Media Is Smearing Me And People Like Joe Rogan as Far-Right
A study was published falsely linking me to channels I have never interacted and included me in a list of "far right reactionary" channels. The study is rife with factual errors and misleading statements. It makes contradictory and conflicting statements in its presentation and is woefully confusing. But nonetheless it is being spread as proof of "Far right extremism" on youtube even when the study concludes the "network" is of varying ideologies.
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The other day, a group called Data & Society published a false and defamatory study, and the reason I say it's false and defamatory is because it includes me in rather negative ways, but the information, the facts they present, are incorrect.
So I'm not a lawyer, I don't necessarily know how it works, but I can say that They've made a statement of fact that I have collaborated as a guest, host, or collaborator with several channels I have never interacted with.
They placed me actually in the middle of this graph of all of these reactionary right-wing channels.
That's what they call it.
But I do want to talk a little bit about some other ideas before going into the article specifically.
Simply having certain subject matter as the core of what I cover.
I cover cultural issues, be it protests or now it's the culture war.
That is enough to warrant being called right-wing.
But I'm not.
For those of you that follow my channel, you know that I'm a social liberal.
I get a lot of criticism when I say things like diversity is a strength, or when I say things like the MeToo movement has done really great things, and getting rid of these horrible monsters has been spectacular.
But we want to make sure we protect the innocent?
Is that a controversial statement?
But simply because I talk about some of these issues, people will accuse me of being right-wing.
For instance, when I made a video about Nike's campaign backfiring, this was before their stock was at an all-time high, which I could address, but I'd make one video per day on my main channel.
The point I made that immediately I said, yes, their sales are up, However, this could be a temporary bump.
What we want to look at is brand recognition and value.
And I showed that across the board it was down.
And this was not my opinion.
This came from a mainstream market research company that was being shared by several mainstream outlets.
The article in question, the study, claims that these YouTubers, of which they include me, are far-right reactionaries, but they also have Joe Rogan on there, which is just ridiculous.
They claim that we want traditionalism, we oppose social justice and feminism.
How many times do I have to say on my channel that I'm actually for social justice, just not authoritarianism?
I believe diversity is a good thing, but I don't believe attacking white people is diversity.
I don't have traditional views.
I am not conservative, and I refuse to call myself such.
I'm a social liberal.
Yet, these studies come out.
This study itself is contradictory.
But you know what?
Let's just jump right into it, and I'm going to show you exactly what's going on, what's wrong with it, and why it needs to be addressed.
So, alternative influence.
Broadcasting the reactionary right on YouTube.
So, right away, they start with the premise that the people included in this are reactionary and right, and that's just not true.
And this is by Rebecca Lewis at Data & Society.
Full disclosure, I do know people at Data & Society who are high up And I don't want to say too much to respect their privacy, so I'm actually surprised this passed, you know, I don't know if they checked this because there are people associated with Data Society who I've known for years, and I have sent them a mildly worded letter, not very strong, but I said please correct this, it's factually incorrect as it pertains to me.
So, they start by saying this report identifies and names the Alternative Influence Network, an assortment of scholars, media pundits, and internet celebrities who use YouTube to promote a range of political positions, from mainstream versions of libertarianism and conservatism all the way to overt white nationalism.
Content creators in the AIN claim to provide an alternative media source for news and political commentary.
They function as political influencers who adopt techniques of brand influencers to build audiences and sell them on far-right ideology.
This first paragraph is important because they mention libertarianism and conservatism all the way to white nationalism.
However, I am a social liberal who regularly espouses social liberal opinions, especially on my second channel.
If you're a fan of the content I make, you'll know that on my opinion channel, I made a 30-minute video where I talked about why I do like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's campaign platform, minus a few things that I feel are too far left.
But she's got a bunch of positions I agree with, such as private prisons are bad, and we gotta get money out of politics, and it's why I was such a big fan of Bernie Sanders.
However...
I support a public option, meaning I think there should be a balance between public and private, but we do need public health care.
However, when they advocate for universal health care, I don't know if that's their exact position.
I think it might be Medicare for all, which may just be the public option.
So in that case, you know, the issues I take with Ocasio-Cortez primarily are her gaffes and when she blocked the press.
