Interview with Timbah Toast on his Tim Pool Documentary & Scooby Doo Partisans
This week's episode we have an extended interview with an independent decoder, the YouTube documentary maker, Timbah-on-Toast. A kindred spirit in many respects Timbah is perhaps the ultimate form of the 'I can't come to bed, someone is wrong on the internet' meme. He makes detailed videos analysing the content of a variety of internet pundits, especially those who are posing as something they are not.If you have not experienced one of Timbah's documentaries you should go do so now. He has an excellent 3-part series on Dave Rubin's interview techniques and another 4-part series breaking down the career of the propagandist founder of the Veritas Project, James O'Keefe.His most recent series, however, is looking at self-proclaimed milquetoast centrist fence-sitter, the eternal beanie wearing Tim Pool. We compare notes, delve into what makes Timbah motivated to do what he does, and discuss his Scooby Doo narrative arc.So join us as Chris meets a kindred consumer of irritating content and Matt continues to ponder if it's all just cloud castles and narcissism.Also featuring... a Weinstein World update, the standard banter quotient, and an abusive Patreon shoutout segment.LinksJordan Peterson's 'Smug Judge' TweetBret Weinstein & Jonathan Pageau: Ancient Wisdom, Modern WorldTimbah's Series on Dave Rubin: Battle of IdeasTimbah's Series on James O'Keefe: 10 Years of TruthTim Pool: Chaotic News AnalystTim Pool: Fence Sitter
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Professor Matt Brown and with me is Smug Judge Chris Kavanagh.
G'day Chris, you Smug Judge, you.
Hello Matthew Brown, or whatever your name is, whoever you are.
Who is Matthew Brown?
Everyone is asking this question.
Yeah, so we are poking fun.
At our Twitter misadventures where Brett Weinstein said you should reconsider your life or what you're doing, right?
Matthew Brown or whoever you are.
And in my case, Jordan Peterson recently retweeted me and called me a smug judge.
Shocking, shocking, shocking.
How dare he, Matt?
How rude!
I don't know how anyone could think that about you.
Such a justice.
I know.
And I mean, that's terrible.
That's just so inaccurate.
There's not even an inkling of truth there.
But in your little exchange, it did raise some little issues there because you were taking a couple of pot shots at JVP.
JVP did.
Yeah, you know.
This is right after we said on our previous episode that JVP is too far gone.
We can't criticize him anymore.
It would be punching down.
We can't do it.
Thoughts?
The problem there, Matt, is you're inserting the rural we.
We didn't say that.
You said that.
I just nodded along politely.
But I do actually agree.
Jordan is, you know, like I've listened to a bunch of his content.
I think he is emotionally fragile.
So there is an element where I think I would withhold some of my more caustic takes for him.
But at the same time, you know, he rampages on Twitter, throwing tantrums and threatening people with impunity.
So, like, if you're going to dish it out, you can handle the occasional critical comment.
And in this case, I didn't even make a critical comment directed at him.
He just didn't like that I made a snarky remark about...
This guy, Jonathan Pajot, and his appearance with a bunch of IDW sense maker superstars, right?
James Lindsay and Brett Weinstein and Jordan Peterson's wife.
I was just saying that these appearances, you can draw reasonable inferences from.
Or is it guilt by association?
That was my frame of my question.
But I did appreciate Matt.
It gave me a chance.
It gave me a chance when he called me a smug judge.
To respond by saying, to be honest, mostly I'm just preoccupied by my quest for revenge against God for the crime of being.
I did enjoy that, I have to say.
It gave me satisfaction to quote that back to him.
So, yeah.
So we all had fun.
Yeah, fun was had by all.
And you took the opportunity to link him to a previous criticism you had of his lectures, which you described as including references to psychology, finger-waving about how we don't really know something, references to myth and literature, complaints about the
modern left, crying about something, comparison to animal, conclusion, Jesus and the Bible house ultimate truth.
Which I think is probably a fair summary.
I mean, it's really just a description of his lectures, not so much a criticism.
It is!
No!
I mean, you might read it as a criticism, but it's an accurate description of the majority of his content.
And it was based on listening to his recent talk at Cambridge, which featured all of those things.
So, there we go.
Just, you know, truth hurts.
Truth hurts.
Yeah, and in your defense, he did receive an ovation, did he not, at that talk at Cambridge.
So, he is not some kind of enfeebled invalid.
He is taken extremely seriously by a lot of people.
So, you know.
Yeah, that's it.
So that's fine.
You just have to roll with the punches.
Take that, Jordan Peterson.
Speaking of metaphorical punches, so people, people, Matt, the fans, the internet hoi polloi, no, that's the opposite, the rabble, the internet rabble and the hoi polloi, they've been asking us to,
they've been begging us to return to the Weinsteins.
They've said, what are those guys up to?
What are they doing?
And, you know, we will get back, I'm sure, to a Weinstein episode at some point in the future.
But we thought instead we'd do a little mini update just on what they've been getting onto.
We used to do this, right?
A check-in on the Weinsteins.
So, haven't done that in a while.
So, what have they been doing?
What have they been up to?
I don't remember.
You tell me.
Okay, so we'll deal with the eldest first.
So Eric, you know, he's been rampaging around, giving his hot takes on Twitter.
That's what he does.
But I think the most notable thing that he has done recently is that he went to give a talk about alien survival and Bitcoin with Avi Loeb of the Galileo Project at Harvard.
At a Bitcoin conference.
So he's combining aliens and Bitcoin and reference to prestigious institutions all into one event.
So I feel like Eric has emerged from his chrysalis as a UFO-inclined Bitcoin guy.
I'm down for this.
That's a better arena for him to operate in.
Yeah, that's a good endgame to be playing.
I like that.
But what's the connection?
Why are they organizing a conference that's bringing together aliens and Bitcoin?
Will Bitcoin or NFTs be the currency when we have developed an interstellar civilization?
Will this be the only things that aliens, we value of each other?
Bitcoins and NFTs?
Yeah, well, Avi Loeb, I don't know how to pronounce his surname, but he's a legitimate theoretical physicist.
I think he's now based at Harvard University.
So there's credibility there, Matt.
Don't just dismiss it as NFTs and Bitcoins.
This is important stuff.
You know, they're just hopping on to a community which is hot right now, so hot right now, and trying to get them interested in potentially finding out our extraterrestrial life.
What's wrong with that, Matt?
Why are you scared?
I'm not scared.
I'm all for it.
We should do more SETI.
We're going to find them.
They're out there somewhere.
It's the buzzing around in UFOs across Montana.
That's the bit that I'm skeptical of.
I want to see more SETI.
I want to see big radars, big telescopes pointed in every conceivable direction.
But like I said, I think this is...
I'm much more comfortable with Eric operating in this space than giving his takes on the pandemic or COVID or...
Yeah, that's fine.
I mean, basically any take you have on Bitcoin is basically fine.
Who knows?
It's not like a vaccine.
It's different.
Yeah.
So the other brother, Brett Weinstein, well, it'll surprise you to know that he's been continuing to push ivermectin, anti-vaccine talking points.
His podcast is now over 50% just platforming.
Anti-vax people and talking about the problems with vaccines and their alternative medical takes.
So he's not really even disguising it anymore.
Like there was a defeat the mandates us.com account, which was promoting some defeat the mandates coast to coast event.
And it's got four sets of speakers and it's got everyone.
Mickey Willis, Judy Mikovits.
Dale Bigtree, Naomi Wolf, you know, just all the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists people and Brett was saying the resistance gathers tomorrow in LA Grand Park, right?
So I just, again, I think it's the reaching the end point of his trajectory into he's now recognized, I think should be recognized by most reasonable people as an anti-vaccine Advocate.
And that doesn't surprise because overall, that fits in with his naturalistic, fallacy-heavy worldview and kind of crunchy perspective on stuff.
Yeah.
I see that Pierre Corey and Robert Malone are at this event too, naturally.
But it is odd, isn't it?
These anti-mandate protests continue in dribs and drabs all over the place.
They're continuing on in Australia too.
And most people are a bit baffled by this because I don't know what it's like in every part of the world, but it's kind of over here.
You know, it's done.
Like, this is ancient history, man.
For a start, I don't believe there are mandates.
Are there?
In America, there are mandates for specific areas, like specific professions and that kind of thing.
But I don't think there's a national mandate.
For vaccination.
So I guess, well, I guess, you know, they still don't want it.
So that's what they're going on about.
But actually, it's just anti-vaccine.
As we know, all anti-mandate marches are just completely full of the anti-vax superstars of the world.
So theoretically, the two issues are independent, but they're a reliable predictor.
Of course, the anti-vax community has latched on to the COVID thing and have correctly seen that the public disgruntlement over restrictions and mandates was the perfect opportunity to leverage clout and influence, so it's not
surprising that they're going to try to move
I mean, and you see it in Brett Weinstein's weird theory that the Ukraine situation is some kind of It's a manufactured event to distract people away from the fact that the vaccines haven't worked or are dangerous or something.
It's so transparent.
You can see that he's just unhappy that he sees the limelight shifting and that impetus that has been fed into this anti-vax movement is vanishing like smoke, like a dead cow.
Yeah, yeah.
It is like a cow that has been experimented on.
By an alien probe and is now in the field without a uterus.
So yeah, that's Brett.
That's what he's up to.
The other thing he did was he had a three-hour conversation with a Jordan Peterson clone, theologian, sense maker called Jonathan Paju.
And they did a three-hour conversation about religion and science and ritual and evolution, which is very related to my research interest.
So if you...
We're looking for a conversation featuring one of the Weinsteins that we may cover in the future.
This might be a fairly safe bet by them.
In any case, that is not today, Matt.
That is not today.
We've got other business.
We may well be looking at Peugeot and Weinstein at some point in the near future, but that day is not today.
No, sir.
Today, we're looking at another scholar.
A towering intellect.
Well, really, I'm not talking about we're interviewing Timba on Toast, and this is not an insulting introduction of Timba.
We're discussing with Timba his new series about Timpool.
Concealed under that beanie is a head full of ideas.
It's amazing it can be contained in the head of one man.
But Timba on Toast.
He's a towering intellect.
He's a very interesting guy.
And we have a nice discussion with him.
Now, one small point of correction or clarification needed.
So Timba in this interview mentions he was disappointed that Sam Harris, somebody who he respects, introduced Joe Rogan to the idea of having Tim Pool on the podcast to kind of interrogate Jack Dorsey.
Now, it's subsequently emerged when...
We tried to locate this clip that we can't find it.
So it may be the case, can't say for sure, but that Timba was just misremembering and it's actually somebody else or it's just Joe Rogan who suggested Tim Pool.
So we may besmirch the good name of Sam Harris, but the comment is made in the context of Timba kind of saying how much he likes Sam's output.
So I don't think it's that bad, but I just wanted to clarify that.
We subsequently looked for the clip and weren't able to locate it.
So it might be, you know, somewhere in one of the various interviews, but it doesn't appear that Sam Harris was the one that recommended Tim Pool to Joe Rogan, which is good.
That's a good discovery.
That's a good thing.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
Sam wouldn't mind anyway.
He wouldn't.
No, he wouldn't.
He wouldn't take, you know, he wouldn't take exception.
He's bigger than that.
That's right.
So this is just for other people who might take exception that we're not spreading.
Misinformation and Timber mentioned, you know, just stick in the correction at the start of the next episode.
So there we go.
Done.
Done.
All right.
Let's get to it.
Let's talk to him.
So before I introduce our guest, I'll just say good morning, Matt.
It's an early morning.
We're glad to see that your old bones made it.
