How Rikki Poynter uses YouTube to advocate for the Deaf community
Rikki Poynter is a Deaf activist and popular YouTuber. Her videos range in topic from Deaf and disability access awareness to product reviews, reaction videos, vlogs and Q&As about her life. Poynter, 30, spoke with me over Zoom about the variety of responses she gets to her videos, Deaf representation in film and television, and how technology and entertainment can be more accessible.
I know that you are so busy aside from your YouTube channel with public speaking, consulting and activism. Would you mind walking me through what a typical week looks like for you?
It currently depends on how my chronic pain and fatigue [are] feeling. If there are flare ups, I'm [in bed]. [If I’m recording] just YouTube or Twitch stuff, I try to get a routine. I'll do my makeup and I’ll try to remember where my camera charger is, because those love to go missing the moment that you need to film. If it's an off-the-cuff type of video, I just [film] that. If it's for a Film Fridays [video,] I try to watch the movie either the day before or a couple days before. I do some [streams] on Twitch as well. I need to be better at doing a routine to try to grow an audience there, but right now it's like "I'm bored. Let's play some game."
When it comes to public speaking, that can take a little bit more time. It also depends on if it's Zoom versus in-person. Usually I make a PowerPoint [and] do an outline. I normally don't do my public speaking engagements in ASL because it's not my first language, I'm not fluent in it. I get nervous just trying to do a regular casual YouTube video or a casual conversation about it, so trying to do a public speaking engagement in ASL [is] a little bit more difficult. Funny enough, if it's something [at] Gallaudet [University, a college for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH),] it's a little bit easier because I feel like everybody's going to understand what I'm saying, and if not, we can work around it. If [my speech is] in spoken English, I noticed that when I try to do a walkthrough and practice, by the time I'm actually going live, everything that I practiced before just becomes more off-the-cuff.
Just this past weekend, I filmed and edited a video on the same day, [and] today I'm working on a thumbnail and the captions. Hopefully, tomorrow it will go live. It's pretty casual. I'm [also] trying to find some more work now, like a few public speaking engagements. I have management now, I'm under a talent agency so thankfully, I can go to them [for opportunities]. It’s mostly just trying to get back into that routine especially with COVID.
Do you have a favorite video on your channel?
Probably my baby which would be the “Shit Hearing People Say" video because it's so simple and to the point, and it's my most viral. It’s the thing that shot off my career, or it was my “Deaf Accessibility on YouTube” video that kind of shot off my career because Tyler Oakley found out about that video and then he made a video talking about that and shouting me out. Then more people started seeing the “Shit Hearing People Say” video, and then news outlets started picking up on it. It was back when the whole “Shit ‘insert-something-here’ People Say” [trend] really kicked off on YouTube and everybody was doing them. It was a fun time.
What responses do you tend to get on your videos?
It really depends on the subject. Most recently, I did a video about when I was coming back from Los Angeles. Now that I've experienced more chronic pain and fatigue in the last couple of years, when it comes to airport travel, I tend to use a wheelchair. I was talking about how once I [landed after a flight] from Burbank to Salt Lake City, I was waiting on the plane for another 15-20 minutes. The person that came with the wheelchair was there. The flight attendant started telling them, “You need to pick up this girl,” when I was going to get in the wheelchair, the guy just turned around and took the wheelchair with him, so I made a video about that titled “Delta Airlines Took My Wheelchair Away From Me.” And some [comments were] like, "It's not the airline's fault" or "You don't need a wheelchair, you're fine” [and even] “Sounds like another fabricated or overdramatic story for a fake video.” If I'm talking about captions, people tend to be more accepting of that. And I don't usually get comments that are like, "Oh my God, why are you talking about this?”
Last year, I uploaded a video talking about how when Trump was holding his glass with two hands, people [were] making fun of him [on Twitter.] Disability Twitter was like, “Man, I can't believe I have to defend this guy, but don't do this.” I actually just got a comment [on the video] this morning that was like, "I'm going to keep making fun of Republicans and even Democrats too. Honestly, I find you pathetic for saying we can't make fun of this guy." I mean, make fun of him for his terrible policy and politics. Don't make fun of him because he's holding [the cup that way.] Your other disabled friends are doing the same thing, I do it sometimes too because I have carpal tunnel syndrome. If I'm talking about disabled experiences with pain or other people's experiences, if it's not about accessibility [and] captions, people are just like, "Oh my God, it's not that bad. Oh my God, you're complaining about everything.” Why would we waste our time making this stuff up and talking about it? Do you think I like talking about this all the time? No.
