Tyler discusses the “Intellectual Dark Web”, a collective of people having open conversations about controversial topics and amassing massive audiences because of it. This includes people from across the political spectrum from Ben Shapiro to Sam Harris, via Claire Lehmann’s new magazine Quillette, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Jordan Peterson.
What is the “Intellectual Dark Web”? David Fuller describes the main principles as:
- A willingness to engage in conversations with people who have different beliefs and political viewpoints
- Rejection of identity politics (and a recognition that it has become the dominant ideology in mainstream media discourse)
- Ideas worth listening to
- Honoring of freedom of speech
- People who don’t want them to speak their truth and try to silence them
Links from video:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html
https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/how-to-join-the-intellectual-dark-web-a-users-guide-b60ae0b12b86
http://intellectualdark.website/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRPDGEgaA
Transcript (Unedited)
Hello, I am to ride. It is June 15th, 2018, I’m excited to be here just has been flying by and I’m trying to continue this habit of putting the video was pretty no content been pretty critical but pretty no content in the past. I’ve really viewed it as of keeping up with the Joneses. Everyone’s doing it, so I have to do it as well too, but I’ve struggled with the platforms of mediums that are so popular in today, of course, and of course, I’m on it all that stuff, but I just really struggled a break up my day putting on those posts, and so I’ve really tried to focus on a channel, a medium that works for me, something I’m happy to do and be able to get out my thoughts get out the things that I’m thinking and hope to get out, and an easier way that fits the way that I like to approach things. And so I’ve got the video work in here, but I’ve also got the audio file and actually set up a system so when I take that audio upload it to my site actually pushes out to iTunes and actually upload is a podcast, so it’s pretty cool to see little iTunes podcast up there.
All taller to… I made that I paint the RILA really planned for there anything special, but I do wanna put that content out in that people struggle to find the time to engage in content, especially video were always hustling. We’re always on the move. And I’ve seen it in my own life. This big switch from consuming content, whether reading or consuming video and actually shifting over to audio. So when at the gym listened to a podcast listening to an audio book and I’ve really found that that that’s engaging, it’s a great way to consume content and it also fits with the lifestyle. A lot of us are living now. But I did have a topic I wanted to talk about today. I know there’s a ton of stuff going going on in the news, mostly a little bit from that today. And what I actually wanted to look at was an article printout. It was actually put up by very wise who is a journalist? This is a picture of her, her shot shows up on Bell bar is put it an article in May talking about, what is now known as the intellectual dark web, and it’s a really interesting, a movement that has started and it has been around the conversations that have emerged especially in what people are calling this post-truth era. And a lot of people are a little bit confused about what this intellectual dark means who these people are, but this article originally put out by very wise has built quite an amazing conversation online one that a lot of people are contributing to some people positively and of course in this Internet in that age that we’re in, a lot of people negatively, as well too.
But first of all, I just wanted to find a little bit about who are these people, what is this intellectual dark web actually have. This is where a part of it started was this website called intellectual dark dot website, it had a list of all these people who were part of it. You can see it is down now, I don’t know if it’s through traffic, and so many people are going to it or someone at some higher power has destroyed the site. I’m not too sure, but this is really where it all began, but there does seem to be a common definition. And I just wanted to read this off. This is actually from a Medium article here, what is a article says how to join the intellectual dark web, a user’s guide.
And really this idea was formed by Eric in Stein here who I think made it as a joke, but that joke that joke had some consequences obviously. And so this guy, this guy here, and what a lot of people are trying to do is actually provide a definition for what what the intellectual dark web is. And the reason is because there’s been such a wide spectrum of who these people are and who they’ve been classified. So you might not know some of the people. I don’t fully know everyone, but I’ve become more and more engaged as I tried to consume more of this content and it really does appeal to me this kind of content and the scope of people. And so, just to give that definition quickly, the core principles of the intellectual Dart with a willingness to engage in conversations with people who have different beliefs and political view points to a rejection of identity politics and a recognition that identity politics has become the dominant in ideology and mainstream media discourse. There are ideas worth listening to. They’re trying to own or the freedom of speech and often people don’t want them to share this, the spec “Share that truth and they try to silence. And so one of the things that we’ve seen for a lot of the these people, they’ve had some significant backlash. And just to highlight some of these people are, if you are interested, it’s quite a range is a couple of pictures. This is not original article.
