 Okay. I debated on whether or not to make this video. I really hate doing these kinds of things because I feel like if you're a viewer, you shouldn't have to hear about me gripe about the things that are affecting me behind the scenes. But it's to the point where I feel like if I don't use my large platform to advocate for myself here, I may lose this large platform permanently. And at this point, I don't think that that's hyperbole. So for those of you who don't know, I lost monetization entirely on this channel on May 1st. No videos can be monetized, even older ones that were already approved for monetization. I can't take super chats. I can't take super thanks. The hundreds of members who signed it to contribute either $1, $3 or $5 each month, almost all of them were canceled. I had hundreds. We're down to 22. And the reason why they're being canceled is because since my channel currently does not support monetization, well, if you joined and your membership is up for review, well, since there's no monetization, it just gets automatically canceled. That is a permanent loss of a member. And unless they manually join again, if I get monetization back, then that's just, it's over. It's gone. If you were a member for two years and you have that two year badge, well, you lose that badge now. So what happened exactly? Why was I demonetized? Did I break the terms of service? Did I post something a little bit too spicy? No, it was completely arbitrary. So on May 1st, I officially left my MCN. For those of you who don't know, smaller channels join networks called multi-channel networks. And we become partners with these larger networks because since we're too small to have our own rep to advocate for us to YouTube, we oftentimes have larger networks represent us. So my network partner was TYT Network. And I was with them since 2017. I left as of May. But as soon as I was unplugged from TYT Network, I was automatically demonetized and was forced to reapply for the YouTube partner program in order to continue being monetized. Now, I found that very bizarre because I was a YouTube partner before I joined my MCN back in 2017. I was already approved for monetization. Every time we upload a video to YouTube, we have to rate our video to determine if it's eligible for advertisements. And YouTube determined that my ratings were very high because I accurately demonetized videos that I needed to if I knew that they weren't suitable for all advertisers. So for me to have to reapply to the program seemed so arbitrary and unnecessary, especially considering that larger creators like Ethan Klein, for example, who I watch, just in April, he had a huge dispute with his MCN, BBTV. He left and there was no disruption to his monetization as far as I know. I watched his channel pretty regularly. No disruption to memberships, nothing. But a month later, so much changed on YouTube that me leaving an MCN results in losing monetization and leaving an MCN amicably. By the way, my MCN TYT is currently trying to advocate on my behalf to figure out what's going on, even though they're no longer my partner, even though I'm not their client, right? So nobody knows what's going on. And I've talked to YouTube and they don't know what's going on. They keep telling me different things. So the initial thing that I got was, well, it's going to take two to four weeks. I assumed it wouldn't take that long initially because, again, I've been a partner for a very long time in good standing, no TOS violations, no community guideline strikes. But within a week, I get a little bit impatient and I reach out to a YouTube representative, just basic support. I don't have an actual rep to represent me, but I talked to YouTube creator support and they said, okay, I looked at this. It looks like monetization is imminent for you. So I thought, okay, great. This isn't going to take that long. It's going to hurt because I'm losing a week's worth of revenue and then it's going to take time once I'm re-monetized to build up that revenue again. But as long as it happens quickly, that's fine. Well, weeks go by. So two weeks later, I talked to another representative and they look into it and they say, okay, well, you know what? It's taking a little bit longer. I'm sorry. Maybe there's a backup, but it's definitely not going to be longer than 30 days. I can guarantee your channel is going to be re-monetized within 30 days. Day 30 rolls around. Still no monetization. I talked to a YouTube rep and basically they say, well, okay, it's taken a little bit longer. Let's wait a couple more days. That was on Tuesday. A couple more days rolls around. No monetization. So what the fuck is going on? Now, the response to these folks when you talk to them, they're indistinguishable from AI bots. I don't even know if I'm talking to a real person. I mean, I think they are real people, but they basically just copy and paste things that YouTube tells them to. I don't think they have any information that I don't already have. So I don't even necessarily know if it's their fault that they can't be helpful. The problem is that this is my livelihood and now I've lost a month, permanently lost almost all of my memberships. And now it's to the point where I don't even know if monetization is ever going to return to my channel because we were talking about this on Leftist Mafia last night and we were joking about, Hey, you should play the gay card. It's pride. You can do what you want. And I thought, I don't want to, I don't want to use that because that feels really disingenuous, right? But then I slept on it. And I started thinking, Oh, my God, wait a second. How many times in my life have I seen people get ghosted or been ghosted myself for being gay? I've seen landlords not rent to my friends when he realizes that they're gay. I've had friends all of a sudden cease contact when they get with a partner who's homophobic. So I started thinking about this. And again, this is conjecture. I don't know for sure what the fuck is going on, but the specialists who review my channel for monetization, these are just normal people. And my channel is a very politically charged channel, right? I talk about LGBTQ plus issues. I talk about a lot of political issues. So am I being punished because it feels like I'm being punished? Is there somebody who's just anti gay who thinks that this groomer shouldn't be monetized? I mean, you start and again, I want to emphasize that this conjecture