[music]

youtube video 1 What dream or vision do you want to turn into reality? youtube video 2 Hey, everybody. youtube video (foster the people) (SINGING) All the other kids — youtube video ("frozen") (SINGING) Do you want to build a snowman? youtube video (jared taylor) Equality is a dangerous myth.

caleb cain

It felt like I was chasing the truth about reality.

youtube video (lauren southern) Go to Africa and you will see a real rape culture!

caleb cain

And it was an uncomfortable truth.

youtube video Take your privilege somewhere else. youtube video (mike enoch) These people hate Americans. They hate white people. They hate you and me.

caleb cain

And I accepted that, and that’s what made it even more compelling.

youtube video (jared taylor) It’s necessary to have a certain kind of separation.

andy mills

OK.

caleb cain

So I’ll let you —

kevin roose

Yeah, so when did you feel your views shifting again?

caleb cain

So a big thing was Destiny.

youtube video (destiny) I’m going to die. Oh, no more enemies, please.

kevin roose

Can you just explain who Destiny is.

caleb cain

Destiny is a Twitch streamer.

youtube video (destiny) OK, there is a rush to get all of the achievements for the campaign modem.

andy mills

Um, Kevin Roose —

youtube video (destiny) 16 streamers I think that are participating.

andy mills

What is a Twitch streamer?

kevin roose

OK, um.

youtube video (destiny) Good job, thanks a lot.

kevin roose

So what Destiny does is a version of this thing that a lot of people do on the internet for money now. They stream themselves playing video games.

youtube video (destiny) Oh, look at all the people. I’m gonna lose.

kevin roose

Hundreds of thousands of people are watching them every time they go on stream and donating money to them and subscribing to their channels. And this sort of becomes their full-time job.

youtube video [INAUDIBLE]

kevin roose

And if you’ve ever spent time in like a multiplayer video game, you’ve met someone like Destiny.

youtube video (destiny) Oh, god, what is this [EXPLETIVE] cancer?

kevin roose

He’s the guy in the chat room who like profane and irreverent.

youtube video (destiny) You [EXPLETIVE] suck shit Jim. You’re just sitting there [EXPLETIVE] watching me, not doing anything. What the [EXPLETIVE].

kevin roose

Edgy in this performative way.

youtube video (destiny) But then after that, he like went back onto the autism train and went full blown [EXPLETIVE] retard on everything.

kevin roose

If you tell him not to say something, he’s definitely going to say it.

youtube video (destiny) I’m sorry. I’m a gamer. I use words like that.

kevin roose

And he started doing this thing a couple years ago, where he would invite people on his channel, and while he was playing video games, he would debate them.

youtube video (destiny 1) All right, can we be done with this one? I think — I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on this, so. youtube video (destiny 2) Yo [INAUDIBLE], listen. Hey, dude. You’re, listen. Despite all our disagreements, despite all of it, dude, you’re a solid mind. I really appreciate —

kevin roose

And he doesn’t just debate them.

youtube video (destiny) I hate you, I legitimately [EXPLETIVE] hate you. You are one of the people, you are one of the people that I would seek to deplatform.

kevin roose

He owns them.

youtube video (destiny) You unironically told me in here that Obama should be held accountable for the [EXPLETIVE] housing crisis. You are beyond [EXPLETIVE] retarded.

kevin roose

His goal was not just to prove the other person wrong. It was to make them look like an absolute idiot.

youtube video (destiny) How is Trump cheating on his wife relevant to anything? Who the [EXPLETIVE] cares about it? Who cares about it? Who cares — you mean Republicans, the people who talk about [EXPLETIVE] God every [EXPLETIVE] two seconds? You mean Trump that —

kevin roose

He would do these, they call them internet blood sports.

youtube video (destiny) What do you mean, who cares about that? When [EXPLETIVE] 95 percent of the evangelicals, part of the largest [EXPLETIVE] religious voter base in the United States, votes Republican every [EXPLETIVE] election.

