Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Materials 8: Lab Leak Discourse, Toxic YouTube Dynamics, and the Metaphysics of Peppa Pig

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

We stare into the abyss and welcome darkness into our souls as we discuss:Feedback on the Žižek episodeMiddle Aged Men's Health UpdateAlina Chan and the newest round of Lab Leak DiscourseDiscourse S...urfing PunditsAlex O'Connor cornering Jordan Peterson on the resurrectionThe philosophical and Marxist implications of Peppa PigPotential Alternatives to Hipster Christianity and New AtheismAndrew Gold's Heretics Channel and Toxic YouTube DynamicsEditorializing and Responsible CriticismBalaji Srinivasan's Waffling Defence of HubermanThe 'Elite Defector' PoseVerbal Fluency vs. SubstanceHeterodox and Anti-Vaxx Incentive StructuresJames Lindsay's most recent idiocyDesperate Call to ActionLinks Alina Chan's NYT Article on the Lab LeakOur episode addressing Alina and Matt Ridley's points with relevant expertsJordan Peterson's Podcast: Navigating Belief, Skepticism, and the Afterlife | Alex O'Connor @CosmicSkeptic | EP 451Andrew Gold - Heretics: EXPOSED: I Didn't Show THIS in Viral 'Woke' Debate with Eni Aluko (4K)Balaji's huge Twitter thread defending HubermanSummary of Huberman's Math MemeTop Earning Substacks The full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1 hr 14 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and hello and welcome to decoding the guru's supplementary materials with me chris kavanaugh anthropologist of sorts and him matt microphone attacker and moonlighting psychologist you might not hear the sounds of the microphone banging but if you don't it's only because they've been removed in post so yeah i'm gonna try hard i'm gonna do my best chris i'm gonna leave it alone i'm gonna leave it alone you're like the zizek of microphone banging you know zizek is touching his nose and snuffling and all that. And you are molesting your microphone in between takes. It's all sorted in post. You guys think he's smooth.
Starting point is 00:01:11 Not naturally. That's all. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I am a mobile person. I do fidget. I'm mercurial, Chris.
Starting point is 00:01:19 I'm mercurial. How do you feel about the Zizek episode? How was the feedback? I haven't looked yet. Zizek. Zizek. Yeah. Zizek. how do you feel about the zz episode how is the feedback i haven't looked yet um reddit's become too big there's too many people on it there's too many posts i see 80 replies and uh it's too much for me so um give me the distilled version do people like it do people agree most people like that the feedback was generally positive it wasn't one of the you know explosive episodes um but predictably the arts and humanity philosopher types oh oh yes
Starting point is 00:01:57 of course they would make these elementary errors in their analysis and. So you guys should realize that you enjoy that. We actually did you a service because you got to feel like, well, they would be that amateur. You can lord it over the knuckle-headed reductionists. Like, oh, of course the shark
Starting point is 00:02:20 isn't just a shark. How naive you are. Such silly fools. Have you heard of him matt heard of him i did like there was some comment somewhere might have been on the youtube about an unrelated thing but it was just somebody saying have these guys even heard of a book have they ever read a book it was like yes yes i have actually covered cross books before. So yeah, but you know, you can't please everyone on the internet. That's what I've learned.
Starting point is 00:02:51 It's a prerequisite before they make you a full professor. You got to give a list of all the books you've read. Yeah, Jordan Peterson read 200 on climate change. You got to read at least three before they'll give you the bomb. And you're not allowed to have that many pictures in them. So that's the other. No, no picture books just only worth half a mark comics you need five comics if you're gonna use comics that they go on like these are the professor tests the kind of stuff you can't learn until you're in academia but um you know matt i'm gonna do this for you because i i know your spirit is flagging your
Starting point is 00:03:28 body is falling into disrepair and i'm gonna perk you up because i know that you like to talk about you know not the horrible things that have been happening online but the the positive aspects the good things that you've been doing in your life to improve your existence. And so I'm just going to ask for a little update. We're not going to spend that much time on it, Matt, but you know, we're middle-aged male podcasters. So of course, the podcast has become like a fitness track. People want to know. Yes. How is your fitness journey? Have you been keeping up your morning jogs and that kind of thing? You really teed me up there, didn't you, Chris?
