What is The Intellectual Dark Web?

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It’s a very misleading name, isn’t it? They’re not intellectuals, and they’re massively overexposed. Rubin in particular is notable only for his complete stupidity, and has absolutely no right to be considered an intellectual, but all of the cited individuals routinely struggle with very simple concepts and have below-average critical thinking skills. Weinstein and Peterson have some distinction in their fields but consistently embarrass themselves whenever they move outside it - indeed that’s basically all they’re known for in public. They’re dreadful bigots who are unable to see past that bigotry. They’re old rich white men who have tried to make a career out of playing the victim.

So what is the IDW? It is what a stupid person imagines that smart people are like.

Dark web??? They're not even on Silk Road!

One of my favourite insults, especially as it's targeted more towards the fanbase. I largely agree with your assessment, but allow me to plant the smallest seed of unprovable conspiracy.

Controlled opposition.

"Intellectual Dark Web"; Ha.

You Get A YouTube Channel.
You Pick A Target Audience That is Disgruntled About Life (i.e. Crowds
of INCEL Young Males, Devoid of Social Meaning And Purpose in Life With Plenty of Days to Listen).

Then You Cater to What They Wanna Hear; No Different Than Trump And His ' 5th Avenue Target Audience'.

Then You Make Some YouTube Pennies; Eat, Sleep, And Repeat; Fascinating What The Audience Will Unusually
Consume Together; Key is the Audience Is All Agreeing; Measure of What is being Said: In Terms of Group Think.

Jordan Peterson, was one of the Most 'Hilarious' 'DW Intellectuals', Suggesting Monogamy Should
Be Enforced, so INCELS Could 'Get Some'; 'Nervous Little Man', Sadly He tried to put Shoes on too big;
It Was Very Predictable to See; if You've Ever Seen A Chihuahua Barking And Shivering At the Same Time;
True, If He Really Mastered 'A Lobster Pose' (i could show him how to do it) He'd Still Be Around Making YouTube Pennies.

It's a Way to Make a Living; And Considering We Have An "Alex Jones" President; There is Potential for Real Influence;
No matter, if one agrees with what is being said or not; i've learned something Significant from All The Folks Mentioned,
except for Rubin and Shapiro; i don't Leave any opinions, Out of my Personal Research; but i am surely not that Impressed; As They All Cater to Target Audiences; as Most People, Naturally do, anyway. Whenever i see everyone agreeing in the Comments Section of Any YouTube Audience; It's Obvious the Target Audience is Fully ONLY Captured
And Owned; Like Any Congregation of A Religion; It's A Religion; It's Politics; It's Philosophy Still Now; and No Matter
How Different it portrays itself to be; it has the Same Target Audience, So is Very Predictable What will come Next.

Generally Speaking, Again, It Caters to Young Males Who are In Large INCEL, Without Social Roles in Meaning
And Purpose; Looking For A New Religion to Believe in to Bond and Bind Over; And Perhaps Get a Father
Figure Where That Father Looks More Like them Now; Than 'Anything' Really to Grow Into to, to fit in 'Bigger Shoes'...

Participating in New Religions On Youtube Is Not much different Than Being Stuck In Pews of Other Churches With No
Other Place of Meaning And Purpose in Social Satisfaction to go; "We Love You Jordan; We Love You Trump"; Yuck,
ugh, just ugh; Make 'Yourself' into Your own F in Hero; With Never a Worry of Having to 'Shoot-up' Target Audiences.

Sounds like a fictional millennial invention,I am not greatly familiar with the people talked about on this thread,I don't watch those types of video's.I don't believe there in conspiracy with each other to promote a singular ideology.

If you don't like certain political or philosophical personalities than don't watch there content and you will be saved from there influence,and the intellectual dark web if such a thing exists.

(If you really want to learn about these guys do yourself a favor and do it in incognito windows. Act like it's a misbehaved child and keep it far away from your cookies).

It more or less refers to the online circles that certain (overwhelmingly bigoted) individuals move through. It's mainly spaces online where people can discuss their various anti-liberal (ie: liberal democracy) philosophies. There's some overlap with the alt-right, but IDW tends more towards the extreme and has more emphasis on specific ideology than on general "triggerin the libs". It's also overflowing with conspiracy theories. They congregate in the Dark mainly because their ideologies do not pass the respectability smell test. I made an overlong list of some of these ideologies off the top of my head on another topic but just know that it's mainly various fringe conservative or capitalist schools of "thought".
Compare also: the Dark Enlightenment (again, go incognito if you must. things get very ugly very fast). So named because they (generally) reject Enlightenment era-onward philosophy because it (generally) advocates democracy and human rights.
Both of these groups/spaces are very ugly and I would advise caution before you go down the rabbit hole of learning about them. And I want to emphasize I am not lumping 'regular' conservatives in with these guys. These guys are in an awful league of their own.

Pretty much the most important names to know, currently, out of that circle are Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Bret Weinstein, and Heather Heying (Bret's wife). There's a strong overlap between Intellectual Dark Web and GameB thinkers like Daniel Schmachtenberger and Jordan Greenhall because they're working on / analyzing very similar problems.

As for the suggestion that they're right-wing bigots, completely untrue, they're square circles and inside-out giraffes.

But they also tend to despise millennia of western philosophy and try to make up their own. Philosophy students routinely tear gaping holes into their thinking, nit because philosophy students are so smart, but the arguments are old and the counterarguments have been around for centuries.
So the IDW guys are starting somewhat from zero, where they could just read for a few years and then jump in where things like moral philosophy etc. are at, now.

Sam Harris in particular has famously bwritten that he believes "words like deontology increase boredom in any given text".
Well... Yeah, so he just makes up his own terminology, and tries to look smart while doing so.

Last edited by shlaifu on 04 Jul 2020, 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Can we unpack some specifics? TY.

No idea.
This was the first time I came across the concept.
I found it by accident.

I like the notion of politics essentially being irrelevant,
And where ideas, free speech and freedom of thought is being engaged, free from censorship.

Political correctness is creating an intellectual dystopia.
That is something I have a problem with.

Would it be correct to say the progressive side of politics has a problem with the IDW?

And what do any conservatives, here, think about it?

I interpret this as a "safe space" to pursue intellectual discussion that is not screened by corporations/authorities/agencies

You could add to that formula - making people aware that such thought exists and having it in publicly available venues and on vlogs and rebelling against the notion that five or six minute discussions of issues were the most people had an attention span for.

There was about a year or so where Travis Pangburn was setting up events to get many of these people together to talk about big issues, probably most popular was a series of four debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Pangburn Philosophy both helped lift this up in terms of providing venues and events where thousands of people would show up, the problem - he also had the business model where he'd partially fund current events with funds for future events or handle refunds through funds from future events and this model ended up crashing on him eventually with him getting a reputation for cancelling shows and not giving people refunds.

David Fuller over at Bret Weinstein's place talking to him a bit about the history:

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 05 Jul 2020, 12:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hence, the "Dark Web" nomenclature?

Dark = not subject to moderators