#hes streaming on his alt and he has no vods on so no timestamp

[azure-bluet]

derap, editing his video: if c!mapicc was real i would beat the shit out of him in real life. in game

[miaclemeverett]

ok so I'll admit I haven't watched the full Tommy alt vod yet. Mostly because I watched just a bit earlier (right before/when Wilbur joined) and it was making me so uncomfortable and sad haha but here's my take sorry it got long lmao

0. context for those unaware

everything kind of came to a boiling point yesterday (?) when Tommy made a joke on Twitter about Schlatt:

so people have been upset because it sounds like Tommy is poking fun at people who dislike Schlatt (for various reasons, but the majority of people who dislike him cite his his past use of slurs and jokes that he's made [most infamous being the Jackbox video])

1. Schlatt

I have a lot of feelings about just the dude alone lmao. I admit that I do watch a lot of his content even though that Jackbox video really was just a big wake-up call for me in feeling upset at that genre of his jokes. It sucked to see him and others make a joke out of people who are rightfully outraged at racism, when he has shown so much capacity to be funny without relying on lazy shock humor (literally the Fragrance Man stream and the Minecraft but videos with Wilbur are some of my favorite videos/streams of all time). But I think since that video Schlatt has taken that to heart and hasn't done that shit anymore, though I wish he'd actually vocalize that, so I've felt more comfortable still watching him I guess? Idk it's just hard for me, same when I think back on Soothouse and think about some of the jokes that were made during that era which make me a bit upset.

2. Wilbur's advice to Tommy

Tommy appeared on Wilbur's stream today and briefly mentioned how he's thinking of taking a break from Twitter (timestamp: 1:36:52, you can also see a transcript of likely the most important bit here). I have so many thoughts about what Wilbur said to Tommy here!!

I'm really glad to hear that Wilbur wants Tommy (and presumably other people with platforms) to be politically active. Overall, I don't think we should be lifting up & expecting content creators (especially young Minecrafters lmao) to be pinnacles of political activism. ABSOLUTELY NOT. But I think if you have a platform of millions of people, not using that platform to help & uplift others is a huge waste of potential & opportunity for even a bit of change.

As an adult, in an ideal world I wish NO KID OR TEENAGER felt the pressure to learn about politics or to be an activist. But as a person of color & a member of the LGBTQ community, I felt essentially forced into that role based on pure survival like... you think about the "extreme" cases of people like Malala Yousafzai and I can't even name how many teens I saw in the frontlines of BLM protests & the awful border camps. So many parents have to have the talk with their kids that the police and EVERY INSTITUTION are going to treat them differently just because of shit they can't control. It is very much a privilege to be able to be a 'normal teenager' and I wish it wasn't.

3. Tommy's response

Nonetheless, I think it's important to recognize that Tommy himself has many pressures on him that I can never begin to understand. The biggest being that he has hundreds of thousands of eyes on him during streams, millions of people follow him on Twitter and Youtube and TikTok.

I can already tell from what I saw of the alt stream (which has been taken down now) that Tommy was really really anxious about what's been happening on Twitter. I genuinely think this isn't completely routed in fear of being 'cancelled', I genuinely think he wants to make his community inclusive and he likely saw fans of his upset and alienated by his jokes.

I definitely don't expect Tommy to be as seemingly educated as Wilbur is on various issues. Wilbur himself is educated but doesn't really talk in depth about politics (which I think is a good thing; when it matters he will speak out, but the best voices to uplift aren't creators lmao that leads to a lot of idolizing and placing them on pedestals or tearing them down if they get something even slightly wrong even if their intentions were good). Wilbur is 24 years old and IN THE STREAM ITSELF told Tommy about how he used to say homophobic slurs when he was older than Tommy currently is, and he's talked a lot about how he hated the person he was up until like 21 years old.

I think people really need to keep in mind how fucking clueless and susceptible to bad influences white boys are. Remember how many white boys got caught up in the alt-right pipeline during that Pewdiepie era (up to the Christchurch shooting where I feel like he finally vocalized his complete disavowal of that). Of all people to essentially be the next Pewdiepie, I'm glad it's Tommy, but he's only 17 and he's not ever going to be perfect. I want to give him as much time to learn how he wants to use his platform, but in the end I just hope he uses it for good and that he takes care of himself.