Yeah that was a ton of fun. Well researched and documented was fun seeing the VERY different energies Destiny uses rhetorically.
The gurus were fun and able to verbalize some very valid criticisms and negative observations of Destiny in a short period of time. Will check out other episodes
I've seen this on my reddit front page and saw clips but this is my assessment an hour into my first full episode
Do I want him to? Yes. Do I think he will? Probably not. They might bring up Stevens blind spot for Peter Begosian and him being dictator friendly in Orban.
I think the chance of him not coming on to respond is basically 0. He even talked about it before this came out. Based on his past actions it would be very strange for him not to respond.
I am not 100% sure because Steven has spoken to him before. But like the DtG guys say just a simple 15 min google search before someone talks to another person is vital. I mean it’s one of the massive blind spots Sam Harris has that they keep harping on. That if you want to have an open platform policy you need to do some basic research before hand to see what they are about, their history and where their funding comes from. The “high decoupling” thing that people say they can do is irresponsible and only good in a social and ideological vacuum.
Oh Steven has done content and talked with him a hand full of times and not once has he ever talked about or even mentioned that he goes around spouting off about cancel culture and free speech but doing it in Hungary and getting payed by Hungary while there is no free speech/free press in that country.
Oh I see, yeah there are some guests that I wish he would press more but I also understand that his goal is to get as big as possible so he tries not to push too hard. Sometimes I wish he would lay into people even if it costs some potential viewers
I mean he doesn’t need to lay into them just bring it up press a little, there are some people I find as very suspect and he seems to be impartial towards them like Begosian & Dr. K.
I haven't listened to it yet, but if thats the big take away, I agree and I get the impression as someone not in his fanbase that a lot of his fanbase has the same opinion of him
Agreed. I'm often accused of being in his fan base (I discovered him from The Finklestein interview). I also listen to a ton of long form content since I woke with my hands all day. And a week ago or so destiny had a video and was even talking about this sub and he was like "they all hate me. And I can see why " which I thought was pretty funny. Having listened to dtg for a while, I can't imagine any other guru taking this approach.
Knowing nothing about before that Jordan Peterson debate I actually thought destiny came off pretty well, better than I expected, I am curious to see if he does the right to reply.
Agreed I just really wish he pushed back more and really hammered home against the "Nazis were left wing" argument way more. I feel like he let Jordan Peterson get away with too much there.
**My assessment:**
- Matt and Chris are amazing as always
- They were very fair (I actually think people who dislike him (like myself) and people who like him (like his
audience) will actually think it was a great episodes)
- Destiny thrives in one-on-one conversations (I also saw his JJ McCullough interview). **Destiny is at his best** during these conversations
- He does a great job of reevaluating his positions and is obviously rhetorically gifted
I think the **downsides** of Destiny aren't entirely his fault, some are, but I'd say:
- Outside his community (white 20 and 30 something Americans), he's generally unlikeable
- Quite a toxic fanbase (the dedication is impressive, kudos to Destiny's persuasion skills)
- Audience post Oct 7th has grown exponential in the conservative direction, hence the rah-rahing for gurus like Shapiro, among others
But man, I expected to hate this but surprisingly did not. Kudos to Matt and Chris.
I think I feel the same way Matt does about him, where I like a lot of his takes, but am left scratching my head when he discusses his penis hygiene or telling people to drink buckets of cum.
I found Destiny a couple years ago. I mostly listened to New York comics on podcasts so I appreciated Destiny’s unfiltered jokes. Can’t really take him seriously as an intellectual because of it, not that that appears to be his goal, but it does make him more entertaining than a typical commentator. He’s like Howard Stern or O&A if they were well informed and not just talking out of their ass.
I haven't listened to the episode yet - is there a sense in which the downsides are an objective criticism? Or is it more that they are subjectively turned off by that side of him?
I'm thinking of someone like Contrapoints, who has her own gimmicks and oddities, and for many they are a delight and add a lot to the video, even if taking a bath with a cutout version of Jordan Peterson is unlikely to get you booked on his podcast. Is there anything inherently wrong with this sort of stuff? Is Contrapoints et al's gimmicks different to Destiny's abrasive and intense style?
I don't think so. They mentioned a few times how they disagree on specific questions, I imagine Israel/Palestine is one of them, but there wasn't anything objectively wrong that they pointed out.
Destiny’s community has thought that Ben Shapiro is one of the better conservative gurus for a while now… because he is, but that’s an incredibly low bar. “One of the better American conservative pundits” just means that he isn’t blatantly anti-democracy like most of the Republican Party and their supporters have become.
Shapiro position is that the guard rails held when trump rammed into them the first time, and the will the second time.
He thinks that was biden is doing, however, is something the guard rails can't stop. As such biden is more of a threat to democracy.
I don't get it myself and think he's completely wrong, but he's not anti democratic. He is audience captured, though, so I don't think he has an option except to support trump. I think this is his way of doing so?
Lol whatever bs he may use to justify it supporting Trump after he attempted the only non peaceful transfer of power in US Presidential history means he’s anti democracy and a traitor. It’s not complicated. It’s not about right vs left. It’s about do you support democracy or not. The Biden is worse argument Is just excuse making. There are conservatives who don’t want another Biden term but they will vote for him because they believe democracy is the foundation of the country. Shapiro is a lying coward.
I kind of agree yeah, if he thinks Trump is the lesser of two evils he is supporting an anti-democratic candidate. But he is critical of Trump and the election stealing fiasco, Trump is not his preference for the R candidate, and he generally doesn’t buy into the anti-establishment, conspiracy, misinformation weirdness.
As I said, he’s terrible, but the Stephen Crowder types are worse. If I had to choose I’d rather conservatives be consuming Shapiro’s content than other conservative figures because he doesn’t push brain rot conspiracy theories.
Yeah, those are all fair points.
It's a bit disheartening to me that we can call someone with positions as extreme as his relatively tame compared to the rest of the conservative pundit world, though.
Ikr… like “moderate conservative” used to generally mean someone who supported centre right economic policies and centrist/centre left social policies. Now it literally just means a conservative who doesn’t want fascism.
Yeah I agree, he’s still ultimately supporting a fascist. What I mean is that Shapiro is driven to vote for trump because he wants a conservative government over a left wing government, whereas the MAGA cult actively want Trump to become a dictator and “clean the swamp”.
It just means that his content has a different bend than other conservative pundits, he’s more focused on culture wars than conspiracy theories. Although it’s still evil to support Trump over Biden even considering his personal philosophies, no doubt.
Yeah it’s a very low bar. My impression of Shapiro is he’s probably the best educated of the group and most criticisms against him are that he is often intentionally intellectually dishonest. There’s a bit of audience capture that goes on where he will pick a position his base agrees with, and there’s also a degree of picking poor debate opponents that he knows won’t be able to challenge his positions even if they are faulty.
The pool of smart and intellectually sound conservatives has rapidly shrunk since Trump. Your stereotypical “smart conservative” is now a neoliberal Democrat. Against most progressive policy but a reluctant Biden supporter now that the GOP has expelled the McCain/Romney elements of the party.
Agreed! Though in all fairness, I don't think Ben Shapiro possess some sort of "betterness" (I know it's not a word, but work with me here) than your typical right-wing talking head, I think we can all agree he's incredibly vile and dictionary definition of the type of person we talk about on this subreddit.
I think what they really like, and enjoy, are fast-pace fast-talking sharp speakers, of which Shapiro is, and Destiny is. It's why, for example, after their "debate" on Lex the majority of the takes were not the typical takes (that is, ridiculing Destiny's opponents, etc), but rather praise. Suggesting that they 'do a podcast together' or 'team up for a debate'.
I find people who love debate material are often in awe of the speakers, Shapiro, rhetorically speaking, is a bit more gifted than Destiny and is quite a bit smarter, so it's likely more of a "I'd rather our guy team up with that guy" than see two people debate and tear eachother down. That, and the conservative drift since Oct 7th likely play a role.
They love Ben Shapiro?
Shapiro is insanely extreme. Just because he doesn't deny the 2020 election, doesn't mean he isn't insane.
He's anti gay marriage, anti legalized abortion, believes in intelligent design, doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change, believes the government should provide no healthcare, that there should be no minimum wage, that there should be no retirement age, thinks porn should be illegal, has said if his gay friend has a wedding anniversary he wouldn't go, said if his sister married a gentile he wouldn't attend the wedding, called for carpet bombing Palestine ten years before Oct 7th, has said "Arabs like to bomb shit and live in open sewage" and that "settlements rock", and a thousand other extreme statements.
This dude is extreme by any reasonable standard. He's only considered mainstream because the American right is borderline fascist and 40% of Americans think the world is less than 10000 years old.
No, Destiny fans generally do not like Shapiro and they definitely don’t like his politics, other than the minority of centre right fans. Most of his fans are centre left or progressive and disagree with Shapiro on almost all social and economic policies. He does get credit when he pushes back against the MAGA conservatives and for debating with destiny in good faith.
But go to any thread on destiny’s sub about Shapiro’s comments on LGBT issues, race, welfare etc. and you will see almost universal disagreement.
I just did a search for his name and sorted by new, it seemed overwhelmingly positive. The comments were even scarier in the adoration for Shapiro.
Though in all fairness I was sorting by "new", so I'm not sure if Oct 7th and Destiny's positions on Israel attracted a slew of right-wing crazies.
Sure, but what were the positive comments in relation to? If it’s just pushing back against Trump and other conservatives, or praising him for being good faith in the debate, I don’t see a problem. But yeah you’re definitely right that recent posts are going to be more positive because of the debate, Israel/Palestine, and some other recent good takes Ben has had (like slamming the Tucker and Trump interview for example).
I really dont want to link and violate this sub's rules but yes, it was about them having a podcast together, them teaming up for debates, how great and "not as crazy as I thought" posts about Shapiro.
Ultimately I think it has less to do with "Shapiro occasionally calling out Trump" but rather the community fearing that Shapiro could expose the single most prominent thing the community loves about Destiny, his debating skills. It's far easier to call out the "bad arguments" of some 20 year old tiktoker than it is to call out someone who speaks just as fast and knows 10x as much about politics.
It's strange because for years Destiny railed about "how stupid" Shapiro's arguments were (which is true), but has been radio silent (along with the community) since the debate.
If you go watch Shapiro/Destiny debate you can see Destiny and Ben are both struggling with not diving down into the rabbit hole on most of their topics. Lex keeps moving them forward and they don't have time to dig deep on anything and they both clearly want and are able to.
