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Thank you for the solid feedback. I guess I should've made a stronger argument.
The reason I didn't make a more substantial argument is because it's been two years since I last watched Destiny, and I didn't want to spend hours looking through past debates and effort posting about Destiny to justify a minor point I made. I still don't feel like it. If I felt like it and I had the goal of trying to convince people something about Destiny I would've made a top level post with the appropriate amount of effort and evidence.
But I'll acknowledge you have brought up some valid points, and perhaps I was too charitable in assuming Destiny's motive around 2022/2023 when he was engaging in debates with popular figures from the other side, which caused me to react more negatively to his subsequent behavior within the last year than I would've if I hadn't had that charitable impression of him. I'll adjust my parent comment with an edit.
Kirk founded an organization with the purpose of advocating for conservative politics amongst a younger generation, and you don't accomplish that without changing young people's minds about politics. Even if I were to grant you that they are there to primarily clip farm, that does not constitute evidence that they are not trying to change people's minds via debate at their events.
I disagree that Destiny approached it more honestly on the grounds of his attitude towards the people he is engaging in. Nothing Kirk has said comes remotely close to the inflammatory description of the regular people of the other side that Destiny has. If there has been, then it would've already been used as ammunition in the current campaign to bring down his image. I don't know about Crowder or Shapiro, but I doubt there's anything to the same degree either. Why do you think Destiny approached it more honestly and wanted more engagement than Crowder, Shapiro, or Kirk?
I appreciate your honesty. FWIW I do agree that Destiny does not optimize for truth. I just don't think he's ever said he optimizes for truth and while I would not go quite as far as saying he tries to maximize heat he does certainly enjoy it and is deliberately very spicy on twitter. He is terminally online and streams like 80% of his life and has an entire website devoted to describing the positions and values he holds. Given that, I do not think it is fair to say he ascribes to some ideal and then does not live up to it (or even attempt to) without some actual evidence that has that ideal.
If anything rather than trying to bridge the gap between right and left in politics he was trying to bridge the gap between left and far left. These seem to be nearly mutually exclusive to each other. He a podcast called Bridges with notsoerudite that I personally never watched, but it got burned to the ground by him being a gooner. He was also working with some political group with Brianna Wu that I don't remember the name of that was basically trying to get him, Hasan, Vausch and other left-wing adjacent influencers to work together to get Democrats elected rather than constantly fighting with each other. This also blew up but before the sextape things even came to light.
I will also admit that I am not about to go watch hours of Destiny, Kirk, Crowder, or Shapiro content to provide specific citations to things. I have way better things to go than that, but I do want to do my best to respond to your questions. I never watched much of Shapiro/Kirk/Crowder so I could easily be misrepresenting them. I would say I am more familiar with Destiny's content but did not follow him closely and I haven't re-watched the Destiny college visits since they came out.
My impression of the first set is they are intentional provocative to make the students look emotional and they are the ones with facts and logic. They churn through students without letting one student have much back and forth and then put out 10-20 minute long videos featuring 2-3 students with who knows what cut out. It mostly consists of trying to railroad them into gotchas or emotional outbursts.
Destiny, on the other hand, approached the content in a completely different light. He had like 4 students he talked to for 30 minutes-an hour each. The videos had their full conversations without editing things out. When the students did not express themselves well or maybe could not cite a fact well before he responded he would try somewhat steelman them first. He even had follow-up conversations with some of the students after the fact. It seemed more like coaching someone or a friendly game where you are trying to introduce someone to a game rather than slaughter them.
I also see Destiny's twitter ragebait as something nearly completely separate from this. That he acts like people on twitter act while on twitter and acts more reasonably in other places seems expected. He probably does it to a more extreme degree than most people, but people acting differently in different social situations is not as all unexpected. Him being an edgelord on twitter probably does make some people more hostile and less willing to talk to him, but I don't think he cares.
I didn't know that about Destiny. Interesting.
It seems like Destiny's campus videos is a lengthier version of the Crowder change my mind segments. That being said, Crowder has had longer conversations with students too. Kirk has also posted full length hour long + uncut videos. I don't think Shapiro has ever done the campus sit down style videos. The conversations on average does seem shorter but I took a quick look at Destiny's change my mind videos at the average seems more like 15-25 minutes per student which is still higher than the average for Kirk (5-15 minutes).
Kirk's format is different because the student can come up and talk about a topic of their own choosing, versus the change my mind format videos where there is a set topic to be discussed and debated. Kirk was also massively more popular, so I think there is a tradeoff of trying to let as many students speak as possible.
I feel like in general, the average left leaning student in a college campus tends to be less informed on the reasons for their position compared to right leaning students. I think right leaning students are more used to having to hold their ground and thus have the greater willpower to continue a conversation even if their arguments get dismantled. The intention to communicate from both sides matters. Did Destiny get many hostile students that are easily triggered coming to talk to him?
I think Crowder was also the pioneer of the format and had to enter much hostile territory compared to Destiny or even Kirk. Crowder was definitely the more crass one too so he had a lot of haters. I don't think it's fair to criticize the length of the conversation if the student comes in with hostile intentions. It's not easy to build rapport with someone that hates you and isn't arguing in good faith. Even more so if they get triggered by an idea and become unable to discuss said topic. I don't feel much sympathy for students that willingly come up to discuss if they can't even discuss the idea. Maybe Crowder could've tried to coddle them, but if stating basic facts is enough to trigger an individual, I don't think there's anything you can do. Maybe they do go in with the full knowledge that there are students like that that will come and create a viral clip, but what would their options be? Not create the event to begin with? I guess someone operating on pure principle could choose to not share said content, but I'm not naive enough to believe Kirk and the like is operating solely on virtue.
I've seen segments where the student does come in with an open mind or is wiling to actually engage in discussion, and these are the ones that lead to longer conversations.
Posting edited clips of the conversation, I think is a fair criticism, but if you're running a business you play the game algorithms gives you, and I believe 2017 YouTube really favored 10-20 minute videos. Nowadays, it's shorts and long form videos. From what I see, they post the full video but then create clips from that video for the viral moments.
I don't think I can decouple Destiny's twitter persona from his in person persona, considering I've seen clips of Destiny being confronted on his twitter takes, and not only did he not apologize or downplay it, he doubled down on it, and so I take his word for what he thinks about people on the right. It looks like he also stopped making the campus style videos which only strengthens my notion that Destiny has completely given up on reaching out to the right, so he's probably focusing on the left/far left bridge as you mentioned.
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