Yeah.
Good to be here, Chris.
The things I do for this podcast, the things you put me through.
That's right.
That's right.
Matt is sacrificing his bodily health for his art.
That's the commitment.
But the guest is Timba on toast, who I suspect many people know from his YouTube channel of the same name, who makes short documentaries, analyzing a whole bunch of people and the kind of rhetorical techniques that they use in the video,
somewhat similar to what we do, but with much more impressive.
Yes, yes.
Very nice to meet you boys.
Yeah, I think broadly, I always go to the description of, I make YouTube videos about politics and culture and leave it at that.
I think it's very difficult when you get into describing your own field of what you do because you get all expansive and trying to make it super broad.
I think that grabbed it fairly well.
Yeah, there was a podcast interview I did a while back with someone and they said, oh, Chris has a podcast about podcasts.
I was like, okay, that's a pretty succinct...
That is it.
Yeah, it's actually true.
And you don't need to get into politics or anything to describe that.
It encapsulates it really well.
Yeah, it was.
To give it credit, I think that was Megan Dolm.
Timba, your videos, I think the first time I came across them was with the Dave Rubin video, which is like three years ago since it came out.
It feels like it was only yesterday.
As I'd say, yeah.
For me, it doesn't seem like that long time has passed since I started on the YouTube channel.
But you're right, it was Doldrum was president at that time.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Oh, the good old days.
Yeah.
How much we miss them.
So you had a three-part series on Dave Rubin, The Battle of Ideas, which I think a lot of our audience know about, but if they don't, we'd highly recommend it.
The more recent series, though, we'll talk to you about today, as well as the earlier ones, is your Tim Pool series, which you've now produced two episodes on, the Tim Pool Chaotic News Analyst and Tim Pool Fence.
And is there more to come with Tim Pool, or are you done with him now?
This is something we'll probably go into during the podcast.
I could express this, but basically, it's just a lot of work, those videos.
I did want to make a third one, and I still might, but I feel like I'm going to have a little break for a little bit doing some videos about other stuff and come back to it.
Yeah.
So that's a solid maybe on the third temple video, basically.
Yeah, it's definitely clear how much work goes into your videos.
Like, they're carefully put together, and you collect a lot of, I guess, evidence or material to support the argument.
So, one quick question for me is, what drives you?
What makes you feel like you need to give yourself this extra job on top of your day job?
What got you into it?
Oh, are you allowed to swear on this podcast?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm a massive fucking nerd.
So basically, it all stemmed from arguments with people online, and then you feel like they haven't accepted the arguments you've put forward, and you're like, oh, I fucking just...
Express it in more words.
I could literally, like, lay everything out for you.
That's how I started, like, making the ribbon one, is I just made a video addressing the things that I was constantly hearing in regard to this political figure that I didn't agree with.
That is what drives me, basically.
There's some perspectives that I feel, for good criticism, need to be articulated well about these people because of often how multifaceted they are in the way they present themselves, different things they talk about.
And I feel like...
Sounds really big-handed.
I think because I can animate videos and do stuff with music, I think I can lay it out a lot more compellingly than I generally see other people doing.
But obviously that's completely down to my own subjective taste.
Well, your motivation sounds exactly the same as Chris's, which is to prove somebody wrong on the internet.
That's literally that, yeah.
I feel a contract spirit, Timba, when I watch your videos and it has a pretty cathartic Quality, because what you describe as your motivation is how it's received, because it feels like whenever people would make accusations about Ruben's content or whatever,
they can just refuse to see it, for example, debating it on Twitter.
But when you have the video evidence presented in the way that you do and kind of consistently break down the techniques that he's using.
It seems like it's much harder to deny.
In a way, somewhat similar to whenever we are making a point about the gurus that we cover and we play a clip of them demonstrating that they do do this.
It feels like that is harder for people to ignore.
They do try.
It definitely works.
It feels like it would be very hard to refute a lot of the points that you raise.
Well, this is the biggest difference.
The big form of critique that you'll see on YouTube and on podcasts is necessarily what people have to do is you take one video and then you respond to the points that are made in that video and you do some research around the edges.
And so by the end of it, you're like, so I've proven that what they argue in this video is wrong or it's like misinformation.
But the problem with that is it's one video.
So no matter how good you've broken it down.
It's one thing.
People get things wrong.
It doesn't really imply anything about their character or imply anything about their overall approach that you've managed to do that, even if you've managed to do it really well.
So my friend described it as it's like you want to debunk their whole life.
And I think that's the approach I'm going with.
It's like, well, don't even stop when you've got a mountain of evidence.
Keep going and going and going until the points that you're making the video, you've got almost like 60 clips to prove it.
And at that point, The idea is that it becomes really hard to argue against because it's like, well, if your point is that they were doing it out of misunderstanding the issue, or you're very hard steel manning them to the point where you're over favorably representing them, how come they made that same mistake 60 different times over the span of two years?
Like that, I think it's when you've got that, that it's actually as persuasive as it can be, in my opinion.
But obviously that takes so much work.
Yeah, for the people who haven't seen your videos, although I think most people would have, your format is a bit different from us.
We're much more casual.
We'll take a particular piece of material and just focus on that, mainly because we're lazy and we don't want to do all the work of having to cover all the stuff they've ever done.
And we're more casual about it.
But what you do is, as you say, build up a really broad selection of evidence from all of the material to really firmly establish Just probably a small number of points, but totally backed up.
So maybe you could summarize for people who haven't seen, say, your Tim Pool episode.
How would you describe, in a nutshell, those main theses that you develop in that?
Okay, so video by video, I guess.
The first video is more the point that Tim Pool doesn't have the journalistic competence to be Reporting on the issues in the way that he does.
So in this one, it's actually mostly about the way he interprets data.
It's the way he reads articles.
It's kind of all the foundational skills of what you would expect a professional reporter to be really good at.
And it's lively about that, that those fundamentals that you would kind of expect from a seasoned reporter, he doesn't do very well.
And then toward the end of the video, the next conclusion is that he doesn't do it well on purpose.
That it serves the purpose of audience validation.
Now, the problem with this as like a punchline or like a twist is that it's the same in every single video I made.
You go in and it's like, well, assuming they're doing badly, but at the end it's like, ah, they just want to validate their audience.
So, yeah, you will find if you watch my videos, that's the conclusion of every single one of them.
The interest I guess for viewers is how I get to that conclusion, how I show it.
That's a, that's a, the Scooby Doo, like, screw off.
Let's find out why they really did it.
Ah, they're biased.
Again, that's the reason again.
And then in the second video, which is the one I put out more recently this month, it's titled "Tim Paul Fence Sitter".
And it's about the proposition that Tim Paul is someone who fundamentally, if you look at the way he speaks, And if you take clips from different videos, you can find him arguing two diametrically opposed points.
And what this does is it means that it's really hard for anyone to fundamentally charitably characterise his positions in any way.
So I go through the whole video point.
I lost different examples of this.
And then again, towards the end, like I then show how this is not even being undecided.
Or Tim genuinely being like on a fence between two different positions, but rather Tim aggressively selling one side of a narrative and then backtracking enough to give himself plausible deniability.
So if anyone wants to call him out on these things, he can and does say he'll throw out a non sequitur.
Like in that video where you said that I am implying there was fraud, I explicitly said that I didn't think fraud had been committed.
And it's like, but the whole video is about election fraud.
To go on to that, I think this is the best way I can describe watching the way the Tim Pool operates.
Like, let's say I've got a neighbour, right?
And this neighbour, he comes up to me one day and he's like, "Hmm, you know what?
I could have sworn I saw like a metallic object in the sky last night."
And I'm like, "Oh, that's kind of crazy."
He's like, "Yeah."
I'm not saying it's a UFO.
Like, I don't believe in UFOs.
Obviously they're fake, but it's kind of weird that I saw that, right?
And I'm like, "Yeah, I guess so."
And then every day after that, he comes up to me with different stories about metallic objects in the sky.
He's like, "Oh, it's weird.
There's been more reports coming out of other parts of the country about them.
It's strange."
Obviously, I'm strictly agnostic on the issue of whether they exist or not, obviously.
And then I see him amassing a group of people who are all very avidly into UFOs.
They've all got UFO merchandise on and they're all sitting on his lawn listening to him speak about UFOs.
And so at some point I'm like, "Okay, technically..."
He's always said that he's agnostic on the subject.
But I have to, at some point, his whole behaviour contradicts that.
He's clearly someone who believes in UFOs.
And it doesn't matter the technicals of what he sends on this issue.
I can tell that this guy is someone who believes in UFOs.
But similarly, Tim would kind of deny the end result of all of his reporting of behaviour.
And I think that's the way I'd describe it.
It's like, at some point, their words don't really matter.
Their behaviour tells the whole story that you need to know to understand where their motivations are.
The interesting thing about that, Tim, is we've noticed that this is a very, very similar thing.
We refer to it as, like, strategic disclaimers.
It's a little bit different than what you outline in the video because the kind of, like, shouty animated endorsement of the conspiracy theory or extreme version and then the, like, softly muttered disclaimer.
In the content of Heller, Haying and Brett Weinstein, for example, they can spend, like, 20 odd minutes, essentially marshalling the evidence that the whole virology community is full of bad faith individuals who are just out to make money and they're afraid to tell the truth.
They're lying about the side effects of vaccines.
We know this because the pharmaceutical industry has been doing things for decades and so on.
They'll marshal like 20 minutes of unbroken evidence about the corruption.
Of the virologists and the international scientific community.
And then they add like a less than 30 seconds often disclaimer to say, no, are we saying that's true?
We don't know that's true.
And we don't say anything, but it's amazing how many people then, when you say, well, they were advancing the conspiracy theory.
They're like, no, did you miss, you know, they said.
They're not sure.
But they just spent 20 minutes telling you quite clearly that they are sure.
And it's this weird thing, because I feel like in everyday life, that doesn't work.
If you have a used car salesman or whatever, people would get that, that they're being manipulated.
But there's this weird thing where...
It works really, really well online, like surprisingly well.
I think, Matt, we've even talked about it being a magic spell.
But if people just say, of course, I'm being reasonable and I'm not making conspiracies, it's almost like there's a portion of the audience which is like, well, he was being reasonable and not making conspiracies.
Brett Weinstein, I've noticed, he's a big fan of the prepositional phrase, if this is true.
So he'll be like, if this is true, what we're seeing here is true.
That we are witnessing the biggest, most horrendous abuse of human rights in their history of humanity.
And it's like, well, you've prefaced it with if this is, that's not the kind of thing you say if you're not sure about something.
Look, this is true of so many of our gurus, like Jordan Peterson is another perfect example.
He'll say that he's speculating and that he's just built like this massive cloud castle from something that he himself admitted at the beginning was a speculation.
But look, I had a slightly different take on your thing.
Like, I agree about the strategic disclaimers and there's that similarity between your analysis and ours.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you were getting it more than that.
Because, you know, in the fence sitting, someone like Tim Pool claims being super duper precise and that they're going on and on and on and flipping backwards and forwards because they're delineating exactly what it is they're saying and what they're not saying.
And I think one of the points you make really forcefully.
That's not what they're doing at all.
And again, Jordan Peterson's another good example.
He's super big on preciseness, purportedly.
But in actual fact, what they accomplish with all of that backwards and forwards is that you can, it's almost either it's a set of tea leaves or a Rorschach diagram.
Even though they are pushing, as you say, a particular line, they want you to come away with a certain conclusion.
As well as that, they can almost claim to have any Basically, it allows the audience to take it in whatever way they need to.
