UP | uncultured project

In my project I’ve been able to help Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims. But because my focus is on Bangladesh, and because Bangladesh is 83% Muslim, it does mean that most of the time it’s Muslims & Muslim families who get helped.

This is why comments like this annoy me:

If I got a dime everytime someone left a comment like this, this project would be fully funded.

Most of you will brush this off as random haters. And, okay, in this case it may very well be. And, to be fair, this project seems to attract all varieties of haters. There are Muslim haters who say I should go to hell. There are Bangladeshi haters who claim I’m doing it for fame. It goes on and on.

A Muslim by the name of Mohibul left this gem for me. Haters are by no means just anti-Muslim. Bonus Fact: I later learned Mohibul is a graduate of the London School of Economics.

I know you’re supposed to ignore haters and not feed the trolls. But let’s face it: this kind of hate isn’t confined to the internet. We live in a world where there are people who think it’s perfectly alright to want to see Muslims suffer and those who want Christians to burn in hell.

I don’t talk about my own religious beliefs because whether I read (or tweet or respond to comments using excerpts from) The Bible, The Qu’ran, The Torah, or even The God Delusion – I find that these books all inspire me to believe that we as a species need to get along with each other.

And I realize that me rebutting or responding to every hater isn’t going to create world peace. But, at the same time, me just helping one person or one village at a time won’t end global poverty. But ignoring either doesn’t seem to be something I’m wired to do.

tl;dr: Why can’t we just all get along?

/hippie-moment

One of the things I’ve learned from this project is that some of the most vile, intolerant, and hideous comments I have received have been left by local Bangladeshis who are privileged enough to have the resources to access (and be hateful) on YouTube.

The thing to keep in mind is that, with over 80% of the country earning less than $2 a day, those within Bangladesh who are able to comment and critique my videos come from a very narrow (and very privileged) position in society. I guess sometimes the hardest people to get through to are those living right in the middle of it all.

More after jump. Discretion advised.

Continue reading ‘Dealing with Haters from Bangladesh’

Since being featured on the YouTube hompage, the biggest difference in the responses to my video have been the change in comments: quality has been replaced by quantity, and positivity has been replaced by negativity. There are tons of videos and websites devoted to how to get featured on YouTube. But what happens after you get featured? How do you handle that?

Here are a few videos that had some pearls of wisdom.

Bernard Smith is this YouTuber who plays a character called Cornelius Blow. When one of his videos got featured, he quickly made a follow-up video where he talked about how to deal with all these new comments (many of which were negative):

Not everyone who gets featured is a professional like Bernard though. Steven and Kelly (aka SteAndKel) are two young YouTubers from the UK who got featured on their very first video. With over one million video views, they have gathered their share of fans (I’m one of them) – but they’ve also gathered their share of haters. Instead of getting sad about it – they brushed it off…. using song and dance. Check it out:

In one of the last courses I took before I left Notre Dame to start this project, I had a professor who was highly critical of the World Economic Forum.

What’s the World Economic Forum? It’s an event that happens once a year in Davos, Switzerland. World leaders, economic leaders, and prominent citizens get together to discuss the future of the world. According to this professor, the World Economic Forum was not only something to be seriously critiqued – it should be boycotted. Many people share this professor’s view and, as a counter to the World Economic Forum, have formed something called the World Social Forum. Why all the criticism of the World Economic Forum? The argument is that the World Economic Forum is too elitist, with not enough grass-roots input, and too undemocratic.

Well in 2008, thanks to YouTube, that all changed.

This year, anyone with a message to world leaders could make a video and put it on YouTube. These videos would then be rated, judged, and evaluated by other YouTube users. Anyone with an account on YouTube can go to the channel called “The Davos Question” and view and vote on which videos should be seen by the World Economic Forum members. The Davos Question was a question put forward by the World Economic Forum asking us – what do we think needs to be done by corporations, individuals, and governments to make the world a better place? The videos with the highest ratings would then be screened in the World Economic Forum. Bono, Bush, and Blair – they would all see what you had to say. All of a sudden, ordinary joes with good ideas got a voice at one of the world’s highest forums. Fancy that.

Okay…. so it’s not that simple….

The biggest problem with getting a message across – no matter how good – is dealing with haters (or “haterz”). Haters are a problem for people who get popular on YouTube. Fortunately, I haven’t run into that problem – which probably speaks to how much I am an unknown on YouTube. But, for many people trying to put good ideas forward in order to answer the The Davos Question, a lot of them are being picked apart by haters. One of my favorite videos to the Davos Question was done by a high school teacher (and fellow Canadian) by the name of Greg. He calls for greater consideration towards the global poor. As you can see in his video, he’s articulate and he makes a passionate plea.

But, after his video got popular, what do the haters have to say?

Find out after the jump.

Continue reading ‘YouTube and Davos – Trying to Do Good Amid the Noise’