Tom Scott (entertainer)

Tom Scott
Tom Scott in his signature red t-shirt in 2016
Personal information
Born Thomas Scott
1984/1985 (age 33–34)[1]
Nationality British
Residence London, England
Occupation Entertainer, educator, YouTuber, web developer, presenter
Website tomscott.com
YouTube information
Channels
Years active 2006–present
Genre
Subscribers
  • 1.3+ million (Tom Scott)
  • 140+ thousand (Matt and Tom)
Total views
  • 255+ million (Tom Scott)
  • 16+ million (Matt and Tom)
Associated acts
100,000 subscribers 2014
1,000,000 subscribers 2017

Alma mater University of York
Subscriber and view counts updated as of 4 September 2018.

Thomas Scott[2] is a British entertainer, educator, YouTuber, web developer[3] and former presenter of Gadget Geeks on Sky One.[4] He lives in London and is originally from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.[5] He graduated from the University of York with a degree in linguistics.[6] He has over 1.3 million subscribers and more than 250 million video views on his YouTube channel as of August 2018.[7]

History

Scott began in 2004 by producing a website parodying the British government's emergency response procedures, including a section explaining what to do in case of a zombie apocalypse. This resulted in the Cabinet Office responding by demanding the site be taken down. In response, Scott said he sent a "polite response declining to take down the site" with the website still live today.[8][9][10][11] Four years later, his University Radio York radio show, "The Technical Difficulties", won the Kevin Greening Award[12] at the Student Radio Awards. More recently, The Technical Difficulties has been relaunched as a podcast,[13] and as a series on Scott's YouTube channel. He later captained the Hitchhikers in series 3 of BBC Four's Only Connect in 2010 but was knocked out by the Strategists in the semi-finals.[14] In 2012, Scott took part in the Team in the Sky 1 series Gadget Geeks where he was responsible for the Software solutions.[4] Widespread coverage was received by Scott in 2013 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".[15][16] One year later, Scott worked part-time for UsVsTh3m for over a year.[17][18]

Politics

University of York

In 2008, Scott was the UK organiser of International Talk Like a Pirate Day,[19] and successfully ran as "Mad Cap'n Tom Scott" for student union president at the University of York.[1]

UK general election

In 2010, after losing a bet that the New Orleans Saints would lose the 2010 Super Bowl, Scott ran for Parliament—again as "Mad Cap'n Tom"—in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency as a joke candidate. [20] By chance, Scott stood against the Pirate Party candidate Jack Nunn, which was described on the BBC News Quiz as "a split in the pirate vote".[21]

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."[22] He received 84 votes, 0.2% of the total,[23] including that of musician Noel Gallagher.[24]

YouTube

Scott has a popular YouTube channel with over 1.3 million subscribers and more than 250 million video views on his YouTube channel as of August 2018.[7] Regular series' on the channel include Things You Might Not Know, Amazing Places, The Basics, and Built for Science, as well as a comedy panel show Citation Needed, featuring the other members of his radio comedy troupe "The Technical Difficulties". He also produces explanations of computer security issues and linguistics, among other projects.[7] He is known for his red t-shirts, worn out of a need for continuity during filming.[25] He is also a regular contributor to Brady Haran's YouTube channel Computerphile.[26]

At the end of 2015, Scott launched a collaborative YouTube channel with his colleague and friend Matt Gray called Matt and Tom,[27] 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. From its inception until March 2018 the series was produced weekly, but as of their 24 March 2018 episode[28] they announced that the series would no longer be produced on a regular schedule due to time constraints. They did note that they would produce irregular episodes from time-to-time, whenever they had interesting things to talk about.

He has produced a number of quiz and panel shows, including Citation Needed (2014-2018), Game On (2016), and Lateral (2018).[29]

Emojli

Scott, along with Matt Gray, co-founded Emojli in 2014. It was a parody emoji-only social network based on social networking application Yo. It was described by Salon as "an inside joke turned into reality".[30][31]

It closed in July 2015 after it became too expensive to maintain, though it is sometimes mentioned in Scott's videos and speeches.[32]

Web apps

Other web-related humour Scott has created includes "Evil", a web app that revealed the phone numbers of Facebook users,[33][34] "Tweleted"—which allowed you to see posts deleted from Twitter,[35] and "What's Osama bin Watchin?", which mashes together an image of Osama bin Laden with Internet meme videos from YouTube.[36] In 2012, Scott released "Klouchebag", a satire of the social media rankings site Klout.[37][38]

