And it’s getting deader by the day, if the deterioration of YouTube I’ve witnessed in the past six months is any indication.
How has my YT experience changed, you ask?
Yesterday I received the following email:
The occasion of that nuisance letter was the test stream I ran yesterday. Wanting to test my PS2 with the game capture rig used for my previous retro gaming series, I threw Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in the tray and took it for a spin on stream.
Live streaming video games is not a new concept I invented. Right this minute, you can find any number of gaming streams, many of which feature live gameplay footage of the GTA series, including Vice City.
During the stream, I offered criticism of several aspects of the game, particularly the music, and related that transformative content to current social commentary. The whole production was intended for entertainment, information, and education purposes, and was obviously fair use.
But that didn’t stop the same algorithms that mistakenly pushed a 25-year-old Dinosaur Jr. song to the top of the Billboard charts from blocking my stream in the US–along with Australia and New Zealand, where an extravagant censorship fetish is all the rage these days.
To make sure that nothing at all works as intended, YouTube’s algos demonetized my prior test stream on a channel that isn’t monetized anyway, just for good measure.
Instead of masochistic Aussies and Kiwis, this time the bots acted on behalf of Latin American licensees of midi John Williams music.
Total clusters like these are why I don’t rend my garments over the internet’s accelerating demise. Letting everyone on Earth stick their noses in everyone else’s business was always a dumb idea.
Nor do I foresee that the tech oligarchy’s consolidation of power will doom us all. Their blank slate anthropology and false theory of mind have left America’s defining invention in the hands of malfunctioning bots and helot laborers with terminal tunnel vision.
If the same forces in charge of policing the internet will be running the gulags, I think we’ll be OK.
While we wait for the camp guards to finish setting up the volleyball nets, be sure to check out the premiere of my new Retro-Spective series on Final Fantasy Tactics.
Tip: I’d make a point of watching live, tomorrow at 10 PM Central. You never know–some Azerbaijani might lodge a claim over the grass whistle song.
