Tom Scott (entertainer)

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Tom Scott
File:Tom Scott-headshot.jpg
Scott in 2011
Born (1985-01-01) 1 January 1985 (age 39)
Nationality British
Alma mater University of York
Occupation Entertainer, web developer
Website tomscott.com

Tom Scott (born 1 January 1985)[1] is a British geek comedian,[2] YouTuber,[3] programmer,[4] and formerly the presenter of Gadget Geeks on Sky One.[5][1] He lives in London[citation needed] and is originally from Nottinghamshire.[6]

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 GICS Operations Web Team responded by demanding the site be taken down.[7][8]

In 2008, his University Radio York radio show, "The Technical Difficulties", won the Kevin Greening Award[9] at the Student Radio Awards. More recently, The Technical Difficulties has been relaunched as a podcast,[10] 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.[1]

In 2012 he was part of the Team in the Sky1 series Gadget Geeks were he was responsible for the Software solutions.[5][1]

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".[11][12]

In 2014, Scott co-founded (with Matt Gray) Emojli, an emoji-only social network based on social networking application Yo. It was described by Slate as "an inside joke turned into reality".[13][14]

Politics

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.[15]

2010 UK General Election

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 had bet that the New Orleans Saints would lose the 2010 Super Bowl and said he would run for parliament if they won (they did). He promised to scrap taxes on rum, have schools offer courses in "swordsmanship and gunnery", and putting 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."[16] He received 84 votes, 0.2% of the total.[17]

Web apps

Other web-related humour Scott has created include "Evil", a web app that reveals the phone numbers of Facebook users,[18][19] "Tweleted"—which allows you to see posts deleted from Twitter,[20] and "What's Osama bin Watchin?", which mashes together an image of Osama bin Laden with Internet meme videos from YouTube like the song Friday.[21] In 2012, Scott released 'Klouchebag', a satire of the social media rankings site Klout.[22][23]

YouTube

Scott also has a popular YouTube channel with over 400,000 subscribers and more than 59 million views. He has a regular series on Things You Might Not Know, Amazing Places and explanations of computer security issues, among other projects.[3]

At the end of 2015, Scott launched a collaborative YouTube channel with his colleague Matt Gray, Matt and Tom, 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.

References

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External links