hey so about your favorite boy hank green.
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@zzt I remember when Scishow put out a dumb/incorrect video about knitting last year that some people speculated that his team had used AI to write it. It was definitely "phoned in" one way or another. So the current controversy isn't as surprising to me as it might've been.
I wish more people recognized that the AI boosters and AI doomers are both on the same team.
@giflian @zzt
I ran into a reaction video about the current controversy (if it can be called that) and thought about that bs knitting video and other links YouTube has shown me that smelled like further bs.I have no stake in this, having never heard of him before the knitting one. If anything, I feel happy my bs detector has been validated.
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@hipsterelectron @davidgerard there are many more types of addicts than substance abuse addicts
an LLM addiction is close in mechanism and outcome to a gambling addiction. a gambler in the throes of their addiction is absolutely making dogshit decisions. I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to have sympathy for an active gambler or an active LLM addict, as both are still doing damage to the people around them.
maybe that’s unkind of me. I don’t know if kindness helps here. in my lifetime I’ve physically dragged multiple people away from slot machines before they spent money they really shouldn’t, and I’ve lent a couple hundred bucks to a friend who spent the last of their grocery money on Overwatch loot boxes (yes really). the latter was more kind, but it sure as fuck didn’t stop them from hurting me.
@zzt I've dealt with people addicted to things that aren't substances. Video games, pornography...Those things invite lying, misuse of finances, and an inability to function as a full human being just like other addictive substances we would recognize.
(And, as an indie author, I also recognize that much of the advice around ebooks involves feeding an addiction.)
I'm sorry if Green is suffering from addiction to LLMs. But he's not getting a walk on all else.
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hey so about your favorite boy hank green. it’s such a shame that he went overboard with the LLM stuff, that was impossible to see coming, good on him for realizing he was addicted right? well wishes for the good boy!
anyway there’s smoking gun evidence that he was paid by effective altruists to do marketing for the “AI is so dangerous but so revolutionary” flavor of critihype. this is alleged by hank green expert hank green in the washington post, as well as an EA in charge of influencer marketing. he was literally being paid by TESCREALs.
someone in the same community ran a program where TikTokers were required to post an AI critihype video a day in a cult-like environment where they were subjected to “voluntary” waterboarding and other forms of indoctrination. I’m not kidding, this literal thing happened.
here’s @davidgerard’s pivot to AI with the evidence linked: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/06/the-ai-doomsday-cult-recruits-social-media-influencers/
Re: the waterboarding
Unsatisfied with reinventing the train and the taxi, tech bros have now moved on to reinventing the bdsm scene!
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@cyberquixote might I recommend the Autism Model
encounter new thing, spend a significant period of time in consideration of thing before deciding to engage in an uncritical analysis of thing, learn about history of usage and funding of thing before committing to thing, which leads you to using or caring about fewer thing
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@davidgerard I’m very serious about this by the way
if you respect science, you must not forgive hank green. you must spread the word on what he’s done, especially if you used to be a fan. this is corruption in the raw and what he’s done must be known.
if you respect science, you must verify the claims of science communicators independently and reject any who are doing marketing. most of the major YouTube science communicators are doing paid, undisclosed marketing for effective altruists or for political groups. this isn’t hard to spot, but you must be critical and you can’t let yourself be impressed by perceived celebrity, popularity, or production values.
if you respect science, you have to demand accountability. science is actively under attack and if we don’t do anything to defend it, we will be in a new dark age. this is the moment, and you don’t have to do much. you just have to be very loud and very unforgiving.
The part in the article where Hank said "yeah I don't really believe it but it's important to platform people with all opinions" is when he went from "this guy is squirrely and talks really fast, I don't enjoy his content so I'll pass" to "nope not interested".
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@cyberquixote you just gotta wear your autism like an albacore around your neck to remind you of the weight of your responsibilities to the world @zzt
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Shame on Green, but if I permanently banned everyone on the internet who did something colossally stupid or bought into some terrible narrative before, I would have no one but a couple of totally insufferable arseholes and some teenagers who joined the internet yesterday to talk to. (And folk wouldn’t talk to me either)
@MichaelTBacon @zzt @davidgerard
I have seen people saying "it's not right to unfollow Hank Green just because he made a mistake" and oh hell no.
He's not entitled to anyone's attention.
Granted, the only video of his I ever watched was an AI doom video sent by a booster friend of mine, so it's not going to be any change in my lifestyle to not give a shit about what Hank Green said.
