This tends to be the story of a lot of popular tiktokers. They present harmless at face shtick and it slowly bleeds into evil ideologies before you notice
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I honestly think that the independent TikTok/YouTube/newsletter economy presents some of the most perverse incentives imaginable for the people doing that work, and it either encourages them to be their worst selves and/or rewards people who get worse! Not everyone does that, but it's so lucrative!
aug 31, 2025, 2:04 pm • 2 0 • view
I was just thinking this about the crew for Ethan Klein and how they’re essentially enabling his behavior now. It’s wild how rage bait can be someone’s source of income
aug 31, 2025, 2:07 pm • 3 0 • view
Yeah, my brain has seriously been a little melted by the fact that "do something cool and then get attention for it" has been largely replaced as an ethos by "get as much attention as you can and then monetize that attention by any means necessary."
aug 31, 2025, 2:11 pm • 2 0 • view
TikTok especially has perpetuated this by punishing those in the creator fund for not posting 3 or more times a day and not getting engagement. I went viral twice and when I learned the game of “make people angry, go viral” I was out
aug 31, 2025, 2:15 pm • 2 0 • view
You have to appeal to either “oh someone is going to hate this” or “oh someone evil is going to love this”
aug 31, 2025, 2:16 pm • 2 0 • view
I think Caleb Hammer has always had that rhetoric but the ridiculousness of it all was more of an element, over time as he got more confident it shifted more towards a lecture, but it was always there.
aug 31, 2025, 2:04 pm • 1 0 • view
I went back to watch some of his old clips to see if I could spot do this and I think all of it was just watered down until as you said he became more brazen with his support and audience
aug 31, 2025, 2:08 pm • 0 0 • view