But I seriously made a half an hour video, and I got some criticism for it, but what I respect about this platform on YouTube is that even though most people who follow me—actually, I don't believe it's most, because I made a video where I disagreed with Tucker Carlson, and it was 60% people giving the video a thumbs up, but even people who disagree with me, they're willing to give my video a thumbs up and say, you know what, I like it, but I disagree.
And I hear that a lot.
Yet, they're going to claim that the people in this group are libertarian, are conservatives, are white nationalists.
It's not the case.
So, in the study they say, this report presents data from approximately 65 political influencers across 81 channels.
This network is connected through a dense system of guest appearances, mixing content from a variety of ideologies.
This cross-promotion of ideas forms a broader reactionary position, a general opposition to feminism, social justice, or left-wing politics.
Okay, and this is where I take huge issue to their inclusion of me.
I disagree with tribalism and authoritarianism, but my politics are wholly left-wing, I support social justice, and I support feminism.
My concern is with the idea of what's called a social justice warrior, that apparently they don't understand there's a difference.
When we're talking about a social justice warrior, I often will use quotes, and I have recognized that some people find it offensive and some people don't, but I like to point out that Ending racism is a really great thing.
In fact, I believe many of the people that are included in this report would agree racism is bad, sexism is bad.
But there are people who are staunch traditionalists and do believe like, you know, Gavin McInnes says women are dumb and things of that nature.
I believe he did.
You know, I don't have his quotes pulled up.
But a lot of people who are anti-authoritarian will criticize dogmatic tribalistic groupthink.
And that's what I've criticized.
I don't believe I've ever directly criticized or said feminism was wrong outside of the idea that there are certain people who might disagree with the idea of what the word represents.
But as far as I'm concerned, equality among genders, I've even made a video recognizing trans rights.
So to include me in this, I feel, is entirely defamatory.
There's no reason for my name to appear in this.
But we'll get to that.
So let's scroll down.
I don't want to waste too much time specifically, but I wanted to highlight how they talk about opposing certain things, of which I certainly don't.
But I want to get to the core of why this is a smear and it's factually incorrect.
So first, they talk about how there was a live stream with Andy Warski and Jean-Francois Giareppi facilitating a debate between white nationalists and the libertarian.
They talk about race realism and things of that nature.
They point out that Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber who goes by the pseudonym Sargon of Akkad, during the broadcast, the debate became the number one trending live video worldwide on YouTube with over 10,000 active viewers.
They say the archived version was viewed 475,000 times.
But I also want to point out that this is actually really small, and I regularly surpass 10,000 viewers on a breaking news stream, and there have been streams with hundreds of thousands to millions of live viewers.
So I do feel like this kind of overstates the scope.
So they talk about, you know, a lot of the stuff, and I don't want to get too much into, you know, they mention that there's watch hours, they make some false conclusions, which I'll get to in a second, but I want to show this graph, which is their influencer list, and I want to point a few things out.
So right in the middle, they include me.
And this is false.
There is a line from me to Coach Red Pill.
I have no idea who Coach Red Pill is.
There is a line from me to SomeBlackGuy.
I have never collaborated with or even inter- I don't believe I've interacted with SomeBlackGuy.
It says in the top left, each line indicates that two connected influencers appeared in the same YouTube video during the period of January 1st and April 1st, serving as guests?
Hosts or collaborators?
She is not saying that someone simply mentioned me.
She is specifically saying I was a guest, a host, or a collaborator.
So first of all, Yes, Carl Benjamin.
Now there's a line from me to Andy Warsky.
I have never even- I don't believe I even- I may have met Andy Warsky at VidCon, but I don't believe we've ever actually interacted or anything of that nature.
Maybe I said hi.
I never made a video about him.
I'm pretty sure.
I've never appeared on his channel.
Some black eye, never happened.
They have a line from me to Destiny.
I only somewhat know who Destiny is.
I've never interacted with him.
They have a line from me to Kalen Robertson.
Now, at the time of this study, I have never interacted with Kalen Robertson, but he did briefly appear in a video in May, a month after the study, when I was on the ground in London and asked him what was going on.
