The Young Turks.
What happened?
The biggest news network on YouTube has become
a total shit show.
TYT, or the tyts as I like to call them, seem
to have more ex-viewers than viewers these
days, and former fans are wondering: did they
change, or did we?
Where they always this bad, or did we just
now notice it?
So what's the answer?
Is it them, or us?
Can TYT be saved, or are they a hopeless case?
As someone who has been following their trajectory
for years, I will try to answer this question.
The Young Turks started out in 2002 as a radio
show, in which Cenk Uygur and Ben Mankiewicz
talked about politics.
In 2006 they moved their format to YouTube,
becoming one of the earliest YouTube news
channels.
Ben, who is the more level-headed of the two,
left in 2007 to pursue a bigger career in
media, although he remained a regular host
on the show.
Cenk carried on as the head of the operation,
becoming the biggest tyt, in every sense of
the word.
The show is molded around his personality,
and that's its biggest strength, but also
its biggest weakness.
Cenk is a charming and entertaining guy, and
has a pretty astute grasp of American politics.
But he also possesses several personality
flaws that are extremely problematic to anyone
who wants to be taken seriously as a media
figure.
I subscribed to TYT in late 2009.
Back then, this was the place to go if you
were a liberal, the place where you could
get news and commentary from a left-wing perspective
and discuss it in the comment section.
I loved the show at first, because Cenk and
his gang of bouncy tyts offered a combination
of humor and reasonable liberal views, but
after about a year I unsubscribed, because
I couldn't take the bullshit anymore.
Almost all the problems that are so glaringly
obvious today were present even back then.
Allow me to list the major ones:
Let's go back to 2010.
One moment I remember from that year was when
Cenk interviewed the chairman of Go Proud,
an organization that tried to push for gay
rights in the Republican party.
So Cenk opens by saying "let's just get it
out of the way", but then spends the entire
interview, five minutes, trying to convince
Barron that he is wrong to affiliate with the Republicans.
This goes completely against what I believe
in.
For me, politics isn't about winning elections,
it's about getting your ideas to prevail.
The biggest victory is when the opposing party
adopts my ideas.
So any group that fights for acceptance of
gay rights in conservative parties has my
full blessings and support.
But for Cenk, it's always about us against
them.
Our party are the good guys, the other party
are the bad guys, so his main goal is to convert
people to his party.
This "us vs. them" mentality leads to  another problem: generalization.
When Cenk discusses something bad done by
a right-winger, he'll usually present it as
representative of all right-wingers.
It's always "see how they act".
And this leads straight to another very prevalent
fault in Cenk's rhetoric: straw-manning.
This was a recurring cause of frustration
for me when I was a fan of the show.
Some of TYT's most amusing videos are when
Cenk goes after right-wing pundits and blasts
them for their views, but I quickly realized
the weakness in these videos.
Cenk would almost always twist the words of
the people he argued against, creating a strawman
that would be easier for him to attack.
Even when arguing against people like Rush
Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, who are
bad enough as it is and are quite easy to
refute rationally, Cenk would twist their
words.
As a liberal I wanted him to tear them down,
but I was repeatedly frustrated by him missing
the mark and attacking a strawman instead.
I kept wondering "why are you doing this,
when you can easily defeat the actual argument?"
But in time, I've realized the sad truth:
Cenk simply doesn't listen.
He has a stereotype of a right-winger in his
mind, basically a person with
bigoted views, and anything a right-winger
says will always be translated in his perception
to fit that stereotype.
Another one of the biggest problems with TYT
is the poor amount of research they put into
their stories.
I've noticed it first with their videos pertaining
to Israel.
First of all, they would discuss every negative
story about Israel that was in the news, and
never discussed any positive stories.
That is character assassination, another bad
feature of TYT which they employ against anyone
they don't like.
As for the stories themselves, Cenk would
always talk about them with much confidence
and authority, as if he was an expert on the
matter, but they were laughingly divorced
from reality, and showed no effort to get
to the real story.
And in the end, Cenk would also patronize
us Israelis and tell us what he thinks we
should do in this situation which he just
totally misrepresented.
