Why YouTube Sucks

Before I started blogging here, I created videos on YouTube. It was kind of fun, and I was proud of the results. At the time, YouTube advertised videos by using a snapshot of the video exactly in the middle, so I created a video detailing the scientific evidence that lesbianism is likely to not be biological in the way that male homosexuality is biological, but I advertised it as relating to a famous bisexual celebrity, Tila Tequila. The result was that about 70,000 people saw my video, and while no one did much to debate me on the science, I did have some interesting discussions with lesbians, and I may have convinced a few to question their sexuality again. Actually, I prefer to remember it as the time I reduced the world’s lesbian population by about 70,000. Another accomplishment of mine was that I think I coined the phrase “education bubble” in a video I created in 2007 or 2008 about higher education. Some anonymous people started asking me for my sources just prior to series of mainstream journalist pieces speculating about the possibility of a higher education bubble. Such a bubble could have a profound impact on our economy and our society.

Most of my work on YouTube came to an end when I posted a video series on the genetics of black violence. Certainly it is a provocative title and subject, but the video contained nothing that I would consider legitimately controversial. It consisted almost entirely of direct quotations from peer-reviewed scientific literature on dopamine genes and monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). One person gave me feedback that it was too difficult to follow for this reason, but I wanted to help educate the public without using sources that anyone could impugn. I have taken pains in all of my work to not only cite science directly, but also to rely on scientists whose motivations and politics are not lambasted as are those of, for example, University of Western Ontario researcher J Philippe Rushton. For entertainment value and to highlight or counter the opposing viewpoint, I peppered the video with excerpts from liberal documentaries and television programs, including parts of the movie Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore. Now, YouTube is wholly owned by Google, and all of the studies I used can be accessed through Google Scholar. However, YouTube saw fit to remove my video. More to the point, YouTube removed me. My “channel,” all of my videos, and every single comment that I posted on any video anywhere on YouTube immediately vanished forever. In response, I reposted each of the three parts of the genetics of black violence video on three separate channels using a mix of L’s and I’s for channel names to complicate anyone’s attempt to remove these again. Those videos remain on YouTube and have received over 27,000 views, which is not bad for a hidden, extensive scroll of esoteric scientific jargon read by a computerized voice.

The view that YouTube tried to snuff out has become a burgeoning subfield of criminology, called biosocial criminology, which recently received a panel discussion at the annual National Institute of Justice conference, to which the New York Times chose to draw attention. In less academically rigorous news, the MAOA gene became the star of a sensational National Geographic documentary and an episode of the Dr. Phil television program.





What is obvious and hardly needs mentioning is that, even without the extreme, draconian censorship, YouTube would still have a dimwitted milieu. It is dominated by those with enough free time to express themselves in video format and with the kind of career prospects that do not demand anonymity when approaching taboo subjects. Two such individuals plan to stage a live debate this weekend on race and IQ, and I can only expect wreckage. YouTube comments, in particular, tend to be dominated by idiotic insults, forcing the video owners to choose between joining in the censorship or allowing endless bickering that would drive away anyone with a three-digit IQ.