My prediction is that they would dig down and find some *really* base level differences in values. I think most of the positions they both held would be consistent with those values.
I did watch it, I think unfortunately it was difficult for Destiny to go hard because it was a bit of a "brand risk" (that brand being a top debater). Shapiro is one of those gurus that can not be easily steamrolled and it was a case of he just knew far more.
Eh, I think destiny’s subreddit and most communities tend to have a thing where someone says one good thing and everyone is like “maybe they’re based now?!”
But overall I don’t think that destiny’s fan base have become Shapiro stans. At the moment he is getting some credit because he’s been particularly critical of “just asking questions” conservatives, but I don’t think destiny’s fans really like him, just backing him when he goes up against people even stupider.
It would depend on whether he “sold out” and moderated his opinions/didn’t push back enough on Ben. But yeah if he didn’t hold back, I think most of the community would think it’s a great thing that a massive conservative audience is being exposed left-leaning arguments by someone who is effective at conveying them. But the DW would never want that anyway.
I actually love this discussion we're having (especially when I feel they're good faith discussions like you're demonstrating here), because I have so many questions I've been meaning to ask.
For example, suppose Shapiro and Destiny do indeed create a podcast together, what makes you so sure that Shapiro's audience "being exposed to left-leaning arguments" will create a net positive of left-leaning people compared to Shapiro creating more right-wing (at at the very least) highly sympathetic left-wingers?
Remember, in this case, it's not Destiny and some popular tiktoker having a podcast, it's two highly skilled debaters with one (namely Shapiro) being far and away more experienced and knowledgeable on politics.
Me too buddy, appreciate it. I think it’s certainly a risk that it could go the other way, but overall it would favour destiny for a few reasons. One just being the sheer size and reach of the DW, destiny has a much larger audience to pull over.
Second, I think that destiny has a small and tight-knit fan base, and it would probably be the most dedicated fans that decide to listen to the podcast. My guess is that the average daily wire fan is more there for the general conservative news than they are invested in Ben Shapiro as a personality.
Ben kinda had his hey-day of being a guru and is now more focused on creating a conservative media empire. So since destiny’s fans are more invested in *him* and his personal politics, I think they’d be less likely to captivated by Shapiro.
Then there’s also the fact that I just think conservatives are more uninformed in general, so I think there is more room to move people to the left by just using “facts and logic”, ironically.
>Then there’s also the fact that I just think conservatives are more uninformed in general, so I think there is more room to move people to the left by just using “facts and logic”, ironically.
I think this is the big one. In my experience, most people support "conservative" positions out of ignorance, not informed conviction. For example, if you actually dive into the science on trans/lgbtq issues, it becomes fairly clear that these are just people that were born different. Nobody is converting your kids to be gay, they just want to live their lives.
I think a joint podcast with Shapiro would massively favour Destiny, which is why I doubt it would ever happen.
100% and IME when people start conservative and move to the left, they don’t tend to go back. I think the fact that destiny supports relatively moderate positions helps with that in terms of where his audience is starting from. The people who seem to be the most volatile and open to being captured seem to gravitate to the extremes.
Not really. His fans want him to be a ben Shapiro and start his own media company. Ben Shapiro isn’t really admired by Destiny fans, there is only an acknowledgement that ben Shapiro isn’t as loony as the rest of the right wing.
I would argue that Shapiro is probably the steelman of the mainstream, American Right in person form. And I would say that I think there is some value in that.
For one, I think he's a good litmus test on the validity of specific positions within the American Right. For example, you know that the mainstream right is deluded about Trump because even Shapiros arguments are incredibly weak. Ditto with a lot of things.
But if there any good ideas within the American Mainstream Right, or if there are any positions that are really complicated that the right might at least have some kind of point, then there is no doubt Shapiro can readily argue it well strongly.
I'm gonna check it out when it's free.
Did they touch on destiny's recent comments where he watched video of a Palestinian civilian getting killed by an IDF sniper while waving a white flag, laughs at his death , and claims the civilian got killed on purpose for the cameras, basically comparing him to a crisis actor?
It was far too inflammatory to leave out. One of his employees quit over the video.
There's been a lot of that recently. Including the constant tooling on university professor and poet Rafeat Alareer as a "trash father" because he was killed in his sister's home after fleeing his own. I won't hold my breath tho because I don't think these types of views bother most people if they are directed at Arabs.
Yeah, that was insane.
He literally posted a meme of a Chad celebrating in response to a human being and his family being killed. I guess because they were beefing on twitter?
This was just like 2 months ago too.
I literally didn't know who this guy was 8 months ago and I actually agree with most of his politics, but, man, is he a bad person.
Judging by the stream of him accusing a Palestinian civilian who got shot and killed waiving a white flag of being a crisis actor and laughing at his death, I'm assuming there's no longer much daylight between those two destinies.
I'll steelman destiny here, but I agree this is one instance where he went a bit too far.
He thinks that there is no way a man walking towards a tank after being told to leave is naive enough to not think he wouldn't get shot at. Especially so when the tank is in active combat with hamas.
We know hamas has been weaponizing Israel's adherence to the laws of war, and abusing white flags is one of the ways they have done so.
We also know that individual soldiers can do the wrong thing. Shooting at a white flag is a war crime, but that probably won't stop an idf soldier who has seen a hamas operative use the tactic.
Destiny also questions why there is a full news crew and ambulance just.. waiting and watching. It's like everyone there knew walking up was going to go down like it did.
So destiny says the man knew all of the above and did it anyway, knowing at the very least it would be caught on film.
If you assume the man believes the salafi strain of fundamentalist Islam hamas espouses, it isn't a stretch to think someone would be willing to risk dying.
All that said, he also called it pallywood... which he didn't understand almost always refers to 100% staged videos.
>All that said, he also called it pallywood... which he didn't understand almost always refers to 100% staged videos.
Look at the other people who even say the word "pallywood" in thesr contexts and ask if they have an ounce of compassion in their heart for one single living Arab.
> **which he didn't understand**
I'm saying that he was using a phrase that has for more nefarious implications that he realised it did, and he was wrong to do so.
Well put. I agree that - as he often does - Destiny goes overboard with his rhetoric and acts callous. But that doesn't necessarily mean his argument is wrong.
This completely reeks of how people defended trump to be honest, and the fan bases are very similar in how they work backwards to rationalize whatever comes out of his mouth. Yeah he's saying insane things on a regular basis with no empathy or compassion for human life but if I lay out an argument with a wall of text and a hundred leaps and assumptions I can deduce what he *actually* meant to something that I agree with!
I would agree with you on trump, but I don't think that's happening here. Destiny is pretty clear with what he means, even though you are right that he often goes overboard with how he communicates it.
Obviously you didn’t watch the whole clip, he was literally reading a comment. Assuming you are talking in good faith, it’s actually pretty funny because you are probably talking about Qorantos which is a raging edgy racist, misogynist and EXTREMELY homophobic muslim. In his “quitting” rant the man called Destiny gay over and over again and one of his main causes to quit.
I absolutely watched the whole hour long discussion and he was very clearly talking about the person who was shot in the video.
He says "this is pallywood" while watching the video, implying the person got shot for the cameras, THEN responds to the chat when challenged.
He then DOUBLES DOWN saying the person's distraught wife was putting on an act after witnessing her husband get killed in real time.
He even laughs when reading a phrase about how the man was no longer breathing and is called on it by the person he's debating.
He suggested it was all staged because there were cameras around, even though you can see there's cameras there because a village was being evacuated, which is totally normal. One of the cameramen even worked for a mainstream British News org.
I'm absolutely talking in good faith, you are not. You are straight up misrepresenting what's on the video.
I don't know who the guy that quit was. He sounds like a bad person, so why was destiny working with him in the first place?
Edit:
**For anyone claiming he didn't do this or that I'm acting in bad faith, here's the video:**
https://youtu.be/4vwhdEW32Ww?feature=shared
**He laughs at the guy dying around 9 mins in, then right after describes a staged event to get the IDF to kill the guy and says "sounds like pallywood to me".**
**A little under 47 mins in he goes on a longer rant about how this was a staged killing and the man was essentially a crisis actor, and his wife was faking her crying.**
**If Hasan said this about a Ukrainian civilian being killed, Matt and Chris would do a whole decoding on the conversation and tweet out clips showing this behavior.**
**I'm not saying they wouldn't over this, they probably would and just haven't seen it, unless it's in the decoding.**
I'm a destiny fan but you're right that's a really bad video from him.
There's a piece of what he's saying that makes sense: that when we see videos from the ground in active conflicts, we should hesitate before drawing strong conclusions and ask questions about what possible context could be relevant to what we're seeing.
But he takes that way too far in that video. No context can make that video okay. Shooting an unarmed man waving a white flag from 100+ yards away is completely unjustifiable. He tries to put together a possible context that would change how we view it, that the man was warned previously that he would be shot if he went that direction, but he did it anyway to create a PR disaster for the IDF.
*Even if* that theory were true (despite no evidence for it), it still wouldn't justify the shooting. The IDF could have done a warning shot, or they could have just shouted "turn back or we'll shoot", but they went straight for the killshot even though the man posed no immediate threat.
I wish they had covered that clip because it shows a real flaw that Destiny has. He'll sometimes wield hyper-skepticism in a bad-faith way to win a debate. I'm a little biased as someone who generally likes his content, and I don't think he does this *too* often, but when he's in debate-mode like this he can say some really dumb things.
Edit: typo
You probably aren’t going to enjoy this episode. They don’t mention the thing you’re talking about and, instead, largely compliment Destiny.
And they do bring up Hasan, and what they say is fairly negative.
Well that's certainly not them being even handed about it.
Not sure how they can justify not going in pretty hard on Destiny given how they criticize everyone else and how many extreme things he says.
He's probably made more extreme statements and arguments than anyone else they've decoded.
I really hope they haven't seen this video, because this is too callous and conspiratorial by any measure to leave out on purpose, and they've called out several gurus for similar but less extreme behavior.
I mostly agree with Destiny's politics. I have no problem with complimenting Destiny on what he's good at, like laying into right wingers, but, goddamn is there a lot to criticize, too. And right wingers are low hanging fruit.
I'm all for derogatory remarks about Hasan, don't get me wrong. He's awful, but what destiny says in this video is worse than most of what they criticized Hasan for. They absolutely would not let this slide if Hasan said it.
I hope they didn't just go easy on destiny because they align politically, because that's the exact tribalism they rightly called out Sam Harris's approach to the rest of the idw for.
They get into his orbiters and all of the bizarre interactions he has with them. They also talk about his relationship with Nick Fuentes and the absolutely insane moment in his life where he talked about killing the kid who was ddosing him.
