Hello Everyone!
I know it's been a while, but I figured that it'd be best if I threw you guys a channel update.
While yes, its true that 2021 sucked tremendously (death in the family, apartment flooded, supermarket that we normally go to made the news because a crazy guy shot a bunch of people in it (which, along with the flooding, was a big reason as to why we moved)) 2022 has been...not similar, but equally as insidious.
As some of the long-time viewers are gonna know, and perhaps even roll their eyes at, there's an old, old problem I've been having with the channel that I've never quite been able to solve.
And it's more or less where I've been the last few months.
As dozens and dozens of people on the internet will tell you (if not EVERYONE) there's a HUGE copyright/plagiarism problem online. I don't know what it looks like for you, but on my end I get almost daily updates about someone ripping someone off in terms of their artwork, and it really, really sucks.
I've been no exception.
Again, for those of you who have been around for a while will know, I've had a run-in with more than a few other content creators about making work that's really similar (and in some cases, IDENTICAL) to mine.
Now, for the most part a lot of people are going to throw out the old adage of "well, it comes with the territory" or "that's what happens when a lot of people see your work/it's bound to happen" all the way to "there's no such thing as an original idea" or even "you should be happy that you made something good enough to be stolen in the first place " (eww).
But there's one critical difference between my experiences and the experiences I've seen from other content creators:
When other content creators go after these perpetrators, via videos , tweets, livestreams, etc., there's always a degree of justice.
A 20k liked tweet here, a few hundred thousand views on a video there, and the original copycat has to issue an apology, delete the copy, and/or suffer the general PR disaster.
However, whenever I've tried to stand up for myself after I feel that someone has ripped me off, not only does no one have my back, but in my experience, it's even sent me to the forbidden online territory of "cringe." Which again I find really strange, because I've never seen that happen to someone else.
So I want to be really clear here:
I pride myself on citing my sources. I'll spend weeks and months accessing all of the resources I can (*grumbleacademicaishiddenbehindapaywallgrumble*) so when I tell you I've had an original thought, I'm telling you that I had an original thought to the best of my ability.
In fact, I've literally lost sleep when I've retroactively found a source that would've fit into one of my videos, and I throw them into the description along with an apology.
So when I've spent a solid month looking up if something exists, not finding it, putting it in my video, and then someone happens to say the exact same thing a few weeks after my video, it's hardly suspicious as much as it is outright "all about the hustle." I'm not trying to sit here and pat myself on the back, far from it, I just don't understand why I shouldn't get the same credit that everyone else gets.
Now, when it comes to certain applications of Music Theory, there's absolutely no way to say that it's original.
Like if I try to make a video talking about chord inversions and I use an example from a film, I can't say that I'm the first person to think of something like that, and that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about entire sections of my videos copied word-for-word, showing a PROFESSOR (who teaches, at a college) and having them shrug and say "well, ya know, we all cite too many sources as is."
So this is something that's been haunting me for a while now, I've had no idea how to reconcile with it.
Not crediting people properly for their own original work has bothered me so much that I've even gone out of my way to make videos citing the sources that other content creators are ripping off just so the guy who wrote the dissertation gets his credit!
In one such instance, I had an explanation in a video that I'd come up with in college to describe a certain subject in a very specific way, copied word-for-word by a video that went onto win a significant award (technically the first of it's kind).
And while yes, our videos were on different topics, that doesn't change the fact that an exact copy of what I *know* is something I came up with at the very least deserves some credit beneath the fold of the description, right?
And when I turned to my discord for support, I had to spend an hour convincing them that it was something I'd come up with in the first place, including some of them going out and trying to disprove me, and even then the "support" was mixed at best.
And no shade to the discord, it's just indicative of the kinda stuff I have to go through whenever I try to deal with this.
I could spend all day talking about this, and if you ask my girlfriend (who's been with me since the beginning of all this and has some VERY strong opinions on the matter) you could, in fact, literally talk about different examples for a full 12 hours.
So why now?
Why is this a problem now?
Well, it's been eating away at me for a long time, I've been trying to grit my teeth and bear it with the all the stresses of last year, getting back on this horse was seeming a bit too much.
Then I was invited to an academic conference.
So, SMT (Society for Music Theory), AMS (American Musicological Society), and SEM (Society for Ethnomusicology) are the three big academic societies who present about all the high-brow music studies.
Every once in a while they'll have conferences where professors submit papers and if your paper is selected, you get to present it at the conference.
This is considered to be a huge deal, these presentations go on resumes/CVs and are considered when you're looking for a teaching position and for when you're trying to get tenured.
So I go to this conference and there's someone presenting on a topic that I'm super interested in.
I sit through the presentation, and I know I've seen a youtube video that talks about this exact same thing.
