2d ago

me_irl

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This was me with Ethan Klein/H3H3 over the past ~14ish months. Their podcast content used to be lighthearted Internet drama with funny soundbytes, but now the dude is having a major crashout about Gaza after rotting his brain with Israeli state ~~propaganda~~ media coverage. He's always been an out-of-touch rich asshole, but now he's so far out of pocket it's unbearable to watch.
- This is so dumb. Ethan s always been anti apartheid and settlements, but the Hassan fans got into a tiffy because he called them out for their unhinged - and they really are unhinged takes
- h3 is an incredibly interesting part of internet fandom/history. my phones about to die but if anyone is into it, i’ve “personally been there” since the very early days of their channel and think i have a decent perspective on the entire dynamic here, i might do a little actual, extensive write up in an edit here when i get home later.
  i find h3 is fun to discuss as throughout his history on the internet he’s unique in of that he has entirely abandoned his audience multiple times. on the outside he’s a hypocrite (which is definitely true don’t get me wrong), but i think “inside” it’s a more machievallian and sinister sort of thing. frankly ethan and hila not only do alt-right dogwhistling better than anyone else; they invented a whole new technique. idk what to call it. but their snake-y nature lets them subvert typical premonitions and community norms time and time again and infiltrate way further into communities any other alt-righter would get nowhere near as close into the spheres of.
  
  I think h3 is kind of a hidden nexus of fringe->main stream internet culture throughout the last like 15 years. Every wave Ethan has ridden has never been the main thing, it's always right on the periphery of mainstream internet culture. That way he has cultivated a tiny amount of fans from every wave but never enough to get him into the public eye, and as a result everyone who knows him thinks they know someone "under ground" and he doesn't shy away from that branding.
  I don't think it's Machiavellian. I think it's more just that Ethan has always held incoherent views (like everyone in the world) and his brand is to be unapologetically opinionated, so now that he's dug his heels in on Gaza there's no moving him until he has fully crashed and burned.
  I mean he's Jewish and his wife is from Israel, they have family members or at least know people personally who are in Israel and have their whole life, so the propaganda they've been fed is ingrained in their family identity.
  It's not an excuse, it's sad to see, but as you pointed out he's always declared himself a "capitalist" and has taken some pretty right wing positions. It's just to say it's not intentional, just a stupid dude who doesn't work to hard to form opinions about stuff. I wouldn't say this about every grifter, it's just that H3 started out much more innocently and I don't think they spent a decade keeping up a ruse like that I think it was genuine. I mean you really think he was doing Vape Nashe videos concocting how he was going to infiltrate internet culture to push right wing propaganda?
- His wife is Israeli isnt she? I also thought they were pretty anti israel and she tried turning away from that life... I havent watched any of his videos since the "hugh mungus" era so I've no clue.
  
  They recently had a kid, all Hasbara had to do was give them a couple mil contract to help their kids future in exchange for taking a side on an issue he never really cared about or brought up before October 7th. The ol' "I have kids to take care of" spiritual bypass is a powerful excuse for going along with atrocities, 99% of westerners practice this every day.
  
  They support Israel's right to exist and were disgusted by October 7th. Idk what the OC is talking about, but this platform is filled with Hamas/Russian propaganda - as much as people see the Russian tankies, they don't see the connection, apparently.
  
  An apartheid state does not have a right to exist. It must dismantle it's systems of apartheid if it wishes to continue to exist.
  
  You can't be a Tankie and a supporter of Russia today. The USSR is gone. What are you even talking about? Do you even know what the words your using mean?
  
  Their beliefs don't make any sense no. But it's still true that they hold them.
  After much pondering of this mystery, I've found the likely explanation to be that they are less pro communism than they are anti the USA. And that their thinking is firmly rooted in cold war propaganda.
  The West Bloc is the source of all evil, so anyone the USA supports is evil and anyone who oppose them is good. Russia must be justified in their invasion because it is opposed by the West.
- he had a weird sense of humor and was universally loved. how did that even happen.
  
  Turns out his free use of using the Nword and calling hasidic jews "dirty and nasty" meant he was actually just a bad guy. He just needed to find an outlet for hating brown people that people would support. He's found it now.
- At this point Ethan's final act will be picking a fight with reddit and losing.
- I'm seeing this play out on the Hasan Piker side of things, and it's outrageous but also completely hilarious that Ethan will not have a conversation with Hasan or Sam Seder about Gaza. The propaganda of the State of Israel, and plain old sunk cost fallacy has left him paralyzed as a liberal. I hope he doesn't stay in that place for the rest of his days because it's destructive, but some people have to bottom out before they can come up for air. I just hope that means all the hate and trouble both sides of the American political divide give him doesn't lead to anything drastic.
  
  There is nothing healthy about Hasans coverage of this. He is completely audience captured and will say the most unhinged things. Also, he lies non-stop and the fact he has a platform this big is really sad
  
  Hasan is absolutely not audience captured. He sticks to his morals, and does not change his views to suit his audience. He whips them into shape instead, and has conversations/debates with those in his community that disagree with him in order to get them to see his side of things.
  Hasan has barely covered this Ethan shit in the past year and a half! Instead, Hasan has been covering news that actually matters like the peril of the Palestinian peoples and Trump's lunacy in public office. Ethan is the unhealthy one, as can be seen by all of the subscribers he's lost over the last year and a half, and the responses his dwindled audience leaves on the H3H3 subreddit pushing to leave the Hasan drama alone.
  Ethan is confused and is falling into a very toxic trap. He's cozying up to a liberal content creator that has sexually harassed multiple women in the past, and is currently undergoing a suit for using revenge porn to get women to submit to him. These are not the kinds of people I would want a progressive advocate like Ethan to hang around.
  Also, Hasan does not lie. He uses facts and statistics. He spends a lot of time combating the lies of Trump and his party, and of the Democrats because they are not so pure as people think.
  Hasan only has a platform because of the Twitch subscribers that give him their money on a monthly basis. He does not grift to the right by accepting money from corporate donors or benefitting from the conservative-laced algorithms on modern day social media platforms. He is a leftist, and with those views in today's age, almost everyone on the political spectrum is against him. It is not sad that he's gotten this big. He saw 300k+ people watch his stream on the night of the 2024 US General Election. Hasan has built up his community over many years by being honest, staying true to his values, and not budging when it comes to external influences trying to silence him. I find Hasan quite inspirational in this way.
  What's sad is the state of the American government, the conservatives that are destroying it, the liberals that are allowing it to happen, the absolute void of American class consciousness, and yes the poor, pathetic attempts by Ethan Klein to try to smear Hasan when Ethan's the one with skeletons in his closet.

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