Free Speech and Civility (RE: Discord) (Patreon)

I received some criticism recently regarding my proposition of some regulation of explicit language within a discord server that's unofficially associated with Arby 'n' the Chief, but that I've mentioned and engaged with the participants of repeatedly in my streams, so I am associated with it to a degree.

There are people who consider the discord's now-updated TOS due to my input a betrayal of my position on freedom of speech.

I've been thinking about it a lot.

I am against censorship, so I think it's true to a degree, but I have my reasons, which I'd like to elaborate on.

I hear the server administrators are taking heat for it, which is unfortunate and I feel bad about it.

That said, I didn't create the server.

I don't object to a discord centered around my content existing, but I didn't and never want to be in the position of managing one.

I once managed a bulletin board community that was dedicated to my content, years ago.

Every day I was settling juvenile disputes between users and reading things about me.

Mostly good things, some terrible (to a completely unwarranted degree) things, but either way the anxiety it generated in me going daily through a pool of things written about me was too much.

When I stepped out of that role I told myself I wouldn't do it again.

I decided my time's better spent on content creation, the reason I have fans to begin with.

I haven't participated in this discord server for similar reasons.

Reading YouTube comments and reading and responding to e-mails feels like enough community engagement to me.

The discord server was created years ago, without my knowledge (not that I think I needed to know), with a TOS that stated explicitly in its rule set that no language was off-limits, which I found out in recent exchanges with the administrators.

Had I been involved in the initial creation of the discord, I don't think I'd have put a policy like that in place.

I don't think my old bulletin board had a policy like that either, but I don't remember clearly, I can't be certain.

Times have certainly changed.

I consider announcing an anything-goes policy like that a practical invitation to use taboo language recklessly.

Some trolls on the internet with little to no accountability are obviously gonna be inclined to take that inch and run a mile with it.

Across the past year the discord began to make itself known to me via emails and the YouTube chat.

As I understand, the majority of participants in the server are very kind, and diverse (in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.)

I'm very happy about that.

They've been responsible for the production of some terrific and heart-warming content, including a compilation of animated artistry dedicated to Arby 'n' the Chief that I was offered to watch for my birthday, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.

Unfortunately, I sometimes read comments on my videos suggesting that some portion of the community was toxic, using slurs, sharing explicit content and the like.

I've received some direct messages and emails from participants in the server alerting me to some extreme content they stumbled across, some messages including screenshots of said content.

The messages included observations of individuals getting bullied, gratuitously pornographic images (nothing illegal to my knowledge), and sub/splinter channels with rules such as a mandate for slurs being present in every post, which is way over-the-top.

How much of that fell under the broader discord server or unofficial sister servers I'm not exactly sure, but I believe they're all members of the same community, in some cases splintering off for one reason or another.

I don't want to place blame where it's undeserved.

During a recent stream of mine and premiere of a new episode I made, I had people spamming slurs in the live chat, as well as exchanging phrases that circumvented blocked words and were purposefully edgy.

I don't think any of it was motivated by racism or bigotry, but considering the hyper-tense culture we all currently find ourselves in, I couldn't help but feel off-put, and I felt I couldn't perform on camera adequately.

The chat was too distracting.

I didn't want to ignore it either, as I'd always be thinking about what was being typed and the things anybody could be reading who happened to be tuned in at the time; friends, employers, potential ones or whoever.

I didn't and currently don't have YouTube chat moderators, either.

I know the TOS thing looks hypocritical, but believe it or not I really don't like the idea of policing anyone's speech.

I've always preferred to rely on chat participants to be disciplined.

As I gain some popularity, maybe that's a mistake.

I asked the spammers nicely to stop, in a way that was understanding of the desire to have fun, and some wouldn't.

Following the stream, I had distressing photoshopped images of me sent to me via Twitter, accompanied by text that suggested that many participants of the discord server were involved in the creation of the images.

One of them was an image of me in a cop uniform that I wore for a comedic character in a recent episode of mine, superimposed over the cop who had his knee on George Floyd's neck.

I get shock humor, but I honestly started feeling sick and anxious.

I later learned that the tweeted images were the work of a couple of trolls pretending that many more people were involved in the creation of the images than in actuality.

Regardless, in light of what I was later told, I couldn't help but think that all this behavior I was observing and hearing about was symptomatic of a TOS that permitted all explicit language, specifically one that explicitly stated such in its rule set that gets displayed to everyone upon server entry.

I reached out to the administrators of the discord, initially coming in hotter than I should've as I was just so dismayed by what I was receiving and hearing about.

They kindly explained things to me, and that's when I learned that the discord had a no-limits language policy for years, since its creation.

I learned that this was done in an attempt to reflect my values on uncensored speech suggested in my content.

I understand the rationale, but I believe this was done in error.

And it's unfortunate now because server participants have obviously become accustomed to this method of operation.

I understand the sentimentality people can feel towards the server as it has existed for years, and how the sudden policy adjustment can be considered jarring.

I think that some people think that I forced the revision of the TOS on the administrators, and that's not true.

I gave them an option between updating the TOS with a general regulation of explicit language, the same that you'd find on any other mainstream chat or forum, even ones that revolve around content that's resistant to political correctness -- or keeping the TOS the same, but in the case of the latter, I didn't want to further associate with the server in my streams.

I don't consider that unreasonable.

If I continue to draw attention to the discord in my streams, more people will want to join it, I think many more than the amount of people that have joined throughout the past few years while I wasn't mentioning it.

Especially following events such as the birthday video.

And the knowledge that people were joining the server likely looking to engage in civil discussion with others about my show and finding basically a 4chan-lite suddenly placed a huge amount of worry on me.

I was losing sleep over it.

I still am.

To the people who consider the recent changes to the TOS a violation of my principles regarding speech, I'm not saying you're wrong flat-out, but I ask you to consider the difference between my show, which remains as it has been, with uncensored but carefully contextualized language, a cinematic work of satire with a beginning, middle, end and embedded message, created by somebody with a large body of work clarifying my views and over a decade of experience doing so -- and a chat/forum server, a permanent, publicly-accessible log of exchanges between people with little-to-no accountability from all corners of the world who come home from work or school and vent underneath a TOS that practically encourages extreme language and content in these times of cultural hypertension and cancellation.

I also haven't proposed anything with this discord TOS that I'm not also applying to myself, or isn't ubiquitously applied to most other forums.

I'm much more careful now with my language while on camera than I used to be, not only for reasons pertaining to my aging and personal taste, but also for cultural reasons that I think are obvious and understandable.

I believe not doing so, and the existence of the discord server in its prior state, regardless of the intent of the participants engaging in the unsavory behavior, are both things that can be used against me if anybody or any group were to ever want me de-platformed for saying the wrong thing any amount of time from now, and I suspect that this cultural divide and sensitivity is going to get worse before it gets better.

Again, I never intended to come off as authoritarian, telling people what they could or couldn't say.

I guess I'd just like the community, specifically people who felt strongly about its language policy, or rather lack thereof, to do me a solid here.

Things are crazy right now, and content creators like myself are under constant pressure.

I now regularly hear of YouTubers I'm both familiar with and follow getting demonetized, strikes against their channels or their channels outright removed for saying a spicy word on a stream, in some cases on a different platform entirely, or including as little as a couple of seconds of copyright content.

There's already plenty of videos on my channel of me saying spicy words and using copyright content, such as in the old episodes of Arby 'n' the Chief.

I can only hope that context matters regarding the language, that it was uttered for comedic and satirical purposes, and its taken into consideration that the words were said during times that were far less tense.

Every day I suspect that my days on YouTube are numbered, and I wake up wondering if my channel's still up.

It's a horrible feeling.

I know if it ever gets struck or goes down, I'll take it hard and it won't be a good day, having been on YouTube since around 2007.

My anxiety's regular and bad enough already in regard to my own content alone, in this time of extreme cultural divide that, frankly, I don't need a public server out there with no language limits with my show's name on it that I affiliate with in my streams and encourages the recklessness I've observed and had reported to me by others.

That makes me feel vulnerable and angry.

There's an episode of South Park called Apologies to Jesse Jackson.

Fans of the show know it as the "N-word episode", referred to as such for its uncensored use of the word at least forty times.

They got away with it because the word was carefully and properly contextualized.

Randy says the word on national television in a game of Wheel of Fortune in which the desired answer at the time is "naggers", the question being "people who annoy you", and the running joke is Randy taking offense to being repeatedly called by everyone "that N-word guy" while being ignorant to the pain that black people experience when the N-word is thrown at them disparagingly.

Regardless of the good intention behind that episode, I don't believe that episode would be made right now; the reason being that the time just isn't right for something like that.

I think racial tensions are such that that word is just too incendiary regardless of the intention behind it in an artistic work.

Some time from now it could be a different word with a different definition at the top of the offense hierarchy.

And I wouldn't expect any discussion platform like a discord or sub-reddit revolving around South Park or that particular episode to have an anything-goes language policy in reflection of the show's values regarding speech.

Just because that episode has at least forty uses of the N-word, doesn't mean that a forum post regarding the episode should have the same.

I only wanted a basic, run-of-the-mill TOS regarding language to be put in place on a public server I associate with that encourages more respectful discussion and not the kind of excess and trolling I've recently experienced or heard about from others, behavior that can be carried over to other platforms like YouTube or Twitter, while not stifling any intelligent (or even unintelligent) or respectful discourse regarding any subject, controversial or otherwise.

I obviously can't stop anyone from independently creating some no-rules server on whatever platform if they feel that strongly about exchanging explicit words and images, and neither can any other content creator, but I reserve the right to refrain from affiliating with such servers, and I won't affiliate with them.

I'm really sorry to have upset some people, but I'm doing what I believe is necessary for my own peace of mind, maintaining my channel's status and presence, maximizing the appeal of the server to new users and encouraging civility rather than the forum equivalent of a food fight.

I've spent hours upon hours upon days thinking and worrying about this matter and writing posts like this one and emails to people regarding it, it's been exhausting, it's time I'd much rather have spent writing my Halloween special or the rest of season eight.

I can't help but feel annoyed that, in essence, this grief is about people wanting to recklessly throw slurs back and forth.

Again, a contextualized work of cinematic satire and a forum are not the same.

My use of language is far from reckless.

Chief is a funny character who admittedly is sometimes written to be empathized with, sometimes even suggested to be right in his thinking, but he's a deeply flawed character and not intended as one to be emulated.

I know that some people may still not approve of my decision, but I hope that I've explained my position well enough that it can be understood.

Some do, as people on both sides have informed me.

Currently I've received more approval than disapproval.

Although I remain a non-participant of the discord, I respectfully ask participants to please refrain from giving the administrators a hard time over the matter.

It's an unfortunate situation and they implemented the change as a result of weighing options in light of exchanges with me.

We're all doing what we think is best.

I had an individual recently revoke their financial support of me over the TOS revision.

If people don't wish to support me anymore over the matter, I'm genuinely saddened to see you go, but my position remains the same.

I would hope you're supporting me because you enjoy my content which, as I said, remains unchanged -- uncensored, but its explicitness contextualized as carefully as I can possibly manage.

Thank you again, for reading and all of your support and kind words, as always.

I wish you all well, and I will continue to entertain you and make you laugh to the best of my ability and whether you're a Patreon backer or not, I hope you'll be there to enjoy my content.