Patreon Censorship Update (Will Blunderfield Must Come Down) (Patreon)

Hey guys, we really regret informing you of this, but we have no choice.

Two days ago, Patreon informed us that if we did not remove our Will Blunderfield documentary, which features a decent amount of male nudity, our Patreon account and page would be completely suspended, which would financially shut down our operation as our entire production budget is reliant on Patreon dollars. 

This is disappointing because we initially launched this Patreon with the hopes of being able to distribute uncensored and unfiltered content without hawkish ‘Community Guidelines,' that have limited the reach of our content so dramatically on platforms like Instagram and YouTube. 

Long story short, we have to completely remove our initial uncensored Will Blunderfield documentary, and re-edit and blur all nudity, the presence of bodily fluids (i.e. urine and dried semen), and all instances of nude contact (I.e. cupping your bro's nuts) based upon 15 ‘Red Flag’ timestamps that were recently sent over by Patreon’s ‘Trust and Safety’ team.

As you guys know, in our dealings with YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Doing Things Media, etc.. (the list goes on), we’ve usually just said ‘YOLO’ and either shitcanned them or just ignored their warnings and kept doing our thing. However in this case, because our business model is so directly linked to Patreon, we have no choice but to comply .. so a squeaky-clean version of the 'Will Blunderfield' documentary will be uploaded within a few days. 

For those interested, I’ll break down a chronology of how things went down, with accompanied screenshots. I’ve kept all names of Patreon employees redacted, because I don’t want them to be harassed. We just wanna let you guys know what’s up.

Screenshot 1) - Pre-publishing Approval from my contact: On August 16, two days before the ‘Will Blunderfield’ documentary went live, I reached out to my private contact at Patreon to let him know that we had something explicit in the pipeline. I figured we’d be fine either way (particularly because 2 years ago, with the All Gas No Brakes Patreon, we posted a full blown mid-p*rno interview with Sean Lawless and Kendra Cox), but I figured I’d reach out anyway. I carefully examined Patreon's policy. It seemed like they mostly cared about stopping the spread of sexually explicit content involving minors, which is obviously a good thing, and also stopping Patreon from being used as a p*rnography platforming. I assume the fear there is that Patreon will become like OnlyFans, whose brand identity is synonymous with porn. However, my contact made it clear that as long as the video was flagged 18+, and it was clear that no minors were featured in the video (Will and his friends are clearly men in their Mid 30s), I’d be good to go. So when I posted the initial ‘Will Blunderfield’ documentary, I made that quite clear — I added, ‘DO NOT WATCH if you’re below 18’ to the title and the description of the video.

Screenshot 2) - Account suspension email from ‘Trust and Safety’ Team: On August 23, a week after the video had been up, I woke up to a notification on my Patreon that my account would soon be suspended if I did not remove the ‘Will Blunderfield’ documentary because of the concerns outlined in the following message: “Patreon does not allow p*rnography, which is defined in our guidelines as real people engaged in sexual acts such as intercourse or masturbation.” To me, this was very frustrating. If you've watched the documentary, you'll realize that the entire purpose of Will’s workshop was to encourage ‘platonic male bonding.' The purpose of this ritual was to de-stigmatizing the often homophobic stigma surrounding mutual male nudity, via ‘re-wilding,’ i.e. a return to nature. Several times throughout the documentary, Will and his buddies explicitly remind us of the non-sexual nature of their ‘manhood activation’ ritual. One could potentially argue that there are some pretty horny undertones to Will's workshops, but the way I see it, there's no sexual contact, so it's not p*rn. 

Screenshot 3) My response to 'Trust and Safety Team': I responded shortly after with pretty much the exact thoughts I just articulated: “the video that we posted 'Will Blunderfield,' is not at all pornographic, the nudity featured in this video is nudists in Canada performing a ritual called 'platonic male bonding,' which is marketed as being explicitly non-sexual.' However, given the power that Patreon has over our financial stability, I didn't feel like fighting for it, as that may result in the potential loss of our page. I cut straight to the point and asked simply, 'would you like me to re-upload a clean version?.' Shortly after, I went back into the editing studio and made a completely clean version of the doucmentary, which I sent to the Trust and Safety team via WeTransfer. This clean version featured no un-blurred nudity. No cocks or nuts were visible in that new clean version, and I actually left out some sections altogether because they were basically un-editable. But I guess that wasn’t enough .. shortly after I sent my response, the Trust and Safety Team got back to me with their final terms. 

Screenshot 4 and 5) A Final Response from ‘Trust and Safety’ Team: Apparently the clean version I edited wasn’t enough. Shortly after sending my clean cut through, I received a final email from the team demanding that I put a harder blur for 15 timestamps, and full obfuscation (i.e. black box) for 7 timestamps. After this email, we were genuinely shocked by the level of Big Brother energy on Patreon's end. Shortly after, I asked again and again for other options. I even asked my private contact at Patreon if we could simply upload a password-protected DropBox link of the initial version. Nope. I even asked if we could upload elsewhere and link to a third-party like PornHub .. Nope. We have a meeting set next week with Patreon's 'Trust and Safety Team,' but we really don't feel like fighting this time. After all, this isn't our platform anyway. 

So I’m sorry guys. I have to take down the Will Blunderfield documentary, or this whole operation is bust. In the coming days, I will be uploading an extended, squeaky clean version to Patreon, which I’m sure will be enjoyable as well. 

Thanks for all your support.

Best,

Andrew Andrew.