The Problem with Vaush

(and how he can fix it)

Internet debater Vaush has valid reasons to deflect against criticism: political adversaries acting in bad faith have consistently labeled him anything from a racist to a pedophile.

Why did they do that? Early in his relatively short career, Vaush argued against those things and made some linguistic missteps, saying things that, when clipped out of context, made him sound like a despicable human being.

Personally, I think he deserves some leniency for those missteps. After all, musicians can practice in a quiet room. Writers can bury their notebooks in filing cabinets. But performers, whether it’s a stand-up comedian or an online debater, need an audience, which inevitably leads to witnesses for their sour notes.

As a result of such fumbles, Vaush calls himself the most hated Leftist on the internet. And this isn’t necessarily an insult, either; he has pointed out hypocrisy and problematic behavior from other members of the online left. For example, he aggressively interrogated a defender of genocide and pointed out their manipulative gaslighting tactics during a debate. He exposed a content creator who starts fights based on flimsy premises he misunderstands. And Vaush has, multiple times, called out the once-largest “debate bro”, Destiny, for empowering his community to attack anyone who disagrees with him.

But then, during a debate with a smaller content creator, who had valid criticisms of Vaush’s work, Vaush used manipulative gaslighting tactics, created uncharitable straw men, and empowered his community to attack her on social media.

That may sound like a misrepresentation of the interview. But I say this wanting Vaush to improve. This isn’t a “take down” as much as it is a “report card”. So if you’ll give me some leeway and take the time to hear me out, you might change your mind. Or, at the very least, see where I’m coming from.

Let’s Get This Out of the Way

I personally believe that killing another person who is no immediate threat to anyone else is morally indefensible. As such, I also believe that genocide is the worst act one group of people can enact on another group of people.

Wait, what?

For anyone who’s never heard the terms “Nazbol” or “Tankie”, that paragraph probably feels like a strange tangent, completely out of the blue. After all, why would anyone need to say that?

By default, the vast majority of humans believe murder is wrong and genocide is exponentially worse. I bet some people, when reading my last paragraph, would get suspicious that I would even make such a claim. It’s almost as if I would need to defend myself against such accusations.

But I’m going to plant this seed and, once we get to the end (and please read to the end), it will all tie together.

I consider myself a writer over any other form of communication, so I take great care in editing my words. I can’t do online debate. I can’t make a video essay. I could probably try and have a conversation about this, but I’m sure I’d just trip over my own words and say something stupid that, when clipped out of context, would make me sound foolish, stupid, or worse.

How I Found Vaush

Like many progressives who saw the rise of Trump and the Alt-Right as a sign mainstream media had irresponsibly platformed bad-faith actors, I largely ignored the rise of internet political debate theatre. I always enjoyed carefully crafted video essays, such as those from Contrapoints, Lindsay Ellis, and HBomberguy. A favorite, early on, was a video by Sarah Z about Ben Shapiro and how, because debate is a performance, it should not be a measure of an argument’s validity.

As a result, I first ignored content creators like Vaush, who stream themselves playing video games, chatting with their communities, and engaging in online debates, sometimes mediated and sometimes not.

But I’ve always enjoyed conversational voices to scripted ones. I’ve been devouring podcasts since before they were “a thing”, starting around 2005–06 (can’t remember exactly). Even though I’m a (relatively) avid reader, I don’t enjoy audiobooks because of their scripted-sounding nature. I even got a degree in linguistics because I just love human speech and everything surrounding it.

So when I do things that don’t require 100% mental concentration, like washing dishes, going on a bike ride, or certain work tasks, I listen to people talking. For over a decade, it was through podcasts. As I became more entranced with leftist YouTube, those voices came from conversational video essayists.

I watched a ThoughtSlime video where she described feeling antagonized by supposed allies after apologizing for using an ableist slur. The video goes into a rant about certain members of the online left who she thought were toxic. This piqued my interest, so I started doing more research to find who she could be talking about. Even though she never named them, some people guessed one of those people was Vaush. Since I didn’t watch him, this didn’t bother me. But it did leave me with a bitter taste when I heard his name later.

