Someone in my high school ethics class offered “hate speech isn’t real” as a debate topic, the whole class pretended he didn’t even exist.

I've stopped a few arguments by asking "Do you actually care if your position is true or are you only concerned with winning the argument?"

I love the heavy sigh before he goes “it also means Jews”. He’s so annoyed

Also fits Ben Shapiro's "I'm not an expert, but...". It's Schrodinger's expert. If people call them out on made-up facts and severe misunderstandings, they can just back up to a position where whatever they said was a mere insincere thought-experiment. But to anyone who doesn't do the research, it is presented as sincere and genuine science.

I take offense to the term "Mayonnaise Boy". The politically correct term is "Hellmann-Americans".

What you generally describe here in this video is what I have dubbed "Fat-free Fascism." A fat-free food is often marketed as having all the pleasure of a fatty food without any of the guilt of actually eating a fatty food. It's all the pleasure of fascism, fascist rhetoric and ideas, but without any of the guilt of actually having to admit to being a fascist to themselves or others.

Republicans: We are the party of Lincoln Also Republicans: *waves conferderate flag proudly*

Yeah when I’m arguing with a conservative and they pull the “women don’t really deserve rights” or the “people’s lives don’t really matter” there’s nothing left to say. I can’t convince someone that people matter and I usually just leave. I would hate to think these people take that as them winning the argument and champion their disdain for humanity elsewhere

See also: Kettle logic. Holding multiple arguments that are contradictory. Named after Freud's story about a neighbour who had borrowed a kettle, and returned it damaged. Confronted about this, the neighbour claimed, simultaneously, that he had returned the kettle undamaged, that the kettle was already damaged when he borrowed it, and that he had never borrowed the kettle in the first place. If someone uses kettle logic when arguing against you, it is a clear sign that they don't actually hold a coherent narrative that they believe in, they just want to throw any argument that they can think of at you.

"He believes he believes it" is a really interesting statement. I know 2 very conservative people that will come to the middle or even the left sometimes when you follow them down the rabbit hole of some conservative stance they take. But as soon as they go back to normal and especially when they get around their conservative groups, the last conversation is erased from memory and they are back to their far right stance again. It's almost like it's the comfort of their old pattern that controls their stances. If you can lead them out of it, they are reasonable. But once they return to their resting state, it's back to the old ways.

just here to say that the phrase The Card says Moops" has honestly saved me a lot of energy. Everytime on Twitter I see a guy in the comments of a progressive tweet trying to feed their animal brains, I just thinks about the cards and move on. If I do respond, I simply say "Card says Moops" and move on; That's how powerful this saying is to me

Edgy 13 year old me is in this video he and doesn't like it.

"No social mores" I believe you mean social moops

"The most recent gay nightclub shooting wasn't an anti-queer hate crime, because the person guilty claims to be non-binary." Newest and trendiest incarnation of this unfortunately common argument tactic, just to give this comment section another time capsule.

Oh my god I just today played a game of "The card says Moops" with a Terf. she contradicted herself in every sentence, pretended not to understand things she clearly mentioned in other replies and all in all had decided what I was going to say before she even engaged and then just pretended I said what she had anticipated despite me explaining the opposite multiple times. Frustrating as fuck

This is also why I hate trolls (or people who are claiming they are trolling) with a passion. Because, barring some exceptions, they undermine communities by trying to rile people up. It erodes the trust required that people will be acting in good faith and care about a certain issue. They're like a noxious gas in a space station's air supply. "Just kidding." should not fly as an excuse for whatever garbage they post. It's also why I think people who make particularly harsh jokes in meatspace are either bullies or very very good friends who know what they can or cannot say.

"They agree with hateful shit but don't want to be reminded of it" This explains so much.

dat Meloriac font Also, that bit about maintaining ignorance of one's own beliefs really reminded me of Zizek on disavowal, and the whole Pontius-Pilate washing his hands thing

As someone who nearly drove himself mad trying to figure out a coherent/internally consistent worldview as a kid, the concept of "maintaining ignorance of one's own beliefs" is so alien to me it feels like it shouldn't even be possible, but it's definitely held by my parents. Anything terrible I bring up is dismissed as quickly as possible, and sometimes I swear I've talked with them again the same week and it's like they've forgotten the entire conversation. They're not senile, _yet._ I don't know how it works. It's got to work somehow into the notion of prioritizing a coherent worldview over a true one. (I recognize the wording earlier, and the thing was I valued truth first, making the "coherent" part challenging, especially coming out of a religion)

"Oh, this isn't an Iron Cross, it's a Gregorian cross!"