When you're speaking to someone who habitually watches Tim Pool, it's really hard to identify the people who are genuinely taken in with Tim Pool's arguments.
And the people who are deliberately obfuscating what they know he's getting at, because it's a stronger argumentative position.
So, especially on the election fraud stuff, if you watch Tim Pool's videos between November 2020 and January 2021, all the way up to January the 6th, to be honest, Tim was pushing back the date when Joe Biden could legitimately be declared president.
And I think people have said, well, this is what I've heard so much.
They say, Well, Tims explicitly said he doesn't think there was widespread fraud.
He just said there was lots of irregularities.
And it's like, yeah, but he was talking about the irregularities like every episode, all day.
And on the basis of those irregularities, he was saying that he didn't think that elections should be certified because there was too many irregularities.
So at a certain point, how is his argument any different from the people who think there was fraud?
He thinks there was irregularities to the degree that he thinks the election shouldn't be certified in favor of the person who won.
But you don't know with the people you're talking to, who knows that's the case?
And they're just arguing from the position of, well, he wasn't saying X and Y because it's a stronger position to put Tim in.
Or whether they're generally brought in with his rhetoric.
Yeah.
I mean, one way to describe that, I suppose, is the kind of Martin Bailey.
Stance, yeah?
Where you can have this spectrum of arguments or positions from very, very extreme to only just very slightly extreme, which you can take depending on the level of resistance you're getting or depending, as you say, on the audience, right?
Like with the anti-vax stuff that we see, for instance, you can see that it works for people that are on the whole spectrum from just slightly vaccine-sceptical to the hardcore conspiracy theorists.
I just want to touch on one more thing.
Sorry, Chris.
I'll pass it over to you.
Which is that I think another point you make is that, again, similar to many of our gurus, it's very much preaching to an audience that likes to have a self-image of being not politically ideological,
not strongly committed to a particular position, but middle of the road, open-minded.
Intellectual type people who approach things in a very rational way.
So that's obviously a self-image that a lot of people like to have about themselves.
But it provides that, but it also provides the sort of emotional gut punch, the extremely satisfying red meat type propaganda.
They get smuggled in, so the listener gets to have their cake and eat it too.
In terms of thinking of themselves as a very reasonable, not ideologically committed person, but also have all of their ideological buttons pushed.
Is that a fair description?
Yeah.
Well, this is part of it, is that Tim is essentially two different people.
He's one character, essentially.
When he's banging his fists on the table, he's shouting at the camera.
There's like spit flying out of his mouth.
And he's like, they want to fuck you over.
They want to fuck regular Americans over.
And it's like one person.
And then he'll come out at the end of the video and he's like, "All I'm saying is we need to have a rational discussion.
We need to talk about things."
And it's like, you would not be irrational just five minutes ago.
Like, flashback to five minutes ago, you would be a different person.
It's like there's two different people.
One of the things I visualized in the video is there are two different people living in Tip's head who have different levers and neither of them can retain full control over him.
So he's either one or the other.
I see on Twitter a lot of lefties.
They like sharing videos of Tim when he's like going off the rails.
When he delivers these very, very long, actually really, really good, fierce monologues.
And I mean, good in the sense of not that they're true, but amazing political theatre of the sort of type that you would see from Alex Jones.
And that's the only other person I can remember who does it as well as Tim does, where he's fully passionate, he's in a rage, and it's like he can coherently deliver.
12 points whilst maintaining this level of aggression.
And it's amazing to watch.
It's like, whoa, this guy, he's so passionate about this stuff.
And I think the lefties share that clip as if, oh, look how much of an idiot he's being.
But that's exactly the kind of spread of his content, which I think gets him more viewers.
And that's the Tim that his fans like.
For me, that's the Tim his fans actually gravitate towards.
That's the pull of his content.
Hearing someone say to the establishment, "Fuck you!"
and say it really, really precisely and clearly and for a long time, because that's what his videos are and say, "Fuck you to the establishment" over and over and over again.
So you're saying that the reasonable and thoughtful Tim Pool is there to provide plausible deniability?
Yeah, and the other side of Tim, I don't think anyone would actually draw to that version of him.
But I think it just comes up handy in these situations where suddenly they have to defend why they're watching someone with a delusional Alex Jones level hype around him.
You know, you look at that in isolation, like why would you trust this person?
Then they'll pull up, but look, he said this reasonable take on this, he said.
And he always looks at things rationally.
And often the fact that he's going crazy is used as evidence that this is the average guy.
This is how much the establishment have pushed the average guy to the edge.
Like he's the most reasonable amongst us.
And yet look how mad he is.
The interesting thing about that is that you've heard the guys on Knowledge Fight talk about this issue as well, right?
But when the clip goes viral of Alex Jones like freaking out about something and going on one of his unhinged rounds, that it tends to do the rounds and get shared.
And they feel like somewhat ambivalent about that, if not negative, because they think that it can downplay what Alex actually does, right?
That's like the crazy dramatic Alex, but his content is quite insidious, like the worldview that he's promoting.
And with Tim, there's like this paradox.
Like, say, Tim Pool Clips, who I know helped you a lot for the research for the video, and is a great accountant in general.
And he made this, like, excellent edited video of all the times that Tim Pool was predicting 40 state lands died or whatever.
Outstanding, that compilation.
Outstanding.
Like, it's become...
The foundational text in Temple Law.
Very quickly.
Yeah, and the version with the little crabs dancing.
That's my favorite version of it.
And I think that video was really effective as well.
So I'm not saying this in any knock on the Temple Clips account because I think it's great.
But I saw when you were in your new video highlighting that some of the ways that Tim tries to discredit those videos, he basically says, well, look, they're just taking...
These edited snippets of me saying things and they don't take the fact that I include disclaimers and the fact that I'm much more reasonable.
And I thought that's why your video was really good because it does show that and it shows how that's rhetorical technique.
But there is one issue that like, say somebody watches some critical clips of Tim Pool and they say, well, this guy looks like an idiot.
And then they go to his video and they see a random video.
And in the video, he comes across as much more, oh, he said some extreme stuff, but he walked it back and he also added disclaimers and all that.
It feels like he has the possibility to basically say, well, the people taking the extreme clips, they're just selective editing.
I think in full context makes it weirder because it's like you've got someone predicting a 49-state landslide for Trump and in the same video saying, well, part of me is worried the Democrats will win, though.
And it's like, this is bipolar disorder.
You've got two completely different statements there.
So you could say that you've taken it out of context by just clipping one.
But look at them both together, it's completely conceptually impossible.
I actually think this is why people could say, why spend any amount of time on Tim Pool when he's such a vacant human?
Even if you think that Tim Pool is doing like chock-chock daily political analysis or...
Just reading headlines and reacting in a manner similar to Alex Jones.
At the same time, Alex Jones, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, all of such figures, their content might be very skewed and like partisan, like the way you described with the UFO guy, right?
Just constantly, if you look at Tim Pool's channel and they're very clearly skewed, but the techniques that they use and that you illustrate in the videos.
They can be actually rhetorically quite sophisticated.
Yeah, it's smart.
Yeah.
So like your breakdown of Tim Pool, I think is actually highlighting that for all his limitations, he actually has a very slick way of presenting things.
And like when you break it down and point out what he's doing, when you stop his sentences and say, okay, so he said this.
And then in the next sentence, he contradicted himself.
And then the one following that, he's back on the same point.
I think it's very helpful because it lets people say, oh, right.
Yeah, this has the image of reason, but it's the opposite.
It's mostly rhetorical.
As you said, it's the stopping and summarizing that points it out.
Because I think it'd be really easy to miss this if you're just listening.
Especially because I think the way in which most people consume Tim Paul's videos, I don't think people sit and like avidly watch Tim Paul videos.
I think they've got them almost as podcasts where they go to work and they've got like Tim talking about the news of the day to them.
He's like, who's the guy that blew up the Bill Clinton sex scandal who was really delivered by conservatives until he turned against Donald Trump.
Do you know the guy?
Oh God, it's on the tip of my tongue.
The Drudge Report.
Drudge.
The Drudge Report, yeah, yeah, Matt Drudge.
So I think Tim Pool's channel, because he releases it so frequently, he's like a Drudge style, not even a figure, he's like a Matt Drudge service.
He aggregates all the conservative news of the day.
If you listen to his show, he does a midday and his podcast at night, you will hear about every single conservative hot button issue that's been out there.
So that's very useful for you as a conservative.
You're going to know everything that conservatives are talking about.
So I think people have his videos on in the background.
And if you're listening to it in that way...
You're not going to catch, for example, him saying something and walking it back because it's really subtle the way it actually happens in the video.
It's only with someone going, stop, right?
This is the argument he's made and pointing out to you the argument he's just made.
I think you have to do that in order to understand why it doesn't make sense because it does make sense in a roundabout way when you're listening to it.
Yeah.
What you say there is interesting because it just parallels so closely the thoughts we've been having in this stopping and breaking down.
And being clear about precisely what is being claimed or what kind of logical argument is being built up.
That's a very particular mode of treating Text or speech, right?
And there is another mode, right?
And you talked about if you just let it flow over you without paying close attention, then it can all slip by you.
And this is true of so many of our gurus.
For some reason, I'm citing Jordan Peterson a lot today, but I'm going to cite him again.
When I think of myself, when I was first listening to Jordan Peterson, I didn't really notice any issues.
I thought he was pretty sharp.
If you just let it flow over you, it comes across really, really well.
I've come to realize...
I'm from listening to so many gurus that what they're doing is a kind of impressionistic poetry.
And it's this scattergun thing.
You mentioned with Tim Pool, he'll say this thing about, I'm very certain that the Democrats are going to win the landslide.
Then he'll say, but I'm worried what's going to happen if the Democrats actually do win.
And then he'll say, but we just don't know because, like, the points contradict each other.
It's not internally consistent.
A little bit like poetry, that doesn't matter.
If you just let it flow over you, then the impression that is created is extremely effective.
I'm going to rep someone that I feel like your listeners probably don't like very much, called Sam Harris, who I love.
He's one of my favorite commentator-centrist people.
The reason why I like him is because he's a genuine fence here on a lot of these issues, right?
As in, I remember when there was the January 6th introduction.
And he was like, right, I've got a point to make about something left doing wrong.
And basically, he hit his podcast that episode.
I mean, it was mainly criticising the right.
And he was very forceful.
He was very clear about what he was criticising.
He was like, we've got a sitting president who's basically spurred all the campaign, not just the speech, but the campaign that caused this.
And he kind of cheered it on, right?
And he called that out very harshly.
And he was like, now I've got something to call out on the left.
And he was like, people are saying that this is an example of racism.
That they didn't shoot the protesters.
And he's like, obviously, that's not the case.
But I can come away from that.
And I know the two arguments he made.
He called out the left for a thing.
And then the thing that he called out the right for was a completely different thing.
So they don't contradict each other.
He wasn't saying, now, I think this was the most serious, horrible event ever.
But I also think it wasn't that bad.
And people are going too mad over it.
Because that's the analysis we got from Tip Paul.
This was a horrible event.
People shouldn't be violent.
But the left are blowing this apart.
It's like, if you think it's a horrible event, then surely...
How can people blow a really, really horrible event out of proportion by saying that it's horrible?
Sam Harris is clear in separating the two things he says.
And even though he's super verbose, which he is, and he's super like artsy-bartsy language where he'll go on these very wordy sermons where sometimes it's very descriptive.
It does get a bit hard to follow.
But it's clear.
The arguments are super clear.
I mean, Chris might have a different view, but we've covered Sam Harris before and we certainly have our criticisms of him.
