Hey there, this is Josh from The Josh Speaks. I made the live stream private because I don't think the things we discussed were very appropriate for my audience and given the controversy surrounding Dylan it's probably best to detach from what's happening.
I originally met Dylan at Vidcon a few years ago and we chatted about being YouTubers. He invited me to be a guest on the Jesse Lee Peterson show but when I looked up his content I realized that wasn't the audience or type of channel I wanted to be associated with.
I more recently saw Dylan on Vaush and Destiny's channels talking about ideas so I reached out to him after finding out he had a book where he talked about his life with autism and how he has been able to use those experiences to transform his life in a more positive direction. I originally tried to do a live stream with him a month ago but the audio ended up coming out bad so we just rescheduled it for some time in the near future.
Dylan reached out to me earlier this week and asked if we could do it sometime soon so we just casually scheduled it for today, I didn't think anything of it since I last spoke to him or read about his troubling past.
The major reason why I didn't address any of the comments during the stream was that not only was there massive amounts of spam but it's hard to know what's fact and what's fiction. Once I saw that Hasan's fans were raiding I figured it was best to continue on with our planned conversation topics. My channel is not a debate channel or a political streaming channel where people discuss controversial things.
Sure, he shared some controversial opinions and I tried my best to re-route them since I have an adolescent audience but on the spot, I wasn't going to accuse someone of something that I didn't know anything about.
Some of the comments here are trying to somehow group me in with whatever he may have done and I just want to say that I have no connection to anything he has said or done at all.
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Update: I read through the Kiwi farm thread so I'm way more familiar with everything now.
My intention overall was to speak to someone who may come from a controversial perspective and then try to work through the ideas so we can see why he feels the way he does and what can maybe be done to change those strongly held beliefs or ideas. In hindsight, perhaps the way I titled the stream or set it up came off like an endorsement or that his actions or beliefs were something I was ok with (part of the reason why I made the live stream private).
I think I definitely have to do a better job at how I may present people I want to discuss different ideas with. I get a lot of messages from young people who I feel may be spiraling into the dark holes of the internet and getting involved in communities that may be toxic so I wanted to try and offer that compassionate perspective to let them know that it's ok to feel the way they do, but how they choose to act on those feelings is manageable.
Slowly but surely I'm beginning to see that it has to be done in the right kind of way.
Once again I do not condone, nor agree with anything Dylan has done or said in the past, this was an error on my part and I see that now in hindsight.
