I’ve continued to try and figure out exactly what is happening with Owen Benjamin. I watched a portion of episode 424 of his podcast and several other clips recently where he addressed disputes with Steven Crowder, Sam Tripoli and Jordan Peterson. At this point I think I have a slightly better idea of where he stands than I did before, but not really.
One thing Benjamin mentioned is the potential hypocrisy of concerned old friends like Tripoli who said on a public platform that they want to speak with Benjamin in private, but not share the content publicly.
Someone somewhere in this back-and-forth chain became petty and aired their grievances to other people and on a public platform instead of actually sitting down and talking directly despite being old friends. Where that back-and-forth chain actually begins is buried in semantics and subjective accounts.
I think that the comedians who have implied that Benjamin has lost it — Tripoli, Bert Kreischer and even Joe Rogan — should have him on their podcasts to discuss the points of contention between them to attempt to clear the air. The reason I think they don’t is because Benjamin is so insufferably combative, that they believe it would quickly devolve into an argument.
Benjamin seems weirdly obsessed with cosmetic aspects of their personalities, like Rogan’s height or Kreischer’s sexuality, and it’s hard to see how that has any bearing on the issues at hand. For example, whether or not Benjamin is racist for writing a song, “That N****** stole my bike.” The only thing I can imagine is that he is trying to make a point about how they are similarly dismissing him but that isn’t clear at all.
To be fair to Benjamin, the comedians who have condemned him for his use of the N-word in a comedic sense are people who have interacted heavily with comedians like Doug Stanhope, who has used the N-word to achieve the same effect and not taken any issue with it. This is why I think they are hypocrites for stating their opinion about him publicly and throwing him under the bus while expressing a desire to discuss it privately. But, that doesn’t mean Benjamin has handled this well either. The reality is that both sides are exhibiting elements of hypocrisy because human beings are deeply flawed and complicated.
I personally haven’t taken the time to listen to endless hours of Owen’s podcast to hear what he has to say about the moon landing because I have other things I need to accomplish in a more immediate sense. Though, even something so ridiculous might be worth listening to if he is this adamant about making his opinions heard.
My previous article, “YouTuber Owen Benjamin goes from comedy roasting to ridiculous conspiracy theories,” was a comment on how difficult it is to make an assessment of a situation like Benjamin’s than to ridicule the pursuit of conspiracy theories — though I do think pursuing conspiracy theories with this level of intensity is detrimental to your own mental health. I regret the connotation the title gave the situation because it implied that his beliefs are more ridiculous than they might be — considering I don’t know all of the facts. That is why the intention of that article, and this one, is to make the point that I can’t be sure of what he’s saying without sifting through more content than I think is practically possible for a normal person.
This isn’t to say that people shouldn’t take ample time to research issues. It’s just ridiculous to expect someone to listen to hours and hours of someone raging against his enemies and veering wildly around his topic with biased side tangents.
At the very least, I believe his conviction in his own beliefs. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but as he has said himself, he might be wrong but I don’t believe he is lying and that is enough for me to at least try and figure this out.
He did make some very good points in episode 424 about how it is necessary to have people who can give genuine feedback within any inner circle. He has at least acknowledged the sycophants and the trolls to a degree that makes me believe he still has some sense of self-awareness. But again, I can’t be certain of any of this and that is what makes it all so weird.
On one hand this seems legit and on the other this seems like a man who is burning every bridge he has while contradicting himself in the same way he accuses others of doing. In one moment, he laments that people don’t know anyone anymore, and that they don’t see the predators surrounding him so they assume he is crazy — yet will condemn other people who criticize him without really giving credence to their own personal situation.
Though he shouldn’t be your hero, I also don’t think he deserves to be a pariah. The most valuable aspect of this is using it as an example of how incredibly complicated modern discourse has become. It is difficult to know how to feel about this even when weighing both sides.
If you look back on something like when Lenny Bruce was censored, it was very cut and dry — especially in retrospect. He was speaking his mind comedically and arrested for it. Clearly the police and the legal system were wrong there — it was an injustice; end of story. The issue of Owen Benjamin has so many moving parts that the average person doesn’t have the practical time or energy to properly sift through every piece of pertinent information in order to make a real informed decision about who is right or wrong.
What is scary is that we are beyond a point of easy dismissal and black-and-white judgements. We are beyond a time where we can just say, certain people are good and certain people are bad. I believe that there is an inherent right and wrong, but you can’t just listen to one clip on YouTube and accurately make that call. Lack of context on all sides is what is going to drive us down the wrong path and cause the kind of confusion we see in regards to the state of Benjamin is in at the moment.