But I definitely agree with you.
I wouldn't say that he does the same kind of impressionistic scattergun.
He does do his best to be pretty clear and logical and achieves that goal more often than not.
What do you reckon, Chris?
Yeah, so I think Timber probably, our audiences, 50-50 split on their attitude to Sam.
And when people took a poll on our subreddit, it was around like an almost 50-50 split.
And then in my case with Sam, I think that he does do what you are saying often, which is he does very carefully construct arguments and clearly delineate points that he's making, right?
In a way which is not characteristic of a person like Tim Pool.
The only kind of pushback I would offer to that, because I have to, is that I think Sam can, on occasions, when he wants to argue for something, his arguments can be contradictory.
Not when he's giving his prepared monologue on this podcast, but in the sense when he's talking to you and saying that he's very concerned about like X and then...
We'll downplay the extent that, say, the right-wing extremism is a substantial problem.
But then, in other contexts, acknowledge it.
Yeah.
Well, I think he did that all the way up to the later years of Trump.
I know that was a point he was making before.
It was like, well, the threat that we have for right-wing extremism, it's got to be so much lower down the scale than Islamic extremism, which I definitely strongly disagreed with at the time.
I think he's changed that.
Now, he said in the podcast, like, consider it upticked from what I said before about running extremism.
I think there's more of a problem now.
There are points I fundamentally disagree with him on, but just in his style of speaking, the way he presents things, I think, yeah, broadly, I'm a supporter.
Yeah, and I think, like, for my disagreements with Sam, there's a lot that we actually agree on, but there's something that I find peculiar, and I think it links to Tim Poole and a lot of the figures that you cover.
So with Dave Rubin, Your analysis of him quite clearly showed the kind of obvious partisan bias in his content, right?
With Tim Pool, it's also evident if you spend any sort of time with his content.
And yeah, whenever people are talking about the deficiencies in the online media or ecosystems, especially like folks from the intellectual dark web area.
They tend to be very clear on what the problems are with CNN and so on.
And they might hand-wavingly make references to the existence of Fox, and we all know that's a problem.
But where they seem much less aware, and also to have spent almost no time considering, is Tim Pool, or Dave Rubin for that matter, where Sam was a defender of Dave Rubin for a surprisingly long time.
And even with Tim Pool...
There was a point where Tim was interacting with Sam on Twitter, and Sam was kind of re-insuring Tim.
Sam was the one that recommended Tim to Joe Reagan for the Twitter episode.
The worst crime he's ever committed, in my opinion.
He definitely deserves a social justice cancellation for that one, and I would be part of the mob.
On that point though, I'm curious what you make of that because I feel like there is this strange thing where it's either the people are not looking or there's a legitimate blindness to Sam interacting with Tempul.
That's fine, interact with Tempul.
But he didn't seem aware of...
What Tim Poole fundamentally is, trying to reassure Tim that we're both on the same side against the woke.
And I was like, Sam, you don't want to be on like Tim Poole or Paul Joseph Watson's side when it comes to these kind of issues.
These are not the kind of people you want to be reassuring that you're both working together.
But there's a blindness, it feels, around the kind of centrist, rationalist-y side.
About what a lot of these characters are doing.
And James O 'Keefe would definitely fall into that.
A lot of people seem to be like, well, he might have a bias, but he's revealing real issues.
So, yeah, I wonder what you think.
Maybe, like, Matt, you're somewhere around the left-leaning centrist spectrum, but there does seem to be a pathological blindness there.
Yeah, I would say, so this is the last point I make specifically on Sam Harris before we broaden it.
I think, certainly with that Tim Pool recommendation, that was at a time, and actually this is something that strikes me as just very interesting now.
If you look at my video about Dave Rubin, I think it was the third one, I make a point where I say that Dave Rubin has had this meteoric rise to being the top conservative commentator, which he was in 2019, that time I made the video.
And I show, I'm like, he's been so much more successful than every other commentator in this space.
And I show some other conservative type commentators speaking out against the wonk.
And I include Tim Pool as part of that montage.
And I say, he's so much bigger than all these people.
And I include him as someone who just hasn't made it that big.
Because he hadn't at that point.
And that was around the time when he was recommended for that podcast.
I genuinely think Sam Harris hadn't watched that much of his content.
But even if he had...
He wouldn't have found anything as bad as what exists about Tim Pool now in his content.
And even if you look at my videos, the kind of things I'm criticizing Tim for, where the videos go back to 2019 or 2018, it's about him, like, he's talking about his wankiness to blame for obesity, which it's a point that's broadly anti-left,
right?
But it's in that space where it's like, well, it's not a serious appointment to make.
I don't see how anyone's going to come away from this with this crazy vindictive feelings against the fellow countrymen who happen to be Democrats.
Whereas you look at his more recent videos, I can totally see how someone in Tim Paul's audience would hate anyone who's a Democrat with a passion.
And obviously, Sam Harris hasn't talked about Tim Paul since then.
And I feel like now he would slap past himself in the face for recommending him for
The way I originally came across Tim Pool was when Paul Joseph Watson Funded him to go to Malmo, right, in Sweden to do a special report.
This is the kind of thing I think that a lot of rationalists or so on think is an illegitimate signal to detect.
Because when Paul Joseph Watson referred to Tim Pool as his favorite balanced journalist, my alarm about, oh, this guy is very unlikely to be a balanced, reasonable journalist went off,
right?
I looked into Tim's history and saw the Occupy movement and saw that he had a sort of legitimate claim, but he was promoting that he was a candidate for Times Person of the Year.
He was put in the category of journalists of the Occupy movement kind of thing.
And I feel there is this business tendency within the...
The sense-making and rationalist community and so on, that they don't like you saying, oh, Paul Joseph Watson recommended them and that triggered a warning sign because they see it as like, well, that's killed by a association.
But it's proven to be, those kind of things tend to be actually very reliable signals.
Like, if you're being consistently recommended by terrible conspiracy theorists, the chance that you are actually A very balanced, you know, non-partisan journalist is very low.
I'm just saying that I think with Tim Pool, although the signs were less evident, I think if you looked critically, they were always there, even if his content was a lot better than what it is now, like where it's descended to now.
I don't think his trajectory is depressing, but it was predictable in a way.
Like, it would be more surprising if he had ended up actually a rigorous, balanced journalist.
Or do you think that's unfair?
I think we massively overestimate the amount that Sam Harris would have looked into Tip's content.
I genuinely get this impression that the fact that he defended Ruben for a long time, I don't feel like Sam was watching Ruben's episodes and being like, "No, he's actually really good."
I think Sam was just like...
Ambiguously defending a friend without knowing anything about what Dave Rubin was promoting or the people he was having on his show.
I think we totally agree with you there.
Like, and this isn't meant to be a Sam bashing thing because we could list off nice things to say about Sam as well, but in common with a number of other gurus, it really is surprising sometimes how little background Research or just knowledge goes into it and some of their statements or endorsements of other figures.
I just wanted to agree with you that this is something we've definitely talked about a lot.
This is the other thing, though, is everyone is the hero of their own story, right?
And so I think, obviously, we know that people are influenced by audiences, but I think when we think about that, we think about you're purposefully playing into your audience and you're sifting through to see what can most...
Persuasively sell to these idiots that you've got in your audience.
But I think they're far more influenced in it than they know.
So I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, these blind spots they have for certain people who they'll defend almost without looking into them.
I wouldn't be surprised if subconsciously they know, like, because they've received comments, that their audience likes these kind of people, if not the person in question that you're talking about, the people of their ilk.
And because these commentators have all got big, Of speaking, having a platform.
They're not going to rationalize it as, "I got big by lying to these gullible fools."
They're going to look at it as, "I got big because people value what I say and I'm making sense."
And when you look at the people they'll defend, it's people that broadly exist in the same spectrum of we're the sense makers.
And so when you say they've got a blind spot, I don't think that it's lack of research and I don't think they're consciously doing it.
But they're influenced to ignore all the warning signs about these people.
In my community, for example, I know, like, I get a lot of comments around Destiny.
Have you heard of Destiny?
Yeah.
Twitch streamer.
Yeah, he's massively toxic on Twitter, but the best debater, hands down.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone debate better than he does with, like, conservative people.
It's, like, not a deluge of comments, but it's a stream of comments that happens often enough that I notice it.
Where if I reference Destiny, where I bring up anything like positive about Destiny, I'll get people like, ugh, Destiny, oh my god, that guy.
And it's not that it makes me feel bad in any way, but when you're then thinking about making a new bit of content or putting something out, you're then, when you're reaching for the Destiny clips, you've suddenly got that thing at the back of your head, like, I'll get a little bit pushed, like,
is it worth it?
I might as well.
Do you know what I mean?
And it just leads you on to...
You know, maybe when people ask you about it, you back off talking about Destiny in this way.
I think similarly with these guys, they vaguely know their audience like these people who they're being asked to provide a statement on, or do you think this person's honest?
But they're like, well, I don't know enough about it.
Because they know at the back of their minds, there's that thing that they know, there's enough of their audience that'll be bothered about it, that it's one either skirting around the topic completely, or even going the other way and saying something nice about the person, because it's the least hassle route to go down.
In your Dave Rubin videos, your early videos, it's quite clear, right, you have a relatively positive assessment of Eric Weinstein in comparison to Dave Rubin.
And I will say that the approach that you saw to Eric, like I remember the very first time I saw Eric and he was on the Rubin show with Jordan Peterson and a bunch of them like sat around having a chat.
And I remember...
Listening to Eric and he started going on about economics theory and he was probably like, now that I'm familiar with his content, he was probably talking about gauge theory and using physics term.
But I remember thinking, wow, this guy is like, why is he here with these people?
He's really like a cut above, like he's talking about economics theories and stuff that these people don't seem to know anything about.
And then I didn't pay much attention to Eric's content.
And now we have.
I think in that respect, it's an illustration that you can be looking critically at content.
You can be aware of these techniques.
And part of the reason that the Weinsteins have proven a subject of fascination for me and Matt is that we feel they're doing something new in the conspiracy space and that it's tied to the way that they can present.
Science and martial economics and so on in a way that's convincing.
But I'm curious about your opinion of Eric has shifted somewhat, but maybe it's a good illustration when you were preparing those videos, right?
That you went and did an extensive check into like, is Eric much better than Ruben?
Let me deep dive in his content.
This is what I'd still say.
I think the main point I was making is that...
If you take Eric out of the context of the Rubin Report and essentially take him out of the context of the culture war, he's actually really interesting.
There was another interviewer that did an interview with him.
I think it was in 2015 or 2014.
So that's before the intellectual dark web.
It's before all of Eric's entry into the culture war.
And when he's talking about languages, when he's talking about different cultural traits...
And it's not got this spin of Rubin's political edge.
There's nothing wrong with it.
But then as soon as you put him in the culture war, he's suddenly obliviating about points that are kind of life or death issues in American politics for people.
And speaking to an audience who I don't think they're able to pass the difference between an intelligent person who's genuinely intelligent but doesn't really know that much about.
The issues that you need to in order to make an authoritative claim about political issues.
They can't pass the difference between that vaguely intelligent person and someone who actually knows what they're talking about when they talk about the issues that Eric talks about.
Because I think that's what Eric is.
He's a vaguely intelligent person.
But in the areas that he talks about, he doesn't really have any specialism that would allow him to give any insights that are greater than the vast majority of us, right?
But he's really good at dressing it up.
We would be right to say that my opinion on Eric has changed, but I still don't see him as some nasty potent force in the same way as Tib Paul, James O 'Keefe, like those kind of people.