"Was Spain really invaded anyway?"

"Schrodinger's Douchebag." I can't tell you how many times I've encountered this personality online. Someone making some comment that they then go "Bro, it was just a joke!" or something similar. Nice to finally have a name to put to the personality.

I was a liberal troll for a while on Instagram, I legitimately took pride in dumbasses blocking me because I made them hate the fight they started. I stopped when I realized it damaged my personal life and made me have an unhealthy relationship with social media. "Trolling" is not something anyone needs to embrace, even if you win or "win" fights against people you hate.

I literally said on a forum "It's racist for a white person to continuously say the n-word after it's been pointed out to them it's racist." What I got in response: "I'm not White, I'm Irish and we're oppressed by the brittish! And also by the VIkings who pillaged us 800 years ago." "Why are you pointing out that I'm white and hating me because of it?" "You won't convince people who disagree with what you just said so you might as well not try!" "Racism isn't when you spam the n-word to your friends repeatedly or post it on public forums." 2 of these people just said "Nu uh, pointing out I'm white is racist", 1 tried to define racism as a binary not a spectrum or scale, and 1 tried to say "racists will always exist".

"It is piss easy to upset conservatives" 5:09 Saw the companies you threw in there. 4 years ago, never would have imagined that BUD LIGHT would end up in this category. Piss. Easy.

I'd like to offer a minor correction and a possible point in regards to Darwin's theory: it's not the strongest that survive, it's the most adaptable. Which, for this example, means the ideas that are most readily adapted or altered to fit the groupthink opinion are the most likely to endure; hence why so many of these alt-right ideas are contradictory.

I used to be really fooled by this type of thing to the point where I joined a Kekistani fb group and was actually shocked by how much actual racism I saw there. I'm probably just stupid idk but either way, it was terrifying to see something I genuinely believed was just a joking and funny thing be unironically terrible :(( in retrospect I really should have seen it coming because I saw a bunch of these contradictions flying around but always assumed it was just flukes for a lack of a better word.

"...or do you believe cops are civil servants and we should believe their account of events whenever they shoot a black man for looking like he might have a gun?" Innuendo's videos continue to be blatantly, nationally relevant. Even as the conversation shifts. Really hits home.

This whole process - that truth is determined by the best arguer, not the actual facts - is fundamental to the way that high school debate classes and competitions operate. The whole idea is that you should be able to argue from any position, and in fact you're told to prepare "both sides" and are only assigned a position when you walk into the room ten minutes before the argument starts. This is a big part of why I quite high school debate.

I'm amazed how many people watched this whole video and only got "so you think all Conservatives are racist?" Some people are beyond help.

A perfect example of this technique is Tucker Carlson. He merely spews a series of questions on an issue to stir the pot but never takes a position that is consistent with a heart felt belief system. The questions are often easily answered with a little research but he is not using them to take a fact based stand that supports a position. His purpose is to continue the controversy ad nauseam.

I've stumbled onto this channel due to a video being shared by a friend. When I was younger, up until a couple of years ago, I was big into chan culture and considered myself part of the alt-right for a while. I never knew any of this, or realised I was doing this, but you're right on the money and you're being a big help to me understanding my past mistakes and what went wrong in my head and how I can continue to learn and improve. Thank you so much for making this series. I hope more people like me can see this and grow beyond their old selves, as well as people who are still part of the alt-right and don't see what's going on in their own heads. (Their instincts will tell them to reject it because it makes them uncomfortable, but not all of them will.)

“The left thinks I’m insufferable and nobody wants to be within 1 mile of me, I must’ve won the argument and PWNED THE LIBS!!!11!111!”

the New Zealand killer just took this ideology to the next level to the point where /pol/ and T_D are actually claiming he was just a trolling to trigger "normies", and how he wasn't ACTUALLY a bigot. This is the best video explaining this kind of channer ethos.

