Hey you! My name is Thomas “TomSka” Ridgewell and “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
- Uncle Ben, 1892.
YouTubers are influential people - like any other type of “celebrity” we have a degree
of sway over people’s opinion. It’s why we’re often hired to endorse brands or products
and why the money-people straight-up call us “influencers”. Hell, without influence
we probably wouldn’t be exactly be able to convince you to give us your money and
buy your shitty merchandise. Which reminds me, please buy my shitty merchandise.
It’s because of this influence that I believe we all need to be very careful with our actions.
Unfortunately, reckless abandon is a luxury afforded to people who have… No real impact
on the world; like your one crazy-racist relative who you can kinda tune out at family gatherings.
Every single thing we say or do online has a real world consequence and that’s something
I think we should always consider before saying or doing anything.
I myself have made a bunch of screw-ups in my time online, some a lot harder to live
down than others - hell, the last time I tried to make this video was debatably one of them
- but I’ve done more than enough apologising for a lifetime. Right now I’d rather just
take what I’ve learned and hopefully pass it onto you so less mistakes can be made in
the future.
So, back to the topic of YouTubers and influence. I think the very fact that people will quote
our videos in the real world is proof that the stuff we say sticks with people. Now I
don’t want to police what people can and can’t say but I think it’s worth considering
these two questions before releasing anything to the masses:
1) Could this be imitated? Meaning could people see what I’m doing or hear what I’m saying
and be inspired to do the same, and 2) What would the result of that imitation be? What
would that look like?
Now I’m not saying that everything is going to directly inspire someone. A special effects
video of someone flying around their neighbourhood isn’t likely going to encourage a kid to
jump off their roof. However, a video normalising or trivialising some sort of shitty behaviour
just might tell someone, even an adult, that “yeah, that’s funny, maybe I should do
that too” and that’s really the point I’m trying to get at here.
Let’s focus for a moment on content that relies on “punching down”. Where groups
of people who have historically been shit all over… Get shit all over some more. Videos
that rely on offensive stereotypes, harmful language, or just generally perpetuate negative
attitudes or behaviours. Are the creators of this content responsible for the potential
affects these videos could have on their viewers or is it up to the viewers to not be affected?
Well, because the Internet quite rightfully has no governing body or ethical overseer,
I think that responsibility falls onto us, the creators. YouTube doesn’t exactly allow
us to choose our audiences. It’s kinda like cinema where everything is free and anyone
can walk into any screening. Yeah, there’s a degree of community guidelines but that
rarely gets applied to more than pornographic content and copyright infringement. In short,
I’m saying… Think of the children!
There’s a whole lot of kids here on YouTube, even if the platform doesn’t want to acknowledge
that anyone under the age of 13 is using the site - because obviously it was 400 million
teens and up that watched this video. What about the affects we could be having on them?
Ideally YouTube would allow us to appropriately age-gate and still monetise our videos or
legal guardians would keep a closer eye on their kids but…
Unfortunately we live in this reality so that's not gonna happen.
Like how we learn swear words from other people, I think we inherit most of our opinions and
even prejudices from those we look up to. So, when we are knowingly uploading our work
to a platform chock-full of unavoidable and impressionable children, we lose the ability
to claim we’re only making videos for our like-minded, critically thinking, peers.
So, like I said, I have no interest in judging or policing anyone - these are just my opinions.
Hell, I make sketches featuring baby death, suicide, gun violence, even a whacky homeless
guy. I’m no moral authority. But I do think we have a responsibility to at least consider
the consequences of actions before making them - to make a calculated assessment of
what you’re doing and if you’re comfortable with the message you’re sending. Ask yourself
the two questions: “could this be imitated?” and “what would that look like?”
When you approach social issues like this you’re often told to stop being so “politically
correct” and to worry about the “bigger picture”, the “real issues”, but I think
the bigger picture is really a mosaic made up of all the little pictures and I believe
that with a little bit of consideration and taking a small amount of responsibility we
could leave this planet in a happier state than we found it in.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and I’m sorry of being so insufferably self-righteous.
TomSka out