I was like, dumbfounded that this paper got through and no one said anything, and I was wondering if I should've spoken up.
Then, at the end, during the Q&A section, the presenter mentioned that he'd never...uhh..."consumed the media in question" (he said he didn't play/watch the thing he was presenting on) which led me to the somewhat significant question of:
IF YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED/SEEN THE THING, HOW DID YOU KNOW THE MUSIC DOES THIS SPECIFIC THING IN THIS SPECIFIC CONTEXT
Beyond that, talking to some of the professors was enormously disheartening. One of the advantages of being anonymous online is that I wasn't recognized while hanging around the conference so professors weren't super nice to me because I had a twitter follow, at least at first they weren't.
And let me tell you, youtube videos just aren't taken seriously, like, at all.
Once I told them who I was they got all nice and friendly, but I'd already sat through multiple conversations with profs who'd just read the riot act about all kindsa channels and videos that both you and I are familiar with and enjoy.
It just feels like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On one hand you have the internet where I'll just getting ratio'd on twitter if I try to stand up for myself, and on the other hand you have academia that won't care about the academic integrity of a youtube video no matter how much work goes into it.
So, quite frankly, I have no idea what's going on.
My girlfriend (and I don't mean that in that terminally-online incel "I hAvE a GiRlFrIeNd" kinda way - she's really more like my manager at this point) who has a Master's in Social Work, describes this whole experience as closer to gaslighting than anything else.
We both can't figure out how or why when other people go after those who steal there's some kinda justice but when I do it *IF* there's some kinda response it tends to be some variant of "bro you just posted cringe" or quite literally "wtf is your problem."
Like I can't stress this enough, I know one story of a content creator (who I absolutely adore and respect) standing up for himself against an online journal that ripped his video off and his community was so vocal and did so much to support him that HE had to APOLOGIZE to the head editor of that organization for the deluge of voices coming their way.
Most of the time I can't get people to believe me, even with a direct side-by-side comparison!
So here's thing thing:
Everything I've seen makes it seem like this is a me problem.
Like I don't understand what plagiarism is or I don't understand some kinda cultural thing going on about how similar two things can be before it's ok to get upset.
Like I just missed the boat somehow and everything is fine.
And if that's the case then fine, cool, but I need someone to explain it to me because I just don't get it.
Cuz at the same time, if people are going to get resume-quality work from me, even award-winning in some cases, and I'm not even going to get so much as a twitter-follow back from them.
Then, well, I have no idea how to exist in this environment.
I'm not asking for awards and celebration and pomp and circumstance. I just wanna be treated like a person and not walking, breathing wikipedia article that people ctrl+c, ctrl+v in the middle of the night before a deadline.
I want to make something very clear here:
I'M NOT QUITTING, I HAVEN'T QUIT (even though some people have asked if I've "retired" *shudder*)
I literally spend all day, every day working on this while still trying to live life.
I'm such a nerd that I'm going back to the college board to see what they have to say about citation and looking at their definitions for plagiarism, along with court precedents for what does and does not constitute copyright infringement.
But all that aside, there are a good number of very successful people who have made really crappy moves against me.
OH and that's another thing, I didn't want to name any names or give any specifics here because that's another thing that people point out; that I'm just clout-chasing (I still have no idea what that is) or that I'm just jealous or trying to spark up some drama.
I'm not, I'm really not, idk how to prove that to everyone, but I'm really not.
So I've been trying to work all this out both personally and professionally.
Like how upset am I actually allowed to be, how much am I just not getting it, and how much of this is the aforementioned gaslighting that Sarah insists is going on.
AND THEN you wake up one morning to a tweet with 10k likes making fun of the title for one of your videos and you have to deal with a twitter hate mob.
Ugh.
But yeah, so that's what's going on.
I'm stuck, like, REALLY stuck, and if anyone has any thoughts or ideas then jesus please send them my way.
I've literally written and produced 4 different videos over the last 6-8 months but just can't bring myself to publish them over this. I just can't move past like, how much work goes into these videos just for it to kinda fall apart for me.
Literally just wanna be able to tweet "Bro, not cool" if someone rips me off and not have dozens of people dm me hate messages.
And if this post, just like all my others, somehow backfires and turns into another "omg ur posting cring bro" or like "bro just move on why do you keep complaining" then I'm just gonna take it down.
Life's too short.
Anyway, miss you all and I miss making videos, hope this helps explain where I've been, and if not, sorry.
I do genuinely, sincerely appreciate all of you sticking around, and it'd really mean the world to me if any of you had any ideas (What am I not getting!?!?!? help!!!).
Also, obviously I'm not charging you for any of this, I only charge for videos.
Hope you've all been having a better 2021/2022 than me!