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Notes -
The Persecution of the Internet Historian
Internet Historian is a popular YouTuber whose best content is retelling interesting, fairly obscure stories with janky animation and luscious voice over. He’s an excellent storyteller and the videos are insanely easy to watch.
Left wing breadtuber Hbomberguy recently released an almost 4 hour video about plagiarism on YouTube. One of the subjects of the video was Internet Historian, and I think Hbomberguy credibly shows that IH was in the wrong. For his most watched video, Man in Hole, IH heavily copied the story and format of a Mental Floss article, as well as directly quoting entire paragraphs. IIRC, IH did cite the Mental Floss article in the original video, but it would be fairer to say that the entire video was an animated telling of the original article, and IH should have described it as such.
Furthermore, after Man in Hole was DMCAed, IH seemingly purposefully concealed what he had done, made excuses, and never fully acknowledged the extent to which he plagiarized, even after reuploading the video with heavy edits.
I think IH did a bad thing by committing plagiarism. Then he did another bad thing by trying to cover it up. I don’t think his life should be destroyed, but I think he deserves some score for this and my opinion of him has been lowered.
But if you ask some very online leftist people what’s wrong with IH, they won’t say plagiarism, they will say he is a literal Nazi - https://old.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/18dotzf/internet_historian_is_a_nazi/
That thread is by far the most popular ever on that subreddit, and lists evidence that IH is a Nazi. I’d summarize the evidence as “IH has a 4-chany sense of humor, has made some edgy jokes, and follows mainstream conservatives on Twitter.”
What I find most interesting about this affair is how difficult to convey to the breadtubey online leftists how vapid and dumb I think this evidence is. I think that’s because there’s actually a lot of cultural complexity here tied into some big gaps in moral intuition.
For instance, many of the evidence points are that IH has made jokes in his videos about Nazis and the KKK. In one video, he put 14/88 in the background, in another he uses a KKK caricature, and he has also sarcastically listed his birthday as 4/20 (Hitler’s birthday, though this might also just be a weed lmao thing). To the OP and most of the commenters, this is strong evidence that IH is a literal Nazi. Even if they acknowledge that these are edgy jokes, they can’t comprehend why someone would make light of something so awful unless they were secretly sympathetic to it. Or they just say that IH is straight up “dogwhistling” to align himself with all the Nazis watching his videos.
These arguments strike me as so divorced from reality that it’s difficult to bridge the gap. These jokes are not actually making light of Hitler, Nazis, and the KKK. They are making light of online lefties being pathologically obsessed with speech. Referencing Hitler isn’t funny; what’s funny is watching online lefties think that referencing Hitler indicates a deep seated hatred of Judaism and a real desire to exterminate non-whites. It’s the overreaction that’s funny. Or another way to put it – edgy Hitler jokes are shibboleths indicating that the speaker doesn’t buy into the predominant lefty internet culture. The speaker signals that he has such little concern for the culture that he considers stifling, censorious, and ridiculous, that he invokes the greatest taboo possible. IMO, this is the essence of edgy 4-chan humor.
Is this an accurate take? Or am I being too nice to IH?
I dunno, this seems basic information theory. Meta can't be decoded without other info, ie if you share the signal as another meaning there is no way for the receiver to disambiguate, without extra info.
Now your Bayesian based on his work etc leads you to conclusion X. But you also have to account for his potentially hiding his true views. Perhaps he's hiding his true depth of nazi feeling, trying to fly undercover with a few subtle references here and there?
Perhaps he actually doesn't know his own Nazi sympathies because coming from 4chan world he has constantly engaged with meta that can't be unambiguously decoded as meta, and his mind is the same superposition?
I think honestly if this is the state of the evidence, I would not take it seriously. Sarcastic references don’t mean much, especially if he doesn’t seem to hold any position that Nazis actually hold. It’s never been my experience with political radicals that a person can hide a set of beliefs far outside of the mainstream for long periods of time. There don’t appear to be any posts or comments on his Twitter or other accounts that even the Nazi-hunters find out of line — and they were definitely looking for it. How is it that someone could seriously believe in Great Replacement and be putting “references” in his videos yet never ever talk about that belief anywhere. I follow some breadtubers and it’s very obvious where they’re coming from. They don’t make vague references, they’re definitely on the left.
Yeah, I can imagine finding it humorous to get the internet a-stir with these things, and there is a legitimate point you can make so sounds credible.
My go to tell over whether a person actually means what they’re (accused of) saying is watching what they do. If you’re only making jokes about a topic, but never expressing the belief behind that action anywhere and not acting as if you think it’s true, I see no reason not to be charitable and say that sometimes a joke is actually just a joke or a story is just a story, or whatever the case may be. People do take creative license with their art and their shows. IH may well be playing a character that’s nothing like who he actually is. His persona doesn’t seem to be him.
I think so many people especially on the left have no understanding that someone might well create a persona for the purpose of making a video much like an actor might take on a role that’s nothing like who they are off the set. John deLancie has played a demigod, a Nazi, an evil pony, and I’m sure lots of other things. None of those things are who he is. Why couldn’t an influencer on YouTube do the say thing and create and play a character who isn’t them?
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