A company isn’t forced to have a representative it doesn’t want to have, it’s not even a question of speech, at best it’s a labor dispute.
My guess is he never had the shit kicked out of him for being a minority.
Can you at least tell him about the number of bomb threats sent to JCCs this year? And if he says “they’re just trolling, no harm in that”, ask why the coordinated series of threats wasn’t sent to Domino’s locations or car washes?
Even before this year, there are always guards on duty outside our temple and the local JCC, and they look in the trunk of all of the cars going into the underground parking facility. Not a lot of other places in San Francisco that do that.
We went through similar discussions with our son during the Anita Sarkeesian/Gamergate/Zoe Quinn dust-up. He just couldn’t understand what the big deal was when everyone on the GG side was obviously just trolling for lulz or whatever and from what he understood the women were asking for it. We finally made him see the light by framing it as “Would you be cool with it if this were happening to your mother or your sister?”
You could actually see the moment it clicked for him. I was proud that he finally turned the corner on it, but I was still disappointed that it took personalizing it for the point to break through. Thankfully, he’s matured a lot since then.
What a quote.
I mean, I grew up in a town with 0 jewish people, went to school in the 90’s, many decades after the holocaust, and I can let you know that everyone I went to school with certainly understood the holocaust. That was drilled into our brains. We watched movies, read stories from Elie Weisel. We were properly made aware. It was horrible, and I remember having a really hard time reading “Night”. And I remember, because south park was just starting up then, people would try to make jokes and use the term jew derogatorily, and the specific group of friends I had wouldn’t stand for that. We called people out on that shit, and it stopped. I don’t think that kids only 15 years further removed from the holocaust don’t understand it. I think you give our education system too little credit, they know the seriousness of it, I just think this coming generation (the i-generation) after millennials has a much lower tolerance of taboos in general.
I think that the culture of youtube (which did not exist for a high school me) has just made everything less taboo. Everyone is free to be a bad comedian on the internet. As kids we could make jokes, though I doubt anything about the holocaust, that would probably be offensive, and nobody would ever know, and each group of friends would have different levels of comfort on topics. But, people can broadcast offensive humor to millions now, and it becomes less taboo. And you have the real minorities of genuinely hateful people latching on to it, while the you tubers can just shout “It’s just a prank bro!” or “I am only making a joke, look at the context!” is now what people think.
And I think the lessening of taboos is a good thing in general, I mean 25 years ago, or heck even 15 years ago kids were heavily ostracized for being gay, or acting “gay”. And while that probably still happens, our culture has done a lot to normalize the what was once considered “taboo” of homosexuality. This has been a great thing, it isn’t taboo, love is love, this is good. Like, incredibly life-savingly good. As brand new research has shown that the passage of same sex marriage legislation has had a direct effect in lowering teen suicide rates
But, I think that with the removal of so many taboos, the lessening of censorship on TV, and the rise of shock humor there are a lot of problems too. People think it is ok to make distasteful jokes publicly. Why not? Some of the old taboos are gone! And because we live in a freer society, we also should be allowed to speak and act more freely. And I think it is important for people to stress the real world connection between our actions and the effect it has on people. I think you personally can’t look at this current uptick in antisemitic humor, and the uptick in antisemitic acts and not make some sort of correlation. While it all might feel like “It’s just a joke bro!” there are real consequences to that type of thinking. Someone above mentioned the instances of real world attacks happening against jewish centers as a good example.
I am very glad the internet wasn’t much more than email and chatrooms and C.S. 1.6 when I was in high school, because I am sure I would have said or done some stupid shit that I would regret now.
There weren’t a lot of Jews in Great Barrington, MA, either. In 9th grade (1988-89) we did a whole section on the Holocaust for Social Studies class. I don’t remember the readings but I do remember watching Night & Fog. Only a few years later, of course, Schindler’s List put the Holocaust front and center in pop culture. Even that’s almost a quarter-century ago, now. Jeez.
If the Holocaust is no longer a centerpiece of history/social studies curricula in public schools across the country, that’s a severe dereliction of education duty. (I don’t know the truth in this case, just saying ‘if.’)
The most disturbing thing about WoW online chat (and I presume other games) was the constant casual racism and anti-Semitism. The use of “Jew” as an automatic slur reminded me of unpleasant excerpts from Chopin’s letters circa 1840. I always assumed this was just the case of dumbass 12 year olds looking to shock, who would someday grow out of it.
We had the kid from Escape from Sobibor come to my elementary school. The man might have been… 70 or then and he just described his situation, what it was like to kill someone in order to survive, and took question. I remember it so well even decades later, especially when one of my classmates asked him what he would say to Hitler today if the man were alive. And he said something like what can you say to a crazy person?j
I don’t know how anyone could ever downplay the Holocaust, or really overlook or make fun of war in general like that.
I understand that you were referring to that specific bit in your link (which I agree was well done), but I think it’s worth mentioning that Gilbert Gottfried ended up in the same place that PewDiePie is in now. Did he lose his subtlety or skill?
Having literally lost a full ride scholarship to NYU at 18 due to something stupid I said on the internet. . . yeah. . . just. . . yeah.
Not only the ability to type things but god there are cameras everywhere now. Even if you choose to keep somethings private someone else might take that right away for you. I feel sorry for young people who seem to have to be on “always”, and of course the parents that post everything they do online too.
People on the internet, man. They are ruthless.
