Who would've thought a video essay on suicide would be seditious?
Optics is everything these days. I don't care for that notion. I let my work speak freely. That being said, sometimes a bobbleheaded dingus comes around and turns their lack of comprehension into ignorant snitchery. Often, the snitchery is incentivized as the companies flying these infuriating kites confuse controversy with a loss of revenue.
What was really lost was a morsel of humanity. Not the video, of course, but those that took the time to share their thoughts and experiences below it. I read every single one of them.
If it wasn't obvious, I don't condone suicide, nor have I ever promoted it. Don't kill yourself, that's a boring and trite and devastating thing to do. There are better things to do with your life, like managing your Roth IRA or working as a YouTube subcontractor at wages you'd find abhorrent.
YouTube's Community Guidelines are malleable; pliable to the outlooks and sentiments of advertisers and data hoarders--taut and furtive to creators, enforced selectively and opaquely to their creations. It's easy to parse, yet hollow and encompassing. The language is direct and truncated, yet necessitates the "including but not limited to". It saves the company a lot of face in the Platform vs. Publisher discussion, of which YouTube seems to have evaded legislative scrutiny.
Melodrama and "I'll take 'Things Out Of My Wheelhouse' for 200, Alex", aside, WSITN4 was one of my favorite videos. It's a shame the implicit message wasn't heard by whoever flagged it. It's confusing as to why the individual who reviewed it parsed the guidelines to find it's content a violation. It's sad to know that a video like it isn't allowed here. It's wild that disembodied specters can determine what's safe for you and I to watch.
YouTube wields the ban hammer. Until they don't. Let's hope censorship isn't common to the point where we can't be honest with each other anymore.
Perhaps we are already there.
- Attar
"In the end, it doesn’t matter, but this isn’t the end. So live a little, and forgo an obsession of frugality so that you might live the last years of your life in sedentary bliss and meaninglessness. Fuck a 401k. Take thought for the morrow but don’t wish upon it. And if tragedy strikes you dead, then so be it: tragedy comes for us all, in the end."
ATTAR
RIP Why Suicide Is The New 401(k)
Who would've thought a video essay on suicide would be seditious?
Optics is everything these days. I don't care for that notion. I let my work speak freely. That being said, sometimes a bobbleheaded dingus comes around and turns their lack of comprehension into ignorant snitchery. Often, the snitchery is incentivized as the companies flying these infuriating kites confuse controversy with a loss of revenue.
What was really lost was a morsel of humanity. Not the video, of course, but those that took the time to share their thoughts and experiences below it. I read every single one of them.
If it wasn't obvious, I don't condone suicide, nor have I ever promoted it. Don't kill yourself, that's a boring and trite and devastating thing to do. There are better things to do with your life, like managing your Roth IRA or working as a YouTube subcontractor at wages you'd find abhorrent.
YouTube's Community Guidelines are malleable; pliable to the outlooks and sentiments of advertisers and data hoarders--taut and furtive to creators, enforced selectively and opaquely to their creations. It's easy to parse, yet hollow and encompassing. The language is direct and truncated, yet necessitates the "including but not limited to". It saves the company a lot of face in the Platform vs. Publisher discussion, of which YouTube seems to have evaded legislative scrutiny.
Melodrama and "I'll take 'Things Out Of My Wheelhouse' for 200, Alex", aside, WSITN4 was one of my favorite videos. It's a shame the implicit message wasn't heard by whoever flagged it. It's confusing as to why the individual who reviewed it parsed the guidelines to find it's content a violation. It's sad to know that a video like it isn't allowed here. It's wild that disembodied specters can determine what's safe for you and I to watch.
YouTube wields the ban hammer. Until they don't. Let's hope censorship isn't common to the point where we can't be honest with each other anymore.
Perhaps we are already there.
- Attar
"In the end, it doesn’t matter, but this isn’t the end. So live a little, and forgo an obsession of frugality so that you might live the last years of your life in sedentary bliss and meaninglessness. Fuck a 401k. Take thought for the morrow but don’t wish upon it. And if tragedy strikes you dead, then so be it: tragedy comes for us all, in the end."
5 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 446