Starting point is 00:04:09 This is a big invitation. Yes, thank you for asking. I'm really happy to report I've been jogging for the first time in my life. Imagine someone that has never jogged since they were like 19 years old. I can imagine that kind of person. They would look something like this if such a person existed. Like this too. And then at the age of approaching 50, they say, I'm going to jog now.
Starting point is 00:04:37 And let me tell you, it's a shock to the system. Turns out you can't just jog. The body. The body rebels. The body rebels. What are you doing to me? But you can work your way up to it in stages, and I've been doing that. So, you know, first mainly walking, a little bit of jogging,
Starting point is 00:04:54 then stop when the pain hurts or your knees fall off or something. They're gradually increasing the periods of time that you're jogging, and now, you know, I get two or three kilometers before I have to start walking again then that's very pleasant i lived in the ocean i'm very lucky i get to i send you pictures of the of the beach it looks very nice does look very nice yeah and uh on my update matt i've been cycling to and from work. That's like 15 kilometers each way. That's doing me good.
Starting point is 00:05:26 I'm seeing little areas in the countryside and whatnot. And I took up bouldering. There's a bouldering gym near my office. I've been bouldering up and down walls like a graceful... Chimpanzee. Like a goat. Not exactly. More like a lumber. Not exactly. More like a
Starting point is 00:05:46 lumbering sloth. But anyway, very good exercise and I enjoy it. So, you know, I get these kind of like obsessive things. So I'm going quite a lot recently. It's very convenient for my office. So there we go. In a couple of years, we'll
Starting point is 00:06:01 expect bouldering championships and whatnot. But for for now just getting up without falling off uh repeatedly that that's the goal yeah you know it doesn't look incredibly difficult from the videos you send me but you do assure me that it really hurts it is i'm looking i'm making it look easy matt that's the trick that the trick. I think it's the camera. The camera does things and makes it doesn't look very tall and stuff. But then I remembered that, you know, you got me into buying a pull-up bar and you do like a hundred or something.
Starting point is 00:06:35 I don't do a hundred. Well, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's in the double digits anyway. My maximum is 18, which is good. It's just good, I think, for a 40-year-old. And then I did three and then permanently injured myself. But let's not focus on our failures, Matt.
Starting point is 00:06:56 So this is old man or middle-aged man health section. We're doing all right. We're doing okay. All right. Like, yeah. Don't worry about us. We're okay. Don't worry't worry about us we're still our heart is still beating our bones are not broken we survive so uh while we are in physical peak condition the discourse is doing It's doing worse. It's not keeping in tip-top shape. It's causing troubles. It's getting funny.
Starting point is 00:07:28 Yeah. Well, I guess it depends how this metaphor would continue because the discourse, I suppose, is relatively healthy in that everybody likes swimming and splashing around, surfing along the waves. And in particular, there is another round of blambly discourse. Yay! Yay!