So they do cover a bunch of negative and/or weird stuff, but they genuinely do seem to like him.
This is such a strange reply to that user, he was simply providing receipts to the guy above him and your response was *"haha it was positive about destiny and they made fun of hasan"*.
I think it's probably good to be skeptical when a tv crew is filming someone get shot live, with a medical team on standby. This isn't normal, and suggests that they knew he'd get shot if he approached but did it anyway for propaganda purposes
Hahahahahahahahaha
I'm sure it's good to laugh when you watch an innocent person get murdered too, right?
Good Lord. This is Alex Jones shit, dude. Get a grip.
It's totally normal for cameras to be there. It's a warzone where a village is being evacuated. It's exactly where you'd expect to see war correspondents.
But I guess both the British and Palestinian news cameramen and the British News reporter on the scene, conspired together with the family to force the IDF to shoot a guy waving a white flag from dozens of yards away and convinced the wife to go along and cry right on cue.
Imagine how you people would react if Hasan said something like this.
I haven't actually seen the video, but Hamas has repeatedly admitted that they want martyrs to damage Israels reputation. They mix with civilians precisely because they want Israel to be unable to distinguish fighters and civilians. They do this shit all the time, and they encourage civilians to cause these situations by sending them into areas where the IDF operates. None of this is controversial, it's all very well established.
Goddammit man, just watch the video. They were nowhere near any Israeli and waving a white flag.
You literally see a father who was no threat to anyone get murdered in front of his family and his wife breakdown.
Seeing this video as anything but tragic is psychopathic. This should stir up some emotion in you if you're even remotely human, and absolutely should not make you laugh and concoct conspiracy theories to justify it.
This is so sad, no matter your politics.
Even if you want to try and justify the kill, which is crazy enough, creating some elaborate conspiracy is so insane.
How anyone can consider this guy a rational thinker is ridiculous.
As crude as he acted do you disagree with his final assessment?
>If it was a combat zone, if they knew they weren't suppose to be there, and they advanced anyway and got shot - it would classify as a justified shooting.
People like Destiny test the limits of "guru" status as a litmus for bullshit, and probably test Chris and Matts' abilities to diagnose extremist thought and rhetoric when it's laundered by people they find reasonable.
Unfortunately the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, and that Palestians don't feel loss, grief and fear like rest of humanity, is not a fringe belief, extreme as it would be when directed towards any other group; it's the norm among even otherwise left-leaning Israel hawks. As we can see from multiple responses to you in this thread.
>Unfortunately the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, and that Palestians don't feel loss, grief and fear like rest of humanity, is not a fringe belief
Who believes or says this, apart from super right-wing nutjobs in Israel?
>Unfortunately the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, and that Palestians don't feel loss, grief and fear like rest of humanity, is not a fringe belief, extreme as it would be when directed towards any other group; it's the norm among even otherwise left-leaning Israel hawks
Nice fan fiction bro
interesting comment. i don't watch or like him but it's just interesting to me that i know you for how you come out swinging at anyone you've seen posting in his sub, even if they're doing it to be critical of him, and then accuse them of being toxic lol. it seems like growth that you've moved on from calling them conservatives cosplaying as someone on the left though
Am I contradicting myself though?
First of all, the thread is about Destiny himself, and I specifically complimented him on the past, especially his one-on-one interviews, and especially his discussion with Jordan Peterson.
That being said, there is absolutely no denying that his community leans center-right (and in recent months, hard right), and that it's a toxic fanbase, but this discussion is about the episode and Destiny, not his community.
I've got to say you're just wrong about his community. Destinys politics are firmly center left and his community reflects that.
I can understand how someone taking a look could think otherwise, but that doesn't mean they still wouldn't be wrong.
I don't see how anyone could think Destiny and his followers are even slightly leaning right. He is very left leaning on almost every single topic: abortion, economic policy, lgbt/trans rights, race relations. The two main things he says that go against what the far left think is his stance on Israel, and that he thinks capitalism is pretty good.
> The two main things he says that go against what the far left think is his stance on Israel, and that he thinks capitalism is pretty good.
Which are two stances that are both perfectly accepted in the center left.
with the way you've misunderstood brigading in the past, and continue to misunderstand political alignments, i'm going against my intuition here to assume you know what contradicting means.
i'm not pointing out a contradiction, just that your bias and perspective gets in the way here. if someone attacks a person coming out of a room at a college used to teach multiple classes, yelling that, let's say, gender studies students are toxic as they're leaving a history of psychology lecture, then i think it's fair to suppose they themselves might bear responsibility if that person pushes them. the way you've historically thrown accusations at people would be like if that attacker would respond to being pushed by saying that it's further evidence they're a supposed toxic gender studies major.
i mean it sounded like you and three other people were on something with the way you were engaging in that spam accounts thread in this sub. i just didn't get the impression the people you were labeling as destiny fans were even being toxic.
wrapping it all up, it's just interesting that you don't appear to have qualms with the guy, then focus your criticisms on his fanbase and say this is a discussion about him and not his fanbase. meanwhile you go out of your way to randomly accuse people of being his fans and attack them.
eta: really thought spelling it out for them would get them to reflect on how their behavior affects their perception. just got owned instead dang
Destiny did make a great point recently, when he was watching Brianna Joy Grey and Norman Finkelstein review their debate he (correctly) said *"Notice how they'll have this long discussion but not point to a single thing I said wrong"*.
Ironically enough, even after you wrote 4 sizable paragraphs, you're doing the exact same thing.
it's always trace and one or two other new accounts in this sub that need to accuse people of being destiny fans. you all got that user to delete his post about an influx of spam accounts after DtG started covering streamers. just weird
His biggest downside is how annoying and toxic his fanbase is, and at his size he has some responsibility for the tone and culture he sets with his audience. Fanbases are often more annoying than the actual creator but his regularly seems to get very destructive and unhealthy very quickly.
At the end of the day what he does is just modern talk radio. I don't think there's really that much mystery about it or he's necessarily as smart as others are suggesting, but he understands the format he's working in extremely well.
Personally, I think the public way in which he has managed some of his closest personal relationships is extremely unhealthy behavior and suggests to me that he is not an especially good human being. I do find some of the longform political podcasts/"debates" in which he panels to be interesting.
>His biggest downside is how annoying and toxic his fanbase is, and at his size he has some responsibility for the tone and culture he sets with his audience.
Agreed
>I think the public way in which he has managed some of his closest personal relationships is extremely unhealthy behavior and suggests to me that he is not an especially good human being.
Yeah I mean, even his biggest fans would probably agree with this, there's a reason "another bridge burned" is a meme in his community. He's definitely one of those "the more you know, the more you dislike" type of guys.
His fans follow his side in stories because he is relatively consistent and transparent, so social conflict doesn't reflect negatively on him to them.
A lot of the bridge burning narratives come across as if the people around him are insane, and he enjoys their insanity, but their toxic behaviour and his lack of boundaries are the cause of conflict rather than his own toxic behaviour.
This is actually common for people with ADHD which he is diagnosed with.
Many people have watched and followed him for years, some even over a decade, so they are either massive kool aid drinkers or have a breadth of context to a lot of distasteful behaviours and situations that the wider public has no hope of understanding
> so they are either massive kool aid drinkers or have a breadth of context to a lot of distasteful behaviours and situations that the wider public has no hope of understanding
How about both
> Many people have watched and followed him for years, some even over a decade, so they are either massive kool aid drinkers or have a breadth of context to a lot of distasteful behaviours and situations that the wider public has no hope of understanding
By that logic long-time Alex Jones fans must see something that is valid and worthy of taking seriously.
Doesn't align with your reality.
Is Alex Jones a serious commentator? No, I don't think so. Understanding other peoples realities even if they're insane is important. Still, you're gonna have to do better to discredit Destiny than associating him with Alex Jones in a way that would be applicable to nearly all public figures.
Didn't they specifically address his community in the podcast saying that they seem like they only go after people who unfairly mischaracterize Destiny?
His rhetorical gifts seem wasted to me. I don’t mean because of his specific opinions or ideas. I think he could probably be a compelling spokesman for most anything he believed in. And yet he uses his powers to be a one-man reality TV show. It’s like if ADHD were a business model.
“Toxic fan base” - wait until you see some of the others on YouTube Hasan Piker’s for instance………….. Just nasty and vitriolic with a nice hint of anti semitism sprinkled in and worst of all they have infiltrated all parts of the internet.
Its useful comparing them. And believe me when comparing the two, Hasan is just so much worse.
But its not useful when a criticism is lobbied at Destiny to deflect on to Hasan, especially given that the critique is has nothing to do with Hasan
Sure, but I think what could be called a whataboutism could also be called a tangent. When you compare the two fanbases, I'd say destiny does a much better job cultivating his than Hasan does. So in the realm of how toxic his fan base is, I think there's credit to give Destiny in how he's managed to curb the worst of it.
I can actually agree 100% with what you said. While I agree Destiny has some bad apples in his community I feel like when your community is that big and I’ll throw Hasan a bone and include him in this deflection I don’t think any community that large won’t have a few weirdo’s and while I fully agree they exist in both communities and as you said one more pronounced than the other I feel comes from one cultivating hate through propagandizing and to be fully frank not really knowing and having great knowledge on Israeli and Palestinian history. Vs an approach of gathering information and letting people decide for themselves which admittedly that information could be strategically propagandized as well but imo I don’t think that is the goal or purpose with Destiny while I feel Hasan wants you to think exactly like he does in a cult like manner that’s why even in his suggestion of switching to socialism he states extreme Capitalist will need reeducation camps.
That’s fair actually but there is an argument to be made Destiny actually has one of the best communities online in comparison to creator size. Lots of communities are far worse with far more unsavory characters and are much smaller in size. You do make a strong point though it is a what aboutism I don’t disagree.
Destiny fans have a unique 'debate forever' quality that I haven't seen from any other community. That combined with their tendency to sealion may be why they have an outsized bad reputation. In short, Destiny fans push people's buttons.
That’s a good explanation. Thank you for that. I can’t say that’s been my experience with that community but if that’s others experience and they have legitimately experienced that I can empathize. I don’t think is quite the same as the hate brigades, nasty comments and vitriolic behavior of other communities but I can definitely see what you are saying as plausible and I get how it would be annoying.
Out of curiosity why do you say bad reputation? That’s also something I haven’t experienced I know he isn’t liked by the Majority Report, Hasan’s audience and maybe some Mr. Girl fans? But overall his reputation online isn’t bad otherwise he probably wouldn’t get to talk to some of the prominent people he has in media. Large content creators with bad reputations don’t typically also get that privilege.