There's a couple of DM's and [comments] where they'll be telling me, "Hi, I grew up like you and I didn't have anybody and I felt like I had an internalized ableism or audism," It's nice whether it’s [Deaf people] or parents that have a Deaf child. They'll be like, "Thank you for letting me know that, I'm glad that I can learn ASL and make it easier to give my kid that choice or extra accessibility.” [I’ll have] teenagers commenting on my video because [they’re] also Deaf or growing up in an abusive environment.
What first drew me to your channel were your Film Fridays videos. What inspired you to cover disability representation in movies and television?
Funny enough, when I was growing up I hated watching movies. I don't know why, I was very [into] TV shows because I had more time. Then all of a sudden, I just started watching movies more. I was trying to think of another fun series that I could do, and I was really starting to get into movies. I’ve always actually been a horror movie fan. If there was gonna be a movie I would watch it would be horror movies or thrillers, especially Korean ones. There wasn't a lot of talk about disabled or Deaf representation on YouTube, at least not from what I could see. The abled creators or hearing creators would talk about “Hush,” for example. They'd also be talking about “Sound of Metal” or “A Quiet Place,” but [their video] would never actually be accessible. There's no real captions or anything like that.
There's a lot of talk about how Deaf representation just isn't there, which is ironic since [the TV show] “Switched at Birth” blew up. Everybody was like, "Oh, my gosh, yay amazing! Deaf people!" But they would still be creating these movies about disabled people and then they wouldn't get an actual disabled person to play that role.
[When coming up with Film Fridays,] I wanted to be able to watch my movies and then be able to do something with them. So it didn't just feel like "Oh no, here I am wasting my time just sitting here watching a movie and then not doing any actual work." If you put two of them together, I hope it would like inspire other filmmakers or aspiring filmmakers, big or small, to be like, "Huh, you know, she's got a point, we should get some actual disabled people, some Deaf people, some blind people to play the actual characters that I'm writing about.”
I love how you talk about the importance of employing Deaf and HOH actors for these roles. Do you have any personal favorite Deaf actors, and any favorite movies or shows that authentically portray a Deaf experience?
In terms of like following careers, definitely Millicent [Simmonds.] I'm pretty sure that girl is gonna blow up, because “A Quiet Place” blew up and then she was “Wonderstruck.” I do think that Millicent is gonna be someone to look out for.
In terms of shows or movies, I guess it really depends on [the fact that] everyone’s experience of deafness is different. If it's made by actual Deaf people, [the show] "This Close" is near and dear to my heart. Granted it is very much catered towards a white Deaf experience. In terms of if it was made by hearing people but it kind of has something going there, I think [the film] “Sound of Metal” is the best that we have so far. It is not perfect by any means, I say that in my video. But in terms of a late deafened experience, I think it's the best that we have so far because his reaction to suddenly losing his hearing is very relatable. It is very real. I'm not entirely upset with the fact that they took a hearing guy to do it, although you could have [cast someone like Deaf actor] Russell Harvard. He's in “The Hammer,” which I love. [That movie] kind of does the same thing as “Sound of Metal.” I feel like I relate to both of those [movies] because I did grow up mainstream and I started learning ASL a couple years ago when I was 23. I'm 30 now and it's still basic conversational, because I'm still so much in a hearing world instead of being thrown into the Deaf world. One day I'd love to make that happen, but it's just not in the cards for me right now. [“Sound of Metal”] does a pretty good job with that, and I do like that they do have supporting characters that are actually Deaf.
I appreciate how you bring up how the movie theater experience can be difficult for those of us who are Deaf or HOH. Do you have suggestions for theater chains on how to make going to the movies more accessible?
[It’d be great] if everyone just started going to open caption screenings. The problem is supply and demand, but the theaters aren't necessarily giving supply. They'll make [their open caption screenings] happen on Tuesday at 1pm while everybody's working. How is anyone gonna show up to that? [Also, if] everybody as a collective — hearing and Deaf — [made] phone calls, [sent] emails, letters, things like that, just getting the message out there directly to the people. I think that having a conversation on Twitter or on YouTube so it gets spread out to the open is important, but also actually sending it to whoever owns AMC and Rega, sending it to the people in charge.
