Wealthy but Still Ebegging: the Amazing Atheist & Kevin Smith.

you ever done drugs
i'm not encouraging you to do drugs you know this is just a question i just want to know if you have and by drugs i mean like any drug right you ever drink a coca-cola it's got caffeine in it that's a drug you might tell yourself it's not for some reason we let little kids drink it you know all not all that chemically different than uh you know cocaine right if i'm not mistaken many of you in the audience will feel that this just doesn't matter and some of you will even feel positively that this is what the internet is all about that the wonderful thing about youtube is that it gives us all the opportunity to have this kind of freedom of expression to come on camera and ever so casually share whatever's on our mind and sure some of the things people say are scientifically inaccurate misleading wrong maybe even dangerous misconceptions about scientific facts are shared in this way but who am i to criticize and why would you in the audience take the time to think about this seriously to engage in this kind of critique of misinformation on social media well would you feel differently if the man delivering the message were wearing a lab coat would you feel differently if you knew that the man delivering the message was earning more than three hundred thousand dollars a year maybe the appearance of privilege wealth and elitism doesn't matter maybe the reality of privileged wealth and elitism really does matter tj kirk the amazing atheist currently in the year 2020 earns much much more than three hundred thousand dollars per year if you calculate the minimum amount he could be making from just one of his patreon accounts he has more than one currently he has had more than one historically just that one patreon account must earn more than three hundred and forty thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars per year the math is not hard to do that's assuming all the subscribers are giving the minimum minimum donation amount of five dollars a month many will give more this does not even attempt to calculate or estimate his other revenue streams now can you expect someone who is earning so much money from youtube to do a quick google search to do a fact check to put some effort into the content if not the aesthetics of what they're doing on youtube i think this question really matters i look at a guy like kevin smith who has this very strange history of different projects both on the internet and on youtube in which he's kind of crying poor and presenting himself as poor oh this is just a couple of guys who have a friend who own a bar who are producing this podcast no kevin smith is worth more than 25 million dollars this website tried to estimate how much money he makes per year and they allege that he has an income of over 4 million us dollars per year and you will see kevin smith's name is associated with several attempts at crowdfunding at seeking donations he makes jokes about having to get out a second mortgage on his house there's an article here on the left about him having a garage sale to help finance his films if you listen to kevin smith's content he is actually constantly misrepresenting himself as some kind of struggling middle class filmmaker content creator youtuber podcaster this sense of him not being poor not quite e-begging but just being a regular guy like you and i who who can just just barely get it together to deal with the technical difficulties of having a proper microphone and camera set up for these podcasts and other projects he does it's fake i mean it's fake poverty it's fake powerlessness from someone who is in an extraordinary position of power privilege and wealth now i have to say i don't vilify millionaires i don't hate rich people for being rich i think that if you are a multi-millionaire you have different options i think if you were a multi-millionaire you have different opportunities and i think you have different responsibilities and somehow tj kirk the amazing atheist has held on to this public image he had from 13 years ago as just being some guy casually recording videos in his parents garage and i just pointed even from this one image you can see that is a wealthy person's garage okay it doesn't bother me i don't mind that his parents were wealthy his father was a very successful businessman he's told the story many times but like tj kirk never was poor he wasn't poor as a kid he's not pronoun but he's maintained this image of himself as struggling to just get by with his camera by the seat of his pants the evidence indicates that he is a multi-millionaire if you earn more than 300 000 a year year after year after year and again his real income is much more than this this is not attempting to calculate his revenue stream such as the sale of his books his books cost quite a lot of money they generate quite a lot of money and he put very little effort into them this is not attempting to estimate what happened to the money from the various donation drives he did he raised 23 000 in donations for not productive i i can't find anywhere on the internet now a record of how much money he made for the earlier attempted e-begging to set up his website free speech vids that's a lot of money 23 000 there were thousands of dollars raised for a world tour that he never did also that many people still complain about the internet in terms of his history of scams e-begging donation seeking raising money through various kinds of merchandise and various promotions linked to his books but actually all of that seems like a joke compared to someone who's making 28 000 a month every month from just his patreon just one of his patreon accounts alone this is not attempting to calculate how much money he makes from youtube his current level of fame is much more modest than his past level of fame it's reasonable to assume that his current level of income is much lower than his past level of income at various points over the last 10 years his star has sean starry sean is that the right firm his star has been shining quite a bit brighter over the last 10 years at various points being a multi-millionaire doesn't mean that you're a bad person it means that you have exceptional responsibilities it means you have exceptional opportunities and tj kirk has criticized other people for doing this i'm showing you in the bottom right corner there i remember this video he made criticizing anita sarkeesian for her greed and fundraising where her money came from what she did i thought he was raising some interesting questions about the finances of a fellow youtuber anita sarkeesian much more recently he made a video in which he really attacks michael jordan the athlete for presenting himself as being much more middle class than he is michael jordan never presented himself as poor but is living kind of ordinary guy lifestyle when in fact michael jordan is really really a multi-millionaire or multi-billionaire these these criticisms i'm sorry tj i'm sorry the amazing atheist but they apply to you and just as i said there's this sort of strange disconnect between the reality of kevin smith's personal wealth and what he does with it here on youtube what he does with it as a youtuber because part of what he does is just being a youtuber there's this strange disconnect between the enormously high level of financial reward the amazing atheist has taken from youtube and the sense of responsibility he has in content creation i don't really care about how expensive your camera is how expensive your microphone is i think you should feel a really deep sense of commitment to your audience and to the truth even if you're only making one thousand dollars and i don't mean a thousand dollars a month i mean a thousand dollars all time period i once made a thousand dollars from youtube i decided to spend that money printing free t-shirts and giving those t-shirts away for free to my viewers i just asked them to pay the the price of postage and i showed them the receipt i took a photograph of each receipt for how much it cost for me to ship that to them do you think tj kirk could give away his book for free his other book originally retailed it 15 us dollars per copy and in order to make more money you can read here he put the font size up to be massive he tried to make it seem like it was more pages than it was he's been ripping off his viewers his fans his supporters all this time including in the book publishing side of the game i think for someone making more than 300 000 a year and again i'm sorry guys this could be less than 50 of the money he's earning to really estimate how much he's making through uh youtube itself merchandise all these other revenue streams it is going to be significantly more than 300 000 a year you know what you could you could give that book away for free or you could publish the book and sell it to people just for the cost of printing and the cost of shipping just ask them to pay you could be somewhat magnanimous towards your fans and you know what you can't put a price on virtue how much would people have to pay the amazing atheist for him to care about doing the fact checking for him to care about producing content that is actually informative rather than misleading dangerous dishonest and bad drugs i got a dick until i got addicted to smoking cigarettes and i quit uh like two months ago or more at this point every time i see a cigarette anywhere or sometimes it's just out of the blue just sitting there minding my business not even thinking about smoking a cigarette and bam want to smoke a cigarette but i don't do it because i quit you know but i'm trying to just avoid that that moment altogether i'm trying to just say no to cigarettes like nancy reagan used to tell us to do when i was a kid you know just say no don't do drugs but anyway this video is about legalizing drugs because i think drugs should be legal