Starting point is 00:07:54 This particular one brought on by Alina Chan, publishing an opinion piece in the New York Times, why the pandemic probably started in a lab in five key points. And this was a very highly produced article. It's super long, has these interactive visualizations and released just before Fauci was being grilled on, you know, one of the never-ending panel Senate investigation committees in America. So New York Times adding to the discourse, the actual article itself, nothing new, nothing new, written by somebody who has published books and for many years spent advocating the lab leak without directly claiming that's what they're doing. But it's very obvious that's what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:08:47 If you're interested in arguments, we did a three-hour episode with relevant experts where we put these exact arguments and other ones that Alina Chan and Matt Ridley raised to Sam Harris and had the experts respond. And the fact that we did that, it must have been over a year ago, and yet this is breaking news. It needs a big opinion piece in the New York Times. That says something. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:18 It says something about the sad state of affairs in our mainstream media. Our main job is criticizing these alternative media sources and you know we've been fairly labeled as mindless defenders of the mainstream media but my god standards really have slipped i kind of do blame the online discourse in a way because clearly those mainstream channels are like you know they're desperate for clicks and downloads and subscribers as well and i just feel like standards are slipping. I mean, the New York Times is meant to be the best. It's meant to be one of the best. Like, remember when the UFO thing was a big deal? The New York Times headline then was, no longer in the shadows, Pentagon's UFO unit will make
Starting point is 00:10:00 some findings public. And that's this breath breathless thing always implying that there's some exciting new ufo revelations of course there wasn't there was nothing but it's you know it's what people want it's an exciting story just like the lab leak is an exciting story bloody matt ridley slid into my mentions last night you know asking whether i'd read his book and i was like no of course i haven't read your book i mean i know I know what's in it because we listened to you speak to Sam Harris. We dealt with all those things with actual experts, like you said. But why would anyone read a book by someone who is a banker slash journalist, that's his background, has weird libertarian sympathies, has written other books saying that all the climate scientists are making stuff up.
Starting point is 00:10:46 And as you reminded me, Chris, has famously quite strongly implied that AIDS, I think. Oh, he just considered the possibility that AIDS, HIV, there was another origin possible. Just consider, just asking questions. another origin possible just consider just asking questions but that's the yeah okay so yeah in this alternative universe all of the climatologists there's a shady conspiracy afoot they can't see what's obvious to matt ridley all the virologists there's a shady conspiracy afoot they can't see what's obvious to matt ridley in this alternative universe he's the person you should be going to to find out the lowdown on these very technical scientific subjects no he is not no he is not yeah and i've referred to this
Starting point is 00:11:35 habit that people have of surfing the discourse essentially like when you hear anybody talk about the lab like or really anything with covid it is almost all just referencing a handful of headlines and the views of media pundits and presenting that as if it represents science as if it represents a universal experience that everybody had that you know there was a headline in sliet or whatever liberal outlet and that headline, not even usually the articles, because when you dig into the articles, they tend to include qualifying information, but the headlines themselves or individual snippets, which are endlessly repeated on right-wing media of a two-line answer from Fauci in some interview where he spent one hour, you know, going into
Starting point is 00:12:27 detail about trade-offs and whatnot. And then they said, nobody discussed any trade-offs about, there was never any reference about things like that. So all that kind of thing happens. And an example of this, yeah, usually the people that are doing this are people like Neil Silver, Matt Iglesias kind of people, right? Like there's a whole host of them. They often don't have relevant scientific training. So they treat science as if it's a, you know, a similar sort of thing as opinion punditry. Like that is the way that they react to it. And an example is Nicholas Kristof, who is a journalist, I think also for the New York Times, a columnist, quite a venerable one. And he wrote, quoting Alina Chan's article,
Starting point is 00:13:14 I don't know what caused COVID-19, but I do think Alina Chan makes a strong case for a lab leak in Wuhan. In retrospect, many of us in the journalistic and public health worlds were too dismissive of that possibility when she and others were making the argument in 2020. Now, Matt, that's so frustrating because maybe Nicholas Kristof was dismissive, but the public health and scientists actually did investigations into the possibility. They actually wrote papers. they actually examined the possibility in quite a lot of depth they did take it seriously the who sent an investigation there was multiple efforts and ongoing efforts to detect the origin and they gradually came to some very definitive conclusions and so there is a scientific reality there underneath the surface and on top of it is the discourse including the mainstream and the alternative media which is flip-flopping
Starting point is 00:14:11 between this shock revelation new thing you know this new and then they've been done yeah swing and then they make out that it's all wrong and they backtrack it and then it's all it all makes for copy i guess but they make up that their discourse is the actual reality of the scientific investigations that have been going on and it just isn't very frustrating and alina's key arguments are there was a lab in wuhan the diffuse project submission these are all things again that we talked about in depth with the people over a year ago. So why this is being presented as breaking news is just that whole thing because of the way discourse works. It was in the New York Times. It doesn't matter that the arguments have already been addressed.
