knowledgestick said:
Now lets look at this for a second, I feel there will always be this divide in the psychedelic culture. Because although i agree with almost all the points you raised i still belive it is the right thing to do to put this type of information out there.
We're all in favor of informing people about DMT and other entheogens as well. That's a major goal that many of us here share. But care must be taken in how we go about this. After all, what's the point of informing people if in the same stroke, we lay the groundwork for destroying
everyone's easy access to these substances?
I myself am a visual learner, Also did HORRIBLE in high-school science, I did not understand the DMT tek the first 2-3 times i did it, I was mearly following a cooking recipie. If i had a tutorial to watch and see the reactions taking place it would have amplified my ability to absorb that information propperly to do my own exraction safer and better.
Now, There will always be more people out there that will be looking to get high easily EXACTLY like you said. This is unavoidable for anything, But the true question here is now, Is it fair to hamper the ability for those in our culture who ARE visual learners or who are new to science just because there is that bad side to the drug culture ?
Is it fair for them to waste money or to be scared to smoke their final product because people who have done this before them are to scared to put out tutorials in fear the drug will be taken from them ?
If you didn't understand the tek you were using, why didn't you ask questions? There are many forums around where knowledgeable people are willing to answer questions. I must admit I'm skeptical of your professed support for harm-reduction if you were willing to attempt to extract DMT without even understanding what you were doing. That strikes me as terribly reckless.
You've mentioned that a video could make it so people wouldn't be unsure of the material that they extracted, that they'd be able to consume it with confidence.
That's simply NOT true, and it's important to recognize this. At best you will give them a false bravado that only encourages recklessness. For the extracted spice to be safe to use, the right materials have to be used. Take your video for example, where you show Draino being used as the base! Drano is not safe to use, and hasn't been for many years; there's all kinds of other stuff besides NaOH in there that you don't want in your extraction.
You can't ask a video, "Will [such-and-such] solvent work? Is it safe to use?" Especially if your target audience is people who aren't comfortable with chemistry, it's absolutely vital to have an interactive medium (like a forum) where people can pose their idiosyncratic issues and questions, where they can confirm that what they are doing is safe.
If harm reduction is your goal, I simply can't understand how you think a youtube video is going to accomplish it to ANY degree.
I would never try and stop that side of my culture from having their own opinion about shairing information to the wider public who maybe interested in psychedelics. If they choose not to that is fine, But when it comes to me making my own choice to represent the side of the culture that would infact like to shair that information i would expect to be able to do so, As both side of our culture should shair the comon theme for freedom as it is what our culture was built on.
Attacking my youtube channel & getting my ability to post content suspended for 6 months while we are trying to release a documentary and advertise it is not letting me be free, The people flagging my videos are not embrassing live and let live, Instead it is a form of control that i do not appreciate.
As i said i would never try and stop those who feel the information should be kept behind closed doors, But i would expect the same level of respect and to be left alone as we do what we feel is right.
You are able to do so. But you don't own youtube. As long as you're spreading your message on someone else's medium, it's subject to their control. One of their controls is the ability to flag videos. If we see videos that are not responsibly informative, that put our entire community at risk of losing the ready access we have to the materials we hold dear, then of course we're going to flag it. You don't see us flagging trailer's for Strassman's movie, or videos where McKenna talks about DMT, or interviews with Jonathan Ott on the subject. Because they present the message and information responsibly, in a way that doesn't threaten our entire community.
Why should we "live and let live" when someone is threatening a central aspect of our way of life? We believe that people should have access to DMT, and although it's not your intention, your videos put that in extreme jeopardy. So of course we flag them. We have a vested interest, and we're protecting it. We aren't keeping information behind closed doors... if you explore this site some more, I think you can clearly see that we're all for disseminating information. We just recognize the need for care in how we go about disseminating it, to protect
everyone's ability to utilize the information.
The "I've got mine so fuck you Jack" approach doesn't hold much water with most of us.
I want to get over this in a way both sides of this culture are satisfied. We are going to keep doing what we do regardless, But if you DMT nexus tell us what to keep out of our tutorials or other videos, Things that would upset you most then we will honestly try to abide by that.
I'd say keep extraction videos off of youtube, if you honestly value harm-reduction. Youtube extraction vids are only going to lead to more people doing more dangerous things and harming themselves, bolstered by a false bravado they derive from having seen a video and thinking "Damn that's simple, nothing can go wrong!"
The things that upset us are irresponsibility and recklessness. Good informative videos about DMT are fine when approached from a stance of integrity and responsibility. Showing people smoking DMT does not seem to be in any way productive, all it serves to do is fuel the evening news with video-clips of the "dangerous new drug that's killing your kids" like it did with salvia.
We're not opposed to all youtube videos on DMT. Only the reckless and irresponsible ones, the ones that place our entire community in jeopardy. Those are the ones that will continue to be flagged relentlessly.
