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Sept. 2, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
25:08
The Curse of the YouTube Socratics
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So, let's talk about YouTube and their policies and what we're all doing here.
So I think it's important to understand that we're not here because YouTube wants us to be here.
We're here because we want to be here.
Now, I've always been dealt with fairly by YouTube.
I've had plenty of copyright strikes and I've won them all.
I've never had any that stand and it's always been a slow process.
It's always been difficult to get in contact with anyone from Youtube I think i've only ever had like one email from someone at Youtube regarding these issues but nevertheless that their automated processes are genuine, generally quite fair.
From my perspective and I I would I could quite see myself being lumped into the category of person who Youtube doesn't really want to support because of the things I deal with and the things that I say, and not that I say anything that I think is excessively controversial.
But they are the times we're in at the moment.
You know, I think Orwell was right then, in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act, and I think we are in those times.
We I genuinely think we are.
We we've come to the point where we are seeing, legitimately seeing conservatives censored from social media for their perspectives.
Now, you know, not being conservative, it shouldn't bother me, but i'm also the wrong kind of liberal.
So it this is starting to affect everyone, and it's I mean.
Philip Defranco is the least controversial person I can think of.
I've only watched a couple of his videos, but he is so clearly not a man out to cause trouble and he genuinely wants to discuss the issues.
He he's obviously not like a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or any of these other terms, and so victimizing him seems like an odd move by Youtube, especially given how big his channel is.
But he's not really, he's not really in the sort of group of the, the sort of community that we're in and I I mean everyone calls it community might as well accept that it is.
Um, at least it has that formation in people's minds.
I, I don't know, i've heard it termed the skeptosphere which okay fine, I think that's a perfectly reasonable name.
Uh, I think we could have a better name though.
Uh, but i'm not in any way any good at choosing names.
My naming skills are terrible, and there is a lot in a name.
There is a lot in a name.
I Shakespeare's wrong.
I, I don't care that.
The rose itself will smell a sweet.
The name itself will put people off even trying to smell the rose.
So you know, it's a name, isn't any name is important um, so I would be surprised if Youtube isn't reacting to social justice pressure and not just social justice pressure, I mean like well, I mean it is technically like regressive left pressure, but I mean, for example, I put up a video the day that was banned in certain countries, and the hell,
that wasn't a con, you know.
I mean, it was a silly video, it was the TEAM America one I couldn't monetize.
Obviously it's copyright content and fair enough that's, that's fine.
I totally accept those rules.
But the fact that it was banned in certain countries I find bizarre.
And it was banned only in Germany.
Only in Germany, because Germany has been putting a huge amount of pressure on social media, as have the UK government with their new Twitter Stasi and, as I'm sure other countries are as well.
So we've come to the point where we have to understand that we aren't, we aren't going to get any special treatment from these people.
They're, they are, in fact, they're not going to really care if we go away.
And YouTube is usually quite friendly to large channels because obviously they make money.
But I mean, for example, a channel like mine, less than 400,000 subscribers, that's not a big channel.
You know, in the grand scheme of things, that is not a big channel.
It's big for what we do and what we talk about because well, most of the time we don't talk about things that the general public has any interest in whatsoever.
They're interested in watching 30 second fights or they're interested in watching cat videos.
They're interested in watching whatever pop starts.
You know they're interested in watching nonsense, and that's fine.
You know that's their choice.
If they don't want to be engaged, then they don't want to be engaged and that's totally their choice.
But we obviously all want to be, and so we have to make the space for ourselves to be able to do this, and a lot of time that will mean playing by Youtube rules.
It's the way it's going to have to be, unless anyone wants to try making their own version of youtube, which i'm sure nobody does.
So I, you know we've got, we've got no choice.
Now there's um, apparently another.
There are other video streaming sites that function in a similar way to Youtube, and i'm sure they'll be fine for most people.
But for people who are like myself and who do this professionally, we need to.
We need to talk about what it is we're doing and why we're doing it and, I think, the importance of doing it and unfortunately, because i'm outside, you're gonna get airplanes going over, I apologize.
So I think the first thing to first thing to be aware of is that what we're doing isn't new.
What we're doing is, in fact, the same thing that Socrates did in before.
Oh my god, Sagon just said he was like Socrates well, in method, only in action, not in brilliance.
Okay I, I do not think i'm anywhere near as brilliant as Socrates, but we are doing the same thing.
And if you read the apology, I mean he, he literally says this as well.
He I, I should have got it up on my phone.
In fact, I will do exactly that.
I'll get it up on my phone so I can give you exactly what he said.
