I’m really adverse to following Twitch or Youtube personalities religiously since I think that leads to unhealthy expectations but Destiny is an interesting guy and I wouldn’t have the mental fortitude or patience to debate wackos all day like he does for a living. What’s especially interesting is his shift in stance towards slurs and context; its a rare story on the internet where everyone defends slurs as freedom of speech without considering the harms it can cause:
Let me tell you a story. Maybe you can relate – maybe you should relate to it but you don’t even realize it, yet.
About a year and a half ago I was chatting with a few friends. These are guys that I’ve been friends with for a long time and, for the most part, they’re great people. We’ve played games together, talked and joked together, watched SC2 tournaments together, so on and so forth. However, after one of them started making a few too many gay jokes, I noticed something about him that I didn’t really pick up on before – he was genuinely homophobic. Not homophobic in a “I want to vote against gay marriage and murder gay people!” sort of way, but homophobic in a “I would never be friends with a gay guy and I genuinely think that being gay is a negative personality trait.” I distinctly remember one of the lines he said towards the end of the conversation, “Wouldn’t want to be a faggot now, would we?” followed by the usual laughter before we all departed and went our separate ways.
I was really uncomfortable thinking about things that night. I’m sure I’ve made similar statements in the past. In fact, I’d wager that I’ve said probably those exact words at one point or another in my life. I’ve used faggot as a pejorative, a term of endearment, a random, nondescript adjective…you name it. I’ve always felt okay saying it because I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t a homophobic person. I have the classic “I have gay friends” card up my sleeve and I can even pull the “I have gay friends who constantly use the word faggot and support me saying it” card, as well. I have all of my views on language that I’ve detailed over and over again in the past to support me being able to use that word, and I’ve never felt out of place arguing its usage in public.
However,
I don’t like the fact that legitimately homophobic people might find comfort in me using the word “faggot”.
I am a very inclusive person. I would never imagine turning someone away from either a fan event or a group of friends or a conversation just because they’re of a certain race or sexual orientation. And I’m saying that because I have always been like that, not because I run some team and I want you to write good things to my sponsors, not because I’m trying to win any public fan contest, not because I support diversity, not because my boss or manager is telling me to say it, but because I legitimately love playing games and talking about music, and if anyone shares those hobbies with me I want to have the chance to talk with them about it.
I’ve said it a few times on stream that I’m working my best to cut some words out of my vocabulary from now on. Of course if you watch my stream enough you’ll still hear me slip from time to time, but I’m only human and this is a really hard habit to break. I’m just not comfortable knowing that there are genuinely racist or homophobic (or transphobic or anti-anything) people out there who feel like they are finding acceptance of their asinine and inane beliefs due to a word I might use. It’s something that’s so upsetting to me that I will go a bit out of my way to avoid it happening.
Can we turns this into a general youtube “drama” thread because there is some amusing opposite things going around at least in the British Press over the week end:
I think we should keep this one JUST about the white supremacists and gomergaters. Make another thread or use the Google thread for direct Youtube stuff.
And look at that. It’s a complete departure from what I remember his position on crude language being and yet it fits the guy perfectly. And it’s sensible. I’ve had my ‘that guy’ sensors tripped in the past by him but I think it’s just because he plays it a bit fast and loose, and not because he’s ‘that guy’.
He has lost another thing. I didn’t know he was “celebrity voice” level of person - I know Jim Sterling does voice work professionally (He is going to be in the Abe’s Exodus remake.)
The thing is this thing happening coincidentally wouldn’t effect the people like Jon Tron. His videos won’t be demonetized by this sure it will likely effect people who he is being chummy with. The one Jon Tron was talking with for 5 hours a month ago already has a Patreon set up and they do much better generally at getting their audience to pay.
Also the big pre-internet racists and homophobes (the David Dukes and Westborough baptists) don’t use youtube as revenue but as a platform to recruit new members and being demonetized will just give them another thing to add to their talking points.
On this note: now that I’m finally getting a better-paying job, I feel like I should take the plunge and demonetize all my videos like I’ve wanted to for ages. I only used ads in the first place because I truly needed the extra income; they weren’t my only income, but they definitely made a difference. And I’ve wanted to get free of them the whole time! I hate annoying my viewers with ads, I hate stressing out over CPM fluctuations and maximizing impressions, and I hate the anxiety of knowing that needed revenue could drop out from under me at any moment. So I sympathize with (non-shithead) mid-tier YouTubers being afraid of what will happen to them if they suddenly can’t pay bills because of stuff like this. There really aren’t many great self-sufficient alternatives to monetizing internet videos yet, so a lot of YouTubers are forced to rely on the shitty, unreliable ad system.