This should form part of the curricular for the "surviving the internet" course taught in every school

I honestly feel like this channel needs to be automatically included in a starter pack for new leftists. Really, really, really good content

When I was young, I used to believe I could convince people of my position because I was learned, or because I was passionate. If I couldn't convince someone based on reason, I thought that I could convince them by my conviction and sincerity. "Surely," I thought, "if they don't buy my argument, they might see that I want to get to the truth earnestly." I would walk away from arguments, do my research, and try harder, but whereas I might question what I believe because I know I might be wrong, I have never received that impression from anyone I've argued with. To this day I have never convinced anyone of anything. I don't think it's possible.

As someone who used to be an edgelord that specifically enjoyed shocking and triggering conservatives, I can offer a little bit of insight here. See, if you're the type of person to be insincere about whether or not you're joking when you say something offensive, it stands to reason that you're also willing to be equally insincere about whether you take someone else's offensive statement as a joke or at face value, and for much the same reason... to create the appearance of winning. So, for instance, if I make a joke about how the "great replacement" can't happen soon enough, it doesn't matter how obvious it is that I'm just trolling the far right, they will turn around and present my statement as confirmation of their cuckoo conspiracy theories, as well as evidence that the left are in on it. If you try to clarify that you're just joking... well... then you'v e just fallen into a trap, because they're gonna throw all kinds of false equivalent examples of the left misreading offensive conservative edgy jokes as legitimate talking points. It doesn't really matter that their arguments don't hold water, because the appearance of having won the argument is good enough. If you actually believe in anything remotely left-leaning, it quickly becomes apparent that the practice of triggering conservatives is self-defeating. You don't do it, because it just doesn't help your case.

‘They don’t care what they believe, but they know what they hate’ *and I took that personally*

"like Newtonian physics, if you assume this framing, you will get highly useful results [...], but like Newtonian physics, this framing will be lower case 'a' 'accurate,' without being capital 't' 'True.'" I just needed to comment to say that this analogy was so beautiful I cried. But I just have a thing for physics. Regardless, YES.

Using Seinfeld for good. I can get behind this.

Love this! But I'd like to add one thing: I believe this phenomenon is older than digital culture. I have a "friend" in her 60s who became a fascist in 2016. One day, knowing I'm a socialist, she argued that I should admire Nazi Germany because they were socialists and they made Germany great. A few days later she argued that socialism was monstrous because Stalin! Venezuela! International Jewry! No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get her to see she was contradicting herself. She has no experience with chan culture, and I know she'd hate it. Her philosophy has come from right-wing KZfaq, Facebook, and the old-fashioned internet. I feel she could easily have adopted this way of thinking at any time, if exposed to the right books and articles. To me this suggests that this is a style of politics that's native to fascists of all times. There's a famous Hannah Arendt quote that supports this idea, but I can't find it at the moment, goddamnit.

6:04 made me laugh because he just sounds so defeated by how many words are antisemitic dog whistles but also makes me sad about how many words are antisemetic dog whistles...

I just showed this to my mother because it's how my grandfather argues, and she loved it. Thanks for sparking healthy conversation in my family ❤

Never thought I'd see the day where Poe's Law is weaponized, but here we are.

: "*sigh* It also means... Jews..." That cracked me up

On the humor point, there is a rational argument for taboo jokes. One of comedy’s central purposes is to promote discussion of uncomfortable parts of our society the laugh to keep from crying assertion. The problem is, there’s a big difference between joking to provide additional nuance and perspectives and joking to simply receive cheap laughs never really saying anything about the topic that adds to the normal discourse. Finding this boundary of nuance is extremely difficult and the reason only a handful of people are comedians and only a handful of them have succeeded in adding depth to our culture.

Very late into this, but I will say one thing. 4chan was not built to be a congregation of far right leaning, Moot did not develop the website for that purpose. The purpose was p0rn. However, the structure of 4chan breeds right wing ideology. Under the cover of anonymity, they can say things that doesn't bounce back at them. In addition to that, 4chan archives posts after 10 pages, so saying incredibly outlandish things creates a longevity in 4chan's constant self-destructive site. It's interesting how Tumblr is fundamentally the opposite, and did breed left leaning people. In having a username you have an identity that still doesn't have to be associated with people you directly know. The fact that it doesn't automatically delete posts means that it has an increased longevity, and posts can gain attention after the fact. 4chan forces intensity to be relevant. Tumblr allows identity to flourish.

