censor crystal healing

Let’s dive right in.

Those of you that are into crystal healing, and I assume if you’re here with me that you probably are 😉  you might want to know about this… certain mass media channels are going to try to control our opinions of things.

I’ve never been too enthused about this kind of behavior and you deal with that enough in academia.  I came across that when I was a science department head.

But it’s not something that I expected to spill over in the things that we choose to watch.

There is a little bit of censorship out there already,  some for good reasons, some for not so good reasons, but to me, this is really pushing it a little bit too far.

In the video above I share my screen from a website called The Verge, where it says “YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about conspiracies.”

Some of us think Wikipedia is the word of fact and it’s not, and I’m going to tell you right here why it’s not.

Crystal healing, I don’t know that that qualifies as a conspiracy theory, but it could.   It seems that theVerge titled the blog like that because they wanted to roll everything up into one post. Along with a picture of the CEO of YouTube on the Verge blog page it says:

“YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about popular conspiracy theories to provide alternative viewpoints on controversial subjects, its CEO said today. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki  said that text boxes which the company is calling “information cues” would begin appearing on conspiracy-related videos within the next couple of weeks.”

I don’t know about you, but I watch YouTube quite a bit because that’s where I get my information from. I don’t watch CNN, Fox News and the mass media. I’m sorry. Some of you have ridiculed me for that. Some of you like it, don’t like, whatever. It’s my choice to do that, right?

I use my own discretion.

I do my own due diligence.

I do my own research.

I always encourage you guys to do that too, to use your critical thinking skills and your natural skepticism. I keep an open mind. I’m skeptical on things but I keep an open mind, and I do my own research and put it through my own filter and decide if something is true or not true for me, and I make up my own mind.

censor crystal healing

I don’t need YouTube putting little boxes next to probably 75% of the stuff that I watch on YouTube to give me an information cue that this is possibly, according to them, a conspiracy related video.

I’ve done some additional reading and took some notes because this spills over into other topics that include:

  • anything that’s trending
  • anything showing significant debate happening
  • or anything having an active discussion on YouTube.

Basically if you are a YouTube creator and getting lots of engagement on whatever it is you’re talking about and they see it’s sparking a debate and creating controversy, they’re going to flag it for these information cues, and what are they going to use to provide their stance on the subject? Wikipedia?!

Do we need our Opinions Spoon Fed to us?

So this brings up another thing.  Do we need our opinions to be biased by a mass media authority like Wikipedia?  Do we need our opinions spoon fed to us?

I don’t.

I want to make up my own mind on things.

Wikipedia on Crystal Healing

Here’s what Wikipedia says about crystal healing… So if they put one of those information cues next to one of my videos, this is what it’s going to say:

“Crystal healing is a pseudoscientific alternative medicine technique that employs stones and crystals. Adherents of the technique claim that these have healing powers, although there is no scientific basis for this claim.”

I call bullshit. Bullshit.

Any of you who’ve taken my course know that we give a lot of scientific basis, and when they say no scientific basis, who did they go to to verify that?

We come up against this in academia all the time. You know, peer reviewed, but then there’s someone like Nassim Haramein who has lots of scientific basis behind the work that he does and most of academia won’t give him the time of day. Most of the peer review journals won’t publish him because he didn’t go through the proper channels and he’s talking about stuff that scares them, and means they’re going to need to revise entire theories in textbooks, and put lots of professors out of commission. So no, we don’t want to talk about that fringe stuff.

Sorry, I get really passionate about this!  Wikipedia goes on to say …

“In one method, the practitioner places crystals on different parts of the body, often corresponding to chakras, or else the practitioner places crystals around the body in an attempt to construct an energy grid, which is purported to surround the client with healing energy.”

censor crystal healing

Okay, I’ve got no problem with that.

“Despite this, scientific investigations have not validated claims that chakras or energy grids actually exist.”

We do have scientific investigations that do validate these claims of both chakras and crystal gridding. Energy gridding can be verified if you look at the right scientific investigation.

They go on…

“Nor is there any evidence that crystal healing has any greater effect upon the body than any other placebo. For these reasons it is considered a pseudoscience.”

Who did they go to for that information?  How do they know? Who’s they?

I’ll tell you who they is

For those of you that don’t know, with Wikipedia, anyone can apply to be an account holder and be someone who goes in and creates these pages, validates them, and then also can make changes to them.

