The Making of a YouTube Radical - The New York Times

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Over time, he watched dozens of clips by Steven Crowder, a conservative comedian, and Paul Joseph Watson, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist who was barred by Facebook this year. He became entranced by Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian activist, whom he started referring to as his “fashy bae,” or fascist crush.

These people weren’t all shouty demagogues. They were entertainers, building their audience with satirical skits, debates and interviews with like-minded creators. Some of them were part of the alt-right, a loose cohort of pro-Trump activists who sandwiched white nationalism between layers of internet sarcasm. Others considered themselves “alt-lite,” or merely antiprogressive.

These creators were active on Facebook and Twitter, too. But YouTube was their headquarters, and the place where they could earn a living by hawking merchandise and getting a cut of the money spent on advertisements that accompanied their videos.

[clip]

“I fell down the alt-right rabbit hole,” he said in the video.

Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a “decentralized cult” of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.

[clip]

Mr. Cain never bought into the far right’s most extreme views, like Holocaust denial or the need for a white ethnostate, he said. Still, far-right ideology bled into his daily life. He began referring to himself as a “tradcon” — a traditional conservative, committed to old-fashioned gender norms. He dated an evangelical Christian woman, and he fought with his liberal friends.





How is Caleb a 'radical' if he NEVER Adopted Radical Far Right Ideals and became a TradCoon or Traditional Conservative ?
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
What exactly is radical about watching a video titled “Trump wins!” on the night Trump won? Nothing, unless you, like the New York Times, believe there is no distinction between “alt-right,” “far right,” “traditional conservative,” and “Trump voter.” By watching a conservative comedian celebrate the Republican victory in 2016, the Times concludes, “Mr. Cain’s transformation was complete.” Except it wasn’t. As the Times reports,

In 2018, nearly four years after Mr. Cain had begun watching right-wing YouTube videos, a new kind of video began appearing in his recommendations. These videos were made by left-wing creators, but they mimicked the aesthetics of right-wing YouTube, down to the combative titles and the mocking use of words like “triggered” and “snowflake.”
Cain then started watching videos by left-wing YouTuber Natalie Wynn. He found the videos so persuasive that he eventually came to identify as a liberal, which presents a major problem for Roose’s argument. Roose writes, “The right-wing content Mr. Cain viewed in 2015 and 2016 often consisted of videos by Stefan Molyneux,” an anarcho-capitalist with dubious views on race. He then moved on to more mainstream conservative voices like Steven Crowder. By 2017, “Mr. Cain also watched many videos by members of the so-called intellectual dark web, like the popular [liberal] comedian Joe Rogan and the [liberal] political commentator Dave Rubin.” Finally, “during 2017, Mr. Cain began watching more videos from left-wing channels.”

Putting aside for a moment the internal inconsistency—did Cain begin watching left-wing videos in 2017 or 2018?—the author accidentally disproves his own thesis. Roose purports to show the rightward radicalization of a YouTube viewer. But if Cain was radicalized at all, he was radicalized to the left, not the right. He began near the fringes of right-wing YouTube and moved steadily to the Left.


https://www.dailywire.com/news/48245/knowles-everything-about-nyt-making-youtube-michael-j-knowles
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
New York Times Thinks Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman Is the Gateway to the Alt-Right

A lot of us have, my friend, a lot of us have.

The following one-two punch is fun.

Shot:
According to the NY Times you are a racist threat to the nation if you:
  1. watch Milton Friedman videos
  2. listen to @JoeRogan
  3. date evangelical Christians
  4. follow @jordanbpeterson
  5. subscribe to @RubinReport pic.twitter.com/l1IStVjmSe
— TakingHayekSeriously (@FriedrichHayek) June 9, 2019

Chaser:

I once watched Milton Friedman while listening to Joe Rogan while dating a Christian who was following Jordan Peterson and subscribed to Dave Rubin.

Where do I report for re-education? https://t.co/eXssZANALK
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) June 10, 2019

The article's author attempted an explanation:
FYI, since I’m getting some questions about it: the collage up top is just a sample of stills from Cain’s viewing history. Some are far-right, some (eg Milton Friedman) aren’t. https://t.co/MklCZOJzbp
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) June 8, 2019
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The Media/Democrat Complex Strikes Big Tech

There are two reasons for that. The first is obvious: Those on the political left long ago abandoned the traditional liberal notion that those who disagree have a right to speak. Instead, they must be deplatformed and their advertisers punished, lest their nefarious ideas spread and metastasize. "Repressive tolerance," in the parlance of Herbert Marcuse, has become a mainstay of left-wing thinking.

The other reason is far more cynical: Many in the media want a regeneration of the monopolistic media control of the past. They long for the days when everyone consumed mainstream product to the exclusion of alternative sources. It's no coincidence that YouTube and Facebook have been touting their elevation of "authoritative" news in recent years — they're looking to appease a ravenous media eager to tear them down.

The media and Democrats have picked the right target: The lords of Big Tech are eager to please and frightened of blowback. They're political liberals who can be intimidated into censorship while being simultaneously assured that they're making the world a better place.
 
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