Y'know, if there's anything that grinds my gears, it's when people come into our social
media inboxes and tell us that talking about things on the Internet doesn’t do anything
and we need to get off the computer and go do something about it.
This has been a thing that has been grinding my gears for a few years, but I just recently
wanted to talk about it after somebody I follow on Tumblr got that sort of message.
The Internet is this huge platform and thousands of people are on it every single day and these
thousands of people have a voice.
Sometimes, it’s a good one.
Sometimes, it’s a bad one.
But voices are there.
Tons and tons of information is on the Internet.
When I was 15, I knew nothing about a lot of things.
I was a very ignorant child.
Now, I am very well informed on a lot of things and that is because of the Internet.
‘Cos high school education in North Carolina is extremely laughable.
Talking about things on the Internet makes people aware of lots of things.
We’ve talked about Mike Brown and lots of people are aware of Mike Brown.
We’ve talked about the college student in Columbia, South Carolina who was raped in
her dorm room, carries her mattress across campus to get her rapist out of the school,
and now she’s been on the cover of a very well known magazine.
Her story blew up ‘cos it was talked about on social media.
I, and many others, have learned about rape culture, feminism, sexism, homophobia, transgender
issues, racism because of the Internet.
We make people aware of Sam Pepper, Alex Day, Jason (veeoneeye), and all of these other
guys that have been involved with the sexual abuse on YouTube so far.
And one of them is now officially dropped from YouTube networks and partnerships.
And I officially make more money than Sam Pepper from this day forward.
I just don’t understand why people seem to think that talking about things on the
Internet isn’t doing anything.
Not everybody can stand up on a podium like Emma Watson and create a #HeForShe campaign.
Maybe, in the future, those of us that are talking about these things on the Internet
can do something like that, but right now, talking about issues on the Internet seems
to be doing something pretty good.
Here’s my own personal experience with talking about things on the Internet:
Last week, I made a video, a twenty minute video, about deaf awareness and it has almost
seven thousand views and made a lot of people aware.
There’s over a hundred comments in that video of people telling me they knew jack
shit about deafness or the wrong things about it and now they know.
And ‘cos of that, I made it on the Huffington Post Good News and then more people knew about
that.
And I have Hank Green’s attention which is pretty damn awesome, but that’s for the
future ‘cos nothing is definite but I just wanted to throw that out there ‘cos I’m
still in awe.
So, basically, the next time you want to go into our inboxes on social media and say that
we’re doing absolutely nothing by talking about issues on the Internet -
Look around you and look at what is happening.
Look at how many people are aware of these issues since we’ve been talking about it.
YouTube videos, news articles, Tumblr posts, tweets get lots of attention.
And the more attention it gets, the more aware people are and the more that these aware people
can do things whether it be talk about it some more or… physically do something outside.
So you can tell us that we’re not doing anything until you’re blue to the face,
but the fact is, it is doing something whether you like it or not.
And that’s all I have to say about that subject.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more deaf awareness videos to plan.
I’ll see you in my next video.
Bye.