Was it illegal to do what they did to the guy? Thats the only reason Elon says he would ever take any content down from X

For me, I look to the past to see what life could have been like were I born 100 - 200 -500 - 1,000 years ago and try to find the positives that being born now has.

And the reality is that even as soon as 100 years ago life was much, much harder and worse in almost every metric. Brutal jobs, brutal hours, with safety of no concern, even if you were a child. Housing? You were lucky if you could heat your home in some way in the winter, and air conditioning didnt even exist yet. Physical labor jobs were a large amount of the work, so many people simple worked themselves into uselessness and then suffered the rest of their lives.

It doesnt get much better going back further than that really. Plague anyone?

Today we enjoy a massive, massive amount of comfort in our lives. Have amazing, tasty, and safe food at our fingertips almost without issue. Can travel the entire globe effortlessly when even a cross country trek could have been a multi-month brutal affair with a death sentence for half the travel party. Modern medicine eliminates so many of the issues of the past.

In reality very few people “just” work for 40 years and then retire useless husks and then die. I suspect you spend some time with friends and loved ones, perhaps even travel and engage in leisure time kings and queens of 200 years ago couldnt dream of during those 40 years.

Its an interesting sentiment… but ultimately it just rings a bit hollow yeah? As if nearly anyone would work 40 hours a week if they didnt have to. You think if 100 people were given enough money to cover their housing/food/leisure/travel they would go to a factory job 40 hours a week? Or even a job they enjoyed or had fun at? Or would they spend their time with loved ones, doing things they enjoy, filling their lives with interesting experiences they can enjoy in the moment and reflect back on?

I enjoy my job quite a bit, It even has value to me in that it contributes to society in a fulfilling way, but 100% I am looking forward to not being obligated to do it

Simple doesnt necessarily mean easy to accomplish. I took it to mean they just go and so something as opposed to some structured, unwavering plan or training so hard they cant walk 5 days out of the weak.

Could probably accomplish something similar with 100-200 squats and push ups a day, but going to the gym gives you more variety

I would say pushing boundaries (and maybe to a lesser extent just pushing buttons) is categorically different than trolling.

Trollings sole purpose is the reaction, to rile people up. You dont have any intention behind your words besides that. Or heck maybe you even lie to do it. “What if I post pictures of sad looking polar bears to Greta Thunbergs twitter account? Wouldnt that make her mad!? hahaha!” Thats a troll - Nothing is gained, nothing is learned, nothing is advanced.

Pushing boundaries is something different. You can have intent, social movement, and a message with it. Star Trek pushed boundaries when they had an interracial kiss, it wasnt just for shock value or trolling white people. Ellen coming out on TV pushed boundaries without trolling people.

Boundaries are generally placed by people for the purpose of holding certain groups back, and they deserved to be pushed and in fact broken. Trolling does none of that. Trolling is putting a flaming bag of shit on someones porch and ding-dong-ditching just to watch them get their shoe dirty. If they are old, fall over, and break their hip when they do it thats all the more fun to the troll.

Pushing buttons… more on the trolling end of things, but probably done in a more playful way, maybe even to someone you know and hope to have a positive relationship with afterwards. But really its a more mild form of trolling

Sounds like, if it was going to happen to one of us, this chap was as good as any. How many people could take it in stride like this and see almost all the positive and none of the negative.

Obviously we dont wish it on anyone, but this could have lead someone with a more fragile disposition right into years and years of despair, depression, and impacted everyone around them heavily for the worse for years.

I certainly wont take tomorrow for granted after reading this posters message.

Im not saying there isnt a difference, or that I dont appreciate it personally. Im saying there are plenty of people that DO pay for video essays or LTT and find them even more entertaining than Game of Thrones or whatever show you want to watch on HBO or Netflix, at least at certain times of day and in certain scenarios

YouTube hosts millions upon millions upon millions of videos for free, and they set up and maintain the ad network that gets creators the money (55% of the ad revenue goes to them, 45% to youtube). That is the value they provide, not the content they create. They dont take a “risk” per se (anymore, that risk was taken in the beginning), but they are 100% outlaying resources to maintain the youtube network/experience at great expense so that people can create, host, and profit on their website with no risk to the creator except wasted time.

Obviously not a simple thing to do otherwise tons of websites would be doing the same thing and YouTube would have lots of competition, but they don’t because its actually a very resource intensive process that literally - and I mean literally as in literally - no other company is willing to take on.

There is no moral objection, unless you find funding Google in any way immoral.

Its a mutually beneficial relationship with YouTube and the Creators. Youtube has reduced the risk of spending money on content creation but takes on all the work of maintaining everything youtube offers, and the creators have reduced the risk of financial/commerical resources needed to make money on their product. Neither could exist withou the other

Thats why I added in the bit of patreon and merch. The persons argument was that no one was going to pay for content that was cheap to make, which is patently absurd given the amount of people making a living off of merch/patreon type deals

Youtube ad revenue is split 55% with the creators - presumably its the same for premium - so yes it actually is “most” depending on how you want to define that.

True, but no one is going to pay for content with production values barely above tiktok videos - which is what most of YouTube’s most famous content is.

Lots and lots and lots of people make bank “on youtube” because people sub to their patreons or buy their merch as a way to support the channel. I think you vastly underestimate what people are willing to spend on a creator whose community they feel apart of and whos content they like.