So recently I rediscovered the "7 ANT COLONIES in 1 ARENA: ANT WAR or JOIN FORCES" video and I said to myself: "Wow, People can be idiots sometimes." Mikey has been antkeeping for over a decade, he knew that they wouldn't be polygynous, but no, he just had to put them together. "For science!" he says. In my mind, it's "For views!" Those poor Camponotus queens didn't deserve this for their lives, when they could have been out in the wild, founding their own colonies for themselves. Sure, the chances aren't high, but those queens could have had empires ahead of them, ruined by this YouTuber driven by money.
Then, all of the forgotten colonies. I think Mikey will create tons of videos for one colony, and when everyone realizes how repetitive it's going, he places the colony into a black box entitled "Oblivion" and we never hear about them again. I can name countless colonies. Multiple termite colonies which were surely eaten by feral black ants, the 2021 carpenter ants, snd many others.
Then comes fire ants. When Queen Solis died I was convinced Mikey did something wrong without telling us. You tell me a Solenopsis queen's natural life span is 5 years? I know small ants have small lifespans, but at least 10 years! Probably covering up some mites or other parasites, or maybe he poisoned them with pesticides, I don't know. That one time the Pheonix Empire got their water contaminated and discolored to pink, I have a feeling either Mikey just didn't clean correctly, or even worst, made the mistake of putting sugar water into a founding tube. And because of how clean the cotton is, I'm leaning towards the latter. The time he made a video of an infertile fire ant queen was a horrible idea, Mikey should have known that it was a risk displaying a queen before it got workers, but he knew he could get so many views from "HEARTBREAKING, promising FIRE ANT queen suddenly DIES." This is very odd, as AC usually doesn't do this, and if that weren't true, I wouldn't believe Conditioner did it on purpose.
I like the old videos where smart, passionate Mikey is still there, making competent decisions that didn't put ants in danger for views. The video where he let little roaches walk to their death in the Pheonix Empire's outworld, was not a plan that would have worked long term. The roaches were very small, and the Empire was pretty big, but the amount of roaches in the outworld at once, over a dozen, could injure workers. Plus, the roaches were falling at a rate that I doubt they could have had enough young to fix it. The footage in the roach shot couldn't have been over an hour, and countless roaches already died in that time. Moreover, Mikey was constantly asking himself "Is this ethical?" the whole video. He knew that it wasn't a good plan, especially for the roaches' cut of the deal. The trash would have piled up in the outworld so fast that the outworld would be covered in dismembered roach parts, and if left for too long the ants could potential climb out and wreak havoc on the so called "Antiverse".
The videos are so overdramatic, instead of making true, heartfelt videos that truly show the hardships and daily times of an antkeeper, AC is so desperate he has to leave videos on cliffhangers to force the predominantly 13< audience to watch the next video. Since he doesn't show his fans a accurate view on antkeeping, and instead twists it into his distorted, dramatic kaleidoscope where he crafts every impurity to become mixed with the rest of the glass, the audience thinks it is easy, goes into it, has their queen die, and gives up. And the ones that do stay will think they can mix ant colonies together with no consequences, they'll think ants fighting each other just to survive is fine, they basically forget the ants are living creatures, with their own needs,
P.S: Why are those glorified Tupperware boxes so expensive? I could build one of those outworlds with random supplies in my house. Literally just need some food containers and Vaseline.
TLDR: AntsCanada/Air Conditioner is rapidly declining in quality as an antkeeper, by abusing his colonies in ways like mixing multiple monogynous ant colonies, clickbaiting and making cliche, dramatic videos and distorting true life as an antkeeper, and misleading the audience into failure.
So comment your opinion! Just keep everything civil. I mean no disrespect to Mikey.
), Tetramorium bicarinatum, Solenopsis spp. (probably xyloni, the queens are tiny hehe)