So yeah, now seems as good a time as any for me to just jettison any remaining reliance I have on all of that. Patreon is doing okay for me as extra income too thankfully, so I can probably make do with just that now that I’ll have better employment income. I really hope that more alternatives open up for video creators beyond Patreon too, because Patreon can be unreliable and hard to get off the ground for creators just starting out. There really needs to be more development on ways to monetize art without ads.
So, Ethan aka h3h3, a very popular reactionary youtuber, came out with a video earlier today “Proving” that the Wall Street Journal faked screenshots of monetisation of racist youtube videos, as the creator of the video saw a complete and total drop in their ad rev from the video about eight months ago, well before the WSJ took the screenshot. Various accusations about lack of research, failure to fact check, etc followed.
And here’s the punchline - he’s also just set the video to private. Because, turns out - the reason the revenue dropped off was because the youtuber that provided him the screenshots didn’t mention that he’d been hit with a copyright claim, and all the revenues for the video were going to the claimant instead, and of course, Ethan did approximately zero actual investigation.
Of course, the only appropriate reaction is a Gif from the video in question -
I know of the h3h3 guys. There’s a lady as well, Ila? Maybe.
Anyway the only reason I know of them is the whole h3h3 lawsuit. I kinda assumed they were decent because they made a video pointing out the extremely cringe nature of another youtube video which was pretty blatantly misogynistic and faux pornographic. When hit with a copyright claim from the maker of said cringy video they are fighting using the affirmative defense of fair use and really showing how expensive it is to do that (I think they got crowdfunding). They got a $50,000 bill from the firm representing them for the first month alone.
The nature of h3h3 aside the case will hopefully set some real precedent in fair use cases and hopefully help a bunch of future lawsuits move through the court system more smoothly.
It’s kind of a shame the system really just works that way. In order for precedent to be set, someone has to really go through the extremely expensive process of actually going to court at their own expense.
From what I understand precedent is kind of like law in court and having it is extremely beneficial for the court in general. but exactly 0 gets made without someone paying for it. It really feeds into the whole access to justice issue… but I’m getting off track here.
My point is I thought the h3h3 crew were cool, They’ve just taken themselves down a notch.
What did I miss? I thought this was basically a retraction. He said he fucked up. There’s some other weird stuff going on but he’s out right admitting he got it wrong. He brought me from “ok he’s an idiot” to “ok he cares way to much about this but at least he admitted when he dun’ goofed.”
It’s not “doubling down” in that he retracts his original claims (more-or-less, "there may actually be a possibility that the video was claimed), but then he goes full “just asking questions” mode about the amount of money made. There’s no way to interpret his tone when he talks about WSJ finding high-value ads as anything other than another attack. Dude should have issued a proper apology and kept his head down for a bit, instead of going off half-cocked again.
[quote=“Naoza, post:56, topic:562”]
I kinda assumed they were decent because they made a video pointing out the extremely cringe nature of another youtube video which was pretty blatantly misogynistic and faux pornographic.
[/quote]Yep, they did. And they were cool. But they’ve since gotten popular with the reactionary crowd, and they’ve started making videos catering to that crowd, as well as explicitly supporting Pewdiepie, Jontron, etc.
[quote=“Naoza, post:56, topic:562”]
When hit with a copyright claim from the maker of said cringy video they are fighting using the affirmative defense of fair use and really showing how expensive it is to do that (I think they got crowdfunding). They got a $50,000 bill from the firm representing them for the first month alone.
[/quote]That’s pretty nuts. They should have contacted Jim Sterling to get his lawyer’s contact information, that’s not much less than his total for the entire year-long case with Romaine/Digital Homicide.
[quote=“Ikatono, post:57, topic:562, full:true”]
lol instead of backing off he decided to double down. Digging his fucking grave.
[/quote]So, now he’s basically saying “I’m wrong, but there’s still a conspiracy, which I have zero evidence for, pls belive me.” Good luck with that matey patatey.
I hate annoying my viewers with ads, I hate stressing out over CPM fluctuations and maximizing impressions, and I hate the anxiety of knowing that needed revenue could drop out from under me at any moment. So I sympathize with (non-shithead) mid-tier YouTubers being afraid of what will happen to them if they suddenly can’t pay bills because of stuff like this. There really aren’t many great self-sufficient alternatives to monetizing internet videos yet, so a lot of YouTubers are forced to rely on the shitty, unreliable ad system.