kevin roose

Where he just basically, like, he would hit you with facts and data, but at the same time, he’s making fun of you.

youtube video (destiny) Saying that the idea that you’re voting for a Republican, because you don’t like Clinton, because Clinton bombed some shit is hilariously [EXPLETIVE] stupid. Republicans are going to [EXPLETIVE] stop bombing the Middle East? What the [EXPLETIVE] is that shit? What a dumb [EXPLETIVE] — that’s like saying —

kevin roose

Even though Destiny is very much on the left side of the political spectrum —

youtube video (destiny) It seems like you’re kind of trying to weasel in that, like, well, people didn’t really think this thing, but you don’t really have any polling data or anything whatsoever to support that view. That’s just your personal belief, right? Do you admit that? youtube video Yeah, yeah. No, I think it’s a personal belief that’s based on — youtube video (destiny) Well, it’s your personal belief.

kevin roose

When he pops up in Caleb’s feed, and Caleb sees the way that he is owning and destroying his opponents —

youtube video (destiny) It’s about — no, no, I can’t let you say something completely incorrect and move on, because this is how you win your arguments. You say a bunch of bullshit, and then you try to move on to a separate thing.

caleb cain

Oh man. This Destiny guy is great. Like, that was awesome.

kevin roose

Caleb kind of respects him for it. And then there was this one day that Caleb got a recommendation for another Destiny debate, and this time, Destiny was taking on —

youtube video (lauren southern) Hello? youtube video (destiny) Hey, what’s up? Can you hear me?

kevin roose

Lauren Southern.

youtube video (lauren southern) Yep. Yeah, I can hear you fine.

caleb cain

And then I remember seeing the Lauren Southern debate pop up on the sidebar, and I clicked on it.

youtube video (lauren southern) How’s it going? I am stoked.

caleb cain

And I thought, oh, Lauren Southern? This is going to be great.

youtube video (destiny) OK, so here’s my problem, Doug. Five or six years ago, I was a pretty right-leaning person. OK, like — youtube video (lauren southern) Really? youtube video (destiny) Yeah, believe it or not —

kevin roose

But the Lauren Southern that he sees —

youtube video (destiny) Do you agree or disagree with that? youtube video (lauren southern) Uh, I don’t know. I don’t know, honestly.

kevin roose

— is not the one he’s used to.

youtube video (destiny) You did a video where you linked an article about how refugees were causing an increase in crime. But if you followed that article and read it — I don’t remember if I tweeted this at you or not — the article actually stated that even though the amount of refugees coming into the country was increasing, the per capita crime was actually decreasing drastically and that the majority — youtube video (lauren southern) You’re saying that there is no proof that immigrants are a net drain on the country, I think, is ridiculous. youtube video (destiny) I mean, most of the reading that I did to prepare for this was of the economists that you cited in your book, who agrees that immigration has been a net gain for the entire Western world.

caleb cain

They were talking about immigration, and he nailed her down on the stats.

youtube video (lauren southern) You focused a lot on the economic side, and I’ve got to admit, I am not an economist. I don’t think either of us are.

caleb cain

Then —

youtube video (lauren southern) So I want to talk about culture for most of this, quite frankly, but if you want to talk about economics —

caleb cain

— she wanted to jump topics to culture.

youtube video (destiny) Wait, but dawg, you have a whole chapter on immigration. youtube video (lauren southern) No, no, no, no, no, no. youtube video (destiny) — and how it’s a net negative on the economy. How could you say that now? youtube video (lauren southern) I dedicated, I dedicated about three pages to the economy, and the rest is about culture, but I’m happy —

caleb cain

He would just pin her into a corner and get her to admit that she didn’t know what she was talking about, basically.

youtube video (lauren southern) I believe he compared human workers to a resource that was a natural resource we should let in, which was just — youtube video (destiny) You know that’s true, right? Like, labor and work is a resource that the market can take advantage of. If you run out of it, it’ll be bad. youtube video (lauren southern) Humans are not exactly equivalent to resources, so I put this —

caleb cain

I was like, what?

