I fully admit to not being a huge student of YouTube culture.

When this site gained the meager prominence it now enjoys, I started to do streams on Hitbox, and those were eventually transferred over to YouTube. I just never really got into making standalone videos, until recently. For one, I make more advertising dollars from writing than I do with video content. I think that may be because I’m more well-known as a writer and they’re able to sell ad space here for higher prices because of that. I’m not sure. If I had 100,000 subscribers I guess it would be a bit different, although recent developments have made it to where even those with a large following on YouTube are no longer getting proper remuneration. Knock on wood, but my Adsense for the written word still does pretty well, and the revenues are usually reflective of the amount of work I’m able to put out. This month they are down, but that’s because I’ve had things going on that have made it to where I wasn’t able to write as much.

Something else has always put me off when it comes to YouTube, though. It’s very cliquish. You see that everywhere there are humans, but it is especially pronounced over there. Yes, part of it is me not taking the time to put the necessary work into the platform, but another part of it is that I’m pretty much persona non grata for a lot of the bigger personalities there. Not all, of course. Sargon of Akkad is someone who has always been cool about coming onto my channel. Bearing has come on, several others as well. However, it’s not so much the size of my channel that keeps most of these people from appearing (especially since I also have a decent sized written presence). It’s more about it being easy to signal your “moderation” by denouncing me.

(I would argue I’m pretty moderate, but that’s another column.)

A lot of these people are simply holier than thou, and it shows. I don’t begrudge anyone their success, even if I can’t understand how some of these mongoloids got an audience in the first place. But when it comes to acting like you have some sort of moral superiority? Yea, I can definitely say fuck that. Part of the reason I started going at SJWs in the first place was because they acted like they were better than everyone who didn’t co-sign their political agenda.

I could go through and name all the prominent anti-SJW personalities who have shit on me out of the blue, with us having had zero interaction previously, but this post isn’t really about individual people. It’s about the clubbish culture of what is called “The Skeptic Community.” I don’t even really know what that means. Are all these people atheists? I know a large majority of them are. But it seems to be more of a catchall term for the entire anti-SJW YouTube community nowadays.

I’m just going to be honest (especially after the last week of most of them accepting a bogus PTSD murder excuse at face value, how skeptical) the whole idea sounds really fucking silly to me. While I don’t consider myself a part of this particular community, I was a part of one you may have heard of: GamerGate. The main reason I see myself as dissociated from GamerGate is because of the co-option you saw in its later stages. The power of the brand name also made it easier for people to sneak in and subvert it however they saw fit. Shockingly enough, most of this subversion was directed towards making it more “friendly” and less “antagonistic.”

How could you make that joke, Ralph?

Why did you out so and so’s personal history?

Moderates won’t listen to us because Ralph is too mean!!

Whereas, at the beginning of GamerGate, it was all about wrecking SJWs using any legal means possible (and even some illegal ones). I outed all kinds of shit about Leigh Alexander and Zoe Quinn, among others, in those early days. I denounced them in some very nasty and personal ways. Yet, there wasn’t much kvetching about it. Most people knew this is how you had to go at entrenched media structures and a poisonous ideology. Even back then, there were those who didn’t agree with my methods. But they just did their own thing, while I did my own thing. Later on, you saw the attempted purges, etc.

Similar things seem to be happening now to the so-called Skeptic Community. You even see it in the alt-right. This is one reason I don’t want labels put on me anymore. It’s why I identify as an independent, not as alt-right, New Right, Super Saiyan Skeptic, or whatever. Once you pick up a label, people try to hold you to some mythical community standard that never really existed in the first place. They use your self-proclaimed designation against you in order to score points. It’s poor strategy. Hell, I’m even somewhat uncomfortable calling myself anti-SJW, although I obviously am.

Once you pick up a label, all it does is make it easier for your enemies and intragroup rivals to attack you. It can be helpful for a time, sure. A lot of pro-GamerGate people shared my blog, tweeted my stories, had me on their shows, all that stuff. You’ve seen YouTubers build each other up through similar methods, although I would argue their planning is much more concerted and centralized. But is it really worth it in the end? Isn’t it much better to just let the content you put out speak for itself?

It seems to me like that is the far better method.