I remember a while ago one of my Facebook friends posted a transphobic meme. Most of the time I don't engage on Facebook but transphobia is the rock I will die on p much no matter what. Anyway, they posted this transphobic meme and I commented, politely I'd like to think, saying something along the lines of "hey this is transphobic just so you know", and at first, they defended it by saying it was just a joke. After saying a few other things like "well it's a joke based on misinformation" or "even as a joke a trans person will see this and probably be really hurt", and then, all of a sudden, the argument quickly and abruptly switched. It wasn't "it's just a joke" anymore, it was "I don't care because it's true". You are exactly right in saying Schrodinger's douchebag tends to just agree with the shitty things they say, even as a joke. But more to the point, even if it was, 100%, a joke, who cares? If trans people are the butt of your joke because they are trans, then the underlying truth of the joke, the one you need to believe in order to think it's funny, is "trans people are wrong and transphobia is right". When Kevin Hart made that "joke" on Twitter that if his son was gay he'd beat him, the thing you have to believe for that joke to be funny is that he's right, that gayness is undesirable. That beating your child is preferable to them being gay. And even if that wasn't the intent, in the end it doesn't matter. If you spread transphobia by making jokes about trans people, you're still spreading transphobia.

Kinda sick of the comments claiming this to be a strawman or whatever. Innuendo is not making up a concept, he is literally explaining something that happens and we (and by 'we' I mean leftists who actually discuss with conservatives often) see every fucking time. If you don't use these tactics hey, great for you and he's not talking about you. But maybe, just maybe, you do use these tactics and don't even realize it. Not because you're "dumb" or "indoctrinated" and needs "enlightment from the progressives!", but because you're human. And humans can be biased, especially when it comes to strong beliefs. Just a hint: if your belief isn't racist at face value but ultimately leads to the empowerment of racists and to racist policies... maybe you should consider reavaluating them.

In person, especially with strangers/acquaintances, I immediately go “hun, yeah” and leave if they say something insane. I have done this with anti-maskers, flat earthers, and people who literally ban immigration. I am a small person, and I like being alive

The Card Says Moops, AKA South Park's politics

I encounter this kind of 'trolling' a lot. Where someone only decides they're joking based on the reaction.

How did "Say-for-the-sake-of-argument" become your catch phrase?

hey now, 4chan has moderators! although their literal only purpose is to delete child porn threads.....

Holy shit I've never seen a video that puts ALL of my biggest frustrations with online right wing dingbats & fascists & Chanboards and "anti-SJW" types into words so succinctly...

You have no idea how weird it is watching this video, about a year ago your first alt-right playbook video showed up for me and I was screaming since at the time, you were basically telling people how to deal with people like me. It was all a deconstruction of the person I was and the things watched and participated in at the time. But now after going through that year and meeting different people and making a serious shift in the media I watched and the way I thought and saw things, it's honestly a bittersweet feeling, knowing how easily one can fall into the rabbit hold of thing you aim to stop and seeing what you've done and hoping it can spark a change in others like it did for me. I hope you keep up what you're doing and others follow suit. I left alot of people behind, very few of which have managed to catch up and the following generations are already being infected. We can't afford to stop

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." -Oscar Wilde And I think he knows a little more about truth than you do, pal, because he invented it!