Eventually ThoughtSlime tweeted something about “debate bro” Xanderhal having a harem, and my inner gossip hound got excited. I searched until I found a discussion where Xanderhal talked with Riley Grace Roshong about the misunderstanding, about how his Discord server had an inside joke, started by someone else, and it got misconstrued.

I started watching Roshong’s videos, even though I didn’t agree with a lot of what she said. Eventually I watched a video where a friendly conversation with political edutainer Demon Mama turned into a heated argument which ended their previously amicable relationship. I sided with Demon Mama and started watching more of her videos, which often included debate panels.

As I watched Demon Mama, I learned she found a lot of inspiration and admiration in Vaush, who I hadn’t, by that point, really paid any attention to.

Yeah, ThoughtSlime might have hinted that Vaush (or was it his community? I can’t remember) was toxic. But still, I liked Demon Mama well enough that I decided to check him out.

Why I Like Vaush

On the surface, Vaush is a brash, internet-savvy deep-voiced bear of a man who shares a lot of visual and linguistic similarities with the kind of internet trolls I saw dominate the alt-right. If you watch any of his videos without knowing him, especially one in which he isn’t engaged in debate, it’s easy to suspect he’s the kind of person who would’ve tried to dox Anita Sarkeesian or at least tweeted Pepe memes at Hillary Clinton.

But in his debates, that personality goes away and you can see a calm, collected intellectual who’s done the research, confidently lays out the arguments, and never surrenders ground to bigots.

I can’t remember the first debate of his I watched, but it was probably with some sort of white supremacist. (He’s done a lot of those.) I probably grinned when Vaush pointed out their dog whistles and confidently explained how he’d already heard the same arguments from other Nazis. When he finally got to the “real beliefs” of the person, he’d get louder, more assertive with his words, his face redder as the disgust manifested in well-earned rage. After all, he wasn’t talking to any old conservative, but white supremacists. Fascists, even! I’m sure I pumped my fist in the air when the other person got flustered.

After that, new Vaush debates went immediately to my “Watch Later”.

He made the biggest waves when he went on Tim Pool’s show to explain why Pool isn’t the enlightened centrist he claims. Vaush maintained his composure the entire time, knowing that Pool’s viewership far outweighed his own and he needed to steer away from proving any stereotypes about angry, emotional leftists. He cited specific facts, statistics, and publications that supported his arguments. He even gave Pool the benefit of the doubt, allowing him to say, “I don’t know,” as an “out” so that, even if he was wrong, he wasn’t embarrassed in front of his own audience.

Oddly enough, I watched the interview on a stream from The Serfs. While the host of The Serfs, Lance, usually talks throughout his streams and adds a lot to the conversation, he didn’t need to on this one. Vaush carried his weight and then some, gaining validation that his method of debate worked, changed minds, and could even penetrate the mainstream. And because of his near universal support from the leftist community on this debate (at least, from what I saw), Vaush drew in people who had previously hated him.

After that, Vaush debates were pushed to the top of the queue.

The Problem with Vaush

A video by Black YouTuber Professor Flowers discusses why Vaush is wrong about the topic of Black nationalism. She introduces the video as a response to her frustrations trying to communicate this complex argument through Twitter. After all, she’s a video essayist, so that’s where she’s going to make her most effective argument.

She explores the broad category of Black nationalism, the differences from ideologies like Black separatism and Black supremacy, and even the differences between a black “state” and a black “nation”. At one point, she Googles the phrase “black separatism” and explains why Google’s auto-fetched definition is confusing. She points to the Wikipedia article’s introduction, which mentions and then immediately dispels these common misunderstandings:

Black nationalism is sometimes described as a euphemism for, or a subset of, Black supremacism and Black separatism, and these terms have often been used interchangeably by journalists and academics. They are in fact very different philosophies: Black separatism is the pursuit of a “Black-only state”; and Black supremacism has been defined as the belief that Black people are superior to non-Blacks and should dominate them.

