If you have been following the modern far-leftism / anti-leftism sociopolitical war "only" for the last 7-8 years, you might have not even heard of one Phil "Thunderf00t" Mason nor know who he is or what he was known for.
In the early days of YouTube antifeminism/anti-leftism, from about 2011 to about 2016, give or take, he was one of the big names on that front, alongside other big names like The Amazing Atheist (another name that more recent anti-leftists probably have never heard of), Sargon of Akkad, etc. In fact, Thunderf00t was such a big name in the anti-leftist community that he became pretty much the Public Enemy #1 of the far left, especially in the atheist community, for some years, so much so that for a time he was under a massive harassment campaign (which ultimately was pitifully weak because of his tenured position as a researcher in a university in the Czech Republic, which made him essentially untouchable.)
Yet, today he is mostly unknown in these circles, and most particularly even the far left doesn't care about him (and mostly doesn't even know who he is). Why is that? Because, as I wrote in a 2020 blog post, he suddenly declared himself as "not part of the 'Skeptic' community anymore", and became essentially an "anti-anti-leftist", ie. someone who isn't a far-leftist but who nevertheless opposes the anti-leftists. He made a couple of antifeminist videos after that, and then stopped doing that type of video completely. And, unsurprisingly, in 2016 he contracted a rather serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (as well as anti-Brexit syndrome.)
So, if I already wrote a blog post about this topic, why am I writing again? I'd like to update his situation a bit.
Thunderf00t was never a pure anti-feminist. In fact, he started his YouTube career years before that, making videos about science, and continued doing so even during his heyday of anti-feminism, and then concentrated once again almost exclusively on that topic after he declared himself to be an anti-anti-leftist. And, in fact, he is nowadays known more for his science videos than his antifeminist past.
And, indeed, many years ago he made some of the most famous science videos on YouTube, especially those debunking scam crowdfunding projects and other similar projects that try to do physically impossible things.
Then he made a video about Elon Musk and some project of his. And then he made another video criticizing Elon Musk. And then another, and another, and another...
It has become a crippling obsessive compulsion to him. At some point he for some reason contracted an extremely bad case of Musk Derangement Syndrome and has been pumping out anti-Musk video after anti-Musk video ever since. Without any exaggeration out of 10 videos on average about 9 will be about Elon Musk. And he has been doing this for years and years now, pumping out video after video.
It's a clear obsession not just because of the sheer amount of such videos, but also because he just repeats the same three or four topics relating to Elon Musk over and over and over. There are literally like three or four things about Musk that he just keeps repeating again and again in these videos. Always the same topics. And he just keeps making more and more of these videos. It has literally become a sick obsession of his, and I'm not exaggerating.
And that's not even counting the livestreams that he has made. There are several such streams out there where he watches some SpaceX launch, openly giggling at the prospect of the rocket failing and exploding. In one particularly notorious stream he was watching the SpaceX Starship test flight where the primary rocket returned back safe and sound, clearly giggling at the prospect of it failing, and being visibly disappointed when it landed successfully.
Yes, this is a scientist, a scientific researcher, who is overjoyed at the prospect of a huge technological failure, and disappointed when the test actually succeeds, because of his obsession about the guy running the company in question. Instead of being joyful about technological progress and success, he is disappointed by it, because he doesn't like the owner of the company.
Why anybody takes this guy seriously anymore is beyond my comprehension.
On top of everything else (and as I already commented a bit in that previous blog post), the quality of his videos is abysmal, and has only become worse over the years.
He might be one of the very few youtubers out there who have been actively creating and posting videos over the past 15+ years whose video production quality has not improved one iota. If anything, it has only become worse. Most other people learn the art of video creation and editing over the years, but apparently he hasn't. His videos nowadays actually look worse, and are more poorly edited, than they were 10 years ago. And his scriptwriting has also worsened over the years.
In the beginning of his career his videos were not extraordinarily well made, but they were decent enough, clear enough, and watchable enough, and the scientific topics he dealt with were expressed clearly enough that many of his videos (especially the ones debunking ridiculous crowdfunding projects) became really famous.
Over the years, however, his videos became longer and longer, and more and more repetitive, saying the same things over and over. Most of his 30+ minute videos could perfectly well be edited and cut to be 10 minutes long without any loss of relevant information, by just removing all the repetitions and all the unnecessary stuff.
Curiously, though, regardless of the decreasing quality of his videos, and regardless of his unhealthy obsession with Elon Musk, and regardless of the fact that about 9 out of 10 videos he has been publishing over the last several years have been nothing but Musk bashing, his view counts have remained about the same, in the hundreds of thousands of views per video.
Go figure. If there's one thing that puzzles me the most about this guy, it's that. How does he manage to keep those numbers? It's astonishing. Most other youtubers who have become deranged and obsessive have usually plummeted their views, but not him.
This man is a complete mystery.
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