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Re: the waterboarding
Unsatisfied with reinventing the train and the taxi, tech bros have now moved on to reinventing the bdsm scene!
@eestileib @zzt Aella's been hard at work on that, *just asking questions* about fucking children, fucking animals, race science and of course consenting non-consent (first consent optional)
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@eestileib @zzt Aella's been hard at work on that, *just asking questions* about fucking children, fucking animals, race science and of course consenting non-consent (first consent optional)
I left off the "... but skeevier and worse" in my last post, figuring that was implied about tech bros at this point.
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@MichaelTBacon @zzt @davidgerard
I have seen people saying "it's not right to unfollow Hank Green just because he made a mistake" and oh hell no.
He's not entitled to anyone's attention.
Granted, the only video of his I ever watched was an AI doom video sent by a booster friend of mine, so it's not going to be any change in my lifestyle to not give a shit about what Hank Green said.
@eestileib @MichaelTBacon @zzt @davidgerard i never got around to subscribing to hank green or scishow, but i have clicked the "dont show me this channel again button" and watched Evie Unraveling's excellent remake of the infamous knitting video
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@Rycochet @zzt @davidgerard "Would anyone be...?"
Me? no.
The people defending him for shilling for LLM companies? Probably. -
hey so about your favorite boy hank green. it’s such a shame that he went overboard with the LLM stuff, that was impossible to see coming, good on him for realizing he was addicted right? well wishes for the good boy!
anyway there’s smoking gun evidence that he was paid by effective altruists to do marketing for the “AI is so dangerous but so revolutionary” flavor of critihype. this is alleged by hank green expert hank green in the washington post, as well as an EA in charge of influencer marketing. he was literally being paid by TESCREALs.
someone in the same community ran a program where TikTokers were required to post an AI critihype video a day in a cult-like environment where they were subjected to “voluntary” waterboarding and other forms of indoctrination. I’m not kidding, this literal thing happened.
here’s @davidgerard’s pivot to AI with the evidence linked: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/06/the-ai-doomsday-cult-recruits-social-media-influencers/
@zzt@mas.to @davidgerard@circumstances.run
Everything I have heard about these ai-quasireligion groups has been really fucking wild and horrid and profoundly fucked up.
I feel like at least some people had been raising the alarm about Hank's repeating these kinds of ea/doom/tescreal/yudkowskirelated ideas for a minute, and questioning why he'd platform this shit and then ignore criticism of it, for quite a while before recent events. No one wants to believe the worst. But what's been the most alarming to me is trying to visit comments or the reddit to process and better understand, and seeing these concerns basically ignored or dismissed. Not just fannish reactivity over criticism, but like very little substantive discussion about the implications of this ideology and his engagement with it??
I think most people who were fans of his work because they thought it was about critical thinking and fun nerdery said 'fuck this' and left a long time ago. But I am deeply concerned about the fanbase he has cultivated since then, because like it or not this guy has huge reach and huge influence and he has proactively sought those things, the 'community' such as it is not the same community as it was before, it is much larger and as always it includes a lot of quite young people. Shit is dangerous. He is a lot of things to a lot of different people and sure man you can be that, but not if you are pushing what is basically an anti human eugenicist-adjacent capitalist ideology in ways that are seemingly designed to be deniable or not obvious. The sheer manipulativeness of that is something I feel like he might have convinced himself is not even wrong? But it is perhaps a lot more noticeable than he thought.
#deeply-mad-about-all-this!!!!!!!!!! #have-been-for-a-few--years-now-but-it-keeps-getting-worse -
@eestileib @MichaelTBacon @zzt @davidgerard i never got around to subscribing to hank green or scishow, but i have clicked the "dont show me this channel again button" and watched Evie Unraveling's excellent remake of the infamous knitting video
@Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt @davidgerard
I don't follow Hank Green and don't really feel the need to tell anyone else to. I haven't watched a Hank Green video in I don't know how many years (his one on getting rid of pennies must be at least 15 years old now, that's the one I remember most) and have no idea what the knitting video is or what AI doom videos he's done.
It's the "don't forgive him when he comes back" bit that I thought was on the deranged side. Like really.
Whatever Hank Green has turned into, he's more than just an influencer based on his and John's past advocacy work at the bare minimum. To reduce someone to the dumbest thing they've said in a bad internet take video is best ridiculous and at worst just being excessively mean. A lot of people who know little about the topic have had terrible takes on AI in the last three years.
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@zzt @davidgerard that's quite a quote.