So in the apology, Socrates explains how the reason he's on trial is that he went around to various groups under the oracle that he was given from Delphi, saying that he was the wisest man in Greece.
And he thought, well, I don't really know anything.
I can't be the wisest man.
So he went around and interrogated the ideas of various other factions.
He went to the sophists, he went to the poets, went to the artisans, he went to the politicians, he went to anyone that was reputed to be wise.
And he said, okay, well, explain to me what you know.
And he just asked questions.
He went through his Socratic method with them, and they eventually got to a point where they didn't have the answer.
And they would get angry at him, and their supporters would get angry at him.
And so he became hated in that community and would leave.
He would then do this and go around all of these communities, and eventually became hated by all of them, except some of them.
Now, he says this.
This investigation has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion to many calumnies, and I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I possess, I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others.
But the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise, and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing.
He is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration.
As if he said, he, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.
And so I go my way, obedient to the God, and I make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise.
And if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise, and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own.
That's what he's doing.
He's just interrogating their ideas, and that's what we're doing here as well.
There is another thing.
Young men of the richer classes, who do not have much to do, come about me of their own accord.
They like to hear the pretenders examined.
They often imitate me and examine others themselves.
There are plenty of persons, as they soon enough discover, who think that they know something, but really know little or nothing.
And then those who are examined by them, instead of being angry with themselves, are angry at me.
This confounded Socrates, they say, this villainous misleader of the youth.
And if somebody asks them why, what evil does he practice or teach, they do not know, and cannot tell.
But in order that they may not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made charges, which are used against all philosophers, about teaching things up in the clouds and under the earth and having no gods and making the worse appear the better cause.
For they do not like to confess that their pretense of knowledge has been detected, which is the truth.
And as they are numerous and ambitious and energetic, and are all in battle array and have persuasive tongues, they have filled your ears with their loud and inveterate calumnies.
And this is the reason why my three accusers, Miletus, Anitus and Lycon, have set upon me.
Now, tell me, how much does that sound to you like Sargon is a misogynist?
How many of his videos you watch?
None, I would never watch his videos, because he's misogynist.
and so on and so forth.
And I don't mind that people, I'm very pleased that people say, I watched your videos and I was inspired to do my own.
I think you should.
I think everyone should have a critical inquiring mind about people making claims.
Even myself, if I'm making a claim, bloody hell, you better be critical about it.
I'll be disappointed if you're not.
But this is the thing, we are following the footsteps of Socrates.
We genuinely are.
None of us are nearly as brilliant, of course.
But we don't pretend to know all the answers.
At least I don't.
And none of the people I follow in this community seem to either.
Some do, but some don't.
And I think that what we're doing is important.
And I think that people, as Socrates says, like to hear the pretenders examined.
I do.
I love it.
I love to go through someone's arguments and analyze them.
And some arguments are good.
Some arguments are bad.
It just so happens the ones we deal with on this channel are usually bad.
And again, I know that people are going to say, oh my god, he dare compare himself to Socrates.
No, look, I'm not saying I'm anywhere near that good.
I'm not saying anyone is anywhere near that good, but that is what we're doing.
And that is why we're popular.
That's why we're doing well.
Socrates was the original sceptic.
He was the, in fact, he was a martyr for his scepticism.
That's what the, that's what...
I've been planning through a video on this for ages, and I guess this is it.
I was going to do it in much more depth, but the point I'm making is this is not going to win us any friends outside of our echo chamber.
I wouldn't even call it that, to be honest, but you know what I mean.
This is not going to win us any fucking friends.
These people are all universally going to revile us because in some way we'll be attacking something, a deeply held belief that they cherish.
So we have to be aware that, A, we're not in the driver's seat here, and B, we're going to drum up resentment against ourselves.
And I think that's okay.
I think it's necessary.
I mean, we don't live in a society that is going to eventually put us on trial and force us to drink hemlock.
So we're lucky in that way.
We're not going to be executed for blaspheming and misleading the youth.
Despite the fact that is what we do.
So my point is, I don't expect much from YouTube.
I really don't.
I do not, I mean, not many of my videos get demonetized because I tend to couch them in slightly more abstract terms rather than the direct, this is what you're getting.
So in the description box, for example, I'll rarely put anything that isn't a sort of backhanded reference to the video or something like that.
Perhaps I'll put a straightforward description, but I like to be a little more, I don't know, just subtle with it.
And I never use the tags.
I'm really lazy.
So this is, I think, why my videos tend to fly under the radar when it comes to this sort of thing.
