Occasionally I look back at my older videos
and cringe because they’re rubbish. I try
my best to keep all of these up, but sometimes
I have no choice but to remove it because
they are THAT BAD. Like, seriously. Bad.
But there was a time and place for that stuff.
Back when my channels were smaller, and the
comments section had more of a community feel.
I could get away with jokes or stuff that
I can’t get away with now. Looking back
at them now with fresh eyes, it’s easy to
forget about this and to judge these videos
with modern-day standards.
But I think this touches on a much bigger,
and more worrying issue. The world is changing,
and what was acceptable a decade or so ago…
no longer is. But we’re getting to that
stage where the internet has been around for
several decades… and changes have happened
in that time. What if our past internet footprint
comes back to haunt us? I think there are
already instances where what people have said
in the past has been used against them, now
out of context in a different world.
I notice it a lot on my older videos. Going
Low in CS:GO is a prime example! This was
all recorded in 2013 and 2014, soon after
ranks were added to the game. I deliberately
lost games to try and reach the lowest rank
possible. At the time it was a jokey thing
to do with friends, and since everybody wanted
to improve their rank, they didn’t care
that I was trying to lower mine.
Boy, that series has aged BADLY. I think because
of ranked play, the community got a lot more
serious, and expected others to also behave
seriously. Only after the series was recorded
did smurfing become a game-wide problem. This
is where players deliberately get a low rank
so that they can get easy games and beat less
skilled players for fun. A lot has changed
in Counter-Strike, to the point where the
things we did in Going Low in CS:GO are seen
as downright wrong and offensive to some!
I have enough content on my hard drives for
another 10 Going Low videos! But it’ll never
be released because the world has changed.
It’s moved on, and Going Low is no longer
acceptable. We reached silver 1. It took us
just 1 night to drop through all the silver
ranks- we simply killed ourselves every round.
The teams we played against loved us for it!
They saw it as an easy way to gain ranks,
and would accept rematches with us over and
over again. Rematches in Counter-Strike are
almost unheard of, but some of the people
we met that night would have 5-6 games with
us in a row. This wasn’t offensive content-
we made a lot of people very happy that night
and I thought it was a lovely way to end the
Going Low Series! BUT artificially boosting
or lowering your rank has since become incredibly
frowned upon. And the game has changed as
well. The ability to rematch has been removed.
Killing yourself has been disabled, committing
suicide in other ways will get you kicked
from the game. Really, I think the Going Low
series is of historical significance and only
gets more interesting to watch as time goes
on. But it isn’t seen that way by anybody
who takes the game seriously today.
Also, players were a lot worse at the game
back then. I was DMG in 2013. But DMG back
then is like, lowly silver rank today. When
people watch these videos in 2019, do they
understand that it’s old and things were
different? Of course not. They see me playing
at silver level and they think that I was
bad, even back then. It’s like comparing
the Olympics from 100 years ago with the crazy
stuff people are capable of now. Things have
changed! And it’s not as simple as saying
that people back then were less talented.
But change can lead to more serious consequences
than simply looking a bit rubbish with hindsight.
Imagine if the internet had been around in
the 1930’s. Say the queen instagrammed herself
doing the nazi salute in 1933! Imagine if
that salute then went on to represent terrible
acts and the largest war the world has ever
seen. And now there’s an image of the royal
family doing that salute forever more. Oh
dear! A reasonable person would understand
the context. But not everybody is reasonable,
are they. And do we always take the time to
understand a situation? Or do we sometimes
like to get angry about things, using our
moral superiority to justify our hatred towards
the accused party?
We all know a racist granny, don’t we. Their
odd or offensive mannerisms are remnants of
a different world, back when it was more acceptable
to say and to do the things they do. We can
smugly see ourselves as smarter, fairer and
superior. If we were around back then we wouldn’t
have been racist or anything like that! …but
maybe we would have. It is not okay to be
racist. But it’s important to understand
that the situation was different back then,
and different things were deemed socially
acceptable. But perhaps it’s time your granny
gets with the times and stops being quite
so racist now, okay?
We like to think that we’ve finally got
it all sussed! That our current mindset, right
now, is the perfect one, free of bias or prejudice.
We will judge everything that has ever happened
to the standards we currently have in our
heads. But what if we don’t have it right?