I have no evidence for this, but you start to kind of like your mind goes to weird places when you begin to get desperate, right? And that's where we're at. I'm losing sleep over this. I'm extremely stressed out my mental health has deteriorated because if they're never going to monetize me again, that's their decision. They have the right to do that. But I at least deserve an answer. I deserve to know whether or not that's the case. But it's the uncertainty that is killing me because they're making it seem as if there's no way of telling, right? These specialists, they're in some sort of a fucking underground bunker and you can't check up on them and say, Hey, this large 400,000 plus LGBTQ plus creator, any updates on that? Now I reached out and Team YouTube on Twitter responded with I mean, they're not even using their good AI. That was my response to them because they basically said, Oh, well, if it's taking longer than 30 days, that means that there is additional reviews going on. There's something extra going on. Perhaps something is wrong. They didn't say this, but that's kind of the subtext, right? But that's such horseshit. Why is my channel getting so much scrutiny when I've been a partner for years on this fucking platform, I've been a partner for years. Every single video I rate accurately according to YouTube for monetization. I am safe for ads. And yet, meanwhile, they're being overly rigorous and scrutinizing my channel, but Ben Shapiro gets monetized, gets floated to the top with the algorithm. Candice Owens spreads hate, spews hate speech on a daily basis. She's monetized, but the humanist report. No monetization. It is so draining to have to deal with this every fucking day to check that a monetization page and still see it's in progress. So it's to the point where I'm not really sure what to do. I don't know if this is the end of the road for the humanist report because I can't do this full time if I can't support myself, right? I left a job at my university to do YouTube full time. I gave up a second year of funding that I secured for the PhD program that I was in to do this full time because I felt like I could make a difference. But if these platforms aren't going to respect LGBTQ plus creators and effectively try to eliminate us from it, just by not granting us monetization forever. What am I supposed to do? I mean, I really didn't want to talk about this one because I feel like other creators oftentimes, particularly on the right, they use instances of like demonetization and whatnot to push some sort of a fucking grift. And I hate that. And I don't want people to think that I'm trying to exploit this crisis for my own monetary gain. But I'm coming to you saying, I have to use my platform now to advocate for myself because being quiet and polite to YouTube very clearly has not behoved me. And you know, it never made sense to bite the hand that feed feeds me and started attacking started attacking you two more directly. But what else do I do? Being quiet as it works. So I've got to I've got to make as much noise as possible and get them to pay attention to me because they've been trying to ignore me. And I just can't allow that to happen. I can't allow that to happen. So if this is it, then I've got to go out screaming loudly, right? I'm not going to go down without a fight. But if I'm not going to get a monetization back, I at least deserve answers. I at least deserve something more than a copy and paste response from their support page. I can just go read that myself. I've read it. I've read it all. Trust me. And here's what I will say. If you were a member on this channel, you can still be a member. I get that it's not as convenient, but you can do the same thing on Patreon and get most of the same benefits. I'll put my Patreon down below to anyone who wants to support me. But you don't have to if you don't want to. Because I mean, there's so much going on in the world where that that money is better used, I think honestly. If I'm just I'm being 100% honest, you know, supporting a YouTuber not necessarily the best use of your funds. But if you were already supporting me, if you were a member, then I would highly consider switching to Patreon because that is the most secure way to support creators. I've been on Patreon as long as I've been on YouTube and I've had zero disruptions whereas on YouTube I've had multiple disruptions. So I really appreciate all of the other large creators who are trying to behind the scenes get this sorted out for me. I appreciate my MCN, TYT trying to look into this. It's been very, very stressful. I haven't been posting as much not because I'm like angry that I'm demonetized. But because I mean, I was already burnt out before this, right? Just the news cycles eating away at my fucking brain. But to now have to deal with demonetization on top of it. Talk about all of these ghouls who hate queer people and not even have monetization, not even be able to support myself. It's just draining. So I've been posting less. If I get monetization back, I will go back to my normal schedule of two videos per day. But I mean, if there is some sort of a conspiracy and again, no evidence for that. But if YouTube, whoever's reviewing my channel just hates me and wants me to suffer and wants to deter me from posting, it's working. There's a very easy way to deter creators from posting if you don't want them to post. And it's just it. The thing that really pisses me off is the double standard like how many community guidelines strikes do these right wingers get, right? Matt Walsh was making $100,000 spreading hate and bigotry. He admitted that. And yet the humanist report bend over backwards to appease YouTube, try to do everything appropriate, even started censoring curse words at one point until they said, no, it's fine. You can you can curse again. They got to they got to bust out the magnifying glass to really go over every single thing I've ever said or done to make sure I'm ad safe. When again, I've been a partner for eight years, but this is the things that I get. So I'm sorry to unleash this on all of you. I might be making matters worse. YouTube might be pissed off after seeing this, but they already don't care clearly. So this is kind of like my last resort. Either monetize me or kill off the channel permanently, but don't leave me in limbo forever because that's just so unnecessarily cruel. Let me know if I'm going to have my livelihood, YouTube.