youtube video (destiny) Do you understand what a cross-sectional analysis is?

caleb cain

I thought we’re the ones with facts and logic.

youtube video (destiny) Does that phrase mean anything to you? youtube video (lauren southern) No, elaborate. youtube video (destiny) OK, when you’re polling groups of people —

caleb cain

We’re the ones that own the libs.

youtube video (destiny) In your book, you cite the term “reactants,” as people wanting to do the opposite of whatever it is they’re told. That’s what I see your entire movement as.

kevin roose

And you can tell from looking at his watch history that this is, like, a moment for him. It embarrassed Lauren, because he actually goes back and, like, rewatches that video several times.

youtube video (destiny) So is your goal to be just as retarded as the opposition? Is that your life goal? youtube video (lauren southern) No, it’s to — youtube video (destiny) — because I find it funny, because — youtube video (lauren southern) It’s to present the other argument that is currently not being protected in popular culture. youtube video (destiny) But why do you have to that by taking up the most extreme anti-opposition side.

caleb cain

It was the first moment, I was like, how did this liberal do that?

youtube video Destiny, welcome to the show. How are you doing? youtube video (destiny) Pretty good. How are you doing?

caleb cain

And then slowly, Destiny would keep appearing.

youtube video (destiny) You just moved on from the gay marriage thing and assume that — youtube video Yeah, I think death penalty is a better example, because — youtube video (destiny) OK, death penalty, sure. I don’t agree, and I think it’s wrong. But even if what you’re saying is true, I could sell any brand of bullshit and achieve the same thing.

kevin roose

Until one day, he got recommended this video in which Destiny was talking to someone new.

youtube video (contrapoints) People on the left, we get like — we just get kind of flustered and befuddled and just, like, exasperated and desperate. And we end up looking bad. You know what I mean?

caleb cain

Eventually, he talked to Contrapoints.

kevin roose

Her name is Natalie Wynn. She goes by Contrapoints on YouTube, and in some ways, like, she’s sort of the mirror image of someone like Stefan Molyneux.

youtube video (contrapoints) So I feel like great rhetorical use has been made on YouTube of painting this, like, social justice warrior caricature of these screaming college students — youtube video (destiny) Yeah. youtube video (contrapoints) — and who are self-evidently a mockery and who everyone finds basically annoying.

kevin roose

She’s a former academic. She studied philosophy. She then started the YouTube channel, and she kind of breaks down and explains these complicated ideas.

youtube video (contrapoints) This is the thing I try to do often when I’m making YouTube videos — don’t wait for the comments section to post the objections. youtube video (destiny) Yeah. youtube video (contrapoints) Like, figure out what they’re going to say first.

kevin roose

And like Destiny, she’s a progressive, who debates people on the internet.

youtube video (contrapoints) But if you want to convince people who aren’t on your side, there actually comes a point where it’s helpful to sort of understand what this thing you’re opposing comes from and why people believe it and precisely why it’s wrong, not just because you have —

kevin roose

But she’s not doing it by, like, owning people or calling them names or making them look like idiots. The way that she presents her ideas is different than anything that Caleb has been watching on YouTube.

youtube video (contrapoints) Hi. In this video, I’m going to talk about how to recognize a fascist.

[music]

kevin roose

She’s trans. She’s doing these drag-style, like, theatrical performances.

youtube video (contrapoints) Of course I wasn’t actually being racist. It was just an edgy meme. Can’t anyone take a joke anymore? Or will the anti-fascists violently attack you over humor now, too?

kevin roose

Where she dresses up in costume and acts out these ideas. And it’s all very vivid, and there’s a lot of pageantry to it.

youtube video (contrapoints) Hello, loiter. I mean hello, fellow Americans. You have a moment to talk about the need to secure the existence of our people and the future of white children? Hang on a second.

caleb cain

The content she was making, it’s, like, very theatrical and engaging, and interesting. I was, wow, this content’s way better than watching some dude stand in front of a camera for three hours.