Starting point is 00:15:01 And many scientists, relevant experts link to fred's highlighting that so there we go there we go that's it another round of lab like this question some people asked you know oh what do you think about this new thing and nothing i already know that alina chan thinks the lab like is the most likely thing she wrote a book about it she yeah conspiracy tweets constantly on twitter there's no nothing new for her to say that she thinks the evidence is leaning more towards the lab lake so nothing changed nothing just the new york times covered it that's what changed yeah yeah which isn't isn't information it isn evidence. It's just that you can point to a New York Times article. Okay.
Starting point is 00:15:47 All right. Okay. That's us being grumpy old science men. Yes. Well, so in another corner of the internet map, we previously talked about Alex O'Connor's interview with Jordan Peterson and the potential for the skewing perspective that becoming a bigger influencer type pundit can bring, right? Because
Starting point is 00:16:14 he was talking about taking a dialogue approach as opposed to a combative approach to entering into discussion. And we previously talked about potential issues, the trade-offs that you make there in doing that, you know, being more indulgent and yeah, avoiding certain kind of topics that might cause more controversy and whatnot. But another aspect of that conversation, which I do think needs to be acknowledged and which was productive in a way, is that Alex wanted to pin Jordan down a little bit on his stance about religion and Christianity, and in particular, the resurrection. And he really had to go to quite a lot of lengths
Starting point is 00:16:59 to try and get Jordan to address the topic. So I'm going to play an example of Jordan being his obfuscating self. Now, there's a claim that is attributed to Christ that he is the embodiment or the incarnation, the fulfillment, let's say, of the prophet and the laws. I think that's true yeah what does that mean well you know what i think it's in the gospel of john i think gospel of john closes with a statement that's something like if all the books that were ever written were written about the gospel accounts that wouldn't be enough books to explain what it happened yeah if we like yes all the things that jesus did yeah yeah and it's and it's there's a there's a truth in that the truth is that profound religious account is bottomless and the biblical representations are like that
Starting point is 00:17:52 there's no limit to the amount of investigation they can bear not least because the text itself is deeply cross-referenced so there's like there's an innumerable number of paths through it it's like a chessboard and so it it's it's inexhaustible in its interpretive space that's true and that's a problem too because it means it's also susceptible to multiple interpretations including potentially competing interpretation right so this is in relation to a question about whether he believes in christ yeah from the dead. Yeah. And you do hear echoes of Zizek a little bit there, right?
Starting point is 00:18:30 That there's endless possible interpretations. The interpretive space is endless for text. Some people mentioned that in response to us commenting, you know, a shark, you can make endless. And just to be clear, I i agree humans can't do that they can waffle endlessly about almost anything you could write dissertations on the imagery and pepper pig if you wanted to or pepper pigs metaphorical analogous structure to the jataka teals of buddhism right like there you go any aspiring humanities phds chris has got a topic for you if you're struggling for one that'll work
Starting point is 00:19:12 yeah what what exactly is the ontological status of the human queen in peppa pig when everyone else in the show is an animal and the queen is the only human explain it right like we could be look at let's look at the ontological assumptions there is there multiverses has the queen slipped into the peppa pig verse is she this is a dystopian future for her these are all questions that one could ask but one could ask these questions yeah yeah you might well ask whether or not she you know whether it's a commentary on class struggle and um yeah he's working all the time but does he ever reuse in a position like and do people age it's almost a meta commentary on you know the futility of work and the alienation from the mode of production
Starting point is 00:20:01 but set that aside set that aside so peterson's right in that people really can interpret this is the beauty of our species and the horror that we really can go on such interpretive flights of fancy but he regards it as like a specific property of the biblical of the bible yes yes the biblical not texts, because that would be postmodernism and therefore bad. But the biblical text, that's a special one, that does permit a multiplicity of interacting fractal-like interpretations spawning off into infinity.