(source; bold added for emphasis)

She goes on to explain how white nationalism is different in many ways, not the least of which she later identifies as how it “is rooted in the justification of slavery and colonialism for capitalist gains.”

And then, to a lot of people, Black nationalism is an escapist fantasy, much like Wakanda from Black Panther and “Negro Town” from Key & Peele, both of which she uses as examples. White men have these sorts of escapist, power fantasies, where they get to have their own Fight Club or just relish in toxic ideas before exposing how they’re wrong, like The Wolf of Wall Street, Joker, Falling Down, Death Wish, the list goes on.

Breaking Bad is a great example of someone exploring toxic masculine notions of “pride” and what it means to be a “provider.” Even though Walter White is doing terrible things that hurt people and sets a terrible example if you misread him as a hero and not a villain (which many people have done), that story didn’t get shot down in the writers’ room. It got feedback, no doubt. But Black people don’t get to tell toxic stories without being reminded, constantly, how telling toxic stories is bad. The bar to get that off the ground is much higher. When those ideas are shot down by leftists and progressives, the people who are supposed to be on your side, that must feel disheartening (to say the least).

Profess Flowers goes on to explain the nuanced and subtle differences between different types of Black separatists, beginning the argument by explicitly stating, “To be clear, I am not a Black separatist.”

She continues:

But to bring justice to colonialism, colonized people must have the self-determination to decide if they want to live with those who’ve colonized them or not.

That “But” might seem strange in this context. After all, saying, “I’m not an X, but…” is often a hidden way of negating yourself. Racist people often start off racist sentences by saying, “I’m not a racist, but [here’s how I’m racist].”

But in this context, it makes perfect sense. She’s saying, “I don’t believe this thing, but it’s important to understand why someone else would.” If her entire critique is about the importance of listening to other people and not erasing all nuance and context, then she needs to highlight the nuance and context for these ideas, even if she doesn’t believe in them. And more importantly for her argument, she needs to tie everything back to her main thesis, which is that Vaush needs to actually listen to people instead of jumping to his own foregone conclusions.

She even shows a clip where Vaush is talking with another white, leftist YouTuber, Mexie, where he says:

If their ideas are good, they should be able to prove that to me.

To which Mexie replies:

I mean, just on that, like… Yes, people should be able to prove it. But if you’re talking to, like, a Black person about their ideas on racism or, like, their own experience or whatever, you know, um… You don’t have to flex as if like “What I’m saying is right and what you’re saying is wrong.” It can be like “This is my personal opinion and I don’t have experience with this, so like…

I left in the “like”s and “um”s to illustrate how Mexie, a video essayist, is not always as eloquent “on her feet” as Vaush and other debaters. As a result, I feel like her verbal fumbling (much like Vaush’s missteps I mentioned at the forefront of this article) are most likely just a sign she isn’t as practiced as Vaush at public speaking (or debating), to a large audience, on his platform. Not only is this not her home turf, it’s not her home sport.

But instead of asking questions and trying to understand, Vaush immediately interrupts Mexie:

Mexie: You don’t have to flex as if like “What I’m saying is right and what you’re saying is wrong.” It can be like “This is my personal opinion and I don’t have experience with this, so like…

Vaush: But I do. I’m a sociology major. Nah, fuck ’em. They’re wrong. Yeah, a lot of Black people have stupid opinions on race. Yeah, absolutely. Fuck these people. I’ve seen people defend fucking Candace Owens lately. What was that thing that.. fuck! What’s her name? God… that Black lady. Um… come on, guys. She defended Candace Owens? Kat Blaque! Yeah, yeah. She said she’d rather talk about race issues with Candace Owens — Candace Fucking “Hitler wasn’t a nationalist” Owens — over a white guy.

So, if you read that out of context, some people might think Vaush is saying that, because he’s a Sociology major, he doesn’t have to listen to Black people about race. If you did that, I think that would be unfair, but I can see why you’d think that.

After that clip, Professor Flowers gets heated and argues that Vaush is creating a pretty toxic environment for Black folx:

Gee, Vaush. I wonder why? This can’t possibly be a statement about how a Black person might legitimately find a person like you to be less pleasant to talk to than a Black Nazi.

