed greatswords, those artillery cannons that shoot TacNukes- while constantly peppering all discussions, including those about pastry baking, with impulsive and manly terms like 'Alpha Strike,' 'Blitzkrieg,' 'Lethality Radius,' and 'Maximum Overkill.' Expect any disagreement to be met with "How 'bout I come to your house and see what you say when you're staring down the barrel of X."
 * Technocrat- Technocrats are the heralds of the bleeding edge of battlefield technology, and place high-tech above all other considerations. They're most noticeable around settings with Schizo-Tech, complain about inconsistencies created by a weapon prototype announced a week ago and asking things along the lines of 'Why don't they just Nuke'Em?' And they won't take a legitimate in-universe explanation for an answer. The most dedicated will write "Setting vs Real World" fanfics which mainly just consist of "Iconic thing from Setting shows up, then CRUISE MISSILES!" Repeat until the entire universe has been cruise missile'd to death, then drop a nuke or fuel-air bomb just to be safe.