Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the contradiction of utilizing YouTube as a platform to make videos using philosophy and critical theory to examine cultural and political systems. Because no matter how earnest my intent, I'm still producing work on a platform owned by Google that's structured wholly around capturing attention and selling advertising. And this contradiction goes way beyond the very useful brand of comment that says something like, uh, you're going to make a video critiquing capitalism that you post on a capitalist website. Wow. It creates a situation where I'm having to balance my creative and intellectual goals with things like clickability, uh, audience retention and trending topics. You know, it's hard to square all of this with my goal of educating and entertaining people from a philosophically informed leftist perspective. And you know, thinking about all of this has made me wonder if this whole project is really sustainable in the long term. And it's not just me, as many of the most successful creators in the YouTube philosophy space are having all sorts of problems. Contra points, arguably the most successful philosophical voice on YouTube, recently alienated huge portions of her audience with a statement on the genocide in Gaza that made Miss Rachel look like Trosky by comparison. Shout out Miss Rachel. And after a series of videos on Nichza that garnered both good faith and some very bad faith critique, Philosophy Tube released a video calling into question the very goal of making philosophic video essays. There's education and there's YouTube and sometimes those things are intention. Sisphus 55 recently posted a video questioning if he should even keep making video essays, which accompanied an earnest community post about the struggles to keep the channel going. And of course, my former employer, which spent a decade making videos using philosophy to analyze pop culture in society, shut down for very good reasons that I will not speak on any further at this moment. Seriously, that's it. Not going to say anything weird about Canadian businessmen who are like if Albert Einstein and John Cena had a baby and then you let the baby run a company while drunk on maple flavored grain alcohol. But whether it's a lack of moral clarity, uh arguments over the depth of content, the economic viability of creating videos, or the crushing demands of the platform itself, it seems like the future of creating philosophy based content on YouTube is increasingly uncertain. Now, this matters to me, not only because I would very much like to keep doing this for my job, but because I think having lots of good content that utilizes philosophy and critical theory that's on the most watched streaming platform in the world is absolutely a good thing. So, in this video, I'm going to break down the current landscape of philosophy on YouTube. I'm going to talk about what philosophy is supposed to be doing and how that contradicts with the aims of YouTube. Then I'm going to explore where I think the possibilities and problems are for the future of making smart stuff on this platform. While I'm going to focus mostly on explicitly philosophical channels, I do think that this discussion is relevant to educational and political content more generally. And because I am first and foremost a fan, I spoke to some of my favorite philosophy creators on YouTube about these questions. And I'm going to include some of those interviews throughout so you don't have to just listen to me talk the whole time. Okay. So, there's a ton of channels out there that use philosophy to varying degrees. And of course, lots of channels that fall under the bread tube moniker that rely on left-leaning philosophical concepts. And while there's not time to list every single channel doing philosophical analysis, we can get a better sense of things through a bit of digital cgraphy. So, let's break things down into a few categories, shall we? Now, one category of philosophy YouTuber is what I call the professors because these are former or current academic philosophers, usually with formal graduate school training trying to bridge the divide between professional philosophy and entertaining videos. A related category is what I might call the star students. These are folks who either formally studied philosophy or maybe are still in school or are just autodidacts who put their passion for philosophy into making very good content. Then there's the artist. These are people that use creative film making and performance styles to make philosophy content. And then there's the skeptics. They're usually, but not always, English guys using philosophy to critique things like religion. One thing that I'll confidently say about all of these creators is that they're all clearly trying to make genuinely educational and engaging content. Now, this doesn't mean that their work is perfect, but I think these folks have built loyal audiences precisely because folks feel like they're passionate about what they're doing and they want to support them in that. You know, another commonality amongst many of these folks is that they acknowledge the tensions that exist between their educational aims and the addictive and extractive aims of YouTube as a platform. It's worth noting that many of the more successful of these folks have built out so much direct financial support from their audiences that they don't even need to take sponsors on videos, which gives their videos an added air of philosophical integrity. Now, if I had to put myself in one of the categories that I just mentioned, I guess I'd have to be a professor. As I'm a former academic philosopher with a PhD who's published some research, and I went to grad school in the UK, which meant that I spent a big chunk of my 20s traveling between the US and the UK and attending philosophy conferences at universities in Europe, which was both super fun and a total pain in the ass because it was almost impossible to use my phone in the UK, which meant paying for a separate mobile phone. But then if I went to a conference in the Netherlands, I'd have to wait in line outside the airport to buy a sketchy SIM card so that I could maybe send some text messages to find out where the grad students were drinking that night. Friends, let me tell you, the grad students were always drinking. But thanks to this video sponsor, SLY, I will never again have to worry about getting lost in Arus or finding the best coffee in Galway. 