Final Cut Bro: David Dobrik, Ally Hardesty & Durte Dom.

the case of the cancellation
of david dobrik is not important because of the conflicts it has created and it is not important because of the questions that have been raised it's important because the questions nobody's asking it's important precisely for all the things that are not controversial that are passing us by unquestioned and unchallenged david dobrik never had a job interview at google he was never hired to be a presenter at youtube now if david dubrick had gone given an interview and been hired by a tv station to provide commentary on current events nobody would be surprised if today he had been fired by that tv station or by that radio station because they said well this was the contract we signed with them this was the sort of images he was supposed to maintain this was his job whatever the details the case may be i think we all understand very well the relationship of employer to employee and that if he had been hired by a tv station as a broadcaster as a performer as an actor as a host as a personality right he would have all the benefits of being an employee which includes not just a regular paycheck healthcare probably union membership maybe even a lawyer to defend his interests and conflicts of this type right and he would have disadvantages also he would have a relationship of authority to someone who was his boss there would be someone he answered to there'd be someone in the corporate hierarchy there'd be someone who had final cut decision on what did and didn't make it into the show when the broadcast came right none of us want to question just how different the relationship is between being a youtube personality and youtube as a technology because youtube is not a broadcaster it's not a television station it's not a radio station it's not your boss none of us showed up for an interview and were hired by youtube and youtube's relationship to us is not of employer to employee i think there is a very very important parallel case to be considered in the legality or illegality of uber uber and lyft these are companies that compete with taxi cab services around the world during the years 2019 and 2020 there was a storm of controversy especially in the state of california about to what extent uber and lyft these taxicab like companies that exist through the internet through mobile phone connections to what extent they would be forced to recognize their employees as employees to take on the role of employer with all of its responsibilities all of its powers all of its advantages and disadvantages to what extent would the people who earned money driving a taxi for this company be entitled to the benefits that for centuries taxi cab companies have provided to their drivers why was there this special exception for uber and lyft the answer was that uber and lyft presented themselves not as an employer not as a company not as a company that owns a gold mine and then employs people as miners and takes on responsibility in case that miner gets injured to pay for them to go to the hospital no no no no no what uber and lyft wanted you to think was that they had developed a technology that could now exist in your life as invisibly as the word processor right this is just a piece of software this is just a piece of software that sits on your phone and allows you as an isolated individual to get in touch with and have a relationship with another isolated individual you get to pay that person to drive their car and all uber does all the corporation does is sit back and keep a percentage because their technology facilitated the connection between you a very profitable arrangement for the company an arrangement in which they do not have to take any of the responsibilities financial or otherwise as employers right and the drivers don't have to take on the responsibility of being an employee so if they get sick their employer does not provide them with sick pay they also don't have a boss they can call to make up an excuse for being sick there is no call nobody is going to ask anyone who drives to those companies if they decide to just stop driving for two weeks they decide to just go on vacation just they're sick they stopped driving their car no questions are asked nobody to answer to nobody's gonna check are you really sick and nobody is going to pay them a dime for the time they're spending when they're not working right year 2020 was eventful i think what a lot of people didn't hear was how that legal and political controversy came to its conclusion in california and it came to a conclusion with a vote the people of california were asked to vote on a proposition a referendum if you will for whether or not there should be a special exception made to the laws so that uber and lyft could continue in this way employing people without legally recognizing them as their employees and the companies involved uber and lyft said if you don't vote for this we're leaving california we cannot do business it is not affordable for us and it's not affordable for you as consumers to actually pardon me take on all the responsibilities of an employer employee relationship the people voted the corporations won and so uber and lyft get to exist not as an employer but just as a technology in the same sense you have a word process right now what is the relationship of david dobrik to youtube okay nobody's questioning the relationship of him to his audience my relationship to my audience is really no different than if i were a corporate employee in a broadcast company it's surreal but it's true i know a lot of people probably relate to david dobrik from audience to broadcaster the same way they would relate to someone employed by the mtv company or some other big corporate tv content creator right but that has nothing to do with david dobrik's relationship to youtube youtube never interviewed david dobrik he never was an employee david dobrik was for youtube a customer in precisely the same sense that you are a customer of your email service whenever you enter in your password and check your email all right now i do not like david