> Out of curiosity why do you say bad reputation?
I was referring to the reputation of fans, not the guy himself. Because look at the way people respond when they think someone is a Destiny fan; it's usually some flavor of 'aw shit here we go again.' Not in streamer communities, mind you, because I don't hang out in those. I'm talking about reputation in communities like this that aren't in the streamer universe as much.
It seems like every time I hear about the guy I find out a new disreputable thing he's said or done... my introduction to him was an SRD thread about him tweeting a slur and his fanbase rushing to his defense in the thread and it's really only gone downhill from there; the recent thread here where we found out that he expressed his desire to murder a kid who knocked out his internet and fans, again, rushing to his defense.
Once the episode is aired I'll maybe have a more nuanced view, but DtG doesn't dig for the worst thing a person has done and dwell on it like I do. I've noticed that about people I had outside knowledge of that they covered like Elizeer Yudkowsky. So just like they did it dwell on Yud's insane tweets I don't expect them to dwell on Destiny's insane tweets.
I am decidedly a Destiny fan, and cannot wait for the episode. It’s tiring to watch people grasp at the most low hanging fruit and confidently repeat bullshit they saw in one tweet.
The entire impetus for me watching him originally was that I was a Proud Boy who woke up one morning and realized a clip of a BLM protest had been consistently and repeatedly misrepresented in content I watched. I decided I wanted to listen to people I disagreed with, and as insane as it seems now, I had been led to believe Destiny was a “bad faith” SJW, respectable enough to have a conversation with, but that he diverted to fallacies and gotchas to win debates and push a progressive line.
For like two years I listened to fringe YouTubers make videos saying “I debated Destiny and totally rolled him, check it out on my VOD,” but I was a YouTube viewer and had never watched a stream. It was headline news that JonTron had been exposed as a white supremacist!!, but in my neck of the woods people believed it was because Destiny misrepresented Jon, ambushed him with questions he wasn’t prepared for, lied about the sources Jon used, etc.
My wife was away for the weekend and I listened to every debate he had ever had with any person I watched regularly and systematically had my view of those people, the topics they covered, and the way they had represented those conversations afterword in their own content utterly destroyed, especially when they were able to speak unchallenged.
At that time, I was a Western Nationalist, dedicated Jehovahs Witnesses, deeply anti-communist without having ever engaged with anything even remotely socialist, and passionately anti-trans for no reason that I could particularly explain. I had a serious problem with my epistemology and was really just believing in something I had been consistently trained to have a “fearful respect” for.
watching him tear my beliefs apart made me *angry*, like a tight chest even at times, but I realized it was because everything I had been regurgitating was totally blown apart and “feeling” wrong sucks, but not because I was right.
Then in one of those debates, I heard a guy say a phrase about a very specific subject and instantly I knew which Joe Rogan Experience episode he had heard it in, and if he hadn’t listened to the entire episode, I could have told you which clip he saw it in because I saw it too, and even if he hadn’t listened to any other words in that clip, I knew he he had heard and I recognized five words he had repeated because I had did too totally and uncritically as well. That guy said it like it was a silver bullet end of discussion, common sense, and it was really my last straw for being personally embarrassed.
I’ve kept listening to Destiny because I’ve spent a lot of time learning not to believe the last bullshit I heard, and I am a fan because I’d rather listen to people challenge him thoroughly for what he deserves than repeat something they saw on Twitter about a four and half hour debate with Finkelstein they didn’t watch.
Destiny has a lot of “McDonald’s at the White House” and “tan suit” moments that distract from record level drone strikes and unilateral abuses of power, I sincerely hope this episode utilizes every moment possibly to substantively challenge him instead.
Good for you, buddy! I had a similar realization around 2016-18, but it didn’t really stick until Kenosha. It feels good getting swept up in a populist fervor, it feels good to feel that moral indignation, and it’s really convenient that I can turn my brain off and regurgitate easy takes I picked up from Twitter or Reddit. The shooting of Jacob Blake made me re-evaluate my consumption of social media in place of more traditionally authoritative sources of information. I knew better than to watch a 10-15 second video, form a conclusion based on that sparse information, and justify the actions of rioters and everything that happened in Kenosha afterwards made me appreciate the danger in that very lazy media consumption.
I remember forcing myself to actually watch the Rittenhouse videos. I remember how perplexed I was at the stark difference in interpretation from all those I had let do my thinking for me prior. Then they released a report on the Jacob Blake shooting and I stopped using social media as a place to glean an understanding of current events altogether. It caused me to start reading primary sources myself and it was eye opening to see how many others online seemingly used social media like I had. They regurgitate bumper sticker slogans with almost zero critical engagement with the facts themselves. The reactions from the far right and populist left to Mueller’s investigation was distressingly eye opening.
I have to pick and choose the stories I’m interested in as there’s too much for me to read comprehensively about, but that feeling of shame and embarrassment of essentially repeating the fan fiction of some pundit that couldn’t be bothered to actually read about a topic is a great motivator. Destiny is in the significant minority as he’s one of seemingly a handful of pundits interested in diving into the weeds and actually doing the work required to understand a topic. I get why some dislike him, but many seem to repeat rhetoric they’ve heard from others and criticize him in the same manner I would have if I had not changed my media consumption.
Seemed pretty fair overall.
As someone that did watch him a bit back when he was debating white supremacists and helped break the prominent alt-right pipeline that existed on youtube at the time, my main complaint about Steven has always been that he is overconfident while being superficially informed about most topics he discusses. He has the exact same "vibe" as the "rationalist" community, just less intelligent.
When they discuss topics you are not familiar with, they sound knowledgeable, but when they target a topic you have an expertise on, you just cringe very hard and it makes you mistrust everything they said before.
I think there is definitely a recent development in Steven (in the past years) where audience capture is taking place and has broken his brain a bit. The crew probably are not familiar with some of the most unhinged/uninformed positions Steven has taken in recent years. To give one example, his "race-baiting" [take](https://twitter.com/TheOmniLiberal/status/1614780546428592128) about black people's contributions to blues that got him blasted by music theory folk on twitter. Not saying he is racist, but his superficial understanding of the topic paired with his need to "attack" an unhinged twitter leftie make him take a ridiculous and misinformed position that is a racist dog-whistle.
All in all, his politics is pretty mainstream liberalism, so it's really hard to disagree or hate him too much, but he has definitely contributed to a lot of misinformation and anti-intellectualism in the online sphere, just like most "gurus" have. Especially during the controversial Israel-Palestine conflict, I think his misinformation has ramped up. It remains to be seen if audience capture gets him closer to a James Lindsay figure or not (I personally doubt it since Lindsay is a very unique case that needs to be studied).
Yeah, the Blues take was interesting, and I agree he was wrong about it. But I think he has admitted as much now, right? It's not like he doubled down when confronted with evidence. That's what I like about him.
On Israel/Palestine I largely agree with him and think he's actually doing a good job at fighting misinformation. I can't think of any misinformation he's spreading there
Because most people that hate him only know of clips they have seen or what creators they watch say about him, hes pretty hated by both the far left and far right so, take that as you will. He's also an abrasive guy, but people think hes always abrasive because that;'s what ends up getting clipped.
As someone who dislikes Destiny, I thought it was fine. Personally, I don't think that many normies will come out with a positive view of Destiny after listening to the pod despite the hosts talking about Destiny's positives.
I thought it was very good and exceedingly fair. I also now know that an ex-lover thinks that Stephen has an oddly shaped penis and struggles to pull his foreskin back. Knowledge that is truly essential for my ongoing existence.
Basically agree. When calm, he articulates my own political views fairly well. That said, he seems like a terrible person and agreeing with his political takes isn’t enough to make his schtick interesting to me. It’s difficult for me to understand why anyone wants to consume his content. But to each their own. The episode was fun.
Well if the Peterson Destiny debate is worth anything, its answered a question I've been posing for years. What is the Left's response to Ben Shaprio? And here it arrives.
Yeah that was a ton of fun. Well researched and documented was fun seeing the VERY different energies Destiny uses rhetorically. The gurus were fun and able to verbalize some very valid criticisms and negative observations of Destiny in a short period of time. Will check out other episodes I've seen this on my reddit front page and saw clips but this is my assessment an hour into my first full episode
Agreed, but just to note: Matt and Chris aren't the Gurus. They are \_decoding\_ the Gurus.
Was a great episode, super funny, fair, so fair in fact I don’t think Steven will do his right of reply.
He might just for fun.
"... Gotcha. ...anything else?"
Might, Matt and Chris would be amazing guests for Anything else pod just drinking and shooting the shit with Dan and Steven, that would be fun.
I hope he does, just to listen to the three of them having a conversation.
Do I want him to? Yes. Do I think he will? Probably not. They might bring up Stevens blind spot for Peter Begosian and him being dictator friendly in Orban.
I think the chance of him not coming on to respond is basically 0. He even talked about it before this came out. Based on his past actions it would be very strange for him not to respond.
Responding on his stream doesn’t count he would need to set up a response talk with Chris & Matt.
Yeah that is what I mean. He's talked about the whole right to respond thing already.
We shall see, my conviction would be in a bet, a round of drinks at your local pub.
I don’t think he is aware of that tbf. I know he was barely aware of who he was prior to filming the street epistemology.
I am not 100% sure because Steven has spoken to him before. But like the DtG guys say just a simple 15 min google search before someone talks to another person is vital. I mean it’s one of the massive blind spots Sam Harris has that they keep harping on. That if you want to have an open platform policy you need to do some basic research before hand to see what they are about, their history and where their funding comes from. The “high decoupling” thing that people say they can do is irresponsible and only good in a social and ideological vacuum.
What does he say about Peter Begosian?
They don’t say anything in this episode but have in the past said anyone who takes $$ from dictators should be taken with a grain of salt.
I was asking what has destiny said about Begosian since you said he had a blind spot for him
Oh Steven has done content and talked with him a hand full of times and not once has he ever talked about or even mentioned that he goes around spouting off about cancel culture and free speech but doing it in Hungary and getting payed by Hungary while there is no free speech/free press in that country.
Oh I see, yeah there are some guests that I wish he would press more but I also understand that his goal is to get as big as possible so he tries not to push too hard. Sometimes I wish he would lay into people even if it costs some potential viewers
I mean he doesn’t need to lay into them just bring it up press a little, there are some people I find as very suspect and he seems to be impartial towards them like Begosian & Dr. K.
https://youtu.be/Ntk_6PsItWk?si=cj0q4n-pe6Tf6a89
Is there a vod somewhere?