I just see Eric as a sort of blabbering nothing accent.
He just posts these tweets, you read the threads, and I'm like, what?
You've used so many words, you've said so little.
And it just seems to cash in on these opportunities where...
Like, Sam's involved in Beak with someone, Eric will step in, like, I am a friend to Sam and name X other person from the culture war.
I will mediate this.
It's like, no one asked for you to get involved, Eric.
I'm pretty sure, like, no one cares about you being involved on Twitter in this thing.
Least of all, Sam and the other person we've been talking about.
Like, they've probably got bigger followers than you.
So it's more, I just see them as like a little bit of a cloud chasing.
Uh, nothing burger now, but not necessarily a bad person.
Well, look, we're probably, well, no, we're definitely less charitable to Eric.
I partly perhaps because we're as triggered by blathering narcissists as, uh, political.
So it seems like they graduate kids.
Yeah.
From a few podcasts I listened to.
They do.
They do.
Um, but I did see you tweet once about.
Narcissism and these figures and this is something that's become More central for us, I think.
We're doing a bit of psychologising, it's true, and trying to understand the motivations and the appeal.
We've also talked a lot, as you mentioned, about the way in which this audience capture happens.
And I think the influence of the audience happens to everyone.
It's a very normal human thing to think twice about saying things that will disappoint the people that you're talking to.
And it can almost happen subconsciously, I think.
I think it's probably also fair to say that if you have these narcissistic traits, then you are going to be more sensitive to those dynamics, those levers of approval, and tend to chase the praise and the adoration more so than somebody more in the normal spectrum.
So, yeah, I mean, do you think we're on the money there?
Do you think narcissism is like a core defining trait of people who tend to do this kind of thing?
I think it's the core defining trait of everyone.
And it's the people who think it's just a trait of people who are like doing these YouTube videos and stuff.
I think they vastly underestimate what they would behave like if they had an audience of a size that these people do, validating them.
And I don't think even we, like you guys and me, can picture it.
Because obviously I've got a fairly sizable audience.
I've got like 70,000 subscribers, which is a lot of people to validate me and my opinions.
But having a million people doing that is on a completely different scale.
Like no one can picture what that would do to you in terms of like how it would change your self perception and how it would change the way you look at yourself and your place in the world.
Because if you've got like a million people lifting you up and praising you for Quote, unquote, getting the truth out, which is something that people like to say about the alternative media pundits.
Suddenly, you don't probably see it as a YouTube channel.
You actually see it as like a calling.
You're like, wow, I've actually found what I was put on this planet to do and look like the proof is in the numbers because look how many people are listening to it.
So I think narcissism, I don't think they actually have any more narcissism than the average person, but it would take someone.
I don't know, it would take like a Jesus Christ style figure.
Actually, that depicts Jesus as a not narcissistic person, which I think the Bible masses would point to be quite narcissistic.
We know what you mean.
Have you heard that story about when Jesus goes to the house of the two women and one of the women is like trying to get everything ready for Jesus and she's like busy in the kitchen.
She's like cooking like loads of nice food for him.
She's like cleaning the whole house and she's gone on out.
And her sister does nothing.
And she's just in the living room with Jesus the whole time.
And then she gets the biggest jar of perfume in the house and she pawns it over Jesus' feet.
And the sister comes in and she's like, "Why are you not helping me?
Oh my God, I'm sweating buckets here and I'm doing all this work."
And then Jesus turns to her and he says, "Your sister did right by me."
That's what you should have done.
And I'm just like, what a fucking narcissistic piece of shit.
She's the one who's going on out to cook food for you and stuff.
And you're praising this do-nothing person who just poured the most expensive perfume on your feet.
He didn't even reject the perfume.
He allowed her to do that.
There's a lot of Bible verses that have somewhat questionable moral lessons to extract from them.
The lesser told tales.
Especially at different times, if somebody now came into your house and you poured a large amount of perfume over their feet, they probably wouldn't take it as, "Look what this person did to honour me!"
You were making the point that perhaps these figures are not narcissists, but rather any one of us in the same situation would be...
There's a lot of truth in that, but at the same time...
If you take Donald Trump and compare him to other politicians, I'm sure all politicians at the top echelons of the presidential race in the United States, are narcissistic to some degree, like we all are.
Maybe even more so than a normal person.
But at the same time, Trump is special, right?
He's a bit different.
Chris, what do you think?
Yeah, the argument you're making, Timba, and I always think it's better to err towards the side of, like, charity.
With people and to go for it, I do think that's a valuable position to take.
At the same time, I can't help but think, Robert Wright was talking about, Robert Wright, this commentator online, public intellectual, was talking about Robert Malone and his conspiratorial tendencies and his persecution complex.
And he made the point that everyone has these feelings that they aren't giving enough credit.
And that there may be sinister forces arrayed at kind of keeping them down.
And he was putting Robert Malone at the top of that spectrum, but he was saying it's all a continuum and we're all on it.
And I'm on board with us all being on that and being aware that we have some of the same issues.
And if we had a huge audience, you don't know how you would react to that.
But at the same time, I see in figures like the Weinsteins and Jordan Peterson, This thing which is different from ordinary people that like when you go back and look at their early content and before they were famous there's often other people remarking on the level of self-aggrandizement that they have and their tendency to see themselves as like having
Revolutionary insights or world that they are at the forefront of ideas, even if there's no actual evidence of that from the output of their work.
And I think that sense that, like, I don't get the impression that, like, you, Timba or Matt or I have this notion that, like, well, actually what the world really needs is to put, like, me and Timba and Matt in at the head of government.
To get everything working right.
And if they just did that, we'd be able to straighten this all out.
I think what it comes down to is maybe something slightly different.
So not the level of narcissism within the person, but maybe the extent to which that pushes them to make bigger lies and bigger claims.
Because I feel like you could be quite a narcissistic individual in your head, be like principally.
I don't want to say that's ludicrous, that's going too far.
But it seems like...
There's a certain level you go over and Romano is definitely in that category where he's almost, it doesn't even matter if he gets caught out on a lie, he'll just spin it again.
And that's also the thing you see with Donald Trump.
So it's like the way their narcissism maps onto this kind of flagrant disregard for consequences of things they say that might come back to bite them.
Like they lose an awareness of that.
Yeah.
You disagree.
I could tell.
Yeah, look, it's one of those things, isn't it?
Like, we're psychologising, so one can never really say.
Like, when we first covered Eric and Brett Weinstein, we went through some of Brett's first appearances on The Portal, where they went into great length regarding all of the groundbreaking revolutionary theories.
His discoveries.
His discoveries, and how they were stolen from him, and he wasn't given the credit he was deserved.
And there was this tale.
Of grievance.
And of course, Eric has his own tales of grievance, many of them, and they have pretty much frankly said that themselves and other people or their family deserve Nobel prizes.
Now, I've worked for an academia for 20 years, so I've met a bunch of academics and all academics are hungry for recognition, right?
This is the game.
And I think all academics do have a bit of a tendency to imagine that their contribution was a bit bigger than it actually was, to be somewhat jealous of each other and so on.
That's all true.
But at the same time, I've met just a few that were on another level and generally pretty toxic personalities.
They generally don't do very well because they alienate everyone around them.
And just relating my impression of those brothers to my professional experience, I definitely place them in the quasi-pathological category.
Yeah, I think this would be a thing in academia because it's part of the thing.
You've got to keep publishing, haven't you?
It's almost like a system that necessitates that hungry desire for, as you say, recognition and doing work that also finds a gap for your research.
Inevitably, you've got to go to more and more niche stuff in order to be a recognised expert in that field.
All the gaps, I suppose things that people discover now might become a bigger thing further down the line, but there's so many gaps that are plugged.
So I'm thinking this comes really strongly in on the guy.
Which of the ones that you're talking about is the MRNA guy?
That's Robert Malone.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
So in his very little niche of MRNA, it just so happens he struck gold with that after the fact, right?
Because at the point where he did his research, it wasn't a fully fledged.
Vaccine that was being used to treat the whole world, but it became that.
I think that's a really, really crafty tool he's got in his toolbox to pull out his interviews, the fact that he can say that.
He's another good example, of course, of someone who has a personal tale of grievance.
Just my personal take is I relate that to narcissistic personality type.
It's just one of those things.
It's one of those markers of people towards the end of that spectrum.
I have a question, Timber, because I definitely do recognize in your content a similar mentality, for better or worse, with myself.
And I'm curious about when you cover a character, any of the ones you've covered, Timber, James O 'Keefe, or Dave Rubin, you do exhaustive analysis of them.
And I will also say that this is just a side note to praise you, but I've seen that your analysis, it gets endorsed by Like a wide array.
I'll hear it endorsed on Knowledge Fight, which is quite a leftist leaning podcast and hear it endorsed on Rebel Wisdom, which is very IDW sympathetic.
So I think it's very good to have that like broad appeal.
The question is, so when you do the deep dive on the people and after you're finished, I know that you like with Temple, after you produce a video, you need a mental break, right?
When we do coverage of...
Joe Rogan.
We don't want to talk about Joe Rogan again for the next like six to 12 months.
But I wonder...
And yet.
And yeah, I know.
But does it feel like, say James O 'Keefe, is that basically like now you're able to go, well, I've done him.
He's out of my mental space.
Yeah, that's the whole idea.
The thing is, I've gotten myself into like spirals of video production that I really didn't want.
To be in, in terms of the way I'm working through this, I get to a mental place where I hate making the series.
I hate the fact that I've committed to a series instead of one video.
But the idea is very much like, so Dave Rubin, I will never make a video about him ever again.
James O 'Keefe, I will never make a video about him ever again.
The idea is I do it so thoroughly, the process, that I never have to come back to them.
But the process itself is horrible because essentially what I do is I do I did all the research up front, which is imagine like it's just three, four months of no videos getting made and I'm just watching those videos and noting down all the things I see that might be of interest,
but are not guaranteed to be of interest when I'm making the series.
And so what I ended up with is these, I've got like a Google document that's like Tim Pool 2017, Tim Pool 2018.
Each one is like 80 pages long full of different notes on different videos.
And then when I come to like how I'm going to make the series.
I then grip it by, I try and sort of thematically say, right, well, is there a theme in the things he's getting wrong?
That goes into one category, that goes into another.
But the problem with it is, I made a video about music.
I made two videos about music, actually, about genres of music that I liked.
And I found that there was this lovely creative process where I was writing the scripts and it just came straight out of my head and just landed on the page.
And it was like a joy to write about those subjects.
Whereas the political videos I make, it's you're constantly like chipping away at this massive pile of bits of evidence you've got.
And often I'm going into videos and I've got a certain conclusion and I realize that I don't have the evidence to substantiate that conclusion.
So I have to change the whole thing.
Because what it does is it focuses your mind to think, can I actually say that?
I've only got two clips of that.
So probably not.
Probably that's not a thing they do a lot.
If I've watched all these videos and I can only find two examples.
So it's a really arduous, arduous process.
And like this, obviously I did my first tin pool one.
The second one, I got held up because I was in a horrible job last year where I was working like 15 hour days, so I couldn't do any video stuff for a while.
But I was chipping away at that second one for so long and trying to work out what the video was about before I got to the venting thing.
So I was like, that's what you call it, like what he's doing.
And then it sort of fleshed out from there.
But yeah, because it's such a long process, inherently, I never want to think about these characters ever again after I've made the series.
That sort of sounds healthy, like, in a good way.
And I think what you intend is what happens.
It does feel like you don't need to return to Reuben.
And I often see people now...
