How People Criticize Peter Coffin

I focus on systemic critiques. I recently have begun regularly uploading to my YouTube channel and have been more actively engaging with popular viewpoints and recent events. As one might expect, I’ve navigated through a sea of challenging (and sometimes very positive) feedback. For instance, an analysis I did of the movie trailer for an upcoming film The American Society of Magical Negroes was met pretty even-handedly by people across the political spectrum (and racial one as well).

However, I pointed out that the recent Hbomberguy video on plagiarism, the most popular one he has ever made (with over 11 million views as of this writing), is essentially a call for individual responsibility and reverence for intellectual property law. The “left,” folks who generally claim to be against individual responsibility and bourgeois private property, became quite mad at me.

So, people have begun to post responses.

Markets

As I have outlined in previous works, particularly in my book Custom Reality and You, the media landscape – and continually more so, the social one – has increasingly resembled a market, where attention is the prime currency. In CRAY, I called this “attentionomics,” where the value of content is dictated not solely by its substance but by its popularity and the engagement it garners.

The recent video by Hbomberguy serves as a prime example. To take my CRAY metaphor further, it’s like a high-value stock in this attention market, drawing substantial viewership – attention currency. In critiquing this popular Hbomb video, my stance positioned me in a role similar to that of “shorting” this highly valued “stock.” By challenging the prevailing narrative and the popular viewpoint, I've opened up a market for derivatives – essentially, “Anti-Peter Stocks.”

In less metaphorical terms, this situation has created a fertile ground for reaction streamers and content creators who are relatively less known. Seeing an opportunity to gain traction, they capitalize on my critique, framing their content as a counterargument to a view that stands against a widely accepted and popular opinion. This tactic of “Look, guys, this whacko is disagreeing with what’s popular!” is a strategy to garner attention and views, essentially riding the wave of controversy I've generated.

Another way of putting it is that they take the engagement metrics as a sort of “might-makes-right-by-numbers” approach that capitalist markets ultimately justify. This phenomenon illustrates the incentive to identify dissenting voices challenging “high-value” (popular) content and create a counter-argument specifically due to a lucrative opportunity for engagement and/or currency (social or otherwise).

Basically, it’s fandom all the way down.

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Ephrommentator

The first video I want to address here was by a person calling themselves Ephrommentator ("A Measured Response," indicating their parasocial fan relationship with Hbomberguy). I will also point out parts of my video for reference.

1. Understanding of Plagiarism

My video:

• Views plagiarism as a result of systemic circumstances, not simply individual morality. (Starts around 1:23-1:34)

• Argues it's a complex issue embedded in the broader socio-economic context, particularly under capitalism.

Ephrommentator’s Video:

• Suggests I am defending plagiarism, misrepresenting my approach. (Begins immediately at the start of the video)

• Intentionally represents any analysis I presented as shallow and driven by a vendetta.

2. Role of Intellectual Property Law

My video:

• Critiques intellectual property law as serving the interests of the capitalist ruling class. (Begins around 4:32-5:00)

• Suggests these laws don't adequately protect smaller creators and serve platform holders (capitalists), reflecting a Marxist perspective.

Ephrommentator’s Video:

• Misrepresents my critique of intellectual property law by ignoring IP law as a whole. There are no mentions of IP law in this video.

• This video does not address class dynamics and power structures.

3. Focus on Individual Responsibility

My video:

• Advocates against focusing solely on individual blame for plagiarism. (Begins at 6:01-6:11)

• Emphasizes systemic factors and conditions that drive such behavior.

Ephrommentator’s Video:

• Represents my stance as totally disregarding individual responsibility.

• Outwardly disregards all systemic thinking/forces.

4. Systemic Change vs. Individual Action

My video:

• Calls for an understanding that the harm of plagiarism comes from incentives and rewards (stemming from the fundamental contradiction that defines capitalism, socialization of production amid the private appropriation of product and therefore profit) and that ending that harm requires a change in the entire economic and social system, not just individual behavior modification. (Found primarily around 13:21-13:50)

• Highlights the need for understanding and addressing the broader socio-economic causes of plagiarism.

Ephrommentator’s Video:

• Misrepresents my call to focus on systemic critique as “excusing” and even “defending” plagiarism, which I even said is not good at 1:16 in my video.

• Claims Hbomberguy “touches on” systemic issues by mentioning YouTube content mills and how they encourage plagiarism for profit; however, content mills are a result, not a cause of anything on a systemic level. This is a massive misunderstanding, intentional or not, of what “systemic” means – I would argue this is downstream of Hbomb’s inadequate/incorrect articulation of what “systemic” means in the original video. (Starts at 3:58)

• Circles through the same few talking points for about 15 minutes.

Ephrommentator’s video dramatizes and misrepresents my discussion of plagiarism, focusing on systemic issues and the socio-economic context of plagiarism. Ephrommentator reduces my argument to a defense of plagiarism, which is outright malicious and bad faith.

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Actual Jake

Moving on, another creator named Actual Jake did a video entitled “Peter Coffin’s Pretentious Rage over Hbomberguy.” Here, I'll focus on identifying potential areas where my points have been misrepresented (or at very least misinterpreted; Jake attempts to play it a little less like a drama video than Ephrommentator – but make no mistakes, that’s all both are doing). Here's a breakdown of key themes and how they are addressed in each video:

1. Nature of Plagiarism and Systemic Analysis:

My video:

• I emphasize the systemic nature of plagiarism within a capitalist framework. I argue that it’s not simply a moral issue but also a result of the broader socioeconomic system. (Again, starts around 1:23-1:34)

Actual Jake’s Video:

• Jake characterizes me as dismissing the importance of individual ethical behavior in content creation. It suggests that I downplay the role of personal responsibility in plagiarism. (begins 0:20-0:25, 0:46-0:51)

2. Focus on Individual Responsibility:

My video:

• I criticize the excessive focus on individual responsibility for plagiarism, suggesting that it overlooks the systemic incentives that drive such behavior.

Actual Jake’s Video:

• The critique interprets my argument as neglecting individual ethics. Jake misses the nuance that systemic critique doesn’t completely negate individual actions but rather contextualizes them.

• Throughout the video, there's a strong emphasis on the importance of ethical behavior in content creation, regardless of the systemic pressures of capitalism. In fact, as per the following points, Jake completely ignores them.

• He discusses the issue of plagiarism and ethical behavior in content creation.(1:12)

• Jake emphasizes the “importance” of identifying the “baddies” in a situation, again deferring to the primacy of ethical considerations without any class context. (3:02)

• The discussion here implies a need for ethical clarity in determining the roles of different players in the content creation space, obviously without addressing a critique of ownership or class. (7:17)

• Jake critiques the idea of justifying plagiarism through systemic pressures, emphasizing personal responsibility. (8:17)

• Further discussion on plagiarism and its ethical implications. (11:00)

• Jake discusses the importance of ethical behavior and personal responsibility in the context of content creation. (14:03)

• There are more instances of him circling through his views on the importance of personal responsibility, but frankly, you get the point.

3. Intellectual Property Law:

My video:

• I discuss intellectual property law as primarily serving the capitalist class and critique the naturalization of these laws without a deeper systemic understanding. (Starts at about 5:00)

Actual Jake’s Video:

• The critique does not address my points on intellectual property law in any capacity, focusing instead more on the unethical aspects of plagiarism (as noted in the previous section).

4. Critique of Hbomberguy:

My video:

• I critique Hbomberguy for making a four-hour video without addressing the systemic underpinnings of plagiarism in his analysis and for focusing too much on individual actions.

Actual Jake’s Video:

• The critique interprets my stance as a personal grievance against Hbomberguy, suggesting that my arguments lack substantive criticism and are motivated by jealousy or personal bias. (seen at 1:45-1:50, 3:02-3:11)

• This is likely due to Jake’s inability to think systemically. Both creators demonstrate a misunderstanding of what “systemic” means, and Jake, in particular, thinks my suggestion is that we should do nothing because we are not in communism. (29:21)

• Jake further derides the idea of noting capitalism as the problem, because it’s “too obvious,” he then goes on to talk about how irritating it is that I say we should be talking about it from that perspective. (44:15)

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Conclusion

In reviewing the responses from Ephrommentator and Actual Jake, it becomes evident that my emphasis on systemic critiques has been misrepresented. Both have reduced my arguments to an oversimplified binary of disregarding individual ethics as a means to defend “the baddies.” This oversimplification not only misinterprets my position but also dismisses the nuanced approach required to understand what the actual harm of plagiarism is.

The harm is the deprivation of reward for creative labor by way of incentive to do less scrupulous actions to gain that reward with less effort. This deprivation and the ensuing unethical behaviors must be understood not just as individual moral failings but as outcomes. While I do think plagiarism is ultimately a “bad” action to take, the response Hbomberguy’s fanbase (and the broader “Left”) has expressed no desire to address the actual harm, instead hyper-focusing on opportunities to punish individuals (often coming from individuals who have advocated for “restorative justice,” a utopian alternative to punitive action).

Ephrommentator and Actual Jake, in their responses, focus heavily on the ethics of individual content creators, implying that my analysis excuses or defends unethical practices. However, this interpretation misses the core of my argument: while individual choices matter on the individual level, they are influenced (and sometimes outright dictated) by the broader economic and social systems in which we operate.

In discussing the role of intellectual property law, I aimed to shed light on how these laws often favor large corporations and platforms, further complicating the landscape for individual creators (particularly ones harmed by plagiarism). This point, unfortunately, was overlooked, misunderstood, or intentionally omitted in these critiques.

I maintain that while individual responsibility and ethical behavior are important interpersonally, they must be contextualized within the broader socio-economic structures that shape and influence these behaviors. My critiques are not a dismissal of personal ethics but a call to expand our understanding beyond the individual, recognizing the influence of systemic forces. Yes, my concerns prioritize systemic critique over individual actions, but if the harm comes on a systemic level, this is hardly an oversight.

It's disappointing (but not surprising!) to see my critique of Hbomberguy's approach and my discussions on intellectual property law being misunderstood (at best) or intentionally misrepresented (more likely). The focus on personal grievances, as suggested by Actual Jake, is a diversion from the substantive issues at hand. My aim has always been to foster a deeper understanding of these issues, transcending personal biases and focusing on the larger picture.

For all the hate “the Left” points at Jordan Peterson, they sure do sound like him.