Sydney Watson: “Both sides think the other side is crazy”

This is Sydney.

Sydney has a YouTube channel. Sydney has political views deemed by some as controversial. Sydney talks about arguments, not people. Sydney dislikes certain notions, not certain people.

Be like Sydney.

Sydney Watson’s YouTube channel happened by accident. ‘I converted a Facebook page I had into a political page, made a video for YouTube and then posted it to both platforms. It went insane overnight. I never really planned to make anything out of what I did, but seeing the response I got, I thought “maybe I’ll do more of this”’. And so she did. Her almost two years old channel has over 18 million views and roughly 333 thousand subscribers.

Australian-American political commentator and journalist, Sydney Watson talks about issues deemed as unpopular and controversial by mainstream media — she considers herself non-feminist, does not believe in the concept of white privilege, believes in free speech for everyone and admires Donald Trump. In her most popular video, which alone reached more than one million views, she speaks of “non-existent thin privilege” (a notion that skinny people have a societal advantage over not-so-skinny people). ‘I do think self-censoring ideas is dangerous in media’ she says. ‘It means that what everyone sees, reads and hears becomes watered down. It also means bad ideas aren’t called out and criticized because people are fearful of being attacked. It’s something I really dislike about society these days.’

She continues: ‘People can think what they want, but creating an echo chamber by forbidding disagreement is insane’.

Mainstream media in her home country of Australia are not keen to agree with the statement above. News.com.au called her March for Men initiative — a pro men’s rights event — ‘taking fight to the streets after stating that she ‘regularly preaches to her thousands of social media followers about how Australia is “demonising” men’ and dedicated lion’s share of its article on this event to recall two men having been arrested — out of roughly 700 attendees. Two years earlier, her comments about Hotties of Melbourne University— a website that rated students on their attractiveness — were turned into rape apology by TV program Sunday Night. ‘What is offensive, really, about somebody considering you a ‘hottie’ at your university? There is no world where I would consider this sexual harassment. I view majority of the comments as harmless’ she said back then.

Sydney believes that peaceful and earnest communication between left-wing and right-wing is very much possible, the thing is that ‘both sides think the other side is crazy and, therefore, don’t bother trying to converse’. She continues: ‘It’s really up to people setting aside their own ideas and listening. That’s why calling people racist/sexist/xenophobic isn’t helpful. It shuts down legitimate discussion about legitimate issues’.

Sydney now lives in Washington, DC, but she grew up in Melbourne — her father is Australian, her mother is American and her accent is something in between. Her mother was brought up in a traditional, Catholic household, although she herself isn’t a practicing Catholic. Her father is from rural Australia, and he never identified with many values on the left side of political spectrum. It is, of course, Australia where she calls home — that is also where her dogs, sea monkeys and alpacas live — but she traveled quite a lot, and even briefly lived in London in 2016.

Her political beliefs certainly did evolve, but she ‘always leaned to the right. I attribute that to never approaching things emotionally. But a wise man changes his mind, obviously: If anything, I’ve softened over the years and tried to make a more concentrated effort to see and understand what prompts others to believe as they do. It doesn’t necessarily change my ideas, but it rounds them out and gives them more meaning.’

Sydney is immensely grateful for the feedback she get from her followers and feels sorry she can’t be more involved with them: ‘I think there are people who comment and engage with what I do who are much smarter than me. I learn a lot when I read comments or reply. I think people forget, however, that what I do is a one-person operation. I don’t have a team who help me reply to emails, respond to messages, organize business things, produce/edit. I do it myself and it means that I have less and less time to read and reply. It sucks, because there are so many awesome things that people say and I wish I could contribute more to their feedback’.

Both photos courtesy of Sydney Watson