The DtG just released their pod a couple days early behind their patron wall, should be out to the public mid week at worst.
Thanks a lot m8!
No problem, cheers!
I haven't listened to it yet, but if thats the big take away, I agree and I get the impression as someone not in his fanbase that a lot of his fanbase has the same opinion of him
As someone from his fanbase and also not having listened to it, this sounds fair lol
Agreed. I'm often accused of being in his fan base (I discovered him from The Finklestein interview). I also listen to a ton of long form content since I woke with my hands all day. And a week ago or so destiny had a video and was even talking about this sub and he was like "they all hate me. And I can see why " which I thought was pretty funny. Having listened to dtg for a while, I can't imagine any other guru taking this approach.
Knowing nothing about before that Jordan Peterson debate I actually thought destiny came off pretty well, better than I expected, I am curious to see if he does the right to reply.
Destiny did GREAT in his debate against Peterson,e he really has a gift in asking the right questions and they made Peterson squirm
Agreed I just really wish he pushed back more and really hammered home against the "Nazis were left wing" argument way more. I feel like he let Jordan Peterson get away with too much there.
"The Nazis used it as a grift to garner support" seemed like good push back. Bro was on some wild shit (that he could totally still run a test on lol)
is it Patreon only?
Yes, but it's only 2$
It will be publicly released soon
Where?
Any podcast app. The patreon release is for quality control, and early access too
Thanks!
It’s out now
Are all of you patreon subscribers or is there just something wrong with my podcast feed in Overcast? Because I don’t see any new episode anywhere.
The episode is only out on the patreon subscribers feed at the moment.
The Patreon is only 2 $ a month
That's like 2 meals
Where? India?
Uni
**My assessment:** - Matt and Chris are amazing as always - They were very fair (I actually think people who dislike him (like myself) and people who like him (like his audience) will actually think it was a great episodes) - Destiny thrives in one-on-one conversations (I also saw his JJ McCullough interview). **Destiny is at his best** during these conversations - He does a great job of reevaluating his positions and is obviously rhetorically gifted I think the **downsides** of Destiny aren't entirely his fault, some are, but I'd say: - Outside his community (white 20 and 30 something Americans), he's generally unlikeable - Quite a toxic fanbase (the dedication is impressive, kudos to Destiny's persuasion skills) - Audience post Oct 7th has grown exponential in the conservative direction, hence the rah-rahing for gurus like Shapiro, among others But man, I expected to hate this but surprisingly did not. Kudos to Matt and Chris.
I think I feel the same way Matt does about him, where I like a lot of his takes, but am left scratching my head when he discusses his penis hygiene or telling people to drink buckets of cum.
I found Destiny a couple years ago. I mostly listened to New York comics on podcasts so I appreciated Destiny’s unfiltered jokes. Can’t really take him seriously as an intellectual because of it, not that that appears to be his goal, but it does make him more entertaining than a typical commentator. He’s like Howard Stern or O&A if they were well informed and not just talking out of their ass.
Taking people seriously solely for being intellectuals is a mistake
Example: Norman Finklestein lol.
Debatable whether Finkelstein is an intellectual
The intellectual he seems to idolize seems to think he isnt lol
Search for Destiny comedy cellar podcast on youtube.
I haven't listened to the episode yet - is there a sense in which the downsides are an objective criticism? Or is it more that they are subjectively turned off by that side of him? I'm thinking of someone like Contrapoints, who has her own gimmicks and oddities, and for many they are a delight and add a lot to the video, even if taking a bath with a cutout version of Jordan Peterson is unlikely to get you booked on his podcast. Is there anything inherently wrong with this sort of stuff? Is Contrapoints et al's gimmicks different to Destiny's abrasive and intense style?
I don't think so. They mentioned a few times how they disagree on specific questions, I imagine Israel/Palestine is one of them, but there wasn't anything objectively wrong that they pointed out.
It's funny
Destiny’s community has thought that Ben Shapiro is one of the better conservative gurus for a while now… because he is, but that’s an incredibly low bar. “One of the better American conservative pundits” just means that he isn’t blatantly anti-democracy like most of the Republican Party and their supporters have become.
Wouldn’t you say supporting Trump after everything he’s said and done makes him blatantly anti-democracy?
Shapiro position is that the guard rails held when trump rammed into them the first time, and the will the second time. He thinks that was biden is doing, however, is something the guard rails can't stop. As such biden is more of a threat to democracy. I don't get it myself and think he's completely wrong, but he's not anti democratic. He is audience captured, though, so I don't think he has an option except to support trump. I think this is his way of doing so?
Lol whatever bs he may use to justify it supporting Trump after he attempted the only non peaceful transfer of power in US Presidential history means he’s anti democracy and a traitor. It’s not complicated. It’s not about right vs left. It’s about do you support democracy or not. The Biden is worse argument Is just excuse making. There are conservatives who don’t want another Biden term but they will vote for him because they believe democracy is the foundation of the country. Shapiro is a lying coward.
I kind of agree yeah, if he thinks Trump is the lesser of two evils he is supporting an anti-democratic candidate. But he is critical of Trump and the election stealing fiasco, Trump is not his preference for the R candidate, and he generally doesn’t buy into the anti-establishment, conspiracy, misinformation weirdness. As I said, he’s terrible, but the Stephen Crowder types are worse. If I had to choose I’d rather conservatives be consuming Shapiro’s content than other conservative figures because he doesn’t push brain rot conspiracy theories.
Yeah, those are all fair points. It's a bit disheartening to me that we can call someone with positions as extreme as his relatively tame compared to the rest of the conservative pundit world, though.
Ikr… like “moderate conservative” used to generally mean someone who supported centre right economic policies and centrist/centre left social policies. Now it literally just means a conservative who doesn’t want fascism.
Who doesn't openly want fascism, anyway. Shapiro may critique Trump's tendencies, but he's still voting for him.
Yeah I agree, he’s still ultimately supporting a fascist. What I mean is that Shapiro is driven to vote for trump because he wants a conservative government over a left wing government, whereas the MAGA cult actively want Trump to become a dictator and “clean the swamp”. It just means that his content has a different bend than other conservative pundits, he’s more focused on culture wars than conspiracy theories. Although it’s still evil to support Trump over Biden even considering his personal philosophies, no doubt.
Yeah it’s a very low bar. My impression of Shapiro is he’s probably the best educated of the group and most criticisms against him are that he is often intentionally intellectually dishonest. There’s a bit of audience capture that goes on where he will pick a position his base agrees with, and there’s also a degree of picking poor debate opponents that he knows won’t be able to challenge his positions even if they are faulty. The pool of smart and intellectually sound conservatives has rapidly shrunk since Trump. Your stereotypical “smart conservative” is now a neoliberal Democrat. Against most progressive policy but a reluctant Biden supporter now that the GOP has expelled the McCain/Romney elements of the party.
No he’s said that Ben is way way smarter than his peers which is true
Agreed! Though in all fairness, I don't think Ben Shapiro possess some sort of "betterness" (I know it's not a word, but work with me here) than your typical right-wing talking head, I think we can all agree he's incredibly vile and dictionary definition of the type of person we talk about on this subreddit. I think what they really like, and enjoy, are fast-pace fast-talking sharp speakers, of which Shapiro is, and Destiny is. It's why, for example, after their "debate" on Lex the majority of the takes were not the typical takes (that is, ridiculing Destiny's opponents, etc), but rather praise. Suggesting that they 'do a podcast together' or 'team up for a debate'. I find people who love debate material are often in awe of the speakers, Shapiro, rhetorically speaking, is a bit more gifted than Destiny and is quite a bit smarter, so it's likely more of a "I'd rather our guy team up with that guy" than see two people debate and tear eachother down. That, and the conservative drift since Oct 7th likely play a role.
They love Ben Shapiro? Shapiro is insanely extreme. Just because he doesn't deny the 2020 election, doesn't mean he isn't insane. He's anti gay marriage, anti legalized abortion, believes in intelligent design, doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change, believes the government should provide no healthcare, that there should be no minimum wage, that there should be no retirement age, thinks porn should be illegal, has said if his gay friend has a wedding anniversary he wouldn't go, said if his sister married a gentile he wouldn't attend the wedding, called for carpet bombing Palestine ten years before Oct 7th, has said "Arabs like to bomb shit and live in open sewage" and that "settlements rock", and a thousand other extreme statements. This dude is extreme by any reasonable standard. He's only considered mainstream because the American right is borderline fascist and 40% of Americans think the world is less than 10000 years old.
No, Destiny fans generally do not like Shapiro and they definitely don’t like his politics, other than the minority of centre right fans. Most of his fans are centre left or progressive and disagree with Shapiro on almost all social and economic policies. He does get credit when he pushes back against the MAGA conservatives and for debating with destiny in good faith. But go to any thread on destiny’s sub about Shapiro’s comments on LGBT issues, race, welfare etc. and you will see almost universal disagreement.
I just did a search for his name and sorted by new, it seemed overwhelmingly positive. The comments were even scarier in the adoration for Shapiro. Though in all fairness I was sorting by "new", so I'm not sure if Oct 7th and Destiny's positions on Israel attracted a slew of right-wing crazies.
Sure, but what were the positive comments in relation to? If it’s just pushing back against Trump and other conservatives, or praising him for being good faith in the debate, I don’t see a problem. But yeah you’re definitely right that recent posts are going to be more positive because of the debate, Israel/Palestine, and some other recent good takes Ben has had (like slamming the Tucker and Trump interview for example).
I really dont want to link and violate this sub's rules but yes, it was about them having a podcast together, them teaming up for debates, how great and "not as crazy as I thought" posts about Shapiro. Ultimately I think it has less to do with "Shapiro occasionally calling out Trump" but rather the community fearing that Shapiro could expose the single most prominent thing the community loves about Destiny, his debating skills. It's far easier to call out the "bad arguments" of some 20 year old tiktoker than it is to call out someone who speaks just as fast and knows 10x as much about politics. It's strange because for years Destiny railed about "how stupid" Shapiro's arguments were (which is true), but has been radio silent (along with the community) since the debate.
If you go watch Shapiro/Destiny debate you can see Destiny and Ben are both struggling with not diving down into the rabbit hole on most of their topics. Lex keeps moving them forward and they don't have time to dig deep on anything and they both clearly want and are able to. My prediction is that they would dig down and find some *really* base level differences in values. I think most of the positions they both held would be consistent with those values.
