The Jordan Peterson Thread

I got an ad for some kind of class he's doing, like a right-wing Werner Herzog Masterclass site.

jp is unworthy of being forced to eat his shoe on camera tbh

It would be a good exercise for him to push a boat overland between the Don and Humber Rivers.

he has a new show on Ben Shapiro's network

I got a Facebook ad for the Daily Wire a little while ago promising me that if I subscribed I could watch a video of Shapiro and Peterson in conversation. I lol'd at the idea that this something someone would pay for.

the all shoe leather diet is surely his next step

yeah ftr I don’t buy this whole “heel turn” narrative that the substack guy is selling. but I did figure there must have been _something_ there that appealed to people (however shitty in their own right) who weren’t angry online gamergate incel types. JP’s whole steez is so repellant and he was so obviously on the grift (partic by the time he made it into my consciousness) that I’d never really bothered to look into it.

at least youse came out of the darkness, kudos

James Hillman is good for all your post-Jungian needs

I have enjoyed Michael Meade's "Living Myth" podcast, though it does require a higher-than-average tolerance for earnest hippie speak.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar goes after Peterson in his email newsletter this week.

Jordan B. Peterson is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. He has announced his bold decision to publicly martyr himself—like all good cult leaders—by choosing death over retracting a recent tweet that got him suspended by Twitter. “The suspension will not be lifted unless I delete the hateful tweet in question,” he announced. “And I would rather die than do that.” Death wasn’t one of the options in Twitters’ terms of service agreement, but Peterson is nothing if not self-importantly melodramatic. He sees himself as a cultural lightning rod absorbing the charged bolts of wokism that is setting ablaze traditional values. In reality, he’s just an embittered crank.

...

Here’s the surprise I promised: I agree with Peterson. Not about what he wrote, which is offensive, ill-informed, and childish—akin to scribbling obscenities on the bathroom stall in middle school—but we must draw a clear line between hate speech and hateful speech. Hate speech promotes violence and biased actions against groups. Hateful speech spews irrational anger that is hurtful. Granted that line can get fuzzy because hateful can quickly become hate, but it’s important that we are vigilant in making that distinction so as not to quash free speech. His comments were more buffoonish than hate and he should have the right to be a buffoon.

...

Much of Peterson’s fame and infamy is the result of YouTube debates he does with other YouTubers, mostly with people that agree with him. On those occasions when he debates people who don’t agree with him, his tactic is similar to Ben Shapiro’s: name-drop famous writers and thinkers, keep changing the subject so he never has to fully defend his position, throw out irrelevant facts and studies so he sounds smart. You would be hard-pressed to know what Peterson’s thesis is during a debate.

In his debate with secularist Matt Dillahunty, Peterson kept straying from the question at hand so much that Dillahunty’s frustration as he kept trying to bring him back to the point was evident. Peterson knew he couldn’t logically win so he just talked about whatever popped into his mind.

I don’t care for debates—whether on YouTube or presidential. They are designed purely for entertainment value and to get more subscribers who already agree with them, not to clarify complex issues. Someone mentions a fact or statistic but there’s no time to look it up to see if it’s a legit study or fact. So the process has the veneer of reason when it’s mostly emotion.

I have seen some debates in which Peterson was so outmatched that I was embarrassed for him, especially those with Dillahunty and neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris. He would ramble pointlessly only to have his fans comment how he “destroyed” the opponent, which is a testament to the inability of his followers to distinguish logic. They think because they can’t understand what he’s saying, he must be really smart. The reason they can’t understand him is because there are so many logical fallacies he uses: slippery slope, false dilemma, name-calling, poisoning the well, and so forth that they should be used in critical thinking classes as examples of what not to do. That’s why one columnist referred to him as “the stupid man’s smart person.”

The whole thing is worth reading.

this was before he busted out with the TERC stuff, the C standing for Conservative

This always confuses me because in Canada his public fame only occurred *as a result* of his transphobia, but tbf I don't expect non-Canadians to be aware of Canadian politics. And of course it's possible even in Canada that people were into him before his Bill C-16 lies went viral (though his podcast began a couple months after he released his videos about the bill & "political correctness").