The best example I know of the whole “we are who we pretend to be” and “it’s just a joke, bro” thing is the fandom of Warhammer 40k. People start out jokingly saying things like “purge the unclean” and “suffer not the xenos to live”, essentially role playing as fictional fascists online either as a way of demonstrating their ‘membership’ in the fandom to others online, or for the purpose of humor with other fans. But in many cases, if this goes on long enough, it ceases to entirely be an act. You internalize ideas from the game, and it starts creeping into your other interests (for example, claiming that the humans from the movie Avatar were actually the good guys, or insisting that Cerberus from mass effect were actually right.). You start using catchphrases from 40k when talking about completely unrelated things. At this point, many fans start buying into the in-universe propaganda, and start trying to justify the horrible things the Imperium does as ‘necessary’, or start describing them as the ‘least evil’ faction. At any point in this process, if someone where to point out that the community seems to have a fascism infestation, or point out the fascist apologia seems to be rampant in both the community and the source material, best case scenario you get a response of “well, the setting started out as a deliberate parody of fascism/authoritarianism, so it’s not actually fascist apologia (despite having ceased to be parody/political commentary somewhere around 2nd edition)”. If you are unlucky, they will refuse to break character, and start accusing you of heresy. If this goes on long enough, it becomes hard to distinguish the person from the character they are RPing as. The mask ceases to be a mask. For some people it’s not a complete process; a bunch may not become full-on fascists, but they still start moving closer to the alt-right, becoming vulnerable to recruitment by fascists later on, and internalizing ideas that may not be fascist themselves, but are certainly fascism-adjacent. Speaking from experience, it is really easy to start internalizing unpleasant stuff from fiction, especially when you’re still trying to determine your own beliefs. It can happen with a lot of different fandoms. I’ve seen people go from being fans of fallout, to being fans of Caesars Legion in terms of lore or aesthetics or whatever, to actually claiming that they’re “doing what is necessary/making the hard choices”, and are really the good guys, to arguing that in IRL, a dictatorship can actually be good because it “gets things done”, etc.

I used to lean right and it's scary to me how accurate some of the statements and mentalities presented are. I legit used to only speak in half-truths, claiming that I'm serious or kidding based on what I'd get out of the conversation. I didn't even realize I was doing it, until someone sat me down and pointed out my hypocrisy.

*DEEP SIGH* "It also means Jews." YES. YES YES YES.

They legitimately do not care whether the words coming out of their mouths are true. That is what alternative-facts are for. You can say anything is true as long as you can just make up any amount of sh*t that you want to. As long as you or your guy wins, then it doesn't matter if you lied, or can't do the job. The only thing that matters to them is winning.

This just reminds me of this one time I watched a George Floyd deepfake singing 'I knew you were trouble when you walked in'. One guy in the comments said it was disrespectful the comments immediately went from its just chill it's a joke to George Floyd was no saint to he already had high levels of substance in his blood so it wasn't really 'the cops fault' that he died some guy even called him a baby killer. Don't worry guys these people are not actually bigots they're just 'trolling'

In my opinion, this is the most fascinating alt-right playbook phenomenon. It shows how insane these people are.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night EDIT: Damn, should have waited for the video to end to comment!

“People are judged by their actions, not by what they believe in.” Even if you don’t believe in anything, if you preach, spread, defend, or tolerate alt-right and fascist ideology, that’s who you are. No questions asked.

this hit the nail on the head for me. i used to hang out in much edgier groups years ago, before deradicalizing and going a lot further to the left. and yet, when looking at how i got here, i'd remember having some very left-wing beliefs years ago, and yet saying some pretty far-right stuff much more recently, spending years in cognitive dissonance (i remember one time saving two memes at around the same time, one pro-palestine, one pro-israel, amd remarking that my beliefs seemed to change according to whichever i thought was funnier). watching this has made me realize what actually happened: it was not a shift from right to left, but from edginess to sincerity. the more left-wing opinions were sincere opinions of mine, and the edginess was stuff i said for the sake of approval from other edgelords, that slowly dug their way into my brain

"Jerry, just remember: it's not a lie if you believe it." -George Costanza

"the shirt says figs" I'm glad that this video made a few months ago can be so so relevant for this months mess with bigots

I love that you animated sitting the channer down in a chair for this conversation. That's nuance.