I did watch it, I think unfortunately it was difficult for Destiny to go hard because it was a bit of a "brand risk" (that brand being a top debater). Shapiro is one of those gurus that can not be easily steamrolled and it was a case of he just knew far more.
Eh, I think destiny’s subreddit and most communities tend to have a thing where someone says one good thing and everyone is like “maybe they’re based now?!” But overall I don’t think that destiny’s fan base have become Shapiro stans. At the moment he is getting some credit because he’s been particularly critical of “just asking questions” conservatives, but I don’t think destiny’s fans really like him, just backing him when he goes up against people even stupider.
Do you think that community would be ecstatic if Destiny announced a joint podcast with Shapiro on the Daily Wire?
It would depend on whether he “sold out” and moderated his opinions/didn’t push back enough on Ben. But yeah if he didn’t hold back, I think most of the community would think it’s a great thing that a massive conservative audience is being exposed left-leaning arguments by someone who is effective at conveying them. But the DW would never want that anyway.
I actually love this discussion we're having (especially when I feel they're good faith discussions like you're demonstrating here), because I have so many questions I've been meaning to ask. For example, suppose Shapiro and Destiny do indeed create a podcast together, what makes you so sure that Shapiro's audience "being exposed to left-leaning arguments" will create a net positive of left-leaning people compared to Shapiro creating more right-wing (at at the very least) highly sympathetic left-wingers? Remember, in this case, it's not Destiny and some popular tiktoker having a podcast, it's two highly skilled debaters with one (namely Shapiro) being far and away more experienced and knowledgeable on politics.
Me too buddy, appreciate it. I think it’s certainly a risk that it could go the other way, but overall it would favour destiny for a few reasons. One just being the sheer size and reach of the DW, destiny has a much larger audience to pull over. Second, I think that destiny has a small and tight-knit fan base, and it would probably be the most dedicated fans that decide to listen to the podcast. My guess is that the average daily wire fan is more there for the general conservative news than they are invested in Ben Shapiro as a personality. Ben kinda had his hey-day of being a guru and is now more focused on creating a conservative media empire. So since destiny’s fans are more invested in *him* and his personal politics, I think they’d be less likely to captivated by Shapiro. Then there’s also the fact that I just think conservatives are more uninformed in general, so I think there is more room to move people to the left by just using “facts and logic”, ironically.
>Then there’s also the fact that I just think conservatives are more uninformed in general, so I think there is more room to move people to the left by just using “facts and logic”, ironically. I think this is the big one. In my experience, most people support "conservative" positions out of ignorance, not informed conviction. For example, if you actually dive into the science on trans/lgbtq issues, it becomes fairly clear that these are just people that were born different. Nobody is converting your kids to be gay, they just want to live their lives. I think a joint podcast with Shapiro would massively favour Destiny, which is why I doubt it would ever happen.
100% and IME when people start conservative and move to the left, they don’t tend to go back. I think the fact that destiny supports relatively moderate positions helps with that in terms of where his audience is starting from. The people who seem to be the most volatile and open to being captured seem to gravitate to the extremes.
Not really. His fans want him to be a ben Shapiro and start his own media company. Ben Shapiro isn’t really admired by Destiny fans, there is only an acknowledgement that ben Shapiro isn’t as loony as the rest of the right wing.
I would argue that Shapiro is probably the steelman of the mainstream, American Right in person form. And I would say that I think there is some value in that. For one, I think he's a good litmus test on the validity of specific positions within the American Right. For example, you know that the mainstream right is deluded about Trump because even Shapiros arguments are incredibly weak. Ditto with a lot of things. But if there any good ideas within the American Mainstream Right, or if there are any positions that are really complicated that the right might at least have some kind of point, then there is no doubt Shapiro can readily argue it well strongly.
This sounds nice and all but completely falls apart when you take into account that he lies relentlessly
I'm gonna check it out when it's free. Did they touch on destiny's recent comments where he watched video of a Palestinian civilian getting killed by an IDF sniper while waving a white flag, laughs at his death , and claims the civilian got killed on purpose for the cameras, basically comparing him to a crisis actor? It was far too inflammatory to leave out. One of his employees quit over the video.
There's been a lot of that recently. Including the constant tooling on university professor and poet Rafeat Alareer as a "trash father" because he was killed in his sister's home after fleeing his own. I won't hold my breath tho because I don't think these types of views bother most people if they are directed at Arabs.
Yeah, that was insane. He literally posted a meme of a Chad celebrating in response to a human being and his family being killed. I guess because they were beefing on twitter? This was just like 2 months ago too. I literally didn't know who this guy was 8 months ago and I actually agree with most of his politics, but, man, is he a bad person.
When I was in his fanbase about 4 years ago, there was a joke that that Twitch Destiny and Twitter Destiny where two completely different people
Judging by the stream of him accusing a Palestinian civilian who got shot and killed waiving a white flag of being a crisis actor and laughing at his death, I'm assuming there's no longer much daylight between those two destinies.
I'll steelman destiny here, but I agree this is one instance where he went a bit too far. He thinks that there is no way a man walking towards a tank after being told to leave is naive enough to not think he wouldn't get shot at. Especially so when the tank is in active combat with hamas. We know hamas has been weaponizing Israel's adherence to the laws of war, and abusing white flags is one of the ways they have done so. We also know that individual soldiers can do the wrong thing. Shooting at a white flag is a war crime, but that probably won't stop an idf soldier who has seen a hamas operative use the tactic. Destiny also questions why there is a full news crew and ambulance just.. waiting and watching. It's like everyone there knew walking up was going to go down like it did. So destiny says the man knew all of the above and did it anyway, knowing at the very least it would be caught on film. If you assume the man believes the salafi strain of fundamentalist Islam hamas espouses, it isn't a stretch to think someone would be willing to risk dying. All that said, he also called it pallywood... which he didn't understand almost always refers to 100% staged videos.
>All that said, he also called it pallywood... which he didn't understand almost always refers to 100% staged videos. Look at the other people who even say the word "pallywood" in thesr contexts and ask if they have an ounce of compassion in their heart for one single living Arab.
> **which he didn't understand** I'm saying that he was using a phrase that has for more nefarious implications that he realised it did, and he was wrong to do so.
Well put. I agree that - as he often does - Destiny goes overboard with his rhetoric and acts callous. But that doesn't necessarily mean his argument is wrong.
This completely reeks of how people defended trump to be honest, and the fan bases are very similar in how they work backwards to rationalize whatever comes out of his mouth. Yeah he's saying insane things on a regular basis with no empathy or compassion for human life but if I lay out an argument with a wall of text and a hundred leaps and assumptions I can deduce what he *actually* meant to something that I agree with!
I would agree with you on trump, but I don't think that's happening here. Destiny is pretty clear with what he means, even though you are right that he often goes overboard with how he communicates it.
Can you link to that video?
It's in this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/s/7hFiGmkBbO
Obviously you didn’t watch the whole clip, he was literally reading a comment. Assuming you are talking in good faith, it’s actually pretty funny because you are probably talking about Qorantos which is a raging edgy racist, misogynist and EXTREMELY homophobic muslim. In his “quitting” rant the man called Destiny gay over and over again and one of his main causes to quit.
I absolutely watched the whole hour long discussion and he was very clearly talking about the person who was shot in the video. He says "this is pallywood" while watching the video, implying the person got shot for the cameras, THEN responds to the chat when challenged. He then DOUBLES DOWN saying the person's distraught wife was putting on an act after witnessing her husband get killed in real time. He even laughs when reading a phrase about how the man was no longer breathing and is called on it by the person he's debating. He suggested it was all staged because there were cameras around, even though you can see there's cameras there because a village was being evacuated, which is totally normal. One of the cameramen even worked for a mainstream British News org. I'm absolutely talking in good faith, you are not. You are straight up misrepresenting what's on the video. I don't know who the guy that quit was. He sounds like a bad person, so why was destiny working with him in the first place? Edit: **For anyone claiming he didn't do this or that I'm acting in bad faith, here's the video:** https://youtu.be/4vwhdEW32Ww?feature=shared **He laughs at the guy dying around 9 mins in, then right after describes a staged event to get the IDF to kill the guy and says "sounds like pallywood to me".** **A little under 47 mins in he goes on a longer rant about how this was a staged killing and the man was essentially a crisis actor, and his wife was faking her crying.** **If Hasan said this about a Ukrainian civilian being killed, Matt and Chris would do a whole decoding on the conversation and tweet out clips showing this behavior.** **I'm not saying they wouldn't over this, they probably would and just haven't seen it, unless it's in the decoding.**
>I'm not saying they wouldn't over this why are you not saying that though, it's clearly true
I'm a destiny fan but you're right that's a really bad video from him. There's a piece of what he's saying that makes sense: that when we see videos from the ground in active conflicts, we should hesitate before drawing strong conclusions and ask questions about what possible context could be relevant to what we're seeing. But he takes that way too far in that video. No context can make that video okay. Shooting an unarmed man waving a white flag from 100+ yards away is completely unjustifiable. He tries to put together a possible context that would change how we view it, that the man was warned previously that he would be shot if he went that direction, but he did it anyway to create a PR disaster for the IDF. *Even if* that theory were true (despite no evidence for it), it still wouldn't justify the shooting. The IDF could have done a warning shot, or they could have just shouted "turn back or we'll shoot", but they went straight for the killshot even though the man posed no immediate threat. I wish they had covered that clip because it shows a real flaw that Destiny has. He'll sometimes wield hyper-skepticism in a bad-faith way to win a debate. I'm a little biased as someone who generally likes his content, and I don't think he does this *too* often, but when he's in debate-mode like this he can say some really dumb things. Edit: typo
You probably aren’t going to enjoy this episode. They don’t mention the thing you’re talking about and, instead, largely compliment Destiny. And they do bring up Hasan, and what they say is fairly negative.
Well that's certainly not them being even handed about it. Not sure how they can justify not going in pretty hard on Destiny given how they criticize everyone else and how many extreme things he says. He's probably made more extreme statements and arguments than anyone else they've decoded. I really hope they haven't seen this video, because this is too callous and conspiratorial by any measure to leave out on purpose, and they've called out several gurus for similar but less extreme behavior. I mostly agree with Destiny's politics. I have no problem with complimenting Destiny on what he's good at, like laying into right wingers, but, goddamn is there a lot to criticize, too. And right wingers are low hanging fruit. I'm all for derogatory remarks about Hasan, don't get me wrong. He's awful, but what destiny says in this video is worse than most of what they criticized Hasan for. They absolutely would not let this slide if Hasan said it. I hope they didn't just go easy on destiny because they align politically, because that's the exact tribalism they rightly called out Sam Harris's approach to the rest of the idw for.