Everyone was laughing at this cause Jeroen showed up and everyone else is dressed very nice and groin showed up with a jacket from Alaska. But either you looking good there, Joe and a couple other people who you may have be seeing or may be seeing soon because these people have have a sort… avalanche, behind them in success, and every single time they seem to talk to get more outraged more press more media more people sharing retaining about them and so they have become so prominent in this, in this little subject in this little dark web that people are engaging content. The thing that we’ve seen I think why this has had such a big impact is because we are in this time, that’s anti-truth era where people are searching for conversations looking for especially long-form honest conversations discussing issues that we aren’t normally hearing, day to day right now, and so for example, I think if I pull up here, I got a picture of a Jordan Peterson, he is on the left single as well, Talal as tough on this right as bench pero and then sitting in the back there, that’s the robin here, Dave, roe they have… you can see this video is an hour and 41 minutes long, got another picture here, Joe, Rogan with Bret instead and Heather hang who are mentioned in this article as well, too. That’s a two-hour and 50 minute conversation.
People are engaging with this, people are ingesting this content, even more than what we’re seeing in mainstream media. Your Robins viewership is as high as a CMS mainstream media, and people are more engaged with this content because of the conversations they’re having because of the format is in and the way that we can digest it and I don’t really think that this is gonna stop. And the reason is that this is what the original idea of the web was built around. The idea was that Internet world-wide-web, would create sort of a utopia, and it was a little bit optimistic to look at that way but a way to find to find information to democratized media to access information of scale that we had never had access to before, and that was the original vision of the internet. But a lot of that has fallen through or a fall apart, especially in the last couple of years in to have this return to civil discourse to long-form conversations, with really open topics that a lot of people are discussing right now, it makes sense that this is the direction we’ve had it in. Then again to bring it back to this idea of post-truth it’s something that has been needed right now.
And what I’m gonna do after this little video here, I was gonna share some links to some of these guys and some of their videos, but I just think it’s such a fascinating thing. We see someone, when I pulled up this video here, Jordan Peterson, on the left, a Canadian professor who was really unknown until 2016 when he decided that he didn’t want to deal with all that gender pronouns here in Canada, I think there was like 80 different pronouns. He protested it, and wanted to look at it from a scientific lens of left were all about truth roll about facts, especially when it looks, what comes to something like climate change. We’re clamped say, Look at the evidence, look at the evidence, but shorter in his rebuttal to that, was that we don’t pay attention to science when it met comes to gender when it comes to this kind of stuff. And he went to have a stand, and he had his stand toward throughout Canada got a ton of backlash in his continued at tour today. You can see him showing up on Ruben. I have opened report here. We’ve seen on almost four million views. And he should even he’s had these issues, he considers himself a classic left progressive left, but he’s sitting over there on the right here with benches formally the editor of Breitbart, News and editor at Bright Barnes and he is as conservative as you can get in a lot of ways Republican supporter of the Republican Party. But yet, even though their ideologies in some ways, clashed so much, they’re willing to have these open conversations and not just quick little conversations. You can see an hour 40. and that is what people have embraced so much. We are in a time where there is that outraged culture when someone says something that used to fly in the past, people jump all over it and attack with it.
And I think that’s why we have seen some of the success of these populous parties and just the popular political movement. This becomes were sick of hearing. And I put myself enough, or sick of seeing that backlash were a set of the political correctness. And we wanna have real honest conversations around these issues that are so binary in day-to-day and that so many people attack.
So I just, I don’t think I have too much else. I really wanted to say about this, but I really wanted to share some of this, some of this content. Sure, this idea and movement that is growing and whether that’s people who are part of this and are happy to be part of this, and people believe should be part of this. Someone like Jordan Peterson, obviously an intellectual Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, sharing his ideas on consciousness and there’s some people, obviously, who maybe aren’t so happy that they’re up here. And so, I just really wanted to share this, share this conversation that has been going on and let you to explore that for yourself. If you are engaged, if you’ve been paying attention to this idea online and what’s happening should be a message… ’cause I’d love to have a conversation about it and I think this is only gonna continue this long form content with these open discussions and it’s important thing that I hope does continue. So that’s my little video I did 11 minutes today. Hope everything is going well. I hope that I can get another video and continue building this habit and I appreciate, appreciate you if you’re watching this or listening. So I have a great weekend and I look forward to see you.