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Okay, while the folks I just mentioned all seem to be doing it for the love of the game, there are others who I don't know I think seem slightly less committed to philosophy and maybe more committed to blowing up their channels and building brands. There's a growing trend of folks who use ancient philosophy, in particular stoicism, to create content that straddles the worlds of philosophy, self-help, and bro culture. This isn't completely new. The school of life has been doing the philosophy as self-help thing for years. The most notable creator here is Ryan Holidayiday, a former marketing guru who has created an entire industry that uses stoicism to help people live happier and more productive lives. His work's been especially popular with aspiring Silicon Valley types. While some want to use philosophy as a tool for success, there's others who want to wield it as a weapon. These are the debate lords, folks that use philosophy as a set of tricks and tools that they can use to win arguments, specifically in the online debate space. These days, we could almost think of Jubilee as a jobs program for some of these folks. And same with xenophobic national like what's the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don't you think that's better for Americans in general? Adjacent to the debate lords are the smart guys. Uh to use toxic internet language for a second, they're basically beta bros who attempt to use philosophy to posture as alphas of the mind. Rather than encouraging curiosity, they aim for a type of social recognition and superiority as the ones who truly understand what the philosophers actually mean. They're doing a type of intellectual gatekeeping without the power or influence to actually intellectually keep the gate. The thing that has annoyed me about uh YouTube philosophy in general, right, is there are a lot of channels and then commenters who I think um sort of reciprocate where they think like if you say it with enough confidence, it shows that you've read it better and that you've you've read more of it. Um and the truth is um someone put out Amber Frost rule here, but yeah, everyone is lying about how much they've read. That's almost certainly true. Everyone's lying about how much they understand almost certainly and they are I think in large part kind of embibing a certain interpretation of certain figures and then just repeating it and um hoping that nobody kind of calls them on it and if they do you can just say what you don't understand niche or something. Now, what separates these creators from the ones that I previously mentioned is that the latter group is making work that seems to at least loosely align with the aims of philosophy as a discipline and a methodology, while the former group is mostly not. Okay, so let's now talk about what philosophy is and what it's meant to be doing. video essaists that claim to be doing philosophy or using philosophy in a sincere way. I think a lot of what they're doing is performing their moral superiority to others and they're inviting the audience to partake in identifying with that moral superiority. I think that's the service that a lot of people's YouTube channels actually provide is not um giving tools or like educating or whatever. I think a lot of it is just people being on screen being like, "Hey, we're better than other people, right? And uh because you're watching this, that means you're better. Who said this? I think it's Brad Trel. He calls it uh like literalism, like some kind of like aesthetic literalism, which is that like, you know, I watch content that contains people being morally good. And because I watch that, that means I'm morally good. Now, I spent years teaching intro to philosophy courses at various universities, often hung over, um exhausted or both. once while coming down from a mild hallucinogenic trip. And early in my courses, I would usually share some cliche slogans to explain what philosophy was. The most obvious starting point was to remind students that the word philosophy literally means a love of wisdom, which I would contrast with a like of knowing stuff as the philosopher is less a thing knower and more someone with a passionate desire to seek out truth and meaning. Now, another classic is a line that Socrates dropped while on trial. um his version of if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit. He said the unexamined life is not worth living. And I think that that line captures some of the human stakes of philosophy. As for Socrates, a life without self-examination and the examination of the world around us is one that's not even worth living. This is why Socrates also said that the point wasn't just to simply live life, but to live a good life. I'd often end my run through first day of philosophy class cliches with another line from Socrates. For this is an experience which is characteristic of a philosopher. This wondering this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else. This again taps into the idea that philosophy is not thing knowing or the desire to be a thing knower. Instead philosophy begins from a space of not knowing and curiosity. Wonder is the affect that accompanies experiences we don't understand or can't fully make sense of even though they're beautiful or compelling or even a little bit scary. And I think this is important to remember because wonder is more likely to create a sense of dialogue and community than the desire to know stuff or to be the smartest boy. I'll give you an example here. Um, I recently saw one of my favorite bands, Wilco, play an amazing show in Chicago and they played this song called Quiet Amplifier, which is a weird ambient noise track that they've barely played live before. Now, up until that point in the show, I largely kept to myself. But during Quiet Amplifier, I ended up connecting with some other fans around me in a shared sense of wonder and delight. And and none of us were saying, you know, actually, this is the first time they played this live in Chicago. We were just in awe that it was happening and eager and excited to share in that experience. And at its best, I think philosophy is more about that sort of shared wonder than it is being really good at individual trivia. Now another philosopher famous for quotes that haunt the brain of philosophy 101 students is Renee Decart of I think therefore I am fame. Now in his principles of philosophy Decart describes the work of the philosopher like this. Now in all ages there have been great men who have tried to find a fifth way of reaching wisdom. A way which is incomparably more elevated and more sure than the other four. This consists in the search for the first causes and the true principles which enable us to deduce the reasons for everything we are capable of knowing. And it is above all those who have labored to this end who have been called philosophers. Now this search for the first cause and first true principles of everything might sound a little Stephen Hawking adjacent but I think the search aspect is really important to emphasize as the philosopher is the one with the desire to search to keep asking to keep digging deeper. Think about the curious child who keeps asking why when you're trying to explain something to them. I think often they're doing that because they're trying to dig deeper and get down to some first cause or true principle. Other times though, they might just be acting like little bastards. The pestering why of philosophy isn't meant to annoy. It's indicative of the desire to dig deeper and figure out what's really going on at the core of various types of knowledge and social