Posted on 03/26/2017 9:03:33 AM PDT by Lorianne
"Twitter is a tiny echo chamber. I'm not sure the left understand the monumental ass-whupping being dished out to them on YouTube."
Thus reads a tweet posted this Tuesday by InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson, who you may remember best as the right-wing vlogger who inadvertently promised every journalist in the world a free holiday to Sweden.
As with most things PJW does nowadays, the tweet was immediately and widely mocked. But however fun mocking Watson might be, there was a curious hollowness to the whole affair.
PJW's tweet offers a sketch of the social media terrain that seems spot-on. Twitter isn't wholly dominated by the left, but – Donald Trump and anyone with an egg avatar aside – left-wing views are certainly better-represented there than on any other major social network. However, left-wing Twitter has failed to translate into real-world influence. Twitter conversations aren't very accessible to outsiders.
The "echo chamber" trope is lazy and inaccurate – I've personally learnt a huge amount from people on Twitter, and often this has led to my political views changing as well. Nevertheless, Twitter lends itself best to the refinement of people's views in conversation with people they already share some sympathy with. It's an effective tool for dragging young Labour voters further left, perhaps, but not turning Trump voters into Black Lives Matter activists.
The videos these people produce are a lot of things – "amateurish" and "mind-numblingly tedious" are among the main descriptors I'd use. But somehow, they're incredibly effective. Let's face it: anyone who can get hundreds of thousands of views for a one-hour rant about Owen Jones is worthy of at least our anthropological interest, if not quite our respect.
The most famous instance of far-right views being disseminated on YouTube is PewDiePie – the site's biggest star, commanding an audience of literally millions of impressionable teenage boys, who for some reason want to watch him play computer games. He was dropped by Disney after it emerged that his videos included antisemitic jokes and Nazi imagery. PewDiePie wrote a blog post declaring: "I am in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes... Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive."
What PewDiePie does is very different from the likes of PJW, but this ironic racism can offer us a good example of what happens when these views, prominent in YouTube's ecosystem as they are, become normalised. Such videos are – at least anecdotally – having a measurable effect on how these kids talk about Jews, or the Nazis.
OK, ENOUGH, SNIP
Female vs male traits I believe.
Twitter and Facebook are all about slogans. Women (most) want to feel belonging and have little patience for details that dont directly concern them. And very little desire to hear a reasoned argument.
The writer is silly about “multiple points of view”. She will not sit for a different point of view.
Men are way more aspergers-y, willing to geek out on information in detail, and a reasoned case.
These things are slogans, and are mainly signals of belonging to the club.
What did you say?
Yes. Stupid article.
Vice and Infwars deserve each other.
This is a bit of cross-pollination.
They support each other.
Hmmm - sounds much like my tag line.
Infowars is not right or conservative.
So says every cuck in America.
“Why the Right Is Dominating YouTube”
it’s because the alt-left already operates almost all of the conventional video outlets, e.g., enemedia broadcast and cablecast outlets such as CNN/MSNBC/NBC/CBS/ABC and half of FNC, so the alt-left has no need to use YouTube as a national media outlet, whereas YouTube is pretty much our only national-platform alternative.
Logic trumps emotion. The left deals in emotion.
This means that those that are at least fairly reasonable soon see the difference in the argument styles of the two sides and adjust’s their viewpoint accordingly.
The right dominates every forum where people are free to say what they think. The socialists can only prevail where they can repress views against their own.
Mind-numblingly whiny, IMHO. Bitchy, rambling, and self-centered.
Ain’t nobody got time for that. Right side YouTubers are upbeat, positive, and often rousingly pissed-off!
Yes but Google owns YouTube so one wonders how much longer it’s going to be open for anyone to post there.
The article is about YouTube as a medium of communication, not those specific channels per se. I think you are missing the point.
“Yes but Google owns YouTube so one wonders how much longer it’s going to be open for anyone to post there.”
Indeed.
Anything worth saying once is worth saying five times.
Conservatives dominate non traditional media because we are shut out of traditional media. You don’t need to drill down any deeper than that.
Dude, we get it. You dont have to post 10 times.
Infowars has more in common with left wing conspiracy theories than conservatism.
Anyhow, maybe someday you will actually be able to touch a woman, but I doubt it.
You were a feminist before your wife started sleeping with other men, but you only understood feminism in the abstract.
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