matpat is really fucking stupid

When I saw MatPat's video about the value of Bottle Caps on Game Theory Rejects' timeline, I decided to watch it, as I happen to have a PhD in Fallout Economics. I was greatly disappointed by the numerous errors in his video. If this was submitted to me as a graduate thesis, I'd tell the poor soul who sent it in that he might want to try Women's Studies instead.

List of errors in MatPat's video:
1. You obviously only included FNAF 4 as part of your "Apocalypse Trilogy" so it would be a "trilogy" in the first place. It has nothing to do with the end of human civilization as we know it, therefore, it is not post-apocalyptic. Dumbass.
2. You claim that Fallout takes place in an alternate history where "World War 2 never really ended", when in reality Fallout takes place in an alternate universe where the Cold War never ended, specifically the Cold War as it was in the 1950's. While the Cold War did start almost immediately after the end of World War 2, they were two entirely separate events, and the fact that you actually included a picture of Hitler from "Downfall" saying something stupid to punctuate your idiotic statement demonstrates that you either have have no knowledge of history whatsoever, have never played a Fallout game before, or just really wanted to make a bad Hitler joke.
3. They're ghouls, not "zombies".
4. Your pre-order jokes are based on Fallout: New Vegas pre-order bonuses, not anything that's been announced for Fallout 4. None of these packs actually included a rifle of any kind, and in fact the weapons included in these packs were pretty decent.
5. There were no bottle cap factories after the apocalypse *at first*. By the time of Fallout: New Vegas, bottle cap factories are in operation again, and a quest in Fallout: New Vegas actually requires the player to deactivate a bottle cap pressing machine so the value of the currency remains stable. Also, you can find an abandoned bottle cap counterfeiting operation in the Mojave desert, complete with counterfeit caps on the counters, which prove that they can be faked, albeit with some effort.
6. Using the gold bar from Dead Money to calculate the value of a cap is pretty clever, but ultimately, like any currency, the value of the bottle cap changes over time and is far from stable, so you've actually just calculated the value of the bottle cap as it was during the events of Fallout: New Vegas. In fact, bottle caps were almost completely worthless in Fallout 2, having been superseded by the NCR's own gold-backed currency. However, prior to the events of New Vegas, the NCR's gold reserves were destroyed by the Brotherhood of Steel, hence why bottle caps have become the standard again by the time New Vegas starts. Fun fact: It's never really explained why or how bottle caps are also used as currency on the East Coast in Fallout 3. Just a massive coincidence, I guess.
7. It's funny how you mention that the timeline apparently split off sometime during the 1950's. which was after the end of World War 2, yet you somehow believe Fallout takes place in a universe where World War 2 never ended. I'm really bothered by that, as you can tell.
8. The value of the US dollar had almost certainly changed after 1961 in the Fallout universe. In fact, the period immediately preceding the apocalypse in pre-War America was marked by inflation of a scale similar to what was seen in the early days of the Weimar Republic. Your method for calculating the price of bottle caps using gold is thus completely invalid, and you may as well use the current price of gold to make an estimate in today's dollars to avoid all of this needless complication.
9. I was actually just about to make the point that it's a fictional currency anyway and that using one item from one game that uses caps as a currency to calculate how much they are worth in real US dollars is really fucking stupid, especially considering that the value of gold is anything but an unchanging law of nature, as well as the fact that the value of both the bottle cap and the US dollar have no direct relation to the value of gold in the first place, and that your initial premise is thus fundamentally flawed as a result, but you addressed that for me. Oh well.
10. It's approximately 2,205 pounds, because you round the value of a number like 2,204.6 upwards because the decimal point is a 5 or higher - you know what? Forget it.
11. Calculating the monetary value of a real-world bottle cap strays from the point of your video, because as you explained earlier on, the value of a bottle cap in the Fallout universe is determined at least partly by what people perceive its value and the value of the commodity backing it to be. But whatever, it's your show. Do what you want. Asshole.