practices. But Decar's brand of rationalism can introduce a risk of philosophy becoming a wholly cerebral enterprise. You know, something you can do just sitting in a room alone as your mind journeys towards the center of everything. The empiricism of Scottish philosopher David Hume is a nice balance here as he offered a reminder that our philosophical thinking needs to keep a foot in human reality and social experience. In his book, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he writes, "Indulge your passion for science, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man." Basically, let the spirit of wonder and the desire to search for first causes, motivate your philosophical thinking, but make sure that the end result of this thinking involves your own humanity and the humanity of others. You know, don't let thought be an end in itself. Now, I'm confident that at least 17 of you just thought of Marx's 11th thesis on Foyerbach, which says the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. While Markx did, of course, want philosophy to help fuel the revolution of the working class, which to be clear, absolutely rips. He wasn't really breaking with the spirit of Greek philosophy, in which our goal isn't just understanding things, but living a good life and creating a society that engenders virtue in others. Also, I want to note that there's a whole other tradition of analytic philosophy which defines philosophy in slightly different terms, but that's not really my area of expertise or interest. So, just going to keep I'm just going to keep moving in the direction that I would like to go. Now, I'll quickly share a definition of philosophy that's offered by contemporary philosopher Alon Beju, the rare philosopher who at least at the time of this filming is still alive. Now, Beju argues that philosophy is a particular kind of discourse that engages with the conditions of truth without necessarily attaching itself to any of those conditions. Now, for BEu, there are four conditions of philosophy: art, science, politics, and love. And he thinks that truth occurs under these conditions, but that those conditions in themselves aren't doing philosophy. So, for example, when an artist creates a work that expresses some sort of philosophical truth, it's not because the artist was doing philosophy. They were just doing good art. It's philosophy's job to locate truths that occur in these conditions and then understand their conceptual implications. This might sound distinct from the earlier Socratic definitions I mentioned, but in a sense, it's largely just a rearticulation of those Greek understandings because the philosopher in a state of openness to wonder and novelty is aware that truth occurs in art, science, politics, and love. And that when something happens, you know, a real event in which a truth emerges, the philosopher strives to make sense of both the truth and its implications for the lived subjectivity of human beings. And just to be clear, this was not intended to be a comprehensive historical survey of the concept of philosophy, but I think that the thinkers I mentioned and the examples that I just gave can help give us a sense of what philosophy is meant to be doing in its ideal form. Okay. So, to synthesize a lot of this into my own words, I think that philosophy is a discourse capable of destabilizing things about ourselves and the world that we previously thought we understood. in the process creating a renewed sense of wonder that allows us to further our understanding of ourselves and the world via new language and concepts. And it does all of this not just for the intellectual gratification of the individual philosopher, but for the sake of creating concepts that can be used by humans to change the world for the better. So, it's clear that what philosophy aims to do is very different from what YouTube aims to do. Without getting too in the weeds, I think it's safe to say that the goal of this platform is to keep as many users engaged for as long as possible so that increased watch time and engagement leads to an increase in ad revenues and data collection. Because of this, almost every element of this platform is designed to facilitate just that. And not just the platform itself, as those creating videos on this platform will often explicitly make creative choices to best align with YouTube's aims and goals. you know that negativity drives clicks, right? Like the algorithm likes the mean stuff, but it's not particularly productive, right? We we want at best if there is like a disagreement or there's something that's worthy of criticism, you want it to be a productive dialogue. And just like piling on doesn't help anything, even though it might be algorithmically viable, which means that often the most successful philosophy videos are successful because they are good YouTube videos. Utilizing the visual and creative elements that serve the aims of viewer retention and increased watch time. And to be clear, that's not always a bad thing. This also means that an intellectually robust video that's not doing YouTube stuff might underperform. while a video where someone just sort of summarizes Wikipedia articles that has amazing editing and hosting and YouTube stuff might blow up. But the problem with YouTube isn't just that its attention and profit driven structure can lead to attention and profit seeking content. It's that YouTube isn't just a video sharing website. It's a platform. Like I'm using YouTube as a tool for things that aren't good. Like I I think it's good that people are more informed on some, you know, philosophy that you probably wouldn't get unless you were in a graduate class or something like that. I think that's pretty good. I think I think YouTube uh as a platform like is a good thing, right? Like I I think at the end like clearly Google bought YouTube and I think in in a sense like the corporate consolidation of YouTube is what was the problem but the the medium or like the form of YouTube is is is nice. It's good. It kind of democratizes media in a sense. There's problems with that. Obviously like I think one of the biggest problems that we see right now is the um you know like one of the things with political commentary that people always talk about. We're like we're independent media. We don't take money from corporations. But the form in which they operate is almost the exact same. It's just punditry, right? So like there's issues with it, right? Like we can just we can democratize something that shouldn't be democ shouldn't be democratized at all or like not necessarily democratize at all but we shouldn't even be doing. Like I I think political punentry in some instances is is a good example of that. And we can better understand this function via the concept of platform capitalism which describes companies whose business model involves owning software that serves as the platform for other people to carry out various forms of labor. You know, think Uber and Lyft, Airbnb or Amazon. One of the features of platform capitalism is that laborers both rely on