Essentially say, well, you know, what Dave Rubin does, just look at Timba's three-part series.
So I think that's definitely to your credit.
And what you're describing as your process, it actually sounds very similar to how we clip for the episodes, right?
We're doing that on a much smaller scale, but we're listening through the content usually at least twice, if not more.
And then noting down clips.
And then extracting them and trying to remember afterwards.
And we end up with like hundreds of clips from a couple of episodes and then thematically collect them into these folders, which might be conspiracism or it might be like strategic disclaimers.
Surely the conspiracism folder is just like everything.
There are certain folders that tend to become rather like huge in nature.
Often that's overwhelming.
Like, I don't know if you know, but Matt listened to six hours of Joe Rogan and he couldn't resist.
Damn, bro, that's crazy.
Like, what you do is, like, compared to us, it's on a much grander scale, like months of preparation to go into it.
Listen, coming back to something else you said as well, though, I think part of the reason why...
I wouldn't say I have a broad political appeal as in, you know, I appeal to the right as much as I do the left.
No.
I make a very specific point in my YouTube about me to stay lefty politic.
I think one of the main things I'm criticizing about these people I criticize is that they're presenting themselves as something other than what they are.
I think it'd be massively hypocritical if I was to go in pretending I had no political affiliation, pretending I had no political views, that I was...
Obviously like invested in, because it's wrong, of course I am.
But I think the reason why the videos have broad appeal is because I don't reveal my hand until the end of the videos, usually.
So what you find is usually, so like David Fuller, I know he's like the guy from Rebel Wisdom.
I know he's someone who is, he's vaguely liberal, certainly.
I think...
Kind of aligned with you guys in many ways.
I think in terms of his actual political leanings.
But he's specifically, with his content, trying to appeal to everyone all the time, which I couldn't do.
I think it'd be too tiring trying to do that.
But when they've got a certain problem with commentators that I talk about, my videos, the better ones for them to push out.
Because people aren't going to go into my videos and suddenly be assailed with lots and lots of insults, jokes about how dumb conservatives are.
All these things, they're massive red flags if you go to a video and that's what it is from the opposite.
Unless you are already solidly left and happily on the left, you're not going to find that video appealing.
Even centrists, I think, don't like it so much when you go in and it's just like an endless stream of venom about a certain political side because they know what they let themselves in for.
And I think it's because my videos are seen as safer ones to recommend for them more centristy people, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
And I think it's...
Fair to point to say, well, horses for courses, right?
Because there can be very, like the pointed and accurate critiques that come from a very clear political skew.
So I agree with you that it's important that people flag up where they're coming from, but it doesn't in any way necessarily invalidate the criticism, but it can make it much harder to listen to when there's constant signals, you know, that you are...
If you're a conservative person or whatever, that you're like a member of the targeted art group.
That's it, yeah.
Well, I get comments sometimes, it's like, this YouTuber pretends to be neutral, but really he's a leftist.
It's like, go with my YouTube, I'm saying that I'm a leftist, man.
I'm not hiding from you.
The reason why you think I'm hiding it from you is because my videos are like, don't have insults, don't have these ridiculous attacks.
It's not me hiding anything.
It's just, for me, what constitutes a better criticism, which is to leave that stuff out or leave it off the table until such a point as you feel like you've thoroughly proved it and can make some more comments there.
Move on from the heart of your own political beliefs.
I usually just save them until the end of my videos.
Yeah.
I think one thing that we hardly endorse, and we do it too, is to be upfront about where one's coming from politically.
Well, rather, but, for me, I guess, I'd like to think, perhaps naively, that good communication, non-rhetorical discussion, being clear, being evidence-based, and so on, doesn't have to have a political slant to it.
So, it's something that Chris and I talk about a lot, which is, even though politics inevitably comes into play, and a lot of our assessments are influenced by that.
We don't want to have a political podcast.
There's any number of those ones.
We want to have a podcast that is about good evidence-based reasoning, good information, literacy, that kind of thing.
So I'm just wondering, is that similar to how you describe yourself and your motivations, or do you...
You know what it is?
Perhaps this might go outside of your guys' wheelhouse in terms of people whose names you wouldn't know.
So I started watching YouTube around, like, you know when you say you start watching YouTube, obviously YouTube's been about for time.
There's a point where you hook into your specific YouTube niche, you know, "Oh, I'm going to watch YouTube, like, way more than often now and, like, have been ever since."
So it was around the time of Donald Trump's election in 2015 and I found H Bomber guy who's this, like, I think he's very far left, actually.
And he's a guy who, at that time, he was special, particularly special to me because he was a guy who, it was an atmosphere of just Very, very, like, massive hatred towards the left on YouTube as a platform because we hadn't yet got to a time where there was all these different lefty content creators who were making response videos and,
like, holding their own.
So it was typically a space where if you were making a lefty video, you'd get, like, dislike, bond, and all the comments would be, like, negative.
And Hates Bombergang was the one creator who seemed to have this massive audience.
And he was going after conservative commentators and doing quite a good job at debunking them.
I'm still quite into his videos, but there's certain things that eat up us and a lot of other creators do now that kind of, I don't know, now I'm like slightly older.
Not that I find them like bad, but they take me out of the critique.
So these are the things that bred to you, right?
It's like crazy side plot jokes that have nothing to do with the video subject.
So like a hench bomber guy will shout at a porcelain dog for like Two minutes.
I have some sort of dialogue that has nothing to do with the video.
And I'm just like sitting there like, oh, come on, man, like get back to that.
He made a brilliant video about the anti-vax community recently, which I don't know if you guys would have seen, but it really, it goes back to the first guy who's like Andrew Wakefield, who started the anti-vax movement.
It goes specifically into the papers that he wrote.
It goes specifically into the poems of those papers.
It's great.
But there's so many like little side things, like little jokes.
And each time I'm just like, ugh, it's making me lose a bit of focus on what's going on.
It takes me a bit out of it.
And it's the same thing with, like, very blatant attacks on the right.
Whenever I go into a video critique and I see a creator who's, so again, we're maybe away from Hbomaguy, but then also to me, it's just something that happens a lot in, like, left-wing YouTube.
Just very, very, like, snarky comments about conservatives on the way in, when I don't feel like they've actually proven anything against conservatives at the point where they've made the joke or they've made the comment.
And again, that's the sort of thing that just zones me right out of the video.
I'm like, ah, it doesn't make me cringe, but it sends this spike through my heart.
Like, I don't think this is a good video.
I don't think this is going to be very persuasive to many people.
And so I think the specific thing about how I craft my video comes from not the things that I find bad about other people's videos, meaning them to warm their way into mine.
And I think to understand where HBO guy people are not coming from, this is the other big thing about having an audience.
You think.
That your jokes are way more funny than they are.
When you're finally preparing something and writing a video, I can't tell you how many there are in my scripts, or how many comments I put in, that when I'm saying it out loud, or even when I've said it, I've recorded it, I get to the video, and I'm just like, "Well, that was quite a vicious comment, really, that doesn't really add much."
And I ended up going back and finding a way to take them out.
Because when you're in your own zone preparing the content, you think you're really funny, you think you're...
Insults are really good and like really like on the bar and it's funny when you listen to yourself back you're like oh no actually and I've never regretted going back and editing something like that out because I think the balance is always better and it's only if I've got a super fire joke where I'm like oh no it sounded funny when I read it it's fully recording it and it's funny in the video that's when I'll keep it in but I think that's that's the sort of path that I go down when I'm writing them.
We are we're definitely less funny than we imagine.
That probably applies to the vast majority of humans.
That's a part where everybody is guilty on that spectrum.
You've got super plausible deniability in that you guys are having live conversations with each other.
That's right.
If you're joking with my video, I've written it, recorded it, edited it.
At that point, I'm very committed to the junk if it's gone through all those.
That's right.
Like, we do have the clapping sea feedback from both of us that allow us to feel validated and we can blame it on the other.
But the interesting thing for me, Timber, is like, I don't know the leftist YouTube sphere very well.
Like, I know about BreadTube.
I'm familiar with HBOMER guy by name and the popular Ben Shapiro Aquaman viral video and that kind of thing.
But I don't know the content of many of those creators well.
And we looked at counterpoints.
And she's probably the person that I've seen the most content of.
But one thing, the ecosystem, which will have its own dynamics.
And I wonder if you think this applies.
Because your videos, they're quite artistically made.
The music in them is good.
The anime clips are good.
And as you mentioned, you have some other videos about...
Music, right?
About Skrillex.
To be clear to the audience, it's a video.
It's not like I'm a big fan of Skrillex, by the way.
I'm talking about how he ruined my cultural dubstep movement that was part of MIT.
Just a disclaimer.
That's probably an important disclaimer in your world.
Yeah, it won't matter at all to your audience.
But I think the point I want to make about that is because you're obviously making content that relates to the culture war, And figures that are prominent in it.
But because you have these other interests, and your video, which is about all your homies hating Skrillex, is like 1.5 million views, right?
Like I'm just looking at your channel.
It's the most popular.
So I think that when people have an interest or a life which is not completely consumed by the culture war, that it actually makes them like more...
Even when they're like, indulging in breaking down videos or characters that are prominent in the culture war, that it gives you like a level of detachment that you know that there are communities and other interests where like the culture war might have some impact, but it's not all that matters.
I get that sense from your videos, but do you think that is helpful or is this a completely irrelevant?
I think that's exactly right.
You can make videos essentially responding to some of them, but make them dropping off points for the topics.
This is something I think that Left Tube is big on with the people that do it well, is they'll make a response video, but then it's actually a video about the passing of certain laws.
But you didn't know that going in.
You thought it was a response to Ben Shapiro, but then they use it to talk about the treatment of black people in America and back to the Jim Crow era.
And suddenly you learn a lot of stuff outside of just the...
The political culture war thing that you went in for.
And yeah, I think you're right with my videos.
I like the fact that I could put my own music in them.
I like the fact that this is the thing that I do the most about the music is that I feel like I could match the music to the mood I want to create.
Which is why I decided to do it early on, made my own beats.
It's because you can't always find stock clips of things that capture the exact mood you want.
And so through the music, I can elevate the level of mood that goes through the videos.
If Tim Paul's talking about culture war, I've got like a...
Crazy trap beat I can play in the background.
And if it's a part where he's talking about something boring, I'll make the beat in the background quite nice and gentle and chill.
But yeah, I think recently as well, I've been trying to just like not be involved in so many tips on Twitter because I think overall, you always feel like there's some point to me that you can make really well.
But I've realized that I'm actually better at making those points on YouTube and keeping my Twitter line very clear and clean because I don't think...
In any of the arguments I had on Twitter, I ended up coming off very well.
Well, certainly not as well as I do with my videos.
So I've consciously made the decision to be like, right, I'm just going to try and not respond to as many things.
And also consciously, I try and make my timeline on Twitter.
Not consciously, it sounds like I'm playing some still ulterior motive game.
But consciously, I try and do like just my own political content in amongst everything else.
So that again, it's like the appearance of like, if people come to my...
Twitter or whatever.
They're not like, well, he's like a crazy, deranged lunatic who's just obsessed with James O 'Keefe and these people he's made videos of.
My videos normally suggest I'm quite obsessed about them.
So yeah, I try and I try and downplay the graphics.
And as you said, step away from it and not let it be the dominating force in your life.
It definitely makes your critiques more persuasive and it makes you more detached when you're making them, which equally makes them stronger when you're saying the things that you're saying.
I feel this timber.
By inference, if anybody looks at my Twitter.
It's about to say, you're quite big on Twitter, aren't you, Chris?
No, I'm not.