References

  1. 1 2 Grimshaw, Gerran (10 March 2008). "'Pirate' becomes new student union president". York Press. Archived from the original on 5 October 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  2. ↑ Tom Scott (17 February 2014). Let's Talk About Names. In Iceland. YouTube. Event occurs at 1:04. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  3. ↑ "Web Toys and Games". Tom Scott. Archived from the original on 10 July 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  4. 1 2 Barnett, Emma (15 January 2012). "My life as one of Sky 1's Gadget Geeks". Sunday Telegraph. Archived from the original on 15 January 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  5. ↑ "North vs South -Youtube". Matt and Tom's Park Bench. 19 February 2016. Event occurs at 00:27. Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
  6. ↑ "Only Connect (3x10)". 3. 27 July 2013. Event occurs at 01:37. Archived from the original on 1 August 2017. Retrieved 25 December 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 "Tom Scott". YouTube.
  8. ↑ "Spoof website will stay online". BBC News. July 29, 2004. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
  9. ↑ Sherriff, Lucy (27 July 2004). "Emergency advice parody misses Gov UK funny bone". The Register. Archived from the original on 5 November 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  10. ↑ "When zombies attack". The Guardian. 30 July 2004. Archived from the original on 14 September 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  11. ↑ "Preparing for Emergencies - Homepage". www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk. Archived from the original on 16 May 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
  12. ↑ Barnard, Mike. "Student radio talent celebrated at the Student Radio Awards 2008". Milkround. Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
  13. ↑ "The Technical Difficulties - Podcast and Web Show". Archived from the original on 6 January 2016. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  14. ↑ "Only Connect, Series 3 Episodes". BBC. Retrieved 8 September 2017.
  15. ↑ "Actual Facebook Graph Searches". actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com. Archived from the original on 25 February 2016. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
  16. ↑ Garside, Juliette (23 January 2013). "Facebook's Graph Search tool causes increasing privacy concerns". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 February 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
  17. ↑ Scott, Tom (30 August 2014). Emojli: Behind the Scenes and Why You Should Never Build An App. Archived from the original on 26 June 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2017.
  18. ↑ "Web Toys and Games". Tom Scott. Archived from the original on 10 July 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  19. ↑ "Talk Like A Pirate Day UK Headquarters". www.yarr.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-09-18.
  20. ↑ Scott, "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 5 February 2017. Retrieved 28 January 2017. . "The Ballad of Mad Cap'n Tom, Part 2." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Apr. 2016. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
  21. ↑ "Yarr! Election pits pirate vs pirate". Retrieved 2017-11-28.
  22. ↑ McDermott, Kerry (29 April 2010). "England's fringe candidates fight for votes". BBC News. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  23. ↑ "Election Results 2010: Cities of London and Westminster". BBC News. Archived from the original on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  24. ↑ "Noel Gallagher: 'I voted for a pirate at the last general election'". NME. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 23 June 2017. It’s the first time I’ve just picked the most ludicrous thing on the list. Some guy dressed as a pirate – there’s nothing cooler than a pirate.
  25. ↑ Matt and Tom (28 December 2015), Why Does Tom Always Wear Red T-Shirts?, archived from the original on 7 August 2017, retrieved 9 August 2017
  26. ↑ "Tom's videos for Computerphile - YouTube". YouTube. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
  27. ↑ "Matt and Tom". Archived from the original on 5 December 2016. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  28. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je0UVD_4vDM&t=212s
  29. ↑ @tomscott (2018-05-04). "New video! And a new series! Lateral, a quiz show. The first episode has @Kat_Arney, @helenarney, @simonoxfphys and @sallylepage and it is a GREAT start to the show:" (Tweet). Retrieved 2018-06-01 – via Twitter.
  30. ↑ Gray, Sarah (2 July 2014). "An emoji-only social network: Ridiculous … or brilliant?". Slate. Archived from the original on 30 July 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  31. ↑ Solon, Olivia (30 June 2014). "Emoji-only social network Emojli is the new Yo". Wired UK. Archived from the original on 31 August 2014.
  32. ↑ "Investors tried to throw cash at this startup that was actually just a joke". Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
  33. ↑ Butcher, Mike (24 May 2010). ""Evil" app shows how Facebook users make their mobile numbers public". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  34. ↑ Arthur, Charles (6 October 2010). "Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 February 2014. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  35. ↑ Fletcher, Dan (20 July 2009). "Tweleted: Making Mischief on Twitter". Time Business. Time Inc. Archived from the original on 15 January 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  36. ↑ Gross, Doug (9 May 2011). "Make Osama watch 'Friday,' suffer other indignities". CNN Tech. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
  37. ↑ Pagels, Jim (27 April 2012). "Who Are the Real Klouchebags?". Slate. Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  38. ↑ Kosner, Anthony (30 April 2012). "Hate Klout? Tom Scott Mixes Meaningless Metrics with Feminine Hygiene in Response". Forbes.com. Archived from the original on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
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