the platforms they use without having much power or leverage to use against those platforms. I don't perceive this as being uh tension. [Music] I think that um some of these contradictions I I would say that the friction of a medium is kind of what gives the medium its meaning. And so if I, you know, like there's this idea that other YouTubers have sometimes where it's like, if you want the uncensored version of this or like the version where I didn't have to work around all the copyright stuff, you want the real version of my video essay, come to my streaming platform, Nebula or whatever. And uh for me, this is silly because I I'm making the YouTube video like within the constraints of YouTube. And if I wasn't trying to work within the constraints of YouTube, then I would do something different. And I've done different things. That's why I started doing live philosophy lectures and stuff. Um because I I I would just pick a different medium if I wanted to not navigate the cont the apparent contradiction between YouTube's profit and attention motives and the message or the whatever the content I was trying to get across through that medium. We've seen this in the failed attempts of Uber and Lift drivers to gain basic workers rights and protections or the way in which online retailers basically have to pay Amazon to have their products featured in search. YouTube is doing the same thing but for digital video content and video creators need YouTube a whole lot more than YouTube needs them. We can't get unemployment if we lose our channels. No, that's not real because we're not employed, right? And so, um, it's all sort of, I don't know, um, the more that we allow these platforms to sort of control the relationship as well, it gives just them more leverage to then say, well, if we treat you really horribly, what are you going to do? Leave. Yeah. You know, it's like it's like an abusive spouse who controls the bank accounts. Here's a simple way to think about why this is problematic. Um, YouTube could just turn it off one day. you know, they could just go to the the YouTube button and hit off and it's just not here, you know, like Vine or your ex. Or at the very least, they can demonetize or delete a channel and there's nothing that you can do about it. Creators are completely dependent on this platform with basically zero leverage to use against the massive company that owns it. If you get banned from Twitter, you just lose all of your followers, right? Like, you know, um if you if you get banned from YouTube, you just lose all your subscribers. And so it's like um they have a complete control of the relationship between you and your audience as well which is even strong even stronger. This is of course why almost everyone that I've referenced in this video so far self included relies on alternate sources of income and content production like Substack and Patreon which of course are just other platforms that could also just turn off at some point. specifically sponsorships and like sponsors because that is the more it's the more stable income if you're doing well on YouTube, but it can also be taken away just as quickly. Now, to get back to YouTube, we also need to remember that because it's owned by Google, one of the ultimate aims of the website is that it operates like its own search function where people come to YouTube seeking answers for specific questions and are served content that answers those questions. There's actually a trends feature on the YouTube Studio page that creators see that shows examples of the types of things their audience is searching for so that we can presumably make content tailored to those search questions. And the structure of this platform then has a direct effect on the form of content as it rewards videos that offer definitive answers to specific questions. So, if you want to know what Nze really meant by God is dead or or what the real meaning of existentialism is, you'll be served a video often hosted by a very assertive and confident individual who will tell you exactly what you want to know without any ambiguity. I've had people tell me like, "If you believe this about Nichze, then you should have read this other book that would show you like and I was like, "Well, I did read that book." And they're like, "Well, then you clearly didn't understand that book because it you you would have agreed with it if you understood it." And this often feels good because philosophical ideas can be really overwhelming and sometimes you just want to understand an idea that you've heard other people reference. And all the better when someone tells you the answer to your question with absolute certainty. I was having philosophy content jammed at me instead of like a an honest or like genuine reckoning with the ideas being presented in a way where like I my intelligence was being respected. If I'm being honest with you, the risk here is that this reduplicates a model that treats philosophical ideas like little economic assets to be bought and sold. Brazilian philosopher of education, Paulo Ferry, called this the banking model of education. This is when the teacher acts as a sort of subject, depositing ideas and knowledge into the minds of objects or students. In a classroom setting, Ferry thinks that this leads students to simply memorize rather than learn. He writes that education thus becomes an act of depositing in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communicates and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize and repeat. He sees this model of education as something that keeps students from becoming fully human. And it's one that's very much at odds with the more classical definitions of philosophical knowledge that I discussed earlier. Barry writes that apart from inquiry, apart from practice, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. And you know, it might be hard to even imagine YouTube serving as a place for the type of knowledge that Ferry is talking about here. We might then wonder if it's even possible to avoid this banking model of education when we're making YouTube videos. But it's worth noting that this is not the first time that a new technology or form of communication has led to skepticism from philosophers. Socrates was famously skeptical about the radical new form of content known as writing. Now, Socrates argued that writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. you'd think they were speaking as if they had some understanding. But if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just the very same thing forever. Uh he also compares writing to poorly planted crops. He says that it is much nobler to be serious about these matters and use the art of dialectic. The dialectician chooses a proper soul and plants and sews within it discourse accompanied by knowledge. discourse capable of helping itself as well as the man who planted it, which is not barren, but produces a seed from which more discourse grows in the character of others. Such discourse makes the seed forever immortal and renders the man who has it as