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Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

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Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#301
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has literally been attempts at passing legislation to force people to use gender pronouns other than he or she. Your framing of this issue as simply being about LGBT wanting to be able to meet together without harassment is disingenuous.

Unsuccessful attempts, maybe, although I doubt it. These kinds of stories tend to be greatly exaggerated, so: citation needed.[0] Meanwhile, there have been actual laws (not attempts!) that criminalized deviation from the heterosexual norm not so long ago -- or even today in not-so-nice countries. The point is: Yes, the public sphere is also changing, but it's changing slowly, and the participants of the discussion w…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

> Examples of Violations

> a. Intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun or title. For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman “him” or “Mr.” after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses

[snip]

> And this isn’t just the government as employer, requiring its employees to say things that keep government patrons happy with government services. This is the government as sovereign, threatening “civil penalties up to $125,000 for violations, and up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct” if people don’t speak the way the government tells them to speak.

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#302
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsuccessful attempts, maybe, although I doubt it. These kinds of stories tend to be greatly exaggerated, so: citation needed.[0] Meanwhile, there have been actual laws (not attempts!) that criminalized deviation from the heterosexual norm not so long ago -- or even today in not-so-nice countries. The point is: Yes, the public sphere is also changing, but it's changing slowly, and the participants of the discussion w…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... > Examples of Violations > a. Intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun or title. For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman “him” or “Mr.” after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses [snip] > And this isn’t just the government as employer, requiring its employees to say things that keep govern…

Thanks for the link, that's indeed extreme. It's a pity that the original source link is dead.

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#303
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you, nor am I a fan. I only saw parts of the episode when a friend watched it, so I did not see it in it's entirety. Is what you listed a complete listing of things he attempted to get through? Or just your selection of what he tried that was prejudice? It seems likely he also would have tried to get some other dumb things through on the level of dick jokes.

I haven't seen him or any of his fans give any examples in his defence of other things he did that were not along the lines of "Hitler did nothing wrong" and "Death to all Jews", which I'd expect them to do if he'd done so.

The zealous petulance displayed by Pewdiepie fans in this thread over anything that doesn't try to excuse his anti-Semitic remarks and behaviour is really weird.

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#304
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The whole reason pewdiepie and other personalities on youtube have such high viewership is because mainstream media hasn't had anyone funny for decades. Anyone fresh, honest or even just equally offensive to every group has been purged from the airwaves for being politically incorrect. Even Dave Chappelle is getting in hot water for jokes that no one would have objected to 10 years ago.

I don't see how what you're saying opposes what fixermark is saying. Sure mainstream media may not be providing good material, but the way to fix this isn't to not hold people accountable for their actions.

But that is the fix if "holding people accountable for their actions" is what kills the joke...

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#305
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how what you're saying opposes what fixermark is saying. Sure mainstream media may not be providing good material, but the way to fix this isn't to not hold people accountable for their actions.

But that is the fix if "holding people accountable for their actions" is what kills the joke...

If holding people accountable for their actions kills a joke, the joke wasn't very good. This is one of the points slowbeef makes in the essay; part of the reason YouTube let's-players end up offending is the nature of the project doesn't leave them time to simmer jokes long enough to be good.

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all correct -- but it underlines the awkward moral spot that Google (my employer) is in. Our incentive is to pay lip service to freedom of speech while taking the path of least resistance and censor to keep angry 3rd parties happy. You might think this shuts down only speech beyond the pale. But we are still rewarding those who act most offended, and our wisest course is to kowtow more and more. That stuff is…

If we stopped saying things that might "offend" someone somewhere there would be silence. What's interesting is, the more we try to silence certain voices, the louder their message gets. Does demonization (?) work? Does it back fire ? Take IS for instance. The stronger and more extreme the resistance (?) the stronger it gets. I'm certainly not defending hate, etc. Just wondering - out loud - if the old countermeasure…

There are things that are pretty unlikely to offend, things that are very likely to offend a lot of people, and things that are very likely to offend a few people (this kind of humor is often called "punching down" when the few are a low-power group and "punching up" when it's a high-power group).

Nobody is calling for zero offense; that's a slippery-slope argument that doesn't really apply to the situation. And nobody has silenced PewDiePie; he's completely free to continue to publish his content on YouTube (with proper community flagging, within the guidelines of the YouTube community, and even if he were no longer free to do so, he wouldn't be "silenced;" he'd just have to move his content to .mp4s hosted out of his own pocket).

What has happened is YouTube and Disney have both exercised their option to no longer pay the guy for being offensive, which they are perfectly within their rights to do.

