don’t give him the time of day, it’s not worth it. also it’s monetized so it will benefit his pocket. i know he says he will give the money to charitable causes or whatever but please do not support him. for people who want to see the video i have spent the past 3.5 hours transcribing it for you. here it is. disclaimer: i stopped using punctuation at one point because i just couldn’t type quickly enough and i wanted it out tonight so sorry about that. also it is a wall of text.
So Alex Day uploaded a new video “The Past”. It’s 30 minutes long and in the description he writes
I hope you’re all well. Please try not to type anything thoughtlessly as you consider your response to this.
Full disclosure: I have put ads on this video because I trust myself to do good things with the money that comes from that, be they charitable donations, funding for projects that will be of benefit to you, or other things I haven’t thought of yet.
Please note that IT IS NOT OKAY FOR HIM TO RETURN TO THE YOUTUBE COMMUNITY.
Though, if you do decide to watch the video, make sure you download and activate add blockbefore.
I quote “I haven’t wanted to talk about my side of the story because I’m scared of Tumblr” apparently we are “intolerant of anyone who doesn’t share our opinion”? No Alex Day, we are intolerant of people manipulating and abusing other people.
“I don’t care what you think of me” … “That’s why I haven’t defended myself at all in the last six months.” Really?Really?Really?Really?
“There is a lot of anger and fear and pain in our community right now. And I am a person who can reach a lot of you, and maybe I can decrease some of that.” It’s a misunderstanding. “Maybe I can decrease some of that, by just explaining my side of it."
"And even if you don’t agree with my side of it, or don’t believe it, or you think that I’m just trying to preserve myself because you know, being famous on the internet has always been so important to me.” [he’s ironic] “Then maybe you can just write it all off, but I think it’s still better. It’s still better that I said something. And even if just one person who watches this comes away from it feeling a little bit more reasonable about the whole situation, then I feel like that’s good. Then I’ve reduced the amount of over all misunderstanding and fear and anger in the world by one person. That’s a good thing to do. And I think the attempt to decrease it will outweigh the inevitable increase in anger that this will create. So here we go…”
Basically what he’s saying:
It’s worth convincing the “few” people who still haven’t decided if I’m manipulative and abusive and should not be trusted. It’s worth having those people on my side over how angry everyone else will be at me for still using YouTube as my platform.
I think this only proves that we need more people talking about this topic, bringing attention to it.
Lindsey wrote a tumblr post where she explained that, if she had told Alex to stop he would have, but she didn’t feel like she could. Alex Day says “But the point is she felt like she couldn’t, for reasons that… I still don’t fully understand but I’ll do my best to make sure no one ever feels like that again”
^The gold plated play button, reports of it going*ting*when looked upon are as of yet unconfirmed.
The new rewards system -which attendees of this years VidCon got a sneak peek at- was officially unveiled just over a week ago.
It consists of a gold plated play button for those who have reached at or above a total of 1,000,000 subscribers and the thing is framed in a way reminiscent of gold or platinum records.
There’s good stuff in here for the slightly less mammoth creators too. Those who have reached 100,000 subs get a 500 dollar gift card and a custom DSLR bag.
Awards
It’s actually not unusual for social media personalities and organizations to receive awards based within an online genre or even a single website.
They focus exclusively on web series; still a pretty small industry despite the large audience growth and acceptance into mainstream culture that it’s made in recent years.
What’s different about these rewards is that they’re given exclusively on the basis of numbers.
^ Look familiar?
Mixed Reception
The reception among big YouTubers has been largely positive and tends to break up into those who are still a bit too small to qualify for the gold and have a hungry look in their eyes.
“I want one, my house mate Charlie. He’s got a million subscribers. He just sits at his desk just across the room from me with his gold…plate….thing. I do just want to put more effort into my videos and make them more worthwhile” - Alex Day
and those who are grateful for the recognition but have some concerns
“I love it because it feels like a thank you…a thank you to the people who have invariably worked extremely hard to achieve that level of success. And it’s important for YouTube to recognize that those people play a large part in the success of YouTube"
"The fact is that most of the people doing really interesting things, who have the most potential to grow, to change things, to continue altering the landscape of media, and who I am fascinated by do not have 1,000,000 subscribers” - Hank Green
“I'm flattered, since i am in the 100,000 category - but saddened by all the incredibly talented and hardworking people going un-thanked, the ones who don’t quite have that many subscribers but still make huge contributions to this community daily” - Kristina Horner
They aren’t the only ones to focus on the smaller channels.