dobrik i don't just mean i dislike his content i dislike him as a person i dislike everything he's done with his life when i look at the videotape evidence that created this controversy i feel absolutely nothing but contempt for the young men who choose to live their lives this way and i can't understand why anyone would consider it entertaining this is the apotheosis of stupidity everything about it i i don't like the drinking i don't like the excuse for humor involved and no i don't like the sexuality i don't like the way it relates to women i don't like the way treats i don't like any of it all right however there are some people in this audience who don't like me there are some people who disapprove of my sex life in the last seven years i have very publicly been going through a divorce and you can imagine as it's taken seven years and still isn't over yet it's what you call a difficult divorce my ex-wife has not made it easy do you think my youtube channel should be canceled should be shut down because some people are offended by what they know however imperfect however one-sided what they think they know about my sex life about my divorce what about my email account what if one day i turn on my computer and i can't access my email account because a little window pops up and the company that owns the email service says hey we don't want to do business with you anymore we think you and your sex life have a bad reputation how would you feel if you suddenly were closed off from and cut off from your email account you think it's a human right but it's not david dobrik's relationship to his youtube channel is precisely the same legally as your relationship to your email account you are not an employee of your email account you are the user of a piece of software and you feel rightly or wrongly that you have the right to continue using that software regardless of the sorted details of your private life now many decades ago in pretty much every western country it became an established practice that your employer would not judge you and would not fire you for what you did in your private life in your sex life unless it somehow interfered with or involved what you did at the office or what you did at the factory so a lot of you guys may not believe this but there are innumerable men who are facing charges and going to court and even going to prison for sex crimes and their employers will say whether they work at a gold mine digging up or out of the ground or just work they answer telephones at a call center no matter what your job is where the employer says we have a human resources manual and whatever problem you're going through this is your private life it's none of our business it didn't happen at the office it wasn't between two employees so you can keep coming to the gold mine and we are not even gonna ask all right like think about that okay employers do not presume to judge employees the way youtube presumes to judge its users its broadcasters the way youtube presumes to silence and kick off and punish and demonetize its broadcasters and we all know no matter how little we sympathize with david dobrik and for me it's zero i have zero sympathy for i have my own biases but we know youtube has heard less than one side of the story we all know how these controversies go no matter how despicable the person is whether it's inissian or jacqueline glenn or any whether it's me whether it's my story whether it's what i've been through in the last 10 years all right you know the executives at youtube are not going to hear both sides of the story they're not going to carry out the equivalent of a criminal investigation they are not even going to treat you as innocent until proven guilty their attitude is where there's smoke there's fire there's smoke meaning public controversy of some kind therefore put water on it dose the fire shut down the youtube channel move on okay this could happen to you and it's not just youtube we need to in a really profound way question the relationship of the creator to the almost living tools that we rely on for our creativity all right books change the world terrible people write terrible books that have terrible consequences millions of people have died millions of people have killed each other over what's written down in black ink on white paper and this ain't something new all right and people kill themselves in other ways they buy books that are full of advice about weight loss health care spirituality cleansing how to cure your depression how to cure your acne people buy self-help books that ruin their lives and may even kill them and people read books of philosophy and decide to go out and kill others okay books are dangerous they always have been and that's partly because some books are written by dangerous people with dangerous intentions do you think those people should be shut down and censored by their own word processor because we have the ability to do that we have the ability for the word processor to have a little window come up the same way david dobrik and anissia and all these other people had a little window come up and say guess what you're too edgy you're too offensive the way monkey jones had his whole youtube career disappear and evaporate oh you crossed a line and there's you don't get a day in court we don't hear your side of the story right we can have the word processor shred your manuscript before you had a chance to publish it we can have your email service close down and deprive you of the ability to speak to your publisher to speak to your own mom and dad for many of us email's the only way we have to keep in contact with people it's part of your work life it's part of your personal life but as a creator as a creative writer as a creative person our relationship to the word processor to the email account to the blog to the youtube channel that is not supposed to be a relationship of employer to employee i do not work for youtube any more than i work for my word processor or my piece of paper or my pen these are my tools but we are living in an era of history when for the first time the tools can silence the author