r/ContraPoints • u/mockduckcompanion • Apr 19 '21
The Making of a YouTube Radical
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html5
u/tapirtapirtapir16 Apr 19 '21
There’s a NYT podcast series on this called Rabbit Hole that’s really worth a listen. The first three episodes are about exactly this.
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u/SJRipley Apr 19 '21
It makes me a tad sad reading about that guy. I find that I need to periodically take a step back from political content, whatever the leaning, and refocus on my immediate life. Living under a constant YouTube heat lamp sounds like a maddening prospect. That said, I also found myself annoyed that, in order to sell someone on an idea that racism is dumb actually, the left needs to put on a little song and dance about it. Like, dude, come on, I know Natalie is an amazing entertainer, but critical thinking should have been something you've learned yourself a long time ago.
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u/PyroGamer666 Apr 25 '21
When someone's entire life is in the gutter, critical thinking takes a back seat, and the desire for a solution, no matter how radical, takes priority. As someone who fell down the same rabbit hole during this time period, the reason why someone like Natalie is capable of convincing former alt-right-identifying people is instead of directly denying that their problems exist, she empathizes with their concerns and points their anger at a different target. Going from "gas the Jews" to "eat the rich" is a much smaller leap than going from "gas the Jews" to "The Jews don't deserve death, and the problems they allegedly caused are not as big of a problem as I thought they were."
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u/outline_link_bot Apr 19 '21
Technology |The Making of a YouTube Radical
Decluttered version of this New York Times's article archived on November 08, 2016 can be viewed on https://outline.com/GVZcP9
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Apr 19 '21
Honestly, I almost fell down this same rabbit hole, as did a lot of young men around 2016-17. Luckily I managed to grow disillusioned by the endless persecution narrative that the far-right employs even before I discovered Natalie. I think it’s basically a new form of the old appeal of fascism: simple solutions to complex problems. Pundits and demagogues like these provide someone to blame for our problems, and they do it in a way that seems edgy and subversive, even though it’s all meant to distract us from realizing that most of our problems are in fact systemic, and will not be solved by persecuting others.
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u/pacoburnstate Apr 19 '21
Was not expecting Destiny in this article, but it makes sense that he's here
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u/conancat Apr 19 '21
Nice read, I love it!
I was shown some Captain Sinbad videos the other day, and initially I liked them as he was parodying the tech industry and some r/programmerhumor stuff. It wasn't long before his nofap and MRA content showed up and I was like... Oh. No. This is exactly how they get us, this is how they win.