It seems like every day there’s something new to be outraged about, and here I am today with my two cents.

Carlos Maza is, according to his own website, a

“video producer at Vox.com. He writes, produces, and hosts a video series called Strikethrough, focusing on media coverage in the age of Trump.”

and I’ve been a fan of his for… I don’t know. A couple years, maybe? He’s a fun, entertaining journalist who calls out bullshit in the field of journalism- in a lot of the same ways that Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Sam Bee, Hasan Minaj, John Oliver, and that whole genre of comedy does. The key difference is that Carlos is a legitimate journalist who is funny, and the rest are comedians who poke fun at journalism.

Carlos’ work, in my opinion, is some of the most important in the field right now.

Enter Steven Crowder. On YouTube, Steven has been harassing Carlos on YouTube, primarily by way of making “debunking” videos whenever Carlos makes a point.

If you want to dig deeper into this rabbit hole, Vox released an open letter to YouTube about this whole shitstorm.

Now, harassers, whatever-phobes, et cetera, are always going to be a problem on the internet. That’s just a fact of life. The solution isn’t in ignoring them, or convincing them to stop, or even harassing them back. The solution is policing. Now, we actually have laws in place for this sort of thing- harassment is a crime. But who is enforcing it?

Time after time after time, I’ve heard stories of women who were harassed. They went to the police and heard “just turn off your phone if it bothers you so much.” There’s a fundamental flaw with this response:

It’s fucking stupid.

It doesn’t address the legitimate grievance of the harmed party, does nothing to stop the harasser from harassing, and the internet is full of actual, real human beings who have the capability to do real-world harm. Y’know, like when Carlos was doxxed last year:

Think of the kind of damage a thousand internet strangers could do with your phone number. That’s a fact of life for Carlos. Now, YouTube has a policy for this sort of thing- its community guidelines explicitly forbid online harassment. But it’s not being enforced any more than the anti-harassment laws are.

As a side note, YouTube is in a lot of hot water over its current system of policing copyright, but that is its own discussion.

So what can we do?

I linked earlier to Vox’s open letter to YouTube. Give that a read- it’ll give you more context. Beyond that, be an active participant. If you stumble on any of Crowder’s- or anyone’s- harassment videos, don’t get disgusted and leave. Flag it. Report it. YouTube only cares about what gets views and makes them money, so let’s let them know what we, the audience, don’t want to watch.

More stupid jokes tomorrow.

-M