What if there are things that we’ll change
our minds about, 10 or 20 years down the line?
I was going to say that as a Youtuber, I have
more to worry about than most, but then I
think most of us have a substantial internet
footprint that can and probably will be used
against us at some point in the future. It
wouldn’t even require a dramatic change-
simply lots of small ones, over a long period
of time. But one day we might wake up to find
our past selves being used against us.
Now I’m going to talk about porn!
Did you know that fisting is illegal in the
UK? So is humiliation. And roleplaying as
non-adults. Or physical or verbal abuse…
even if it’s consentual. Or spanking! They
justify a face-sitting ban because it’s
potentially ‘life endangering’ lol. Some
of these things are vaguely worded- but a
lot of standard pornographic content you find
online will break a UK law in some form or
another. Add to that how they’re going to
roll out a porn block in the UK where you
have to confirm who you are to view pornographic
content and it’s almost like the UK government
is trying to gather dirt on everybody it can.
I’m sure I’m just being paranoid and that
it’s for our own protection – so nothing
to worry about here! Plus I’ve got nothing
to hide, so it won’t affect me. That and
VPN.
The problem is, this stuff wasn’t illegal
until 2014. Wouldn’t it be a shame if you
possessed this kind of content from before
2014, forgot about it, only to have your hard
drive confiscated by the police? When I talk
about this, people mistake it as me being
a FAN of this kind of content. Obviously,
I’m not, because it’s illegal! But I think
porn laws are used BECAUSE they’re difficult
to defend. Nobody wants to stand up for their
right to bondage. Because they’ll be ridiculed
and tarred with the same brush as the content
they’re trying to defend!... but I think
that’s what ‘they’ want- it undermines
any resistance to these kinds of laws being
rolled out.
I think it’s important to draw a line somewhere,
and to regularly check back and see if they’ve
moved sneakily moved the goalposts further.
At what point do you speak up about something?
Or do you just think that, since you accepted
it yesterday, you might as well accept it
today as well?
And I think some people confuse what should
be banned, with what their personal preferences
are. It’s hard to explain what I mean without
an example- so… say a ban against homosexuality
comes in, but since I’m straight I don’t
speak up. In fact, say I go one step further
and support it because I see it as some kind
of popularity contest between gay and straight
people! This would be utterly ridiculous in
my opinion… but I see this kind of mentality
from certain people.
Though I think gay pride’s an interesting
topic. I get the argument is that it’s to
empower a previously repressed group who have
suffered a history of injustice… but once
all that repression’s been fought and it’s
equally acceptable to be gay, will gay pride
stop being a thing? Or, if it carries on,
will straight pride become an equally acceptable
kind of event? This is the way I do things-
to check my biases, I like to flip things
and to see if it’s different if the roles
are reversed.
In peep show-which I’ve been watching a
lot of recently! (again)- one of the main
characters wakes up to find a woman having
sex with him against his will! He tells his
friend and realises he’s been raped, then
it ends with him losing his job because the
woman is offended, he considered it rape when
she was called out for it. Let’s reverse
the genders!
A woman wakes up to find a man having sex
with her against her will! She tells a friend
and realises she’s been raped… and then
loses her job when the man finds out she considered
it rape when he was called out for it.
Do you think that episode would have been
allowed had the genders been the other way
around?
So, I’ve covered nazis, racism, porn and
rape. I think this video might be demonetized.
Although I’ve talked about changing perspectives
as though it’s a new thing, it’s been
around in other forms of media for centuries.
It’s just, for me, the internet feels…
different. For a start, it’s not like the
writers are hidden in history somewhere. It’s
normally a lot easier online to hunt the person
down, to share what they’ve said, and to
start a hate crusade against them using social
media. Plus, if something’s posted, I see
it as being said in the present-day and not
from some point in distant history. I guess
it’s still a relatively new platform- even
if the social media sites are older than some
of their members! At some point, the number
of dead people on facebook is going to outnumber
those still alive. And the fact that sounds
sinister simply shows just how new the internet
era still is.
I hope the world takes steps to protect older
content from modern-day scrutiny, because
as terrible and disgusting as some of the
things we’ve said and done in the past might
be, it would be worse to lose them completely.
Like fisting.