But to imply, you know, this line here as it pertains to the study is factually incorrect.
They also have a line from me to James Alsup.
I am pretty sure I have never... The only thing I can think of in terms of James Alsup would be when I was in Berkeley, maybe he walked past my live stream, but that would have been a minute out of a two to four hour broadcast.
I have never made content or collaborated or guested with James Alsup, nor has he on my channel.
And they also have a link from me to Blonde in the Belly of the Beast, who I don't even know who that is.
So here we have this study claiming you've got, I mean, you can look at how absurd this whole thing is.
Look, I've never interacted with half these people.
They have a line for me to Destiny, I don't know who he is.
There is no line for me to Blair White, but Andy Warski?
I've never interacted with him.
Yet they draw these connections, and this is factually incorrect data.
So I want to say right off the bat, if you make a study, and the premise of the study is fundamentally incorrect, the rest of the study is wrong.
They also have a line from me to Stefan Molyneux.
I've never interacted with this man.
I've never gone on his channel.
He's never gone on mine.
I don't know who he is.
I've never met him or interacted with him.
I've heard of him.
And this is absolutely ridiculous.
But I want to point out a few things that are also ridiculous.
There are several people who probably should be on this list who aren't.
If this woman, Rebecca Lewis, is talking about an influencer network, which she's basically saying political YouTubers, let's be honest, she's omitted several people.
For one, Matt Christensen, if you're familiar, made a kind of a joke about how he's being left out.
Because, yes, he is also a moderately-sized YouTube channel, over 100-something thousand subscribers, he makes regular content, much in a similar vein to me, but I would say he's gotten more opinionated on his main channel than I do on my main channel.
My second channel is Pure Opinion, don't get me wrong, but that's meant to be my editorial column where I'm doing more culture stuff.
I made a video about Marvel movies yesterday.
I won't do that on the main channel unless it relates to a larger issue.
But you can see that they have... Joe Rogan is a small node.
Now, look, if you want to make an argument that these people are all right-wing, you're wrong right off the bat.
Joe Rogan is pretty left.
I just recently met him and talked to him.
You want to make the argument that, you know, I am.
That's absurd as well.
Now they say at the bottom, the size of the node indicates how much of an influencer is a conduit to other influencers.
And we can see Andy Warsky is the largest, which is rather absurd in my opinion considering Andy Warsky's channel is not that large, he doesn't get that many views relative to someone like Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan has probably hosted more people on this list than many others.
I don't know if he's hosted the most, but Joe Rogan has certainly had many people.
We can see he's got several lines connecting to many people, but why he's considered not influential when he's got the largest following on one of the largest podcasts is strange to me.
They say, color indicates an influencer's total connectivity within the network or how close the influencer is to all other influencers.
I believe it's possible they've incorrectly included me because they may have put my name on the wrong data set.
Clearly, as I mentioned, I've never interacted with some of these people.
I don't know who some of these people are, yet they're concluding that I am.
Now, one of the big problems with this study is that mainstream journalists from the New York Times, Ezra Klein shared this.
The Guardian wrote an article about it.
Mother Jones wrote an article about it.
And their articles are based off of a study that is fundamentally flawed and factually incorrect, at least as it pertains to me.
But the study is also contradictory.
They have a section near the end, which I want to mention, where, I guess I'll just do a quick search here.
They talk about objectivity, and they say this.
These influencers explicitly reject the trappings of institutional prestige, adherence to objectivity and neutrality, and the enforcement of gatekeeping mechanisms that dominate mainstream news media.
This is factually incorrect.
First of all, I do not, I routinely defend the idea of objectivity.
I have a strong defense of it, and the idea of neutrality.
However, She's criticizing these influencers saying they reject these things, at the same time criticizing YouTubers for hosting alternative opinions, right?
If the idea is we should be objective and neutral, you're saying we should have an expansive set of opinions that we're going to investigate and interview.
That means I will end up interviewing someone like Lauren Southern or Brittany Pettibone, because they were in the news for particularly, you know, big stories.
So yes, I will.
The funny thing is, They use my interview with Baked Alaska— This thing struggles to load.
They use my— I skipped it.
