Dark Web "Thinkers"

A few months ago there was a Bari Weiss article in the New York Times where the reader would get to "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web". I finally got around to reading it and it wasn't really at all about the dark web. The dark web, when being used by a librarian, usually means the portion of the web that's very difficult to see or access. Oftentimes for a very specific reason like data security. So if Weiss had found some sort of intellectual movement being conducted on the 21st century version of some speakeasy internet salon I was interested. It turns out most of the "thinkers" can be pretty easily found either online, in-print, or even on that legacy platform known as TV.

In fact, Weiss was on Real Time with Bill Maher twice recently (May 18 and March 9). Actually, in double fact, Weiss, Jordan Peterson (April 20), and Ben Shapiro (June 29) were all on Real Time within the past few months. Sam Harris's books are ranked pretty highly on Amazon in their various categories and it's not like Joe Rogan is hard to find. He was the host of Fear Factor, come on. Heck, Peterson's book was #4 on Publisher's Weekly, #1 on Amazon, #2 on the Washington Post's non-fiction, and #4 on USA Today's lists. Again none of these people are actually difficult to find.

My guess the reason they're "dark" is because their "thinking" is outside the mainstream. Again I was hoping for more than Weiss could deliver. It's the usual standard stuff about identity politics being bad and, according to Weiss, all "are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness". Uh, dude, no they aren't. Here's Peterson Tweeting about slapping a critic (I could go on at length about Peterson but I'm not because I'll just worked up. People significantly smarter than I have analyzed his arguments and found them to be pretty lame.) Here's Shapiro civilly disagree with the movie Black Panther. Here's Shapiro saying that George Soros was a kapo for the Nazis. Here's Bari Weiss trying to get a Columbia University professor fired for disagreeing with her.

Ah ok I've found the darkness. Basically, it means, these "dark thinkers" purposefully say nasty/racist/sexist/mean things and if someone gets offended or upset, well, screw them! That's not really thinking, it's not even really being a provocateur it's being well, mean and dumb.

The article reminds me of another group of "dark" thinkers known as the "Dark Enlightenment". TechCrunch called them Neoreactionaries way back in 2013. Their "leader", if he can be called that, is Curtis Yarvin. A computer scientist by day and Mencius Moldbug by blog. His blog posts go all the way back to 2007. What's "fun" (I mean this sarcastically as their ideas are both horrible and terrible) is that their big thought is to basically bring back a monarchy and/or feudalism! Now there's some thinking! Another "great" (again sarcasm and disdain) is seasteading: the creation of permanent dwellings at sea! It's not super original (anyone can become royalty thanks to the Principality of Sealand) but hey, they're at least trying.

This post is, sort of, about the dark web and it seems like, until these thinkers think better thoughts, that it'd be better if their thinking took place on the real dark web.

**All views in this post are the author's own and do NOT represent the views of Mercer County Community College**