"What do you actually believe?" sums up my problem with the right almost perfectly. Taken individually and at face value, most conservative arguments could be thought to reveal a deeper philosophy. "I want a larger military because I want the US to be able to protect its citizens and project force around the globe" is not crazy; I don't think it's right, but there's an honest argument to be had. "I want a smaller federal budget because I think the government is too intrusive, too paternalistic, and too controlling" is not crazy either, but it also contradicts the first point. The conclusion I have come to is that conservatives just like power. That's it. They want power for themselves and groups they belong to and to use that power to crush out groups. Conservatism always requires an enemy, or better yet, many enemies, and conservatives always want to fight "them" and serve entrenched power. Thus they love the police when the police serve them and will attempt to destroy the police when opposed by them. The military is a broadly conservative group and so most conservatives are for military spending, but when the military is accepting of members of the out groups _(racial minorities, women, LGBTQ members, etc.)_ they will oppose the military, to some minor degree at least. When a Republican is president they want to run up deficits _("Reagan proved deficits don't matter" says Dick Cheney, blithely ignoring that FDR had proven that point 40 years earlier), and when a Democrat is president it's time for "fiscal responsibility" and "belt tightening". Conservatives see the world as black and white, good vs. evil, us vs. them, and they always want to fight. If there isn't someone to fight, they'll invent someone. WWII is over? Gotta fight those commies! Cold War is over? Time for the War on Terror! Because we have to always be fighting, "our" side always needs more power, even if "we" already vastly overpower the enemy du jour. All that is just the political right, it's not even addressing the social right _(which is generally the same people but with different out groups; there are definitely some political "liberals" who are members of the social right, as well as some political conservatives who are pretty socially liberal. The Venn diagram isn't _*_just_*_ a circle, though the overlap is large)._ But luckily the social right has similar priorities, but they want to fight anyone not like themselves on a personal level. Different skin color or religion or ideas about gender or what have you. Same lust for power and control, different enemies.

I swear this video is 1000 times better than my communication in the digital age class

I used to be quite close to someone who argued like this. He absolutely delighted in the fact that he could switch between contradictory opinions so easily. I remember how he used to brag "As long as I argue this way, I can never be wrong." He used everything from "What-about-ism" to false equivalence to contradictory opinions, and after the person he was arguing got fed up and left he would just smile smugly and say, "I won." He CLAIMS he supports democratic ideals-- trans rights, freedom of expression, etc. But he also claims that democracies can't be trusted. I don't talk to him anymore.

I laughed so hard at the animation of putting the 4chan guy into the chair for a sit down talk. Something about it felt so brilliant to me, haha

As a leftist who enjoys a little trolling, this is fascinating. I didnt know that most liberals dont troll. For the record, I am transgender and Japanese American, and I tend to go after openly cruel transphobes using conservative language and metrics. I insist seeing a trans person "triggered" them. I refer to the two types of women as cis women and real women. I twist their "alpha male = guy who gets the most women" position and use my polyamorous status to insist that I, a transgender male, must certainly be an alpha since i have a lot of (polyamorous and consenting) girlfriends and good sex skills, and therefore they are but a seething beta. The more they insult me, the funnier it is- telling them "wow, isnt it sad that youre LOWER on the social hierarchy than a TRANSGENDER?" is so satisfying. And it "wins" arguments by agressing conservatives into deleting comments and blocking me. While tactics like this are obviously not viable debate skills and a bit mean, i wonder if aggressuve liberal trolling en masse would be a decent method of shutting up conservatives. On the flipside, debate would be ever harder... But is it even possible to have a good debate these days? Between this and your "they go low, we go high" video, I wonder if large scale liberal trolling in a similar aggressive fashion would hurt or help more. (And consequently, whether or not i should find a new online hobby, haha)

Trump has done the "Schrodinger's Douche bag" a lot.

I know it's a minor point, but there's a bigger reason the "every joke has a butt, therefore all humor is punching down" argument is wrong: jokes are funnier when their "butt" typically holds a higher station, subverting expectations. Thus, "punching down" isn't just socially irresponsible, it's structurally less funny.

"the shirt says figs"

*sigh* "....it also means jews." something about that cracks me up every single time.