youtube video (contrapoints) Are you a Nazi? Nein, nein. I mean no. Of course not. I’m simply an alternative pan-European ethnonationalist identitarian with some socialist leanings.

kevin roose

And she was edgy, too. She would dress up as a Nazi and like Sieg Heil and —

youtube video (contrapoints 1) This man is clearly a Nazi. youtube video (contrapoints 2) Well, he says he’s not a Nazi. youtube video (contrapoints 3) Actually, I prefer Z pronoun. youtube video (contrapoints 4) Stop forcing your made up gender on me, you fascist snowflake.

caleb cain

And i was like, oh, that’s kind of cool, and it made me uncomfortable, too, because at the same time, she’s telling me how wrong I am.

youtube video (contrapoints) The most basic way to resist fascism is to recognize its propaganda for what it is. The idea that appreciating European culture is in some way linked to establishing a white ethno state is just nonsense.

kevin roose

And the thing that she’s doing that is so revolutionary for Caleb is that she is saying the secret knowledge that you’ve been getting, like all this stuff about the West and gender and race and IQ. Like, the real secret about all of that —

youtube video (contrapoints) Fascism promises you a part in something greater than yourself. A homeland for your people, a sense of belonging to a tradition that stretches back thousands of years.

kevin roose

— is that all those people are full of shit.

youtube video (contrapoints) Just be sure to be extra proud of the parts of your heritage that involve buying and selling other human beings as property.

caleb cain

And so I just kept watching more and more of that content.

youtube video (contrapoints 1) Last month, I made a video called “Why White Nationalism Is Wrong,” in which I argued that reverting multicultural — youtube video (contrapoints 2) — is this. If you care about even one person of color or queer person or immigrant, stand up for that person by opposing the alt-right. youtube video (contrapoints 3) So when you see people joking about being Nazis, they could just be joking, or they could be using irony to partially conceal the truth.

caleb cain

And kind of seeing that, wow, she really knows what she’s talking about.

youtube video (philosophy tube) White supremacists don’t usually like bringing up the Holocaust as a point against them, but as Contrapoints has already pointed out in that brilliant video on white nationalism —

caleb cain

Once I started watching a lot of Contrapoints’s content —

youtube video (breadtuber) So today, I want to talk about Lauren Southern and an announcement that she made on Twitter.

caleb cain

— I started finding all these other YouTubers that I had never seen.

youtube video (breadtuber 1) It’s a validation machine to conservative and potentially conservative men, who are looking for a reason that they haven’t made it. youtube video (breadtuber 2) Hello, everyone. Today we’re going to take a look at a Lauren Southern video entitled, “What Every Girl Needs to Hear.” youtube video (breadtuber 3) If you take a look, we see a section in her video description titled, “Links to Studies.” Now how many of these links, would you guess, actually link to studies?

kevin roose

This is when Caleb discovers —

caleb cain

They call it BreadTube.

kevin roose

BreadTube.

youtube video (breadtuber) We can call it BreadTube. We can call it LeftTube. We can call it the anti-alt-right.

kevin roose

Which is a reference to this 19th century anarchist book title.

youtube video (breadtuber) I used BreadTube, because I thought it was kind of a cool little name with some interesting history behind why it was chosen, the whole, you know, Kropotkin, “Conquest of Bread,” yada, yada.

kevin roose

It’s this loose group of leftist YouTubers. Some of them are Marxists. Some of them are Democratic socialists. Some of them are anarchists. But all of them are very concerned about what they see as this fascist movement gaining power on YouTube.

youtube video (breadtuber) A Stefan Molyneux video — oh, my god.

kevin roose

And the way they deal with this is kind of fascinating.

youtube video (breadtuber) This video is titled “The Truth About Sex: Facts You Won’t Believe Are True,” which, yeah, no shit.

kevin roose

They basically mock the far right YouTubers.

youtube video (breadtuber) To be an anti-feminist, you have to have no understanding of how to read studies or what words mean and insist on remaining that way by ignoring criticism.

