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Good. So, I really did n't want to make this video. I was thinking about doing this five months ago, but I thought things had calmed down a bit, and then recently things escalated and got out of control. So I felt the need to at least address this to tell you the truth about what's going on, and hopefully it can provide some insight, maybe some education, about this whole crazy situation. So, about 6 months ago, people started sending me this video right here. Perhaps some of you have encountered something similar. There are many of them now. Maybe you haven't seen him. So I'll just play the beginning of it so you can get an idea of what's going on. An Oregon man was convicted and sent to prison for collecting and using rainwater on his own
property, and the state sued him for theft. Ranch owner Gary Harrington built three large reservoirs on his own land to collect rainwater and snowmelt. He claimed the water was primarily for firefighting and wildlife water, but the state deemed it theft and prosecuted Gary. So, we'll take a closer look at this video and other videos like it in a second, but there's so First, let's address the obvious. I'm not Gary Harrington. I'm Mike Greenfield. But these videos use stolen footage from my videos of me legally harvesting rainwater on my property, while the story is about Gary Harrington going to prison Rainwater is a public resource, and collecting it without a permit is illegal. In Oregon, a man was convicted and imprisoned for collecting and using rainwater
on his own land. The state government accused him of theft. Cattleman Gary Harrington built three large reservoirs on his property to collect rainwater and snowmelt. Ultimately, Harrington was convicted on several charges, including illegal use of public water resources. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and a fine of more than $15,000. So obviously, if you're just flipping through the page on your phone and have never seen any of my videos, you don't know who I am. Your first reaction might be to this guy, Gary Harrington, who went to prison. That's why, about five months ago, when these videos started to surface, I started getting private messages from people who either just wanted to let me know that these videos already existed, people who
knew who I was, but there were also people who were quite confused and wanted more information about the situation, and, for example, were concerned that I had gone to prison. So this is clearly defamation, because I am clearly not this guy, Gary Harrington. But that's just one of the annoying parts of these videos. What is truly twisted is how deceptive the story itself is. It is completely misleading. The whole reason these videos went so viral is because of the title. You flip through the pages, you hear: " Man goes to jail for collecting rainwater." Your first thought is: " Wait a minute."
How could he go to jail just for collecting a free resource? And if you look at the comments on these videos, you'll see that thousands and thousands of people are interacting with these videos. At the moment, it seems to be out of control. It's all like: "America is the worst." The government is taking away our rights. I am leaving this part of the country. The judge should be put in prison." It just goes on and on, like it's out of control. And at this stage, we realize how Evoking outrage is, of course, one of the most powerful emotions for driving online engagement. When people are truly angry, they are much more likely to engage with content. They will comment.
They can argue and fight in the comments. They share with other people. And of course, these algorithms don't really care whether it's true or not. All they care about is engagement. More people are watching videos, which means more people on their platforms, which means they can sell more advertising. Now, right away, those initial videos that were sent to me, some of them went super viral, over 5 million views, which was annoying, but I thought that over time it would just go away. But there seems to be something specific about this story that's causing so much outrage that it just continues.the cycle, like more reposts, more people copying the video, that it just spreads like wildfire. I
mean, right now, if you just type " rainwater prison " into Instagram, it's an endless scroll of these videos. And some are just reposts. They get fewer views, but there are plenty of videos like this that have millions and millions of views and shares. And that's just Instagram. This is the only platform other than YouTube that I interact with. I didn't even check TikTok or Facebook. And knowing the center of disinformation on these platforms, I think it's probably worse there. So let's talk about the most egregious part of these videos, which is the misinformation that is being spread. So, first of all, this happened over 15 years ago. So it's strange that this is coming up again right now. And this guy Gary Harrington, I don't know
if his picture is on the internet, which I think is why people just show my face in these videos. They need some kind of visual component. evidence. So they say, "Oh, this guy is collecting rainwater. Let's put it there." "So Gary was fined $1,500 and sentenced to 30 days in jail. This part of the story is actually true. What is not true is why he was fined and sent to prison. So this guy, Gary Harrington, owned a 170-acre tract in Oregon. And in this area, he built three large earthen dams across a natural drainage channel. Some of these dams were apparently up to 15 feet high. And, in essence, he created these seasonal flows. These streams collected rainwater and melted snow, directing the water into three large reservoirs on his
property that held about 13 million gallons of water. That's roughly the equivalent of 20 Olympic- sized swimming pools. And if you compare that to this 1,000- gallon rainwater barrel that I used to collect water on my roof, you can see that we're talking about a slightly different scale. The dispute was not just about rainwater harvesting. It concerned water rights. Gary believed he didn't need permits because he claimed the tanks only collected rainwater." and the melting of snow from his property. But Oregon officials disagreed, saying the dams intercept water that would naturally flow into protected waterways, meaning state water rights and permits were needed. Gary actually applied for permits and initially received approval for