To touch briefly on the teenage experimentation with ideology thing, I think the 'alt-right', conservatives, fascists and any other extremist group has something else aiding them by coincidence of the world we now livein. Excluding 4chan and other such sites, teenagers these days are faced with a social scene that a lot of us younger millennials never really had to deal with, even though they were coming into existence in our teen years. That is, there is readily accessible evidence of their experimentation. When I was a teen and I said or did something stupid, I remembered it, the folks who were there remembered it for however long it was deemed important or amusing or whatever, and nobody else may even hear about it. If I had to apologise, it was to a limited group of people, and I was at the mercy of that group and how they personally felt about me, a real human being with whom they were face-to-face. But now, the stupid or regrettable things are out there for the whole world to see, and they linger on. The things they have said online are there to stay and can be used as 'receipts' in any conversation or as a comment on literally anything they say on an online platform in perpetuity. Any potential missteps and personal growth are rocks collecting at their feet, waiting until someone - anyone - decides to start throwing them. This leaves a person to then make decisions about not just what they believe, but how the past will affect them when they start publishing their new opinions. It's the sort of social pressure I cannot imagine having to face as a teenager. And since a lot of people are still raised by parents who, whether or not they explicitly state it, demonstrate that standing firm on your word is vitally important and that admitting that you were wrong or apologising makes you weak or a total failure, you're going to have a lot of young adults feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place. They have to choose between making a decision to either publicly rescind old views and do their best to be their own PR team, or stick with what they've said to quash any potential shame and to look strong. And these decisions are made not necessarily by what a person believes, but by how big the backlash will be in their social group - it's peer pressure, but it's not the schoolyard, it's millions of strangers online across a spectrum of age groups and of varying earnestness. And outside even that social pressure, there's cancel-culture, which seems to be very good at taking a person's good intentions and digging up years old 'receipts' to wreak havoc for their own ends, apologising, admitting a mistake or even just changing your opinions and behaviour as you grow as a human being becomes risky in a way it previously never was. So I think that a by-product of the internet social space is that any child growing up surrounded by extremist ideologies in their personal social sphere is going to be beholden to that much more than in bygone eras where leaving town was enough to distance you, where the things you said to your peers may never reach the ears of your parents or community, where you had room to make mistakes and learn from them and not be dragged over the coals about them forever and ever. None of this has been very articulate, but I would love to see this idea explored by someone with more knowledge and who is better at collating and expressing their ideas than I am.

That point about them being being pro 2nd amendment to overthrow the government while vehemently supporting the police is quite baffling.

"So much of conservative rhetoric is maintaining ignorance of one's own beliefs." That's a bombshell you dropped right there.

Ah yes, the 5d chess move of changing your beliefs based on who are you trolling

I've seen so many posts proving this theory it's crazy. One particular post I remember came from iFunny, and it just said "There are two wolves inside you. Both are right." One wolf says "It didn't happen," the other says, "They deserved it" (in reference to the Holocaust, though not explicitly stated because it's a meme). I think a lot of these people genuinely know they do this, and they just don't care because they think it's funny to watch you try and argue with an opinion they don't actually hold. They don't engage in good faith exchanges of opinions, they just change what they think based on who they're arguing with. It's like you're arguing with Chat GPT: They don't necessarily believe it, but they'll believe it for as long as you tell them to. Then when they realize they're losing because it's a stupid opinion, they say "I was just playing Devil's advocate." "The card says Moops" indeed.

This is the best title for a video I've ever seen. That's like my favorite line from Seinfeld. Well played

You should sell a shirt with Crowder's face on it and the writing: "The card says moops!"

This needs to be summarised and printed out in small leaflets to be handed out in mailboxes across the nation...

"We are who we pretend to be" There. There it is.

Whoa! My name was used in a video by innuendo studios! Day made

6:31 "Truth is a democracy" VERY well said. Damn. And this is not just something that happens on the internet, or just about cultural issues. Just last week, a prominent politician in the Netherlands who is/peddles to the alt-right, Thierry Baudet, actually said something in parliament /almost/ revealing this attitude. Last month a group of Russian (FSB) spies were caught breaking into the OSCE headquarters in our capital the Hague, and our intelligence agencies found heaps of evidence, not all but much of which they publicised. To mr. Baudet however, these were "just reports" and the rest of parliament was being "undemocratic" because they "just believed it", and "in a democracy we weigh all the evidence". He has made similar claims about climate change, judging the rest of parliament for believing the IPPC report and not taking his crappy internet source seriously. This "Truth is a democracy" attitude" is seriously threatening our actual democracies, because it quickly derails debates about problem-solving policy into debates about established facts. This actually happened in this case too, the debate in which mr. Baudet made these claims was actually supposed to be about the finances of our defense department (which are in a sorry state) and he turned half of the debate time into a painstaking rebuttal of his bullshit..... which of course was the only thing covered by the mass media. You see the same thing happening with Trump, Democrats and the US mass media.