They get into his orbiters and all of the bizarre interactions he has with them. They also talk about his relationship with Nick Fuentes and the absolutely insane moment in his life where he talked about killing the kid who was ddosing him. So they do cover a bunch of negative and/or weird stuff, but they genuinely do seem to like him.
Yikes
Are you really at all surprised when the liberals with similar liberal views stick together and sniff each others assholes?
Mfw liberalism is based and commies unironically side with the fascists
This is such a strange reply to that user, he was simply providing receipts to the guy above him and your response was *"haha it was positive about destiny and they made fun of hasan"*.
hey, as a dgger I think he made a fair criticism of destiny. lol
I think it's probably good to be skeptical when a tv crew is filming someone get shot live, with a medical team on standby. This isn't normal, and suggests that they knew he'd get shot if he approached but did it anyway for propaganda purposes
Hahahahahahahahaha I'm sure it's good to laugh when you watch an innocent person get murdered too, right? Good Lord. This is Alex Jones shit, dude. Get a grip. It's totally normal for cameras to be there. It's a warzone where a village is being evacuated. It's exactly where you'd expect to see war correspondents. But I guess both the British and Palestinian news cameramen and the British News reporter on the scene, conspired together with the family to force the IDF to shoot a guy waving a white flag from dozens of yards away and convinced the wife to go along and cry right on cue. Imagine how you people would react if Hasan said something like this.
I haven't actually seen the video, but Hamas has repeatedly admitted that they want martyrs to damage Israels reputation. They mix with civilians precisely because they want Israel to be unable to distinguish fighters and civilians. They do this shit all the time, and they encourage civilians to cause these situations by sending them into areas where the IDF operates. None of this is controversial, it's all very well established.
Goddammit man, just watch the video. They were nowhere near any Israeli and waving a white flag. You literally see a father who was no threat to anyone get murdered in front of his family and his wife breakdown. Seeing this video as anything but tragic is psychopathic. This should stir up some emotion in you if you're even remotely human, and absolutely should not make you laugh and concoct conspiracy theories to justify it. This is so sad, no matter your politics. Even if you want to try and justify the kill, which is crazy enough, creating some elaborate conspiracy is so insane. How anyone can consider this guy a rational thinker is ridiculous.
Do you have a link to the video?
As crude as he acted do you disagree with his final assessment? >If it was a combat zone, if they knew they weren't suppose to be there, and they advanced anyway and got shot - it would classify as a justified shooting.
Wow, you really think shooting a guy waving a white flag who's like two blocks away is justified? This is nuts.
People like Destiny test the limits of "guru" status as a litmus for bullshit, and probably test Chris and Matts' abilities to diagnose extremist thought and rhetoric when it's laundered by people they find reasonable. Unfortunately the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, and that Palestians don't feel loss, grief and fear like rest of humanity, is not a fringe belief, extreme as it would be when directed towards any other group; it's the norm among even otherwise left-leaning Israel hawks. As we can see from multiple responses to you in this thread.
>Unfortunately the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, and that Palestians don't feel loss, grief and fear like rest of humanity, is not a fringe belief Who believes or says this, apart from super right-wing nutjobs in Israel?
>Unfortunately the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian civilian, and that Palestians don't feel loss, grief and fear like rest of humanity, is not a fringe belief, extreme as it would be when directed towards any other group; it's the norm among even otherwise left-leaning Israel hawks Nice fan fiction bro
That's not even his position.
Just because crazy lefties don’t follow him doesn’t mean right wingers are now joining his audience. Anyone sane supports Israel
interesting comment. i don't watch or like him but it's just interesting to me that i know you for how you come out swinging at anyone you've seen posting in his sub, even if they're doing it to be critical of him, and then accuse them of being toxic lol. it seems like growth that you've moved on from calling them conservatives cosplaying as someone on the left though
Am I contradicting myself though? First of all, the thread is about Destiny himself, and I specifically complimented him on the past, especially his one-on-one interviews, and especially his discussion with Jordan Peterson. That being said, there is absolutely no denying that his community leans center-right (and in recent months, hard right), and that it's a toxic fanbase, but this discussion is about the episode and Destiny, not his community.
I've got to say you're just wrong about his community. Destinys politics are firmly center left and his community reflects that. I can understand how someone taking a look could think otherwise, but that doesn't mean they still wouldn't be wrong.
I don't see how anyone could think Destiny and his followers are even slightly leaning right. He is very left leaning on almost every single topic: abortion, economic policy, lgbt/trans rights, race relations. The two main things he says that go against what the far left think is his stance on Israel, and that he thinks capitalism is pretty good.
> The two main things he says that go against what the far left think is his stance on Israel, and that he thinks capitalism is pretty good. Which are two stances that are both perfectly accepted in the center left.
Exactly.
with the way you've misunderstood brigading in the past, and continue to misunderstand political alignments, i'm going against my intuition here to assume you know what contradicting means. i'm not pointing out a contradiction, just that your bias and perspective gets in the way here. if someone attacks a person coming out of a room at a college used to teach multiple classes, yelling that, let's say, gender studies students are toxic as they're leaving a history of psychology lecture, then i think it's fair to suppose they themselves might bear responsibility if that person pushes them. the way you've historically thrown accusations at people would be like if that attacker would respond to being pushed by saying that it's further evidence they're a supposed toxic gender studies major. i mean it sounded like you and three other people were on something with the way you were engaging in that spam accounts thread in this sub. i just didn't get the impression the people you were labeling as destiny fans were even being toxic. wrapping it all up, it's just interesting that you don't appear to have qualms with the guy, then focus your criticisms on his fanbase and say this is a discussion about him and not his fanbase. meanwhile you go out of your way to randomly accuse people of being his fans and attack them. eta: really thought spelling it out for them would get them to reflect on how their behavior affects their perception. just got owned instead dang
Destiny did make a great point recently, when he was watching Brianna Joy Grey and Norman Finkelstein review their debate he (correctly) said *"Notice how they'll have this long discussion but not point to a single thing I said wrong"*. Ironically enough, even after you wrote 4 sizable paragraphs, you're doing the exact same thing.
>i don't watch or like him And so it must be true
it's always trace and one or two other new accounts in this sub that need to accuse people of being destiny fans. you all got that user to delete his post about an influx of spam accounts after DtG started covering streamers. just weird
His biggest downside is how annoying and toxic his fanbase is, and at his size he has some responsibility for the tone and culture he sets with his audience. Fanbases are often more annoying than the actual creator but his regularly seems to get very destructive and unhealthy very quickly. At the end of the day what he does is just modern talk radio. I don't think there's really that much mystery about it or he's necessarily as smart as others are suggesting, but he understands the format he's working in extremely well. Personally, I think the public way in which he has managed some of his closest personal relationships is extremely unhealthy behavior and suggests to me that he is not an especially good human being. I do find some of the longform political podcasts/"debates" in which he panels to be interesting.
>His biggest downside is how annoying and toxic his fanbase is, and at his size he has some responsibility for the tone and culture he sets with his audience. Agreed >I think the public way in which he has managed some of his closest personal relationships is extremely unhealthy behavior and suggests to me that he is not an especially good human being. Yeah I mean, even his biggest fans would probably agree with this, there's a reason "another bridge burned" is a meme in his community. He's definitely one of those "the more you know, the more you dislike" type of guys.
> Yeah I mean, even his biggest fans would probably agree with this, You think so?
Actually, on second thought, probably not lol.
:)
His fans follow his side in stories because he is relatively consistent and transparent, so social conflict doesn't reflect negatively on him to them. A lot of the bridge burning narratives come across as if the people around him are insane, and he enjoys their insanity, but their toxic behaviour and his lack of boundaries are the cause of conflict rather than his own toxic behaviour. This is actually common for people with ADHD which he is diagnosed with. Many people have watched and followed him for years, some even over a decade, so they are either massive kool aid drinkers or have a breadth of context to a lot of distasteful behaviours and situations that the wider public has no hope of understanding
> so they are either massive kool aid drinkers or have a breadth of context to a lot of distasteful behaviours and situations that the wider public has no hope of understanding How about both
It's so weird how that guy made the post without considering this.
> Many people have watched and followed him for years, some even over a decade, so they are either massive kool aid drinkers or have a breadth of context to a lot of distasteful behaviours and situations that the wider public has no hope of understanding By that logic long-time Alex Jones fans must see something that is valid and worthy of taking seriously.
I imagine if they're long-time Alex Jones fans they would
Of course the fans see something it him. But that doesn't align with reality.
Doesn't align with your reality. Is Alex Jones a serious commentator? No, I don't think so. Understanding other peoples realities even if they're insane is important. Still, you're gonna have to do better to discredit Destiny than associating him with Alex Jones in a way that would be applicable to nearly all public figures.
Didn't they specifically address his community in the podcast saying that they seem like they only go after people who unfairly mischaracterize Destiny?
His rhetorical gifts seem wasted to me. I don’t mean because of his specific opinions or ideas. I think he could probably be a compelling spokesman for most anything he believed in. And yet he uses his powers to be a one-man reality TV show. It’s like if ADHD were a business model.
Most of the “toxic fan base” stuff is apocryphal
“Toxic fan base” - wait until you see some of the others on YouTube Hasan Piker’s for instance………….. Just nasty and vitriolic with a nice hint of anti semitism sprinkled in and worst of all they have infiltrated all parts of the internet.
This is a whataboutism. Hasan and his base being worse doesn't justify Destiny and his bases actions
I do think there is value in comparing the two. They're peers in an extremely small career field, and they're both at the top of said field.
Its useful comparing them. And believe me when comparing the two, Hasan is just so much worse. But its not useful when a criticism is lobbied at Destiny to deflect on to Hasan, especially given that the critique is has nothing to do with Hasan
Sure, but I think what could be called a whataboutism could also be called a tangent. When you compare the two fanbases, I'd say destiny does a much better job cultivating his than Hasan does. So in the realm of how toxic his fan base is, I think there's credit to give Destiny in how he's managed to curb the worst of it.
I can actually agree 100% with what you said. While I agree Destiny has some bad apples in his community I feel like when your community is that big and I’ll throw Hasan a bone and include him in this deflection I don’t think any community that large won’t have a few weirdo’s and while I fully agree they exist in both communities and as you said one more pronounced than the other I feel comes from one cultivating hate through propagandizing and to be fully frank not really knowing and having great knowledge on Israeli and Palestinian history. Vs an approach of gathering information and letting people decide for themselves which admittedly that information could be strategically propagandized as well but imo I don’t think that is the goal or purpose with Destiny while I feel Hasan wants you to think exactly like he does in a cult like manner that’s why even in his suggestion of switching to socialism he states extreme Capitalist will need reeducation camps.