“Oh, no no no no no. The only reasonable answer is that Kat Blaque, a trans feminist, is actually a Nazi sympathizer.”

And even worse, they feel empowered to humiliate, degrade, and attack those Black people rather than listen.

Watching this video, I honestly felt it strange how heated Professor Flowers was getting at Vaush. Yeah, he might have been pretty harsh, but she should give him some leniency. Maybe watch him for a while and see if that’s a fair representation of his perspective.

Turns out, that’s what she did.

Listen, I used to like Vaush. His content is entertaining, and I thought that we were beating the bad guys and winning. I didn’t want to dislike this person. I think he really believes that he’s doing the best he can to make the world a better place. And no doubt, there are good things about Vaush. He’s donated large amounts of money to charity. He’s helped people who used to be right-wingers and Nazis. I’m not saying that there’s no value in this. But so many issues came to my attention, and then continue to.

Vaush was a content creator Professor Flowers liked, one she trusted to express her same leftist goals. So when she saw him doing something that (from her perspective) contradicted those goals, she likely felt betrayed.

I nodded in agreement, because I understand how frustrating it feels to find out someone who you like and whose content you enjoy could make such mistakes, over and over, and not realize the harm they’ve done.

Cut Him Some Slack, My Dude

Some people might read that last section and think I’m being far more charitable to Professor Flowers than Vaush, especially since I just spent several paragraphs explaining why Vaush is one of my favorite content creators. If you already suspected I wasn’t actually a fan of his, that’s probably enough evidence to prove yourself right and stop reading the article, dismissing my argument as “cancel culture on the left.”

I get that, I really do. But I acknowledge the things I like are made by imperfect people who often make mistakes. We are all human, after all. And as they say, to err is humane (or something like that.) And I fully believe we’re all capable of positive change.

So this video didn’t sour me on Vaush. Even though Professor Flowers ends the video discussing how he’s perpetuating racist systems and making life more difficult for Black creators, even wrongly vilifying them in the eyes of his audience, I didn’t stop watching Vaush.

In fact, I saw it as a great opportunity to grow. I was excited at the prospect that he might watch this video and listen to her, make some adjustments, possibly get better.

When I saw Professor Flowers got invited on his show, she asked her Twitter followers if she should go. Here’s what I said:

I feel like he would be understanding, as I’ve seen him change some perspectives and behaviors based on constructive feedback. But I agree w/ your video that his fanbase seems super toxic and overly defensive, as often happens in fan Discords. (although not as bad [as] some…)

As empathetic as I think I am, I’m also quite selfish in writing this piece: I will admit, right now, that I am not defending Professor Flowers as much as I am trying to help Vaush.

Does that mean that I’m perpetuating racist systems? Maybe. If someone makes that argument, I’ll make a concerted effort to hear them out.

But as much as we say everyone deserves empathy, that doesn’t mean everyone deserves unconditional empathy from everyone else. A murderer does not need empathy from his victims’ family, after all. If you feel you have been mistreated by someone, you — specifically — are not obligated to cut them slack. While that person may deserve some leniency from other people, no one person is obligated to feel a specific way about any other person, nor should they feel compelled to do so.

If Professor Flowers hates Vaush, no one needs to convince her to like him.
If Vaush hates Professor Flowers, no one should convince him to like her.

But if there’s a power differential, and people feel that the person with more power is actively doing harm, then they should try to help, especially if they’re in enough of a position of power and privilege to do so.

When Professor Flowers said she’d go on Vaush’s show, I couldn’t hold my excitement. After all, I had faith that Vaush would do the right thing, would listen to her and change his ways, much like how I’d seen him change in the past over other issues.

But (and there’s obviously a “but”) things didn’t go as I’d hoped.

