If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
You won’t miss a Youtuber today. He/she should be everywhere. Sitting next to your house, a co-traveller on the bus or on the tube, a parent right across the table filming their kid eating, a motorist whizzing past your car, a couple on the seashore posing against surging waves quite unmindful of you present and a cop filming himself issuing a ticket to you for a traffic violation. Bizarre!
They all have a mission on hand. Carry a smartphone, turn on the camera and start filming.
Film whatever moves and emits a noise on Earth.
And hell! You watch them coming up on screen in a jerky, jump-cut, jarring, boring and long video on YouTube, every day. Crazy!
Many cram their loudmouthed, dimwitted and cut-not-to-a-grammar production on another similar (madding crowd) platform called TikTok.
All have one thing in common. They’re amateurs. Not trained to shoot a video or checked through a well-scripted audition.
They call it citizen journalism.
As the media in the world have gradually evolved over many hundred years, from radio, print, television, digital and social media, people have suddenly seen an untapped space in independent media. A free space to say anything. Do anything. And show anything.
And address themselves proudly as ‘Youtubers’.
That’s alarming!
But freedom of speech has often been misused here. Scholars debate now if censorship should be enforced on these free-roaming citizen-journos who show no regard to the ethics of filmmaking.
The debate is raging. And for that reason, therefore, please ban the word ‘Youtuber’ from general usage. Period.
"சென்றிடுவீர் எட்டுத் திக்கும்" 