I imagine that I'm also hampering myself by not getting the sort of coverage I could expect on these videos.
I could probably get more hits or something, but I'm not really doing it for that.
But I guess you might be wondering, okay, so what can I do to help?
Well, if you want to help your favourite YouTube creators, the best way is to directly support them in any way you can wasp.
In any way you can afford to do so.
If you want to support them on Patreon or buy their t-shirts or donate via PayPal or whatever it is that they actually sell in addition, then that's a good way of doing it.
Especially when you have YouTube directly attacking their financial situation by demonetizing their videos.
I mean, you know, the content creators, this is a job.
It's full-time work, and often more, you know, often people put, I mean, I certainly put in a hell of a lot of work on all of this.
And I'm sure there are many other people who do as well.
And if you like what they do and you want them to keep doing it, they need to be supported.
Reality is just they need money to do what they do.
There's no getting around it, you know?
And this is why YouTube attacking their monetization is so insidious.
It's so insidious.
It's important to remember that YouTube is not censoring people.
It's absolutely not.
Your video still goes, people can still watch them.
You can still make your voice heard.
But they are disincentivizing people.
And I think a system of incentives is very, very effective.
for getting the result that you want.
This is why I'm recommending that if you are annoyed by YouTube demonetizing or targeting in any way your favorite content creators, and I'm not just talking about me, obviously, then Patreon is an amazing way to support people.
It genuinely is.
It totally offsets the disincentivization from YouTube when they're taking away the video monetization.
Because that is a huge, huge chunk of a YouTube content creator's revenue.
That's where most of their money comes from.
And it's fairly earned.
It's absolutely fairly earned.
You watched the video, you got something out of it.
You didn't have to pay anything.
All you paid was about five seconds of your time before you clicked skip the advert.
I think that's a really reasonable exchange.
And I think it's a real shame that YouTube are taking the opinion that they're taking the attitude they're taking with this, which is inexplicable to me, especially when it's news channels that are being targeted.
maybe if it was like prank channels or something something something that isn't really it's not important it's not nobody's learning anything from this Nobody's getting anything out of it.
There's nothing, you know, these things don't have anything beyond entertainment value to give.
I could understand it.
You know, if they want to disincentivise that, okay.
But when it comes to talking about, and in their terms and conditions that they've updated, it's news and controversial content and stuff like that.
That's a scary line to go down.
As if people are watching the nightly news about the hell that's going on in the Middle East or about the rapes and murders that happen in the country you're in.
And then it cuts to the adverts and the advertisers are like, my God, but the news has just been saying all this terrible stuff.
We'll be tarnished with the same brush.
It's absurd.
It's absurd.
I mean, nobody for a second thinks that the advert coming up before a video or the advert break in a news program is in any way reflective of what's being said in the content that they are receiving.
That's, it's a ridiculous thing.
I refuse to believe advertisers give a shit about this.
I refuse to believe that they are so stupid as to think, wow, my God, my advert's being run on a video I personally don't approve of.
Therefore, the public will think my content is somehow linked to it.
I mean, anyone with even just a cursory understanding of how the internet works is going to know that that's obviously not the case.
This is obviously automated.
This is obviously not a reflection of these products.
I mean, who in their right?
What kind of moron would think these two things are linked?
But apparently, this is what YouTube's worried about.
Honestly, I don't think it's about that.
I think it's about something else, but I don't know, so I can't say.
But yeah, so I don't, for a second, think that this is just, and I think they're putting this in their terms of services, just so they can say, look, we can do this, and it's something you've agreed to.
So, you know, deal with it or get out.
And some people will probably get out.
The rest of us are going to have to deal with it.
We should be exploring other options, other video hosting sites.
Maybe it's worth just having a presence on all of these sites if you're just a content creator.
I mean, I'm going to set up a vid.me account and I'm going to start uploading my videos just in parallel, I think.
There's no reason why you should only upload them to YouTube.
I don't see a reason to not try and branch out.
And it's a safety net if YouTube decides to go full 1984.
So that's probably what I'll be doing.
And thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon.
If it wasn't for you, I would be having a much more difficult time with things.
And I genuinely appreciate all of your help.
And I'm sure that other content creators do as well.
I mean, I am okay because I get good views.
I get good view numbers.
And I don't normally talk shop, generally.
But yeah, I get good view numbers, view counts.
And a lot of other YouTubers don't get these kind of view counts.
And the views are the things that make money.
So for smaller YouTubers who do do this as full-time work, your support on Patreon is ten times more important to them.
