In April 2020 and in the interest of legacy I wrote a Wikipedia entry recording the thoughts and notable works of Harveywetdog. I admit I was ignorant of the rules concerning self promotion on Wikipedia and consequently my entry was correctly deleted and my account expunged from the system. As a result my original words and links were sadly lost but nevertheless here is a rewrite. Perhaps when I'm gone someone will be able to enter it onto Wikipedia as a fitting epitaph for my time on the Harveywetdog Project.
As
a YouTube creator I am always keen to keep my content within guidelines in
order to avoid strikes against my channel.
So when in a recent Creators
communication I read that:
“[June, 2021] Upcoming changes to
animal abuse policy: On June 15, we are updating our animal abuse policy.
This means that content in which someone deliberately inflicts physical
suffering or harm to animals or humans is not allowed on YouTube.”
Well I wasn’t too worried at first.
But then
I thought hang on, it’s an upside down world out there. We know there are some
animal rights supporters who would say it is wrong to even put a saddle on a
horse’s back, let alone shove a bit in its mouth, kick it and hit it and then
make it gallop for ten minutes over cross country obstacles or make it perform a
number of unnatural movements in a Grand Prix test. (Yes I know they’re
supposed to be movements the horse would use in the wild but when
was the last time you saw a New Forest Pony performing passage or piaffe?)
Now I’m not saying I endorse cruelty to
animals. After all there have been times when I’ve had to edit out over use of the whip by a rider or I have had to supply footage to support disciplinary hearings; but I do
worry about extreme views becoming the benchmark against which the mainstream
are judged. We live a puritanical woke world currently at the moment where it
is possible for anything or anybody to quickly become unacceptable.
Of course at first sight this isn’t YouTube’s
intention. The examples they quote are;
The following types of content are not
allowed on YouTube. This is not a complete list.
Dog fighting,
cockfighting, or other videos in which human onlookers are forcing animals
to attack each other. We do allow content featuring animals fighting in
the wild, such as in a nature documentary.
Non-educational,
documentary, scientific, or artistic content that shows unnecessary
suffering.
Bullfighting with bulls
being harmed (such as swords in the bull).
Hunting using illegal
practices like bombing or poison.
But as they say this is not a complete list and as we've seen with hits against some of the Free Speech and anti-lockdown channels YouTube do tend to respond immediately to targeted attacks and operate an act first ask questions later policy which means the creator is left to restore the good name of their channel and make their videos available again. (I'm not sure it's right for educational content to show unnecessary suffering either?).
So I couldn't help but think "where will this end?" I'm certainly going to avoid those playful title like Boris and Grace having a scrap and change them to something more benign like Boris and Grace playing robustly.
Apart from that only time will tell, but don't say I didn't warn you!
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