I'm not trying to bust anyone here; I had to double check the timeline myself. But I'm wary of revisionist narratives like the link posted upthread (not your story hardcore) becoming accepted, because there was never a non-professional-transphobe JP in my version of reality. Plus the 'cultural marxism' bullshit gyac mentioned was also there from the start: his incompetent lying about the history of philosophy should have been discrediting from the beginning, never mind his political affiliations.

I feel like this must have been noted itt before, but TIL Peterson's middle name is Bernt

Fine, I’ll embarrass myself as a pseud. A friend of mine — an arty, dreamy, wide-eyed goofball with a yen for Big Ideas — was really really into JP (this was before he busted out with the TERC stuff, the C standing for Conservative) and said I should check out his podcast. I enjoyed the hell out of it for a while. It was all overanalytical Jungian stuff that backed up mystical hoo-hah with data-informed social science which is a marriage I was built to be a sucker for anyway, and the vibe was that of an eccentric prof whose class you enjoyed even when it was a bit loopy. The only thing that gave me any pause at first was the ads he had on there for his “self-authoring” courses or whatever, which just the name of gave me the creeps. Then a while later he blew up. Thinking he wasn’t really an ideologue, just an interesting lecturer with some bad ideas (not an uncommon phenomenon) I continued to listen with a bit of an open mind & tried to just pick out the “good bits” but they were farther between and even the psych content started taking on a strident, combative tone. Whereas I hadn’t been listening too critically before, I started noticing him misrepresenting psych data I had at least a passing familiarity with, and when I finally started doing even minimal fact-checking, I grokked to his fundamental hucksterism. Articles started coming out placing him in the “intellectual dark web” (remember that 10 minutes?) and I kept listening, if only to rebut, and then pretty quickly couldn’t take it any more at all. The pivot from big-ideas-guy to ranting phobe felt very swift to me, but fundamentally I do think he pivoted.

I felt pretty chagrined about having been taken in (although I’d hardly been a convert or anything, just an interested listener who got a bunch of food for thought and a couple song ideas out of him). I never went back to the early lectures I had thought were good — I suspect with the knowledge of what he turned into I’d find a lot of red flags I’d missed in my casual-listening days, but a) I can’t be arsed, b) refuse utterly to give him clicks, and c) can’t stand the sound of his voice for even a few seconds anymore.

It took me a while to convince my friend that JP was trash — there was a summer there where I was worried he was disappearing down the alt-right brain worm hole — but he finally came around. Pretty late. I think it was the all-meat disaster that finally woke him up, and he’s no longer convinced that the tyranny of the social-justice movement is one of the pressing problems of our time. *phew*
― war mice (hardcore dilettante), Wednesday, 13 July 2022 04:12 (ten hours ago) link

That's an honest cop and I get it. I think there is something about his delivery and articulation that can be captivating in spite of its ridiculousness. In fact I think his kermit-like voice is part of the appeal, because it takes a lot of the edge off of stuff that could otherwise seem much more offputting and hostile if it was coming out of some shaved head gun-toting aggro muscle man.

it's still morning pre-second coffee here and that c&p'ed entire post with no quote block made me think "wow, can't believe man alive had the same friend experience"

hahaha

astroterfing

lol

_this was before he busted out with the TERC stuff, the C standing for Conservative_

This always confuses me because in Canada his public fame only occurred *as a result* of his transphobia, but tbf I don't expect non-Canadians to be aware of Canadian politics. And of course it's possible even in Canada that people were into him before his Bill C-16 lies went viral (though his podcast began a couple months after he released his videos about the bill & "political correctness").

