Videos on YouTube

[batman]

For all of the years I have been seeing videos on YouTube I didn't know about the "Flag" option. Once I found out about this in December last year (2009), I registered onto YouTube and got busy flagging some videos pertaining to epilepsy. For the first two weeks, it looked like some of the videos I flagged were being removed from YouTube. Just not all of them. One of the videos I flagged was removed, but it was later uploaded again. Seeing this, along with some of the videos I flagged not being removed; I realized this wasn't doing any good.

Stigma, prejudice and discrimination is never going to end. Even for those of us who are having to deal with seizures and epilepsy. So instead of trying to fight primarily the stigma, let's just dodge "the negative" and focus our attention on "the positive".

At this moment, the most recently uploaded video onto YouTube that pertains to epilepsy and seizures, dated January 20, 2010, is titled "WARNING! THIS VIDEO MAY CAUSE VIOLENT PROJECTILE VOMITING AND EPILEPTIC SEIZURES!" This is a 31 second video of an animated hot dog with the background colors rapidly changing. The message under the user name bowlingforcheese is "WATCH IF YOU DARE!" I'm definitely willing to flagged this one video, but there's no guarantee this video is going to be removed. And this is just one of those videos intended to insult people with epilepsy.

bowlingforcheese is only one of the members on YouTube who's throwing stigma at people trying to cope with epilepsy. My idea is instead of trying to "catch the stigma and throw it back", just "dodge the stigma" and focus your attention on getting the information about seizures and epilepsy everyone needs to see and understand. I'm talking about everyone, no matter if they do or do not have epilepsy.
Which would you consider as being most important... A) Keeping people from uploading stigmatizing videos about epilepsy onto YouTube; . . . Or . . . B) Making people aware of what can happen with sticking something inside a person's mouth when they're having a seizure?

By typing in just the word "epilepsy" (without the quotation marks) in the YouTube search box, and by making a few choices within the additional "Search Options" on YouTube, the following weblink is what shows up, in order to have up-to-the-minute search results. http://www.youtube.com/results?uploa..._date_uploaded

This was how I found out about the video of a little baby girl who had a seizure on Christmas day last year (2009). I considered that video as being a wonderful source for learning the correct way to proving proper first aid to a child having a tonic clonic (grand mal) seizure. Here's a weblink for that video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8NmeO-EMfI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8NmeO-EMfI

[Bernard]

You are never going to rid the internets of malcontents, malicious trolls, /b/tards or the otherwise psychologically/sociologically impaired.

Education and awareness seem to me to be more productive goals.

[BuckeyeFan]

I would only bother to flag the vids that are getting a lot of hits. Many, many, many vids never get seen by more than a few people, thus not as big of a deal in my opinion. Just idiots sharing amongst themselves.

Mr B is right, there is no controlling those on the web. Ordinarily nice poeple transform once on the web and all of their inhibitions are removed. I guess we just have to try to ignore them (though it is not always easy).

Hopefully, time will remove prejudice. When I was a kid, we always told pollock jokes about anyone with 'ski' in their name. Now you never hear those jokes. Before that it was 'wop' jokes and since sexual orientation jokes. Slowly society is learning.

[foreverdark]

The human population will never learn, they will never change. They will just move on to another populace to make fun of and torment. People can not be changed, they can only be educated and the rest is up to them.

[Rhea]

youtube was extremely helpful and instrumental in helping my son in law and daughter realize their baby was DEFINITELY having seizures. It was a Godsend...

[tinasmom]

I also flagged many videos on YouTube to be removed. I was very upset when I saw that these videos were made to trigger seizures. I don't have seizures myself but my granddaughter does. It's sad to think that some people get pleasure out of being so cruel.

I have uploaded videos about E and events to raise awareness and funds. There are some wonderful videos on there to help people understand E.