When I have kids, I am going to stress this to them so much. I was a loudmouth (and still am) but I have better control now.
Also, this Polygon Op-Ed is a nice perspective from a mid-tier youtuber.
Yeah. But like most comedians, he also spent a lot of his
time writing those jokes, refining them, trying them in smaller clubs
before his big venues, commiserating with his peers, etc. A “secret” of
successful comedians is you don’t just spit out jokes that come to you.
You develop bits, callbacks, sets, etc. There are legit reasons that
Louis CK, Sarah Silverman, and Jim Jefferies get away with questionable
jokes and JohnnySephiroth315 doesn’t.
Many YouTubers do some of this work, mind, but they also
have to prep footage, record it, process it, do editing, transcode it,
upload it, schedule it… there are many steps to take before the
audience sees the content. And this has to happen, for most, at least
once a day. On a platform that changes its rules on the fly, all the
time.
Also, many 'tubers and streamers don’t have any sort of management or PR or help from an agent.
One time, a much more successful friend, someone with
over 500,000 subscribers, was going to be interviewed by a major
television network. He spoke with me about it beforehand.
I warned him off the situation; it sounded like he was
going to be sandbagged. He was adamant about the opportunity, and I
turned out to be wrong. It also turned out I was one of the only people
who were trying to offer an opinion on it.
This guy had tons of views and made a bunch of money; didn’t anyone at his Multi-Channel Network,
or MCN, know or care that he was gonna do this interview? Did they
offer advice or prep him for challenging questions? Was there a
conversation about avoiding sound bites that can be taken out of
context?
Nope.
I can understand this being such a slog. Like, I am pretty good at Improv, and somewhat funny, but I don’t think I could ever do youtubing or streaming full time. That job is a grinding mill for solo acts. You have to write/edit/manage everything and on top of it be funny on camera. And most channels do DAILY content, which is just a massive amount of work. There are a lot of youtubers that end up joining networks to help with production and promotion for a cut, and that seems almost necessary to maintain sanity. Hats off to those who do great work at a tough gig, especially those working on their own.
Holy shit. There aren’t a lot of reasons I’m happy to be 42, but I guess that’s one.
Suggesting PDP has the same talent as a Louis CK or any stand-up comic is ridiculous. It’s like comparing a carefully aged Scotch to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. One is for cheap mass market consumption and the other is refined, aged over time, often with careful planning and work. So when cheap beer is called out for being mass market pee water, you can’t say “but it’s not fair we don’t age our stuff, because - volume!”
I’d like to reiterate I’m not saying that Youtubers aren’t talented. I am saying if you put out stuff 7 days a week, you cannot cry foul with claims you deserve the same respect of carefully manicured content. What Michael conveniently left out is that Louis CK doesn’t go on HBO to talk to 20 million people and then spew random crap for an hour interlaced with lame racist jokes. He spends a year to hone his craft and then presents it to his mass market audience. If Michael and PDP want the same respect the comedians get then they should do what they do. Only present their material to a small crowd of 20-100 people each day then don’t show it to the millions until they’ve spent a year refining it.
TV censorship brings to mind Carlin’s seven dirty words bit. The words “piss” and “tits” were on the list but I’m pretty sure they can be said on TV before the watershed hour now. They’ve become mild and tame and are no longer shocking in their crudeness. They’ve become normalized.
Making light of hate speech helps soften it by deflating it and robbing it of its power to provoke. Normalizing hate speech like this we sort of forget why it’s so terrible and eventually shrug it off as nothing because it means nothing to us. The targets of that hate speech? It still has meaning to them and continues to hurt them.
I’ve tried to stop using the word “gyp” after I learned it stemmed from the connotation of gypsies being swindlers and that gypsy itself was considered a slur.
My starter taught me about gyp years ago too. I was so sad… But she learned that in some sort of poly sci class.
There is danger too. Normalizing the speech also makes the actions seem less abnormal. Lets use PDP’s choice. If it is not ok to say “Kill All the Jews” then is is obviously not ok to actually kill them. But if it is ok to say it, you are one step closer to normalizing the actual harm. It works in less dramatic ways. Using the other example, if it is not acceptable to call someone a “faggot” they are also less likely to be beaten up for being gay in that environment as well. Hate speech has an effect of dehumanizing a person or group, which makes them fair play for harm.
[quote=“DaveLong, post:241, topic:75038, full:true”]
I had a huge argument with my 16 year old son about this last night. He was on PewDiePie’s side. The most horrific part of the discussion was how he has become normalized to the idea of this being a joke. There is no touchstone for kids to understand why anti-semitic words and “jokes” like this really shake people to their core. Kids today do not understand the holocaust.[/quote]
Have him watch any numbers of documentaries on the Holocaust, followed up by Schindler’s List or a similar movie.
Shouting “Fire” in a crownded theater has never been and will never be covered by free speech. And hate speech is the same thing because when you shout “Kill the [something here]” maybe somebody go and do it. Because there are crazy people. And humanity had lived phases where everyone was crazy this way (stuff like pogroms). So you probably should not. And if you do it, better have a social message to include it, and to do it with tact, or best not do it.
Part of the adulthood should be to not make casual racism jokes, and maybe educate childrens why casual racism is bad. PDP have a responsability, because a large part of his public is childrens.
That is really well put. There is a very big difference between making light of and normalizing. And I think comedy that works makes light of hate speech, and comedy that doesn’t just normalizes it.