This is just a quick-and-dirty thought I had while browsing the roundup thread tonight, and I figured I'd just dash it out here since I want to post something else in the big thread and not clutter it up.
Part of what spurred this was a recent video by Rimmy Downunder, who you might recognize as the Australian guy who uploads a lot of edited videos about Arma 3 and other kinds of simulationist-type games. It's an hour-long video, so to quickly summarize: if you are a big creator on YouTube, you should never ask Team YouTube for help on Twitter whenever one of your videos gets demonetized or age-restricted, because in the name of consistency, they will just go through your channel and do the same thing to all of your videos, making your algorithm performance and monetization drop even further. Contained within this video is discussion of new rules for advertiser-friendliness--specifically, the guidelines around profanity and the severity, frequency, and latency with which it is uttered in a video--changes that weren't exactly announced by YouTube, along with new policies for how YouTube reviews creators' appeals against the dings they get.
This post isn't about recent drama on a social media platform so big that it should really be regulated as a common carrier, or even about the constant frustration with inconsistent enforcement of rules, but instead, it's about the degree to which our modern society seems to be drilling down on making things all sanitized and offense-free.
Just to talk about YouTube a little more, I've been aware for a while that the entire design of YouTube--what is allowed, what is punished, and what is incentivized, whether that be through the algorithm or the automated content-policing systems they almost certainly have deployed--is set up to push creators into making the absolute safest content possible. I don't feel like digging up all the videos that talk about this phenomenon, but as an example: if you want to maximize your potential ad revenue on YouTube as a gaming channel, you need to play kid-friendly games (like Minecraft and Fortnite), say absolutely no swear words (at most, you might get away with TV-friendly minced oaths), and basically treat any copyrighted material (or even anything that could plausibly get claimed by some anonymous third party) like the plague. Add on sponsorships and upsells of patronage sites, and it makes for content you or I might consider...banal.
But again, this is about the direction we're all being pushed in. I could ramble here about how excellence and hard work aren't rewarded on a particular website, but this goes beyond YouTube and all social media platforms. Why is it that we've moved from a culture that was permissive with expression (to put it a certain way) to one where something even slightly outre is left to wither on the vine? (Okay, sure, you can find weird and shocking modern art, but probably a lot of said modern art is made to help sell people on the idea of Marxism or whatever, as opposed to something like Dilbert 3 [NSFW] which presumably isn't trying to push any message and just exists, well, because.)
Likely, you're already aware of how the modern Culture War has had its effects on pop culture and media, where any work that gets advertised on TV or pushed to the front shelves of your local bookstore or recommended online often has to fit in with modern sensibilities, so I won't rehash the history of that here. Creators often subscribe to various versions and formulations of progressive ideals, people will judge past works through the lens of today, and what was perfectly acceptable within the tits-n'-beer liberalism milieu of old is often scrutinized today.
There's also the other cultural aspects of this coddling/infantilization/whatever-you-want-to-call-it memeplex. Many Americans are becoming more and more like the hikikomori of Japan, one of the less-inflammatory ways of describing the current state of the battle of the sexes is that the male gender role has been razed and not rebuilt (this was the post that spurred this one, but this topic has come up before), and we may have accidentally re-invented segregation because it's easier to not interact with those outside our specific demographics rather than trying to interact with them and risk reputational homicide.
So, the question I have is: where did all this come from, and why? Is it what some call "safetyism," the impulse to prevent harm at all costs and take no risks whatsoever? Relatedly, is it because legal liability is treated as a mortal risk, because lawsuits can be a punishment in themselves? Is it because of the unkillable zombie Boomers who, even in their old age, and with all of the pains they've suffered in their long lives, keenly remember the trauma of troubled childhoods the most, and have used their power as the current generation of power-holders to make sure that no child ever grows up feeling hardship?* Is it some combination of all three things, where nobody really complains about the effect it has on the broader culture so long as some politician's (grand)kids are doing okay?