Vaush’s Response

Vaush watched part of Professor Flowers’ video on his stream (starts at 1:31:45). The “reaction” video is such a common way to create content that Bo Burnham parodied the trope on his Netflix special, Inside. While it’s fascinating getting someone’s feedback in real time (as if you’reright there, watching with them, right?), it also leads to problems when an argument is presented but needs time to be proven.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about some online YouTuber drama and, in the second section, you offhandedly mention how you don’t support genocide. If the article were read chronologically (like, for example, on a Twitch stream), the content creator would likely stop to comment about how strange that is, probably even raising suspicions about why that was mentioned in the first place.

This suspicion plants a seed for the audience.

Narratively, humans love foreshadowing. A common writing quote comes from Russian playwright Anton Chekhov:

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.

For writers, this is always brought up in introductory storytelling classes. If you want to introduce an unlikely event in a story, the reader will more likely accept it if it’s foreshadowed, preferably a few times.

Likewise, there’s an inherent assumption that, if something is foreshadowed, it must be important for something later. Even in real life, or in unscripted conversations, people draw these conclusions, which is why things like Tarot and Astrology are so popular. It’s also why people believe conspiracy theories, clutching circumstantial evidence in the past that proves them right, even if they ignore everything else that proves them wrong.

While watching Professor Flowers’ video, Vaush starts out by saying:

I saw this person on Twitter and they were complaining about me nonstop and they’re never gonna talk to me or reach out to me. I doubt they even know what my position is.

We know that’s not true, since we watched her video. He didn’t yet know that she used to watch his content, so she wasn’t just pulling things from out-of-context clips off Twitter.

If I listen for, like, 30 seconds, do you think that she will misrepresent me in the first 30 seconds? Do you think it’s possible?

Vaush makes a hypothesis then listens until Professor Flowers says that “long story short”, Vaush argues Black nationalism is the same as white nationalism.

Aaaaaaand [Vaush pauses video], there we go.

All right, already an incredible, massive, absolute waste of time. In the context of that discussion itself, I moved on from that position. And that was, by the way, exactly 30 seconds.

As Professor Flowers points out in her follow-up video, she immediately explains how he “moves on from that position” and how that response is what she was talking about.

But instead of learning this by pressing the “Play” button, Vaush skips around until he sees his visage on screen to point out all the ways Professor Flowers has misrepresented him.

Instead of listening to her, he jumped to his own foregone conclusion.

He made a hypothesis and searched for reasons to believe it while ignoring (or just missing) the evidence against it.

As I wrote previously, that was Professor Flowers’ entire thesis. And then, when some members of Vaush’s chat start to tell him he should watch the rest and give her credit, he says:

The content of this video is fine, I just don’t like being misrepresented.

And he eventually extends an invitation to his show.

So, if you want, you can come here and have a conversation with me. I won’t, like, do “debate bro” shit. I know not everyone can keep up with my “sick debate skills.”

So Professor Flowers goes on his show.

“This is where I’m starting to wonder if you’re educated enough to have this conversation.”

Again, Professor Flowers never once (at least, not in any videos I’ve seen of hers) claimed to be a Black nationalist. She has also, explicitly, said she’s not a Black separatist and “obviously” (her words) not a Black supremacist. She’s also stressed, multiple times, that there are huge differences between those ideologies, backed by the academic publications cited on Wikipedia.

And she didn’t make a video about Black nationalism: she made a video critiquing Vaush for how he treats Black nationalists and Black creators in general, immediately equating the former with white nationalists while using (whether intentionally or not) the latter as defense, and refusing to acknowledge the nuance and context behind these situations.

So, when she goes on his show, she probably expects she’ll be addressing that critique. In fact, her follow-up video requests, at the very end, as one of the conditions for her going on, he needs to watch her full video. Therefore, if she’s on his show, he must have watched her video. At least, that would be the charitable assumption.

After an initial introduction, Vaush explains the problems he sees with Black nationalism. Since Professor Flowers is there, she’s obligated to help him understand. After all, Vaush previously said he wouldn’t pull any “debate bro shit”, so if she can just explain why he’s wrong, he will understand the reasons behind her critique.

Granted, that’s my assumption. I don’t know what Professor Flowers thinks except what I’ve heard her say. But going into this conversation with that context, assuming good-faith intentions on both sides, that’s what I thought.