In terms of the more general "Just wondering aloud" question: The old Streisand Effect is still in play, but the Internet is now a mature enough platform that it has "these sites" and "those sites." You can find all manner of things completely unacceptable to YouTube's community standards linked off of 4chan. Keeping them off of YouTube does probably make them a little harder for most web users to find (since YouTube's search, indexing, and relational systems are so convenient). That's likely working as intended.

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is the fix if "holding people accountable for their actions" is what kills the joke...

If holding people accountable for their actions kills a joke, the joke wasn't very good. This is one of the points slowbeef makes in the essay; part of the reason YouTube let's-players end up offending is the nature of the project doesn't leave them time to simmer jokes long enough to be good.

> There’s an apparent double standard, right? Comedians tell AIDS jokes, Holocaust jokes, 9/11 jokes and much more. When a popular YouTuber does it, it’s suddenly being reported by the media (and, cough, other YouTubers). Didn’t George Carlin once say no topic is off limits?

> There really is a joke there somewhere at Fiverr’s expense, and I think that’s what he was going for.

> The parts are there, loosely, if you cock your head and squint a bit. There’s an air of exploitation (on Fiverr’s part, but also often claimed to be on PewDiePie’s part) but it was a rush job. Seinfeld, in contrast, maps out goofy jokes about Pop Tarts down to the syllable.

I read and understood what slowbeef wrote. Delivery is the unmentioned point of discussion -- landing the delivery. It's the difference in whether a joke is funny or not. But changing delivery keeps the raw essence of the joke the same.

And I don't think it's fair to call it "holding someone accountable", if the same raw essence of a joke told with better delivery is suddenly OK. It's the same accountable action. If you're really interested in "holding someone accountable", shouldn't the same raw essence of a joke be wrong no matter how it's delivered?

I don't disagree that delivery is extremely important to landing a joke and it being funny. I do disagree that holding people accountable for bad delivery of a joke is somehow a moral impetus. That good joke was just as morally bad as the bad joke.

In other words, you could have taken a lot of George Carlin's material and run it through the ultra-politically-correct filter and come out deaf from the blaring alarms. But he's somehow above moral reproach because he's good at it? I don't buy it.

I think all this really goes back to the idea: Only the fool can criticize the king. Anyone else, and it was grounds for treason. I would have hoped we moved beyond that model.

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#308
post #293
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When "mere disagreement" is something like "I don't think you should have the same rights as me because your sexuality/gender/class/religion is different" then, uh, yes. Part of maturing is learning how to stand for one's ideas and beliefs, as well as learning how to deal with (bigoted) opposition to those. Isolating yourself, locking yourself in the echo chamber will make you unprepared for dialogue with those out…

If you disagree with 90% of his policies, but you vote for him anyway because of his LGBT activism, you're no better than racists could also disagree with 90% of a white man's policies, but still vote for them because their opponent was black. I know you'll argue against that point, but I mention it not for you, but to put what you said into context for other readers.

Actually, I fail to see the point you are making. I'm arguing that people should be active in shaping popular discourse of their societies while honing and validating their opinions as they clash those with other opinions.

Is your argument "oh, but racists are also shaping discourse of their societes"?

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If holding people accountable for their actions kills a joke, the joke wasn't very good. This is one of the points slowbeef makes in the essay; part of the reason YouTube let's-players end up offending is the nature of the project doesn't leave them time to simmer jokes long enough to be good.

> There’s an apparent double standard, right? Comedians tell AIDS jokes, Holocaust jokes, 9/11 jokes and much more. When a popular YouTuber does it, it’s suddenly being reported by the media (and, cough, other YouTubers). Didn’t George Carlin once say no topic is off limits? > There really is a joke there somewhere at Fiverr’s expense, and I think that’s what he was going for. > The parts are there, loosely, if you c…

Who is the king in this analogy?

Re: Reasons YouTubers keep imploding, from a YouTuber

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recurring pattern I've seen with online celebrities is that when they get popular enough for more mainstream media to notice them, they're suddenly held to the standards of mainstream sensibilities and judged in a mainstream light that can be very incompatible with their brand. And their fans then defend them with "If you've seen their other stuff, you'd know that isn't unusual," which is a pretty thin defense---a…

My defence of that point wasn't predictated on the idea that what he said was atypical of his content. It was predicated on the fact that WSJ took statements completely out of context to have the exact opposite of the in-context meaning.

I'm not sure there's a lot of "Taking out of context" involved with paying strangers to hold up a "Death to All Jews" sign.
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