I hate censorship. I know what you’re thinking: Controversial statement of the year.
Censorship limits how much artists can do in terms of content. Any 30-year-old mom with a blog she uses as an excuse to neglect her child while simultaneously exploiting them for easy cash will go and write a nine-page article about how Nickelodeon put a homosexual couple in a kids’ show neither she nor her child have seen.
Nickelodeon’s “The Loud House,” released in May 2016, features a supporting character named Clyde McBride who is an African American adopted child of a homosexual, interracial couple. This is the first blatantly obvious and publicly stated instance of homosexual characters in a show on Nickelodeon, something previously thought impossible.
The LGBT community is at a point in history where they are more accepted and recognized than ever before.
There are still many anti-gay people and countries in the world, but in America Nickelodeon realizes censoring homosexuality from shows just to appease a couple of angry parents would be ignorant to the real world.
This is the fault in censorship and its execution — parents will flip over anything. Homosexuality, the human body and religion are always pushed to the side in favor of “good, wholesome television.”
I would say there’s a level where these subjects aren’t suitable for the public.
Two people having sexual relations isn’t okay, that’s pornography.
Discussing religion to the point where a specific ideal is superior to others isn’t okay, that’s propaganda.
And homosexuality is okay to show kids homosexuals exist, but it should not be presented as an agenda trying to force people to agree with the LGBT movement. Everyone is entitled to their opinion even if it’s offensive to others.
This is the point I’m trying to make when I say “I hate censorship,” artists and creators should have the freedom to portray any feelings or opinions they have just as much as the public has the freedom to disagree with it.
Recently, YouTube has been losing companies who used to advertise on videos from the site causing channels on YouTube to lose substantial amounts of ad revenue.
This event was antagonized by an article from Wall Street Journal written by Jack Nicas. Supposedly in the article (because I refuse to pay a single cent for a WSJ subscription to read the article after hearing what the company did) Nicas found ads from big corporations such as PepsiCo, Wal-Mart and Dish Network on five videos with racist or offensive contents.
This prompted these, along with many other companies, to pull ads from YouTube.
Of course you’re going to find racist videos on the Internet, it’s the Internet, it’s the single most free, non-censorable body of work on the planet.
Furthermore, just because an ad for Pepsi runs on a negative video, that doesn’t associate the ideals of that channel with a corporation that is just trying to make money off the popularity of somebody else’s work.
And it’s not like YouTube isn’t actively trying to stop these videos from making any money, there’s a flag system in place that prompts YouTube to look at an offensive video and choose to take it down for good. This system has taken down videos that so much as have one swear word in the entire video.
If these corporations can’t understand YouTube is actually doing all it can to keep the site friendly enough for their greedy intentions then someone needs to tell them: people have freedom!
