Side Scrollers Stopped on YouTube While Talking Politics in Gaming

Video Games

It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. Today on Side Scrollers, the video gaming podcast hosted by Stuttering Craig and the Blabbering Collector, Craig and Blabs were joined by guests BX and Gothix to discuss some disturbing current events. BX is an independent investigator who was on to talk about the government infiltrating the gaming community (which you can read about here), while Gothix is the former Black Girl Gamers employee who, during the company’s recent fight with That Park Place, said she was fired from and harassed by the consulting firm for her political beliefs. During the stream, however, Side Scrollers was suddenly stopped on YouTube. This didn’t happen anywhere else – not Rumble, not Kick, not Streamlabs, just YouTube. That suggests it wasn’t human error but YouTube stopping people from seeing what everyone on Side Scrollers had to say. YouTube is notoriously biased in a certain sociopolitical direction – it’s owned by Google, remember – and questioning woke video game consulting firms and government agencies forcing themselves into the private sector probably doesn’t sit well with them. You can see the moment the Side Scrollers livestream stopped here:

Today on @SideScrollerPod we spoke with @GothixTV about her personal experience with #BlackGirlGaming & went down a deep rabbit hole with @bx_on_x about the governments involvement in video games – and our show stopped midstream on YouTube.

It continued on @rumblevideo &… pic.twitter.com/iv427bJIZo

— Stuttering Craig (Official) (@StutteringCraig) March 28, 2024

As is often the case nowadays, this is one of those things that’s shocking for about three and a half seconds before you remember everything else that’s been going on lately, the many attempts to stop people from speaking out about political or cultural rot. What made this episode of the show important enough to stop? Because they were discussing an instance where the two meet and making a situation that’s already going very bad for the gaming powers that be even worse. Does that mean men in suits and sunglasses showed up at YouTube headquarters with threats and briefcases? Probably not; I imagine the folks at the Google-owned streaming platform were just being good little doggies and did what their ideology demanded them to do. (Or it was a total accident, which, if I type it often enough, might make the flower delivery van that’s been parked across the street all week go away.) And, as BX points out in the video, this happened just after Craig pondered “how deep this could potentially go” and predicted we would “go down the rabbit hole even deeper.” If someone put that in a movie, you’d say it was too on the nose.

Now, my earlier joking aside, this could be a coincidence. That it never happened before doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and the show where Craig, Blabs, and two particularly knowledgeable guests were talking about government interference in the video game industry and DEI-subsidized gaming companies hiring woke consulting firms to socially engineer video games to the point where Harley Quinn is portrayed as morally superior to Batman is just as likely as any other episode to be the one that got accidentally stopped. It’s also entirely possible that I own the Brooklyn Bridge and will set it to you at a savings you won’t believe. But here’s the rub: while I’m sorry this happened to Blabs and Craig, it’s a good sign that the establishment is going to these lengths to silence people on the subject; it means they’re scared. I don’t like to prognosticate, especially about something positive, but it really feels like the jig is up in the gaming world. Gamers are too present online, too many outlets are reporting on this, the ones that aren’t haven’t been trusted for some time, and the bad guys just don’t know how to handle it. Gamers aren’t the type to be swayed by  a news program using scary words or a “very special episode” of Law and Order: Special Gamergate Unit. And it makes me wonder if the gaming community is not so much the exception as the first domino to fall. Will this progressive madness be forced out of other industries and communities once the gamers decisively hold theirs? That would be a kick in the pants to the stuffed-shirts who dismissed it for decades. Video games could save Western Civilization.

You can still watch today’s Side Scrollers in its entirety – and all back episodes – on their Rumble, Kick, and Spotify pages. You can see them on their YouTube page, too, but I would be wary of that one. And consider joining Craig’s Take Games Back initiative.

Also, maybe don’t watch The Parallax View this weekend.