I mean, it genuinely is the thing that gets them from one day to the next and makes ends meet.
So if there is something you like, a dollar a month really adds up.
You know, if, you know, a few people say, you know, okay, it's only a dollar.
I'll chip it in.
I love this guy's work.
I watch, you know, whoever it is.
You know, I'm not talking about me.
I'm talking about whoever.
Then it makes all the difference to them.
It really does make all the difference to them.
And they get to live like a human being while they do work that I think is important, while they critique other people's ideas and nonsense and prevent counter-arguments and counter-narratives that would otherwise be ignored by the mainstream media.
They would be totally whitewashed.
And we've seen it dozens of times in dozens of different communities with dozens of different narratives.
And it's something that we have to resist.
The only way we can do that is, the only way we can do that is by producing content.
And the only way we can produce content is if we can afford to produce content.
And this is why this is a reciprocal relationship.
And this is why I spend a lot of time going through my comments.
This is why I read my, I don't read my emails nearly as much as I do, but on Twitter I read people when they speak to me because I'm not just some remote guy.
I'm not some organization that has Murdoch funded backing or anything like that.
We're just people and we need your help.
So it's something that is genuinely important.
Genuinely.
But yeah, beyond that, remember, if you're a content creator to play the game, you don't have a choice.
You just don't have a choice.
And this is another thing that I drives me crazy.
When you get people who are, they have their morals and their principles.
And good for you.
We all have morals and principles.
And we should always stand on these as often as we can.
But you do have to accept that there are going to be times where you're just going to have to shrug and say, well, I don't agree with this, but I have no choice.
There's no point being a martyr in this way.
If you're a 70-year-old man who is looking at death soon anyway, and you can make a point that's going to last through the ages, sure, you stand on those principles.
But the average person, just a YouTuber who's just a pleb who has to get on and maybe has a family or maybe just is trying to get through college or something, don't ruin things for yourself.
There's no point.
It's not going to help.
You can't fight the good fight if they've struck you down.
So don't go, don't be stupid.
Don't be a hero.
We need numbers of people doing this.
Don't let them weed you out on a silly thing.
I know it's frustrating, I don't want to, I hate having to, I hate having to compromise my principles.
I really do.
I hate it.
And I know everyone hates it.
I know a lot of people in this community are extremely principled.
and they think it's a terrible thing to compromise on the principles, but sometimes you've just got to shut your mouth and fucking get on with it.
Sometimes you don't have a choice, and that's okay.
You know, it's not a terrible thing to be, okay, well, I've lost this fight, I'll have to just go by these rules for now.
But that doesn't mean that you don't know what you stand for, and it doesn't mean that you don't know what you want, and that doesn't mean you can't campaign for what you want either.
It just means that you understand your position and the fucking pecking order.
And unfortunately, we're really low to the bottom.
You know, we're not people they're going to miss in any way, shape, or form.
The only people who'd miss us are, well, us.
And so we need to remember that.
And we need to remember that if we want this to continue, and I think it's important that it does continue, then we need to be smart.
We need to know how to handle ourselves and when to take a stand, when to draw a line and when not.
And unfortunately, this is one of those times where you can't necessarily draw a line, but you can lobby.
So there is a hashtag on Twitter called, I think it's just hashtag YouTube, that people are using to complain about this, and you should.
And I think they'll listen if enough people do.
But they've also, I think it's important to remember that YouTube isn't necessarily the enemy either.
They also have pressures on them outside of their own content creators.
And these are often the big boys.
These are national governments.
These are people with power and influence and can actually get things done.
So there's only so much we can expect from our position of weakness than they will get from their position of strength.
But it won't be like this forever.
And what matters is that we keep fighting.
We keep pushing back.
We keep doing what we do.
And eventually things will change.
This just won't change overnight.
But like I said, any one of you can do something.
You can email someone.
You can make a statement.
You can do anything you can.
If you just sit there and do nothing, then nothing will happen.
And if they sit there and do something, then that will happen.
And you'll have done nothing.
And we'll get nothing out of it.
We'll be at the end wondering how this has all gone so horribly wrong because we expected them to play fair.
They're not going to play fair.
So we have to be engaged.
And I think it's important that we are.
And just a part of being engaged could be giving like Undoomed or Chris Reagan a dollar a month or something.
You know, just give a flying plane.
Yeah, just a dollar a month or something.
Just something small.
Just something to make your mark and say, look, I helped.
I made a point.
I did something.
I did it for this reason.
And to content creators, yeah, just keep your head down, be smart, don't let them grind you down.
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