So now I'm going to patronize back, and say
that there are quite a few other subjects
that I know about more than Cenk and his gang
of so-called journalists, and I've noticed
that when he's talking about these subjects,
he is just as full of shit.
To call the tyts "glorified googlers" is to
give them way too much credit.
They don't google, they get all their information
from left-wing publications.
I've realized very quickly that I need to
double-check everything they tell me.
I suspect that Cenk feels he is entitled to
do these character assassinations, because
he thinks that he's a lone voice in the wilderness.
Since he hears only what he wants to hear,
he is oblivious to the fact that there are
many other media outlets that have a similar
agenda to TYT, and thinks that the media has
biases against the groups he is speaking for.
Whenever one of "them" does something bad,
Cenk rages that if it was done by one of "us",
the media would be much more condemning.
And whenever one of "us" does something bad,
Cenk will immediately deflect to rile about
how judgmental the media is in this case,
compared to how soft it is when one of "them"
commits the same transgression.
In reality, this bias is all in Cenk's head,
but he feels compelled by it to represent
the so-called oppressed side.
And so, he will look for every negative story
on the people he deems as media favorites,
to balance the imaginary biased field.
The result is that those of us who get their
news from the Young Turks are subjected to
a string of character assassinations.
Cenk is trying really hard to be a good man
with enlightened views, but these character
flaws keep bringing him and the show down.
The smaller tyts are too timid to call him
out on it, and are usually just following
his lead, confirming everything he says
so unless Ben is there to give him a reality check, there's no one to rein him in.
All of these defects, then, were there from
the start, so if you were wondering if it
was always this bad, the answer is: yes it
was.
And yet, the show back then was better than
it is today.
Why?
Well, several reasons.
First of all, it seemed more like a YouTube
channel.
There was just one main channel, on which
they discussed not just politics and social
issues, but also movies, sports, video games,
Internet memes and other things that are popular
on YouTube.
In short, they offered roughly the same kind
of winning mix that Phillip Defranco was offering
at the time and is wisely still offering to
this very day.
They were also embedded in the YouTube community
and talked a lot about it, and even did some
fun interviews with other youtubers.
They didn't take themselves so seriously back
then, so their amateurish journalism didn't
matter so much.
Cenk was basically this affable clown, with
his silly soundboard and goofy humor.
And every Friday they would put out a mix
video that was a comical mix the best moments
of the week, reminding us that this was all
just good fun.
Also, they were very small compared to TV
news networks, so you could forgive their
faults and immaturity.
They were an integral part of the Internet's
anarchic spirit.
As the TYT network grew, however, things started
to get worse.
They've created other channels for the non-political
stuff, which left the main channel for Cenk
to drone on and on and on about politics.
And as he felt he had more power, he decided
to do something good with it, and committed
the channel to the cause of getting money
out of politics.
They formed a Super Pac for that matter, and
the need to recruit money and people for the
cause affected the way they covered the news.
Money in politics became the root of all evil
in Cenk's rhetoric, and everything was explained
as stemming from it.
Sometimes it would reach farcical heights,
as Cenk would admit that the problem is very
complicated, but then get taken by emotions
and blame the politicians that they can easily
solve the problem but don't do anything about
it because their donors tell them not to.
Meanwhile, as YouTube grew, TYT became a serious
media player, and the inflated tyts started
to take themselves more seriously and became
less playful and fun.
But they did nothing to adopt more professional
ethics as expected from a serious media outlet
– they are still plagued by the same problems.
Still, I valued what they had to say.
From 2009 to 2013, liberals were occupied
mainly in a struggle against the religious
right, focusing on issues like pushing atheism
into the mainstream; fighting for equality
for minorities, especially gay rights; passing
social reforms, like universal healthcare;
and reforming laws about drugs.
TYT were with us on these issues, and were
a significant player.
I kept on going to their channel on an almost
daily basis, watching the headlines for all
the stories and sometimes watching an entire
video if the subject interested me.
They weren't too annoying back then – they
seemed to have common sense.
If you just became familiar with TYT now,
go back less than two years and watch the
video they made about shirt-storm, and you'll
be amazed by how reasonable they sounded back
then.
