On Censorship
I was never the popular kid and I never wanted to be, but the closest I ever came would have been due to parasocial relationships in high school that predated social media.
Before online broadcasting, I was offline broadcasting. Or at least I tried to be.
In a nutshell, for two years, I helped run the high school's public broadcasting station. We were a free station to the local community, but our targeted demographic was other high school students during homeroom getting the latest announcements— this time period was ancient and predated using email to communicate with students through a corporation like microsoft or google.
Digress.
When I was the director: The episode aired.
When I was the camera: The episode aired.
When I was the producer: The episode aired.
When I was the editor: the episode aired.
When I was the teleprompter: the episode aired.
When I was the anchor: the teacher “forgot” to schedule the episode.
There are two years of my episodes that took a more creative direction than your standard fare news; segments everyone thought was silly and the teacher only wanted serious. My naivety led me to believe he actually forgot. As far as the internet archive is concerned, I was never a news anchor at all, as there is no footage to backup my claims.
I woke up years later witnessing a new form of censorship.
I watched as my roommate never left our dorm room besides meals and class as it was a crime to be Gay at my alma mater. Those were the years I took off my checkered vans and I wish I never did.
My Gay roommate survived, but my Black roommate didn't.
It wasn't immediate, but he never left our room either, besides meals and class.
It wasn't a crime to be Black at Liberty University, but the origin story of the engineering institution that I inadvertently accredited was that it was an all white institution, using religion as the basis for segregation. There's a bitterness towards the public that the government represents there, that does not hide in the shadows.
Chapel was mandatory three days a week. The first time I was ever written up and fined was in fake church wearing a fake tie and a fake collar. My collar and tie needed to be real and I demanded reality back from the church, but only one of us could expel the other.
We were told we'd have speakers from all walks of life of all different ideologies and if we believed them, that was true.
In reality, the out group never spoke as the entire premise was a farce designed to appeal to prospective parents. The goal wasn't to educate the students in the seats today, but to grow exponentially and influence the hearts and minds of the next students, which only works with a consistently crafted narrative, three days a week between 10 and 11 am eastern.
I woke up years later witnessing a new form of censorship.
I was sitting in the driver seat. Lives were in my hands.
I was online broadcasting while it was still a carefully crafted narrative, before the world went live.
The governments themselves had reared their ugly heads and said, “it is not a crime to be anything, but point those cameras away from here or else we'll shoot you back.”
And Saudi Arabia got Hasan Minhaj taken offline. And the other governments realized they too could cancel comedians.
And my dumbass tried to bridge the Black and Trans communities with an “I liked it” in reference to Dave sharing his interactions with Daphne, thinking I would elaborate in conversation, but I got cancelled by just those three words.
I woke up months later in the passenger seat witnessing a new form of censorship.
Paul said he couldn't bring himself to watch Dave talk about Daphne as he was the last producer to book her and he told me about their last conversations on the train platform before he never saw her again.
I woke up a year later to a new form of censorship.
I was running a panel of straight white men as that's who would socially and technically integrate with me.
I was the censor and the censored.
I woke up years earlier to a new form of censorship.
There were streets of guns. Stationed corner on corner. Patrols in buggies with walkie talkies. Jacked up trucks rolling coals on people marching on a bridge a mile long, shouting, “If they want to be Black, I'll make them Black” about the White protestors walking with Black Lives Matters banners.
I woke up years earlier to a new form of censorship.
Crying. I know I'm not the reason Deante killed himself, but it certainly didn't help that I switched code at the wrong time for Jerry's Jesus.
Never again.
Off Censorship