kevin roose

And they try to show that these YouTubers, they’re not edgy.

youtube video (breadtuber) Lauren Southern is repeating the same tired old debunked conservative talking points that we’ve all heard 1,000 times.

kevin roose

The other thing they do sell really goes back to the thing that brought Caleb deep into YouTube in the first place.

youtube video (three arrows) I get a lot of people telling me how they used to watch various anti-SJW YouTubers and who are also very ashamed of their former beliefs. And —

kevin roose

They offer help.

youtube video (three arrows) To you, it’s a community of rational truth tellers that don’t shy away from discourse and is also often the role of the underdog against things like the mainstream media.

kevin roose

They empathize with people who have been drawn up into these far right movements.

youtube video (three arrows) The people on your computer screen are average Joes, often broadcasting from their own homes and who are accountable only to you and the rest of their families. It’s like you stumbled into a big community that values the same things you do — free speech, common sense, and putting facts over emotions.

kevin roose

And they tell them things that you’re feeling, the things you believe —

youtube video (three arrows) There’s really no reason to feel ashamed for buying into the whole anti-SJW thing in the past.

kevin roose

It’s not all your fault. There are forces here that are beyond your control.

youtube video (three arrows) The people who further this kind of stuff to the point of a conspiratorial worldview are the ones who are embarrassing themselves.

kevin roose

And you can do something about it. In fact, you have to do something about it.

youtube video (contrapoints) If you’re someone who’s gotten involved with the alt-right in the last couple years and is now disillusioned to find yourself in the midst of a dangerous hate group, you have to get out now. It’s not too late. Society will forgive you. If you don’t know how to leave —

caleb cain

I was like, where — where were these people at? Why wasn’t I seeing their content?

andy mills

It’s like you ran into another part of equally always online YouTube. They were just on the other side of this continent of YouTube that you were on. It’s really different, like a parallel rabbit hole.

caleb cain

Yeah, yeah, it was like a parallel rabbit hole.

youtube video (breadtuber) White supremacy, as a general attitude, has, of course, been around for centuries. But white supremacy —

kevin roose

And you can see in Caleb’s YouTube history that over a period of months —

youtube video (destiny) That is the issue with Lauren Southern. She literally believes that stats are the plural of anecdote.

caleb cain

I was watching, you know, more left-wing content, but —

youtube video (stefan molyneux) What did the mainstream media do? Well, they lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.

caleb cain

I was still also watching right-wing content.

kevin roose

He is ricocheting between this far left YouTube universe and this far right world.

youtube video 80% of black households are single parent households, because we pay them to —

caleb cain

So I’d go back and forth.

youtube video (stefan molyneux) The more ethnic diversity you have, the higher your levels of violent crime. youtube video (contrapoints) The white genocide theory, also known as ethnic displacement by savvier white nationalists, who know that white genocide sounds like a crackpot notion, because it is. youtube video (jared taylor) Why would I want my nation to be populated by and reflect the culture of people who have come from all other places in the world?

caleb cain

It was kind of [EXPLETIVE] — it was breaking my head, basically, from where I was at.

youtube video (three arrows) You’re becoming part of this hive mind of people viewing politics through the lens of what they watch on YouTube every day. youtube video (stefan molyneux) If you have the facts, you can make better decisions, which is why the left is opposed to you getting any facts. youtube video (contrapoints) Here I am arguing with facts again, and white nationalism isn’t about facts.

caleb cain

Come on. This all can’t be right. I believed this stuff for five years, and it’s all about the facts and the logic.

youtube video (stefan molyneux) Everything you hold dear is, right now, hanging by a thread.

caleb cain

What the hell is going on?

youtube video Choose wisely. This choice will not come again.