I'm not big on Twitter, but I certainly don't practice the level of restraint that you're discussing, which is probably a much healthier way to engage with the Twitter sphere.
I mean, you serve on the lightning rod as well for the side of the more liberal centricity types that are critiques of the IDW.
So I still think there's a function to that.
It's just, I'd rather it be you than me.
Yeah, I think that's how a lot of people would think about me.
Like, much, much rather it be you than me.
Like, to such a large extent, I prefer that.
In the same respect, I'm glad that you took the bullet with tempo, because I don't want to listen to this content.
Before I get off the topic that escapes my mind, do you know Dave Pizarro from Very Bad Wizards?
Are you familiar with their podcast?
I do not.
I thought his name sounded familiar, but lots of Dave sound familiar.
He was on the episode with us, so you might have heard him there.
So he makes the music for his podcast, which is described as beats, which to me sounds quite reminiscent of the music that you use.
And I recognize...
Some parts of, like, I listen to lo-fi or retro-wave stuff when I'm trying to work and lock things out.
But I'm just curious, like, the genre of music that you use in the videos, like, or genres, what is it just for, like, people who might know better in our audience?
Essentially, it's all sorts of genres.
So the fact that you need to talk over this music means that you use less instruments on each track.
So all of them have a lo-fi aesthetic bi-implication.
So everyone is into this channel called Lo-Fi Beats to Study /Relax To.
The reason why the beats are nice to study /relax to is because they're very melodically simple.
They have a pad, like a gliding pad usually, sometimes a piano, and then a melody over the top, and they leave it there.
They've not got any crazy sound design elements going on over the top.
And I think when you're making music for YouTube videos, if you're trying to make something you're going to speak over, it's going to inherently lead you down that path.
Because if you take any beat you're making, strip away loads of stuff and leave only two elements, you're not going to make the drums that complex either.
Yeah, they sound like lo-fi beats.
So I think most of the music in my YouTube videos would fit under that category, I reckon.
That's, to my musically illiterate mind, that's very helpful.
So I appreciate that.
I don't have anything to say except I enjoy listening to it.
Now you know you search lo-fi beat.
Oh no, of course I know that.
I have that channel on repeat, but I think the stuff that you're sampling from is well beyond my range.
It's very reminiscent of that, for sure.
So Jimba, before we let you go, we feel like we have to ask you, if it won't be spoiling the surprise, what's the next project?
What are you thinking?
What a question, Matt.
So, I think.
It's actually really hard to tell.
If you look at my videos, right, what I can tell you, and this is probably of interest if anyone follows my videos, I can tell you the people who I don't think it's going to be, right?
I don't think it's going to be ever Ben Shapiro.
I don't think it's ever going to be Steven Crowder.
Now, the reason for that is that if you look at the people I've made videos on, there's a common theme.
So obviously you could say conservative.
As in they're right-leaning or they appeal to right-wing audiences.
Yes, and that's true.
But it's also people who present themselves as one thing and are in fact doing something else.
And not only that, but they have an audience who are also complicit in the same talking points from them that they are the thing that they're fakely claiming to be.
So Dave Rubin pretending to be a neutral talk show host exploring ideas is actually a hack.
James O 'Keefe pretending to be a journalist exposing the truth is actually a hack.
Tim Pool is actually a hack.
If you look at that, Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder don't really satisfy the criteria because I think they're conservatives.
They say they're conservative, they make conservative content.
As far as my scope is concerned, who I'm looking at to do videos on, these two people for that reason don't really interest me.
So at the moment, I don't know who it's going to be.
I think certainly people like Eric Weinstein, I think he's more of interesting because it's like, well, there's something to unfold here.
We would love it.
You would make us both so happy.
That's my, my God, my eyes are lighting up the thought of this.
And just to mention, he did do an interview with James O 'Keefe, which was perhaps, which James O 'Keefe described as his favorite interview for very predictable reasons.
Although Eric presented it as an extremely tough grilling.
Wait, wait, who was interviewing who was it?
Eric interviewed James O 'Keefe.
And he presented it as a tough grilling of James O 'Keefe.
Yes, he brought the questions that made James really have to think and answer for what he does.
I'm really curious.
Here's the thing.
James O 'Keefe has a response for everything.
He's really good at that.
I don't know if there's anything that Eric could say that would be a grilling for James O 'Keefe because he's answered the criticisms about his work like so many times.
Anyway, I'm going to give that a listen.
I could figure it.
For a grilling, you have never heard the word "heroic" and "heroism" used so many times.
If what you're saying is true, you're an American hero, the likes of which we have never seen on planet Earth.
Well, I'm just trying to convince you to do Eric Weinstein, but I think he's perfect for your theme of people pretending to be something they're not.
It sounds mean, but...
You know, he's a pretended intellectual in my own book, but, but he's good at it and you would have so much to unpack, unravel.
Oh, it would be so good.
It would be, well, you said he's an scientist, an accomplished scientist, but what is he really?
Maybe a hack.
Could be a hack.
Tune into my videos to find out.
Yeah, join the seven part series at the end that we'll be reviewing.
I like that hook.
This mask really, oh my God, it's a hack.
It's a hack, yeah.
You can even stand up at the front, like in episode one of the seven-part series.
In this series, I'll reveal that Eric Weinstein is in fact a hack.
I've tried to end our interviews recently.
I've only done it once, but I'm now making it end the thing where I finish with a kind of stupid question, which is just my personal idiosyncratic interest, Timber.
So I apologize for this to run things off, but I'm just genuinely...
Curious.
Your accent, right?
I lived in England for a long time.
I'm quite bad at placing accents.
So I told Matt that your accent was like sort of Cockney, which I don't know if it's true or not, but obviously you're British.
You have like a British sarcastic sense of humor, which is like very appealing to people like myself and Matt.
But is your accent...
Am I right?
Was I right?
Or is it completely off?
I'll unravel for you the mysteries of my accent.
So I'm originally from Nottingham, which is Midlands.
And there's a very specific Nottingham accent which you could have from there.
However, my parents are middle class.
So the Nottingham accent gets a bit wiped out by that, as we know.
Being part of the middle class is always like an accent neutralizer a little bit.
But then also spent a lot of my teenage years Listening to dubstep DJs who were all Londoners on the radio and Grime MCs who were also from London.
So I think there's a twang that perhaps is from that influence.
And you could say that I was maybe imitating them, which is a bit cringe, which I think is true.
I think I spent a lot of time listening to them and I wanted to emulate the way they spoke and be like them.
And so, yeah, I got this a lot when I went to uni.
It didn't sound like a...
A Midlands person.
That's how accents work.
They just rub off on you.
But really, this is such a great illustration.
Chris, when you said the timber had a Cockney accent, I laughed at you, didn't I?
That was my response.
You did.
Now, Matt, who's laughing now?
But...
It comes across to an Australian.
I guess we all sound quite similar.
Do I sound like Chris to you?
No, you do not.
Compared to Chris, I'm a connoisseur of English regional and class accents.
I had you pegged as middle class, but a little bit street.
Yeah, yeah.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's pretty spawned.
You have said that after I revealed that though.
Well, yeah, it was in my, it was in my head.
It was in my head.
Yeah, it's less impressive.
It's almost too convenient that you should say that after I revealed that that's exactly what I am.
Well, yeah, I didn't, yeah.
He's underneath it all.
He is just a hack.
He's just a hack, yeah.
It's like, what if it's like language understanding really?
Oh my God, he's a hack.
He's like, well, your accent sort of sounds like you're someone who was born in Nottingham, but then listened to the- That's the vibe.
That's the reading I'm getting from this.
This is how you do a cold reading photo.
What we'll do is just cut out the bit where you reveal that and edit it around so Matt's comes first.
Well, it's been a pleasure, Timber, and we are obviously big fans of your work and all the stuff you do, and we really do hope that you Are motivated to cover Eric Weinstein because it would make our day.
But whoever you do, and if the Tim Pool series continues, it's great.
We'll send links to all your channel and the recent Tim Pool stuff.
And it's been a pleasure to have you on.
So thanks a lot.
Likewise.
As I said, I think we've got like a lot of crossover with our audience.
I think your guy's name comes up fairly often in my comment sections and such.
So, um, I think it was only a matter of time, but yeah, it's been very fun.
Appreciate the support.
And, um, maybe we'll do it again in two years and I will have done, we'll have done some more of it because that's how long it's going to take realistically.
Oh, good stuff.
Well, thanks so much Timba.
It was really fun.
Uh, and now you've promised to do Eric Weinstein.
We'll talk to you after that.
Yeah.
And there you have it, Matt.
The interview is complete.
Tim Pool has been...
Unmasked as a secret partisan, and Timber has revealed the secrets of the online guru set.
I was shocked to find out that Tim Pool was really not that good after all.
Just such a disappointment.
I know.
It's really sad.
He seemed just so genuine, such a reasonable voice in the culture war, and to find out that he...
Actually has a partisan skew.
It just makes you sad, really.
It just makes you sad.
We weren't lamenting off-air that Temple...
The first time I came across him, I think, as I mentioned in the interview, was when Paul Joseph Watson was recommending him as his favourite journalist.
Paul Joseph Watson from Alex Jones' Infowars thing.
And...
As soon as I looked into him, I thought he was a giant tool.
Like, even when I saw his Occupy coverage in that, like, looking at that, I was like, no, this is a tool.
But he is a tool who's widely acknowledged as a, like, a comic figure, wearing a beanie to hide his baldness, and an obvious partisan.
But he's a millionaire with millions of followers, people just...
Throwing money at him left, right and centre.
Invited by Joe Rogan to cross-examine CEOs of Twitter and stuff.
Just makes you sad, doesn't it?
People say we're mean, but the nicest thing I can think of to say about him is that he's a pointless waste of space.
Is that mean?
Or is it just descriptive?
I'm not sure.
It's accurate.
I think it's fair.
Yeah, just someone profiting off conspiracy theory and partisan rhetoric.
Like, no, that's not a good person.
Shame on them, Chris.
Anyway, just a clown show.
Yeah, it is a clown show.
Don't look it up, Matt.
Let's move from that clown show to a different circus, our reviewers and commentators.
So they're much more reasonable people than that sphere.
So we have our review of reviews section.
And, you know, I heard somebody, I heard the conspiracy guys refer to it as we pour over every piece of feedback we receive.
And I just want to say, that's not the case, right?
We can get all our, at least like two random reviews.
We don't take every review that we receive and discuss it.
So this is not exactly accurate, but in any case, this week I have a review which comes from the Twittersphere and particularly from an account known for its acerbic wit, Uberfeminist.
Uberfeminist is also an account which can really go pretty hard.
Like, sometimes the digs are pretty spicy.
And like, you know, your tolerance may vary.
But in general, an account which is not afraid to highlight the idiocy of the Weinsteins or other members of the online tribes.
Yeah, you just don't want to get on the wrong side of her.
No.
No.
And she wrote a review of...
Well, a tweet review of our podcast.
So, let me read it.
So, this is from UberFeminist.
Been listening to a lot of Guru's Pod lately.
Every episode is simply, Jordan Peterson is a weird douche, but said in a hedged way over three hours by two dudes who aren't really certain what they actually want to say from one minute to the next.
And it's kind of my kink at the moment.
I thought that's pretty good.
That's a nicely backhanded.
Compliment.
I'm taking it as a compliment, Iberfeminist.
Taking this as a compliment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think that's the kind of positive review that I can get behind.
And I can't say it's entirely wrong.
No, I have no notes on that review.
It's, you know, she's got us bang to rights in most respects.
Yeah.
So...