They use my interview with Baked Alaska to show a connection.
However, one important thing to point out.
The gray lines are actually easier to see, but you can see a line from me to Baked Alaska.
I interviewed Baked Alaska on the exact same day that Vice News was embedded with him.
I simply sat down with him for about 15 or 20 minutes.
Vice News was with him the whole day, driving around with him, interviewing him, asking questions, and published it on HBO.
Yet, my short interview with a person who was one of the speakers at an event in Berkeley warrants me to be included on this.
I would ask, where is Vice News in this graph of alternative YouTube channels?
Because Vice News does, in many ways, the same thing I do in terms of interviews.
There's a few other things that I want to point out.
I will go back to objectivity and state, people within the social justice left eschew objectivity as a tool of white supremacy, and I'm not exaggerating.
Now this news, for instance, stated at VidCon, That they have brought in anti-Trump protesters to help them produce content, because they believe in what's called mission-driven storytelling.
They believe that you can't be objective, and this has persisted since, you know, for a while now.
In fact, The Intercept, for one, Glenn Greenwald, says you can't be objective.
It is typical among mainstream news organizations to eschew objectivity and neutrality.
They argue that you can't be neutral in times of conflict, and neutrality is as bad as support.
They say silence is violence.
So I'm confused as to what the argument they're making here when they say that this group, which includes me, somehow opposes objectivity.
There's a lot more wrong with this.
I don't want to necessarily go through everything, but I will point out where they mention me.
I'm mentioned 11 times in this article, for one.
The study does refer to me as a YouTuber and independent journalist.
So she didn't call me a reactionary or far-right, and that's why I believe my inclusion may have legitimately been a mistake.
But she says that Tim Pool argues that a media outlet's institutional reputation can actually act as a cover for bad journalism.
What ends up happening, Poole explains in one video, is that being behind a brand gets people off the hook for the things they do.
A journalist could write something bad, but people see Washington Post, they don't see the individual.
And if the Washington Post doesn't issue a correction, then these individuals, the readers, will leave with bad information and believing some fake story.
This is a hodgepodge of quotes.
She's seemingly fractured what I was actually saying, and this quote for me literally makes no sense.
I don't...
Understand why it's included.
She's trying to make some point that I somehow disagree with mainstream news, and while I've regularly criticized the media, in almost every video I make about the media, I always say they tend to be correct.
Don't go to CNN for political commentary, because that's opinion, but they do a fine job covering hurricanes.
I've also said time and time again that ABC, CBS, NBC, AP Reuters do an outstanding job, and that PBS is the most trusted name in news.
Now, CNN has that tagline, but it literally is PBS.
There was a study done.
I believe that websites like Huffington Post, Breitbart, you know, I tend not to use these.
However, I won't use right-wing sites as citation.
I will use left-wing sites specifically for this reason, okay?
Because if it is something that they are claiming on their side, I will use that as a source.
I won't use Breitbart because many Breitbart articles actually are rather inflammatory.
I also use a service now, it's rather new, called NewsGuard, to determine, it's a great way that I can use to determine now whether or not something is or is not credible.
And yes, they rate Fox News and Daily Caller as credible sources.
And I rarely use the Daily Caller for that matter.
Yet they're acting like somehow I'm arguing that mainstream news isn't acceptable.
When in every video I make, literally every single one, I use mainstream sources.
Why are they including me in this?
This is... The whole thing is a hodgepodge of quotes, misconstrued ideas, and factually incorrect information.
I have sent an email asking that they correct this because I don't understand.
This quote they're using is actually a hodgepodge of quotes.
Let me explain this.
The part where I say that an institutional reputation can act as a cover for bad journalism, I explain that when you're behind a brand, people get off the hook for the things they do.
Yes, because the argument I was making there is that if you write a bad article, they sometimes don't have bylines.
It will say Washington Post staff.
And so you don't know who to hold accountable.
So you can say, the Washington Post published fake news, but because the Washington Post tends to publish correct news, this is fine.
And I've talked to some experts in academia, who review this kind of stuff, and I asked them, how do we solve for this problem, when news organizations know they're putting out something questionable, they just won't put a byline on it, so that no one can be held accountable, and they can say, look, if 9 out of 10 of our articles are fine, and this one was bad, what's the problem?