[ambient music]

kevin roose

One day, after about a year of this back and forth, Caleb takes a new step in his political evolution, and he joins this big group chat room that Destiny has set up for himself and the fans of his videos.

caleb cain

And when I went to the Destiny servers, and I talked to actual leftists, and I talked to actual communists, and they had these, like, very long, actually intellectual conversations. They know what they’re talking about. There’s PhDs that come in Destiny’s channel every once in a while, and they know what they’re talking about. And every time I would see a right-winger come in there, they’d just own the shit out of them and laugh them out of the chat. And I thought, holy shit, like, I’m wrong.

[music - claude debussy]

kevin roose

Caleb spent weeks in these chat rooms talking with Destiny’s fans.

youtube video Today, we’re going to be talking about a website called therightstuff.biz, which I’m sure has some [EXPLETIVE] up cult following or something like that.

kevin roose

And it’s there, in those conversations —

youtube video Specifically, we’re going to be talking about their podcast called “The Daily Shoah,” and, of course, “shoah” meaning the extermination of the Jews.

kevin roose

— that Caleb realizes there is this world on YouTube that is further to the right than anything he has ever watched.

youtube video (mike enoch) This country, this constitution was set up for me by my ancestors, this historical legacy of rights and privileges. These are mine. I don’t owe them to you. youtube video Effectively, because blacks can’t really seem to get into this whole deal of an abstract philosophical concept as having any kind of validity, you know. Like well, you shouldn’t steal, because that’s wrong, and that’s bad.

kevin roose

He meets these new characters.

youtube video They don’t really do that.

kevin roose

People he’s never heard of before.

youtube video (mike enoch) You just don’t belong here. youtube video Yeah. youtube video (mike enoch) Like, our communities just don’t mix.

kevin roose

And Caleb realizes just how far the right-wing rabbit hole that he was in goes.

youtube video You look at Hollywood. This is a Jewish cultural system designed to market what they view as good to a foreign race, which is us. They’re a human disease.

[laughter]

kevin roose

And it legitimately scares him.

caleb cain

And I listened to things that they said, and they were like, no, the idea of Western civilization is dumb. It’s white civilization. And it’s not cultural Marxism. It’s the Jews.

youtube video 1 I really don’t like Jews. youtube video 2 No. youtube video 3 They’re just despicable, horrible things.

caleb cain

It was so raw.

kevin roose

And what scares him about these people isn’t just the stuff they’re saying. It’s not just the racism or the anti-Semitism that they’re talking about. It’s that they understand YouTube.

youtube video Favorite alt-light figure — Lauren Southern.

kevin roose

They get the mechanics of how it works.

youtube video 1 She has good instincts. She has balls, so to speak. youtube video 2 I think that she does have the most potential of them.

kevin roose

They get how channels build their audiences and how they appeal to new people.

caleb cain

And then I would listen to them, and they’d strategize.

youtube video We see them flirting with our ideas.

caleb cain

They’d joke about how they took all the little alt-lighters and the conservatives, and they pulled them down the funnel. And they’d say, yeah, you know, you just go on their shows. Next thing you know, they’re watching your content.

youtube video They know they’re not right, but they’re just nervous about espousing these ideas fully, and they’re coming up with kind of like shit tier excuses to not go all the way.

caleb cain

We can’t disown these people. You’ve got to let them play with the ideas and get used to it, and then slowly, they’ll come to our side, and slowly, they’ll see that we’re right. And I just saw it, and I was like, they’re doing this intentionally. This is a strategy. They are aware of the way this works.

kevin roose

And what’s interesting is that when he clicks back into BreadTube, they also have a strategy.

youtube video (breadtuber) If you want to win a culture war, you need young people, as a matter of fact. That’s why the alt-right rabbit hole is so successful. They’re bringing in young people.

kevin roose

For how to win people over to their cause using YouTube.

youtube video (breadtuber) They have to be radicalized by somebody. I think we can all agree it’s probably best if they’re radicalized by the left and not by the right.

kevin roose

And you have to reach people on their level.

youtube video (breadtuber) Edginess. OK, it’s important.

kevin roose

You have to talk to people in their level, and part of that is edgy humor. Part of that is memes, you know.