How do I know? Because I used to do it.

Not for Wikipedia I think it might have been the prototype of Wikipedia. This was years ago. I used to be approved, because I’m a geek like that, as a person of different science subjects and I thought it was so amazing that we could go in and provide information about certain topics, and then you would approve someone’s addition or deletion.

Of course, your account had to be approved and if they found you to start being an unreliable source, they booted you off your account. It was peer reviewed.  A peer of a group of people who contribute to Wikipedia. So really anybody, your nine-year-old neighbor’s kid down the street could do this. There’s no verification on this.

When I was a classroom teacher, Wikipedia was not considered a reliable source.  I’m pretty sure that has not changed. Students that tried to turn in work that cited Wikipedia as a source in any way were given a big red X.  Go do it over. Don’t give me information you cited off of Wikipedia because it’s not considered factual information.

Because think about it. Who’s fact checking? Who’s fact checking the people who are supposed to be fact checking? Nobody. They assume that they’re right.

Even Wikipedia itself says:

“Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time.  This means that any information it contains in any particular time could be vandalism.”

Vandalism?  That’s getting a little extreme, but it can happen.

Why are we relying on them to tell us what’s up about crystal healing?

Please.

I found more information on, this is from Wired:  YouTube will link directly to Wikipedia to fight conspiracy theories.

I highlighted this part:

“If you search and click on a conspiracy theory video about say, chemtrails YouTube will now link to Wikipedia pages that debunks the hoax alongside the video.”

I’ll tell you my personal opinion on chemtrails. I don’t know that every bit of it is true, but there’s quite a lot of evidence building that there is something to it.   I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. How come they’re telling me it’s a conspiracy theory?

So they’re also telling you it’s a hoax.  People who just don’t know a lot about it, who aren’t as nerdy as some of us who feel like it’s fun to go in and do all this critical thinking and researching and due diligence and finding the information for yourself, will just go, “Oh, it’s a hoax.  I found it on Snopes. It’s a hoax.”

And Snopes is not reliable either. They’ve had to backtrack on a few things.  I’m flabbergasted.

They’re going to tell us what’s a hoax and what’s not? Is that okay with you?

Let’s be our own free thinkers.

There’s some obviously ridiculous and dangerous conspiracy theories out there, or people putting information out there that they shouldn’t, but that’s always been the case. In the past, we’ve always had to do our own filtering, right, to figure out what we should be paying attention to and what we shouldn’t be.

Are you okay with somebody else telling you how to think?

I can see where social media helps to spread these things and make it more viral, and that’s a layer that we’ve never really had to deal with except for in the last five years, but that’s the nature of social media.  Let’s not put all the blame on them, or we’re going to become a society where censorship is just that’s the way it is and you’re going to have to be okay with them telling you what to think, what hashtags to use, controlling your mind. Are you no longer a free thinker?

Here’s a quote from Steve Jobs:

“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

I think that that is so important, so very important.

I Just wanted to bring this topic up because I wonder… what happened to free thinking? Independent thinking? Allowing us to form our own opinion? What happened to that? Is that not what we’re allowed to do anymore?

So I want you to know what’s up when you start seeing that on YouTube, that you are aware of it, you’re forewarned and you see what’s going on an what they’re doing.

Anyone that is willing to open themselves up to alternate methods of healing will not let a little box deter them from doing their research.  Right?!  Unfortunately though, in reality I think that some people will let that deter them.

That’s the good thing about learning the science behind how crystal healing works, like I teach in my course. I feel like now more than ever that’s going to be really important for you to be confident in explaining what it is you do and how you do it. I feel that knowing the science behind it, the information behind it is very important.

YouTube is cool but I find that they’ve been censoring things more and more. They’ve actually deleted videos just based on complaints from people saying conspiracy theory.  Why?

Now I can see that drawing the line on censorship can be really difficult. I’m sure you can think of instances where some things should not be on YouTube, so how do they draw that line? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer for that, but when it comes to something like this, like whether or not there are UFOs and aliens, I don’t need your opinion on that. I make my own opinion on that, have ever since I was a kid. And just so you know, I do believe that there are both.

What do YOU think about all this censoring on YouTube?  How do you feel about YouTube & Wikipedia telling you what is a conspiracy theory? What is a hoax?  I’d love to hear what you are thinking so let’s keep this conversation going in the comments below.

Crystal Blessings,