“It’s really hard to run a fellowship that’s not an indoctrination camp,” Fernandez said. “If you don’t try really hard to not make an indoctrination camp, you will on accident.”No, it's not. If you're in a cult and making an indoctrination camp, it's hard to pretend that's not what you're doing.
@kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place @zzt@mas.to @davidgerard@circumstances.run
I mean, two things can be true.
He's using it as an excuse, but not making a cult can be surprisingly hard. -
@Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt @davidgerard
I don't follow Hank Green and don't really feel the need to tell anyone else to. I haven't watched a Hank Green video in I don't know how many years (his one on getting rid of pennies must be at least 15 years old now, that's the one I remember most) and have no idea what the knitting video is or what AI doom videos he's done.
It's the "don't forgive him when he comes back" bit that I thought was on the deranged side. Like really.
Whatever Hank Green has turned into, he's more than just an influencer based on his and John's past advocacy work at the bare minimum. To reduce someone to the dumbest thing they've said in a bad internet take video is best ridiculous and at worst just being excessively mean. A lot of people who know little about the topic have had terrible takes on AI in the last three years.
@MichaelTBacon @Siobibblecoms @zzt @davidgerard
You're right—and I appreciate the pushback—but Green's not a footballer or a plumber, he made his reputation by saying things that he expected other people to take seriously.
Shit happens all the time because of the worst thing you do in a given context. I've broken up with people romantically because of the worst thing they ever said to me, and I bet you have too.
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@kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place @zzt@mas.to @davidgerard@circumstances.run
I mean, two things can be true.
He's using it as an excuse, but not making a cult can be surprisingly hard.@flesh @davidgerard @zzt my point is if you're "accidentally" making a cult you really need to examine what you are trying to make and probably realize that it's intrinsically cult-shaped.
If you are centering inclusivity, autonomy, safety, freedom of expression, etc... that undermines the hell out of your thing becoming cult-like. -
@Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt @davidgerard
I don't follow Hank Green and don't really feel the need to tell anyone else to. I haven't watched a Hank Green video in I don't know how many years (his one on getting rid of pennies must be at least 15 years old now, that's the one I remember most) and have no idea what the knitting video is or what AI doom videos he's done.
It's the "don't forgive him when he comes back" bit that I thought was on the deranged side. Like really.
Whatever Hank Green has turned into, he's more than just an influencer based on his and John's past advocacy work at the bare minimum. To reduce someone to the dumbest thing they've said in a bad internet take video is best ridiculous and at worst just being excessively mean. A lot of people who know little about the topic have had terrible takes on AI in the last three years.
@MichaelTBacon @Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt the fuck? he's grifting, he's been grifting for the past year, and he got caught. That counts against someone!
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@MichaelTBacon @Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt the fuck? he's grifting, he's been grifting for the past year, and he got caught. That counts against someone!
@davidgerard @Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt
At no point am I arguing that it doesn't count against him, or that he's entitled to anyone's attention.
Green at this point is the equivalent of a comic strip artist who's been drawing for 30 years and is running out of steam for new ideas, but still needs to pay the bills. It's Jim Davis and Garfield. You can say Green has been grifting (yes Garfield is almost never funny these days) but his history is a hell of a lot deeper than some ghost-pepper-hot takes on AI.
That said, I'm not telling anyone to stay tuned in.
(Really, I'm not!)
I was making a narrow point about not blackballing people for stupid takes.
Because frankly just as there's an attention economy for AI doomerism there's also one for who can be most dramatically angry about garbage AI claims. Not you, David, but your mentions can drift that way.
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hey so about your favorite boy hank green. it’s such a shame that he went overboard with the LLM stuff, that was impossible to see coming, good on him for realizing he was addicted right? well wishes for the good boy!
anyway there’s smoking gun evidence that he was paid by effective altruists to do marketing for the “AI is so dangerous but so revolutionary” flavor of critihype. this is alleged by hank green expert hank green in the washington post, as well as an EA in charge of influencer marketing. he was literally being paid by TESCREALs.
someone in the same community ran a program where TikTokers were required to post an AI critihype video a day in a cult-like environment where they were subjected to “voluntary” waterboarding and other forms of indoctrination. I’m not kidding, this literal thing happened.
here’s @davidgerard’s pivot to AI with the evidence linked: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/06/the-ai-doomsday-cult-recruits-social-media-influencers/
@zzt @davidgerard thanks. we were saying it was like an MLM, but this is more literal than we expected
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@zzt @davidgerard thanks. we were saying it was like an MLM, but this is more literal than we expected
@ireneista marketing cult
@zzt @davidgerard