Beyond that, it’d also just be good if CaptiViews, [the closed captioning devices available at theaters,] were charged to begin with and had the finished files instead of like a line [disappearing] every once in a while. Open captions would be fantastic, they’re so much better. I know there's people that complain like, "Oh my god, I don't want to read subtitles" and I'm like, "Oh my God just get like a dedicated room to [have] open [caption] screenings all the time.” Even a lot of hearing people now are using subtitles. I've seen my hearing friends or just random hearing people talking about [shows or movies] on their story or posting on Twitter and they have the subtitles going on.
Do you think having simultaneous at-home film releases with captions is helpful for accessibility?
The more options, the better. Obviously, it'll put a damper on cinema sales. I guess I do feel like they weren't doing open caption screenings to begin with, so I guess it might hurt the potential of it ever happening. But I understand that, especially now with variants happening, people still don't want to start going back out to the cinema. And if there's an option of it being able to stream all of a sudden, it has captions already. That's good. The only downside is now you got to start paying for all these separate streaming services.
Speaking of captions, you’ve done an amazing job advocating for changes to how YouTube, TikTok and other platforms incorporate user-generated and auto-captions with your #NoMoreCRAPtions campaign. How do you think the tech companies that run these platforms can work on incorporating Deaf and disabled people into their company so these oversights don’t happen?
First thing would probably be to actually hire us because then we would be on the front lines. I know [at] YouTube they have Deaf people on their captioning and accessibility teams. I know a couple of them personally, I worked with a couple of them personally at Google and Apple events. When the whole community contribution fiasco started happening, I had an actual meeting with the people [at YouTube] and was like, "Don't take it away." They [were] like, "Yeah, we got you,” and then were like “Yeah, we're gonna take it away anyways.”
I think it definitely starts with actually having us [involved[ to begin with. We will have a call with you to do this, but they’ll ignore us anyway. I've been in this game for 10 years and I wish people would take me seriously when I'm like, "We need this to happen. I know, you can make it happen, but you just don't really want it to happen." It's a whole cycle.
Also, stop with censoring expletives. Obviously, we're already saying it, the AI already knows we're saying it, what's the point of censoring? It doesn't make any sense. It's absolutely silly. We're not two. Some Deaf people are two, but I'm pretty sure two year olds are not going to be on TikTok or Instagram or [YouTube.]
There's some creators who will bleep [swear words themselves,] and then they'll write the word, but they'll bleep it in the middle. So if they say “fucking,” that will be “f**king.” That's fine with me too, because you're still matching up. But when you're fully saying the word, what's the point [of what] they're doing now [with] the automatic captions [where they put an] underscore [in place of a swear word.] I know they were originally trying to do it because slurs were being written in the captions when somebody didn't actually say it. They were trying to find a way to fix that, but it's not actually doing what they think it’s gonna do.
Lastly, do you have any upcoming videos or projects viewers can look forward to?
Assuming the world doesn't get too much more chaotic than it already is, VidCon's coming up this year. I'm not going to be on any panels because I'm not a featured creator, but I do have full VIP access. If I happen to be wandering around, you're probably gonna have to tap me on the shoulder, but say “hi” and ask me about things.
In terms of videos, I'm really trying to get back into a schedule. I really want to start back up with Film Fridays because after watching a couple of people, mostly the horror community, talking about movies, I was like, "Okay, now here I am watching movies again regularly and I want to talk about them." I need to rewatch “Run” and do a video on that. And then [I’d love to make videos about] “Escape Room” and the “Saw’ series, two movies that don't really have disabled people in them at all. I think it's cool to take the Film Friday series, but give it a little something different. And being like, "Well, what happens if we did put disabled people in this?” This is already out, but [YouTube Original Series] “Could You Survive the Movies?” season two came out and I was on the “A Quiet Place” episode. That's pretty exciting.
Other than that, not too much. I might have some speaking engagements lined up with colleges, [but] I don't know how public those will be. In December, “Vlogmas” is going to happen. Every year I try to actually prep ahead of time to get a video up every day in December, and I failed miserably in the last two or so years. But hopefully I should be able to film and edit, but we shall see. The Film Fridays is what I'm mostly excited about.