I wish I could find the humor in this karma. But the hypocrisy is too distracting.
So, YouTube basically changed its terms of service, in June. Basically, it drastically restricted the videos that it will allow to be monetized. Many creators didn’t find out about the demonetization until late August.
This has caused no small stir in the YouTube Anti-SJW community, because they have often offensive content. But there is also non-offensive content that gets demonetized, too. Suicide and depression, for example, are topics that apparently advertisers are apprehensive about having their ads associated with. Or at least, that’s what YouTube thinks.
I’ve had an experience like this, too. For example, on this website, Patheos, I can write whatever I want. I just won’t get featured or promoted by Patheos if I have profanity in the title. I can have it anywhere else; just not the title.
The last website I was on before this, Hubpages (a good site if you want to develop blogging abilities, by the way) had even stricter rules. I remember I couldn’t get a post about Leelah Alcorn (a trans woman who committed suicide due to religious pressure from her parents) monetized because it was about suicide.
I wasn’t upset. I didn’t cry. I didn’t become a victim. I went to the place they talked about advertisers, and Hubpages said this:
Put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser. Would you want your brand to be associated with domestic violence? How about self harm or illegal drugs?
Chances are you are shaking your head. Rest assured, you are in good company. Most ad networks have rules about the type of content on which their clients’ ads can be presented, and this is most certainly the case with our ad partners.
For this reason, we may disable ads (based on automated filters or moderator review) on Hubs that address the following subjects:
- Adult subjects: This includes Hubs discussing things like prostitution and abortion
- Sexual subjects: This includes Hubs containing descriptions of sexual acts or body parts
- Content about drugs
- Content about self harm
- Content about violence: This includes Hubs touching on domestic violence and hate crimes
So long as a Hub you write on one of these subjects also meets our publishing standards (note that Hubs that are adult, mature, and addressing illegal drugs donot), the Hub may remain published. Just bear in mind that the Hub will not make you any money.
That’s even more strict than YouTube’s current terms of service are, and I respected that. It wasn’t that these topics were bad. It was the free market at work. And I didn’t give it a second thought. It was just irrational for me to force people to give me money for content they didn’t want to give me money for. It seemed kind of greedy in some way.
I could still publish whatever I wanted, I thought. They weren’t infringing on my free speech. I’d just take a loss. And you know what? If your audience wants you to do that content, and you need compensation to justify the time you spend on it, you can always set up a Patreon or something so that they can keep it going. It’s really not a big deal. It’s not censorship because Hubpages, personally, doesn’t like my ideas, necessarily. It’s because Hubpages was a business. And I dealt with it; took it in stride.
If anyone should be able to understand that, it should be these anti-SJWs who are constantly complaining about how I and others are members of “victim cults” who should just get over any injustices that happen in our society and prevail past that, accepting that people have a right to their own decisions and actions. I was able to do that here. It was no big deal. If tomorrow, Patheos decided they could no longer monetize atheist blog posts because they weren’t advertiser-friendly, sure I’d be a bit upset, but I’m going to take it in stride and figure that they’re a business. They can make their own decision. I’ll find someone else to support me, or leave the platform, or just write atheistic blog posts for free like I did for years.
I guess it’s a bit confusing to me that the same people who have been getting on my case and the case of other so-called “SJWs” who are talking about actual injustices that happen in the world, actual positive changes we can make in the world — these people are so astonishingly thin-skinned about this. I understand it in principle — yes, it’s touching their pocketbooks. That would affect people who make their living making anti-SJW videos, sure.
But here’s the thing: making money off of videos on YouTube is a happy accident of YouTube marrying advertisers. You’re kind of the third wheel in the relationship. You’re benefiting from the consummation of their love fest. And their demonetization of videos is not infringing on your free speech. You still have free speech, by their good graces. It’s because of the needs of the advertisers — what they do and don’t want their ads associated with. It’s a rational choice, and complaining about it really makes you look like a big-league victim. I mean, honestly — most of the people the anti-SJWs criticize for being victims have far bigger problems than worrying about sustaining a career as a YouTube celebrity.
It’s really not a big deal. Or, at least, considering your criticism of “victim cults” in general, you should just take it in stride, understand that this is simply the way things work, and deal with it. I mean, I did that. It’s not hard. All it takes is applying all these principles you apply to other people, to yourself.
But they are making a big deal about it. There are a ton of videos about this on YouTube; you can go look for yourself and see all the complaints. And some I understand — like, if you’re sensitive and hurting already and not yelling at other people for being sensitive and hurting — then yeah, you’re not a hypocrite. Go ahead and be honest about how difficult this is for you. But if you are constantly telling other people to “man up!” or “woman up!” as the case may be — if you don’t follow your own advice here, you’re telling me that being a victim is OK sometimes, in a situation that, frankly, sounds hypocritically not quite as bad as the people you so often poke fun at.
Some YouTubers have taken to using this to ask for more monetary donations. So they actually are doing the very thing they accuse others are doing it — except in a more extreme way, for a less important cause. They’re fixing the problem by “playing” the victim. Hardly any of them are saying that they need to just push through it and accept responsibility, that they shouldn’t complain, that they should just deal with reality. They seem…a little whiny, to be honest.
Now. I’m not doing this to say they don’t have a right to do that (although I think they might be overblowing it, but whatever). If you’re a victim, and want to rectify the situation, you should seek to rectify the situation and be honest about your victimization. But that’s my logic. Theirs, in my experience, has been, “Just get over it, and move on.”
Maybe that sounds good for other people, but you can see, here, how that’s hypocritical, and a standard you can’t follow yourself. I think, personally, that everyone’s a victim in some way or another, and it is by victims coming forward and being honest about their victimization that we can solve problems. That’s a bit more consistent. And it applies to gender, to race, to class, and even something less important than that, like whether you make money off a YouTube video.
Basically, what I’m saying is that if it’s OK for you to be in a victim cult based on whether or not you’re making money on a video you freely offered to a platform and they’re freely hosting…you can’t turn around and say that black people can’t complain about getting brutalized by cops at higher rates. You can’t say someone with a broken leg can’t complain and ask to be taken to the doctor’s office when you’re crying and headed there via ambulance because you got a splinter.
Stop with the double standards; if you’re allowed to complain about your smaller problems, others are allowed to complain about their larger ones.
Gravy?
Thanks for reading.
P.S. Yes, I have a Patreon, too, if you want to help me keep writing.