Was that positive or negative?
That's probably positive, right?
So I'll give you a negative, Matt.
This is from Samix57.
It's just a...
Actually, unfortunately, it's not a very interesting negative review, but he said the title is meh.
Meh.
And then his review is disappointing.
I was hoping to hear some intelligent points made, but what I get is mostly jokey rambling.
That doesn't have any clear direction.
Echoes of uberfeminist here.
Their content is not much better than the content they are criticizing.
So it just seems like an endless loop of gurus, decoding gurus, decoding gurus.
Samix57.
Good day, sir.
That's it.
So, Matt, this is a criticism we've never heard before, which is, aren't you the gurus?
Just decoding other gurus.
What makes you not like the gurus?
We're never not going to hear that, are we?
It's going to be every week for the rest of our lives.
Yeah, that one.
And we are covering famous people so we can attach ourselves leech-like to their profile and gain online clout.
Yeah, that one too.
Like Reverend Moon.
Yep.
It's so hot right now.
Yeah, so the one point I would make here, and I've made it elsewhere, and I'll endlessly restate it, is people are welcome to rate us on the Grometer or to look at how we match up to the various definitions we offer for gurus.
And, you know, however much you hate us, if you think we do the same thing as what Jordan Peterson No,
no.
Our message is much more mundane.
Yeah, it's mundane.
It is.
Largely informed by academic research, I have to say.
And we aren't proposing any global conspiracies trying to hold us down.
No.
Many points of difference, if you're actually...
The more you think about it, in fact, the more points of difference you find.
It's interesting.
Yeah, it's like, you know...
What's our core message?
Be critical of the content you consume.
Seek out relevant experts and people who are not super invested in the latest culture war drama to understand an issue.
Institutions and whatnot are not perfect, but they're not always improved by the alternative ecosphere.
As you said, mundane.
If you're remotely sensible, you're boring!
That's right.
If you're remotely sensible, you already know all of these things because they're pretty freaking obvious.
But for the rest of you, you're welcome to leave us a negative review.
Yeah, that's fine.
We appreciate it.
So thank you very much, Samix57.
So Matt, there is one shout-out I want to quickly give before we talk about our patrons, which is we have a volunteer called Joanna Scanlon.
Who manages the Instagram account and she posts up content there.
And I often forget to even send emails about the stuff that we're releasing or that kind of thing.
And she does it out of the goodness of her heart just because, you know, we asked people if they wanted to do that and she did it.
And she's almost got like a thousand followers on the Instagram account.
So I just want to say thank you to Joanna and we...
I appreciate that.
So there is stuff on Instagram, and if it's good and useful, you can thank Joanna, not me and Matt, because we're too lazy to manage the social media accounts properly.
So thank you, Joanna.
Yeah, thank you so much, Joanna.
We don't use Instagram that much because we're addicted to Twitter and getting into pointless arguments there.
So Instagram stuff can fly under our radar a little bit, but it's really nice of her to do that.
So thank you.
Yep, we appreciate it.
And so, Matt, to the patrons, we're going to try something this week.
It might not work out, but you had to confess your undying love to everyone, so it seems fair that we make me have to do something similar.
And this time, since I cannot confess love by my very nature, I'm going to announce my resentment for...
Each of them.
So that means you're going to be reading the names.
Can you manage that?
Oh, yeah.
That seems easy.
I've seen you do it.
It's fine.
All right.
So let's go.
Okay.
Chris, so the galaxy-brained gurus on your list are Christopher McLaughlin.
Thank you, Chris.
Dexter King-Williams.
Alex Bander.
Alex Bander.
Amber Ho.
How?
Benjamin Ashcraft, Brian Nass, Marson Stan, Scott M, and David Ainsworth.
I know David from Twitter, I think.
Yeah.
Oh.
You missed one, Matt.
J. Also J. That wasn't...
Oh, just the letter J. I thought that was a typo.
Yeah.
Sorry, J. Sorry, the letter J. Now, see, Matt, what you did there, just to give you some tips on your reading of the patrons.
You didn't pause after any of them, so now I have to collectively make a comment about how much I resent them all, right?
So the format is just, you know, just keep that in mind.
So I can do it, don't worry.
I'll do it quickly.
So let me see.
Christopher McLaughlin, obviously with him, the problem is that he's tried to take my name.
There's too many...
Christopher's in the world and Mick, like, you know, Irish appropriation, maybe even as Irish.
So that's his problem.
Dexter King Williams.
King, if he does say so himself.
Is it a middle name or is it, you know, self-aggrandizing?
Who can say?
So that's Dexter's issue.
Alex Bander.
That's difficult.
That's difficult because that's a rather unique name.
And maybe that's his problem, Matt.
Maybe that's why I resent him.
He probably had things too easy for him in life because people liked his name and, you know, the Bandar.
How many people do you know called Bandar?
So that's the problem with him.
Amber.
Amber's lovely because I've met her in the AMAs that we have.
But, you know, I have to say something to resent.
She's almost too nice when you think about it.
She is.
That's a problem.
That's like a slap in the face.
I know.
It is a big wet fish across the face.
So that's Amber's issue, but otherwise very nice.
Benjamin Ashcraft.
Well, what can I say about Benjamin?
The surname, you know, it's so pretentious.
It implies that you're going to be crafting things out of ash.
Who's going to be doing that?
Nobody wants your bespoken ash product.
I think Benjamin misspelt his own name.
I think it should be Ashcroft.
That's the normal way to write that.
So, you've got to wonder about someone who gets their own last name wrong.
Right.
Now, Brian Nass, obviously, in his case, we already thanked him once, and he didn't send anything, but I just got the sense that he wanted thanked in the correct tier.
So, yeah, what an entitled guy, Matt.
Just getting shoutouts every week.
That's Seth, Brian, terrible.
Scott M, Scott M, he had your problem, Matt.
Generic.
Generic.
What can I say about old Scott?
Unless it's a fake username.
That's even worse because he picked the generic name with just an initial that I can't do anything with.
So thanks very much for that.
And David Ensworth's trouble, as you already mentioned, is that he knows you and follows you on Twitter.
Big problems, Matt.
Got bad taste there.
Oh, and lastly, Morrison Stan.
Morrison Stan.
Well, people standing people, that's a problem.
That's an issue in this world, so his name just reminds me of that.
That's what he's got wrong.
Just hearing his name puts me in the rage.
J. Lazy.
One letter.
You know, how many letters are there in the alphabet?
You could do with a couple more and you use a name.
Single name.
Who does he think he is?
Prince?
Thank you all for contributing at the top tier.
That took longer than I intended.
Yeah, it does take a while, doesn't it, to do everyone individually?
Yeah, well, I'll shorten down the amount of revolutionary geniuses and conspiracy theorists, and I'll try to keep my views shorter.
So here are the revolutionary geniuses, Matt.
So, they are Liz Pagan.
Her problem, Matt, her problem, paganism.
As a Catholic, what can I say?
I'm not even a Catholic, but my upbringing, it just sends me in their rage at the mere mention of paganism.
So, Liz Pagan.
Bad, bad, bad.
Heretic.
Next.
Agneska Z. Z. Well, obviously, Matt, a foreigner.
Not that, you know, with a name like that.
Or maybe not.
Maybe not.
They're immigrants.
So the fact that her name made me automatically say something bigoted, isn't that, you know, whose problem is that?
Is that my problem?
Some would say so.
But I, yeah, you know, that's a good name.
So that's, again, just I'm obviously filled with bigotry and resentment.
Automatically categorizing people as foreigners.
So that's...
Yeah, that's on you.
Yeah.
Thanks, Agneska.
Thanks.
Thanks for that.
Yeah, thanks.
If you get cancelled, we know who to blame.
Amber Rose.
Amber Rose.
Well, we already had an Amber.
So that's, you know, what am I supposed to do with that?
Two people with the same name?
It's like that guy Christopher McLaughlin.
Just come on.
Mix it up, people.
Stop picking same names and start making it hard to come up with idiosyncratic comments.
So, Amber, that's your issue.
Amber, the Amber slot is taken.
We've already got an Amber and we like her a lot.
So, you know, try something else.
Kevin O 'Rourke.
Thank you, Kevin.
Kevin O 'Rourke.
Old Kevin.
I probably had some feuds with O 'Rourkes in my time.
I'm sure in school there was an O 'Rourke stealing my dinner money or stepping on my shoe.
And he's probably distantly related through lineages, the Kavanaghs and the O 'Rourke's, the age-old feud.
And so it's a genetic tribal bias.
Yeah.
I mean, just statistically speaking, it's almost a certainty that his people probably massacred your people at some point before the British come over and brought peace.
Yeah.
Very problematic.
Okay, thank you to all of you.
I don't condone or support anything that Chris said.
I'm very fond of you all.
Especially the one about the foreigner.
That's what you don't want to endorse, Matt.
Yeah.
Good God.
Okay, so let's just do three conspiracy theories because I'm running out of power as we go.
So here we go.
Harder than it looks, isn't it, Chris?
Harder than it looks.
Mmm. I
Right.
So, what's this group called again?
Conspiracy Hypothesisers.
Conspiracy Hypothesisers.
Just as good as the other two tiers.
Trenton Knauer.
Trenton Knauer.
Well...
Yeah.
Give me time.
Give me time, mate.
Give me a little space.
I'll get it covered in there.
So, you pronounce the Knauer.
I'm going to say Knauer.
And that is an entitled surname.
Knauer.
As if you...
Are the person who gets to decide who knows and who doesn't?
Trenton.
Trenton.
So that's Trenton's problem.
His surname, if it's mispronounced, sounds like Noah.
Very good, very good.
Shana Perez.
Thank you, Shana.
Chris?
What I'm going to say here is, wasn't there someone like Perez Hilton who was annoying on the internet or like some gossip columnist?
Perez Hilton.
No, there was Perez Hilton, but there was a guy called Perez Hilton.
Who was like an online gossip monger.
So, again, I'm just triggered.
I'm triggered by the cosmic vibration of the Perez name there.
So, that's the problem for Shona.
Sorry.
Look what you've done, Shona.
Hope you're proud of yourself.
Gordon Sweeney.
Thank you, Gordon.
There was a TV show where there was a character called Sweeney.
I think he was a policeman.
And he might have been a British policeman.
And Ireland has a history of being brutalized by the British and the military and police were involved in that.
So, what more do I need to say, Matt?
The connection is obvious and the resentment is clear.
So that's Gordon Sweeney.
There we go.
Look what you've done, Gordon.
Chris is getting flashbacks of paddy wagons and being taken to a basement under a castle.
Yeah, I'm not saying you're responsible.
I'm just not saying you're innocent.
That's all.
Well, great.
That was painful.
Thank you, Chris.
Jesus, we'll never do that again.
We're sorry, everybody.
Yeah, we're never doing that again.
So we'll never do the segment where you tell everyone you love them.
We'll never do the one where I tell them I resent them all.
Just go back to sound clips, Matt.
We'll go back to sound clips.
This is what we do.
You know, we experiment, we try out things, they don't work, and we promise never to ever do them again.
We'll place a content warning on this section so people can skip over it.
Skip it.
Yeah, because it's interminably long.
So, yeah, but there we go.
So, should anyone still be here?
Like, you know, where can we find them?
No one will be thinking that now.
Yeah, you're right.
So while we're on Twitter, we're on Instagram, you can email us at decodingtegruys at gmail.com.
And yeah, we'll be back soon enough with, I think our next episode is a crossover with the Very Bad Wizards.
So that's something people can look forward to.
And we promise we'll do the shoutouts differently next time.