Instead, what we see for 3 hours is Vaush arguing against his assumptions about Black nationalism while Professor Flowers tries to clear up his confusion and then redirect the conversation back towards her criticism (which is, once again, that Vaush should listen to Black nationalists instead of immediately equating it with white nationalism.)

As a result, you hear a lot of examples of Professor Flowers saying something to the effect of, “I don’t agree with that, but we need to let oppressed people make these decisions for themselves.”

Vaush asks how millions of people can be removed from a county without committing genocide. Professor Flowers tries to answer how this is possible (not defending it, just answering his question) and then tries to get back to her original point.

Vaush accuses her of essentializing whiteness, accusing all white people of being colonizers. Professor Flowers explains why some people might believe that, and then tries to get back to her point.

Vaush identifies her “self-determination” language as the same logic used by white nationalists, saying that it’s a dog whistle they use when talking about ethno-states. Professor Flowers tries to explain the difference between the context of white nationalists and Black nationalists, explaining that there is nuance behind it. But more importantly, oppressed people need to be able to have these conversations without immediately being equated with white supremacists.

Vaush gets so worked up that he eventually insults Professor Flowers’ education (hence the title of this section) and then humiliates her when (by what I honestly believe to be an actual coincidence) her microphone stops working and she can’t defend herself:

So, I’ll just end with this, I guess, ’cause I don’t know how much farther we’re capable of going: your sociological analysis would get you laughed out of any undergraduate degree, and I can say that with the absolute confidence of a person who didn’t get laughed out of my classes. Your analysis is so vanishingly shallow that it leaves out any of the nuances that allow us to meaningfully critique these systems.

The fact that not all white people participated in colonization willingly, or knew what they were doing, or that people born to those people aren’t the same people who initially engaged in it, or that they were doing it for the benefit of power structures that they were victims of, or any of a million other things. These are all nuances that your desires to essentialize white people completely destroy.

I think that you probably are a bit racist, and I think it’s a bad look, and I think you would be a much better anti-colonialist if you addressed those problems because this is genuinely bad.

Now, that’s only halfway through their 3 hour “conversation” where Vaush had previously promised not to pull any “debate bro shit.”

Things cooled down eventually, and they had some friendly conversations near the end. But ultimately, Vaush started with the assumption that she shared the same ideas as Nazis, then he led her down a road where it sounded like she defended those ideas. Then he humiliated her publicly, in front of a large audience, on his own platform.

As Professor Flowers said in her very first Vaush video:

And if you are a Black person he disagrees with on race, him and his audience will feel empowered to dismiss, denigrate, and humiliate you.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The Many Problems with Vaush

As a Vaush fan, I can’t begin to describe how disappointed I was in this performance. After all, Professor Flowers had actual, good-faith criticisms. Yes, she expressed those in some inflammatory language, but that’s probably because she felt betrayed by a creator she liked. Similarly, my heart fell into my stomach and I couldn’t believe that happened and so many of Vaush’s fans were still defending him.

I went to his subreddit and saw a thread called “Advice for PF” (i.e. Professor Flowers):

Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems. She would benefit on reading up on a philosopher of our time the great Michael Brooks

Considering I felt frustrated, I responded:

And Vaush would benefit from watching an entire video essay before responding. She addresses his concerns later in the video and he called her uncharitable for not mentioning it immediately.

FYI I’ve been watching Vaush for ~2 years, PF for a few months, and I think he REALLY shit the bed on this one. Hope he reflects and listens to valid criticisms moving forward.

Someone responds:

In the 3hrs convo Vaush and PF had, the only definitive things from her positions is a defence of an oppressed people’s right to ethnically cleanse their oppressors or even the descendantsbof [sic] colonizers as a solution to colonialism and racial essentialism towards white people; that being having [sic] white skin inherently makes you a colonizer.

Again, that’s not what she said. She tried to explain the positions of Black nationalists — a group she never claimed membership — in order to explain the position for Vaush but he kept interrogating her as if that was a position she actually held.