Thank you for explaining exactly what has always wrinkled my brain about conservatives. I can never figure out what is actually going on in their heads. All that they’re doing is “winning” by any means necessary.

It irritates me that conservatives don’t at the very least see all the obvious ways in which the capitalist hierarchy is unmeritocratic. I agree that a merit based hierarchy has some place in society, but what we actually have is just so far from that.

Love the massive amount of comments literally proving your point.

In the game In Nomine, where you basically play as angels and demons fighting for the souls of humans, Seraphs are arbiters of objective truths, with magical lie-detector abilities. (Because of this, they're terrible at fitting in, and hate subjective concepts or fiction, and telling lies themselves is so contrary to their purpose, it starts warping their souls and acts like kryptonite to them.) When Seraphs fall, however, they become Balseraphs, twisted creatures that form their own subjective reality in their head and warp it to make it seem true to them. They are liars who believe their own lies, and have the magical power to be so convincing that they make others believe it, too. They need to maintain the illusion they believe what they say, though, because being called out in overt hypocrisy proves they're lying even in their own subjective reality, and is kryptonite to them. They therefore play by making their players have to constantly lie and change lies as the situation demands, but keep track of which lies everyone heard, because their critical weakness is being caught changing your mind about anything. For some reason, the discussion of just sitting back, changing what you believe whenever it's convenient, and waiting to call other people out as hypocrites even if just because you don't understand or outright assumed their position really reminded me of Balseraphs...

That's actually why I really like All Gas No Breaks style of interview were he just put the mic in front of them and just asks to explain what you are doing here/what you stand for and just letting them talk. Why it can be dangerous giving a voice of so much possible hate to your audience that isn't ready for it. If you watch is interview of the Proud Boys rally it's interesting to hear so many different, incoherent thoughts on their "movement".

i see over 5,000 "thumbs down" and i've been scrolling for half an hour but I can't find a calm rebuttal to this video. Surely someone can provide an argument that holds up to any amount of scrutiny? guess i'll keep scrolling.

The fact that we have to return to such ground-level arguments like: "Are all people created equal?" scare me. I enjoy taking up the oppositions (Conservatives) views and attempting to defend them for myself before judging wheather or not they are valid oppinions (I've pissed off a lot of my friends doing this), but I always come around to the same conclusion of: "Who the fuck thinks this is a sensible idea?". I believe that the people who say that they don't care about which side is right as long as they win the argument just haven't thought the argument through. And that's what I heard you say in this video also (correct me if I'm wrong). I've recently began becoming politically active in one of the Liberal youth parties here in Sweden and at my first ever meeting, it struck me how much more sensible conversations got when people could agree on basic principles. We could argue about more subtle taxation issues or similar issues. It was wonderful. The political landscape has regressed so far that the arguments being held aren't about PROgressing anymore, they are about not REgressing any further. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

I wish innuendo studios points were more readily understood just in general. All of this is should be painfully apparent today. the last 2 years have only made it hard to ignore. I admit that only about a year ago i first looked into postmodernism after hearing about it from Jordan Peterson (was aware of the concept without knowing the term for the movement). I see Jordan Peterson and his followers as the poster child for this topic. Just amazing how he rails against postmodernism but argues for darwinistic version of truth instead of objective truth against Sam Harris. His go to tricks are to obfuscate and to double speak and so many people fall for it. Mind-blowing.

The reason I'm not an alt-right pawn anymore isn't because I decided to be moral or something. It was actively making my life worse, and I gradually became disillusioned to the fact that I could never win; so I stopped playing, at least to impress anyone else. I play on the opposite side with history backing every claim I make (systems of oppression have always been around, who knew?), and I still play for my own self-interests; nothing has fundamentally changed other than my actions. We are who we pretend to be.

I learned a lot and I also think missed about half of the points you were making... but still, 50% is more than enough to get me to learn something. I think this is the first time I've ever learned what "Schroedinger's Douchebag" is, and its a brilliant way to explain people who show up in my friends' Twitch chat to say stuff like "ur losing cuz ur a woman" and then when the entire chat blows the fuck up at them, they claim they were joking, but we know that they never are. This shit is wild, and the right are just sociopaths and people they've trained to follow their sociopathy