YouTube Restricted Mike Rowe’s Prager U Video ‘Don’t Follow Your Passion’
“Is it possible that YouTube has determined that the IDEAS expressed in my speech are inappropriate for people under 18 – The precise audience that most needs to hear this message?”
We’re no stranger to YouTube suspensions here, having been arbitrarily subjected to one ourselves.
Former Dirty Jobs host turned skilled worker spokesman was shocked to find a video he’d done in conjunction with Prager U had received the YouTube ban hammer. I mini-blogged Rowe’s video ‘Don’t Follow Your Passion’ last year.
So why was the video only now suspended? Rowe alerted his Facebook followers of the video’s suspension in a post yesterday saying, “Obviously, I was surprised to learn that my video could be interpreted as anything but the G-rated message I believe it to be.”
Rowe concluded, “Is it possible that YouTube has determined that the IDEAS expressed in my speech are inappropriate for people under 18 – The precise audience that most needs to hear this message? The answer appears to be yes.”
Rowe’s entire Facebook post:
Holy Bleep! I’ve Been Restricted!
Last June, I was invited by Denis Prager to give the commencement speech at his virtual university. I accepted. The speech exists today in the form of a 5-minute video that’s been viewed nearly 6 million times on YouTube. I’ve just learned however, that YouTube has determined the content of that video to be “inappropriate.”
The basic message of my speech is simple – millions of good jobs currently exist that do not require a four-year degree. In the video, I touch on a few of the reasons why these jobs are routinely ignored, but focus mostly on the fact that society doesn’t encourage people to pursue vocations that don’t require a diploma. Hence, most people are not passionate about a long list of viable opportunities, because most people are affirmatively discouraged from learning a trade. Thus, our ever-widening skills gap.
I approach the problem by challenging the old platitude, “Follow Your Passion!”
The gist of my argument goes like this:
1) Passion is a critical component of job satisfaction and overall happiness. However…
2) Just because you’re passionate about something, doesn’t mean you won’t suck at it. Which means…
3) Following your passion doesn’t always lead to lasting happiness or true job satisfaction. Ergo, my advice to graduates is…
4) “NEVER follow your passion, but ALWAYS bring it with you.”According to YouTube, “restricted videos” are videos that contain any of the following:
• Vulgar language
• Violence and disturbing imagery
• Nudity and sexually suggestive content
• Portrayal of harmful or dangerous activitiesObviously, I was surprised to learn that my video could be interpreted as anything but the G-rated message I believe it to be. So I watched it again – this time with an open mind and a more discriminating eye. I saw nothing violent, harmful, or dangerous. Nothing vulgar, disturbing, or objectionable. True, the animated figures are unclothed, but clearly androgynous, as well as faceless. I was honestly at a loss. But then I saw this, buried in the fine print.
“Some videos don’t violate our policies, but may not be appropriate for all audiences. In these cases, our review team may place an age restriction when we’re notified of the content.”
Is it possible that YouTube has determined that the IDEAS expressed in my speech are inappropriate for people under 18 – The precise audience that most needs to hear this message? The answer appears to be yes. So, before I officially complain to YouTube, I thought perhaps I might ask 5 million of my closest friends if my head is up my astericks.
Mike
PS. There are currently 6.2 million available jobs in this country, the majority of which do NOT require a four-year degree. Student debt is now approaching $1.3 trillion, and millions of college graduates have failed to find work in their chosen fields. And yet, we continue to push a college degree like it’s the best path for the most people. We continue to tell our kids to follow their passion, no matter where it might lead them. Enough already. The time has come to encourage our kids to explore ALL of the educational options available to them, and ALL of the vocations waiting to be filled. That message has been restricted for too long.
The video has since been restored (at least as far as we can tell) and as we’ve discussed at length, YouTube is a private entity and can control content as they see fit, but when the ban hammer gets thrown at a message that essentially says “do what pays and leave the underwater feminist basket-weaving to someone not serious about earning a living” we are again, observing YouTube’s erratic suspension behavior with cocked brows.
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Comments
Mike has some excellent, common-sense things to tell high school students, things I wish I had heard when I was that age. For YouTube to have restricted it on whatever criteria that it claims to have been applied makes me wonder, did they actually watch it? It’s a moot issue now that the video has (apparently) been restored, but I’d like to hear their reasoning.
Time to shut YouTube and Google down – put them out of business.
Revoke their corporate charters and all their licences of all sorts.
Mike Rowe: “Is it possible that YouTube has determined that the IDEAS expressed in my speech are inappropriate for people under 18 – The precise audience that most needs to hear this message?”
Rut Roh!
Another Lie-Stream MSM Fake Media narrative that’s fallen apart completely just like Goober and its YouTubed.
“Disturbing Discrepancies Surround Marilou Danley and Mandalay Bay Massacre…”
“according to neighbors of the house in Reno, these media reports don’t match the actual behavior:
In an exclusive interview with Sun Online, Suzy Page, 68, who lives next door to Paddock and his girlfriend Marilou Danley, said: “It was the talk of the neighbourhood what on earth he had stashed in the safe, it was as big as a refrigerator…
…“I lived next door to him and his girlfriend and never once got as much as a smile out of him.
