It doesn’t last even half a minute, but the video in which the tiktoker The Argentine Hassan Azteca explains why he believes that, at 21 years old, he is free of any work obligations has circulated around half the planet fueling controversy. And it is normal. With a visibly indignant tone and simple reasoning, Azteca basically dedicates himself to stirring up the argument of antinatalism in his favor. His position is quite simple. So much so that it only takes him a few seconds to explain it: as happens with the other 8 billion people who populate this world, Azteca claims that his parents fathered him without consulting him or giving him his approval.
So… “If I didn’t ask to be born, why do I have to work now?”
“I am not obliged to work”. That is the premise that emphasizes on several occasions the tiktoker Hassan Azteca. And he backs it up with a reasoning so simple that it fits into a video of barely twenty seconds: Azteca did not ask to be born, so – he maintains – the work obligations that accompany ordinary mortals are the result of a decision made by his parents, without his consent.
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“My parents forced me to be born”“I believe that despite being 21 years old I am not obliged to work because I was basically born without my consent,” Azteca explains in your videowhich has already accumulated five million views on her TikTok channel alone, not counting the other networks through which the piece has circulated. “I was forced to be born, they didn’t ask me, they didn’t ask for my consent.”
“It doesn’t make sense that because my parents wanted to give me life 21 years ago, now I have to work. If I didn’t ask to be born, why do I have to work? Let them support me and that’s it, because if they wanted to have me, let them support me.”
It seems controversial… And it is controversial, as Azteca himself has acknowledged, explaining that with his video he was not looking for anything more or less than that: “To generate controversy, which is what my account is about.” “From the beginning I have always tried to generate that in the comments, that they fight, argue… because in the end that is what makes a video go viral,” he explained a few days ago during an interview for four.
Moreover, the very tiktoker He has accompanied his video with two quite revealing hashtags: #humor and #comedyHowever, rather than simply posting a comic piece, his video aims to stir up debate and generate reactions. “For me, what I said is thought by many people. There must be someone who says it.”
During the interview With Cuatro, Azteca acknowledged his surprise at the enormous impact the piece has had, acknowledged receiving responses from Russia and Japan – mostly critics – and left more comments to spark controversy around his character and content: “The people who criticize me are frustrated people who have to get up at six in the morning to work while I’m in bed working on the networks. I get up at four in the afternoon, or five, depending on how tired I am, I make a video, upload it and go to sleep.”
Beyond Azteca. If Azteca’s video has achieved such notoriety and has accumulated millions and millions of views, it is largely due to the fact that what Azteca expresses is not only its opinion, whether it is honest or fake, sincere or a way to generate controversy and make its content go viral. Its argument is linked to a much larger philosophical and political position and with a very long tradition: antinatalismwhich also has great references, such as the South African David Benatarauthor of ‘Better Not to Have Existed: The Harm of Coming into the World’.
The basic premise of antinatalists is that bringing children into the world is “morally wrong”. The reasons for supporting this idea are multiple and complement each other: a vision of life as suffering and nihilistic rhetoric, concerns about overpopulation or the impact of humanity on the environment… or a concept that Azteca emphasizes on several occasions and that perhaps is the most controversial of all: the (non) consent of the newborn.
“It’s all about consent”“If all people gave their consent to play the game of life, I would have no objection. It’s all about consent or lack thereof,” explained A few years ago, Kirk, a woman from Texas who defines herself as a convinced antinatalist, told the BBC: “It makes no sense to me to voluntarily put someone in this world to suffer and die.” She is not the only one who thinks this way. Far from it. In 2018 The world she spoke with a 25-year-old woman from Lérida who claimed, convinced: “Having a child is a selfish act that responds only to the interests of the parents.”
More media cases. Azteca is not the first content creator to gain fame and go viral by using antinatalist ideology. This happened in 2019, when Raphale Samuel, a 27-year-old Indian, announced on YouTube his decision to denounce his parents for having fathered him without (obviously) his permission. His case is not very different from Azteca’s. He took care of the staging, with a fake beard and big sunglasses, and launched the initiative even though he knew that it had little chance of success. He did it to stir up the debate.
“I want people to realize that they were born without consent. They don’t owe their families anything. And if we were born without our consent, we should be paid to live out the rest of our existence,” reasoned Samuel, using a speech very similar to the one Azteca now uses to “generate controversy.” “I love my parents and we have a great relationship, but they had me for their own fun and pleasure. My life has been great, but I don’t see why I have to put another one on the roulette wheel, especially if I have a lot of money.” [esa nueva vida] does not ask me to exist”, insisted Samuel.
Neither new nor strangeAntinatalism has a long, long tradition. There are those who identify part of its reasoning already in ancient Greece and they point out how in the 19th century Arthur Schopenhauer expressed some of its postulates in his works. And although it is not a majority philosophical current, it is true that it has a good number of supporters in different countries and has achieved notable visibility. Five years ago The BBC explained that there were dozens of groups with thousands of members on the networks and on Reddit alone there was a channel with 35,000.
Its defenders have also championed campaigns with a certain resonance, such as ‘Stop Making Babies’, which at least a few years ago was trying to spread anti-natalist ideas throughout India, now the nation most populated of the planet.
Images | TikTok and Kelly Sikkema (Unsplash)
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