Starting point is 00:20:38 That's cool. Yeah, and sometimes he will then follow that up by saying, but this doesn't mean that every interpretation is equal because of, you know, evolution and these kinds of things. So he tries to, you know, like make an appeal to some criteria, but it's very hand wavy what he does, which, and it's essentially to say that his interpretation is better than the alternatives. So there was loads of this. There was 40 minutes of him constantly doing this over and over. But Alex did manage through persistence and politeness to set things up and then get to a question where he eventually got Peterson to admit something which he hasn't before. So first of all, here is the setup. I think a lot of people interpret Paul, for example, the earliest New Testament source as saying that if Jesus did not literally rise from the dead,
Starting point is 00:21:37 if there was not a man who stopped breathing and then started breathing again, then your faith is futile and you're still in your sins. That is Christianity is undermined. Now that means that, and Paul doesn't say sort of believing that that's false is really bad. He says, if you do not believe this proactively, then your faith is futile. It's a problem I have with that.
Starting point is 00:21:59 If you don't proactively believe that yourself, then I think when a Christian asks you, you know, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Are you a Christian? I think you must be committed to saying no, at least under that interpretation of Paul. And even if you're not sure, I mean, it's fine if I say to you, do you think that a man physically rose from the dead? And you say something like, well, I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there, but I think it has a lot of mythological significance, or I think that maybe it
Starting point is 00:22:19 happened in a different sense, or it happened in the sense that good fiction happens, you know, then fine. But it needs to begin with that caveat of the simple sort of, historically speaking, I don't know. And I know you don't like to pull out the historical Jesus from the mythological, but it's an important question to ask. No, of course. It's a very good objection. Good job there, right?
Starting point is 00:22:37 Okay. I didn't know this. So, was it Paul said that you really, to be a Christian, you really do need to... I don't know if it was Paul. It could be a theologian or whoever he was referencing. But in any case, yeah, that is something that I would imagine that various Christian figures have argued. Would say. Yeah, of course.
Starting point is 00:22:56 Yeah. And he does a good job by kind of preempting that Jordan's going to say the historical and mythological can't be taken apart and all this. But so this was the setup, Matt. And this was the question that Peterson was caught with. I was impressed by this. When you say you believe the accounts, do you mean, and I hate to be sort of pedantic here, it seems pedantic, but do you mean you believe that these are things that happened such that if I, if now, I know you don't like that. Let me put it this way. If I went back in time with a Panasonic video camera and put that camera in front of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, would the little LCD screen show
Starting point is 00:23:37 a man walk out of that tomb? I would say suspect yes. So that to me seems like a belief in the historical event of the resurrection, or at least of Jesus leaving the tomb, which means that when somebody says, you know, do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? It doesn't seem clear to me why you're not able to just say, it would seem to me yes.
Starting point is 00:23:58 Because I have no idea what that means. And neither did the people who saw it. You know, like he then tried to walk it back, right? He doesn't really know what it means. But like Alex did, I kind of appreciate it because he added the details. So on the little camera screen, would a man appear on that image?
Starting point is 00:24:17 And that allowed Jordan to be, okay, with all of those things, like, yeah, probably. Then he immediately tries to obfuscate. But yeah. Yeah, yeah, probably. Then he immediately tries to obfuscate, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, because if he'd used any other words, like, do you believe that he rose from the dead,
Starting point is 00:24:34 he'd go, well, that depends what you mean by believe, right? But he can't go, that depends what you mean by an LCD camera. It doesn't work as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, look, Jordan actually gets into more difficulty with the bona fide Christians than he does with leftists and work people and academics and so on, doesn't he? Because they- Yeah, he does.