Smaller Channels
One thing brought up repeatedly in the comments on the official announcement, on twitter and other sites where the discussion has taken place is that the awards do nothing for smaller partners and creators.
The awards themselves arent the main issue here however. It’s a sense of continued and growing frustration with YouTube -spawning movements like the #SaveYouTube campaign- its policies and the general attitude of the site as a whole.
A lot of the ways in which bigger creators got a leg up in the past simply don’t exist any more or have been redirected towards already popular channels.
Stuff like getting featured on the main page or appearing in the recommended videos section and although the community has gone a long way in picking up the slack there’s always going to be people who slip through the sizeable cracks.
Stabilisation
When taken together with things like the new London Creator Space and programs like YouTube Next VloggerandNextUp a picture forms of a business trying to consolidate its gains and standardise skills and pathways to success in an industry where technical proficiency can vary from the profound to the mediocre.
It could well be a risky move, there’s a good chance it may simply limit creativity, create a stiff model for how creators should work and interact with their audience that could stunt them in the long term and make the industry even harder to break into.
Then again it might usher in a new generation of ultra-proficient creators while improving the already substantial profiles of the people who did it the old fashioned way.
Damned if I know, feel free to have your say though.
We had a great response to people interested in boycotting Alex Day’s London gig, but Goot is planning on playing in 14 different locations across Europe: Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, London, Parist, Utrecht, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Cologne. Details of specific tour stops can be found on Goot’s website.
If you – or someone you know – is interested in coordinating a protest at one of these locations, please CONTACT US (tumblr / twitter) un-anonymously ASAP. The tour starts in less than two weeks!
We had a great response to people interested in boycotting Alex Day’s London gig, but Goot is planning on playing in 14 different locations across Europe: Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, London, Parist, Utrecht, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, and Cologne. Details of specific tour stops can be found on Goot’s website.
If you – or someone you know – is interested in coordinating a protest at one of these locations, please CONTACT US (tumblr / twitter) un-anonymously ASAP. The tour starts in less than two weeks!
This post is about Alex Day so please be advised if you don’t want to read about him.
I was on reddit today and there was a thread criticising nerdfighteria and I left a comment. I received a reply from a KyleSalmon. I responded but the name definitely rung a bell and then I remembered that Alex Day used to write slash fiction about his female YouTube ‘friends’ under that name. This was about 4 years ago if I remember correctly, and I believe he read this to them and posted their reactions on YouTube, basically with the sole purpose of embarrassing them for entertainment. It’s just really not very funny and a very shitty thing to do, and I guess in hindsight a major red flag for the abuse that’s been reported.
Obviously there’s a chance some random dude has taken his old username to post under, but I think there’s a good chance this is Alex. Writing style is also really similar. I used to read his alexdaymusic blog, every damn entry, so I guess I’d know.
We all know he’s been posting to YouTube. We can easily unsubscribe from him there and effectively exclude him from the community we are in. Except, he’s involving himself in the Nerdfighter community in other ways. Obviously by posting under KyleSalmon on reddit, but in one of those comments he also mentions that he is apparently in Nerdfighteria related facebook groups. I don’t know if he’s in there under his own name or (more likely) a false name. Point is, when your parents told you not to trust people on the internet, this is why.
In addition to all of this, he has responded to a thread in /r/theredpill. The Red Pill described their sub as follows “The Red Pill: Discussion of sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.” The thread he responded to is a 14 year old boy who asked something about working out (lifting) and girls. Unfortunately the OP has been removed but KyleSalmon’s comment is as follows:
And it just rings all the wrong bells for me…
On top of this he seems to be supportive of meninism by saying he’s disappointed in Hank for reblogging this video of NerdyandQuirky mocking meninism.
And also responding to someone claiming nerdfighteria as open minded by referring to a thread where NerdyandQuirky’s meninism makeup tutorial was posted.
Now honestly everyone who thinks meninism is a totally okay movement which needs to be taken seriously makes all my alarm bells go apeshit anyway, but I thought I’d mention it, just to really drive home how much of an asshole Alex Day is.
What to take away from this? Alex Day isn’t staying on his own little channel (which is relatively easy to avoid/block), but instead he is involving himself in nerdfighteria, although under a fake name sometimes. Please be aware that people use fake names on the internet in general, but also in nerdfighteria and in the various nerdfighteria facebook groups. We tend to treat these places as safe, unfortunately they are NOT. You do not know who you are speaking to.