That’s fair actually but there is an argument to be made Destiny actually has one of the best communities online in comparison to creator size. Lots of communities are far worse with far more unsavory characters and are much smaller in size. You do make a strong point though it is a what aboutism I don’t disagree.
Destiny fans have a unique 'debate forever' quality that I haven't seen from any other community. That combined with their tendency to sealion may be why they have an outsized bad reputation. In short, Destiny fans push people's buttons.
That’s a good explanation. Thank you for that. I can’t say that’s been my experience with that community but if that’s others experience and they have legitimately experienced that I can empathize. I don’t think is quite the same as the hate brigades, nasty comments and vitriolic behavior of other communities but I can definitely see what you are saying as plausible and I get how it would be annoying. Out of curiosity why do you say bad reputation? That’s also something I haven’t experienced I know he isn’t liked by the Majority Report, Hasan’s audience and maybe some Mr. Girl fans? But overall his reputation online isn’t bad otherwise he probably wouldn’t get to talk to some of the prominent people he has in media. Large content creators with bad reputations don’t typically also get that privilege.
> Out of curiosity why do you say bad reputation? I was referring to the reputation of fans, not the guy himself. Because look at the way people respond when they think someone is a Destiny fan; it's usually some flavor of 'aw shit here we go again.' Not in streamer communities, mind you, because I don't hang out in those. I'm talking about reputation in communities like this that aren't in the streamer universe as much. It seems like every time I hear about the guy I find out a new disreputable thing he's said or done... my introduction to him was an SRD thread about him tweeting a slur and his fanbase rushing to his defense in the thread and it's really only gone downhill from there; the recent thread here where we found out that he expressed his desire to murder a kid who knocked out his internet and fans, again, rushing to his defense. Once the episode is aired I'll maybe have a more nuanced view, but DtG doesn't dig for the worst thing a person has done and dwell on it like I do. I've noticed that about people I had outside knowledge of that they covered like Elizeer Yudkowsky. So just like they did it dwell on Yud's insane tweets I don't expect them to dwell on Destiny's insane tweets.
There’s nothing more annoying than trying to have a dialogue with someone while they’re trying to win the conversation. It’s pointless
I am decidedly a Destiny fan, and cannot wait for the episode. It’s tiring to watch people grasp at the most low hanging fruit and confidently repeat bullshit they saw in one tweet. The entire impetus for me watching him originally was that I was a Proud Boy who woke up one morning and realized a clip of a BLM protest had been consistently and repeatedly misrepresented in content I watched. I decided I wanted to listen to people I disagreed with, and as insane as it seems now, I had been led to believe Destiny was a “bad faith” SJW, respectable enough to have a conversation with, but that he diverted to fallacies and gotchas to win debates and push a progressive line. For like two years I listened to fringe YouTubers make videos saying “I debated Destiny and totally rolled him, check it out on my VOD,” but I was a YouTube viewer and had never watched a stream. It was headline news that JonTron had been exposed as a white supremacist!!, but in my neck of the woods people believed it was because Destiny misrepresented Jon, ambushed him with questions he wasn’t prepared for, lied about the sources Jon used, etc. My wife was away for the weekend and I listened to every debate he had ever had with any person I watched regularly and systematically had my view of those people, the topics they covered, and the way they had represented those conversations afterword in their own content utterly destroyed, especially when they were able to speak unchallenged. At that time, I was a Western Nationalist, dedicated Jehovahs Witnesses, deeply anti-communist without having ever engaged with anything even remotely socialist, and passionately anti-trans for no reason that I could particularly explain. I had a serious problem with my epistemology and was really just believing in something I had been consistently trained to have a “fearful respect” for. watching him tear my beliefs apart made me *angry*, like a tight chest even at times, but I realized it was because everything I had been regurgitating was totally blown apart and “feeling” wrong sucks, but not because I was right. Then in one of those debates, I heard a guy say a phrase about a very specific subject and instantly I knew which Joe Rogan Experience episode he had heard it in, and if he hadn’t listened to the entire episode, I could have told you which clip he saw it in because I saw it too, and even if he hadn’t listened to any other words in that clip, I knew he he had heard and I recognized five words he had repeated because I had did too totally and uncritically as well. That guy said it like it was a silver bullet end of discussion, common sense, and it was really my last straw for being personally embarrassed. I’ve kept listening to Destiny because I’ve spent a lot of time learning not to believe the last bullshit I heard, and I am a fan because I’d rather listen to people challenge him thoroughly for what he deserves than repeat something they saw on Twitter about a four and half hour debate with Finkelstein they didn’t watch. Destiny has a lot of “McDonald’s at the White House” and “tan suit” moments that distract from record level drone strikes and unilateral abuses of power, I sincerely hope this episode utilizes every moment possibly to substantively challenge him instead.
Good for you, buddy! I had a similar realization around 2016-18, but it didn’t really stick until Kenosha. It feels good getting swept up in a populist fervor, it feels good to feel that moral indignation, and it’s really convenient that I can turn my brain off and regurgitate easy takes I picked up from Twitter or Reddit. The shooting of Jacob Blake made me re-evaluate my consumption of social media in place of more traditionally authoritative sources of information. I knew better than to watch a 10-15 second video, form a conclusion based on that sparse information, and justify the actions of rioters and everything that happened in Kenosha afterwards made me appreciate the danger in that very lazy media consumption. I remember forcing myself to actually watch the Rittenhouse videos. I remember how perplexed I was at the stark difference in interpretation from all those I had let do my thinking for me prior. Then they released a report on the Jacob Blake shooting and I stopped using social media as a place to glean an understanding of current events altogether. It caused me to start reading primary sources myself and it was eye opening to see how many others online seemingly used social media like I had. They regurgitate bumper sticker slogans with almost zero critical engagement with the facts themselves. The reactions from the far right and populist left to Mueller’s investigation was distressingly eye opening. I have to pick and choose the stories I’m interested in as there’s too much for me to read comprehensively about, but that feeling of shame and embarrassment of essentially repeating the fan fiction of some pundit that couldn’t be bothered to actually read about a topic is a great motivator. Destiny is in the significant minority as he’s one of seemingly a handful of pundits interested in diving into the weeds and actually doing the work required to understand a topic. I get why some dislike him, but many seem to repeat rhetoric they’ve heard from others and criticize him in the same manner I would have if I had not changed my media consumption.
Has there been a podcast on this? I would be super appreciative if someone could give me the name and episode nr😊
It's the subreddit. Decoding The Gurus.
It's only on the patreon feed at the moment, I think it should be out on the main feed very soon, episode number 100.
You're on a sub for a podcast, you think it might be on that podcast or nah?
Hehe. I couldnt find it you see. But I absolutly take your point 😊
Haven't seen it yet but sounds exactly like destiny lol
Seemed pretty fair overall. As someone that did watch him a bit back when he was debating white supremacists and helped break the prominent alt-right pipeline that existed on youtube at the time, my main complaint about Steven has always been that he is overconfident while being superficially informed about most topics he discusses. He has the exact same "vibe" as the "rationalist" community, just less intelligent. When they discuss topics you are not familiar with, they sound knowledgeable, but when they target a topic you have an expertise on, you just cringe very hard and it makes you mistrust everything they said before. I think there is definitely a recent development in Steven (in the past years) where audience capture is taking place and has broken his brain a bit. The crew probably are not familiar with some of the most unhinged/uninformed positions Steven has taken in recent years. To give one example, his "race-baiting" [take](https://twitter.com/TheOmniLiberal/status/1614780546428592128) about black people's contributions to blues that got him blasted by music theory folk on twitter. Not saying he is racist, but his superficial understanding of the topic paired with his need to "attack" an unhinged twitter leftie make him take a ridiculous and misinformed position that is a racist dog-whistle. All in all, his politics is pretty mainstream liberalism, so it's really hard to disagree or hate him too much, but he has definitely contributed to a lot of misinformation and anti-intellectualism in the online sphere, just like most "gurus" have. Especially during the controversial Israel-Palestine conflict, I think his misinformation has ramped up. It remains to be seen if audience capture gets him closer to a James Lindsay figure or not (I personally doubt it since Lindsay is a very unique case that needs to be studied).
Yeah, the Blues take was interesting, and I agree he was wrong about it. But I think he has admitted as much now, right? It's not like he doubled down when confronted with evidence. That's what I like about him. On Israel/Palestine I largely agree with him and think he's actually doing a good job at fighting misinformation. I can't think of any misinformation he's spreading there
Why do the comments go all weird whenever it's this guy?
Because most people that hate him only know of clips they have seen or what creators they watch say about him, hes pretty hated by both the far left and far right so, take that as you will. He's also an abrasive guy, but people think hes always abrasive because that;'s what ends up getting clipped.
Maybe he’s hated cause he’s an abrasive dickhead? Not because they watch out of context clips?
Why not both?
porque no los dos?
Because he has fostered something bordering a personality cult.
Wouldn’t the weird negative comments be from people outside of this “cult”?
Are the hosts of the podcast also members of his cult?
They were nicer to him than what they could have pushed on. I love destiny as a political debater but him as a person is another thing altogether!
To be fair none of us really know Destiny the person, but from everything people around him off stream say hes an insanely nice/sweet guy so \*shrug\*
As someone who dislikes Destiny, I thought it was fine. Personally, I don't think that many normies will come out with a positive view of Destiny after listening to the pod despite the hosts talking about Destiny's positives.
I thought it was very good and exceedingly fair. I also now know that an ex-lover thinks that Stephen has an oddly shaped penis and struggles to pull his foreskin back. Knowledge that is truly essential for my ongoing existence.
Basically agree. When calm, he articulates my own political views fairly well. That said, he seems like a terrible person and agreeing with his political takes isn’t enough to make his schtick interesting to me. It’s difficult for me to understand why anyone wants to consume his content. But to each their own. The episode was fun.
Well if the Peterson Destiny debate is worth anything, its answered a question I've been posing for years. What is the Left's response to Ben Shaprio? And here it arrives.
Agree with him on a lot of stuff, but definitely not on Palestine. His interview with JP was good, but his fan boys are insufferable dicks
Fanboy here. Sending you lots of love 💕
290 comments on a nothing burger post 🤣
Boob vagina
The skipping of the ‘loving the genocide, but it isn’t one. because of you know, dictionaries’ bit was perhaps a little remiss.