We have a great success rate.
And that's a way that they can publish defamatory statements and get away with it.
Then when she goes on to say, if the Washington Post doesn't issue a correction, these individuals will leave with bad information and believing some fake story, that's just a factually correct statement, not even an opinion.
It is true.
If a news organization does not issue a correction, people will believe fake news.
How is that controversial?
And that statement doesn't even connect to the previous quote she has about me.
Why is this being included?
Interestingly, she says that I use my departure from media and academic institutions to highlight their outsider status as a source of credibility.
Poole previously worked at Vice Media and Fusion TV before striking it on his own.
This is also absolutely incorrect and misleading and misconstrues my statements.
While it's possible I may have poorly presented my opinions and arguments, My official stance is that I think Vice News does a really good job.
And I've said time and time again, Vice News is boring.
And that's not meant to be an insult.
It's a compliment.
News isn't supposed to be overly exciting and sensational.
And a lot of what Vice News does is boring.
And that's a good thing.
And now I've been critical of Fusion, but I am absolutely proud of the work that I've done at Fusion.
I'm critical of what they've become, Splinter TV, because they're overtly progressive and eschew objectivity, much like this woman claims that people in this group are doing.
But I believe Vice does a pretty decent— Now look, let me say this.
Vice.com is like an opinion, you know, analysis kind of thing.
But Vice News is different.
Vice News has won awards.
Vice News got a documentary out of ISIS territory.
I have produced things for Vice News and was the founding member who helped launch it.
I certainly am not going to act like I don't like it.
One of the main reasons that I left was not because of some kind of, you know, people claim that I left because media was lying.
Yes, there's, to an extent that's true.
I have talked about this.
That they encourage you to be misleading in order to generate clicks, right?
But one of the main reasons I left is because since I started working in media, these companies refused to adapt.
I recently talked about how I was trying to encourage Vice to make YouTube channels for their hosts, where they can produce simple, vloggy-style videos on the ground as a daily bit of content, and that was in 2013.
And they were excited for it, but they didn't have the ability to do it.
So I can make videos every day where I use mainstream sources and say, according to ABC,
according to CBS, I can make videos where I use NBC to fact check Huffington Post or
the Daily Beast and say that bigger news outlets tend to be credible and valuable sources of
information, yet they're going to include me and act like that's not my opinion.
That is false.
Now what they're stating about me is absolutely incorrect.
I don't know if that's their opinion or what the point is, but they're including me in
something even when they recognize me as an independent journalist and they're not calling
me a reactionary or far right.
They're simply highlighting the fact that I have talked about the misgivings, the mistakes
of mainstream media, as somehow this puts me in a right-wing libertarian reactionary
group.
That is absolutely absurd and incorrect.
I believe that either this woman used my name alongside an incorrect data set because she connected me to people I've never interacted with, or it's intentional.
And I don't know, you know, a lot of people are going to say, of course, Tim, it's intentional.
I can't prove that, and I'm not going to say it's true if I can't.
I'm simply saying, for the time being, I believe they made a gross error and should correct it.
And to the people of the New York Times and Vox, Mother Jones and The Guardian, who are publishing this without fact-checking it, shame on you!
I messaged Kevin Roos of the New York Times, who worked with me at Fusion.
I DM'd him and said simply, just want to let you know, it's factually incorrect.
I've never interacted with his people.
Because he was promoting the study.
His response?
Excellent material for your next anti-media video.
And that was it.
And he said something like, you have a big megaphone, I hope you're proud of what you do.
And I responded with, I hope you're proud of spreading factually incorrect information.
A New York Times journalist, who I worked with at Fusion, was told by me, this is factually incorrect, and he says nothing.
What am I supposed to do about that?
Am I supposed to say to the New York Times journalist, Kevin Roos, am I supposed to just say, you know what, I understand you're promoting information that's factually incorrect to your somewhat, I think 60,000 followers.
I am not going to say anything because I'm going to let you get away with it.
Like, I shouldn't say get away with it.
I'm just gonna let you mislead your audience and not ask you to correct false information.
