YouTube Rewind 2021 Uncensored Version

YouTube Creators Need to Produce Our Own YouTube Rewind With Censorship as the Theme

Think of YouTube nowadays and what is the first thing that comes to mind? For many people it is censorship. It started out slow with a lot of people thinking, “Oh, Alex Jones was shut down but it will go no further.” Well, they were wrong. Alex Jones was merely Censorship Patient Zero and we are all now the new Alex Joneses (keeping up with the Joneses?)

In the past two or three years, YouTube censorship has gotten egregious to the point of absolute absurdity. In addition, channels that are punished for being in violation of their guidelines often have the exact same clips as appear on the “legacy” media which YouTube is so fond of and are somehow immune to their censorship guidelines.

For example, I had a video of a father at a school board meeting complaining about his son being forced to wear a mask which was recently taken down and earned me a guidelines strike. Meanwhile, the legacy media can show parents complaining about masks for their children and nothing happens. If these guidelines were equally enforced not only would legacy media channels such as CNN, MSNBC, or others be shut down due to multiple violations but a high percentage of the school board meeting videos, often running in excess of three hours, would need to be taken down as well due to people discussing “taboo” subjects according to YouTube.

So what to do? Well, one could write a column and complain about it. Oh, wait! That is what I am doing!

But wait….. THERE’S MORE!!!

Instead of beating our heads about it and getting nowhere, I suggest we YouTube creators get creative and produce our own YouTube Rewind for 2021 based on the subject of censorship. Actually, there is a something of a precedent for this.

In 2018, the official YouTube Rewind, “Everyone Controls Rewind” was almost universally panned for its use of celebrities not known as channel creators which only illustrated the YouTube disconnect from its own creators, the “You” in YouTube. As a result their top creator, PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg), who was NOT included in the official Rewind, along with other YouTube creators produced their highly popular idea of what a YouTube Rewind video should be like, “YouTube Rewind 2018, but it's actually good” to great acclaim which embarrassed the producers of the hated official version.

Therefore in the spirit of supporting free speech I recommend that “YouTube Rewind 2021 Uncensored, before it’s deleted” be produced as a way for we YouTube creators to respond to the over-the-top censorship by YouTube.

So who can produce it? Well, all (or at least many) of us who are disturbed by YouTube censorship. That includes probably MILLIONS of us. I would recommend that clips highlighting or (at least in my case) parodying censorship be submitted to a central group of very proficient video editors (that leaves me out). PewDiePie again? Perhaps. And if he is unable to participate, maybe he could at least tell me how to pronounce “Kjellberg” (I got the “berg” part right but the first part? Nope.)

The ones submitting clips illustrating, denouncing, or mocking YouTube censorship can come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and political beliefs. I definitely have my own political POV (as I’m sure many of you can easily find) but I believe censorship affects a lot of views from very conservative such as Steven Crowder of “Louder With Crowder” to Jimmy Dore on the left and even further left to Jordan Chariton of the “Status Coup” channel who got his January 6 videos at the Capitol taken down even though the legacy media was allowed to show his videos on their YouTube channels. Yeah, that is just how absurd YouTube has gotten yet the upside is they have provided plenty of material to work with on the topic of their own censorship.

So take this, my first Substack column, as the Bat Signal in the Internet Sky to put our collective minds (from right to left as well as up and down) together as YouTube creators and come up with our answer to what we think of YouTube’s Orwellian censorship policies.

We have months to put such a project together and the worst (really best) that can happen is it would cause a YUUUUUGE embarrassment for YouTube. Hey, I can live with that!