I've had a bit to say of late about YouTube, its algorithms and the escalating allure of certain facile "creators" to young men. I worry about this stuff. But I think it's also important to acknowledge that the alt-lite and alt-right grifters exist within a much broader and more diverse culture.
My son James Rae Brown has grown up watching and listening to the first-person communicators of YouTube. They are basically his television (but not his movies – actual movies, he goes to several times a week). And in them, from ranty movie geeks to cultural commentators and neurodiversity advocates, he has found community and identity.
Since 2011, he has also beeen a YouTube creator himself. He has 3300 subscribers and is closing in on two million views, although more than half of that total is his wildly popular edits of the Persona 4 animated series. He has posted movie reviews and various other ruminations, all in vlog format. But he's never made anything as important as A Trip to Beach City.
It's the story of how, as a young autistic man, he struggled with disappointment, anxiety and depression – and how a strange cartoon series called Steven Universe really helped him. Of the whole series my favourite is episode 9, where Jim does a deep textual dive into Steven Universe and marvels at how a cartoon story about "magical space lesbians" could have resonated this way with him.
"Come at me, homophobes!" he cracks, and it just seems so distant from the shitty, narrow, resentful "advice" being churned out to young men by the likes of Jordan Peterson.
But that's not the best thing. The best thing is that Jim has grown up with other people telling his story. We made the decision as a family to be open about ourselves and our two ASD sons in the hope that it might help others in the same position. Jim took that on board, and it was the reason he put up with a fair bit of stress in allowing the Attitude documentary Jimmy Wants a Job to be made about him.
And I know, because they told me, that it did help other families. I cried a little when a dad I know told me about sitting down with his own ASD son to watch the documentary, and his son saying "This is the first time I've ever seen myself on TV."
But this is different. This is my son telling his own, unmediated truth, in a way he might not have been able to even a couple of years ago. He does it with skill, frankness and not a little humour. I'm really proud of him.