I'm not necessarily advocating for edginess for edginess' sake (though I think that could have value), but I think American society has somehow forgotten how to masterfully blend novelty, maturity, and creativity, and right now, it seems like the only people who take risks are the same people who can't handle them (or, at least, they tend to make a poor showing once they start doing whatever it is they do).
*Granted, some of the people responsible might be Gen Xers instead, such as YT's current CEO and possibly their content moderation team, too.
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Yeah, if you compare the mainest of today's streams to a curated collection of decades past--is it so surprising that they look different?
I'm reminded of a reddit thread about a guy restoring a 70s sound system for his dad. To complete the package, he burned a CD picking from an actual 197X radio schedule of some local station. He was surprised to find how much airtime was given over to "disco and shitty doo-wop." I can't find the link, but that quote really stuck with me.
I think these generalizations demand more specific evidence. Whether or not you have the impression that Western culture has fallen into an infantilizing death spiral, new art continues to be created. Some of it will be progressive and thus, I assume, dead to you. Some will be decent by any technical standards; this may or may not indicate that it is "safe" and boring art. And some, the top 10 or 1 or 0.1%, will be remembered.
If we could reliably tell visionaries from cranks, we wouldn't have stock tropes of the misunderstood genius Vindicated by History. Or, for that matter, the reclusive or starving artists. The latter archetype even requires a safe, boring mainstream to reject.
History is littered with geniuses ahead of their time. Today, we have the privilege of hindsight. That means picking through decades of disco and shitty doo-wop, perhaps on YouTube, to find the absolute cream of the crop. Looking back on panned movies and laughing at critics who didn't "get" it. Praising the Warhols and Van Goghs who burned bright regardless of whether or not they burned out. They weren't the only ones who took risks--just the ones who got remembered for it.
Oh, believe me, I'm aware the (digital) world is quite wide. I suppose my lament is more that I feel like less and less art is stupid for its own sake, if that makes sense. I made this post from what is admittedly a Very Online perspective, and I got to watch the rise of creators like RubberFruit, Ross Scott, and much of the Channel Awesome/That Guy With The Glasses crew. I mentioned in an older post that I essentially missed the days when the Internet was free to be stupid, a time before algorithmically-driven engagement. Nowadays, the most "derp" you find is in TikTok, but that has its own issues--maybe I'm just being the boomer, but it's not quite the same (it's not even quite like Vine, which was more of a magical time).
I suppose I can take comfort in that even the people who I think are underrated now (Drue Langlois, Capussi, Zeurel) will probably be vindicated later, as you say.
I spent a lot of time on /r/youtubehaiku and /r/gifsound in my [REDACTED] years. Whatever those subs are today doesn't capture the magic, the inanity of little 15 second clips fished from the depths of YouTube. Vine took on some of that energy, and I'm sure there's a section of TikTok doing something similar...just as niche subreddits got their start by distilling a certain type of humor.
There's an author out there who goes by the handle wadapan. He writes short fiction, largely related to the Transformers fandom. At least some parts of the wildly unhinged tfwiki can be credited to him. Perhaps his most iconic work is a series of relettered 80s comics culminating in a deconstructive triumph of fan culture, The Beast Within (My Pants). Explaining why this overgrown shitpost is at all funny is beyond me. Explaining why it is clever, in spite of itself...well, I guess you have to read the author's notes, a breakdown so elaborate that they stand as comedy on their own.
I jest, of course. Much more important is the fact that he used to be into Homestuck. Immersing himself in never-before-seen levels of irony, he comprehended the true face of fan culture. Perhaps this addendum sums it up, but I prefer another user's musing:
It's still out there. Weird, surreal, defying expectations of quality and of effort alike. You won't find it in the mainstream, but that's because of the same old selection pressures that have driven "selling out" since long before the Internet. 99% of everything was always passé. You were just lucky enough to be on the right parts of the Internet while they were still a wild frontier.
Pining for the bland tastes of the mainstream is a lost cause. All we can do is seek out our own slices of horrific memetic entanglement, wherever they may be, and take pleasure in what we know to be good.
Oh, man, don't get me started on Irony, I think there's been some groundwater contamination from that stuff over the past decade.
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