happy as any human can be. Ultimately, Socrates is saying that any speech writer or poet is only a true lover of wisdom if they're able to defend themselves in discourse and acknowledge that their writing is of little work. So in other words, philosophy and ideas need to be living and in dialogue, you know, not just fixed ideas on a page or or a YouTube video, you know, functionally dead. Socrates Danish acolyte, Soren Kerkugard, was also critical of the new age of media in his day, in particular, the type of gossip magazines that became common in the 19th century. Now, Kirkard got ridiculed by a satirical newspaper in Copenhagen, and it had an incredibly negative effect on him. one that left him critical of the influence of the modern media on human relations and thought because if philosophy was a way that we become more human saw this form of media as something that made us less human and hot take I would say sometimes this thing this YouTube thing is making us less human you know and I don't like it I don't like it let's be more human the dehumanization Kirkagard associates with his experience of being ridiculed in the media bears a striking resemblance to accounts of folks today that deal with cyber bullying online harassment and all types of stuff that are increasingly common with the drama content that has infected every niche of YouTube, including philosophy and educational content. Let's honestly look at the online left's Palestinian advocacy. Seems like 50% of it is just trying to ruin my life. And I don't really see how uh that's saving any gazins. Now, around this time, Kierard wrote a short text called the present age. I recently put out a whole video just on this book, so check it out. And in that book, Kierkard critiques the growing media culture of his age for leading people into a cycle of reflection by which they're caught up in thinking about things to the point that they no longer want to do anything. For a revolution to happen, you do need to get outside of the um kind of realm of like mass media for example or what we consider culture because culture is informing a lot of these beliefs. Like if you still need a Twitch account to watch um your favorite leftaning content creators, like you're still funding the thing that that that you're against. And he thinks this culture of reflection leads to a sense of envy and separation among people as opposed to any sort of shared and human project. And ultimately he sees the spirit of the media of his day as counter to the spirit of philosophical thought which is about actualizing ideas not simply reflecting on the ideas presented to you by others. Now in the 20th century critical theorist Theodore Adorno was super cranky about what he called the culture industry. According to Adorno, the culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above. To the detriment of both, it forces together the spheres of high and low art, separated by thousands of years. The seriousness of high art is destroyed in speculation about its efficacy. The seriousness of the lower parishes with the civilizational constraints imposed on the rebellious resistance inherent within it as long as social control was not yet total. In other words, when mass media sucks up all kinds of art and culture, there's no longer a distinction between serious forms of art and popular forms of entertainment and advertising. Adorno thinks what makes the culture industry distinctly horrible is that it has transferred the profit motive onto cultural forms. This wasn't to say that artists hadn't previously made a living by selling their work as commodities. But in an earlier age, the artistic object wasn't seen as pure commodity in and of itself. One of Adorno's favorite targets uh for the worst offender of the culture industry was Hollywood. But I'm sure he'd love Jubilee's YouTube channel. I could believe it is the case that this pen exists. But if someone like threatened my life, right, I would lie in order to be able to save my life, right? Like I I think you would do that too. You wouldn't lie to be so sure. Adorno describes why we give into this type of empty entertainment and a passage that makes me deeply regret all the hours I've spent watching the Bachelor and the Bachelorette. Oh, and uh and Bachelor in Paradise and the golden bachelor. Now, Adorno writes, "People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle. If it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification, they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval and a kind of self-loathing for what is medded out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it, they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions, which are none at all." Like Kierkagard's critique of the way in which 19th century media led people to abstract from live reality in a cycle of reflection, Adorno sees the 20th century media leading to a world where we actively desire a type of selfdeception as long as it gives us some tiny modicum of shallow happiness and pleasure. Again, welcome to the website YouTube.com. Nice to see you here. In a line that could describe the soul of someone experiencing joy at watching fascists share their opinions during a debate show or watching Mr. The beast makes some guys do a most dangerous game to pay for their mom's life-saving surgery. Adorno writes that in wrong society, laughter is a sickness infecting happiness and drawing it into society's worthless totality. I'm sure Adorno was a good hang. I'm sure he he got it all out in his writing and then when he hung he was just a sick dude. And I think whether we're considering the critiques of Socrates, Kierugard, or Adorno, all of them can be used to problematize the notion of popular forms of media like YouTube as being capable of genuine meaning or philosophical thought. You know, it's easy to see how content masked as philosophy can treat living thoughts like fixed artifacts, create a sense of envy and separation amongst viewers, and even use content to deceive ourselves from reckoning with the cold, calculating logic of the modern world. You know, basically we trick oursel into thinking we're not just participating in an algorithmic game of distraction when we know that we're tricking ourselves into participating in a algorithmic game of distraction. This all brings me back to philosophy tube who in a recent video discussed the problem with video essays. Now, after wrestling with the question of whether books and ideas more generally can be wrong in interesting ways, Abigail gets self-reflective about her own work. Another limitation of the format was brought to my attention by this essay written by scholar and poet is Matthew Gwendelin. They say that video, this thing that you're watching right now, is a really good medium for hooking people's emotions, but it's not so good at stimulating critical thinking compared to say reading. Ultimately, she lands on the idea that when transporting philosophical ideas to YouTube videos, there's always something that doesn't quite translate. I never considered that by adapting