Decoding the Gurus - Supplementary Materials 8: Lab Leak Discourse, Toxic YouTube Dynamics, and the Metaphysics of Peppa Pig
Episode Date: June 7, 2024We 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)
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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,
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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.
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,
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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