I tried correcting the misconception, but was met, every time, with the exact same type of response: “She said, ‘Genocide is bad, BUT…’ Why would she say but if she didn’t think there was validity to it?”

As I said before, she was trying to explain a position and then redirect back to her critique. The “but” was an attempt at redirection. Was it effective? Not for the Vaush fans I talked with. As someone who watched Professor Flowers’ previous Vaush videos, I immediately understood what she meant. Or, at the very least, I gave her enough charitability to use her previous arguments as guidance and assumed anything that sounded really “odd” was just her inability to match Vaush’s “sick debate skills,” much like how Mexie tried to convince him to listen to people and couldn’t articulate herself to his standards.

Then I saw Vaush make this response on one of her Tweets:

I started to see red. I tensed up and clenched my teeth. How fucking smug can you be after you dismiss, denigrate, and humiliate someone who has accused you of being the kind of person that does that?

Listen, I know this shouldn’t bother me. I have a family. I’m currently trying to close on a house, work 9–5, have a wife and kid, and just discovered I’m neurodivergent. This drama should be the last thing occupying space in my mind. But I developed a parasocial relationship with this guy, whose content I’d spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours consuming. And I honestly didn’t think he’d be this stubborn, willfully ignorant, and downright cruel as other less lenient Twitter users had accused him of being. Yeah, it isn’t a big deal, but felt like a big deal nonetheless, and it’s caused me to write a 5,000+ word essay on the matter, so take that for what you will.

I respond:

Up until this point, Vaush was my favorite content creator, but now I sounded like all of the other people who Vaush grouped together when he called himself “the most hated leftist on the internet.” As far as anyone knew, I was one of those haters. And not only that, here I was, defending Professor Flowers, who — as far as many were concerned — supported genocide.

I assume Vaush received a lot of negative attention for this debate, because I saw this tweet he made earlier:

Not only did a couple internet randos think I supported genocide, but now Vaush, my parasocial daddy (as Mike from PA might say, even though Vaush is something like 8 years my junior) is out here maintaining the conspiracy theory that he, himself, had created. In the minds of Vaush’s audience who didn’t have the context, Professor Flowers was a genocide supporter and I, for defending her on Twitter, was one as well.

I totally understand that mentality, too. I completely dismissed almost anyone Vaush had vilified. If I hadn’t watched ThoughtSlime before finding Vaush, I’d probably ignore her since I know they don’t like each other. And it worked the other way, too. I was happy that Vaush also mentioned liking Sarah Z (who I previously mentioned) and I started watching videos by Eco Gecko and Unlearning Economics because of Vaush’s recommendation. (And if you’ll remember, I started watching Vaush based on the smaller YouTube creator, Demon Mama’s, recommendation.)

And not only that, but I came to the horrific realization that Vaush wasn’t willing to learn from this debacle, that it would be dismissed and forgotten as just another debate with a crypto-fascist.

So I responded:

A few people responded to question whether or not I’d actually be watching Vaush for 2 years (okay, maybe it was closer to a year and a half, to be perfectly honest), one person even saying this:

And I couldn’t help but wonder, who were the “people like you”? I’d never been very active on Twitter before and most of my knowledge comes from how I hear content creators describe the various groups and communities on there. Was I now I a “Tankie,” or a “Nazbol,” or some other term I didn’t really know but knew I was supposed to hate? How the fuck did that happen?

So, to sum it up, Vaush had clearly deluded himself into believing he was right (i.e. Professor Flowers was a Nazi in disguise) and he’s okay with his community dismissing her as such, even empowering his community to keep vilifying her and anyone who appears to be an ally with her.

That’s not how you build a community. I know you don’t want fascists and genocide deniers in your community. But what if you’ve misrepresented those people?

Fuck her, she’s friends with Mel

The day after the debate, Professor Flowers made a friendly reply in solidarity with Mel, a Tankie who has in the past appeared to defend the Chinese genocide of the Uighur Muslims.

That doesn’t mean Professor Flowers supports Mel. Although maybe she does? At this point, I don’t really know anything anymore.

