Our Community
POG Family is not just comprised of the Braedan Plays and POG Family YouTube channels. We are a community, and before videos and live streams comes our community. YouTube is a portion of our community. It’s a place where we can gather for entertainment, to get to know each other, learn, and play video games. But our community is so much more than just a YouTube channel.
There are many words that we could use to describe our community, and the community we strive to create. The following are a few that really stood out to us on how we want people to feel, and how we want people to see our community: Safe, Positive, Inclusive, Charitable, and Entertaining,
Safe
Because we are primarily an online community safety is always in the forefront of our mind. Because of this, safety is also always part of our community guidelines and expectations. Safety has many different components when considering online communities, and the communities that are built in real life. There is always the threat of humans with ill-intent, the perception of safety by those within the community, various belief systems, and having an environment that general feels like a safe place to be for individuals.
In all of our communities we have set guidelines and expectations that address these concerns. We have anti-bullying, anti-racist, acceptance of all people, don’t give out your information, use appropriate language, anti toxic, and much more policies. These policies everyone in our community agrees to, and their is a general social acceptance of these policies in all of our platforms.
As a community we have no tolerance for sexual content, racism, anti-LGBTQ+, discrimination, bullying, harassment, or hate. People that think this is a joke, or want to push the limits with any of this are immediately banned, hidden, blocked, and/or reported. As parents we take this extra seriously in regards to youth of all ages.
Ultimately we want all of our communities to feel safe, we also want them to be able to discuss with us issues that may make them feel unsafe in our community.
For more information and resources about online safety check out our Online Safety page.
Positive
Don’t you hate it when you have a bad day!? The sky is red, the grass in purple, the wind is blowing, and the sun is about the crash in to the Earth, everything just feels off. We all have these days. In our community we strive to remind ourselves of this all of the time. Aside from racism, anti-human, sexual content, and discrimination, we really really really try to make sure to give people the benefit of the doubt. Instead of assuming people bringing toxicity into our community because they are bad people, we assume that they are just having a bad moment in life, like we all have. As a community we have pushed back on the hate with love and kindness, and more often than not whoever is bringing toxicity flips it around and becomes kind. Maybe they wanted to be noticed, maybe they were really hungry, maybe they lost a family member… Whatever the reason we always to start with kindness.
With the above said, our community, people of all ages, are learning to start with this kindness first. They are learning that using a positive spin on a negative situation can actually lead to a positive situation. We believe it’s important for our community to be a happy place, while understanding that we are all humans going through our lives all with our own obstacles. Our community is world wide, which means the issues that people are facing in this community include everything: bad day, death of family, natural disaster, loss of pets, abuse, hate, discrimination, famine, misfortune, cruelty, governmental differences. We can’t assume everyone is sitting comfy on their brand new gaming chair, as everyone is coming from different places. Regardless of where that place is we strive to be a positive and encouraging community to support them through their trials and tribulations.
Inclusive
This is one of the most important words in my life. Much like the above section about being positive, and understanding we all have our own different issues, inclusion is just that: including people regardless of their differences. We have been asked regularly if we support different groups of people, and more often than not the answer is yes: People of Color, LGBTQ+, People with Intellectual Disabilities, People who have Physical Disabilities, people from different places in the world. We like to support people, because we are all human. Our limitation of inclusion comes when faced with racism, sexual content, hate, anti human rights, and other groups of people whose chosen purpose is to hurt other people intentionally and even sometimes implicitly.
We do our best to keep political, and religious topics from our entertainment, and social platforms. Not to intentionally exclude people from sharing opinions, but unfortunately because both of these topics often lead to hate, discrimination, and devaluing of humans with differing viewers. We understand that so many topics get pulled into these categories, and are cautious as community moderators to ensure that discussion that tow this line are kept respectful, inclusive, and positive. It is extremely important for us to learn about each other’s cultural, political, and religious differences. These various views help us grow, so long as they stay respectful.
Charitable
We are a small business with BIG dreams. We started the Braedan Plays YouTube channel because Braedan wants to buy all of the food trucks in our town and feed all of the local homeless population. We chose to do this because we want to improve our community, and to help others in need. This is always going to be our goal, and we will strive to show this as Noob Family Gaming LLC continues to grow. Not only do we do what we can to help others, we have also encouraged our community to help where they can. Charitable does not mean giving money. As mentioned before we have people from all over the world, all walks of life, with all different sizes of bank accounts. Charity does not have to be in the form of money. Charity is simply giving back, and helping out. Help a neighbor with yard work, help someone at the store reach an item they can’t reach, help someone lift a heavy object, help around the house with chores, clean your own room, give the fifty cents you found on the ground to someone who needs food. There are so many ways to be charitable, both financially, but also in just helping.
#POGMoment: while it hasn’t taken off yet, we have started our own hashtag. We are encouraging our community members to have a #POGMoment every day. POG Means play of the game, we are encouraging your daily play of the game moment to be something where you are helping someone else out, without expectations of being rewarded.
In addition to #POGMoments we are working to raise money, and bring awareness to a number of different causes. In the forefront of our mind are health, and environmental causes. Check the our Philanthropy page for more information on causes we have already supported.
This is going to be an ever-growing, and on-going part of our community, and we are excited to see how everyone can help support not just our community, but the global community and well-being.
Entertaining
Our goal is to entertain, to befriend, to create family, and build community. In order for everything above to work there needs to be some entertainment. Much of the entertainment comes in the form of Live Streams and playing video games. But we’ve also shared real life adventures like snowboarding, hiking, going to the pumpkin patch, meeting crazy squirrels in the park, and much more. We will continue to strive to provide quality, wholesome, entertaining content on our YouTube channels, along with amazing and fun Live Streams where we can all play together. Entertaining is the only word on the list intentionally placed in order, this word is a means to make all of those other things possible. This is how we are able to create a community that must be safe, inclusive, positive, and charitable. This word, helps to encapsulate the rest of what we are about.