Starting point is 00:24:55 I've seen so many articles written by pastors or reverends of some Christian bulletin or something like that, having a go at Jordan Peterson, because he's like a metaphorical, allegorical, metaphysical Christian, rather than a proper one. So he doesn't speak, at least if they feel that he doesn't speak for them. Okay, I see. Well, you can see potentially why. But I just find this, people have been trying to pin Jordan Peterson on this point for years, right? He's never directly answered the question. And this is a, this is an answer. Now, yes, he immediately walks it back. It doesn't actually matter, right? It doesn't really matter what Jordan Peterson specifically means, but it's just the fact that somebody got him that actually, you know, yeah, that that's that's the achievement so alex deserves credit for that and um good job
Starting point is 00:25:52 alex that's maybe the flip side of being indulgent because he was so considerate and polite and whatnot that's what allowed jordan to answer was it worth it you know there's a question there but nonetheless yeah i'm not sure it was worth it i for one do not care what jordan feels about that event but if you cared this would be you know a clarification like he's admitted and it's absolutely fine you think jesus rose from the dead. Welcome to the same realm as millions and billions of Christians around the world. It doesn't make you special or it's not something, you know, mystical that nobody has ever heard of. Yes, fine. You have religious belief. That's it. You know, why did that take you so long? They work out, you know, fine. And if you
Starting point is 00:26:41 don't believe he rose from the dead, that's fine too too you don't have to right like it's it's not shouldn't be this thing which requires thousands of hours of obfuscation to avoid but it it is because jordan peterson is a tortured soul so you know everything has to be like that but there we go yeah there you go well it makes sense, it makes sense to me. I don't think he really does believe, not in the sense of one of those, like a serious, like born-again Christian. I think he is a Jungian, Freudian, metaphysical, cultural Christian. He loves all the trappings
Starting point is 00:27:17 and he loves the sort of moral basis of it. But I don't think he does. But he doesn't want to sort of own that position either because it's it's kind of a weak position to not be a proper christian yeah now i almost all the people that i've seen waxing lyrical about the kind of christian tradition and the importance to consider ritual and people really they're missing these you know fundamental aspects in their life and what almost all of them haven't grown up religious. Like if you were raised, like I was raised Catholic and went to mass every week, there's no
Starting point is 00:27:52 hidden secret world of, oh, I've never considered that. I've met religious people my whole life, people who believe in the Bible, people who don't, they're all going to church, they're all doing different things. And there's people that are into Christian mystics or not, or, you know, they join priesthoods or they become monks or nuns, whatever the case might be. And it isn't this fantastical, you know, mystical realm of psychological interpretations and imagery. It is just, there are people in the world that are religion, there are religious traditions, there's stuff in religious traditions that is boring as hell. And a lot of it rests on supernatural claims. And how do you feel about that? And the theological claims? It just, it isn't such a fantastical mystery that nobody's ever considered if you are somebody that has like been raised in a
Starting point is 00:28:46 culture where religion exists so i think that part of it is an epiphenom of the people coming across this stuff later and regarding that there's very esoteric and you know just like they never were aware of the beauty of the christian tradition and you're like yeah all right well well that's the funny thing about russell brand with his he's publicizing his his newfound appreciation for christianity and his spiritual journey and it's this exotic thing that he's embarking on i don't think he'd ever actually go to church or do any of the boring things that run-of-the-mill christians do but the the he's on is so epic, and I guess it's appealing to people. I think he is going to church, but it's just layered all that.
Starting point is 00:29:31 Well, I don't know. At least he's making an initial effort, let's see, in one year's time. But the whole point about it is my lack of faith in Christianity is well-documented. But one of the things I do recall is that you're not really supposed to publicize your great works and your you know spiritual achievements and whatnot because those people have already received a reward on earth you know the person who gives and doesn't make a show of it that's supposed to be the thing but russell brand absolutely has made a show of you know his christian conversion he doesn't he doesn't
Starting point is 00:30:10 have the right temperament for christianity i feel it's not really in his nature evangelical christianity fine like evangelical american style mega church christ Christianity, but like Church of England style or, you know, Irish Catholicism? No, no, not interesting enough. So yeah, that's the way it is. And like, you know, last thing I'll say is I've been to Barcelona, right? And seen the Sagrada Familia.
