Vi Hart Videos on the Internet Archive | Hacker News Reader

Vi Hart Videos on the Internet Archive

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11 pointslambertsimnel11 comments

"Sending lots of love to Vi Hart. May the world someday become a safe place for you to share your videos once again. Our students love you." https://x.com/ChurchofMath/status/1886860186452943001

Edit: I was going to post only this tweet, but I couldn't get it to fit in the character limit. It now occurs to me it might be unkind to circumvent the removal of all but one of Vi Hart's videos, presumably in response to an adverse experience. However, I also think the withdrawal of previously published videos is a problem with streaming video platforms.

I suppose I should point out the one remaining video (On Gender, from 9 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmKix-75dsg

I don't know exactly what happened, but judging by the video that remains, maybe gender-related harassment prompted ViHart to make the mathematical videos private.

It's truly disheartening to see Vi Hart's videos being removed or made private. Her unique approach to mathematics has inspired countless students and enthusiasts. The remaining video, "On Gender," offers a glimpse into her perspectives beyond math. It's concerning to think that harassment or negative experiences might have led to this situation. I hope that, in the future, creators like Vi can share their work without fear, and that platforms can find ways to preserve and respect such valuable content.

I have no idea what happened here, but this saddens me. Vihart was my first ever "favorite YouTuber," back around 10-15 years ago. (I don't have a specific favorite YouTuber now.) I remember the first video I watched on her channel, which was the one about hexaflexagons.

Yeah, see also Kathy Sierra[1], who had an excellent blog[2], and was intimidated and harassed away. If we can't have a safe space for people, we can't enjoy and benefit from their perspectives and the things they create because stunted, immature toxic-faecal-waste people like to shit all over anything that's any good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra

[2] https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

ViHart was one of the earliest creators I subscribed to and I didn't notice when her videos stopped turning up. That's such a disappointment. How do you know she was harassed? Could it have been something else like a personal or professional matter? Does anybody here have an insight?

> How do you know she was harassed?

I don't. When I posted I was (mis?)reading between the lines, based on Vi Hart's new YouTube bio.

> Does anybody here have an insight?

Other commenters have some ideas, but there seems not to be much to go on. See awwaiid's comment, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42983899

I'm more confused and concerned after seeing those. Thanks though!

Hey, I was looking for a video from her today and just happened to realize they were missing. They are set to private because I managed to find a now defunct link. Never been on this forum before but I'm as saddened as any of you to see that she must've felt this was necessary. I loved her silly videos and when I was younger she helped bring great joy to mathematics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svq2Kscmmwc

That was one of the original hexaflexagon videos.

She seems to have done this as a political statement on gender, which I personally support on its face but I do hope this doesn't have an adverse impact on students who once relied on her videos. She used to offer her videos as torrent downloads for easy teacher access -- I wish she'd left her website up to have the videos still accessible to those in need of them off of YouTube.

Other maths YouTubers will take her place and already have as she has not been that active in recent years anyway.

That being said, one thing is that I'm certain of is that she did not remove her videos due to online harassment, because this is something she's spoken about many times before. In her video "Feeling sad about tragedy" (the video I'm most mourning from this recent purge) she spoke about this topic over a visual of scrolling through a Gmail search of "marry me", showing off 100s of incels who had messaged her via the comments section inappropriately. I don't want to paraphrase everything she said, as this video is likely in the Internet Archive for you to see, but the quote that has stuck with me all these years is "Why would I be worried about what I get on the internet as Vi Hart when it's nothing compared to what I get in real life as me?" She also had a video about comments specifically, "Vi Hart's guide to comments", where she spoke about types of online comment abuse and the reasons not to respond to any of it. She ends by saying "I, Vi Hart, am... not scared at all."

Update: I remembered Vi Hart has a Vimeo page, and that's still up. So people can still find her educational content there. Here's the guide to comments: https://vimeo.com/147801448

Having watched the remaining video, maybe this is related/protest to the recent statements and policies of the US federal government declaring gender+sex as strict booleans and actively harassing and destroying any institutional existence that acknowledges or embraces any alternative to the strict model?

Type checker gone extreme-strict and having issues compiling in the face of real world and real humans.

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