philosophical texts into videos, something might be getting lost in translation or something might be getting added in translation, namely me and my personality. For Abigail, the limit that she identifies to her project is the fundamental tension between education and YouTube. More positively, she posits that her goal with that video was to encourage her audience to sit with that tension and ultimately to think for themselves. Now, I sympathize with what Abigail is arguing about the fundamental tension between the aims of education and the aims of YouTube. I've been trying to get at some of that throughout this video, but I do think that the translation issue she gets at might actually be more of a pedagogical opportunity than it is a problem with communicating big ideas. This is an idea that Kierkagard explores in his discussion of Socrates and Christ as two models of the teacher. Now for Kierkagard, Socrates doesn't represent a teacher as some sort of cashier in a banking model of education. Instead, the teacher is the occasion for the student to realize and experience truth for themselves. In this way, the teacher has a relational nature. They help to stabilize the learner so that they can reintroduce a sense of wonder so they're able to think for themselves. And that way again education isn't about giving someone knowledge so that they know things for sure. It's about creating an experience so they can be reacquainted with wonder and curiosity. So in this way the teacher creates the conditions for thought but they can't think for you nor should they attempt to think for you or tell you precisely what to think. And in this way the learner is treated as an active subject rather than as some objective receptacle for knowledge. And this all brings us back to Paulo Fra. When critiquing the banking model of education, he offers a constructive and liberatory alternative which he calls problemosing education. Like Kierkagard, he poses education as a relational process um in which the conversation between teacher and student is a fundamental part of learning. And again like Kierkagard Ferry thinks that problem posing education is reflective of the fact that humans are in a process of becoming. We're constantly growing, learning, and transcending. So learning needs to reflect that aspect of our own humanity. And Ferry adds a nice little Marxist tinge to what we've seen in Kierkagard because for him problem posing education is a humanist liberatory revolutionary practice, one that can help inform a fight against oppression. In his book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he writes that true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking. Thinking which perceives reality as a process, as transformation rather than as a static entity. thinking which does not separate itself from action but constantly immerses itself in temporality without fear of the risk involved. And I don't want to set too high of a standard for those of us who are making philosophical content here on YouTube. But I think we can learn a lot from Kirkagard Fra in thinking of ourselves as teachers and teachers whose job it is to create an occasion to create a conversation to create the conditions in which people can experience wonder. You know, our job isn't as much to tell people what to think or how to think than it is to invite them into some sort of journey or dialogue of thought. You know, our job should be to destabilize people's everyday understanding of things to reintroduce wonder to help folks think about stuff in a different way. I know it sounds a little ambitious, but maybe striving for that is is better than the alternative. And this is why I do think that what Abigail describes as a problem could potentially be the very space where philosophical activity can happen on this medium. Okay. So, where does this all leave us? You know, is there some magical solution by which we solve the contradiction between philosophical education and YouTube's algorithmic hunger for attention? Before we can answer that, I think we need to acknowledge the realities of the situation. The first is that public intellectuals and their grifter variants aren't going anywhere. People are going to continue making content that promises some level of educational value and that utilizes philosophical figures and concepts to do so. YouTube as a sustainable endeavor is becoming increasingly more difficult. As you probably know as well, you make less and less money as time goes on. But I hope that we get just more new creative stuff. I I suppose um I think it's good when people uh put their foot forward and create. Capitalism itself has just stripped that desire and drive also just like capability. Like we don't have the energy after putting in a 40-hour week to to do creative things a lot of the times. The second reality is that we're currently entrenched in a crisis of higher education that does not have an end in sight. less and less students and especially working-class students are going to have the opportunity to attend colleges and universities due to financial constraints. At the same time, we are witnessing the closure of departments that teach philosophy and the humanities more generally. While at the federal and state level, there are ongoing attempts to punish faculty for teaching subjects that are deemed too woke or or feminist or black or Marxist. Basically, all the good philosophy stuff. At this point, the only institutions to continue offering degrees in philosophy and the humanities are going to be elite institutions largely attended by children of wealth and privilege. But hey, at least Wall Street investors will have read David Hume. You know, I felt this wild sense of relief like I'm so glad I didn't put all my eggs in the basket of academia earlier and instead did this absolutely batshit career pivot that felt completely irresponsible and unreasonable and like not just not a sensible thing to do. But if anything, I'm in a much better position now uh than I would have been if I had kind of stuck to the conventional path because the conventional path is dying. While the situation is grim, I think the existence of something like a robust community of philosophical content on YouTube is important for at least two reasons. First, it creates an educational apparatus that runs parallel to the traditional university system where individuals can have access to text and ideas that have historically only been available to those with the means and ability to attend college. This is even more important at a time when even those who do attend college might be at institutions that no longer teach philosophy in the humanities due to the impending threat of an authoritarian government trying to control ideology through education. That was the first like course that I recorded and interestingly people really responded to it and the biggest comments that the biggest kinds of comments I got were um thank you for doing this because my professor won't explain anything which just so shows you how bad you know a lot of academics are. Um I can't