Substack has allowed for the neat incorporation of YouTube videos in posts since the platform’s inception. One problem: YouTube is owned by Google, and the increasingly censorious practices of Google, Twitter, Facebook (or whatever Mr. Zuckerberg’s online version of Xanadu is now called), and the entire corporate media is precisely the problem Substack is attempting to obviate or at least mitigate.
The kinds of videos Substack writers are inclined to make are just the kinds of productions that invisible YouTube shitwads enjoy deleting. So, a Substacker who embeds a YouTube video she makes to accompany a post might find herself linking to a black rectangle instead of her video. And this isn’t because those videos are offensive or violate any meaningful terms of service; it’s because they contradict government narratives and the cultural nonsense that serves to buttress those narratives by distracting all of us from our shared problems.
And there is no cheeky asterisk needed after that “us,” because I really do mean everyone I regularly complain about, with the possible exception of one of the co-founders of Nike, who really does exert near-monarchal control over U.S. distance running. Despite my obvious differences with a host of prominent media waterheads, grifters, and liars for openly corrupt causes, I have a lot more in common with all of those people—from the dolts whose “wealthy” white families explain their Harvard degrees and the “rich” snobs of Boulder to the morbidly obese Brooklynites of color scrambling for their share of the ersatz social-justice pie—than I do with anyone possessing real influence. And if those people weren’t such determined morons, they would grasp in return that I am fundamentally one of their peers, even if I reject the idea that butthurt should immediately compel a rollout of firings, the diminution of scientific facts and verifiable information, and the enactment of incredibly stupid policies and laws.
To the mostly unseen folks ensuring that the media remains a stream of increasingly authoritarian gushing under the guise of fomenting “patriotism”—igniting wars over useless vaccines, rallying support for miliary action in Europe, and imploring the stamping out only the bad kinds of free speech—we’re all the same disposable, inconvenient chucks of roving scum. There is little a "democratic” government in the middle of a massive power grab could enjoy more than the voters it “serves” steadily being bled of rights and earning power, yet fixating on cancelling people for an improper understanding of the “Latinx” language phenomenon and a hundred similarly idiotic dead-end concerns.
None of which suggests I plan to make videos that might not fly on YouTube, or make videos, period. I can’t make videos of myself talking because I usually have a strip of open sores on my face I can’t fully account for and am missing patches of hair, like one of those cats from North Africa veterinary offices often insist on keeping in the waiting room during business hours. But I wanted to try out the in-domain video feature, and a stop during my and Rosie’s morning amble offered a good excuse.