I never liked Mel (who isn’t a content creator, so I’m not linking to their Twitter) because Vaush had a debate where he pointed out their secret fascist ideology, ultimately humiliating them on screen. (And I’m sure I threw a fist into the air the first time I listened, probably while washing dishes.)

But because of this Vaush drama, I started second-guessing my judgments of other “villains” he publicly humiliated, so I re-watched his conversation with them. After watching, I had pretty much the same reaction the first time I watched it. But then again, I don’t know anything else about Mel or the context behind their tweets that Vaush says supports genocide.

And herein lies another problem: if Vaush won’t listen to people who make good-faith criticisms, remains in his echo chambers, and refuses to grow as a person, then all the “bad guys” he’s debated are going to get a surge of people rethinking their credibility.

Is that a slippery slope argument? Of course. Maybe it’s invalid. I don’t know; I’m not a sociologist.

What I do know is that Professor Flowers is going on a fundraising stream with other people, including one that Vaush publicly criticized, even called a genocide denier (I think?), Luna Oi!

Granted, I’ve seen NonCompete’s video about Destiny where Destiny did a similar thing (in my opinion) as this whole Professor Flowers situation, inviting NonCompete and Luna onto Destiny’s show for a “chat” that became a “debate” they weren’t prepared for and ultimately labeled them genocide deniers.

I also don’t regularly watch NonCompete, so maybe there’s some validity to that, as far as I know. I really don’t like Destiny for various reasons, but just because I dislike someone doesn’t mean I should immediately trust their enemies.

Do you see how exhausting this is? Ultimately, it leaves me wanting to take a break from political YouTube altogether and just binge Um, Actually.

Vaush Can Fix This

I’m a writer and web developer in central Kentucky with a kid who loves V8 more than apple juice, a wife who tumbles rocks while reading two books a week, and six cats. The only reason to bring this up is that I don’t have any skin in this game of BreadTube/LeftTube drama. Writing this isn’t going to get me any “brownie points” with colleagues since no one I work with even knows who Vaush is.

But I represent a lot of the people who make up Vaush’s audience, whether he knows it or not. While the details may be different, the broad strokes are pretty universal:

• I make snap judgments about things, like my initial assumptions about the online debate community.
• I choose my entertainment based on the tastes of people I trust, and I follow a pretty circuitous, almost stream-of-consciousness, way of doing it, like finding Vaush through Demon Mama through RGR through Xanderhal through Thoughtslime. (Seriously, I just watched a great video by Noah Samsen about how he only recently discovered these creators, despite making YouTube videos for 14 years; you should check it out.)
• I develop parasocial relationships with content creators, even though I know these should be fleeting and shouldn’t live “rent free”.
• I get swept up into online outrage and make emotional Tweets that I don’t think anyone will read but I understand are still capable of hurting someone’s feelings.

Whenever I saw Vaush dissed on social media before this whole fiasco, I defended him, just like the people Professor Flowers criticized.

We all make mistakes. The problem is that, the more you make the same ones, over and over, the more likely you’re going to keep making them. That’s going to ruin your credibility with your audience, which means a dwindling viewership.

If Vaush takes the time to reflect, understands the real criticisms behind his behavior, and makes an effort to listen to other leftists without immediately making hasty generalizations, he can change, too.

Because if he can demonstrate a willingness to change, his community is more likely to, as well.

Epilogue: Listen to Black Creators

Since I just spent 6,000 words trying to improve the content of a white, male creator, here are some non-white creators I think you should check out.

• Professor Flowers
• Intelexual Media
• T1J
• Prime Cayes
• Austin Walker (Friends at the Table, Waypoint VICE)
• Melina Pendulum
• DaPurpleSharpie
• KAR
• Shonalika
• JJ the PikaZard
• Jessica Bellamy
• FD Signifier
• Khadija Mbowe
• Saint Andrewism

If you know more I should include, let me know.

(Even if they have a bit of a checkered past, give these folx some charitability. And if you think I didn’t properly vet someone, let me know and I’ll consider removing them, or at least tell you why I won’t.)