u/Agreeable_Tadpole_47

Hi Troy McClure here, you may remember me for "Things I found controversial with the show." and "Maybe they should have stopped a year ago ?". Big fan of the pod but I feel plenty have expressed gratitude in better ways I could, so I'm just grieving my way being negatively introspective.

I have seen some sentiments elsewhere than Dan was "a liberal" (and I can't really say I disagree for what was his persona on air). I do think it's partly unfair to the work because while I wouldn't dare to deliver certificate of proper historical materialism I think the KF corpus ended up being a long form, larger view analysis of Alex Jones, which frequently explored his ideological roots and often touched on the material economic reality that drove it (it's all about the vitamins and pivoting to a model of selling them).

I do agree to some extent Dan was maybe too cautious at points and sometimes what he opposed to Alex Jones (in the specific of a story or more largely) was lines from more "respectable" (legacy, institutional, whatever you call it) media that maybe were a tad shaky themselves. While he came in a little hot, I was glad Jordan actually went at Stelter a tad raw.

They never quite went down fully the rabbit hole of Jones being a paid russian mouthpiece taking his orders from the NuKomintern and ultimately I think I agreed with where they landed on about that.

One thing that bothers me a little in how the roles on the show were distributed : The conflation within the character of Jordan than the more progressive or leftist voice was also the emotional one. I take it is more an unfortunate incident than anything but maybe worthwhile to keep in mind.

Anyway, how did you feel about the politics of the show ? I suspect that inside KF audience there is two wolves etc etc one center left and the other is Posadist.

I'm in a feisty mood and for as much of a fan of the show I was, I think there was a few theorical or ideologic friction happening on the show with some points that were brought up at the margins but ended being pretty core.

I'll try to stay concise and let people get their own thoughts out and flesh a constructive criticism appraisal of what KF was able to do.

- First directive / do not tap the glass : So I think this was a pretty essential aspect early on and it was a very sensible idea, to not encourage people to call in to egg on Alex and be picked up for clips in the show, not taint the experiment so to speak. I have to wonder how much you can really consider IW as a sample under a glass bell though, because KF went a lot at how best to criticise Jones and it highlights that Alex never was in isolation from the "MSM" or his critics, etc...

I do think the Space Sasquatch episode and more importantly JorDan being involved in the trials in some capacity exposed a major practical objection that it ever was possible to keep cultures separated. A lot of the "will Alex mention KF by name" tension also another sign that even KF knew they weren't quite invisible observers anymore and haven't been for a long time.

In hindsight I think having the Space Sasquatch authors on and leaving it at that was a bit of a mistake.

- How to parody / criticise Alex Jones : I do think there was some real discussions and questions to be had there, that Dan touched upon numerous times... However I have to agree JorDan often sounded, well, preachy (and possessive). Them getting vapors over the Prank Stallone calls, for instance, was a major overreaction. I will concede Jones is like Trump in that it seems he is impervious to being shamed or scolded and you can't caricature him in any productive way. I appreciate KF was trying to go at it in a pseudo-academical fashion but they were sometimes graceless to people when really is KF that uniquely pure in cutting Alex clips and "platforming" them to create their content ?

- JorDan punching up comedians : I don't mind they both were comedians at a point and offering some inside baseball about it but likewise they sometimes sounded a little... too self important when offering very definite "comedy advice".

I appreciate a lot partly branches back to Dan wanting to have a scientific approach to the matter and took it really seriously. I think there was a whiff of pretentiousness that crept through all of the above and came to an head in those final episodes where you vaguely got the impression they were pissed at The Onion for not getting a call from them.

- Not following through with (minor) initiatives : That one is minor because they did carry on with the main effort for so long, but it was frustrating to have so many times Dan launch into something only to let it wither halfway through because once he started to dig, well, there wasn't much there. ResetWars, Mystery Babylon, the substack... I'm not mad at it, I know what it's like to throw ideas at the wall and not follow through all of them, and they worked themselves to the bone too much to actually take the time to look into a lot of those side ideas and make sure it was worhwhile.

I just saw that and I thought it was pretty interesting (it's weird it's got panned so hard) though yeah it does share some flaws you could say some other Jordan Peele attached projects have -I know he didn't direct it but I feel the lineage the marketing latched upon wasn't unfounded either-. Was wondering if they touched on that in a recap I would have missed or something.

Specifically, did they say if they would paywall all of the old content ?

That would be my move as a money man : Put all the AJ content behind a paywall or a sub, you limit the reach, make his fans pay for the families and you create some sort of revenue base that hopefully pay for running the base functions.

I am not sure why I would think about that. For one, Dan stopped covering some content because it was paywalled (at least partly) and he respected not stealing off Projet Camelot if Kerry was trying to make a living out of subs, so there's an immediate "would it cripple the podcast ?" question there.

There's also the fact that one of the few things you can give credit to Alex Jones is that he always kept up to his promise that all IW content was free to use and never enforcing any copyright claim. Yeah, probably because he believes every publicity is good publicity, reach is paramount and he didn't want to bother paying lawyer fees pursuing copyright threats... But nevertheless, I don't think he ever threatened cease-and-desists ?

I'm torn on whether it's a good thing to have everyone have access to it considering it's poisonous content but my liberal and first instinct would be I rather let the info flow and those archives, for better and worse, still be available in their current form.