I'm not trying to bust anyone here; I had to double check the timeline myself. But I'm wary of revisionist narratives like the link posted upthread (not your story hardcore) becoming accepted, because there was never a non-professional-transphobe JP in my version of reality.

the anti-bill c-16 stuff in september 2016 is what gave him the initial boost of popularity, made him a darling of the canadian right, and brought in the funding which he used to really expand his output, which further boosted his profile. he didn't start his podcast until december 2016, a few months after that happened. before that he'd been only making youtube videos, largely covering the courses he taught, nothing really blatantly reactionary in the way that he is now. in april 2016, he only had 5600 youtube subscribers, and his most popular video had 65k views and was on existentialist philosophy, and that was really the extent of his popularity until the anti-bill c-16 stuff. i'm sure relatively early on in the podcast he wasn't anywhere as focused on the reactionary politics and still just focused on his weirdo psych/philosophy stuff

JP healing religious divides as only he can

Lmao pic.twitter.com/Rel2IJpzo1

— ishmael n. daro (@iD4RO) July 14, 2022

lmao indeed

"heaven forbid, a Jew!"

"Shiites, find a Sunni pen pal" is the much funnier line imo

Muslims, clean thine rooms!

Jews, eat a lobster.

Jordan Peterson invites you to join him pic.twitter.com/2vPLvVRFaP

— very tall bart (@TallBart) July 14, 2022

😂

Lol

Look who is at Michaela today! 🥰
⁦@jordanbpeterson⁩ pic.twitter.com/nKJFg0OOtG

— Katharine Birbalsingh (@Miss_Snuffy) September 16, 2022

good that's she stopped pretending her state-sanctioned child abuse has educational aims

just trying to work out what characters these two aging comic-con desperados are supposed to be

Where JBP goes, comedy is sure to follow

Jordan Peterson was so moved by what he was seeing, as our little year 7s zoomed past shouting, ‘Morning Miss! Morning Sir!’, tears fell. ☺️ https://t.co/jSQjNBJjQ6

— Katharine Birbalsingh (@Miss_Snuffy) September 16, 2022

I tweeted two photos of Jordan Peterson visiting Michaela and someone reported me to the police for hate crime and various others have demanded Ofsted inspect us immediately.

The world has gone mad. 🙄

— Katharine Birbalsingh (@Miss_Snuffy) September 16, 2022

Is this person the U.K.'s answer to Michelle Rhee?

just looked up Michelle Rhee and while not great she doesn't sound anywhere near as despicable as Katharine Birbalsingh.

"Someone reported me to the police for hate crime" LOL

GTFO.

That guy’s always crying at literally anything

Ten points from Spliffenpuff.

“Miss Snuffy”

this headline man pic.twitter.com/uAWAw8sKE7

— BORG (@borgposting) September 30, 2022

So what was this?

Book #4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcTH-fEHIE8

https://i.imgur.com/RVCYtiR.png

It is so flabbergasting that anyone takes life advice from this wreck.

“gamify romance”

there's a lot to take issue with but i'm going to start with the ultimate goal of marriage

make the bed.. more than her. it's how you win!

Rule #7 for keeping the spark alive: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. e.g. put yourself in a medically induced coma in a Russian rehab facility. She will love you twice as much when you come home.

This cunt is in Australia and merrily wading into culture wars - invited to Parliament House by right-wing headbangers, trying (and failing) to influence the result of a state election via amplifying transphobic misinformation, now whining about the widespread practice of acknowledging indigenous custodianship of land. There's probably more but I can't face actually looking at his cursed timeline.

In short, it was a much more pleasant world when threatened little babymen like this guy were deprived of the megaphone of Twitter.

His tour is basically the Unfuckable Men of Australia tour

No cause too odious

not interested in this guy making speeches or tweeting, please update the thread when he puts himself in another coma from malnutrition or whatever even more stupid thing he will do next time.

This seems...not great.

Don't mind me, just leaving this one here for posterity. pic.twitter.com/3XyhszKoWw

— Phrost (@Phrost) November 29, 2022

What a despicable asshole

Has climate change denial always been part of his repertoire? Very banal observation but: it's striking how the real grifters in this scene don't really have a coherent politics of any kind