Is this the mentality of these organizations?
Ezra Klein posted it.
This thing is going far and wide and no one is talking about the factual inaccuracies.
They don't care.
And I think it has to do with tribal reasons.
What's funny is a lot of this study, it's actually correct.
They talk about how YouTube encourages extreme behavior and it pushes creators further and further into extreme content.
That is true.
And it's not just true of politics, it's true of everything.
If someone makes a video titled, I don't like pineapple pizza, and it gets a million views, well guess what?
They're going to try to do it again.
But this isn't just YouTube.
It's exactly how Vox works.
It's exactly how the Daily Beast works.
It's exactly how Vice and Fusion works.
The reason I believe Fusion became far-left is because in the beginning, when they first started, they wanted to be neutral, they wanted to be non-partisan.
But they had success with far-left content, specifically trans rights videos.
And from then they said, this is what young people want, let's keep doing it.
They chased the algorithm.
This study polls a group of people that have varying political opinions, accuses them of being a Pied Piper to extremism.
Absolutely not the case.
I could talk about this for a really long time, but I don't want to waste all of your time.
I want to make sure I address this.
There are some good points.
However, it's a bit myopic in that they're only talking about specific YouTubers and lumping people like Joe Rogan in with people like Richard Spencer, which makes literally no sense.
And they're not including large YouTube channels like Vice News, which do literally the same thing.
Vice News has had Baked Alaska on twice.
I have several videos with Vice News.
Our names and collaborations, they exist on these platforms, yet for some reason, they are omitted from this influencer network.
Joe Rogan is a normie, right?
Meaning, he's not within these political spheres.
He's just a pot-smoking UFC fear factor guy.
He's a comedian.
The people who follow him aren't these kinds of people.
Like, they're not politically charged left or right.
There's a little bit of everybody.
And they're including him in this, acting like he's somehow a radicalizing figure when his podcast is just an eclectic group of varying voices.
Now their main criticism for a lot of this is that people like Rogan don't criticize their guests.
They give them a platform.
But at the same time, you have people like Lori Penny recently tweeting that while debate isn't the right thing
to do, and I agree with her, that her, I don't want to say this is her position specifically,
but that putting white supremacists and Nazis and crazy people on camera is a good thing
because sunlight is a good disinfectant.
Basically, she said debate was not a good idea.
I agreed because debating doesn't prove someone's right.
It simply proves someone's more charismatic, more prepared.
And then, if you have someone who's not good at debating, who isn't charismatic, it makes it look like their idea is bad.
However, just letting that person speak, on the other hand, instead of trying to oppose them, allows them to share an idea.
Then people can know whether or not they want to disassociate from that person.
And that's why many people in Charlottesville didn't go to the event just recently, because they said being exposed by the press ruined their lives.
They warned people not to do it.
The press worked.
There's one more thing I want to make up, because I don't want to talk too much about this other than this is, you know, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Is at the bottom there are more some more factual inaccuracies, but some rather alarming Connections that I believe shows that this is either woefully inept or actually a smear campaign and what I mean Woefully inept so so let me let me show this right here They have a list of all these creators, and in it they say Tim Pool, Tim Pool, Timcast, Subverse.
Subverse is the interesting thing here because Subverse is not a channel that I run, okay?
Yes, I do have managerial control of Subverse, but Subverse is a collection of interviews and podcasts with me and someone else.
I'm curious as to why Subverse is included in this list when it's something that, for one, I'm not extremely active on.
The host of the content on Subverse is someone else, who I'm going to omit lest they be included in this kind of nonsense.
But I don't host content on Subverse.
I co-host some podcasts and interviews.
But even the on-the-ground reporting of Subverse is not me.
It's not.
I don't do it.
Why are they including Subverse in here?
Why aren't they including Vice News?
Vice News is something I produced for, is something I appeared on regularly, and Vice News is something that I helped start.
It's not included on their list, but Subverse is, and Subverse is something that I don't produce for, I don't go on the ground for.
It's very, very interesting why they would include that.
So, look, I've been rambling for a long time.
I've addressed as much as I can in the amount of time that I have, so I will have more videos up on my second channel.