afford to go to school or I've been out of school a long time. This is you. thanks for uploading this because um I get to feel like I'm in a classroom and get to learn things and then you know people would have more focused questions on like okay so you're saying this what does this mean and then you interact with them right it was very very cool to get to like uh answer questions and and deal with comments and stuff like that makes it more valuable than ever when folks with a background in philosophical teaching and research view YouTube as a platform worthy of their time and effort at the same time, right? Like there is a genuine possibility for the democratization of understanding knowledge and knowledge production through these technologies and like this stuff gets into more people's hands and into more people's heads than was probably possible even just a few decades ago. Um, I don't know what this actually like, you know, I'm not here to make any claims about like how this will or will not translate into effective political reality or anything like this, but I think it is a good thing that a lot of people who maybe weren't going to go to college and study philosophy are listening to a show like mine or like yours and encountering these ideas in a way that's like genuinely open-minded and creative. Um, and I I think that's good. And I'd like I think that the more of that the better, right? like you know we've got our we have our adversaries the reactionaries are pumping out content too and we can at least kind of try to like help them out um you know combat these ideas with better ones and an alternative space to create intellectual work. Second, I think that this encourages the larger project of cognitive mapping as outlined by Frederick Jameson um who we're currently reading in my reading group over on Patreon. As I've talked about in recent videos, cognitive mapping describes a type of spatial analysis which shows the totality of class relations on a global scale. This means a type of system by which we can understand our place in the global system and see the connections between things we might not otherwise see as necessarily related. Broadly, we are all like living under neoliberal hegemonic capitalism. And it's like this is uh you know it's more kind of like okay how much more can we chip away at this um without necessarily uh also encouraging it or promoting it. And I know from personal experience that many folks are drawn into philosophy channels on YouTube to try to make sense of why their jobs feel so terrible or or why the world feels like it lacks a sense of justice or why it's just so hard to find happiness in this life. You know, people have a genuine desire to understand the world that we live in, and well-made philosophy videos can offer something to help them get there. I often think of like philosophy, there's a lot of like things if you want to talk about like what the the value of it is, but I think one of the primary values is like giving you the words to say something that you can already kind of recognize. Yeah. Like gives you the vocabulary to make sense of your own experience. But there's also a real danger in having one of the main points of access to philosophical ideas outside of the university be a platform like YouTube. I am an immigrant. I'm speaking from person experience. I don't even like I should get the hell out. Why? I don't want you here. That's because like all digital content, the logic of YouTube encourages drama, anger, and ragebased content. Creators are rewarded with views and monetary gain for angry takedowns or the perpetuation of fear and political resentment. I don't associate with other YouTube philosophy people generally and other video essay people generally because I think the barrier of entry is zero and that people aren't required to hold themselves accountable to any journalistic or philosophical or academic or intellectual standards basically. Um so it's like a a space that that is very rife for I don't know anything. And so it's just not it's so to me it's not that if if if there's no barrier of entry and it could be like anything and anyone's allowed to do it then you don't have a lot of integrity to the space. Um there's not like strong community there's not strong principles and there's not like a strong sort of overarching mission and ethos. Um yet I do think that the future is integrating humor and individual passion and rhetoric and charisma into academia and intellectual pursuits. I don't really believe in trying to keep those things separate. The worst part of this is that it leads to content created by people who I really imagine at some point had a genuine passion for philosophy and big ideas, but that now are simply reduplicating the very spirit of individualism, cruelty, and competition that's at the heart of the logic of capitalism itself. Folks like this are basically just the spirit of the algorithm come to life. And because of that, they're often rewarded by the algorithm for their unholy sacrifice. Why are we fighting? Like what is the ultimate goal here? Um if not sort of coming to try to some kind of mutual understanding and collaboration that's hopefully going to be positive and generative and just like the culture of yeah debate bro or like yeah the philosophy conference guy who just like wants to win is it's pathetic. It's deeply insecure. First of all, it's coming from like a really sad little place where like, you know, at end of day, what have you? Did you do it? Did you beat that guy in the God argument? Did you win? How much like how much is that really giving you? Is that spiritually nourishing? And even those who are very aware of the insidious logic of the algorithm have to constantly fight the temptation to give in just a little bit more in hopes that it will make their channels more successful and more sustainable. This is of course made even harder in an era of economic scarcity when so many seemingly successful content creators are scrambling to diversify revenue streams to be able to make a living and pay their teams. This leaves us in the middle of the contradiction between the demands of YouTube which are ultimately driven by the logic of capital and the desire to create philosophical work that's confrontational to the spirit of capitalism. And I think it's ultimately something that every philosophy creator has to navigate for themselves in terms of how they make sense of their own project. When I talked to Jared Henderson, he had some interesting thoughts on this problem. Yeah, I think of myself as like a virus inside of YouTube. Like I have to like I have to like because it's it's really a platform that's like optimized for like gaming and entertainment creators or like and I have to like play just enough of that. I have to like hijack those cells just enough um to then like inject myself into it and like and then and then uh but like not so much that it kills the host. Um and so that that that's how I um that's how I think about this. There's a final elephant in the room that I've not discussed yet and