“They had barely any furniture in the house and nothing in the yard, the shades were always down and it was like they were not even living there.
Another neighbour from the same exclusive retirement community in Reno, who did not want to be named, said: “I saw the safe and it was literally the size of a refrigerator.”
“We would all wonder what on earth he kept in there, but nobody could ever ask as he was not the kind of man who engaged with anyone….”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/10/06/disturbing-discrepancies-surround-marilou-danley-and-mandalay-bay-massacre/
Heck. My safe is half again the size of my side by side fridge.
And still not big enough
Time to shut YouTube and Google down – put them out of business.
Revoke their corporate charters and all their licences of all sorts.
That would make whoever did it a criminal. Advocating it makes you an enemy of the constitution.
And citing Conservative Nuthouse makes you a nut. If a story is true you’ll find it somewhere else; if the only place you can find it is that garbage site, then you know it isn’t true.
Mike Rowe needs a bigger megaphone.
I would guess that the fact that Prager U was involved has a lot to do with the banning. Top that off with his message discouraging the growth of the Academia-Government Complex that provides taxpayer money to brainwash our youth into leftist activists.
I wonder if any of these over-educated ninnies give any thought as to who will fix their cars, build their houses, even unplug their toilets when the entire adult population has become a victim of the “must-go-to-college” crowd.
Many of us probably wish we had heard stuff like this way back when. Playing catch-up is tough when you are old.
Oft in the middle of the night
While I struggle with all my might
To grasp Philosophy and such
I find I need a plumber to make my toilet flush
You mean it’s time to flush the self-important Democrat donkey hoes?
Touche!
With current technology, the cost of a 4 year college degree should be FREE.
“I wonder if any of these over-educated ninnies give any thought as to who will fix their cars, build their houses, even unplug their toilets when the entire adult population has become a victim of the “must-go-to-college” crowd.”
Illegal “immigrants,” of course. What’s the point of being an elite if you don’t have some “culturally and ethnically diverse people” to lord it over?
The left has spun this into “Republicans are anti education”
LI’s own yellow stained troll even tried to use it here
“YouTube’s erratic suspension behavior …”
Youtub is owned by g00gle, and g00gle is evil. Just ask James Damore.
What’s the ban process at YouTube? Is Google so lacking in resources that any coven of SJWs can scrape together a dozen “offensive” complaints and get any video they disagree with banned? Inquiring minds want to know.
The process is that an AI straight out of a Harlan Ellison story bans stuff on a whim.
The Harlan Ellison story in question being “I Have No Mouth and I must Scream?” Sounds about right.
I see 71,000 likes and only 4,000 dislikes. Maybe that second number is a lot. I think this video is great.
Watching the video again reminds me to make my short list NOW of charitable donations to make before New Year’s:
Legal Insurrection
Judicial Watch
Prager U.
maybe one other…
4,000 university professors and administrators.
Exactly. Great post.
The Insitute for Justice
Restricting Mike Rowe’s message is one with the same restrictions being placed on Robert Spencer and his information on the world-wide jihad being conducted by Muslims against the non-Islamic world. Spencer’s not alone in this battle; many, many non-liberal websites are being targeted in this war on common sense and common defense.
Similarly against the common sense letter by law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander on encouraging the bourgeois values that once acted as the glue holding this country united (the 1950s values, if you will).
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450905/bourgeois-values-scandal-tars-law-prof-amy-wax-racism-charge
The left is playing for keeps here. Even if there were agreed-upon Marquess of Queensberry rules, the left would ignore them in the same manner they ignore real law. The left pulls punches, delivers deliberate kidney punches, and hits below the belt.
Google-speak translator: “may not be appropriate for all audiences” = some leftist claims to have found a way to be offended by it, hence nobody can be allowed to see it.
And they have a near monopoly. Enforce anti-trust laws. Slice and dice that piece of Antifa garbage. Force them to compete, in which environment their ideological drive to block information flow instead of enable it will be systematically out-competed and eliminated by those providers whose goal is to provide each customer with the services the customer wants.
Now they are spending their monopoly rents on blocking some customers at the behest of other customers or politicized managers parasitically embedded within the company. Under competition there will be no large rents for these parasites to suck dry. Attempting to block customers instead of serve them will lead to bankruptcy. Do it!
In its continued effort to speech that they do not agree with, I believe that Youtube has restricted all of Prager U’s videos. However, knowing Youtube and Mike’s aversion to group think it could well just be what he said.
Not all, but lots of them. Some have been restored after publicity became embarrassing enough.
From the petition at Prager University,
It seems there are a number of people who regard Dennis Prager as an Evil Conservative and will do everything they can to censor anything he says or anything with his name attached to it.
The people in charge of banning videos at Youtube are the Marxists who graduated with a degree in Feminist underwater basket weaving and they don’t take kindly to other opinions.