Saturday, July 11, 2020

pissed off at Tim Pool

In the following video, Tim Pool hectors his friend Adam Crigler. This isn't a new state of affairs; Pool often comes off as overly intense and way too arrogant. He's routinely dismissive of Adam's opinions. I've written before about men and their tendency toward oneupsmanship; Tim's attitude and language make for the perfect example of the sort of dickhead mode of discourse that we guys fall into. With Tim, his replies to Adam are always along the lines of, "But the real point is..." or "But what you're not getting is that..." He's dismissive, he's arrogant, and in my opinion, he's not a very good or respectful listener.


So having had enough, I wrote an angry comment beneath the video (please pardon my awkward Korean; Pool often talks about his quarter-Korean heritage, so I thought I'd test his Korean knowledge with a little peep-to-peep message):

[I tried writing a comment before, but it got deleted. I assume this is because I either (1) hit a nerve, or (2) left a URL (to my own blog) in the comment, and the algorithm swooped in and ate everything. So here's try #2.]

야—친구한테 싸가지 없는 새끼 처럼 행동하면 안 돼! 전쟁 날 때 곁에 싸울 사람이 누구일까, 어?
Hey—don't be a dick to your friends. When the war happens, who's gonna be fighting alongside you, huh?

You like talking about a coming civil war, but if one is really coming, you're going to want your closest mates in the foxhole with you. What's their motivation to fight alongside you if you're so insecure that you constantly have to be the smartest guy in the room? Acting that way doesn't make you seem smart: it makes you seem stupid and petty. You're better than that, and Adam and Lydia both deserve better from you. So stop dialing your intensity up to a self-righteous 11 (as you accuse others of doing), calm the fuck down, and show those good people some respect. Lay down the good karma now, Tim; you'll benefit from it when the shit hits the fan. And be happy that Adam is your friend; he's a much better man than I. If you spoke that dismissively and arrogantly toward me, you wouldn't have any teeth left.
—a fellow part-Korean peep

NB: if this comment also gets deleted, I'm going to keep reposting it until it sticks.

Yeah, I was angry. I admit it. And I generally like Tim's videos, but every once in a while, I have to step back and take a breath because Pool is always cranked up to 11. He's intense and often full of righteous anger, while also seeming to vacillate in his views of Trump and conservatism. Maybe Tim Pool is best taken in small doses. I recently unsubscribed from all of his channels so that my daily queue isn't flooded with a torrent of his videos. I still watch his stuff, but now, I pick and choose what I watch instead of feeling obliged to watch everything. This is a much better arrangement, psychologically speaking.



2 comments:

John Mac said...

Wow, he did hit a nerve! Keep us updated on any response you might receive, from Tim or his followers. It would be interesting to see how he reacts to legitimate criticism.

For some reason, I'm reminded of something I learned in a long-ago government-funded seminar I attended. The gist of it was that we should always welcome feedback because someone who takes the time to provide it is giving you a gift. Some gifts are things you want and enjoy, others go on the top shelf in the closet and never thought of again. But whether you like the gift or not you always say thank you to the giver.

So for the rest of my career in the face of criticism or complaints, my standard response was "thank you for your feedback".

Kevin Kim said...

I was far from the only one to write negative a comment about Tim's behavior toward Adam. Most of the comment thread looks like a slightly tamer version of the comment I'd written. No reaction from anyone yet; at a guess, there won't be any reaction.