it's the problem of community. One thing you'll notice about early philosophical text is that they are dialogues in which the act of conversation and communication enables people to arrive at new forms of critical thought. And if you've ever taken a great philosophy class, your professor likely created an environment full of discussion and collaboration, exploring texts and ideas together, letting a variety of perspectives inform your reading. And this collaborative and human aspect of doing philosophy can be lost when one person is talking into a camera in a room by themselves creating a video that will later be watched by people that are sitting and staring at screens by themselves. But it goes further than that. As in a more traditional academic model, teachers and scholars exist in a system that brings them into regular contact with other people working in their fields. and their research necessitates that they keep up with the literature in their area of specialization. They attend conferences. They develop their own ideas not as isolated individuals but as members of larger intellectual communities at least in an ideal research setting. I thrive working by myself. Like I am honestly very happy to spend hours and hours and hours working on things by myself. I don't think that's good for me. like I think it is better for me and produces better things to be in conversation with people. Um even though I think like for me personally it takes some additional like work to like compromise and stuff. And if anything I worry now that as an island as you say I'm becoming increasingly out of touch like I don't want everything I do to be like well I used to be in this field and so let me speak what I used to know though I'm not actually connected to it anymore. Uh before when I was like still had one foot in each, I could at least kind of like liaz between those. But now I do I do worry about being too much of an island. Uh especially because of how much I like it. Like I'm not going to try to yeah it of my own accord. I worry about kind of like becoming my own echo chamber too because may maybe you can relate to this. When you start getting feedback, you kind of have to start desensitizing yourself to it. Otherwise, it would make you go crazy, right? If I took seriously most of the comments I get, I would have such a horrible self-image, right? I It is a very good thing I I started this job at this age and not any younger because I would not have had the mental fortitude and like uh strength and sense of personhood to handle this level of like scrutiny. But here on YouTube, you don't have to interact with anyone in your niche. You can have a successful philosophy channel without ever talking to other creators or sharing your work with them or asking for feedback or just building relationships so you can share in the ups and downs of creating meaningful work on a ruthless platform. Despite all these criticisms I have on the zero barriers of entry, if we could create some cultural standards, I think this medium is really really good because I think um it's it's very human and very of the moment in meeting the moment to be funny and include a bunch of pop culture and to be eclectic in your um connections and uh make a a sincere philosophical argument that's like entertaining and not opaque and inaccessible. Um, I think that there's a lot of need for communicators of ideas. So to really make the project of philosophy YouTube sustainable and to create some human barriers against the allconsuming fire of algorithmic logic, we need to find some ways to better engage with our own audiences and communities so that we're encouraging a type of active and dialogical learning while also working as creators to support each other creatively and personally. Now, I'm not saying that if enough of us join together, we can start a YouTube philosophers union and and take down the system because we can't. But we might be able to strengthen each other and our communities while helping to find ways to succeed without giving into algorithmic slop. Because in a world where the Neelk boys are getting millions of views for having a chill hang with a war criminal or where Jubilee continues to let Nazi dudes just kind of casually share their nuanced points of view. I'm for defending the traditional demographics of this country which is majority white. It should stay that How does I think the least that we could do is create more room for the Olivia Sons and the Epoch Philosophies and the Then and Nows and the Jared Hendersons and the Overthink podcast and the CJ the X's of the world and all the other great upand cominging young philosopher creators who I might not know about to take up more space on this platform so that philosophy on YouTube is a thriving interactive and communal ecosystem. All brought to you by lucrative sports gambling sponsorships. Okay, maybe not the last part, you know, maybe we find we find better sponsors. Weapons comp. No, not weapons companies. But what what would be a good sponsor for philosophy? Like the wine industry, maybe that coffee books. Now, I must of course give a special shout out to my audience and community who have meant so much to me since I started this channel. And an extra special shout out to all of my patrons. We're currently in the midst of an ongoing Frederick Jameson reading group over there. So, if you're interested in his work, consider joining us. Uh, it's been really fun thus far, and I'm trying really hard to make it accessible, even if you don't have a background in this sort of stuff. Um, of course, my patrons also make it so that I don't have to rely on having sponsors in all of my videos and can instead choose to work with companies that I feel good about. So, in the spirit of this video, please do share your favorite philosophy creators in the comments. I know there's tons of folks that are probably making amazing work that I've never heard of, and I'd love an excuse to binge some new channels. I imagine you want to do the same thing. Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk to me for this video. I really appreciate it. And if you're thinking, "But Michael, why didn't you talk to my favorite philosopher creator?" There's a good chance that I emailed them and just never heard back, which is fine, you know, because people are busy. I'm a stranger. They probably had better stuff to do. But I do love talking to folks who make philosophy and theory content on my stream and would love suggestions for anyone else you want to see me talk to. Okay, I'm filming this late at night and I'm very tired. So, um yeah, I'm going to go to bed now. This has been fun though. It's been really good hanging out. Let's do this again soon. I I like this when we get together like that. But I think for now I think for now I'm gonna Let's just kind of let's turn these off. How do I do this? Yeah, I think it's time to just I think it's time to call it a night. So, I guess I'll just go to sleep uh right here. See you guys later. Try to sleep here in case I have an idea for more content, you know.