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Yes, this is much of the same experience I had. I expected him to be the same type of irreverent, obnoxious right-winger like Crowder, or the Hodge Twins, or those videos from PragerU, or whatever other person with spicy-sounding one-liners gets posted to Facebook, judging from what I had heard of him from all those TPUSA memes. Unlike the others, I don't feel like he put out useless platitudes with no thought behind them. He actually had a masterful understanding of when an argument would or wouldn't apply, based on the reasoning put forward by the debaters. That's part of what made it shocking even reading right-wingers posting here on The Motte, with people downplaying him as being some milquetoast guy who didn't believe in anything. Even the right-wingers here had not watched him and had no idea who he was.
I notice a similar dynamic with Joe Rogan. People who listen to Joe Rogan know that he's not particularly political. He's an MMA weed smoker who is genuinely curious about all kinds of things, making him an excellent interviewer. But some former acquaintances from college said they would never listen to him because of how extreme he is. I fear that this is one of the most damaging ways that the "lefties don't understand righties but righties understand lefties" study can take effect. Just learn about who people are from osmosis, what could go wrong?
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