two of them, but just a couple of months later the state revoked those permits, determining that his property was part of the Big B Creek floodplain. Gary spent over 10 years going to court. And after numerous losses in court and repeated refusals to comply with court orders while continuing to refill these tanks on his property, it seemed that the courts were simply tired of Gary. And they imposed a stiffer fine of $1,500 and 30 days in jail, which, as you now understand, is a very different situation than when a person goes to jail for, say, collecting rainwater in barrels from their roof. And, obviously, that person is me. So when this first started a few months ago, I just messaged the people who were making videos or
posting videos asking them to take them down, and most of them immediately took them down. But over the last. Over the past month or two, I've started getting a lot more personal messages about this, because the situation has continued to spread, to go viral, and to escalate to the point where it's kind of gotten out of control. I can't really write to all these people because it would take me practically the whole day. It would be like a full-time job. The first type of content comes from content pages created by artificial intelligence. Just complete AI slot nonsense taking up space on the internet, probably trying to garner a few views. They find a story, have it
told by artificial intelligence, take obviously stolen footage from somewhere on the internet, put it together, and, you guessed it, hope it goes viral. So there's a lot of that happening. The second type of video is just as stupid. This is people's reaction to these videos. And I use the word " react" very loosely because they don't really add any commentary at all. They literally just sit on the screen and the video plays. An Oregon man has been sentenced to prison for collecting and using rainwater on his own property. Gary Harrington Ranch was built by a man from Oregon. was imprisoned for collecting rainwater on his own property.
Meanwhile, not all those involved in the case are being held accountable. Always trust your government. Always. And since I think they have a more conservative audience, it obviously gets views. And some of these reaction videos have millions and millions of views. Another thing that's annoying about these videos is that I think they discourage people from collecting rainwater, at least in the US, since Oregon is of course part of the US. And I had to study this issue on my own because rainwater harvesting is something I love to do. This has become one of my favorite activities in the entire farming ecosystem. For example, the other day we had huge storms.
We got, I think, five or six inches of rain. And I'm sitting here, so excited that my rainwater tanks are filling up after a long drought, because I can use this beautiful, untreated rainwater to water all my plants, which they really like because it's chlorine-free, unlike city water, which is much better for the soil biology. And in almost every state, it's perfectly legal. collect rainwater from the roof and direct it into some kind of barrel. Some people filter this rainwater and use it at home as drinking water or simply as running water for showers or sinks. Personally, I only use it for my plants. And if you're interested in rainwater harvesting, you should check your local regulations because while it's legal in every state, some
states regulate how much you can actually collect. Colorado is perhaps the most famous example, being part of a much larger western water rights system. Because is more scarce in this part of the country, they want to make sure that more of that water goes directly into the ground. So they regulate how much you can actually collect from the roof. Personally, I feel comfortable with my online image. I have been creating videos on YouTube and various social media platforms for over ten years. If you've watched my videos, you know I'm not Gary Harrington. And thank you to everyone watching this video in the comments to clarify this story.
This definitely helped. I feel like recently.I've seen people commenting like we need to fact check this story. But at first it was just pure outrage. And yet, most of the comments are outrage. There may be one comment that claims this is a misleading story. But this whole experience in general, I think, just reflects a much larger trend and problem that's happening with digital content right now. It has become so easy to create content based on artificial intelligence and post it online. You grab a story, steal other people's content without their permission, publish it, and just hope it goes viral. And most of this happens with short content,
because it's so easy to create a 30-second or 1- minute video. But I'm starting to see it entering the world of long videos, which is a huge bummer. how the virality of such a video shows how effective algorithms are in creating these outrage cameras on the internet. Millions of people watch these videos. They don't doubt the authenticity of the video for a second. They are just angry. They comment, and this algorithm just sends it out to more people. And the biggest problem with this is that people will always be able to take advantage of human psychology and figure out how to profit from it or how to get views.
So I really think it comes down to the platforms themselves. And it seems that the platforms are not doing anything special to stop this type of content. It's obvious that it's so easy for these people to create misleading content full of copyright violations, and the platforms do nothing. At least I can understand where this could happen to anyone. I am just one example. I think that, um, that was it? This guy Rhett Shaw, who has a YouTube channel about guitar, and this is an example of a long-form video where an AI channel just completely copied his content in a few different ways. So I think this problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all.
I have been making videos online for over ten years. And at least on YouTube, I feel like they've always been pretty good at responding to certain issues on the platform. Definitely not perfect, but they've maintained it as a healthy enough ecosystem where I look forward to continuing to make videos there. And that's no easy job when millions of people post every day. But it needs to be done. With the change and development of technology, there will always be such issues, and they need to be met with additional rules, otherwise you will have an unhealthy environment that you do not want to be in. I guess the moral of the story is, don't believe every headline you see on.
