YouTube's Phoney Puritanism

Twice in the last week I have been frustrated by phoney YouTube "standards" policy. People send me fun or useful Arduino projects, to which I reply "You lose, here ...", only to be reminded that my example of the most useful Arduino project currently on the Internet has had its video removed by YouTube for ToS violations.

That project was The Hammer

The Hammer is better described by the engineer, but basically it's a dildo which lights up according to how much pressure is placed on a bulb that is inserted into its "wearer". Like a test-your-strength machine, except awesome and fun.

This video was pretty clinical, yet humorous, and did, at the end, have a period where it's implied that the Hammer is being worn. No proof is given for this and there are any number of ways in which this could have been simulated, but who cares, at no point do you see anything except olive green jumpsuit. (The best way to fake this is to have an Arduino controlling a grip which exerts increasing and decreasing pressure on the bulb. It's Arduinos all the way down)

I like the sex positivity of the project, the fact that it's a neat hack, and, say what you will about the lack of merit of any other aspect of the show, the people who cast The Big Bang Theory knew what the hell they were doing when they cast Leslie Winkle (and probably Leonard too). We (nerds, hackers and engineers) do play to a type whether we like it or not.

Judge for yourself, the video is here: target="_blank">Link to video I can't be bothered to figure out how to embed

Tame and humorous, yes?

Given the dreck that's on YouTube, I can't see the reason for deleting it. It's not meant to turn anyone on, she's not being sexy, she's being an engineer describing her project. Amusing yes, arousing? Not the intent.

If I had to guess, it's the implied sexuality and/or kinks of the wearer, which, this being the Internet after all, is just a ridiculous condition on which to base anything. Considering the traffic YouTube gets from explicitly sexual videos with view counts in the millions, am I wrong in thinking this is just a case of an easily oppressed fringe being crushed under the boot heel of the straight people for being "icky"?

Here are examples of videos with tens or hundreds of thousands of views (Millions in a couple of these cases) which YouTube is happy to keep up. Note: I fully support anyone uploading anything to the site, I'm not one to try and complain about content.

Vibrators Everywhere:

Implied insertion of that vibrator, in this case an English teacher in class:

Tits Everywhere:

Lesbians are great as long as they're doing things guys consider "hot", judging by the multitude of "Chicks making out" videos:

And of course, endless videos of girls dancing in their underwear: