Nobody wants to listen to an hour of indecisive waffling on any of these topics, and nothing could be more absurd than a bunch of cowards on Reddit attempting to "interpret" theatricality as a symptom of a mental illness.
—————
[Tempeh-Muncher:]
My conclusion on recent events...
Le Seal is 100%... not a smidgen, of any sort, even a little bit....
bothered by ANYTHING whatsoever.... ever every.... posted on this sub.
—————
I'm not bothered by any of it: you can hear it in the tone of my voice in the podcast(s) —and you can hear the difference in Melissa's tone of voice, too. You have really hurt her. And you continue to do so. And you apparently enjoy it.
One of the simplest things I said in that podcast is one of the most important: you can't hate stupid people for being stupid. You just can't.
I've created all kinds of content in the last ten years (some of it serious, some of it comedic, etc.) and I've seen all kinds of responses to it: some stupid, some profound. And some people can appreciate and respond to what I do, and some people can't. And that's okay. I really, genuinely do not resent the fact that stupid people are going to react to my content in a stupid way: I do not reproach a gazelle saying, "You should be more like a duck, with your legs so long!" —nor do I reproach the duck for lacking the nature of a gazelle.
—————
[Tempeh-Muncher:]
Doesn't deserve it's own post.....
With recent events this feel like a conclusion for me.
I'm self aware to know I spend way way too much time here and post hostage series poking around for things about Le Seal on too much of my free time.
Not proud of it, it got a bit obsessive, pretty cringe.
I liked Eisel my early/mid 20s prior to the constant I have big PP videos. He presented a rational alternative to ride your bike up a hill and change the world like the DR fruit-loops. DR has a ton of faults.. calling Eisle a pdf-file etc etc. dont get me wrong. I also don't really have a major issue if some people want to promote veganism in athletics/bikinis etc. When they end up being money grubbing fake vegans I like when people like eisel call them out.
I'm not going to say he had a profound influence on me, but to say there was zero would be a lie.
I hope he gets w/e help he needs. He can take that as he will, passive aggressive I am sure, but it's genuine.
Never meet your heroes as the saying goes.....
I think there a lot of young men or especially without guidance or positive male role models... Perhaps myself some time ago...they get wrapped up in the philosophy of a minor or major e-celeb. Unfortunately the internet allows anyone to claim to an expert on anything they want to be. When in reality they are adult man babies living off rich parents with zero accomplishments. Or insane manipulative narcs who film and upload there SO talking about sunsetting themselves onto the internet.
Anyway I feel like he has been exposed enough for what he is. I think people can change... not sure this might be a tough case.
I also feel a bit .... I think someone else said it... It's to the point of picking on a disabled person.
Now if something bizarre happens I'm back.
—————
Re: "When in reality they are adult man babies living off rich parents with zero accomplishments."
You do realize you're talking about me as if I OWE YOU SOMETHING: as if there is some accomplishment that you were expecting from me —and as if I have deceived you by promising some accomplishments that I never did deliver on. Nothing could be further from the truth: I made a youtube channel talking about what was going on in my life and —for several years— anyone could join the fun. If you didn't think it was fun, nobody was forcing you to join. If your resentment that I supposedly have accomplished too little (for your taste) is real, you need to examine it: after all, why? For example, I stopped learning Chinese: why would you resent me for this "lack of accomplishment"? If I resent it, that's quite another thing, but why would YOU resent it? If you don't like the books I've written, nobody is forcing you to read them, and if you don't like listening to my lectures (or songs or comedy videos, etc.) then —again— there's no clear reason for your resentment. Here's the thing: I have been living my life by my rules —you probably hate and resent me because YOU HAVE NOT BEEN LIVING YOUR OWN LIFE BY YOURS. I don't aspire to have the same accomplishments that you do, and vice-versa: but there's just no reason for you to reproach me as if my "everything" is your "nothing" —presumably you're aware that if you stack up all of your own accomplishments in life, I would regard them as nothing at all. And yet it would be insane if I were to write to you with this same resentment, complaining that you, old chap, had no accomplishments at all.
—————
[bunnedgump:]
Eisel IS a narcissist. DSM-5 criteria.
Grandiose sense of self-importance (exaggerates achievements and talents, expects recognition as superior without commensurate achievements). " Calling yourself a public intellectual, a university professor, a talent agent....That's 1
Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. "Every woman wants to fuck me. The Melissa's father phone call" that's 2
Belief in being “special” and unique, and that they can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people. 'Everyone is stupid, nobody understands me, this is why nobody wants to work with me. I'm to brilliant." That's 3
Need for excessive admiration. "I'm a public intellectual, all hail me. I have x million youtub views, and you?" That's 4
Sense of entitlement (unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations). "I should be leading the vegan movement not these other fools." That's 5
Interpersonally exploitative behavior (takes advantage of others to achieve their own ends). "The sex tapes." That's 6
Lack of empathy (unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others). "His last podcast had him laughing at Oscars predicament." That's 7
Envy of others or belief that others are envious of them. "I'm a genius, thus everyone hates me. My own sister, the actual university professor, is envious of me, has been all our lives." That's 8
Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes. "Everyone is stupid, I'm a genius. Computer games bad, I play computer games but I'm in control, you're not" that's 9.
Yep, he's a narcissist. I realise I'm being flippant, he deserves no less.
Were I behaving as he does, making the public statements he does, I would expect the same push back and the same amount of critique.
I'll own any errors in the fallacies dept. That's a couple colleagues that were philosophy majors and I may have misread or misquoted them, that's on me, I'll get back to you on this.
Can I ask why you're feeling as you do after having him cut you off for criticizing him? Is he that important to you?
You can attack me all you like. Say what you please, critique away. I wouldn't feel the slightest inclination to "cut you off." I'm not offended.
I'd also like to remind you that last week he was claiming that this reddit was full of haters wanting to fuck his girlfriend. Good luck decoding that one.
—————
I have taken a test for Narcissism, and I scored close to zero: drastically lower than the American average of people who are NOT Narcissists. Your "analysis" is based on lies told at each and every stage, and is therefore only of interest to people who are willing to pretend that they're unaware that you're lying for the sake of the entertainment value of being lied to (and such people exist, in small numbers).
Last things first, you say at the end, for example: "I'd also like to remind you that last week he was claiming that this reddit was full of haters wanting to fuck his girlfriend." Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth, and anyone could take the time to hear precisely what I said, precisely what the contrast was to what Melissa said, and precisely my tone of voice: Melissa was actually offended that I stated malice was the motivation rather than anyone being interested in sleeping with her —and in response to her objection I conceded that "some percentage" would be interested in her sexually, but that we're mostly talking about people who write with malice in a manner very similar to watching a TV show with malice. To paraphrase only slightly, I say that these people watch our lives "like a TV show" that they hate, but I do concede the point that I had seen (specific) written messages from people who evidently were sexually interested in her (they were "some percentage").
So, yes, if you're willing to regard this kind of gross misrepresentation of what I've said (and with what intention and why) as fact, you can create a diagnosis of NPD out of thin air. Innumerable other conditions could also be attributed to me with the same methodology.
Every single thing said here is both false and written with bad intentions: these are obvious lies written for no reason other than idle malice. And it isn't even sincere: on some level, this author (bunnedgump) is aware that each and every one of the anecdotes in that podcast is true —and the podcast wouldn't be worth listening to otherwise. The stories I've told about every period of my life were true —none of my content has had the elements of the fantastic you could expect from fiction.
I will continue, in the next message below, if you don't mind.
—————
———
Calling yourself a public intellectual, a university professor, a talent agent...
———
There has never been a single example of me misrepresenting any job I ever had (or didn't have) at any period of my life: in China, I taught English at a university, and everyone referred to me as a University Professor because I did the work of a University Professor (teaching lessons, grading papers, etc.) but you will never find a single youtube video or podcast that misrepresents the work I did in even the slightest way imaginable. I did make videos offering advice to people who wanted to get the same kind of job in China —and to say that they were "transparent" would be an understatement. They were utterly lacking any hint of the narcissist or fantasist personality you've invented for me. When that job came up in passing (in conversation on another topic) it was absolutely never misrepresented in any way whatsoever: you will search in vain for any "grandiose" description of what my life was like teaching English in China. There was nothing grandiose about it, and I've never lied about it in any way (not even the smallest detail!).
The idea that I have ever referred to myself as a talent agent has already been debunked: nobody has ever produced a quotation from any video, podcast or piece of writing in which I claim anything of the sort. I have never misled anyone about what my interest in stand up comedy is —not any more than I've ever misled anyone about my interest in becoming a lawyer, for example. Innumerable job and career options have been discussed over the last ten years: I was honest about every single one of them —whether I dipped in my whole foot or just a toe.
Now tell me, honestly, what definition of "being a public intellectual" could you possibly use that excludes me? I was already a public intellectual before I delivered that lecture at Oxford. I was already a public intellectual when I wrote and published articles in Cambodian newspapers. The standard for that unpaid "job title" is so low that nobody could possibly say that it excludes me. If I had written nothing else in my life after the year 2016, nevertheless I'd still qualify as a public intellectual for the work I'd done in the years before —and you know it.
—————
———
Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. "Every woman wants to fuck me. The Melissa's father phone call" that's 2
———
Ah, yes, another quotation that is utterly lacking a source: is it really surprising at this point that I have never once said, "Every woman wants to fuck me"? I have never even said this as a joke.
The reality of my sex life is reflected both in my serious work and in my comedy —and both contain a great deal of self-criticism and self-loathing.
The author here knows I'm telling the truth (with each and every anecdote) and that's the only reason why it's fun for him to claim that I'm lying: the internet is full of people who exaggerate their sexual escapades —and I'm not one of them.
I am certain everyone here will remember the very grim video I made complaining about a woman who told me that her husband "was cool with" the two of them being in an open relationship —but when he found out that I was the man she was considering (as her first sexual partner in addition to himself) he freaked out and revealed that he "wasn't cool with" their relationship being so open at all.
Absolutely nobody here thinks that was a fantasy, a lie, or a narcissistic delusion on my part: the story is "rendered anonymous" through intentional omissions —but it is otherwise honest —and it is extremely grim and self-critical in tone.
It isn't boastful, it isn't adulatory, it isn't narcissistic. It certainly doesn't contain the claim that every woman wants to fuck me. It's a saddening set of reflections on "the narrowing of the middle aged mind" in more ways than one: it's ultimately a cautionary tale —it is my own real life experience made into a morality play for my audience to learn from.
Every other story I've told (including those in my most recent podcasts) has been true, and shares the same kind of "grim realism". They're all utterly lacking the elements that make narcissists such good storytellers: they're rather drab morality lectures, instead, and are reasonably laden with self-criticism and even self-loathing.
And hey: I reached eight million views in eight years. A small number of people really did enjoy participating in à-bas-le-ciel while it lasted. It was a club anyone could join, following along with the absurdities of my life while they unfolded. And if you can't appreciate it or can't enjoy those stories as they unfold, that's fine: I don't resent you for your lack of appreciation, and you shouldn't resent me for failing to fit into your expectations of gender roles.
—————
———
Were I behaving as he does, making the public statements he does, I would expect the same push back and the same amount of critique.
———
What are you talking about? What "push back"? What "critique"? There has been absolutely nothing of the kind: the two books I published resulted in me being buried under plaudits, positive reviews, and personal messages of appreciation. I've always had tons of positive feedback on all of my creative endeavors —even the most unpopular, paradoxically, because people could see that I was trying something gutsy and daring and different (rather than staying within the same format again and again, as people like Matt Dillahunty do).
[A comment added after the fact: how could anyone expect more praise and positive attention for their first attempt AT RAPPING than I received? It was really gutsy and daring and different for me to suddenly teach myself how to rap and then try to set my satire to music, etc., but if you think I feel under-appreciated for those first experimental attempts at the art form… well, you must some kind of narcissist!]
I can say this genuinely in retrospect: I do not feel under-appreciated, and I have never had any problem with "critics" of any kind —and in the recent podcasts you can hear the tone of my voice when I say this to Melissa (I disagree after she said some words to the contrary: I explain that "I do not feel under-appreciated" at all).
A couple of idle trolls on Reddit is no "push back" at all: perhaps YOU are such a coward that YOU would feel "pushed back" by seeing idiots make up lies about your sex life —but people have been making up lies about MY SEX LIFE since high school.
What do you think freedom of speech is for? What do you think Al Gore invented the internet for? Precisely so that idiots like yourselves can fill up pages and pages on Reddit with your malicious fantasies about me.
You may recall my song lyric that freedom of speech means that everything I say about Peter Singer he can say about me. What I say about Matt Dillahunty he can say about me, too, and so on: I've criticized others harshly and I have a sense of fair play about being criticized myself.
Would I prefer that my critics be stupid rather than brilliant, would I prefer that they be shallow rather than profound?
Those that consider themselves profound are the most insufferable: nobody here has said anything half as bad as the defenders of determinism —youtubers who thought of themselves as philosophers, defending the very fabric of the universe and their ethical place in it. That was really the nadir of the channel, dealing with those people.
It's only disappointing to see that other people are being idiots if you have the expectation that they'll be intelligent: anyone can read my books, anyone can listen to my videos and podcasts, therefore, naturally, I have to expect the overwhelming majority of the response to come from people who are both stupid and malign.
—————
(1) "He believes in an extreme form of honesty that I can relate to but am beginning to question…"
Yes, but you see, this is the entire "sport" being played by this Reddit group: you all (i) make up lies about me and (ii) pretend that you perceive me as a liar (and a fantasist) but on some level you're all aware that I've been telling the truth —and there'd be no game to be played in gossiping about my life if I wore a mask as others do.
Now tell me, for example, does Abhishek Desikan exist?
Did any of that really happen?
There's no evidence, is there?
If I were the kind of character you all pretend that I am (so that you can have some idle sport here, making fun of me) you'd be apprehensive in the extreme about a story like that one. You all treat what I'm saying as true: the very "brutality" of my honesty (as Simba says) is what makes my life worth talking about —despite the fact that the life in question consists largely of reading books, studying languages, politics, history, etc.
All of you know that the recent photo showing my work desk (and bookshelf, etc.) is very real: it depicts the life I've lived off-camera for many years (mutatis mutandis, from one desk to another) and you're aware that what I'm really motivated to do ends up being demonstrated in videos very laden down with the results of all that "active research" I've been doing.
In short, if you're being honest with yourselves: (i) it's an objective fact that my life is quite boring, at least from the perspective of those who can't relate to the intellectual content generated as a byproduct, and (ii) you wouldn't have anything to gossip about or mock if you didn't (i) make up lies about me and (ii) pretend that I'm the same sort of liar (that you all are) myself.
What could be more boring than a man who tells the truth?
You know, I listened to the whole of the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens a few months ago: for some reason, none of you are gossiping about that. ;-)
—————
———
He's still out there trying to "find talent." He isn't going around doing nothing. It's just that now, his social prospects are dreadfully poor. My critique, again: could that be due in large part to his confrontational approach in the past? A counterexample would be his anecdotes about meeting people in person...
———
Within this short paragraph you have a powerful demonstration of the extent to which each of you constructs a fictional character out of what you know about me —or what you choose to know, I suppose I might say, as you also choose to ignore contrary evidence in making the selection.
Now if you know me so well, after so many hours of listening to my voice, let me ask you: do I enjoy socializing with fools? Do I yearn to spend more time speaking to people I consider intellectually inferior, morally inferior and emotionally unsophisticated? Do you really think it's consistent with the character of the man you've heard (laughing about his strange fate) in so many podcasts and videos to say that I am now mourning my inability to spend more "quality time" with these "quality people" whom I revile as morons? How is it possible for you to misperceive me as being rejected by precisely the people I reject? Do you actually think I wanted to dance at the same parties as Durianrider? Do you suppose I wanted to be invited to dine at the same table as Cosmic Skeptic? Even now, do you suppose I'm waiting for my chance to sell out to some university or the C.B.C.?
The people I have been confrontational with never could have been my friends, and I did not try to befriend them: you're creating the apparition of a psychological disorder by pretending that I really wanted to be friends with precisely the people I insulted and rejected.
It isn't even true to say that I'm looking for talent anymore: that was the spirit of season two —and I've already spoken for many hours about how starkly different the spirit of season three will now be.
Doomed Republic is not a club that anyone can join —whereas à-bas-le-ciel was. I'm not lonely and I'm not alone: I'm not looking for talent at all.
Very simply, I am not the sort of person who gets on a Caribbean cruise ship expecting to get along with the members of the reggae band: it is not impossible that there's someone who has read Thucydides playing the steel drums, but it is so wildly improbable that I never expect to encounter it. Frankly, my expectations of the average M.A. student are lower than the average drummer: the academy produces gormless conformists with no stories to tell —whereas the drummer may know something of the wickedness of this life that he can teach me, without my having to endure the misery of learning it directly, for myself.
———
He was reasonably disappointed by his audience!
———
That is really all there is to say on the subject.
I always assumed I'd have a small audience (and this was talked about extensively in season one, more than eight years ago, when I'd often deflate the expectations of my fellow youtubers (like Jason Pizzino) who had been infected by the optimism of Durianrider, even if they became his critics). However, I am allowed to be disappointed with how stupid the people I met through youtube were —just as I was disappointed with how stupid the people I met through Discord were —and the people I met through Cambridge, Oxford and the University of Regina, for that matter.
Very simply: I am allowed to be disappointed by the stupidity of others. Everyone is.
———
Generally, however, he does not ask for much of anything in personal interaction, certainly less than he gives.
———
You sound like Melissa, saying that I'm "a wonderful person"! Just imagine!
———
However, I disagree that Eisel was confrontational on the Internet due to spite; as he himself has said, he was influenced by The Amazing Atheist, who was confrontational and succeeded because of it. Eisel applied that approach in his own time, and it failed miserably…
———
I'll disagree with the last part first: à-bas-le-ciel was a wildly successful ten year creative project. It was far more successful than it was ever designed or intended to be. I never expected to have a single video reach 10,000 viewers —I certainly never expected to have a single video reach 100,000 viewers. I was familiar with just how small the numbers were in the (non-fiction) book publishing industry: my videos, my podcasts and my books all reached vastly larger numbers of people than I ever could have dreamed of reaching if I'd taken the narrow path of getting a PhD, etc. —and there are many other narrow paths I could mention.
In my university program, at UVic, there was nobody worth meeting: that is not my fault, and I neither blame myself for it nor do I blame anyone else —in other words, I do not blame the university for failing to provide me with a generation of brilliant colleagues, rivals and contemporaries. The other students were just a bunch of idiots, but I neither blame them for being idiots, nor can I blame the professors for "furnishing me with" idiots as my potential collaborators.
Likewise, in parallel, there was nobody worth meeting through youtube: that is not my fault, and I don't blame anyone else (or anything else) for it.
Secondly and finally: this notion that the content I upload is "confrontational"… is anyone here so delusional that they think Doomed Republic would be improved if it were LESS CONFRONTATIONAL? How about Nihilism Now? You'd like my critique of J.D. Vance to be LESS CONFRONTATIONAL? Really? Even the video I uploaded today ("Your Dog Hates You…") could only be improved by being MORE confrontational, NOT LESS.
Nobody wants to listen to an hour of indecisive waffling on any of these topics, and nothing could be more absurd than a bunch of cowards on Reddit attempting to "interpret" theatricality as a symptom of a mental illness. There is more than one way to make a monologue about the immorality of pet ownership entertaining, or to make a dissertation about the defects of the vegan movement into a page-turner, but my dramatization of these conflicts is neither a symptom of NPD (a condition none of you know the first thing about) nor any other disability.