All of them, at this point, were firmly against the idiocy of the SJWs.
There's no way they'd talk like that today,
is there?
So what happened?
Well, in the middle of 2014, a crack occurred
inside the left, and it rapidly grew and became
a chasm.
By that time, it became apparent to liberals
like me that identity politics had served
their purpose.
The aim of identity politics was to ensure
that women, gays and racial minorities would
have equality of opportunity, by removing
the cultural and systemic biases against them.
By 2013 it became apparent that there was
nothing more to do on this front in the West,
so we shifted our focus to helping it happen
in other parts of the globe, especially in
the Muslim world.
But for a significant part of the left, identity
politics became the end instead of the means.
Driven mainly by third wave feminism, they
demand not equality of opportunity but equality
of outcome, and maintain that Western society
is still unequal, and that it is ruled by
a patriarchy of white males that wants to
keep it unequal.
Because of this worldview, they also view
Muslims as a minority that needs protection
from the patriarchy, and defend Muslim societies
from those liberals who criticize it.
This type of leftists is what is now being
termed the regressive left.
Most of us expected the Young Turks to take
the side of the liberals against the regressives.
Based on their core principles, it seemed
logical that they would update their views.
But here, all of their bad habits finally
came home to roost.
Due to their laziness in research, the tyts
remained unaware of what was going on, and
were still fighting the old battles.
When liberals started to criticize feminism
and Islam, Cenk typically did not listen to
what they had to say, and instead just stereotyped
them to fit with his image of a bigoted right-winger.
Two disastrous interviews he conducted at
the time sealed TYT's fate.
In his interviews with Sam Harris and Karen
Straughan, Cenk exposed his inability to listen
to and comprehend new patterns of thinking.
His befuddled viewers tried to tell him how
wrong he was, but Cenk refused to listen,
and drove them away.
Where before their fan base was a mix of different
leftist views, now it became increasingly
regressive, and pulled the show with it.
At around the same time, TYT formed a partnership
with Al Jazeera, which pushed them further
into the regressive camp.
And so, their videos became stupider and stupider.
The funny thing is, Cenk still holds many
anti-regressive views.
But the constant need to defend regressive
views makes him contradict himself again and
again, and it's really hard to tell what he
believes in anymore.
He is pro freedom of speech, but also pro
SJWs; anti-Marxist, but also pro Black Lives
Matter; against Antisemitism, but for considering
Hamas a legitimate movement.
He believes a lot of the problems in the Muslim
world stem from their culture, but calls anyone
else who says the same thing a racist.
And he is quick to claim knowledge and pass
judgment on any actions taken by any country
around the globe, except on the Armenian genocide
on which he claims ignorance and remains silent.
And so forth, creating a cognitive dissonance
that is very hard to maintain.
Plus, because he is unaware of the processes
within the left, he genuinely doesn't get
why so many people on the left have turned
against him.
He doesn't understand why regressives are
calling him a misogynist Bernie-bro for not
supporting Hillary, and why liberals are accusing
him of being a regressive and a Muslim apologist.
He appears to be increasingly anxious and
agitated, as do the rest of the sagging tyts,
and they don't seem to have fun anymore.
I'm still watching TYT to get the headlines,
but if I watch a video in full it's only to
have a laugh at how stupid they are.
It's really easy to tell now which videos
to watch.
When you see it got more downvotes than upvotes,
you know that they have laid another regressive
turd.
2016 was actually a good year for TYT in terms
of numbers.
By aligning themselves with the Bernie Sanders
camp, they earned lots of new subscribers
and views.
They've developed an air of arrogance, believing
that they are going to usurp traditional media.
But if they were still connected to the YouTube
community, instead of acting like they are
above us, they would get the real picture.
The cutting edge of the left has moved on
and left them behind, and considers them a
laughing stock.
Their fan base now is the regressive left,
and it won't take long before it turns on
them.
Some old fans are still hoping that this will
make TYT come around and join the liberal
camp, but I advise you not to hold your breath.
It's true that they used to be better, but
the reasons for their downfall, as we have
seen, are endemic to their character.
TYT is a dead man walking.
They just don't know it yet.