Starting point is 00:30:39 What a beautiful architectural wonder, the mind of Gaudi who did that. But I love shrines and temples all around japan and there are beautiful buildings beautiful elements of culture that come from religious traditions and devotion and all that do you like the sound of church bells chris i don't like i don't like them that much to be. I'm not a fan. But the thing is, you know, culture, human culture is interesting and we can make profound and beautiful things, but it also comes through literature. It also comes from science and all these different things.
Starting point is 00:31:16 So marking out Christianity or religion as like this fundamentally different thing, you know, that needs to be regarded as this beautiful pearl that nothing else can be compared to it's just it's exceptionalist and exoticism and all that kind of thing it doesn't mean that you have to be this kind of hard-nosed reductionist person saying oh i hate all church buildings and you know we should build those cathedrals and so on no no no but you don't have the the alternative doesn't have to be the indulgent waffles of peterson and brand like surely there's another path that we can all take so yeah yeah i think we can all agree with you there yeah that's it well matt another another thing that happened now we often talk about the toxic
Starting point is 00:32:09 dynamics that you see on social media and you see as people's profile grow as pundits want to be influencers you know we did an episode on trigonometry whether they were reflecting on their growth and it it is at the heart of a lot of the way that the gurus interact. There are always, you know, the kids would say they're trying to gain clout or get controversy and this kind of thing. They're very thirsty for it. The gurus want attention and they can always find ways to get it. and they can always find ways to get it. And there's a channel on YouTube by a guy who has the usual tale of woe about the mainstream media field. In his case, he believes he was held back
Starting point is 00:32:57 because of the woke DEI agenda. And he's a white male, right? wasn't part of the bbc's image right so he had all these good documentary ideas and you know like ability a good presenter and all this but he didn't fit the demographic characteristics he's got a grievance narrative you might say you might say that yes and his name is andrew gold he's also done some work on like scientology and cults and that kind of thing but he created a channel called heretics that was his rebranded um of course it's called heretics there's only like six or so names for these things dissidents i know renegades yeah heretics it is and um and his channel is growing like he's growing up but he very much is following in the mold of trigonometry i think he references chris williamson right as also somebody who wants to imitate and he recently
Starting point is 00:33:54 did an interview with a british soccer player any aluka and she is very much kind of social justice warrior type woke advocate DI advocate type person so he did an interview with her and she doesn't come across very well you know she doesn't respond very well he raises like contradictory points in her perspective of things she calls him racist at times or says you you know, this is a racist perspective. So it's a kind of woke, anti-woke stuff that the culture war eats up. And as a result, it was quite popular on YouTube and, you know, the kind of anti-woke networks. But then I saw that he posted another video afterward called Exposed. I didn't show this in viral woke debate with any aluku. Yeah, so this is a follow-up video that he did afterwards.
Starting point is 00:34:56 And the first thing he highlights, Matt, I'm going to comment on the dynamics because this video seemed to me to encapsulate all of the toxic elements that we talk about in a very short period. So, first of all, you get this. The trailer alone has more than 2 million views on Twitter and opened this channel up to a whole new audience. Eni's nemesis, Joey Barton, couldn't resist a pop. So, the focus on views, right?