youtube video My main goal is and will always be to spread leftism, to bring as many people as possible to the left, OK?

kevin roose

And also, liberals and leftists put out content.

youtube video (breadtuber) And so if you can indoctrinate, like, teenagers, now you’re looking pretty good for the future.

kevin roose

And inspired by what he sees on BreadTube —

caleb cain

Unless YouTube does something about it directly, then it’s only going to happen by overrunning the content that these people have put out.

kevin roose

— Caleb decides that after all of these years —

caleb cain

But it’s difficult, because the alt-right, they do streams for hours and hours a day.

kevin roose

And all these thousands and thousands of videos he’s watched. He gets out his laptop, sets it up in his grandparents’ dining room.

youtube video (caleb cain) Hi, everybody. My name’s Caleb.

kevin roose

Hits record.

youtube video (caleb cain) So you can probably tell by the description on the video in the title what this is going to be about.

kevin roose

And then he uploads it to YouTube.

youtube video (caleb cain) I fell down the alt-right rabbit hole. You know, my story, it starts — it actually starts in high school. You know, I’d spent a lot of time on YouTube. I’d spent a lot of time on the internet and reading things. I listen to bands like Dead Kennedys —

kevin roose

Was there ever a moment where you felt like, maybe the solution was, like, just pulling away from YouTube all together?

caleb cain

Oh, no, I was addicted to it. I’m still addicted to YouTube. No.

kevin roose

So it never felt like, OK, maybe the problem is not what I’m watching on YouTube. It’s that I’m watching YouTube all the time. And maybe I —

caleb cain

That thought never even crossed my mind even for a second.

kevin roose

It’s interesting that the concept of sort of edginess is one that’s been sticking in my brain, since you talked about your high school personality and then your sort of post-college personality as both being sort of seeking the edge. Was there a certain point at which it started to feel edgier to be on the left than on the right?

caleb cain

There’s some of that, yeah. Yeah, because we have our little form of blood sports too, and it’s fun to own people.

kevin roose

I mean, I guess what I’m sort of wondering is it seems like you went pretty far down this alt-right rabbit hole. You didn’t get to the bottom maybe, but fairly close. And then you kind of found this path to this other part of YouTube that works kind of the same way, but with just a different ideology and got sucked pretty far down into that by some of the same algorithms and the same forces that had pulled you into the alt-right. And I guess I’m just — I’m wondering if that makes you feel like the problem is still that you kind of are in the rabbit hole, but you’re in just a different one. You’re still susceptible, if the algorithm were to change in the future and lead you down some other path that maybe was more dangerous, that you — this could happen to you again.

caleb cain

Yeah, there’s always that concern. It’s possible. And so I just — I have to be conscious of it. Yeah.

kevin roose

Yeah, I mean I guess I’m wondering, like, if you think you’re still being manipulated.

caleb cain

Yeah, because that is the problem with YouTube, right? It’s going to recommend you what you want.

andy mills

But you don’t plan on leaving YouTube.

caleb cain

Don’t plan on leaving YouTube, no. I know that sounds crazy. I get how that sounds, but no, I don’t plan on leaving YouTube. And now I’ve got a YouTube channel that’s going viral, so it’s like, I’m kind of in there now, you know? So what do you do about that?

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youtube video 1 (caleb cain) OK, guys, so today — let me go into full screen here. So today, we’ve got a couple things. I’m going to read through some articles on Stefan Molyneux because — youtube video 2 (caleb cain) Today, we are going to talk about a topic of insecurity and how insecurity can lead one to feelings of superiority. youtube video 3 (caleb cain) Hey, there, guys. Faraday here with a, you guessed it, another journal entry. So hope you guys are enjoying these. youtube video 4 (caleb cain) What’s the standard that you hold a person to? Right? Is the standard, like, way up here? Do they have to be, like, damn near perfect? [INAUDIBLE] youtube video 5 (caleb cain) How do I tell when I’m being manipulated? What’s real, and what’s not? I don’t know how to answer that beyond that.

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