Starting point is 00:35:22 We hear this with Peterson. We hear it with Constantine. Yeah. All of them, the constant referencing, this got X amount of views. And that indicates something profound. Rather than that indicates that you're producing inflammatory. Clickbait. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:41 Yeah. Yeah. And then. Yeah. Yeah. And then. So I thought it would be a good idea to have a deep dive into the most controversial and confusing moments. I like Eni Aluko and I think she means well, but she is part of a woke cult the people instilling authoritarian DEI and diversity quotas into our media without our permission. I want to specifically look at Eni's arguments
Starting point is 00:36:14 and the paradoxical hypocrisies in which they are dripping. Some of these are extremely obvious. You can watch the whole thing on Heretics, of course. obvious you can watch the whole thing on heretics of course yeah so he's going to dissect some of the highlights from his own video and he says he likes any but i doubt she would appreciate so so what's going on here is he's had a video it's it's a it's a culture war woke anti-woke thing it went somewhat viral he's gotten very excited he's doing a follow-up and it's exposed you know you have to watch this to find out you know what really happened the thing he's aiming for maximum clickbait he wants to min max this oh yeah and i've got yeah exactly that so listen to this matt this is like this is almost all of the youtube tropes in condensed one minute format and if you care
Starting point is 00:37:11 about this kind of content please just hit subscribe it makes all the difference and i'm fascinated to see how many people do subscribe just from watching this video but more importantly more subscribers means i can get bigger and bolder guests and grow this channel into the stratosphere. Now, the first thing to note is that although socials from the video have gone viral, it's been covered by no one in the mainstream media. And yet, YouTubers have been covering it and racking up millions of views this video struck a chord there are things of course that go on off screen too and if you stay till the end of the video i can give you an insight into how things were off screen off camera and i'll be brutally honest
Starting point is 00:37:58 did you detect anything there matt it's so good he he hits everyone of the like really thirsty influencer techniques because okay first of all if you care if you care about our mission to expose what's going on to to defend the society to make things back the way they should be then you will click like subscribe yeah so nice nice call to action there uh and uh and obviously there's a dig on the mainstream because the mainstream media won't cover this chris it's not viral a youtube video went viral about the anti-vogue thing but the mainstream it wasn't on any of the news channels what are we gonna do about this what are we gonna do about this we need to make my video go more viral and stay to the end to the moon i know i mean this is you know guys most people remember
Starting point is 00:38:58 the constant kiss and thing where it's just the similar kind of obsession where they're very transparent like they're not hiding really what's going on in their heads and you just know that it's going on 24 7 how can i get more likes how can i get more subscriptions how can i get revenue up how can i get more clout how can i get more attention like that is the one and only overriding concern that they have but stay near me chris stay to the end you've got to stay to the end because that's where the real secrets are going to be uncovered and i think i mean i'm not 100 sure of this but i think the way youtube the algorithm works or at least how they believe it works is that if somebody watches your video for a bit that's good if they click on it that they like that's
Starting point is 00:39:39 good but if you watch it to the end then that's extra super good right because it is it tells the algorithm yeah yeah it gives you feedback on videos how long the average person watched to and i don't know what it does but i think the general law is people staying till the end of the video leads to it being higher ranked than the algorithm and whatever so and on that i'm a smart that there will be some you know behind the scenes information divulge if you stay to the end i'll be brutally honest brutally apart what it is so we might even see what that information is at the end but so to show the kind of thing that he did in the video this is a clip of him commenting on the content so you'll hear a a bit of the back and forth and then his editorializing on it.
Starting point is 00:40:27 You're right that it was sports, not just football. You're right. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. In the boardroom in sports, 17% are BAME as opposed to 18% of the general population. So that surprised me. To me, that seems pretty fair as well. So that surprised me. To me, that seems pretty fair as well.
Starting point is 00:40:48 Yeah, I mean, I think with sport as well, you've got to talk about sort of cultural norms and cultural background, right? So typically, you know, sports like tennis. As you'll go on to see, this is one of the many times when Eni is unable to answer the question and goes off on a tangent about tennis again this isn't her fault this is a cult-like ideology and she isn't used to facing a reasonable
Starting point is 00:41:13 person outside of the cult she has nowhere else to turn or to go but let's look at the kind of cultish indoctrination they feed her it's not her fault she's a brilliant dead zombie she's been indoctrinated yeah i mean like i said at the beginning she said she didn't perform particularly well i could easily believe that but he's doing her really dirty isn't he i mean he sounds quite oh yeah and friendly in the interview and then this editorializing in the the follow-up yeah that's not she look at her, dodged the question. And it isn't her fault. She hasn't been taught how to think
Starting point is 00:41:48 or interact with reasonable people. She's never dealt with a reasonable person before. So it's sad. It's like, it is like Alan Partridge. If you'd like to continue
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